Publicans and Priests - On Holding a Community
Mary always said that she and I had the same job, just different locations. Indeed. We welcome, we listen, we comfort. We feed the hungry. She serves beer; I serve wine. —excerpt, A Gritty Little Tourist Town
Mary is a bartender; I am a priest.
Mary was the anchor of the community that gathered at the Pato Loco in Coco, Costa Rica. People came to happy hour to see the bartender, the jefe, Mary. Around town, they identified me as the sister of Mary Ramona at the Pato Loco.
A Gritty Little Tourist Town is dedicated to her.
I can’t say that I have ever been an anchor in my community, though I know some priests are in theirs.
When we arrived in our little village in County Kerry, I was taken aback by how many Roman Catholics were so pleased that the Church of Ireland rectory once more housed a priest—it had been rented out to a young couple for a few years.
I asked the publican, Thomas, why this was so. He said that when the rectory was empty, meaning empty of a priest, it felt like the community was going downhill.
I learned quickly that whenever I did anything, whatever it was, the whole village knew. I closed the gate when a small herd of cows entered my garden so they would be safe until their owners claimed them. I went to the Catholic Church and said the rosary with the ladies on a Sunday when I had the day off. I made a home visit. I attended the community fashion show. People I didn’t know would later comment on it to me. Somebody from Dublin knew me as the priest who said the rosary.
I am not an anchor here. More like a reference point. People notice when I show up. It’s a new way of being a priest for me, being there for a whole village. A few centuries ago, a country priest was known as the Parson, meaning person. Everybody in this village is a person. But I am getting a sense of what it means to be a Parson. I keep office hours at the coffee shop.
Thomas was the anchor in our village, Thomas the publican. I told him what Mary said, that we have the same job. We welcome, we listen, we comfort. We feed the hungry. He served beer. I served wine. Thomas did all of that and more for whoever needed it. He did for me, too.
His death has left us adrift. We aren’t just mourning, we are waiting. The pub is like the empty rectory. Until it is filled, it feels like the place might go downhill. The coffee shop is doing its best to fill in. Maybe I should extend my office hours as well.
We need our communities. We need our anchors. We need our meaning. The Church was not up to the task—a topic for another day. In some corners it is being reborn as the followers of Jesus. But in its absence, people turned to all kinds of silly things, and leaders who make all kinds of silly promises, and meaning which ultimately is a death cult.
The basics for a return: hospitality, generosity, consistency, food, drink. Presence.
Do you belong to such a community? What will your part in it be?
The anchor metaphor here is brilliant, way more precise than just "community leaders". Those third spaces need someone who shows up consistently enough to become infrastructure themselves. I've seen church buildings sit empty for years and nobody noticed, but when the local dive bar closed in my neighborhood, people talked about it for months like we'd lost civic architecture. The priest/publican parallel works because both roles demand this weird mix of availability and discretion that's rarer than people think.