The School Car Park
Living out my faith in the school car park
I spend half my life in the school car park. Except for on Sundays – then you’ll find me in the our parish car park.
This is not to say I don’t have a home, or a job or other places to be. It’s just that when you have three kids and a husband to chase…there’s a lot of comings and goings.
Prior to juggling motherhood I don’t think I had spent much quality time in a car park. I sort of dismissed it as a brief stop on the way to the true destination. But now – now! It’s hard to think of what I HAVEN’T achieved in a car park. I’ve dressed children in the car park, fed them, drunk coffee, eaten scrambled eggs, counselled friends, helped strangers, administered first aid, made new friends, offered rides, written cards, packed lunchboxes, arranged bunches of flowers, paid bills, rehearsed speeches and more all in the school car park.
Once in the school car park (and I’m not making this up) after complaining that I didn’t have quite the right shoes to wear to a formal event that evening… I was given a pair of dress shoes by a mum friend of mine - who then walked off and drove home barefoot.
That’s a lot of activity and a lot of life.
Do you feel like you live in your car too?
This article was meant to be about parents living out our faith – but I’ve strayed off topic to the car park.
Then I gave it more thought. Maybe my faith is being lived out right there in the school car park. Maybe can be like those saints and role models, maybe we can be like Mary, in small ways and ordinary places. Every day.
Back to the car park: I thought about the time I was able to offer a listening ear to an anxious new school parent. The time I gave a ride home to a tired family. The time I invited someone into my (messy) car for a chat after a stressful day. I thought about the 768,200 conversations I have had with friends and colleagues in that car park – people juggling careers and marriages and homes and parenting and responsibilities. People desperate for a laugh or a kind word.
I thought about the meals that have been passed from one car to another, the hand me down clothes left on the boot, the listening and the laughter. I thought about the tears that are shed…not up in the bright lights of the school grounds, but down in the car park. Hidden and unknown.
It’s in the car park that I pick up the whispers of real life… that’s where I hear that someone’s mother is sick, or am told someone has a new job, or learn a family is moving away or notice someone has an injury.
It’s not lost on me that car parks sit on the edge of the true destination – be it school or church or work. Wonderful things happen inside those places too (education, liturgy, ministry…how shiny and proper!)… but for some reason, to me, everything feels a bit more real there on the edge, just to the side of the action.
I wonder if our early Marist friends felt the same about their missionary work in Bugey in the rural foothills of France…off to the side a bit. Was that their ‘car park’ of sorts?
What too, did those early Marist missionaries think of their call to go to Oceania? Talk about being off to the side a bit!
At Whanau Maria where I work we have a lovely car park. It even has a mural in it. My office window looks down to the car park and it is from there I can see whose at work, or late for work, or visiting.
When someone new comes to visit we rush out to the car park to meet them. Quite often when a group gather at Whanau Maria we take a final photo in the car park against that lovely mural. A moment and a farewell captured in time.
If we busy, tired Catholics are called to focus on “the needs of the people” it’s surely helpful to be where the people themselves are.
Someone asked me recently: How do lay Marists live out there Marist-ness?
I think the answer might be this: In the same way that religious Marists do – in their daily interactions with others, in their way of being, in their work, in their homes. And of course, in the car park.
This article was originally posted in the Society of Mary publication ‘Korero’ and is used with permission.
Reflection Question
Where are the ‘school car parks’ in your life - the places on the edge of life you see and meet people?
Daily Practice
The next time you park up at school or work or anywhere else, pause for a moment to acknowledge how your faith might be able to be lived out in that exact spot.
