another spilling the beans episode

I have another reaction to report! I was talking with someone at work and ending up spilling the beans about my news….

I've been working off and on with J for a few years now on this giant project I'm implementing. She's not a City employee but is an activist and expert in the field. Anyway, we were talking about implementation. I mentioned that I'll be here for the first phase but depending on how things go I'll probably be leaving the City by the fall of 2006 or 2007. She then asked the logical question, "Oh, what are you moving on to?".

Now what I know of J outside of our professional interactions is that she's not religious in any way shape or form. She's left leaning politically and very socially liberal. It seemed like a natural enough time to share the news and we've always been pretty friendly. My general rule on thumb for telling people so far has been, does it seem more awkward NOT to tell them? So I did. I was also interested to see what her reaction was.

Her response fits into the positive reaction category of non-Catholics who don't really have much interaction with the Church in general but have vague notions that Sisters do cool social justice type things. Often times they'll bring up Sr. Helen Prejean of Dead Man Walking Fame. In this case, J mentioned a Sister Mary something she worked with years ago on farmer's rights issues in Minnesota. They usually make some comment about it seems to make sense for me to combine my faith and my social justice work. No questions about the details … that usually comes later after the initial shock wears off.

So all in all a positive spilling the beans episode. Now I just need to sit back and see if it moves through the grapevine of this particular crowd!