Parish council meetings can be hell--which is deeply, spiritually ironic when you think about it. I'm sure that parish councils existed before 1962, but only since the Second Vatican Council have they become, necessarily, deadly.
Before--I'm pretty sure (I was nine when the First Session of Vatican II solemnly opened, so I can't be absolutely positive about this)--such meetings were sessions designed to help the Pastor of the parish govern and make decisions. Now they seek to create a "collaborative spirit" where each member is encouraged to participate in the decision-making process. The results of the meeting are less important than how we get to them, and members are encouraged to enjoy the experience and putting up with the product, which will ideally not be anyone's, any one person's, idea.
So there was a lot of sharing last night, for two hours--not much decided upon, nor informed about, but we got to watch our new parish lay coordinator, Pablo, in action at his first meeting, and he can be relied upon for the colorful expression and occasional lame joke that bring a few chuckles even to the most recalcitrant. "I have to tell you," he admitted at one point, "I'm an shaky as a basket of tripe at this meeting!" People laughed warmly.
Some of our perennial adult critics of the youth program also took advantage of this opportunity to ask some of their toughest questions of the two youth counselors (religious sisters), like, "How come you throw out from the program any youth who might get pregnant?" (Turned out it wasn't true--just that youth leaders are not from among the pregnant nor their male "collaborators")
If the young teenagers who attend the meeting are considered a reliable barometer, this meeting had all the fascination of an optional class in world history (presented by a boring teacher who only read from the textbook). The four of them arrived together an hour into the meeting, listened and stared around them for about 20 minutes, and then drifted out of the room one at a time, never to return.
But just about everyone of the twenty or so (constantly) present participated at some point, so that makes it an okay event. We got up to put our arms around each others' shoulders, forming a ring, at the end of the meeting, and prayed the Our Father. I and our parish secretary gave the outgoing coordinators, a married couple, Jano and Rosa Ester ("Not Rosa, Father," she corrected me more than once, "Rosa Ester"--sounding approximately like Fred Astaire's last name in English), a large, rather funereal bouquet of flowers (some roses, of course, included) and a clay rendering of the Last Supper in Peruvian folkcraft style--the Eucharistic community, as it were, that will always count on their spiritual presence with us in the future.
As the slowly departing members of the parish council of Santo Tomás Apóstol sipped their last carbonated beverages from small, white plastic cups and passed around with admiration the brick-sized clay gift, I noticed the great care that the artist took to portray each of the seated disciples. There's Judas, of course, with the bag of 30 coins in his hand, but there was also a young Bartholomew, a wild-eyebrowed Peter, and perhaps that was his competitive younger brother Andrew with the most striking, striped poncho, ...this group of characters, fishermen and reformed tax-collectors, that made up the first parish council meetings ever, felt close to this present version.
So maybe we're on the right track. Parish council meetings are not exactly hell, ...they're uncomfortable, boring, sometimes entertaining, certainly too long, and yet leave a lot of room for God's presence, to make of our weakness and fragility something hopeful and holy, something like a word of divine love tenderly uttered in very human, limited and faltering speech.
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