Catholic Charities Spokane Blog

Rob McCann, Executive Director

Recently someone was telling me that they’d heard some physicists talking on a television show, discussing the components of the universe. One of the scientists said, “That thing we don’t understand, that x-factor—let’s call that love.”

That x-factor is the mystery that fuels our work. We can call it love, or God, or Jesus, or charity. The name is not so important. It requires only that we make ourselves available to us and let it flow through our beings. We at Catholic Charities have the great good fortune of being mandated to respond to its call.

The exciting part about that is that you can never predict exactly how things will turn out. You can make a guess, but sometimes it turns out you’re not even in the ballpark. What we do know is that it will shift things, and if that shift doesn’t seem to be what it should at first, well, we know enough to wait… No story here at Catholic Charities has a definitive ending, but it sure is awe-inspiring to watch the mystery unfolding along the way.

Whatever our roles, whether we be maintenance people or counselors or administrative assistants or front-desk workers at the House of Charity, our job is to let that x-factor live and move and have its being within our behavior. Talk about job satisfaction!

Rob McCann, Executive Director

Some people have told me they aren’t as supportive of Catholic Charities as they might be because they think some of our clients lack self-discipline. “Why don’t those guys at the House of Charity just stop drinking?” they ask, or “Why doesn’t that single mother of 3 get out there and get a decent job?”

One of the definitions of the word discipline is “the rigor or training effect of experience, adversity.” That’s certainly a definition our clients know. They behave the way they do because that is what their experiences of adversity have trained them to do. Right now, any given client may not have any other tools in her tool belt than the ones modeled by her own parents. Those may not be the best tools, but they’re the ones she’s got, and they’re allowing her to survive, whether emotionally or physically.

We see our job as providing our clients with the basics. It’s like Maslow’s hierarchy. Once people have shelter and food and safety, well, that’s when they can start thinking about ways to improve themselves and better their lives. Until those bases are covered, those needs are going to require all a person’s attention and energy.

The words discipline and disciple come from the same root, the Latin for “student.” Our clients are disciples of life. Our job is to make the lessons they’re getting a little more tolerable.