FatherRon.com

The family settled in Maui where husband and dad Paul
Sutherland opened a new office for his company. Paul, Amy and
their kids became active members of a local church. The church’s
warm welcome and the satisfaction they found in volunteering
made the family’s church membership a wonderful experience.
Then one morning Paul got a call at his office. Amy was
hemorrhaging at 26 weeks of pregnancy. She was transferred by
air ambulance to a hospital in Oahu, where she would spend the
next eight weeks. Paul called friends asking if they could pick up
their boys from school and watch them until Amy’s parents flew in
from Michigan. “No problem!” was their immediate reply.
The first full day in the hospital, their pastor called and
offered the church’s help. How did the pastor know the family
was in Oahu? A parishioner saw them at the local hospital in Maui
before flying to Oahu.
Paul remembers: “When Amy was stable enough for me to
return to Maui, I thanked my in-laws for taking care of the kids,
but when I mentioned cooking, my mother-in-law stopped me and
said, “We didn’t have to cook much”, she smiled, “Nearly every
day, the (school) families and your church brought us dinners,
baked bread, desserts, and salad”. Our school parents and church
group seemed instinctively wired to scan for people in need. They
knew we ‘mainlanders’ had few roots on the island. They helped
us because we showed up.
Their Hawaiian church experience has had a lasting effect on
Paul and his family. In every place they have lived since, the
family has made a connection with a local church.
“Thinking something is not doing something”, Paul writes.
“Thinking we are virtuous or accepting or colorblind builds no
houses nor does it feed anybody, nor cure loneliness. Our actions
are what define us. We connect by showing up – to find that we
share so many threads to bind us together in relationships and
connections. We see the similarities and build on them”.
The Sutherlands’ story is lived again and again at churches
around the world – but it’s that care for one another that makes a
community a church worthy of the name. To create that
connection requires “driving out” the fears and cynicism, the self-
centered agendas and the debilitating judgments we make of others
to realize the presence of God in the midst of this community.
Jesus’ cleansing of the temple challenges us to realize that our
parish “temple” is called to reflect God’s Kingdom of compassion
and peace, healing and justice, in this community. Everything we
do as a parish, from our music to doughnuts after Mass, from
Religious Ed to the quilters’ group, is the revelation of God’s love
– and becoming that kind of church begins by “showing up” and
contributing to the working of revealing that love in our midst.