Introduction

In this most foolish attempt to reveal and transform the inner work of the O.C. Catholic Worker, we'd (well, really just Dwight at the moment) like to share the faith questions that undergird the priorities we assign to the work we try to do every day. By soliciting reflection and addition to our own attempts at understanding orthopraxis, we hope to arrive at a deposit of experience which might prove useful to Catholic Workers in the future.

The foolish part is the risk that in revealing those favorites to which we assign a lesser priority, we will alienate those who have been so favored. This is our necessary answer to cleave from our deposit of lived faith the chaff of privilege, puritanism and positive thinking.

We are here for a very brief time, and very few persons have regretted a faithful attempt to live as if someone or something else was more important. We will attempt to understand, as do all Christians, how to live in the light of the centrality of forgiveness to the Lord's Prayer and the fleeting nature of our earthly lives.

The idea of our ownership of virtually anything might well be a blasphemy that denies God it's forgiving use, as well as denying God the rent owed as the Creator of all. The very idea that the oceans or the atmosphere can be polluted because no earthly claim to their purity has yet been ajudicated is the central maddening social sin of our time.

It is time that we seek God's forgiveness and pay the rent on this place. In so doing we will find that forgiveness, in all its encompassing providence, is the rent.