Kathy Coffey

I hope it’s not too much of a stretch to compare the American democracy after its 250^th birthday to the parable of the mustard seed. Jesus, after all, invited open-ended interpretations and comparisons. If he’d wanted his teaching iron-clad, he would’ve started with that unfailing crowd-gripper: “Rule # 479D, section 12.”

I never realized that the beginnings of the thirteen colonies were so small and fragile, until I watched “The American Experiment,” a five-part series on Netflix. What the founders attempted had never been done: since the dawn of human history, people had lived beneath tyrannical rule. Some kings may have been slightly more benign, but the idea of “We the People” having any power was new—and probably scary. How did one shape a structure on that principle?

The show may have a bit much bayonetting of redcoats and lengthy deliberations of men in wigs, but it brings home the point: this form of government had never been tried and it was hard to figure out. As Lonnie G. Bunch III, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution underscores: the Declaration of Independence was aspirational. The framers might have been surprised if their enterprise lasted 25 years, let alone 250! And they would’ve marveled at how it inspired other countries around the world.

How it endured was a series of compromises and failures. Hilary Clinton ruefully points out that “the electoral college is an abomination—for obvious reasons.” She won the presidency by 3 million votes, but the system was built by compromise on top of compromise, trying to allow free and slave states, large and small states equal representation. As it turned out, a minority can overrule the majority—all because the Continental Congress was ending a long, hot summer in Philadelphia (wearing those wigs!) and wanted to go home.

That was only one of many disasters–Robert Miller, chief justice of the Pascua Yaqui tribe explains that native people had no representation in the decision making—nor did people of color nor women. Other events proved untrue to the founding goals: slavery, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the refusal of due process to immigrants. But other moments shone: Mike Pence, defying Trump’s order, certifying the results of Biden’s 2020 election as an angry crowd called for his execution. Pence explains that he’d been inspired by Vice President Al Gore marking the “peaceful transfer of power” 20 years earlier: “A man who had lost the election narrowly, and with controversy, still yielded to the constitutional order.”

Given current political divisions, it’s remarkable how senators from both sides of the aisle express their reverence for the shaky American project. Sen. Ted Cruz (R—Texas) remembers how his dad, who had fled torture and imprisonment in Cuba in 1958, watched weeping as his son was sworn into office in 2013. Sen. Rand Paul (R—Kentucky) says the founders would be astonished that one branch, the legislative would so easily cede its power to the executive.

President George Washington, voiced by Martin Sheen, worried about demagoguery and retired after two terms rather than set the precedent of a life-long or inherited monarchy. Furthermore, he astonished everyone by showing up for the inauguration of his successor, John Adams. Ron Chernow, whose biography of Alexander Hamilton was the basis of the musical, blames Americans for neglecting to learn about the miracle that Washington and the other founders conjured, a miracle that is now in jeopardy. “You can’t begin to explain to them that the system the founders created is being trampled on if they don’t have the rudimentary sense of what the whole design was supposed to be,” he said in a New York times interview with Maureen Dowd July 4.

Democracy is under siege now, but it has been threatened before. Its precarious nature should inspire us to save it. Or, as conservative historian Yuval Levin says in the series, “The fear of losing it all is actually a source of our strength.” This experiment isn’t rooted in centuries of custom or rule, like the Hapsburg Empire or the British royal family. “If you look at the national anthem of England, it’s God Save the King. The national anthem of France is about how great France is. The national anthem of America is about barely making it through one night,” director Brian Knappenberger said. “It’s who we are. We’ve inherited something incredible – and we’re on the cusp of losing it.”

After many eloquent speakers and scholars, the most touching moments may be the final quiet ones. Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D—Delaware) had seen the graves of her ancestors who were enslaved, crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge during a protest, and survived the Jan. 6^th invasion of the Capitol. She says, “This experiment is just not finished… We are at a point where we have to choose: Who do we want to be? …Are we for some of us, or are we for all of us? I’m not going to lean back. I’m not going to quit… Democracy is worth it. It’s worth it.” She falls silent with tears in her eyes, and the rest is up to us. Will the metaphorical plant of the US stay healthy, resisting dictatorship, welcoming the birds of the sky to dwell in its branches?

Kateri would perk up, hearing this Sunday’s readings, evoking a world she knew well: meadows, snow, hills, rain, seed, earth, grain. Kateri and her native people understood how human life is physically and spiritually interwoven with the water, sun and soil that sustain us. They appreciated how the splendor of land, sky and sea inspires our sense of the divine.

Despite sparse biographical details, we know that Kateri, patron saint of the environment was remarkably cheerful, despite smallpox that marred her face and drastically affected her vision. Her joy was so contagious that children were drawn to her for storytelling. She showed a key hallmark of holiness: people wanted to be around her.

Beyond the brief biography, Kateri stands as a larger symbol for the reverence and repair our environment desperately needs. Thomas Berry in The Dream of the Earth underscores the significance of Native Americans to a country that seems aggressively bent on destroying the earth, greedily exploiting its natural resources. The environmental damage goes back to the first European settlers who saw themselves as “lordly rulers of the continent,” (p. 189) who could dominate it at will. Instead of meeting the indigenous cultures with curiosity and delight, wondering what they could teach, these pioneers called them “savages” needing redemption. Berry terms this “our compulsive savior instincts. We take up the burden of saving others even when in fact we destroy them.” (p. 182)

In the five centuries since the European invasion of the continent, the indigenous tribes suffered physically but won “a moral victory of unique dimensions.” (p. 183) Their spiritual tradition, which might be called a nature mysticism, reverenced God’s hand in creation. That attitude might indeed save the threatened planet, teaching “the art of communion with the earth.”

Kateri might’ve liked Debie Thomas’ read of Sunday’s parable of the sower (Mt. 13:1-23). Instead of focusing on the four types of soil, Thomas suggests in Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories, we should look more at the sower. Blissfully flinging seed, he doesn’t much care where it lands. He’s extravagantly generous and open-handed. Like God, who in July is bounteous with sunlight, warmth, daisies, corn, tomatoes and wildly reaching vines. Can we marvel at that abundance, and treat with care the waters and soils which are their sources?

“although you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, you have revealed them to little ones.” Mt. 11:25

What does it really mean to live as God’s children or little ones?

One answer: photos of the World Cup, where children escort players onto the field, a traditional part of the pageantry since 2002. In the words of Mia Gómez Solis, age 7, “Mommy, I got to go with the captain! [of the Australian team] He held my little hand and we walked out.” 

Quaker sponsors this year’s Player Escort Program. In the United States, it has given 1,400-plus children from marginalized communities in or near the 11 host cities a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to walk professional players onto the pitch,” organizers say.  Non-profit organizations sponsor soccer clinics for mostly immigrant youth from underserved areas, then choose the children from participants. It’s such a small, human touch in that huge arena before a high stakes game with thousands of fans.

If we want to live as God’s children, it may not be too much of a stretch to imagine God taking our hands, assuring us we’re accompanied into a world that may seem big and overwhelming. And surprising us with the “thrill-of-a-lifetime”…

Another answer: our family has rented a beach house for vacation annually over the last ten years. It has become what St. Frances de Sales would call “our place of rest and delight,” where we are most alive, happy, at peace. We’ve watched the children grow on this holy ground, from toddlers eating sand to middle schoolers entertaining more sophisticated dangers like boogie boards. The primary activity and highlight of our time there is the children rushing into glacially cold waters, shrieking, splashing, and never wanting to get out. They know they’re not allowed to go in the water without an adult, so behind the small, frail silhouettes in the vast ocean poise vigilant parents, aunts and uncles, counting to make sure all six are there, ready to jump in if needed.   

That protective guard means the children can play carefree, dancing with waves, being part of something huge and potentially scary without worry. And we? Would we be so anxious if we were convinced of a protective parent behind us? Perhaps that unseen presence has brought us here to the beach after another year, with its trials and threats, depressions and exhilarations. Strength beyond our strength, love beneath our loves, we ask this God who creates and commands the seas to grace us with another year of joy, surprise, protection, survival and untold blessing. If we can image God as shepherd, why not as lifeguard?

“Whoever gives only a cup of cold water…” (Mt. 10:42)

Those of us “at a certain age” may still carry a built-in, hard-to-shake distrust of corporations and millionaire Hollywood actors. The tale of Water.org may help us shake both moldy assumptions.

An actor like Matt Damon could luxuriate in his wealth, probably enjoying multiple homes and private jets, right? Wrong. Twenty years ago, as he surveyed the developing world, he concluded that the lack of clean water undergirded severe poverty. It meant disease at worst, and at best, millions of families spending more than 15% of their income on water, girls who should be in school or women who could run small businesses instead collectively spending 200 million hours a day hauling buckets. He partnered with Gary White, an engineer and problem-solver who, traveling in Honduras, observed “how many above-ground graves there were, and how small most of them were.” Young children were dying from water-related diseases.

Then in India he met a woman who was paying a loan shark $125 in interest to buy a toilet. “What if?” he thought, “we lend this woman and millions like her the money for a toilet or water tap, they repay it gradually and own it in the end?” Minor miracles: microfinance institutions started lending for water connections and toilets, families repaid the loans at 98% within 2 years, White partnered with Damon and 90 million people on four continents have been helped.

Problem solved? Not quite. Two billion, or 1 in 4 people still live without access to clean water. Here’s where we come in. This summer, corporations– the Gap, Starbucks, Amazon, Ecolab and others still joining—are partnering with Water.org to educate people about the global water crisis and take meaningful action to help solve it. Learn more about this effort at https://getblue.water.org.

With each purchase from its Get Blue Collection spanning children through adult sizes, Gap will donate $5 to Water.org. Trust me—I have the t-shirt, my grandkids sport the jeans and sweatshirts, and the tiny bear wearing the slogan is highly coveted in our family. (Full disclosure: their dad is the CFO of water.org.)

From June 16 through July 7, 2026, Starbucks will donate $0.25 to Water.org for every purchase of an Iced Blue Coconut Matcha or a Blue Coconut Refresher.

Tell Alexa, “donate to water.org,” and Amazon will make a one-time donation of $5 in your name.

“Ecolab will commit $1 million through the Ecolab Foundation, with $500K delivered immediately and $500K delivered upon helping its customers achieve 255 billion gallons of water savings through the use of its products this year.”

Ever take it for granted that water flows from your faucet, or a hot shower streams forth at the turn of a dial? Next time you’re sipping that icy glass, think of the two billion people who still don’t have it.

“worth more than many sparrows” (Mt. 10:31)

How often I’ve seen unhoused people clumped under a bridge or hovered around a heating grate and dismissed them as anonymous, even slightly annoying. Never again. My attitude changed when I read Rough Sleepers by Tracy Kidder. The author’s work may be familiar to readers of Mountains beyond Mountains, describing the work of Dr. Paul Farmer in Haiti.

Here he profiles Dr. Jim O’Connell, whose career trajectory took an unexpected turn. After graduating from Harvard Medical School and being senior resident in the ICU at Mass General Hospital, he’d been awarded a prestigious fellowship in oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York. But the Boston hospital’s chief of medicine asked him to try—just for a year—working in their Health Care for the Homeless program.  That was in 1985. When Covid hits the streets in 2020, he was still at it. By then, his program had 400 employees, caring for 11,000 unhoused people a year. Kidder spent five years following O’Connell around, tending what he called “a system of friends.”

One of the most poignant chapters describes his orientation to the Pine Street Inn, a shelter with a clinic. It had been run by nurses, who initiated the young doctor. They encouraged him to set aside his stethoscope and focus on foot washing, for more than a month. He was astonished that he recognized some of the elderly men from the Mass General ER, where they were sullen, angry, resisting treatment. With their feet soothed, soaking in buckets, they were docile, conversational, even asking for medications. It made sense—they’d been on their feet all day, they were tired and their feet were sore, itchy. “They’d let you look at their feet before they’d let you examine any other part of them” (p. 32) and their feet could reveal larger problems. Beyond the biblical connotations, it put the doctor at the feet of the patient, reversing the usual order of authority talking down.

He would soon discover and work around other reversals—like relying on friendly bartenders who’d insist that heavy drinkers needing medicine must take it before they could get a drink. Some people were reluctant to come to a hospital, shelter or clinic, so Jim and his team designed “The Overnight Rescue Van,” which would bring food, blankets and medical help to the “rough sleepers,” a term from British slang for people who sleep in rough conditions  They navigated a mind-blowing labyrinth of regulations around what they could do, which Jim termed “the theater of the absurd.”

Jim would treat people who hadn’t seen a doctor, dentist or psychiatrist in years, with ailments he’d met only in textbooks—maggots in wounds, untreated cancers or hernias that had grown grotesquely large. At the low end of the prestige scale, Jim found this kind of health care “utterly fascinating” (p. 42). Perhaps it was because he could see the lovable person beneath an exterior that could be aggravating. As one of Jim’s assistants noted, an invisible barrier seems to block us from those slumped against a wall or begging at a corner. In the care of Jim and his team these people acquired identities—funny, quirky, caring for each other, and better understood knowing the trauma many had suffered. Or as Jim phrased it, “all that anger comes from a broken soul.” (p.189) A psychiatrist added, “How could you live on the streets without self-medicating? [with drugs and alcohol] I never could.” (p. 180)

Jim came to understand why so many unhoused people were averse to shelters–as one asked, “you ever try to sleep in a room with 100 people?” Kidder focuses on one character, Tony, and how his relationship with Jim, often erratic and frustrating, deepened into friendship. After decades of unconventional work, Jim still insisted, “it’s a privilege to be there. I love it.” His conversational manner was to say little, but remain unwaveringly attentive, “rarely ending a conversation himself, but allowing almost all of them to talk for as long as they wanted, as if he had all the time in the world.” (p. 272) 

Over the years, Jim’s patients (or those who adamantly refused treatment) became characters with great stories that could make him laugh and irritate him at the same time. Jim transformed shadowy figures in doorways to lively characters and took photos of them that became a portrait gallery. Some, like the Judge, concocted fictional identities, but others like two former college professors were so brilliant and intriguing, Jim had a monthly lunch with them.  Maybe Jim sees the unhoused as God does—not a heap of blankets beside the street, but precious children, with “every hair of [their] heads counted.” (Mt. 10: 30)

At first the sending forth in today’s gospel (Matthew 9:36-10:8) sounds doable: laborers for the harvest. There’s a certain novelty and delight in gathering the first lettuce or cherry tomatoes from the garden in June. But then Jesus ups the ante. As always, his expectations of us are startlingly high: cure the sick, raise the dead? Large order…

Not to dilute the call, but maybe to think of it from a slightly different angle. Health care workers by the thousands are laboring in hospitals, clinics, homes and offices to heal. Over and over, they show up without complaint, early in the morning, or for the night shift. For a fictional account of nurses working in ICUs during Covid, read Sacrament by Susan Straight, which I recently reviewed:  https://uscatholic.org/articles/202606/sacrament-evokes-healthcare-workers-grace-and-heroism/.  It shows dramatically the cost to nurses’ families when they had to work in isolation, always at high risk of becoming infected themselves. They rise to the occasion beautifully, becoming the healing hands of Christ to critically ill patients.

Raise the dead? Maybe not as dramatic as Lazarus, but my friend’s husband Tom died recently after a long illness during which she and her five children provided dedicated care. Even in their grief, they are now writing the obituary and eulogy, arranging the memorial service, handling countless details. In them and the eight grandchildren, Tom will resurrect—through a familiar facial expression or turn of phrase or way of thinking.

When Jesus asks us to do what seems preposterous, perhaps he means the ways that grace can make us our finest, bestest selves. Sometimes, after pulling off a task we dreaded, we say with surprise, “I handled that rather well…” We organize a closet, call a lonely friend or get ahead of a deadline. But Jesus isn’t at all surprised. He simply grins, “Knew you could do it!”

After nine years, my early morning job of walking the grandkids to school daily comes to an end. The youngest will graduate from the nearby elementary school, and exhilarating walks in the crisp air are over. It was a fine wake-up call, stepping into a shiny new day, and walking briskly, our speed adapted to our degree of lateness. (What colossal relief to hear the first bell after I’d already begun the walk home!) The skies were sometimes marbled, sometimes bright blue and on a few rainy days, we popped open our umbrellas.

At times, we’d walk with high anticipation—a special event at school, a trip planned for the weekend–or reflection after an experience: “What was your favorite thing in Seattle?” Sometimes we’d carry gingerly: the diorama, the Valentine box, the bouquet for Teacher Appreciation Week. Always, the backpack and the water bottle, sometimes the mittens, hats and coats.

Especially in the early years, we were attuned to every snail inching along the sidewalk, to diamonds left by rain in the long grass, to a necklace of jewels along one fence when the sun would strike the dew, to the “fairy decorations for a ball” when moisture would shine in intricate cobwebs. Underlying the sadness of the ending is deep gratitude that we survived vulnerable, dangerous years with only minor scrapes. A couple times, she or I almost fell, but we saved each other—luckily we were holding hands or looping arms. No car accidents, school shootings or major illnesses, just the usual flus and colds and Covids.

It’s appropriate that June 8 marks the feast of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Jesuit poet who captured the precious, fleeting nature of human life. He’d grin with appreciation for our rhythm on a foggy day as we marched along chanting, “One misty, moisty morning/When foggy was the weather/I chanced to meet an old man, clothed all in leather.” He describes eloquently the scenery we might’ve taken for granted: “the azurous hung hills are his [Christ’s] world-wielding shoulder” or “my heart in hiding/ Stirred for a bird—the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!”

And above all, he’d appreciate the nostalgia a grandparent feels for the small, wispy-haired child, reluctant to part in the morning, and running pell-mell to me at pick-up time, bellowing, “Grammy!” Hopkins’ “Spring and Fall” is dedicated to a young girl named Margaret, who’s sad about autumn leaves falling. He concludes with advice not only for her, but for a newly grounded grandparent:

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sorrow’s springs are the same…

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

Ah yes, but not a bad way to spend nine years?

“God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world.”

Indeed, today’s readings are filled with praise and blessing, lute and harp, timbrel and dance, a God “show to anger and rich in kindness.” This spirit echoed into the early Christians calling the inner life of the Trinity perichoeresis, or “dancing around.” This dance pervades the universe, and we’re invited to be partners in it.

In Telling the Truth: the Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale, Frederick Buechnerproves clearly how it’s all three genres. We’re probably more familiar with the first, so on this feast of summer and ice cream and long-lit evenings and flowering and fresh strawberries, let’s focus on the latter two.

In the world of the fairy tale, “the marvelous and impossible thing truly happens.” It doesn’t deny sorrow and failure, but in the words of J.R.R. Tolkien, “denies…universal final defeat…, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.” The genre has a universal and timeless appeal, perhaps speaking to the child in us who’s still in touch with wonder, wanting the magic to be true, hoping someday to stumble into Narnia, Oz or Middle Earth. 

Then in the Gospel, the most unlikely characters become the heroes and the unpromising wimps pull off the extraordinary feats. Peter, briefly, walks on water. The befuddled disciples distribute bread and fish to the crowds on the green grass, and the supply just keeps coming. Women, not even recognized in court as legal witnesses, become the first witnesses to the Resurrection. And One who’d been brutally tortured and killed returns to his friends and asks for something to eat. Buechner calls it “the comedy of God’s saving the most unlikely people when they least expect it…” “Maybe it’s too good not to be true.”

If we’ve attended church services that are solemn-bordering-on-grim, maybe it’s time to hear the Good News as “high and unbidden and ringing with laughter” or to feel the wisp of breeze as the Trinity dances around, surprising us at every turn.  

When I read blogs for previous Pentecosts, it seems easier to see the wind of the Spirit blowing then, the inspiration flowering in unexpected places. This year seems darker: research from Boston University estimates that the lethal cuts to U.S. humanitarian aid will result in more than 750,000 deaths around the world in the first year. “Callous cruelty” best describes this administration’s closing of USAID, the action alone costing $6.4 billion, a sum that could have saved over 1 million children’s lives. In domestic disasters, after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Republican-dominated state legislatures are gerrymandering districts to deny Black people their right to vote.  A clever cartoon by Nick Anderson shows an ordinary citizen struggling to push a massive boulder named “inflation” up a mountain, while the president asks, “Take a quick break to check out my ballroom plans?” It’s all so frustrating, heart-breaking, ugly, and corrupt—with apparently little to stop it.

But it must’ve been dark in the upper room for the first disciples, too. Scripture records only locked doors and fear, suggesting how grief, despair and helplessness must’ve haunted them. So where are the gusts of Spirit this year? Probably many more than I record–the reader can add favorites–but for starters:

The sun keeps rising, the waves keep rolling in, the spring keeps flowering—something eternal in nature abides.

Brave, intelligent  journalists like Nicholas Kristof bring us the statistics above in the New York Times and Heather Cox Richardson sets the historical record straight in “Letters from an American.”

Areas like Santa Clara County, CA stalwartly oppose a planned detention center. Counsel Tony LoPresti called it “the federal government building an infrastructure for terror” against immigrant communities.

The Obama Presidential Center opens June 19 in Chicago, a powerful reminder of a president who was brilliant, understood the Constitution, avoided corruption, and respected democratic ideals.

We draw strength from the historical witness of those who’ve endured terrible times before us. Fourteenth century mystic Julian of Norwich lived through plagues, wars, and assassinations, but kept her focus firmly on God’s radiance. Or as St. Bernard said, “lift  our eyes from our miseria (misery) to God’s misericordia (mercy).” Our only delusion: to think we’re separate from God and have to muddle through without God’s help.

 “I have been glorified in them.” (Jn. 17: 10)

Do we appreciate ourselves as much as Jesus does? Let’s meditate on one small aspect of ourselves: our hands. Look at them resting in your lap, palms up, and reflect for a few moments of silence after each question.

How have these hands gardened, built, cooked or baked, sewn?

How have these hands held those of another, in reassurance, comfort or love?

How have these hands created art, sculpture, music or poetry?

How have these hands steered cars, bikes or boats?

How have these hands cleaned, buttoned, brushed hair, bandaged?

How have these hands used tools—a trowel, a hammer, a ruler, a keyboard?

How have these hands cupped a rose, cradled a head, rippled through the waters of a lake, stream or ocean?

How have these hands gathered fruits or vegetables, made bouquets, changed oil in an engine, collected favorite stones or shells, fixed a flat tire?

God who nurtures us and delights in us, bless our hands that have done so much for the coming of your reign. Prosper the works of our hands for us. Prosper the works of our hands.

This meditation was suggested by Mark Nepo in The Book of Awakening, p.148.