Obstacles or Challenges?

There is a famous dictum from the Talmud that I heard for the first time during a homily a couple months back: "All beginnings are difficult." There is a bit of a 'duh' factor here - of course beginnings are difficult. But the obviousness of the statement does not necessarily mean it is simple or without need of further explanation.

The last 5 weeks of my fellowship and living in San Francisco bear the truth of this statement in many ways. But I would like to emphasize that some of the complexity of this statement is that difficulty should not be seen as a negative thing. Beginnings are difficult in that they do not tend to follow entirely from the ending we just experienced - there is often a leap into something new that we cannot grasp at the beginning. We take time to adjust. All of this is obvious, but it should still be said. If this truth applies to our lives and the flux between beginning, some semblance of stability and ending that we experience so often, then certainly it applies to projects.

Working on my project has been an exercise in this. If we ask deep questions about our own personal identities in times and moments of change (endings, beginnings), then an organization can also experience this introspective tendency in an analogous way. ISN isn't changing drastically, but because we are in a time of transition on many levels (new personnel, a new location in Cleveland in a month, our main conference will be in only its second year in a new location - DC) we too experience identity questions. I've chronicled some of my work with developing one aspect of our identity - our network with Jesuit parishes - and here too, I've found that despite the hope and promise of greater collaboration, obstacles and pitfalls arise. It is in this sense that the beginning of this project is difficult.

During some conversations with people who work in the Jesuit system, reservations have arisen about the impact and/or potential of our network among Jesuit parishes. Some obstacles have been identified: do parishes have time/space for ISN given their involvement with social ministry with other networks and organizations? If parishes are already connected with the diocese they are in, do they need another form of collaboration? How would we integrate the wide variance in structure and life of each parish? What niche are we fulfilling?

These are difficult, but good questions. The difficulty arises from how to address such obstacles while remaining cognizant of the need that has been brought to us for this network's development. Personally, as a somewhat hard-headed personality, such situations lead me to consider these potential obstacles as challenges to address rather than give up. But addressing these concerns at the beginning hopefully puts us on a solid foundation to move forward with our work. This puts even more stress on truly listening to what people want and need at the parish level and trying to meet them where they are. In so doing, some of the challenges can be met with our collective effort.