Three Secret Lives
The Secret Lives of Episcopal Priests
Example: Allen Lewis
Allen Lewis (Padre Allen) is an Episcopal priest and banker who loves to cook and collect first edition science fiction and fantasy hardcovers. Padre Allen leads a stable, fulfilling life that often creates solace for others. And yet, behind that gentle smile, those sometimes rambling but always authentic sermons, beats a heart intent on vengeance. Yes, revenge! A base emotion, and one Padre Allen only allows himself to succumb to once every few years, when he boards an airplane for the Australian coast, near the Great Barrier Reef. Once there, Padre Allen dons a steel mesh scuba suit loaded with pockets of chum and jumps off a fast boat into the churning water…and, weightless, floating, fast descending, carries out his private war against the Great White Shark. There is nothing personal about his assault. No relatives or friends have succumbed to the deadly charms of the Great White’s teeth. No chunk of thigh has been separated from the priest in years past, leaving that tell-tale semi-circular bite mark, made official by the faint trace of long-removed stitches. Nothing in the Bible commands him to wrestle sharks. Nor has he any political or social issues with the Great White. Instead, he wages this one-man war against the Great White solely on the basis of having been frightened out of his mind upon first seeing the movie Jaws. Nothing before or since has quite affected him in this way. He seeks to conquer that feeling, to understand it over and over again. And so, down in the briny depths, where swims the hawksbill turtle, where the lacy fronds of certain sea grasses sway hypnotically back-and-forth, where the moray eel peeks furtively from its hidey-holes, and where the Crown-of-Thorns starfish makes its laborious and tortured way across the coral reef, deathstar of Death Stars, so too Padre Allen becomes part of the landscape, framed in light, framed in shadow, armored suit a-gleaming. As the sharks approach, as he can sense the powerful swash of tails, the blocky gray of their bodies appearing through the murk, see that grinning mask of pure ferocity, there is always a moment when Padre Allen wishes he were one of them—so perfect, so certain, so unwavering, with no hint of the doubt he has always been assailed by. God’s creatures. Beautiful in their sensible yet senseless aggression. And then they meet in mortal combat until his air gives out and he rises to the surface, chumless, battered and bruised, his faith born anew.
