Of Shopping Carts and Service: A Pinning Reflection

I was honored to give a faculty reflection at the Saint Mary's College Nursing Pinning ceremony today. The graduating class is the first cohort of students I had the privilege of teaching since coming to Saint Mary's two years ago, and I wanted my reflection to be a gift to them and their families. I wanted it to be something really special and meaningful. 

So I ended up writing two. 

This was the first one, but I wasn't satisfied that it struck the right note. Neither was my wife, and I trust her opinion, so I buckled down and hammered out another (which I managed to deliver with a minimum of sobs, believe it or not). Still, I kinda' like this one, and I did write it for my students, so I'm going to post it here to make it easy to forward to them. 
_____________________________

Welcome honored guests, friends and family (moms and dads particularly), and, of course, you – Saint Mary’s College class of 2024 nursing graduates. Congratulations! You made it! 

Before I get rolling, a quick shout out to Torie Hardt’s mom. Thanks for teaching your kids to put away stray shopping carts in the grocery store parking lot. Hearing that from Torie last week was just the affirmation I needed as I prepared this address. 

Shopping carts, you ask? Parking lots? Stay with me here. Now, think back, if you will, to the height of Covid with social and economic upheaval, including disruptions in the labor market. Among other things, that meant that collecting shopping carts from the parking lot was often a lower priority for the grocery stores trying to keep shelves stocked. 

If you’re like me, you started bringing in your own shopping cart from the parking lot to make sure you’d have one. I generally tried to grab one that hadn’t made it into one of those stalls – the ones that roll around and scratch your paintjob on a windy day. 

Sure, I’d grumble: Couldn’t this person have walked ten feet to put away the cart? No matter – I grabbed it for myself. Then I started feeling guilty about bringing in my own parking lot stray when I saw others inside cart-less and stuck. I started bringing two – sometimes three or more when I was feeling ambitious – and then leaving the extras for others who hadn’t thought ahead. 

So that was one level of attitude change; here’s the next. That grumbling about the abandoned carts? I began imagining the folks who didn’t stow their carts properly, and I was convicted that some – most even – probably had good reason. Maybe a mom struggling with numerous kids; maybe an elderly woman for whom that extra ten feet of walking would be a real challenge. 

And, besides, who cares why those carts were loose or who’s responsible. I had the time; I had the energy. It’s a good thing to grab ‘em and bring them inside to benefit somebody else. I’m still doing it, but I’d like to think that my heart is softening little by little as well – that I’m more likely to give the benefit of the doubt to whomever left their carts adrift. 

So how is my guilt trip about shopping carts connected to nursing? Think of it like this: The shopping carts are like the job of nursing – the various tasks that nurses perform throughout the day, passing meds and doing assessments and all the charting, stuff like that. New nurses tend to focus on getting their tasks done – grabbing a cart for themselves, that is. Eventually, as they get more comfortable and confident in their skills and routines, they’ll begin grabbing carts for others – helping out nurses with busy patient assignments, for example, or going beyond the minimum in their bedside care.

But then, some nurses go even further: They manifest a generosity of spirit and a charitable demeanor that permeates all their interactions with others – patients and their families, for sure, but also fellow nurses and other staff as well. Even doctors! 

Let me give you a recent example: My chronic med-surg juniors do their clinicals on a local cancer unit. Toward the end of the semester, my student Allison told me about rounding on patients after morning report with her staff nurse, Amber. Entering one room, the two discovered that the patient’s I.V. had infiltrated and was leaking all over the bed. There was fluid and dried blood everywhere, and the patient was a mess.

Now, my kneejerk reaction might be to speculate why the night shift staff hadn’t caught this problem and dealt with it themselves. “My busy day is just beginning,” I might grumble to myself, “and now I have to make time for fixing somebody else’s problem.”

But Amber’s response? Without comment, Amber got right to work and enlisted my student to help. They pulled the I.V., cleaned up the patient, and changed the linens. Sure, they were delayed in their rounds, but it was the right thing to do – and they did it! No backbiting or criticism; no complaining or grumbling. It was a superb object lesson for my student in metaphorically grabbing an extra cart without judgment – just doing the right thing because it’s the right thing, even if you never get the credit.

And my student caught it – she remarked that Amber’s the kind of nurse she wants to be. That remark itself is a sign that she’s well on her way.

Maybe you’re wondering why I’m telling a story about a junior BSN student instead of one of these graduating seniors, right? Here’s the thing: As a rule – and I can say this because I’ve had all of these graduates in my class, and half of them in my clinicals – as a rule, catching on to Amber’s demonstration of charity and generosity is standard fare for Saint Mary’s nursing students. I see it, we all see it – heck, the patients and staff nurses see it, too! Telling about Allison, in other words, is telling about all our students, these graduates included. 

It's the ethos of this place, of Saint Mary’s – its culture and legacy of selfless service, initiated by the Holy Cross Sisters nearly 200 years ago, and carried forward to the present. It impacts all our graduates, but it’s no surprise that it’s particularly evident in our nursing grads. 

In other words, they didn’t just learn how to be a nurse here at Saint Mary’s – you can do that a lot of places. No, they got way more, and they’ll spend a lifetime in caring for others – at the bedside as nurses, at home with their families, and who knows where else – with a grace that’s borne of this place’s unique dynamism. 

So, again, congratulations graduates. God bless you as you launch into your nursing future and everything that’ll go with it. And friends and family, moms and dads? Next time you’re at the grocery story and see a stray cart, say an extra prayer for your graduate and then bring it inside as an act of solidarity. You’ll both benefit, and the world will get one more cart’s worth kinder as a result.

__________________________

Tithing Pitch

“God loveth a cheerful giver” (II Cor. 9.7).

A version of this exhortation was presented during Masses at St. Matthew Cathedral, South Bend, Indiana, the weekend of February 10-11, 2024. 

_______________________

When Nancy and I and our newborn son became parishioners here at St. Matt's nearly 30 years ago, we automatically signed up for collection envelopes. Automatically. As in: No question. For us, to be parishioners – actually, to be Catholic – necessarily included financially supporting the church, our spiritual home. 

 

That’s not some quirk of the Beckers – or some holdover from my youthful upbringing as a Protestant Christian. It’s in fact the teaching of the Church. As a convert, I discovered that fact through a little red booklet from Liguori Publications, Handbook for Today’s Catholic – the 1978 version. You see, I joined the Church B.C. (Before the Catechism) and so handy references like my Liguori handbook were vital for navigating a new ecclesial universe.  

And what did I find in that booklet? Among other things, the Precepts of the Church – what the authors describe as “certain specific duties of Catholics” (cf. CCC 2041). Things like Sunday obligation and Easter duty – ideas certainly familiar to cradle Catholics. But there’s also a line about the duty to “strengthen and support the Church,” which naturally includes material support, usually in the form of money – our “tithes” in other words. 

 

Now, you might know that the idea of tithing is from the Old Testament requirement that God’s people set aside 10% of their income for the Temple and its upkeep. As Christians, we are dispensed from that specific figure, but the requirement to financially support the Church – both local and global – remains. Indeed, St. Paul tells the Corinthians that on “the first day of the week, each of you should set aside whatever one can afford” (I Cor. 16.2). Maybe that’s 10%, maybe not. But Paul makes it clear that giving something is mandatory – it’s not an option. 

That just makes sense for a number of reasons. First, as I said, our parish is our home. Truly. Yes, we come here for Mass every week, but we also come here for nourishment and challenge, camaraderie and inspiration. We come here because our friends are here – some new, some old, some we met when we first got here decades ago. Our kids received their sacraments and their education here. We’ve celebrated births, deaths, and every in-between milestone imaginable here. So, it’s a place we are happy to support with our prayers, yes, and also our cash. 

In our case, we choose to do that through literal tithing – through setting aside at least 10% of our income, and then half of that goes to St. Matt’s, and the other half to the bishop, the missions, and other charitable works. And here’s the thing: We take that 10% off the top before we pay anything else. It’s a priority, you see, and it stays a priority even when we feel the pinch. 

Like a number of years ago when I fell ill and couldn’t work – and I didn’t know when I’d be able to return to work. We had a house full of kids and a mortgage on that house, and I was scared. I went to my pastor looking for advice, but mainly looking for consolation and sympathy, and I enumerated my woes. Father listened, nodded sagely, and then spoke – not words of consolation, not sympathy, but truth: He said, “First of all, don’t stop tithing.” 

Don’t stop tithing? Didn’t he hear what I said? Shouldn’t I circle the wagons financially? Can’t the church go without my puny tithe until I get back to work? 

But Father was right, because our tithe, our commitment to support our parish isn’t just about the Church, but also about us and out trust in God. By tithing in good times and bad, sickness and health, we demonstrate our radical dependence on God as Father. 

It is said that God will not be outdone in generosity, and certainly that’s a common image in the Scriptures. Like in Luke, when Jesus says “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over” (Lk 6.38). Even so, it’s hard to see in the moment how God will get us through this crisis or that, and our habit of tithing no matter what is a concrete way of declaring and embracing our abandonment to the Lord: We’re not in control; he is. 

So, regular giving to the church – whether it’s 10% or more or less, it doesn’t matter – has a twofold purpose. You’ll see one of them on the Commitment Card in your pew: At the top on one side it says, “Radiating Christ in the World,” and that’s true. Our support of the church and her ministries helps underwrite the extension of Christ through time and space, making him present here and now and into the future. 

But it’s also about receiving that radiation of Christ: The very act of sacrificing and setting aside part of our material wealth for the church manifests our reliance on God and predisposes us to grow in faith, hope, charity, to be ever conformed to Christ. It's not that we're paying God for grace; instead, we’re positioning ourselves to receive it. 

The bottom line is this: Odd as it may sound, regular, even sacrificial, giving to the Church is a gift – it’s a gift that I get to write out checks every month to St. Matt’s, and I’m happy to do it. If it’s not your regular practice, I invite you to try it and see for yourself. I’m pretty confident you won’t regret it.
_____________________________________