With D. L. MAYFIELD, Author, Assimilate or Go Home: Notes from a Failed Missionary on Rediscovering Faith, and Sr. Maria Teresa, CFR, Franciscan Sister of the Renewal
Presented by Crossroads Cultural Center
For anyone who feels tangibly the deep suffering and great needs present within our neighborhoods, our city, and our society more broadly, it becomes easy to get caught up in our own efforts to resolve this suffering, and to lose sight of what is most essential to human flourishing. And even as we seek justice and peace, social activism of all forms can convince us that we are capable of generating a new world out of our own resources, perfected and freed from those elements we identify as evil. However, In “The Meaning of Charitable Work,” Luigi Giussani acutely observes:
“To freely go to others, to share a little of their lives and to put in common a little of ours, enables us to discover a sublime and mysterious thing which one understands while doing it. It is the discovery of the fact that precisely because I love the other, it is not I who make him happy; and that not even the most perfect society, the most legally solid organism, the greatest riches, the surest health, the purest beauty, the most educated civilization will ever be able to make him happy.”
So, when the utopian promise of resolving suffering out of our own resources fails to be fulfilled, when we experience frustration, drudgery, setbacks, and even burn-out, where can we turn next? Do we really understand the needs to which we seek to respond? Can we truly claim to hold the solutions to the problems that surround us? And how is it possible to love our neighbors without seeking to save the world, or succumbing to the temptation that the acquisition of additional power is our central concern? Who saves, and how do we allow this salvation to take place rather than trying to supplant it by our own efforts?
We have invited D.L. Mayfield and Sister Maria Theresa to speak with us about their own personal experiences in relation to these questions.
The event is free and open to the public.