By Tracey Primrose
More than 50 years ago, when Fr. Pat Twohy, SJ, first arrived on the Colville Reservation in north central Washington, he thought he had come to serve. Instead, he discovered what would become the defining truth of his life: He had come to learn.
Now, decades later, that lifelong journey of listening, accompaniment and spiritual discovery has found new expression in his third book, syəyaʔyaʔ Coast Salish Sacred Lifeways and the Sacred Lifeways of Jesus, recently published by Lushootseed Press.
“It’s sort of miraculous,” Fr. Pat says quietly. “Every time you’re able to put something out, it feels like a dream happening.”
A Life Shaped by Encounter
Fr. Pat’s first two books grew directly out of his early years in Native ministry. His 1984 work, Finding a Way Home: Native and Catholic Spiritual Paths of the Plateau Tribes, emerged from his time on the Colville Reservation, where he began to recognize something that would shape his ministry.
“I was embarrassed,” he recalls, “that when we presented the Catholic faith to Native people, we didn’t acknowledge the deep spiritual traditions that had shaped their communities for thousands of years.”
That realization led him to affirm what Native communities had always known: their spiritual traditions were not something to be replaced, but something living and enduring. Years later, after moving to the Swinomish Reservation in northwestern Washington, he encountered the distinct beauty of Coast Salish spirituality, an experience that inspired his second book, Beginnings: A Meditation on Coast Salish Lifeways.
“That book was really a salute,” he says, “and I hoped it would be a mirror for young people to see their own beauty and for others to begin to understand the depth of what has always been there.”
Not One or the Other
His newest book brings these insights together in a more explicit and personal way.
For years, Fr. Pat heard a familiar claim: that Native spiritual traditions and Christianity could not coexist—that one had to choose.
But that was not what he experienced.
“The elders and teachers I knew carried both,” he says. “They held their original lifeways and the way of Jesus together in their hearts and minds. And not just as something compatible, but as something deeply intertwined.”
Rather than conflict, he encountered integration. Rather than replacement, he witnessed a kind of spiritual resonance.
“At the heart of both,” he says, “is compassion.”
This conviction shapes the central insight of his new book: that the teachings of Jesus, understood through love, generosity and courage, do not erase Native traditions but can be recognized alongside them, affirming what has always been sacred.
A New Chapter, A Different Kind of Presence
Today at 86, Fr. Pat lives at Sacred Heart Jesuit Center, the health care/retirement community for the Jesuits West Province in Los Gatos, California. He moved there in 2023, describing the transition with characteristic honesty. “It was traumatic,” he says. “And just being naive, I suppose I thought you could work and then die with your boots on. But I’ve been given another part to my life, and I’m still trying to plumb the mystery of why I’ve been given this time. The elders say that there’s a meaning for everything that happens and there’s a lesson to be learned. And so, I’ve been asking myself, ‘Well, what is the lesson? What is the meaning for me?’”
In time, he has come to see this period not as an ending, but as an invitation.
“I can love the men here,” he says. “They’re such good men, and we are good to one another. And the staff is phenomenal.”
And in the quieter rhythm of life, something else has emerged: the space to write. “Maybe,” he reflects, “this is part of the meaning, being able to express something of the heart in words.”
Still Learning
Despite decades of ministry, Fr. Pat resists any sense of arrival because he is still listening and learning.
“I’ve just been in the presence of people I love,” he says. “And something of their way of being has become part of me.”
That way of being, marked by humility, reverence and relationship, continues to shape not only his writing, but his understanding of the spiritual life itself.
Even now, he remains attentive to what lies ahead.
“I believe our friendships are eternal,” he says. “What we’re doing now—staying close, loving one another—it’s preparing us for what comes next.”
For more on the book, visit here.
