The only Starbucks in Great Falls (which means the only one within three hundred miles) is in the Barnes & Noble bookstore -- or was. (A new one has opened.) So once a month, on my grocery run, I stop in for a latte before I head back eighty miles north. Sometimes there are intriguing characters.
One of these was what I took to be a “Friar Tuck” type of jolly priest who sat there for hours in his dog collar, evidently translating Hebrew. He spoke to many people, didn’t seem to be meeting any deadlines. So I spoke to him, too. I was entirely wrong: he was a Lutheran pastor in his first charge. (A double charge: two small congregations who refused to merge though they were close enough together to have done that. But they wanted their own identities -- might as well ask their athletic teams to merge. Their identities were based on opposition to the other guy.)
Probably weighing three hundred pounds, with all his muscles between his ears, he was useless as a farm or ranch helper, which is a classic way for a rural minister to get credibility. He was following one of those energized men who can do everything, who had been there for thirty years, and who was much loved by everyone. He was their standard of comparison. This previous man preached out of his knowledge of his people, the stories he knew about them, and long experience with what sort of rhetoric worked for them.
“Tuck” came from the city. He was the youngest in a family of girls, all of them devoted to his well-being. He never spoke of his father. He had no idea what Montana Lutheran “squareheads” were about -- their work ethic, their value of neatness, reliability and not looking better than the other guy. His seminary had embraced him with warm, soft arms and told him Jesus loved him.
Over the months I worked on him a little bit from my vantage point as a late-in-life “retread” overweight female minister who had run aground in a Canadian city. It took ten years to convince me that I was NOT cut out for this job. I had to pry my fingers off, I so despised being a quitter -- I so hoped it would work. And then the next problem: where to go, what to do next. And what to do about my imploded pride.
I suggested that he must have a director of ministry who could give him good advice and books to read. (He wasn’t really translating that Hebrew -- just making a wall of it.) I proposed that his denomination might put out a bit of money for him to hire a therapist. I asked if there weren’t some senior ministers within driving distance who would be sympathetic? What about his Bishop? (His bishop was cold, he said.) I wondered who had placed him in this job that was, for him, quite impossible, and decided it was someone with a Montana “make or break” attitude, who had decided that Tuck would probably wash out and good riddance. It would buy a little time for those congregations.
Eventually he began to get hints from the more practical men and the more motherly women that he ought to think about his next step. The money wasn’t coming in. Some of the more powerful and moneyed members had stopped attending, saying that his preaching was too new-fangled and too hard to understand anyway. One day Tuck announced that he was allergic to wheat and that explained the whole thing: he was an invalid for life, he’d probably have to go back home now. His sisters thought he should.
By now I was annoyed. I know lots of people with wheat allergies. I suggested a Google search for a support group and recipes. On his plate was a sticky bun. He had applied for disability status with the State. The State didn’t seem to think his disease was disabling. It wouldn’t be for someone with discipline. THERE was the problem. And he admitted that, but he thought it disqualified him for the ministry.
I told him that coming into two small parishes, rivals, who had just lost a beloved long-time pastor was more than even an experienced and specially trained minister could manage easily. This was NOT what every ministry was like -- there are many niches and one was bound to fit him.
Then I played my last card. He was no longer wearing his clerical dog collar but a rather ragged old sweater. No more Hebrew: he simply sat and grieved into his espresso. Ever hear of a “dry alcoholic?” Real alcohol would kill him, but he wasn’t suicidal -- just pitiful. It was late winter. “Have you taken Clinical Pastoral Education?” It’s a program that puts you into a helping job and pushes you through it with a support group -- very effective and completely terrifying. When you come out, you know yourself.
Nope. Just as I suspected. I whipped out the details I’d found on the Internet: the name and address of the closest program, how to apply, another program close to his home town, etc. Quickly he pulled on his ministerial mask. “How kind of you to do this for me!”
Phooey on masks. This was real. “You’ve just about got enough time to apply for summer. Will you at least make contact?”
“Oh, ah, sure.” I could tell he had no intention. When I went out to get in my little pickup, I could see him mournfully staring after me with the papers in front of him. I never saw him again. He sorta haunts me.
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