Missionaries of the Sacred

Of all my cherished memories of Papua New Guinea, I guess I owe my best one to my parents. My dad's side of the family was Slovak while my mom's was Ukrainian Orthodox. Being raised in a family like that I was taught:

When I was on patrol in the back islands the people would wait till I finished supper and then sit on the "porch" of the little house reserved for the priest. This was their cue to drop by, sit down and visit with me. And we would tell stories. I remember one evening when I asked some of the old men in the village if they had any stories about the stars. They told me how they would navigate by the stars but stories... "No" they didn't.

Well, I said, we had stories about the stars. Do you see those three stars in a row and the three in a row near it? We call the first three stars the belt of Orion and the next three stars are his sword.  He was a great hunter and he is following his dog (over there) and they are chasing a bear (over there).

There was silence as the men considered this.

"Father, we do have a story. That is a canoe with three women in it and the next three stars is a shark chasing after them ...."

You have a story.

They have a story.

They do not laugh at your story.

You do not laugh at their story.

Each one shows respect for the other and each grows in appreciation of the other. Why, after a few years I, the new guy on the block, learned about the huge snake that lived in the middle of the island and would call to his mother the rain god and....

But that is a story for another day.

Fr. John Kavcak, MSC served in Papua New Guinea from 1982 to 1988. When he was on patrol in the back islands the people would drop by after dinner, sit down, visit with him and tell stories.

The article above tells of one of these stories.

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