The Story of Father Wojciech in Anecdotes

;"We can give nothing to the Lord except our own sins. And even those are boring."
— Father Wojciech Drozdowicz
;"The world needs saints. Though that is not enough. The world needs o-o-o-overwhelmingly joyful saints."
— Father Tadeusz Dajczer
;Several years have passed since Father Wojciech left us to return to his homeland, Poland.
;Here in Siberia, he left behind memories that have scattered into a heap of anecdotes—some funny, some sad. The simple truth is, Father Wojciech was always a Man from an Anecdote.
;Like the time he nailed a sermon poster directly onto the grand piano in the Krasnoyarsk church-turned-philharmonic hall.
Or when, in his broken Russian, he accidentally preached from the "Gospel according to the Evil One" instead of the "Gospel according to Luke."
Or when he wore that red beret.
Or when he woke up famous one day.
Or when he suddenly vanished from Polish television screens only to pop up here, in our tiny Siberian TV studio.
Or when he clumsily yet brilliantly taught us how to work and how to live.
;While Father Wojciech was weaving his own legend day by day right before our eyes, any other creative ideas paled in comparison. He had a knack for turning a casual conversation into a "dialogue on the threshold," a story into a parable, and any mundane task into a plotline. Or rather, into an anecdote.
;Three Wishes
;"All my life, I dreamed of having three things," Father Wojciech used to tell us. "A donkey, a double bass, and a movie camera. And the Lord granted all my wishes."
;First, the young priest got Francesco, a baby donkey. The entire parish was immensely proud that a live donkey stood in the Christmas nativity scene.
;He simply stumbled upon the double bass in a music shop. (The "miracle" was a Christmas discount that brought the dream within reach of reality). The marked-down instrument later starred alongside Father Wojciech in a music video called Parish Blues, filmed on the rooftop of a Warsaw skyscraper.
;The movie camera caught up with Wojciech in Siberia. It was a genuine Betacam—a terrifyingly expensive professional camera gifted to the Bishop of Siberia by American sponsors. And that was how Father Wojciech became the very first employee of the future TV studio, "Kana." He even became its resident.
;But that was after Father Wojciech had already been a TV star in Poland.
;How Father Wojciech Became a TV Star
;Father Wojciech was walking down the street in his red beret when he ran into an acquaintance who worked in television.
;"Do you happen to know anyone suitable for a children's show?" the man asked.
;Father Wojciech tried to persuade his friends one by one. Every single one of them got scared and refused.
;"Well, why don't you try it yourself?" his TV friend suddenly suggested.
;Wojciech was surprised, but decided to give it a shot. And one fine day, he woke up famous. Across all of Poland. For four years, every Sunday, adults and children alike glued themselves to their screens to go on incredible adventures with the cheerful priest. The most famous actors, musicians, and writers considered it an honor to appear on his programs.
;But that was after Father Wojciech caused a major television scandal.
;Father Wojciech and the Television Set
;It happened during the military coup. Tanks were rolling through the streets of Poland. Father Wojciech was preparing his parishioners for Lent, and preparing himself as well.
;For his Sunday sermon, he needed a television set. He found just the thing: an old, broken, black-and-white model.
;The television was erected right onto the ambo. The priest loudly announced the average number of hours an ordinary person wastes away in front of this box, and then urged the congregation to give up television, at least for the duration of Lent. Finally, he picked up an axe and... chopped the television to pieces. Just for visual emphasis. The church acoustics amplified the dying, crystalline shattering of the tubes manifold. The crowd stood in absolute, stunned silence.
;Father Wojciech told us he had never heard such profound silence during a sermon before or since. However, the success of his first religious show was deafening.
;The next day, a pair of distraught parents brought their boy to confession; he had thrown a brand-new Philips set out of a ninth-floor window. Television crews drove up to the church. The news that the Catholic Church, in the person of a Warsaw priest, had publicly used an axe to protest state policies broadcasted on TV caused quite a stir. A general immediately called the bishop.
;"But why an axe?!" the bishop fumed. "He's gone mad! Couldn't he have done it quietly somehow?.."
;Father Wojciech had to go into hiding for a while. He didn't make it onto the airwaves that time. Eventually, he made it to Siberia.
;"Catholic Coffee"
;In its initial form, the Siberian Catholic TV studio, "Kana," resembled an empty gym—minus the equipment and the athletes.
;It was home to the precious Betacam, Father Wojciech, an editing computer, and a primitive coffee maker. The studio’s signature scent was the aroma of brewing coffee. Guests swarmed to that scent from morning till night. A tall, thin, slouching man in a long, chunky white knit sweater—looking very much like a mountain climber—would hug anyone who stepped over the threshold, and then treat them to a ritual cup of "coffee-waffee."
;The brewing process looked like the launch of a small spacecraft: the machine hissed, whistled, puffed steam and smoke, and, of course, gave off an intoxicating aroma. This was real "Catholic coffee" (Father Wojciech refused to recognize "Protestant coffee"—meaning instant).
;He slept on a wooden plank that served as a table by day, moving the coffee maker aside and rolling out a sleeping bag.
;Potatoes ; la George Walter
;Father Wojciech taught us, his new staff, a signature dish: boiled potatoes "according to the recipe of George Walter."
;George Walter was an American deacon making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was far away, so "walking to Jerusalem" was a permanent state of being for this bearded eccentric in a denim coat, complete with a blue-eyed, white-toothed smile.
;Father Wojciech was fortunate enough to spend a winter with the American monk in a deserted Siberian village, and the man taught him this simple meal.
;Take 1 kg of potatoes, 0.5 kg of carrots, and 1 large bulb of garlic. Chop the potatoes and carrots into large chunks; leave the skins on and place them in a Teflon pot. Add salt and crushed garlic to the water, and boil until all the water evaporates. After that, pour in some sunflower oil and fry the potatoes and carrots right there in their skins.
;Father Wojciech swore that one could never tire of this dish. Over lunch, he would usually tell stories about his American friend, the hero of his own film, How to Walk to Jerusalem. The memories, much like the potatoes, never grew stale.
;Despite this constantly social lifestyle, Wojciech managed to get work done. For him, work was a state of mind, much like George Walter’s journey to Jerusalem—a journey where the process itself mattered most.
;Still, to turn that process into actual results, Father Wojciech brought over his young friend from his television past—Brother Damian.
;The Tooth
;Wojciech chipped a piece of his tooth in the studio. He glued it back on with superglue. It lasted for two months. And then Father Wojciech lost the tooth entirely—he swallowed it at lunch, along with George Walter's potatoes.
;For two days he walked around gloomy, speaking to no one and smiling at no one. But on the third day, walking into the studio, we saw Father Wojciech animatedly telling something to a huddle of laughing priests, grinning widely just like before.
;"Wojciech found his tooth!" Brother Damian announced joyfully.
;The Glasses
;For a long time, Father Wojciech tried in vain to convince Brother Damian to purchase a special pair of glasses for filming.
;"With this equipment, a cameraman can sneak up completely unnoticed and capture life exactly as it is! You look one way, completely opposite to where you're pointing the camera, but you see everything!"
;At the time, Father Wojciech was planning to film the lives of homeless people. In the end, he bought the glasses with his own money and brought them over from Poland.
;"Sit here," Father Wojciech ordered us. "I want to show you something."
;He disappeared into the editing room and emerged a minute later wearing the glasses. It was a massive black structure wrapped around his head, with a blinking red light on his forehead and a camera lens pointed straight at us... Father Wojciech looked like an alien.
;"And what exactly are the homeless people going to say to that?!" we asked.
;The next day, Father Wojciech wanted to see how the glasses worked, so he took them apart. For several days, a pile of tiny components lay on his desk. After reassembling them, Father Wojciech was left holding an extra screw. So, he took the glasses apart again, dumped them into a plastic bag, and tucked them away in the pantry. He simply loved dismantling things.
;A Catholic Movie About Flies
;Father Wojciech was perpetually dissatisfied with himself.
;"Oh, if only I could make something grand, something worthy of the Lord!" he would muse. But nothing "grand" came to mind, and this upset him terribly.
;"Ugh, what do we even need this studio for? We should just sell it and buy biscuits," he complained to Damian.
;"Then why did you drag me out to this Siberia?" Damian wondered. "Let's get to work."
;But Wojciech would just wave his hand hopelessly. The Catholic community waited in vain for good, pious films from him; he couldn't bring himself to create anything holy.
;"I'd rather make a movie about flies. Ha-ha—a Catholic movie about flies!"
;But even that project remained unfulfilled.
;A cot appeared in the studio. When Father Wojciech would lie silently on the cot in the middle of the day, with his boots still on, we knew he was brooding.
;From time to time, Father Wojciech would catch fire and throw himself into work. He would take apart the computer, saw into the Betacam to "improve" it, or dream up music videos. During those stretches, he worked through the night.
;But one day, Father Wojciech accidentally pressed the wrong button and deleted every single film currently in progress from the computer—both his own and everyone else's.
;In the morning, the staff found Father Wojciech at the computer, his head buried in his hands.
;"Father Wojciech, how could you?! Did you delete your music video?"
"E-everything!" Wojciech nodded dolefully.
"What?! Everything?! What about my Vladivostok project? Vladivostok too?!"
"E-everything!.."
"And my homeless documentary? The homeless too?!"
"E-everything!.."
;He was a pitiful sight.
;"Oh, well, what's done is done! Don't look so miserable. It's no big deal."
;Wojciech raised his eyes expectantly:
"True, it really is no big deal."
"What do you mean 'no big deal'?!" we flared up all over again. "How could you! So many films!!"
"Oh, as if those were real films anyway..." Father Wojciech waved it off.
;And in a way, he was right.
;The Elder
;Why do Catholics need television? Does God need broadcasting? And generally—what could one do that would truly be worthy of the Lord?
;In search of answers to his questions, Father Wojciech traveled to see a well-known Polish priest named Tadeusz Dajczer. Despite feeling unwell, the old man received him.
;"Father, how do I discern the will of the Lord?"
"Do you truly not know it? Each of us is called to holiness," the elder replied.
"Father, what should I do—should I stay in television or not?"
"What difference does it make? If they tell you 'do it,' then do it; if they say 'no,' then don't," the old Catholic sage answered.
;Father Wojciech returned to Novosibirsk full of energy and ideas. But right then, he was appointed rector of the Cathedral parish. And so, Father Wojciech stopped doing television. And we, his staff, turned into his parishioners.
;Sinners
;Father Wojciech’s style of confession could be described as gentle: if you showed up, you were already a good lad.
;He preferred sturdy, proper, blood-chilling sins. None of that petty "I don't pray enough" business; he wanted things like benders, murder, adultery. He felt an almost tender warmth toward such sinners.
;"Adultery, I see," he would nod respectfully. "Do you regret sinning?"
"No, Father, I can't bring myself to..."
"I understand. What are we to do then... But do you regret that you don't regret it?"
"I do, I do regret that."
"Well, then go in peace," Wojciech would grant him absolution.
;One couldn't say Father Wojciech had a perfect command of the Russian language, but that didn't bother him in the confessional.
;"When I was in America, I had to hear confessions even in English, and I don't know it at all."
"But how did you know what sins the person had committed?"
"What difference does it make to me? That's their problem. Confession is a conversation with God, and my job is to release those sins. So I released them."
;Russian sinners surprised Father Wojciech with the immense length of their confessions.
;"Do you know why they tell me all this?" Father Wojciech tried to find out from acquaintances.
"All what?"
"Well, the story of their entire life," the priest explained.
"Well, how else?"
"Let them list their sins, I’ll grant absolution, and that's the end of the matter," Father Wojciech argued.
"But what about having a talk?"
;The Polish priest didn't realize that in the broad Russian sense, the word "confession" is interpreted as "pouring out one's soul."
;And then, Father Wojciech decided to publish a book.
;The Book
;A little book with pictures for adults and children alike. Funny and sad. Simple and wise. And made up entirely of parables. Life itself handed Wojciech some of those parables. For instance, this one:
;"What will save the world?" I asked the elder.
"The world desperately needs saints... Although even that is not enough: the world needs o-o-o-overwhelmingly joyful saints!"
;Other parables had been lovingly polished over years of sermons. Absolutely anything could become the subject of Father Wojciech’s sermons. Everything was put to use. Father Wojciech preached about a trolleybus with a broken antenna trolley pole.
;About a fish that spent its whole life searching for the ocean.
;About a gap in the fence left for his sheep by the Good Shepherd.
;And also about "fishing."
"Prayer is somewhat like fishing. The 'fishing rod' of our prayer is our raised hands and bended knees. And on the 'hook,' we bait all the best things: peace, goodness, beauty. But the fish doesn't bite. Why? Because on the 'hook,' you need to put the 'worms' of our lives—our sins. And only then will the biggest Fish swim to us from afar."
;The parables were ready. Now he needed an artist.
;The Artist
;He found his artist completely by chance. Stepping into a Krasnoyarsk art gallery on some business and happening to glance into one of the halls, Wojciech rushed inside, forgetting everything else.
;It was terribly merry in that hall. A robust Russian spirit lived there. Every painting looked like a visual joke. Everywhere, the exact same bearded peasant lived and thrived, wearing a rakishly tilted winter ushanka hat—the quintessential Russian master of tall tales, and no stranger to a drink. Painted in clean, vibrant colors, the little peasant looked childishly naive and clever at the same time. Here he was in his ushanka playing the balalaika, with a calf, a sheep, and a rooster on its back listening along. There he was sitting with a robust woman in a banya bathhouse—naked, but for some reason still wearing his ushanka. And on another canvas, soldiers were crucifying Christ, except the scene was surrounded by Russian log cabins and snowdrifts.
;Father Wojciech traveled specifically to Krasnoyarsk to meet Yuri Deyev.
;It didn't happen right away, but the cheerful artist agreed to work on the picture book despite a lack of time. He even took an advance. Father Wojciech was thrilled. He showed us the artist’s booklet. From the photograph stared the familiar bearded peasant.
;Suddenly, the artist went underground, failing to answer phone calls. Father Wojciech grew worried and sent messengers to check on him. They reported back: he was alive, but drinking, because he had received money from somewhere. Wojciech asked how much was left. The Krasnoyarsk friends calculated: about half.
;So, Father Wojciech armed himself with patience and began to wait. He said he had never prayed so much in his life. And then a telegram arrived from the artist: Come immediately, accept the sketches.
;Father Wojciech packed his bags that very hour.
;He returned from Krasnoyarsk with a pile of sketches, looking slightly bewildered. In the drawings stood the exact same homespun bearded peasant amidst snowdrifts and smoking log cabins.
;"I told him: Yuri, draw me a Good Shepherd with a sheep in his arms! And he tells me: I'm sorry, Wojciech, I can't do it that way. I'm sorry."
"And how did he draw him?"
"Like this!"
;In the drawing, a bearded peasant was playing the balalaika for a sheep with a rooster on its shoulder.
;"At first I was surprised, but then I thought: yes, this truly is the Good Shepherd!"
;Even for the most poetic parable, The Dove and the Wind, which was about the Holy Spirit, the artist Deyev drew the exact same peasant in the ushanka, and with a rooster tucked under his arm to boot.
;"I said to him: what does a rooster have to do with anything, when my story is about a dove? And he tells me: Wojciech, what difference does it make? And really, what difference did it make?"
;The more time passed, the more Father Wojciech grew fond of the pictures—they were just so incredibly joyful. Perhaps not overly pious, but the book turned out thoroughly Siberian—with log cabins, snowdrifts, and a bearded Good Shepherd in a winter hat.
;But on New Year's Eve, tragedy struck. When parishioners stopped by on the thirty-first of December to wish Father Wojciech a happy New Year, he was sitting before his computer, his head buried in his hands.
;"My friend died tonight. He was the artist."
;A Different Address
;Father Wojciech hadn't even managed to leave Novosibirsk before we already began to miss him.
;And he himself terribly missed Siberia at first. He even invented an email address for himself: sibiriak@pl. (Though he later worried Brother Damian would tease him, and changed it).
;Now Father Wojciech has a completely different address. But they say that on the walls of his house hang those Siberian paintings by the artist Yuri Deyev. (They are in full color now: a Polish artist, a friend of Father Wojciech, colored them in).
;They say Father Wojciech was gifted two white sheep. (Though dogs ate them. He didn't tell his young parishioners anything about it; instead, he just went out and bought new ones).
;He has a donkey, too. On Sundays, it gives rides to children.
;And they also say that in his new parish, there is already a brass band!
;Now the Father lives in a former Camaldolese hermitage house and, word has it, sleeps in a coffin. A real coffin. The anecdotes continue. Out there, where we are not.
;Father Wojciech remains our most wondrous and, alas, unfulfilled plotline.
;Here in Siberia, he was a little piece of Poland for us. Back then, we had no idea that in Poland, everyone who watched television knew the cheerful priest Wojciech.
;But now, for us, Poland is a country of people who know and love our Father Wojciech.