A Priest walks into a Bar

My friend Father Rob wrote this on his blog today. Being with people makes a difference. This is a powerful story to me on many levels. It's power for what it doesn't say as much as what it does. We need more stories like this.

"Last night I sat at a bar for a couple hours, nursing a drink.

I realized it is the first time I’ve ever done that.

It’s not that I haven’t been in bars before, but that I don’t think I’ve actually sat at the bar, where the hormones of the men and women gathered there flow like the alcohol they are drinking, and where the air is opaque with smoke. I don’t consider myself a particularly sheltered soul, so the realization was rather startling.

I sat there with a person who had a very difficult week; who had seen a good friend die, and who indeed had pulled a blanket over his head so that the dead man’s wife and kids who were also present (it was their wedding anniversary) wouldn’t see what had just happened.

What I was drinking was water, but after hearing his story, I was sorely tempted to switch to whiskey instead."

Thanks for telling us this story Rob.