An interview with Fr. Gary Smith
When did you think about becoming a writer? Was there someone who got you interested in writing?
I never thought about becoming a writer, although I have always loved good writing. It was only later in life, when my experiences with the poor needed to be expressed to a larger public that I decided to write a book. I was encouraged in this attitude by Lynn Martin, a Northwest poet, who was a volunteer at Nativity House, a drop-in center for street people in Tacoma, Washington which I directed. Out of my experience on the Tacoma streets I wrote, with Lynn’s loving help, Street Journal (Sheed and Ward, 1994).
How do you write? Do you have a daily routine? What’s good about it? What don’t you like about it?
I journal everyday. That is presuming that there is something worth while to write about. Thomas Merton said that journals take for granted that in every day in our life there is something new and important. I agree. Since most of the past forty years of my life have been in dicey ministerial situations, including the last several years in Uganda with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), there is plenty to write about. And, too, especially in the tension and fatigue of the streets of the USA or in the Sudanese villages of northern Uganda, writing keeps me focused and sane.
I like writing about what is happening externally and internally in my life. It is a way to tap the movements of my heart and also it can challenge me to express and communicate myself more clearly. I cannot say that I ever disliked writing even on the cloudy days of disappointment or disgust—with myself or the world around me. In it all God lives and moves and breathes. I want to be attentive to that central truth and writing helps me to break it open.
Any particular story to tell concerning the writing of this book?
Two: First: Writer Walker Percy’s editor, Caroline Gordon, told him that his business as a novelist was to imitate Christ, in the sense that He, Christ, was about His Father’s business every moment of his life. Gordon reminded Percy that he too, like Jesus, must be about the Father’s business: Incarnation. That is to say that Percy was urged to make his word flesh and to let it dwell among people. That notion attracts me and my copy editor, Loyola Press’ Heidi Hill, always reminded me that what I had to say about my experience required that I put the word down and let it live.
Second: There is the story in my book, They Come Back Singing, about Andalinda Yayo, a blind and crawling-crippled elderly Sudanese woman. She was radiant with goodness. I knew on the morning that I left her small hut for the last time (I visited her whenever I came to her village) that if I said nothing else in my life, I had to tell her story. Yayo was wonderfully typical of many Sudanese women refugees I knew. Her transparent holiness in the midst of all the crap and chaos around her simply rescued and uncovered my soul in a way I had not known. What a woman.
What was one of the most important things you learned while writing (or after writing) your book?
Humility. I learned that I don't have the skills to say some things correctly and that I didn’t have the courage to say some things at all. I came to believe that all this is in God’s hands; that it will be used, rejected, improved for purposes that are bigger than me.
How did writing this book change you?
You know, it is not so much that the writing changed me. It is more like my experience with the Sudanese refugees changed me. Writing about that experience helped me to touch and embrace once again what had happened to me. Some events and people and episodes in our life simply transform us and often hurl us into a new way of looking at ourselves and reality. Who has not been changed by another’s love or by personal suffering? Who has not been captured by an idea/ideal that utterly redirected his or her life? Who has not known the moment of grace that seized us, shook us and unalterably changed us? So those years in Africa.
What attracted you to working so closely with the poor?
Well, I think the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius hammer you with this fundamental truth: one discovers himself when he is poor with the poor. You cannot pray about the life of Christ without running into this, and a major portion of the Exercises is a benevolently relentless period of time contemplating His Heart. But it is also possible to escape because we can surround ourselves with so much that can blunt the power of what it means to stare Jesus in the face.
What are you working on at the moment?
I am presently between assignments in the Jesuits. I have my sights on serving the refugees of the world in some fashion. I continue to journal, but no corpus of material is “being worked on.”
What was your most life-changing moment?
I spent two hours one 1972 afternoon in Hong Kong talking with Pedro Arupe, SJ, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus. From that point onward, in spite of close-calls and some numbing disappointments with myself and others, I never looked back at the my commitment to social justice. From the standpoint of a convert, here was a moment where I realized I had been raised from deep darkness to a clarifying moment with a man who captured the light that I longed for. Arrupe was one of God’s great accomplishments.
What brings you the most happiness?
Being with and having dinner with a dear friend;
Sudanese and Ugandan children;
Hanging out with close Jesuit friends;
Listening to Russian classical music;
The ocean;
Truth and peace-makers winning the day;
Watching the Muppets
What is your favorite book? Who is your favorite author?
Favorite books:
Prayer for Owen Meaney (John Irving); Divine Millieu (Chardin); Seven Story Mountain (Merton); Content of Faith (Rahner)
Favorite authors (in addition to the above):
Annie Dillard; Gerald Manley Hopkins; Daniel Berrigan, SJ; William Styron; Dorothy Day; ee cummings
Have your read any other books about the poor that impacted your life, work, or writing?
Little by Little by Dorothy Day
