At the end of 2022, a friend asked if I would like to read a book with him: Orthodoxy by GK Chesterton. I had read it about 20 years ago and loved it so I readily agreed.
Orthodoxy chronicles Chesterton’s return to the Catholic Church after wandering the wastes of intellectual modernism. Chesterton is a master of pithy quips and turns of phrases; Orthodoxy is full of both. His ability to say something that is at once whimsical and profound is unmatched. Often, I found myself shaking my head at the ridiculousness of an analogy only to find myself nodding as the truth of it dawned on me.
One such whimsical statement was, “A clergyman may be apparently as useless as a cat, but he is also as fascinating, for there must be some strange reason for his existence.” This inspired laughter and the cat poem below. Readers will find this poem in my third book, Shadow and Memory, which I plan to self-publish in May or June 2023. It will also be in the cat chapbook I hope to self-publish later this year or early next year.
A Clergyman Is as Useless as a Cat A clergyman is as useless as a cat. He might not lay around all day but he prays around all day. He doesn’t claw your favorite chair; he closets your favorite charity. He might not chase string but he strings chaste people (well, mostly chaste people) together in marriage. We’re grateful he doesn’t shed (except the occasional tear), and that he keeps a collection box instead of a litter box. But we only marginally prefer his cantorwauling to caterwauling. As it is next to godliness, clergymen are concerned with cleanliness, though without all the licking. Clergymen stalk about in soundless penny-loafers, sometimes startling you from behind or pouncing out of nowhere if you try to slip out unnoticed after church. On balance, it’s debatable how useful a clergyman is. Yet when he raises his hands to bless or pauses to lean into the pulpit, when his soul and body are folded tightly together in prayer, a hush can fall like the moment a gift is unwrapped and you are rapt in mystery— God leaning down to whisper a secret just to you, a secret you might tell if the cat hadn’t got your tongue.
A Wandering Minstrel 