Reflections on Private Lives

So... we've visited with Father Peter, and he seems to be doing okay. We didn't stay long, because he couldn't talk too long without coughing, and with us there he couldn't stop talking.

This was the first time I'd been to his house, and it was as militantly normal as any of our homes. Oh, you could tell he was a priest. There were crosses and devotional pictures here and there on the wall. But there was nothing to indicate any deeper knowledge.

There were also pictures of Father Peter: sometimes alone, but usually with other people. They seemed to span his entire career, from a young man first entering the ministry to a dinner at our church several months ago. Looking at them, it was hard to believe that he had ever been so young. He'd been younger than I am now when he first entered the priesthood.

And he had shelves of books, some devoted to Christianity, some to Catholicism in particular, but many more to other things entirely. He had an entire book case devoted to classic literature, and another to works on biology and astronomy, geology and anthropology. I was surprised, to put it mildly, to see The Demon-Haunted World sitting beside his bed, with a bookmark holding his place about a third of the way in.

We didn't speak of anything important. He asked how we were doing, and we told him that we were well. We asked how he was doing, and he told us that he was feeling fine... though he admitted later that he still tired quickly. We delivered some food, and made sure he didn't need anything else - and then we left again, before his cough got any worse.

Neither of us said much on the way back to our apartment.

Friday night was a much-needed break. We watched RED, and thoroughly enjoyed seeing Bruce Willis and his friends blow things up. We sat and talked, but not about anything important - jokes about old movies, mostly. And by the end of the evening, Claire and I were just... relaxed.

And since I don't have much else to report, and that seems like a really nice place to stop...

Reflections of a Deranged Cultist is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between actual priests and the characters here is entirely coincidental.