“For me, everything is art,” said Father David Michael, the new pastor for St. John’s Parish.
Indeed, it’s an approach the 46-year-old takes to life itself, whether it involves the complexities of mission work, cooking or something else altogether.
As he explained, “I write poems. I write songs. I have acted in plays. Later on, I wrote a play and directed it. It was staged in the national theater in my country.”
And being an artist comes with a certain dynamism.
For as Michael put it, “whenever I’m not able to do one thing, I will try to do it in a different way. I’m always looking for alternatives.”
THE SEARCH for different ways of doing things has long held a fascination for Michael, who has studied and written about cultures around the world.
He originally hails from Burma, and it’s a name he thinks is vital.
“I don’t use the word Myanmar,” he said. “In 1991, the military, the terrorists who are ruling right now, they got into power and changed the name of the country from Burma to Myanmar.”
“Since they’ve been in authority for 22-23 years, people seem to be forgetting.”
Michael received much of his education in India, and he’d initially hoped to serve as a priest in China, excited to learn the language and culture.
Before heading to the United States in December 2013, the possibility likewise arose that he could be working in Australia instead.
Despite the global range of options, however, Michael would ultimately find himself in Kansas, bouncing from Wichita to St. Paul to Wichita State University over the past eight years.
He’s now been in Iola for the past month, and plans to stay for at least three more years.
AMERICAN culture didn’t really require much of an adjustment, Michael said.
As he explained, “there’s no culture shock, because we watch movies when we’re young, and so we’ve seen that culture. And smaller counties always imitate a bigger, stronger, influential country’s culture.”
