It was nearing dusk, and the presbytery was characteristically quiet. A dim lamp from the reading table was on as Father Albin entered through the plain wooden front door. He was still wearing his alb and chasuble vestments, as he almost always did after the Sunday evening mass. One of his favorite moments has always been to lay still on top of his bed, with his vestments still on, close his eyes, and mentally review the mass he just delivered. This moment created a kind of calm ecstasy for him. He sometimes felt a sense of guilt or impropriety about it, but it was an addiction he couldn't shake, and had stopped trying to.

After several minutes of reflection, he hung his white alb and chasuble in his closet. The chasuble was special to him. Like most priests, he had chasubles of different colors to reflect the various liturgical seasons and moods. This was his everyday garment, primarily colored a deep emerald green and bearing beautiful gold embroidered arabesques. Inside several of the circular arabesques were royal blue accents, which were unusual in such an everyday chasuble, and part of the reason that Father Albin liked this one so much.

Having grown up near Indianapolis, he wanted to stay close to his family after being ordained as a priest in the Catholic Church. The years away at St. Louis University studying theology had kept him just far enough away, and just long enough, to strain the relationship with his aging parents. He was excited when the archdiocese approached him about the opportunity to take over for Father Williams at St. Joseph's in Lublin. Lublin was a small town, but it was a short drive from his parents, so he could visit them when his liturgical duties waned.

After hanging his vestments, he sat in his plush faux-leather reading chair, and picked up his cherished copy of Joseph Campbell's "Myths to Live By". It was a first edition that his mother had gifted him after high school graduation. He had read it many times before, and each time he went back to it, he found new perspectives and new learnings in it. He had started to push himself to read it regularly, once every year or two to help gauge his changing perspective.

His time at St. Louis was never far from his mind. Catholic guilt had followed him most of his life. From his younger days trying to impress the neighborhood girls, to his later years where his vices and faults began to control him - he always felt the constriction of personal guilt. Once, as a teenager, he had allowed an older neighbor girl to tie him to a kitchen chair, and taunt him with her sexuality. He was fraught with confusion over this incident. What did it mean? She wanted him? She wanted to control him? He remembers masturbating furiously to the scene later that night. The only relief he could find from the tension it created.

At St. Louis, he had found affection with another student named Tim. Tim was a little older, and a little more experienced. Their few encounters never amounted to much more than intense sensuality, but had excited a part of him he had only imagined before. The feeling of giving and receiving affection - sexual and otherwise - was exhilarating, and guilt-inducing. He had been told it was wrong, and felt he knew it was wrong - but it never felt wrong.

But the guilt. The shame. The hiding. It was part of him, but it wasn’t all of him. It wasn’t accurate to call it the true him. It was just a piece. A piece he pursued. A piece he enjoyed. A piece he could give up to continue his mission. But he knew not everyone would see it that way. He knew some people would see it as the only thing that defined him.

His Seiko watch told the time as 11:30pm. The watch had been a gift from his uncle, who had been in the Navy. It was one of his prized possessions. The stainless-steel bracelet of the watch always felt smooth and cool on his wrist. The orange watch face was also something he found both distinctive and comforting. Whenever he read the time, he was reminded of his uncle Przemysław, and the moment his father had given him the watch after his uncle’s death. TheWalenta family had come to America from Poland in the 1920’s, after Józef Piłsudski seized power in a coup d'état. They feared the decline of the so-called Sejmocracy, and subsequent rise in Piłsudski’s Sanation movement would lead to authoritarianism and oppression of the populace. Although the Walentas had lived in Kalisz for centuries, and identified as pure and natural Polish citizens, the turmoil that was erupting around them was irrefutable, and they decided to escape to a place where they could feel safe. In 1928, they arrived at Ellis Island. The family included Father Albin’s father, mother, four uncles, two aunts, his paternal grandfather and grandmother, and many cousins. After arrival in New York, they found refuge in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, where thousands of previous Polish immigrants had settled. Unfortunately, the Walentas were not particularly city-folk, and were not skilled for the jobs available in Brooklyn. After two years, they migrated to Chicago, looking for farming jobs on the outskirts of the city. Eventually, Father Albin’s mother and father settled in Lublin, Indiana, where they able to join a small community of Polish farmers. Lublin was mostly Catholic Poles who had immigrated after World War I, but they were very welcoming to the Walentas. There were several families in Lublin who had also come from Kalisz, providing a common bond for the weary immigrants. When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, uncle Przemysław immediately volunteered with the Navy. He was proud of his heritage, and had a bit of a chip on his shoulder about Germans. He wanted to contribute what he could. Despite wanting to be on the front lines in Europe, Przemysław ended up as a Navigator on the USS Enterprise in the Pacific theater of the war. He was responsible for helping aviators locate their targets, while keeping track of the Enterprise at the same time. After sustaining an injury during the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, Przemysław was awarded a Purple Heart. Upon returning home, he was also awarded the Navy Cross for helping save the lives of two other seamen who were thrown overboard during the attack. Albin can remember his uncle telling him stories of being on the aircraft carrier during the war, and the combination of simultaneous fear and courage he felt. The pride he felt representing the new land which had given him this opportunity. The core feeling he had when he heard this story is what he always felt as an aftershock of when he looked at the orange face of the watch. It was a combination of pride, and reverence, of strength and modesty. The night was passing ferociously, and Father Albin was reaching his limit of comprehension.

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He had just completed reading “The Confrontation of East and West in Religion”, and was contemplating his own perspective on the relevant myths. As the time passed, he considered skipping forward to the essay on schizophrenia. It had, somehow, always been one of his favorites. Father Albin had a fascination with mental processes, and disorders. It had even become a basis for his graduate studies. He had wondered about seers, prophets, and fortune tellers. He had thought about psychics and fortune tellers. He had recognized some similarities amongst these people and those he met in the church. And so, he had wondered if there was some connection between schizophrenia, and other mental illnesses, and prophets. He wondered if the concept of God, if talking to God was just something that happened to crazy people. He wondered how this tested his own faith.

As he contemplated these thoughts, he drifted off the sleep – still in his chair, still with the book in his hands. His thoughts fell back to Tim, and the affection he felt, and gave in return. Within a few minutes, he was asleep, with the lamp still on, illuminating his face in the chair. Midway through the night, he found himself aroused awake, shuffled to his bed, and climbed under the sheets.