People are forever telling me that we religious folks walk around with our heads in the clouds; our brains filled with notions that haven’t the slightest relevance. They urge us to “get real”—but that, of course, depends on who gets to define what real is. The Gospel isn’t a mirror that reflects its surroundings—it means to change what is. For us, reality isn’t fixed and settled—something we simply adjust to. Reality, for us, is what God wants from the world. My hunch is that people go around saying things like “that’s unrealistic” when what they mean to say is, “If I did that I’d have to change—and I don’t want to.”
These aren't my words, they're from a homily, a homily that looked me in the eye and dared me to make some very specific changes.
