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The Parson’s Pen   
By Dennis Daniel

A well-known Irish writer once flew to San Francisco and was met by friends at the airport who asked if it was true that he spoke fluent Gaelic. When he pleaded guilty, they told him of a bartender in a waterfront saloon who kept complaining that nobody spoke Gaelic around there except himself, and asked if the writer would mind their taking him there to meet the man.

When they got to the saloon, they sat him at a table and went to fetch the bartender. The writer could see that the man was reluctant to come with them, but finally he took off his apron and followed them over to the table. He said, "Good day to you," in Gaelic, and the writer replied in kind and waited for him to carry on. He looked unhappy, and finally blurted out — in Gaelic — "Our father who art in heaven," and looked at the visitor beseechingly. Fortunately the writer caught on, and replied — in Gaelic — "Hallowed be thy name."

We brightened up like a neon beer advertisement and said — in Gaelic — "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done," and the Irishman said, in Gaelic, "On earth as it is in Heaven." They went through the whole prayer that way, and when it was done, they shook hands and the man went back to the bar. One of the Irishman's friends remarked, "By George, he really does speak it, doesn't he." The writer said, "Yes, indeed." And when someone asked what they had talked about, he said, "Ah, it was sort of an ecclesiastical dialogue."

What we do around here is a sort of ecclesiastical dialogue, also. We try to do it in language that we can all understand, although language sometimes fails, as we all know. And we do it for the most part without rote prayers, even though, as the story demonstrated, they can act as a form of communication at times. But our ecclesiastical dialogue, I hope, doesn't serve primarily to save face. We say, rather, that our concern is with truth, and the search for truth most often must start with acknowledging the truth about ourselves to ourselves. That means acknowledging our strengths as well as our weaknesses, our virtues as well as our vices, our love as well as our fears. The object is to know ourselves wholly.

And our ecclesiastical dialogue should help us to understand better our relationship with the people, the society, and the world around us, and it should give us the courage to act in other realms out of our own truth, to live at all times and in all places according to our knowledge of who we are and what we hold dear.

Our church should do these two things for us: it should get us in touch with our own truth, and it should enable us to touch others, ultimately to touch the world and work toward healing it. These two themes constitute the ministry which we support with our contributions when we pledge to the church’s operating budget. Let us keep our ecclesiastical dialogue going by pledging generously when we are asked during our up-coming canvass.

                                                    -- Dennis