Reading Shane Clairborns’ The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical brought forth a lot of feelings. Some of what he writes I find a little odd, but I have to admire his passion.
Something I am not sure I was supposed to take away, but did anyways, was how closely some of his words mirrored my own thoughts. You all know I am Roman Catholic, and as a feminist it’s been rough. Now as a feminist and a Roman Catholic who wants to change the church? It’s as intimidating as it sounds. I could have taken the easy way out, and abandoned the church (side note, for me, that would be the easy way, for others whom the church has hurt beyond belief, leaving is a matter of safety and sanity) or I could do what I am doing. I am staying and fighting, and won’t go down until I finish swinging. My brother summed up what I plan to do nicely, “She is really frustrated by the Roman Catholic Church, so she plans on storming the Vatican all by herself. She’s a nut.” I personally don’t envision myself storming the Vatican just yet, but it will probably come down to that. In the meantime I see myself as merely following Jesus and what he would have wanted. Tying that in with how my brother sees me were Shane’s words: “Ha, that’s funny. My life was pretty easy before I met Jesus” (Clairborn, 135). Yes, my life was much easier (and had more money in it) before I decided on this path.
Another line which resonated with me was “This love is not sentimental but heart-wrenching, the most difficult and the most beautiful thing in the world” (Clairborn, 136). In spite of everything, I believe in the goodness of the Roman Catholic church, and the possibilities, other days I literally weep over what it has become and worry it can never be salvaged. I think this on days when I need to go get my best friend from his grandmother’s funeral because his family has been ranting over how the Church says he is an abomination because he is gay. I get despondent when I hear of another pedophilia cover up (it is not “sex abuse” these boys are not willing and it is not sex), or I witness people in church for one hour behaving angelically, only to hit another car in their rush to rejoin “their real life.”
The last one feeds into another line of Shane’s, “Christians pretty much live like everybody else; they just sprinkle a little Jesus in along the way” (Clairborn, 117). I’ll wrap things up now, but that one line alone, really makes me think. What would our lives look like if we instead of sprinkling Jesus in, we sprinkled a bit of regular life, and instead lived like Jesus all the time?
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