When the rally was over, Marty mentioned that he had to give some people a ride home, so instead of riding with him
I decided to take one of the buses heading back to the city. As it turned out, there was an empty seat next to Will on the
bus, and in the glow of the freeway lights, he began to tell me a little about himself.
He had grown up in Chicago, he said, and served in Vietnam. After the war, he had found a job as an executive trainee
at Continental Illinois Bank and had risen fast, enjoying the trappings of the work-the car, the suits, the downtown
office. Then the bank had reorganized and Will was laid off, leaving him shaken and badly in debt. It was the turning
point in his life, he said, God’s way of telling him to get his values straight. Rather than look for another job in
banking, he turned to Christ. He joined St. Catherine’s parish in West Pullman and took a job as the janitor there. The
decision had put some strain on his marriage-his wife was “still adjusting,” he said-but according to Will, the ascetic
lifestyle suited his new mission: to spread the Good News and puncture some of the hypocrisy he saw in the church.
“A lot of black folks in the church get mixed up in middle-class attitudes,” Will said. “Think that as long as they
follow the letter of Scripture, they don’t need to follow the spirit. Instead of reaching out to people who are hurting,
they make them feel unwelcome. They look at people funny unless they’re wearing the right clothes to mass, talk
proper and all that. They figure they’re comfortable, so why put themselves out. Well, Christ ain’t about comfort, is he?
He preached a social gospel. Took his message to the weak. The downtrodden. And that’s exactly what I tell some of
these middle-class Negroes whenever I stand up on Sunday. Tell ’em what they don’t wanna hear.”
“Do they listen?”
“No.” Will chuckled. “But that don’t stop me. It’s like this collar I wear. That really gets some of ’em mad. ‘Collars
are for priests,’ they tell me. But see, just ’cause I’m married and can’t be ordained don’t mean I don’t have a calling.
Ain’t nothing in the Bible talking about collars. So I go ahead and wear a collar to let people know where I’m coming
from.
“In fact, I wore a collar when some of us went to meet with Cardinal Bernardin about a month back. Everyone was
real uptight about it. Then they got upset when I called the Cardinal ‘Joe’ instead of ‘Your Holiness.’ But you know,
Bernardin was cool. He’s a spiritual man. I could tell we understood each other. It’s these rules again that keep us
apart-rules of men, not rules of God. See, Barack, I’m in the Catholic church, but I was raised a Baptist. Could’ve
joined a Methodist church, Pentecostal, whatever, just as easy. St. Catherine’s is just where God happened to send me.
And He cares more about whether I’m about the business of helping others than whether I’m straight on my
catechisms.”
I nodded, deciding not to ask what a catechism was. In Indonesia, I had spent two years at a Muslim school, two years
at a Catholic school. In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell my mother that I made faces during Koranic
studies. My mother wasn’t overly concerned. “Be respectful,” she’d said. In the Catholic school, when it came time to
pray, I would pretend to close my eyes, then peek around the room. Nothing happened. No angels descended. Just a
parched old nun and thirty brown children, muttering words. Sometimes the nun would catch me, and her stern look
would force my lids back shut. But that didn’t change how I felt inside. I felt that way now, listening to Will; my
silence was like closing my eyes.
The bus came to a stop in the church parking lot, and Will walked to the front of the bus. He thanked everybody for
coming and urged them to stay involved. “It’s a long road we’re traveling,” he said, “but tonight showed me what we
barré
(Barré)
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