Every Skinny Tree

Pre-Class Culture Paper:

It is not enough to be cool.
I recently told someone that my pastor is cool. And then I remembered a video of him speaking on Catechism. He was wearing an unforgivable pair of glasses. They were exactly like coke bottle bottoms. If you are going to do something as uncool as talk about catechism, you should, at least, look cool… right?
But Pastor Hoffman never looks cool. Sure his son’s band played Bumbershoot this past weekend and his daughter graduated with an MA in Creative Non-Fiction from NYU. Sure, he and his wife have a house in Wallingford and invite the “young people” over to play raucous games of Pit. But the mercury wouldn’t rise much higher than “pretty dorky” on most cool –o-meters when it comes to Pastor Hoffman.
I realized that I will probably continue to tell people he is “cool” because he makes me feel like I belong. Its not because he is, in fact, stylish or daring or at the forefront of any kind of cultural revolution but because I am confident that he is absolutely comfortable being just dorky enough to make even the dorkiest of thesefeel like they finally belong.
My husband and I just returned from a trip to Mexico City. We did our best to speak the language and look the part. But it wasn’t enough. We are both of Mexican descent and were there visiting my aunt who has been living there for a few years as an ex-pat executive. None of that mattered when it came time for Mass on Sunday morning.
We knew the order of the liturgy—it was exactly like liturgy at our own church, on Phinney Ridge. We knew the history of the church and even relished all the pseudo-superstitious things Mexican Catholics do. We told friends and family that it was all so cool, so interesting and awe-inspiring. It made us think twice about faith and action. But there was something missing.
Even though we liked the candles and saints, we didn’t touch them. Even though we bought some of the little nickel Milagros that represent prayers for body parts and love affairs, we didn’t pin them up in the church. We didn’t participate because we didn’t want to offend anyone. Everything about the church was great, cool, relevant to the parishioners, but we didn’t belong.
There are many facets to cultural engagement. I should think that when we eat and speak, even in another country, we are engaging the culture at a certain surface level. But it is the repetition of deeper, time-tested, personal engagement that leaves an impression. That is why Mexico City mass felt so wonky.
Pastor Hoffman may not wear cool shoes under his alb, but he consistently speaks to us in ways we understand. Time and time again he smiles and hugs us. We can count on him to be honest when he forgets things and genuinely interested in our questions and concerns.
In these past few months of working with Pastor Hoffman I have been invited to his home several times, eaten many meals with him and we have laughed heartily at ourselves together. I get the feeling that most of his parishioners have done the same in recent months. I can’t help but think, when I see him munching his carrots in staff meeting or shaking hands with the kids at the local motel ministry that I belong here among the carrot munchers and hand shakers, that I deserve a hug every Sunday morning and I am not so far off when I think to myself or tell my friends that Pastor Hoffman is pretty damn cool, in a Jesusy sort of way, though I doubt that that really matters to him.
All this while I have been noticing the value in his ways. It gives me hope that I will stop worrying about showing signs of weakness and get over my fears of bumbling through the children’s word; that I won’t be afraid of how uncool I am. Deep down I know that I wouldn’t trade all the cool in the world for the opportunity to show one more family that they belong to Christ.