Reading Pastors

Over the weekend, I somehow managed to read two short stories--both of which featured pastors as principle characters. One was a mystery story, the other a mainstream fiction piece written by the illustrious, but now purportedly dead, John Updike. I always find it interesting to read stories featuring pastors because, most often, the stories are loaded with stereotypes about pastors and rarely contribute anything substantial to the reader's impressions of the way clergy actually live, think, eat, work, play, or struggle.

Both of the stories in this case, however, were well done. In one, the pastor was caring for his ageing mother and was struggling with all of the usual questions about long-term decisions and the emotional trauma of transitioning from a full life to an assisted one.

Reading stories like this always remind me that most people do relate to pastors through stereotypes. For example:
* The pastor (male) as spiritual giant who lives, breathes, eats, and thinks nothing but God.
* The pastor (male with gray hair) who spends every moment of life visiting the sick, the dying, and doing weddings and funerals (the hitch 'em & ditch 'em stereotype).
* Or maybe the pastor (again male) who somehow fathers children through immaculate conception, works in the soup kitchen, and leads a Norman Rockwell family by example.

I'm glad Updike, in particular, breaks through all of these myths. His pastors always have warts, weaknesses, struggles. They are human.