I was away from the Catholic Church in any meaningful way from June 1972 until Christmas 2005, when I received the Eucharist again for the first time. I came back full metal… volunteering for any ministry I could get my hands on. I was on the Parish Council within a month of being back in full communion. I didn’t understand their language, and they didn’t understand mine.
The one who suffered the brunt of my learning to swim was my pastor. I found it difficult to be around him for a while, given that he knew all my bad deeds. I either avoided him or argued publicly with him.
Then came his presence at my apartment for a home Mass for a volunteer effort I was involved in. He came up to me and said, “I wonder if you’d help me with a story.” I was shocked; why was he, a priest, asking me, a parishioner, for assistance?
But I couldn’t turn away a writer who wanted help, and he agreed to leave the story about his missionary days for me at the parish office. He accidentally also left a poem written during the same period.
“I have some thoughts about how to improve the article,” I told him later, “but the poem is haunting. I’d send it to The New Yorker.”
He didn’t do that, but a Catholic publication bought the poem and it placed third in a contest. At first, he seemed to discount his achievements.
“I take it all with a grain of salt,” my pastor said, then added: “I’ve written one now that’s even better than that poem.”
“I look forward to seeing it,” I said.
I could now look beyond the collar and view him as part of a tribe I understood and loved—the tribe of writers. And this humbling of his allowed me to see him and other priests as real people, an immeasurable gift.
