I spoke to a priest yesterday by mistake. I was supposed to call a school and called the church instead. It's the first time I have ever spoken to a priest and I found it a bit scary even though we shared maybe 2 sentences. I imagined him in a stone vestry room with his collar on and it all seemed so alien.
I thought about my rabbi and how he seems like some benign patriarch to me. He's kind of endearing and habits like how the spittal forms at the corners of his mouth when he's fasting for Yom Kippur are disgusting but funny. I thought about how he might seem to non-Jewish people. Maybe he's scary to them. I know I kind of see religious people of all non-Jewish faiths - priests, vicars, mullahs - as kind of fanatical, a bit scary. I might or might not like my own religious leaders but I respect them and basically trust them.