Father John Series #1

Chapter 1

Context of Chapter One

Chapter one introduces the two main characters of this book. I write fictional stories so that I can help community psychology students understand how this discipline can be practiced. I offer the Bob Newbrough character as the ideal of the practicing community psychologist. I offer the Father John character as the kind of client a community psychologist might serve. I modeled Father John very loosely on a parish priest that Bob, Paul Dokecki, and Bob O Gorman consult with once a month. As this story and the ones that follow unfold I hope the reader can come to see themselves growing and learning as Father John did. And I hope those readers, who wish to accept the mantle of community psychologist, can imagine themselves being a constructive consultant in the way that the Bob character was.  

Consultation with Father John

It was a gray late February Monday in Nashville, Tennessee. Bob Newbrough is in his office in the Community Psychology Department at Peabody waiting for his 11:00 A.M. appointment reading a draft of one of his student’s dissertations on the third position. It is the third position that Bob is famous for.

            A man in a brown robe with a hood and wearing sandals walked into the office lobby. His robe was tied to his waist by a rope. Bob hears him ask someone, “Where is Bob Newbrough’s office?”

            “I’m in here,” Bob shouted.

            The man walks into Bob’s office. Bob made note of this man’s unconventional appearance. The man appears startled by the chaotic stacks of books and files that letter the office.

            “You must be Father John,” Bob said.

            “I am,” offering little more.

            “Have a seat,” Bob offered the only chair with books on the seat. “The Bishop called and said that you wanted to talk to me but that’s all he said. What is your work in Nashville?”

            “I’m here to organize a new parish of Latino and Mexican immigrants,” he said.

            “Well Nashville should be a good place for that,” Bob said. “There are 40,000 new Spanish speaking immigrants in Nashville.”

            “I know,” he said, “and most of them are illegal and only I’d say half of them speak English.”

            “That makes them easy to exploit,” Bob said.

            “And that’s why they need a church,” he said, “a community organization where they belong, where they can speak their language where they can find someone to understand and speak to them.”

            “And that would be you,” Bob said matter-of-factly. “What brought you to take on this job?”

            “I didn’t want it,” He said. “I am a disciple of liberation theology I wanted to stay in my country, Mexico and organize laborers against the government. The church in Mexico City wanted to get rid of me, so when Rome told my bishop that the Nashville diocese asked for a Spanish speaking priest he thought of me.”

            “You speak English with no accent at all.” Bob said.

            “That was another reason,” He replied. “I was born in the U.S. of wetback undocumented parents. We were deported back to Mexico when I was thirteen. I have lived there since, until a month ago, when I moved here.”

            “How can I help?” Bob asked.

            “I don’t think you can,” he answered.

            Bob was surprised by this answer. “Then why are you here?” Bob wondered.

            “The Bishop paid your $150 consultation fee,” he answered, “and sent me specifically to see you. I think to have you be his spy.”

            “I’m not interested in being his spy,” Bob said emphatically.

            “Well you are interested in the Bishop’s money,” Father John said just as emphatically. “That money could have gone to the church building fund instead of to you. When I realized I had to come to talk to you I read your articles. I’m not an educated man. I am a Franciscan monk. We serve. We do not read and contemplate. All that stuff you’ve written about the third position is just bullshit as far as I’m concerned. And since I’m a priest of the people from the streets my words are not confined to proper English. I’m sorry if I offended you.”

            Bob wasn’t sure what to say. He sat there in silence for a time. Then he said, “I will contribute the $150 to your building fund. I’m not a spy and I can’t help you if you believe I might be. What you say to me is confidential. My professional loyalty is to you, not the Bishop. I’m sorry. I thought helping you build your parish would have been an exciting project.”

            “So you are not working for the Bishop?” Father John asked.

            “No, I consider you and your parish by client,” Bob said. “I assume the Bishop knew that when he sent you to me.”

            “So I can count on you not to talk with the bishop about what we talk about?” Father John asked.

            “Yes, of course,” Bob said.

            “I’m new here,” Father John said, “I don’t have anybody to talk to about my work. I don’t want your academic philosophy. How can that help me?”

            “I’m not sure I can. Perhaps my ideas about the Third position might help you,” Bob said.

            “I don’t see how,” Father John replied. “What can you offer me?”

            “How a community manages its conflicts is important,” Bob said. “Conflicts can be healthy for a community, just as challenge, exercise and stress can be good for the body. Or conflict can destroy a community just as stress can cause disease and death in people. The third position is a strategy for constructive cooperation and an antidote for competitive destruction. The third position can help make conflict constructive.”

            “So you can help me manage conflict successfully?” Father John asked.

            “That is what we use the third position for,” Bob answered.

            “I tried to read your papers on the third position. It was all a bunch of gobbly-do-gook to me,” Father John said. “I don’t see how it could ever be useful or practical for any community.”

            “I know,” Bob said. “You are not the first person to say that about my writing. I apologize that it appears so convoluted.”

            “Convoluted,” Father John repeated. “See I don’t think you and I speak the same language.”

            “I’m sorry,” Bob apologized again. “I should have said confusing.”

            “There you go talking down to me,” Father John said, “I’m not here to be patronized.”

            “Perhaps I use difficult language sometimes,” Bob said. “I live in a world that competes by using big words. I can’t help it sometimes. It is not something I’m proud of. I want to talk to you and to others like you, who work with real communities and who face real problems. The way I talk handicaps me. I’m sorry, but if you will give me a chance I think you will see that the third position is a simple notion.”

            “My people are handicapped by their language too,” Father John said. “Tell me about your third position. How does it help conflict stay healthy?”

            “First it raises the debate above personalities,” Bob began, “when differences become personal, conflicts become sick. The third position begins by honoring the two debaters.”

            “How does it honor the two fighters?” Father John asked.

            “It helps them identify the values that they represent,” Bob said, “and it encourages them to be proud to represent their opposing values.”

            “I see,” Father John, answered, “It shifts the attention from people to their values. That’s how it takes personalities out of the conflict.”

            “Yes,” Bob said. “And it honors them and their opposing values so that they can be proud and so that the opponents are encouraged to respect each other for fighting for what they are proud of and what they stand for.”

            “So this makes the conflict a conflict of worthy values,” Father John reflected, “not a conflict between two angry people.”

            “Yes,” Bob said. “All conflicts come from value positions worthy of respect. Once these positions are put into words, once the adversaries are encouraged to feel proud of what they stand for, the conflict begins to change its tone. Reason becomes the battlefield, not physical or emotional dominance.”

            “That seems like it is enough right there,” Father John said, “If I can help my parishioners think with words and use ideas instead of curses and fists, I think we could have more healthy conflicts.”

            “That’s a good start,” Bob said. “But it is not enough. And this is not what distinguishes the third position from other efforts to civilize conflict. I live in a world of ideas and in this academic world our fights can be vicious and destructive. Just making the positions clear and identifying and ennobling the values is not enough. Politicians prove that every day on the news.”

            “Why isn’t this enough?” Father John wondered.

            “It’s not enough,” Bob said, “because two positions can become locked in rigid stubborn thinking, with each adversary sincerely believing they are right. If the conflict continues without something added it will degenerate into cursing and name calling quickly. The two positions need a pressure relief value.”

            “So what do you add for that?” Father John asked.

            “A third value position,” Bob answered. “And that’s all.”

            “What does the third position do?” Father John asked.

            “At its most primitive level,” Bob answered, “it works as a tie breaker. When you have an odd number of votes in a decision you can proceed with a decision, but one versus one creates deadlock. The third position breaks this tie.”

            “So the third value votes,” Father John asked.

            “Yes, it can vote but the point is not to vote,” Bob said. “Because if the vote is two against one; you have a loser. And we want to avoid that. The best use of the third position is the role of a neutral that the other two values must appeal to in order to get its vote because the third position has a moral posture even though it may not cast a formal vote.”

            “I see,” Father John said. “So this forces the two opponents to think outside their own rigid positions.”

            “Exactly,” Bob responded, “and this begins the process of including new creative ideas. It opens up the conflict and expands the thinking of the two opposing positions.”

            “So give me an example of how this works,” Father John said.

            “Let’s use a conflict in your parish for our example.”

            “Well I can’t think of one right off the top of my head,” Father John said, “okay what about the death penalty debate.”

            “Oh that’s easy,” Bob said. “What are the two opposing values? You can see those.”

            “Sure,” Father John said. “The sanctity of life versus accountability. Okay so what’s the third position?”

            “It can be anything?” Bob said. “But this assumes we can control this debate which we cannot.”

            “I know,” Father John said, “but lets assume we can what would be a third value.”

            “Any value,” Bob said, “It doesn’t matter. It just needs to be one value that creates a triangle of values.”

            “Okay since I’m a foreigner let’s make the value international relations,” Father John said, “Yes, that’s it. The value of getting along with other nations.”

            “Well that works,” Bob said. “Doesn’t it? We can be accountable and get along with other countries without the death penalty. And that would make other countries feel more compatible with us because we won’t kill their citizens no matter what.”

            “So we just solved that conflict,” Father John said. “If only we ruled the world. I liked that.”

            “Yeah,” Bob said. “I would rather work on real problems where my ideas will actually be helpful.”

            “So this is so simple,” Father John said. “Are you really the first person to have this idea?”

            “No,” Bob said. “I think I am not. Lucretius was but it is implanted in the human brain..”

            “What problem are you talking about?” Father John asked.

            “It’s the problem with the mammalian brain that David McMillan describes in his book Emotion Rituals,” Bob said.

            “Oh no,” Father John said. “Here you go talking over my head.”

            “I can’t win,” Bob said, “If I talk to you one way you accuse me of talking down to you. If I talk to you another way, you accuse me of talking over your head.”

            “Okay,” Father John said, “but don’t expect me to understand what the mammalian brain is.”

            “It is simply the part of our brains that we share with dogs, cats, cows and other mammals,” Bob said. “In us it is about the size of a fist. Most of the wiring for human emotion is contained in this part of the brain. When we get frightened or angry, when our red-alert vigilance system tells us we are being threatened, the mammalian brain takes over. It shuts out the largest part of the brain, the human brain or the neo-cortex.”

            “I don’t want to hear about the neo-cortex,” Father John said. “The mammalian brain is about all I can handle. So you are saying there is a part of the brain, the human part, that doesn’t work when we feel threatened. So what does this have to do with what you called ‘the problem’?”

            “The problem is,” Bob said, “that the mammal part of the brain only uses two categories: pleasure/pain, good/evil, black/white, go/stop, etc. This part of the brain won’t allow for creative problem solving. It is either fight or flight.”

            “I think I see the problem,” Father John said. “When there are two opponents in a conflict, they are often angry and they cannot get out of their positions because their thinking is locked inside the mammalian brain. They only can think inside a two-category universe.”

            “Yes, that’s the problem,” Bob said. “In a conflict it is easy for all of us to be captured in our positions versus our enemy. We then become locked into a linear polar continuum, inside our two-category mammalian brains.”

            “Now you have lost me with linear polar continuum,” Father John said. “I was doing all right until you got to that.”

            “Well when you have only two positions they operate as two dots in space,” Bob said. “Any two points in space from a line.”

            “Okay so two positions form a line,” Father John said. “And that line is flat.”

            “Yes that’s right,” Bob said.

            “There’s no life in a flat line,” Father John said laughing.

            “Now I don’t understand,” Bob said.

            “It’s like the line on an EKG machine that is tracking the heart beat,” Father John said. “It’s dead.”

            “Yes it is,” Bob said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

            “A line needs a third point if it is to move above the deadening debate of either/or.”

            “Yes,” Bob said. “And that’s what I mean by polar. The line forms a pole with each party locked into the extreme position at the end of the pole. A continuum is a pole that will allow positions to be taken at any point on the pole or line.”

            “I can visualize this,” Father John said. “The idea of a line with two points is easier to understand than abstract philosophical ideas.”

            “This idea is part of philosophy,” Bob said. “Plato saw the problem long ago. And before him a Greek named Lucretius saw the same problem, the problem of either/or thinking. Lucretius was making the point that reality is not either/or. Reality consists of one thing and its opposites. Both are part of reality. Lucretius collapsed the polar debate by agreeing with both sides.”

            “How did he do that?” Father John asked.

            “He did that by talking about matter. He noticed that matter had an opposite and that opposite was a void or empty space or a vacuum, however you want to say it. Without empty space (the opposite of matter) everything would be one solid mass. There would be no opportunity for movement. If reality was only empty space there would be nothing to occupy that space. Just as matter must have a void as its opposite, so to do ideas attract an opposing value to create a context discussion. Lucretius was trying to take the adversaries out of the personal and help them see that they needed their opponent in order to have someone or some position to argue with.”

            “This sounds to me like the political idea of the worthy opponent,” Father John said.

            “Yes, it does,” Bob said. “Later, Kant and Hegel amplified Lucretius’ idea. In the twentieth century Dewey had the notion that truth came from the transaction of one thing with another. For Dewey knowing came from the transaction of differences. These differences did not necessarily have to be opposite. After Dewey, in the 1950’s, Hook extended Dewey by suggesting that solutions needed to move back and forth along the continuum for a culture to develop and prosper,” Bob said. “Let’s say that two positions were conservative versus liberal. Some years our culture should be concerned with not risking and should conserve resources. Then the pendulum should swing (and will naturally swing) to a place where the culture should encourage more investment and risk taking. In the 1970’s Altman used this notion that reality contained both parts of the either/or choice by placing the positions on the line calling one position at one end of that line the thesis and the position at the other end of the line the antithesis and adding synthesis as the resolution of opposites, as Marx had done earlier.”

            “That’s an awful lot to fit together,” Father John said. “All I could get out of this was the image of a pendulum. The pendulum has a natural third position,” Father John said.

            “What do you mean?” Bob asked.

            “Well the pendulum hangs from a point above the line doesn’t it?”

            “Yes I guess so,” Bob said.

            “That point is your third position,” Father John said.

            “Well it is, isn’t it,” Bob said, “I haven’t thought of it that way. And neither did Hook. He didn’t notice that still point above the two dots, in some way, acts as a neutral mediating value from which the pendulum swings.”

            “But that still point above the other two dots serves that purpose,” Father John said.

            “Yes it does,” Bob agreed

            “So all these guys were trying to civilize conflict too,” John said.

            “Yes,” Bob agreed. “It appears so.”

“When you mentioned thesis, antithesis and synthesis, those are three positions aren’t they? Father John wondered.

“Yes they are,” Bob said. “This idea came from Marx and Altman. All three of their positions remain on the same line.”

            “I see,” Father John said. “We need something to help us rise above the line. A third position would define a plane, a level field.”

            “Yes it would,” Bob said, “and here is where geometry no longer serves us. I suggest that the third position operates like a magnet pulling out the best elements of each of the two opposing positions. Remember since the third position has moral power, the other two positions need the approval and support of the third position.”

            “This creates as many possible solutions as there are points inside the plane.” Father John said. “The third position raises the level of the argument. I can think with you when you give me this visual image. So the third position is not just a third vote to break the tie. It is a point above the line or argument.”

            “That’s right,” Bob said. “It pulls us onto a plane and off a line. I think a third position will pull us out of the mammalian brain into the human brain, where we can creatively cooperate to solve problems together.”

            “You think a third position will stop us from being pigheaded,” Father John said, “thinking like an animal and will bring us above that to a more spiritual plane.”

            “Well we social scientists don’t use the word spiritual much,” Bob said, “but yes that’s right, if not spiritual certainly to a higher more creative form of humanness. But the problem is that the third position is on the line. Altman and Marx split the blanket to halve the problem. Their solution is often somewhere on that line toward the middle. And often that is a lose/lose decision.”

            “What do you mean by split the blanket?” Father John asked.

            “I mean giving each side half of the resources without accomplishing anything.” Bob said, “Used in the Marxist synthesis does not necessarily bring anything new to the conversation. It just serves as a way to compromise between the two. It is made up of parts of two opposites. Nothing new is added. Sometimes a compromise is not the best solution. Sometimes the best solution is something outside the box, above the line. This is what the third position adds. And this is where I come in.”

            “Where do you come in exactly,” Father John asked.

            “In community psychology there has always been a natural polarity or line formed by the two dominant values in the field. The first value is individual freedom. This position is that communities and governments should use their power to promote individual freedoms and individual rights.”

            “What’s the opposing point of view?” Father John asked.

            “It is that a community should promote the common good or the best interest of the whole rather than its individual parts. Sometimes a community needs water. So the individual must allow the community or its government to put a water pipe and a sewer and perhaps a road or a phone line on an individual’s property, because it is in the best interests of the whole. This line is sometime called the individual versus the collective.”

            “The church deals with this all the time,” Father John said. “I tend to value the collective.”

            “So did Hitler and Stalin,” Bob said.

            “Oh, I see,” Father John said. “The power of the collective can easily be abused.”

            “Yes,” Bob said. “That is why the father of the U.S. Constitution distrusted the power of a central government. That’s the reason for the Bill of Rights.”

            “And that’s why Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and the rest created three branches of government to balance and check each other,” Father John said. “Three positions there it is again.”

            “Yes,” Bob agreed. “This idea of three points pops up all the time. The most stable seat is a three-legged stool. The most stable building is made of triangles that provide its support. In social science we suggest that a theory is valid if it is measured the same from three points of view. Three does seem to be a powerful number.”

            “So what’s your third position between the individual and the collective?” Father John wondered.

            “Well between is not the right word,” Bob said.

            “Oh I’m sorry,” Father John said. “Yes, above is more correct. So what is your third position?”

            “Remember in the French Revolution the French patriots shouted three values used to oppose the King.”

            “Yes,” Father John said and then he shouted, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”

            “Liberty,” Bob said, “represents the value of the individual. Fraternity represents the value of the common good or the collective. Equality for me represents the value of everybody being consulted and everybody having a hand in the decision making person, equal opportunity and a fair, level playing field that allows the most competent to rise.”

            “So the third position is equal opportunity,” Father John said, “not equality of every person with the government giving each person the same wage, thus eliminating wealth.”

            “Yes you are right. My version of equality does not go that far,” Bob acknowledged, “Some people are interested in living simply and are not interested in wealth. Others want to live comfortably and are only interested in security, not wealth. I think work and competence should be rewarded. I appreciate what a free market economy does. What I’m talking about is the community and its government should respect equally all its citizens, regardless of who they are, where they come from and how much money they have.”

            “Maybe I disagree with your view of equality,” Father John said, “but I see your third position above the individual versus the collective is equal opportunity.”

            “Yes,” Bob said, “that’s basically right. But third position thinking is not limited to these three values. The third position in a conflict could be any value position. I could have chosen the value of protecting the earth as my third position. The third position simply is a value that the two opposing points of view can agree that they also want to serve this value as well as the one they represent.”

            “So the third position is any value the two opponents can agree on. Is that what you are saying?”

            “Yes, that’s right,” Bob said, “but I’m the one who is tired of all this abstract thought now. I want to use this idea to help you. Is that possible?”

            “This idea of the number three seems mystical to me,” Father John said. “It has the feel of numerology. Are you saying it is like God’s ordained trinity?”

            “You know I am a bit taken with this notion of the number three as a magic number,” Bob said. “The reason that it may seem magic is that it is how our brain works at its best. The most primitive part of our brain is reptilian. It is reflexive. It has only one position. The mammalian brain adds two positions, for example, approach/avoid, enemy/ally, black/white. It takes the neo-cortex or the human brain to entertain a third position. That is my best explanation for why three.”

            “Just a minute,” Father John said, “I’m getting into this idea now. Why not a fourth position?”

“Well as a matter of fact,” Bob said, “a student in our program Adam Long suggests a fourth position. He calls it a Gramesian Square. I’m not sure I understand it, but my best understanding is that four points create two crosshair lines perpendicular to each other. So when you connect the four points with two lines crossing the middle of the square, they intersect and that intersection is your best solution.”

“That seems too rigid and too much like a formula solution to me,” Father John said. “I would rather have a solution that came out of a discussion, not from having two lines cross an arbitrary point.”

“Yes,” Bob agreed, “and a fourth position adds another dimension that can provide as much instability and chaos as it does to help provide a balanced solution. To me four positions feels like overkill, one too many. Three seems less confusing somehow to me.”

“I agree,” Father John said. “Can three positions ever create a problem?”

“Yes, they can?” Bob said. “Vivian Paley, a school teacher, documented the problem in her book, You Can’t Say, You Can’t Play.”

“What was that about?” Father John asked.

“Oh you know,” Bob said. “It is the universal first grade event of two children ganging up on the third and telling them that they can’t play. Then the third position, instead of being a respected neutral position, above the other two is devalued and below the other two. The triangle is turned upside down resting on one point or you could say it collapses into a line. This is a dangerous place.”

“I see,” Father John said. “How does this play out in a community?”

“C. Vann Woodward documented a time in the South after the civil war when there were three positions were working well together,” Bob said. “The three positions were the former slaves, the poor white sharecropper and the white landowners. They seemed to be collaborating well together to rebuild the South, until the white landowner interjected race again into the cultural dialogue. Here the white landowners and the white sharecroppers united to say to the former slave, you can’t play. You are not our equal. The South did not right this upside down triangle until the passage of the civil rights acts of the 1960’s.

“This is what Murray Bowman calls gossip. This is also how racism and other prejudices from. Gossip is two positions privately colluding against a third. This turns the triangle upside down. In these circumstances three positions can become destructive to a community and to trust.

“Now can we talk about something real that’s a problem for you now?”

“I think so,” Father John said. “I do have a problem with the Bishop.”

            “What’s that?” Bob asked.

            “The prick wants me to build a Belle Meade church, using Belle Meade brick for Latin immigrants,” Father John said.

            “Well I see this has gotten personal,” Bob observed.

            “Yes,” Father John answered. “He called me an unrealistic zealot. My language comes from the earth and the people, not from the brain. Unrealistic. I’ll show him who is realistic.”

            “So what do you want to do that seems so crazy to the Bishop?” Bob asked.

            “I want to build a church that will feel like a church home to my people,” Father John said. “I want it to have mission architecture and a stucco exterior. I want the art outside to be Latin art and not Michelangelo.”

            “That sounds reasonable to me,” Bob said. “What’s the Bishop’s beef?”

            “He says we are immigrants,” Father John replied. “That we are mostly here illegally and that if the U.S. immigration service enforces the law that he will be left with a church that regular Americans, particularly the racist southern American, won’t want to worship in. He doesn’t want to invest the Nashville Diocese’s money in a Latin church.”

            “So what are the two opposing values here?” Bob asked.

            “I only see me representing what’s right for my people and the Bishop protecting his racist southern base,” Father John said.

            “So you see it as a good versus evil fight?”

            “Yes and we are growing,” Father John said. “There are forty-thousand of us in Nashville now. Ten years ago there was maybe three thousand. How many of us will there be in ten more years. This is what he’s afraid of. He is fighting the inevitable. We will be the Catholic Church in Nashville one day. And he is afraid of us and me. And he should be. He will be the loser. Just wait.”

            “Let me see if I can nominate a value that you are fighting for,” Bob said. “Would that be all right?”

            “Yes.”

            “I think you represent the value of building a church for the people it is meant to serve,” Bob suggested.

            “Yes that’s right.”

            “See if you can recognize a respected value that the Bishop might be serving,” Bob challenged.

            “Okay, but I’m not sure there is one,” Father John said.

            “I think the Bishop represents the interest of the indigenous Catholic culture in Nashville,” Bob said. “You are proposing to use money from this diocese of mostly Anglo-American Catholics. He is protecting their interests in the event that you and your people disappear. Because you are right. They weren’t here yesterday. Perhaps they will be gone tomorrow.”

            “That’s exactly what he says,” Father John said as he looked at Bob suspiciously.

            “What if this was in Mexico and a priest wanted to build an American looking church there and you were the bishop. What would you say?”

            “That he is crazy,” Father John replied before he thought about what he was saying.

            “See,” Bob said. “It is not personal. In any system or community or church people play roles. You are playing your role in this drama and the Bishop is playing his. It has become personal, but it really is not personal. It is a clash of values.”

            “And we need a third positions,” Father John said.

            “Yes,” Bob said. “I think a third value that you both agree to serve would help you unlock yourselves.”

            “From our pigheadedness,” Father John interjected.

            “You said that,” Bob said. “I didn’t.”

            “So why don’t you go away and think of a value you both might agree to serve and then pitch this value to the Bishop. And come back again next week and we will talk further.”

            “And you won’t talk to the Bishop?” Father John asked.

            “No, not unless you ask me to,” Bob said. “And then only with you present.”

            “I’ll be back next week. Same time?” Father John asked.

            “Yes,” Bob answered.

Father John returned the next week. It was a gray raw February day. Father John entered Bob’s office in his monk’s robe and sandals with wool socks. He seemed sturdy and strong under his baggy brown robe.

            “I got it,” he said to Bob after the greetings and after he found his seat in the one uncluttered chair in Bob’s office.

            “What do you mean?” Bob asked.

            “I’ve got the third position,” Father John said. “It’s money. We need $500,000 to secure a loan. I talked to a bank. They agreed to lend us the $3,500,000 more it would take to build a cathedral for my people if I could raise the $500,000. They would take the building and the lot as collateral. If I raise this money, the bishop won’t have to put up any money from his diocese. I think he would like that. Right now if he builds it on money from the diocese he will have to come up with $300,000 of his precious diocese’s money. If I can save him from that I think he would agree.”

            “Can you raise $500,000 from the Latin community,” Bob asked.

            “The plans are to break ground in six months,” Father John said. “I have never tried to raise money. It’s for a good cause and there are many potential contributors. It’s worth a try.”

The Bishop agreed. The bargain between them was, if Father John raised $500,000 he could build his church. If not, then, the church would be built with Belle Meade brick and have the architecture of an American Church, so that from the outside it would look like a church that belonged in Nashville, Tennessee.

Some weeks later in April Father John, in his monk robe, entered Bob’s office with a bouquet of tulips.

“These are for you,” he said as he entered Bob’s office. “They came up on the site where we plan to build the church. I thought I would pick them and give them to you before the bulldozer got them.”

“Thank you,” Bob said as he accepted the flowers.

“I had no idea it would be this hard,” Father John said. “I only could raise $75,000.”

“Your congregation is poor.”

“Yes it is,” Father John acknowledged. “They are sending all their extra money back to Mexico. They even send money to their churches back in Mexico. They do this hoping that God and their local church in Mexico will take care of their families.”

“So do you feel defeated?” Bob asked.

“Yes and no,” Father John replied, “I learned a lot about my parish as I tried to raise this money. I think they appreciated my attempts to fight for them. And I figured out we can give the Bishop a Trojan horse.”

“How is that?” Bob asked.

“On the outside it will look like his church,” Father John said. “But we will build it with Latino hands. We will use Latino artists for the interior décor and art. Inside it will look like a South American church. My people will get the work and they will have their church in America. It will be good for them to realize that they live here now. This is their new home. We will all together make room for more of us to come. Eventually I think we can all win. Even the Bishop. And I think I discovered that I can work with the bishop. I think I won his respect. This was something I never expected. The third position created a new space in me. Although I failed to raise the $500,000 I did not compromise. I don’t feel like I lost. I feel like I learned something and began a relationship with the Bishop that may work.”