Journey brings priest home

If the new priest at St. Thomas More looks familiar to longtime parishioners, he should. The Rev. David Kuttner grew up across the street from the church, and his parents still live in his childhood home.

He worshipped at the church and attended kindergarten through eighth grade at the affiliated school. Yet the path he took from parish kid to parochial vicar was far more extensive than a jaunt across the street.

From his office, the youthful-looking 40-year-old recalled his journey. “Growing up, I had no desire to become a priest,” he said. Though his parents regularly took him to Mass, Kuttner said, “To be honest, my faith was never something I embraced. I guess I’d never met God through it.”

Then he grinned. “Baseball was my passion.” He played and coached through middle school and high school. But he also excelled at tennis. By his junior year at Mead, he had to choose which sport would be his focus. “I was a little better at tennis,” said Kuttner.

During college he played tennis for both Spokane Falls Community and Whitworth University, but as his senior year approached, Kuttner said he got tired of tennis. His career plans focused on teaching and coaching, and he specifically wanted to coach baseball. When he discovered he could walk onto the team at Eastern Oregon University, he packed his mitt and moved to La Grande for his final year of college.

Like many young adults, Kuttner had drifted from his faith. While being Catholic was as much a part of his identity as his love of baseball, he said, “I had yet to discover God in a personal way.”

After graduation, he returned to Spokane and worked as a substitute teacher while searching for a permanent position. When no job materialized, he decided to attend Washington State University to get his special education endorsement.

With a wry grin, he described the party atmosphere and admitted, “I didn’t live the most virtuous life.” Later, though, he realized “there’s got to be something more than this.” For Kuttner, that something more became his career.

He landed a job at Hoquiam High School on the West Side. He taught math to kids with learning and behavioral disabilities, and coached baseball – first for the high school and later for nearby Grays Harbor College.

His work with “broken kids” from drug-addicted homes and impoverished environments changed him. “I learned more from them on the level of the heart than I’m sure they learned from me.”

With his career trajectory on target and a busy social life, all seemed well. He’d dated throughout his young adult life, looking for that special someone. However, in the midst of his job successes, his girlfriend suddenly ended their relationship. “I plummeted emotionally,” Kuttner recalled. “Suddenly, baseball wasn’t enough. I felt empty – I felt alone.”

He returned to Spokane for Christmas, and seeking solace he visited an old friend. “I wanted her to commiserate with me, like she’d done many times before,” he said. Instead, she started talking to him about God. At 28, Kuttner said, “All of the sudden, I felt a connection to God. I wanted to know him – meet him – spend time with him. He felt real and accessible, not just as an idea, but as a presence.”

Back in Hoquiam, he began to read daily meditations. He also returned to church – and not just on Sunday. Daily Mass became part of his routine, and his involvement with the church deepened. “I became a lector and helped with the youth ministry,” he said. “I began living my faith in a way I never had before.”

Kuttner paused and swiveled his desk chair as he remembered that pivotal time. “God became the love of my life,” he said.

And for that reason, when he was offered the position of head coach for the Grays Harbor baseball team, he turned it down. Instead, he left his teaching and coaching jobs and moved to Minnesota to study theology at St. John’s University. “I’d never taken a theology class in my life,” he said.

Those studies proved more than he’d bargained for. He plunged in and quickly found himself over his head. “It was painful,” he said. “They used a vocabulary I couldn’t understand.” And yet midway through that year he felt God call him to be a priest. “That call left a mark on my heart that never left me.”

However, Kuttner said there’s a big difference between acknowledging a vocational calling and accepting and embracing it. After a year in Minnesota, he enrolled in seminary in Spokane and then studied at the Theological College in Washington, D.C. There, he faced a significant crisis of faith. He said, “Everything that had been built up was broken down.”

Kuttner took a year off from seminary and returned to substitute teaching. During that summer he spent time in a Benedictine monastery, where he said true emotional and spiritual healing began. Finally, ready to embrace his calling, Kuttner contacted the diocese in Spokane.

After four years of seminary training in Rome, he anxiously awaited his first assignment. “It was a bit of shock,” he said, when he discovered his first place of service was at St. Thomas More – his childhood church. While he said it’s unusual to place a new priest so close to home, Kuttner said he felt a great sense of peace in his assignment.

His path to the priesthood took him around the world and finally brought him home. Kuttner smiled and said, “It’s been a journey to freedom.”