COURAGE TO WRITE

We are a nation of talkers and not a nation of writers. Why is this? According to Bill Henson, a Harvard Nieman Fellow and former deputy editorial director of the Plain Dealer, it’s because “it takes courage to write.” Notice he doesn’t say it’s because people don’t have a college education because he knows many individuals who are natural-born gifted writers.

Let me tell you about a woman who had no formal education in writing but had the courage to write. She did not live in the Cleveland area but often wrote letters to the editor of the newspaper of her city and to the Plain Dealer editor in Cleveland if she disagreed with the position their papers took on a wide variety of subjects.

When The Plain Dealer published something I wrote, she often would write to scold me, particularly if it was critical of the Catholic Church. She thought my Catholicism was too liberal, and I did not hesitate to point out that hers was too conservative. Nevertheless we became pen pals. Unfortunately, we never met and she died about five years ago.

I looked forward to her letters because she was a highly gifted writer. I urged her to write letters to the editor of the New York Times but she thought she was not educated enough to do that. I suggested that she write a novel, but she wrote back, “I do not write novels and short stories. I am not educated and am too old.”

She often wrote sentences that with her permission I shared with my students. For example, she wrote this about her late husband: “Bruno was a laughing, handsome, irresponsible idiot.” In seven simple words, she tells us so much about her marriage. The lady had immense talent, which no school of journalism can teach.

At age 27 she entered the Catholic Church and fell in love with a priest, but she loved him from afar. There is no indication that they even had a close relationship. In a letter to me she described her long hidden feelings for him, which were altered to some degree when she saw him at an event years later.

For 23 years I had held a vision of my beautiful young priest in limbo in my mind. He taught high school for three years before he entered the priesthood. He is an artist and has talents and gifts as long as your arm. He moved several times and went to different parishes. Always, my prince remained in my mind as a symbol of the old church with its beautiful music and an emphasis on worship and the cross. I wondered how he endured the celibate life in a world devoted to the sins of the flesh and the devil. I became cynical and depressed.

A friend of his and mine, a 49-year-old priest much loved by the religious community, died. I went to the funeral held in the priest’s local parish church. There I looked for my young priest in the concelebrated Mass presided over by the bishop. He wasn’t among his peers in their long white frocks. Fresh faced and rested, they sat in rows along the altar near the open casket.

Instead, in the large old church packed with hundreds of people including rabbis and Protestant ministers and the mayor, I found my prince sitting across from me in full view. I was shocked. The lank hair, the slack jaw, the paunch, the wattle under the chin were a jolt. Slumped in his seat, his soft white hands unknown to hard work with hammer and nails held a red hymnal and he sang the songs I could not sing. Sitting with closed eyes he endured the closing of the casket and played with his mustache. When the funeral was over he rose quickly and fled toward the door.

He had spoken to no one. He had come alone but he was known. A fellow priest shook hands with him briefly. If he saw me he covered it up.

She concludes her letter with these words:

I go to my parish church which is super liberal and the long ago screams of children in the school yard echo in my heart. There I cry with God while the church sinks slowly into the world and the guitars play on.

I miss this troubled woman’s letters and hope that she has found peace.

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