“A ship is safe in harbour…
but that’s not what ships are made for!”
“Well, have you given some thought to what I spoke to you about last time?’
“Thought about what?”
“Being Treasurer.”
“Of course not … I just assumed you were calling everyone – that I was number thirty-seven on your list of 100 people to call. I never thought of it again after you hung up last time.”
“Well, no, I really want you to think about it.”
Silence … as with rising panic I start to realize that Ken Thorson, OMI – one of the Vicar Provincials for the Oblates of OMI Lacombe Canada – might actually be having a serious conversation with me.
Then, in quick succession, the protests start:
“Ken, I couldn’t possibly do that! I’m teaching; I’m busy in the school. I’m not good at math. If my high school math teacher were to hear you asking me this question, he would be on the floor screaming with laughter! I’m needed here… who’s going to make pizza for the teenagers? And banana bread? And peanut butter cookies? Who’s going to answer the door when they come knocking at 2:00 in the morning needing someone to talk to? I help out in the church. Fr. Subash depends on me. (And, amidst all this, the unspoken thoughts: ‘My life is here; I love these people; I don’t want to leave. Besides, another nine years of teaching and I can retire!’)
Patient silence.
“Yes, I hear that; you mentioned it the last time we spoke … but we need help here and the Council thinks you can do this. So, think about it; pray about. I’ll get back to you.”
It took a few more phone calls from Ken but, in the end, even the long sessions during which I patiently pointed out to God all the reasons I simply couldn’t leave Sandy Bay didn’t give me the response for which I was hoping. That was how the journey began from the little Cree village of Sandy Bay in northern Saskatchewan to the city of Ottawa.
I’ve now been in Ottawa – as Treasurer – for several months and, as yet, haven’t been able to formulate a succinct response to the question, “So what do you do as Treasurer?” Invariably, I quip, “I don’t know what I do all day; all I know is that it takes me all day to do it.” What I do know is that my days are filled with meetings, discussions, answering requests for information, and asking, “What does this mean?” Fortunately, our Ottawa office staff are friendly, unbelievably competent and endlessly patient people – although I have caught them a few times responding to yet another one of my queries with, “As you may remember when I told you yesterday ….”
When I joined the Oblate community almost forty years ago, it was already clear in my mind that I would go to University, get an education degree, and teach at St. Thomas College, North Battleford until I retired. The College closed the year I graduated from University. It was equally clear to me that having come from northern Saskatchewan, I would never return there; I held onto that belief right up until I was in the truck and driving towards Sandy Bay – the northern community to which I had been assigned as a teacher. I knew, within a week, I wouldn’t be there long. That was in 1984. Well, I know how that turned out!
During our February 17th prayers, when we celebrate the formal approval of the Rules and Constitutions of the Missionary Oblates, Father Charlie Donovan, OMI, Superior of the Springhurst Residence, brandishing a copy of our Rules said, “Remember that at our final vows, the Superior gave us these and proclaimed: ‘Do this and you will live!” It occurs to me, as I look back over my life as a Brother with the Oblates, that it may have been more accurate for the Superior to have declared, “Do this … and everything else will be a surprise!”
In the end, the invitation is always the same for a missionary: we are asked to respond to a need and – sometimes with reluctance, sometimes with eagerness – we do respond. We go; we fall in love with the people and the strange place becomes home; hence the quotation from a poster one of my Oblate brothers had on his door during our time of studies at Saint Charles Scholasticate. Our life is a constant dialectic between being on the open sea, finding harbours and then being called to once again leave it all behind.
My beloved high school English teacher, Fr. Jerome Hellman, OMI, expressed much the same sentiment in one of his poems:
A Little Higher – Jerome Hellman, OMI
A small elastic band curled on his desk, a little heart. He took and stretched the little heart, drew and pulled long, too long, it seemed; the stuff already white and pained, he gave it one more tug and from it gained another quarter inch.
So strained he aimed, let go! It flew anguish-freed and far-out and up beyond the bond of ground and found its heart and curls again upon a little higher plane.
(Chokecherries, 1978 Published by Marian Press)
So, I find myself In Ottawa, building a new harbour; stretched, but hopefully on a somewhat higher plane, tentatively learning what it is a Treasurer does all day.
By Harley Mapes, OMI – Provincial Treasurer
