someone had had a secret for mobilizing people, for making them care about the parish in a time of secular distractions. What did they expect from me? Was I to be a catalyst? Or is the clergy’s role more passive now: a symbolic conduit to a better place … some reassurance that the here and now is only a beginning?
There was a working parish council again, women engaged in the good fight for family, both living and unborn. Serious talk of a parish bulletin, which would be my responsibility. Editor and censor. I told them up front that I had almost no parish experience other than a spell in Honduras, which didn’t really count. I didn’t tell them why it didn’t count and I didn’t mention my first pastoral assignment, where my priesthood started and almost ended. I told them that in many ways I was a novice.
“Clearly not a nun … but you get my drift.”
They giggled.
Nothing in the seminary or since had prepared me for what I now faced every day. Relating an opaque theology to contemporary circumstances. Seeking guidance in the ruminations of great medieval minds, now rendered unintelligible except in transparently manipulative parables, the old promises and threats designed to sway the superstitious, now empty. I thought of Pat and laughed aloud. I thought of Sextus and my sister. There was nothing in my experience, personal or pastoral, to help me deal with these realities.
But it didn’t seem to matter. It seemed to be sufficient that I was here. It hurts, they’ve told me, when a place loses a school, a post office, identity. Losing the church would be the last straw. I agreed with everything. The church is the guardian of life itself, a lonely sentinel. I didn’t tell them what I really thought: how the spire has been supplanted by the satellite dish. I dared not tell them what I think about the right to life.
They wouldn’t listen anyway.
I realized that I was driving northward, aimlessly. Maybe I could drop in unannounced and share an hour with Mullins in Port Hood. No intransigent anxieties in Mullins, nothing that can’t be handled in the time it takes to pound a small pock-marked ball into a slightly larger hole eighteen times on a sunny afternoon. I could visit Mullins. Catch up on the gossip. Mullins helped with one of my successes. Brendan Bell. The fugitive from Newfoundland. I could have sent him anywhere, but Mullins seemed to like him. God, if he had known why Bell was there, prissy Mullins would have had a fit.
Mullins—someone said at a recent priests’ retreat—Mullins wouldn’t know hot pants from sweatpants!
Big haw-haw-haws.
Then Brendan went away as planned, no harm done, married by now I’m sure. His new disguise.
Married.
Christ.
The image returns. Pathetic Parents Without Partners clutching at each other in the slow dancing, trying to recover whatever thing the missing partner stole. Wounded people limping toward a momentary refuge in a bed. Probably only reminding one another of the fragile joy they thought was permanent in that distant moment when they were all swaying and sweating and singing “Could I have this dance for the rest of my life?”
Pat actually tried to persuade me to join them on the floor.
“No way.” I laughed, appalled.
Whoops. What was this? A sign I’d never noticed before marked a turnoff. Hawthorne Road, a narrow gravelled side road, vanished at a curve. I slowed and turned, a supernatural influence directing me. Or booze. But still I felt like an intruder.
Drop by any time, he said. Danny Ban whom they used to call Danny Bad. Perhaps it was time to visit Hawthorne. Find out why.
I ask my father: Where is Hawthorne?
He just stares.
Is it far?
It’s far, he says.
How far?
Who was talking about Hawthorne?
Nobody.
Good. I don’t want to hear any more about effing
Hawthorne. Okay?
Okay.
I entered the lane with the mailbox marked MacKay fully intending to back out again, turn and retreat back down the
There was a working parish council again, women engaged in the good fight for family, both living and unborn. Serious talk of a parish bulletin, which would be my responsibility. Editor and censor. I told them up front that I had almost no parish experience other than a spell in Honduras, which didn’t really count. I didn’t tell them why it didn’t count and I didn’t mention my first pastoral assignment, where my priesthood started and almost ended. I told them that in many ways I was a novice.
“Clearly not a nun … but you get my drift.”
They giggled.
Nothing in the seminary or since had prepared me for what I now faced every day. Relating an opaque theology to contemporary circumstances. Seeking guidance in the ruminations of great medieval minds, now rendered unintelligible except in transparently manipulative parables, the old promises and threats designed to sway the superstitious, now empty. I thought of Pat and laughed aloud. I thought of Sextus and my sister. There was nothing in my experience, personal or pastoral, to help me deal with these realities.
But it didn’t seem to matter. It seemed to be sufficient that I was here. It hurts, they’ve told me, when a place loses a school, a post office, identity. Losing the church would be the last straw. I agreed with everything. The church is the guardian of life itself, a lonely sentinel. I didn’t tell them what I really thought: how the spire has been supplanted by the satellite dish. I dared not tell them what I think about the right to life.
They wouldn’t listen anyway.
I realized that I was driving northward, aimlessly. Maybe I could drop in unannounced and share an hour with Mullins in Port Hood. No intransigent anxieties in Mullins, nothing that can’t be handled in the time it takes to pound a small pock-marked ball into a slightly larger hole eighteen times on a sunny afternoon. I could visit Mullins. Catch up on the gossip. Mullins helped with one of my successes. Brendan Bell. The fugitive from Newfoundland. I could have sent him anywhere, but Mullins seemed to like him. God, if he had known why Bell was there, prissy Mullins would have had a fit.
Mullins—someone said at a recent priests’ retreat—Mullins wouldn’t know hot pants from sweatpants!
Big haw-haw-haws.
Then Brendan went away as planned, no harm done, married by now I’m sure. His new disguise.
Married.
Christ.
The image returns. Pathetic Parents Without Partners clutching at each other in the slow dancing, trying to recover whatever thing the missing partner stole. Wounded people limping toward a momentary refuge in a bed. Probably only reminding one another of the fragile joy they thought was permanent in that distant moment when they were all swaying and sweating and singing “Could I have this dance for the rest of my life?”
Pat actually tried to persuade me to join them on the floor.
“No way.” I laughed, appalled.
Whoops. What was this? A sign I’d never noticed before marked a turnoff. Hawthorne Road, a narrow gravelled side road, vanished at a curve. I slowed and turned, a supernatural influence directing me. Or booze. But still I felt like an intruder.
Drop by any time, he said. Danny Ban whom they used to call Danny Bad. Perhaps it was time to visit Hawthorne. Find out why.
I ask my father: Where is Hawthorne?
He just stares.
Is it far?
It’s far, he says.
How far?
Who was talking about Hawthorne?
Nobody.
Good. I don’t want to hear any more about effing
Hawthorne. Okay?
Okay.
I entered the lane with the mailbox marked MacKay fully intending to back out again, turn and retreat back down the
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