(Interlude: Search for a new minister)

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Meanwhile the parish was in the midst of its search for a new minister. It was a time of anxiety, of live spirits but anxiety. Some people said: what we need is a duplicate of Father Sam so we can retain our community, our vibrancy and... but others insisted that it was time for someone or something new.

What should he even look like? Sharlene asked. Are we even saying “he”? (Because there are talented women in ministry now). In any case, I will go out on a limb and say I go for someone as homely as possible. Downright ugly if we can only achieve it.

And the others cried: Sharlene!!! Why????

Not that a priest should be pretty? But why ugly, what’s the use of “the face that no one wants to look at”?

Well....

Well we as a society have had our fill and more so of the people who are good to look at. We have had so many ministers who look like newscasters and whose message seems somehow... oh, I’d say sweetened and made crisp by their newscaster looks. By their constant poise. By their never getting shaken up by anything anyone ever says. Insurance people, when what I want is not insurance but **risk**.

Oh, Sharlene.

I would like someone like Lincoln, only of course I don’t mean a politician. Someone whose pants roll up to his shins when he rides a horse, someone covered with dust, awkward and too tall or else heavy and squat with sweat going diagonal on his forehead. Someone not only easy to laugh at but who finds being laughed at easy also. Who are we not to be laughed at? I want to see the spirit move not so much in his Sunday words but in the way he moves through the other days, when the rest of us sit here biting each other’s heads off. Oh Sharlene.

Someone who doesn’t break a bruised reed, someone you don’t care about for the obvious reasons, someone who can take what is dished out by people like, well, like me. Oh Sharlene. Someone who knows what he wants and doesn’t get shaken off the one tree where he sees it growing. Someone I can follow, not just look at like I’m looking at you.

I want someone whose market value is nil and who doesn’t even care that much about raising money. He doesn’t have to worry about that, because if he exists, I’ll do the money raising for him. I want him to do the things I **can’t** do.

At that point the others laughed at her, shook the pool of resumes in front of her face and said: That’s all very well, dreamy girl. But this here pool is what we’ve got.

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