When I was a young teenager in the early 1960s I became
friends with a boy who lived a couple of doors down from me. We enjoyed many
adventures in the fields and neighborhoods near our homes. In 1966, the year I
graduated from high school, his family moved away. We determined to continue
our friendship by writing letters; fifty-two years later, we continue to write,
and our correspondence has amassed more than 1,500 pages. Our letters tell the
stories of how I became a priest and he became a screenwriter for movies and
television; of our marriages; and of our philosophies of life. We wrote the
accounts of the deaths of parents and friends, of our moves, and of the many
tragedies and joys of our lives. Both of us became published authors, and both
of us were artistic and enjoyed illustrating our letters in pencil, pen and
ink, and watercolor.
Letters produced on typewriters and now half a century old
are fading, and the ink is slowly seeping into paper that is ever more drying
out and becoming yellow and brittle. Last year for several months I spent two to three hours a day
scanning the letters into my computer, improving the contrast, and editing them
for general reading. Now the work is almost done. Soon they will become available in a 700-page volume
through the print-on-demand industry.
As I was scanning, I read what I had written more
than 45 years ago when I was in seminary, and described to my friend, who is
not a Christian, the deep joy of knowing Jesus and how he was working in my
life. I wrote, “This is a true continual natural high. I am a prisoner and a
slave, but I am freer than I ever imagined, and it is forever.” I was in my
early twenties then—idealistic and sensitive and definitely inexperienced, but
the joy radiates to me off the pages I wrote so long ago.
Now I am approaching seventy-one and my career is mostly history.
As I look back, I have lots of memories: being ordained with a noted
television/movie actor who became a good friend; an emergency baptism of a
newborn triplet who would not survive, leaving her sisters to be raised as
twins; ministering to a newly-converted young woman who had been raised by
parents who were Satanists;
becoming friends with the author Kathryn Lindskoog, a friend and correspondent
of C.S. Lewis, who was confirmed in her house since she was paralyzed with M.S.;
being the instrument that converted an exotic dancer, who remains dedicated to
Christ to this day; preaching at the funeral of a young murder victim in the
presence of her murderer, who would not be arrested for about 15 years when
technology caught up to the evidence; baptizing an old man on his deathbed;
ministering seven years to a woman who had been described by the police as “one
of the most savagely abused children in California history” so that she could
become functional in society; walking down California coastal highway 1 with a
priest-friend in formal clergy suits, tennis shoes, and Navy pea-coats while
cars drove by honking greetings to us; performing a wedding for a “punker”
couple with everyone in the congregation festooned with spikes, tattoos, and
dyed hair and the bride seven-months pregnant; the amazing infusion of hundreds
of college students into the Anglo-Catholic church of which I was Rector; and
working with a forensic psychologist to track down the actual murderer of a
woman whose husband, a member of my church, had been arrested for the murder—and
who remains in prison 26 years later through the indifference of the legal
system. These are just a few of the memories that come to the surface without much
effort.
I have performed
about 150 weddings and the same number of funerals, baptized at least 500
people, and heard about 800 confessions. I figure that I have said Mass about
6,000 times and preached at least that many sermons. Like all priests and
ministers of the Gospel, I have my share of failures and successes, of sins of
which I am greatly ashamed and saintly acts for which I am grateful to our God
who guides and empowers—and in everything I see his always-reliable grace and
mercy and beauty.
The immaturity so
evident in the early letters to my friend is long gone. The world has changed
and I have changed, and through the changes both the joys and sufferings of my
ministry have been intense. Over the years I have been undeservedly loved by
many people, and suffered grievously and equally undeservedly from the anger of
a dozen or more others who projected on me fiery rage over hurt done to them by
others. I have mental and emotional scars, and carry wounds that cannot ever
heal in this life. I have learned what St. Paul meant when he wrote, “Let no
one trouble me, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.” The marks are both
evidence of deep suffering and tokens of the glory that ultimately triumphs.
From those heady
days of seminary when I wrote naively to my friend of the all-encompassing joy
of knowing Jesus, I can draw an unbroken line to my life today, and note surely
that through the years there has always been the golden thread of that same
all-encompassing joy that no one can take away. The priesthood is at the core
of my calling and therefore of my identity for ever. Praise be to Jesus Christ!
