What Good is a Prophet Who Is Not Open to Their Own Conversion?

This essay first appeared in the February 2024 issue of the Catholic Agitator, the newspaper of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker.

As I have aged, I have found myself more and more convinced, as the book title suggests, that All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. The core principles of how to be in the world—cleaning up after ourselves, sharing, and being kind to one another—make more and more sense as I navigate adulthood.

But go to any family dinner table during the holidays and what you will likely see (at least in homes where extended families are still able to gather together) is that we have very different notions on the specifics of what those values should look like. What each of us believes will get us to the land flowing with milk and honey are often chasms apart: Who do we share with? How much do we share? What are people obligated to offer in return? When must kindness end and people be cut off or out?

Our answers to these questions say a lot about who we are and what we believe in. They also say a lot about whose voices we trust.

Unfortunately, we live in a world that too often prioritizes picking a political, religious, or cultural faction and following whatever “true north” their compass points to. We often parrot their talking points with such frequency (and without much interrogation) that before we know it, we have become so trained that even (physiologist) Ivan Pavlov could not uncondition us.

Over the last few years, I have knocked on hundreds of doors as part of a 15,000-plus door “deep canvassing” project. This conversational endeavor invited people to share their honest beliefs about incarceration: Do we need more jails or alternatives? Who should be in jail? and so on. Then, they get to investigate their responses alongside their experiences: Do they know anyone who has been to jail (or struggled with addiction or other mental health challenges that land so many people in jail)? What has their experience been like? What have these people needed? Have they obtained access to that need through the institutions they are connected to?

In many situations, people came to realize that the values that have been ingrained in them by their “trusted sources” do not reflect the things they want or experience: Jail has not made their community safer nor protected their loved ones; the needs of their loved ones are not met by a world that funnels so much of its resources into cages and uniforms; when a loved one commits harm, they want options beyond incarceration.

What became clear in those conversations is that, too often, the belief systems we subscribe to deserve more interrogation: Will the means we choose (or tolerate) get us to the ends we yearn for? The boxes our political parties and religious congregations ask us to fit in are so narrow that often they do not serve us.

Now ask any Catholic Worker about this and they are likely to heartily agree about the need for a change in individual and national value systems. As a community that strives to be in the tradition of the prophets of old and new, from Isaiah and Miriam to Oscar Romero and MLK, our commitment to be voices calling out in the wilderness keeps us struggling for a converted world.

Part of our commitment to change is connected to how we daily choose to live our lives, attempting to be a counter-cultural example of how one might move through this world. Another part is manifested in the particular public stands we take and acts of civil disobedience we commit.

Now, each Catholic Worker has a personal motivation and intention with their protests. Some of us do it to be faithful and pure—so it will be clear (to God, to our system, to our neighbors) that we stood against the inhumanity we saw around us. Some of us protest to change systems: to achieve concrete, measurable “progress” in laws and policies, in the distribution and allocation of resources, and commitments to accountability and repair. And some of us protest to change hearts—to “instruct the ignorant” as the spiritual works of mercy unfortunately call it.

In the question of the chicken and the egg between individual change and systemic transformation, I believe that it is changed people who change systems, though we need not wait for every heart to be converted before we seek to change systems. But just as important as it is that we have changed, we must continually be open to future change as well.

We can all identify the ways the Spirit has helped us “see the light,” helping transform us from who we were then to who we are now, but how often do we move with the recognition that the Spirit is never done weaving through our lives? How often do we live with an openness to whatever shifts She has planned next for us? Catholic Workers are very good at pursuing change in others, in seeking the growth of those people out there.

It is often the “wrong” values and behaviors of other institutions, structures, communities, belief systems, and people that become the focus of our work: “An end to this filthy, rotten, corrupt, immoral, and evil system,” as our dear Mike reminds us each week.

Some of us (and other social change activists) go to city council meetings because we believe making a public comment could change the minds of policymakers. Some of us cross artificial lines at military bases because we believe our witness—through God’s spirit and grace—can transform the conscience and lives of the career soldiers stationed there (and maybe the whole military industrial complex). Some people voluntarily choose jail time, believing the chance to put our rationale on record offers the opportunity not only to transform judges, prosecutors, and prison staff but also to set precedence for future legal battles.

We block streets and freeways and inconvenience drivers because we believe that the seduction of capitalism has so hypnotized people that only a serious discombobulating jolt will be able to awaken them from their slumber. We hold signs on street corners because we believe if individuals are confronted by a kernel of truth or an incising question that forces them to face things they (and our systems) have been working hard to conceal, they might find their way back.

But there is something particularly intriguing about the desire to change hearts and systems, or the desire for “history” to remember we stood against the dehumanization of the systems around us: too often, it seems like the commitment to change is only a one-way street.

At one point in my seven-plus years at the L.A. Catholic Worker, our community was discerning whether an applicant interested in joining our community would be offered a chance to “come and see.” (Having had the widest range of experiences welcoming people into this home in the past, we understandably strive for an openness that is not blind.) In conversations with others who knew this applicant, we were told they were kind but had neither a passion for the work nor a drive to take initiative. Given the particular needs of the community at that point, we knew that would likely not work.

Debating whether it was worth giving them this feedback, the caution that this community needed something more, and the chance to show up differently, we still considered it. When we learned this person’s age, though, interest dwindled. “At that age, they have already had the chance to change,” one community member commented. “I don’t think they will be willing to learn new things,” they continued. “I know I won’t change any more.”

The comment has stuck with me. If our whole project as Catholic Workers is premised on the belief that others can change, and that we will labor tirelessly to work for change because it is so desperately needed in this world, what does it say when we excuse ourselves from the responsibility of the same? What does it mean to ask someone something we are not willing to do ourselves?

This does not mean we need to be subject to the whims of the world, swayed by anyone’s strong feelings or arguments (like what I probably did following this comment). Nor does it mean that we should not have compassion for ourselves when we need to set extra boundaries from time to time.

But as someone who has not always thought the way I currently do or seen what I now see, the only certainty I cling to about my humanness is the necessity of change. I am aware of power dynamics—some people are often the instigators of change and others are often the forced recipients of change—but also of how many individuals have been gracious with their time, generous with the compassion they have extended me, and merciful in their forgiveness of my arrogance, naivete, and clumsiness. I am here now because of them. Change has set me free and brought me closer to God’s doorstep.

What good is a prophet who is not also open to their own conversion? And while any of us could respond to the gift of Saul and Jonah received—the unavoidable, supernatural redirecting from God—how many of us remain open to the whispers of the Spirit that might only be known in our wonderings by the heart burning within us?

Each day, we are gifted with incredible volunteers who arrive because they have found this world offers them something of value. “I just want to say thank you so much for being here and allowing me to come and serve with you all these years,” our dear friend Jack wrote in his Christmas note to us. “It is certainly not something I would have done on my own, but your being here allows and encourages me to be here.”

Many people arrive in humble recognition that they have more to learn and grow in. I have lofty expectations, but I pray I (and all of us who are “committed”) remain open to the same. In our striving for a new society in the shell of the old we do not forget we also are part of the old society, that we hold it in our bones, too. I would do well, I think, to look with the same admiration at those who return each week as I have become accustomed to being looked at by them.