Pie Town - Lynne Hinton [66]
George had never liked the story, was never comfortable with the action of Jesus or the interpretation of the story by scholars.
He got up from his desk and decided to make a pot of tea. He hoped that the chamomile that he bought at the grocery store on his last outing would calm him, soothe his mind. He turned on the faucet, filled up the kettle, and placed it on the stove, waiting for it to heat.
George had never understood the harsh words of Jesus to the woman and he also never understood the way it appeared as if Jesus changed his mind and met her request. He knew that some scholars claimed that Jesus said the proverb just to show his disciples their prejudice and how wrong they were to exclude others. “It was a teaching moment,” his professor had said. But then one of the students, an older boy who eventually dropped out of seminary, raised his hand and asked the questions that had shocked everyone in the class: “What if she changed his mind? What if Jesus had a conversion experience because of what this woman said?”
At the time George thought the student was crazy, heretical, and, like everyone else, had not been surprised when months later he had left school. But the questions he had asked stayed with George. They practically haunted him. He wondered: was it possible that the Son of God could have a conversion experience? Could it be that Jesus had started out thinking one way about Gentiles and women, the way all Jewish men thought about them in the first century, and then suddenly changed his thinking?
He poured a cup of tea and shook the memories and thoughts from his mind. It was more than he wanted to think about that week. He would simply preach on the Old Testament text and just not deal with the gospel story. And with that decision he dismissed the other thoughts he was having and recalled instead the events of the day.
Most of that Thursday he had been out of the parish and rectory making pastoral visits. He’d gone to Carebridge and conducted Mass for the few Catholic patients who could attend and made visits to the rooms, offering Communion to those who could not. He had visited Fedora Snow because she wanted to talk about the upcoming fall services, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Feast Day held in early September, only a few weeks away, the St. Francis Day Blessing of the Animals scheduled for October, and the Pie Town community dinner that was always held in November.
She had asked for the visit because there were things she needed the priest to know, things like Millie Watson should not be in charge of the Feast Day meal because she always made her stew too spicy and never had enough desserts. Fedora wanted Father George to ask someone else to be in charge of that event, and she also wanted him to know that she didn’t think the animals should be on the front lawn of Holy Family Church for St. Francis Day. The November community dinner, she explained, needed only publicity and no discussion since she had been in charge of that gathering for years and saw no need for any change. The woman had droned on for over an hour, and by the end of the visit Father George, feeling bored and in need of a break, had decided to stop by the diner for lunch and to catch his breath after he left Fedora’s house.
After hearing from Bea that Roger and Malene had brought Alex home from the hospital earlier in the week, he decided he would drop by Malene’s house after he stopped to see Frank at the garage to give him a Bible and rosary beads for Raymond, his son, who was in boot camp. He thought about that encounter too, his first with the owner of the garage, a Navajo, the son of an active member of Holy Family.
Frank had been polite but not thrilled to see the priest or to receive the gifts for his son. George explained that Frank’s mother had asked him to bring Raymond the Bible and rosary beads, and Frank had made a kind of huffing noise at that. “Mama still thinks she can make Catholics