I keep finding a few places in Steve’s journals/files where he will have added some paragraphs to the story of our story that he had hidden in his ‘novella.’ This gives me a window into the way he saw our love and also the ways he loved others.
The day she appeared at St. George’s, everything began to change.
It is hard to put an experience into words when you are in the middle of that experience. There are these eternal moments where timelessness enters into chronological time and change us forever. And their meaning takes time to unfold and describe.
He would say that he was aware of her from the first time that she walked into the room. He was in love with her from the first time he heard her voice. “Deep called to deep,” he said. At the time, he held it as a secret, even from himself. Years would pass before he would give voice to the desire and affections that grew steadily in him. Her presence in the world made it hard for him to be completely present anywhere ever again, since from their first encounters and conversations on, she was never far from his mind.
And yet…
And yet, there was work and there was family. His and hers.
And people really don’t like their priests to fall in love, not like this anyway.
When he first arrived at St. George’s, Sam spent the majority of his time, to the dismay of some, in local haunts and houses. He was as much at home in the tavern as in his study. Because he now had his collar back on, it didn’t take long for people to know who he was.
There was a period of time in his work, early in his career, that was marked by zeal, when he worked feverishly for the advancement of the church. When he was like a man with a cause, a mission. The great discovery of this period was that zeal tended to attract zealots (and those who liked to ride on zealous coattails.) The more passionate, confident he became, the more impatient he became. And the more he noticed people quietly slinking away to nurse hurts and fears alone, in hiding. Zealots make for dull company, while those who have tasted a little heartbreak have a capacity to both laugh and cry. By the time he came to St. George’s, the zeal had given way to a quiet hope that love would encompass the things that drive us into exile, and could find us in our pain. Hope had to be big enough for his own inner turbulence too- desire, fear, loneliness.
Sam was no fiery preacher. People would say that his sermons were like having a conversation between “Me, and Sam, and God”. And people began to come to enter this conversation. For some of the long standing members in the church, this was what they had hoped for. For others, well, not so much.
Tommy looked like a drunk. He approached Sam along 20th Street one day and asked for some money, with what became a very familiar “Can you help me out for the holidays?” It was a funny way to start a friendship, but a day didn’t go buy when Sam and Tommy didn’t speak. Sam learned Tommy’s story a sentence at a time, since the man couldn’t hold still long enough to link two sentences together.
It wasn’t the bottle. It was his nerves. At sixteen, in a strict catholic high school, Tommy was teased so hard that his young nerves gave way. He landed in the state asylum for the first time. Who knows what horrors went on there in the 1950’s? His family made sure he kept an apartment, but they kept him at arms length. And now, at 57, he made the rounds of about four blocks of the neighborhood from around 4 a.m. until night.
For some reason, Tommy thought that Sam was as crazy as he was. So he started confiding in him. At first he didn’t make much sense, but then in lucid snatches he would talk about his life, being lonely, not sleeping, and especially the girls he liked. Actually, Tommy liked all the girls. He tried to kiss each woman that came around. The ones who knew who he was might let him get away with it now and again, but he got slapped a lot.
There was quite a stir when Tommy first strolled into St. George’s during the Eucharist. Sam was just beginning with the preparatory words, when the man walked straight to the front and asked for the cup. “Kneel right there Tommy. I’ve got to say the magic words first.” So he did. Sam gave the congregants a “deal with it!” glare, and Tommy was a fixture from then on. Even when he worked the pews looking for a kiss.