Pigeon Holes

Do you ever notice that when you are doing something that seems rather obvious, people tend to ask, “What are you doing?”  Or, “What are you doing that for?”  An example: you are walking out of the house or wherever, and you have on a baseball cap, a tee shirt that says, “Robins Team” with a baseball glove in one hand and a bat in the other.  Someone says, “What are you doing?”  You could substitute ballet slippers and outfit, fishing gear, or tap shoes.  Behind the question, that cannot deal with the obvious, is that people have a hard time allowing us to be someone they cannot pigeon hole, as we used to say.  People decide who we are, for their own benefit, and then cannot grasp that we might be more than or other than their expectations.  I could be in a hall tapping away on my tap shoes, and someone will walk in and say, “Father, what are you doing?”  Followed by, “Why are you doing that?”  In other words, priests can fit only certain boundaries, images, and context for the questioner.  I do not live other people’s image of priest or me.  Maybe that is why I have so few fans?  Be you.  And allow that to change as you go through life.  Not everyone can keep up with change.