CHERRY HILL – Pulling the yellow No. 2 pencil from behind his ear, Father Michael Coffey measures a piece of wood with a ruler and draws a 90 degree angle. Next, he wedges the cedar between two pieces of scrap wood, and captures all in a vise grip. With the wood secured, he grabs a handsaw off the wall and slowly begins to cut, each back and forth motion provoking a flare of sawdust.
Moving the cedar to the miter saw on his workbench, he continues his cuts, noise mingling with the wood’s dust.
After a few more swipes at the wood, he switches off the saw, turns, smiles and makes reference to the saint he is prone to think about when he is in his woodshop here, on the grounds of Holy Eucharist Parish.
“Joseph used simple tools and what was available,” he says, indicating his preference in handsaws. “The trick is, you go slow.”
It’s a Monday afternoon, one of his days off, and Father Coffey, a priest of 31 years, the last three of them retired, is wearing a dark blue ball cap, green-collared shirt, jeans, work gloves and a measuring tape at the belt. In this setting, the 78-year-old priest presides over a different, but also contemplative, space.
“When you’re cutting wood, sanding, it relaxes you, and you get deep,” he explains. “If you’re thinking about the right things, spirituality will enter the picture.”
For the past four years, Father Coffey has repurposed this former office space at Holy Eucharist into his woodshop.
The organized space is a class in woodworking all its own. Handsaws rest on workbenches. Various sizes of wood are carefully divided and labeled into different-colored milk crates. Hammers (sledge, ball-peen, claw, etc.), mallets, bench planes and chisels hang, or rest, close by.
It was Father Coffey’s younger brother, Gerard, a skilled craftsman, who “put the bug” in him, so to speak.
Not including the guidance from Gerard, Father Coffey’s own skills are largely self-taught, thanks to YouTube and books, and the accumulated materials come from local lumberyards and home construction shops, yard sales and items left at residents’ curbs.
This hobby and passion “keeps me busy and going,” he says.
Father Coffey is quick to show off the different birdhouses he’s created – the chickadee house, the bluebird house and a log cabin.
On a good day, he says, he can make four birdhouses. Father Coffey is currently creating wares to be sold at the Nov. 13 parish craft fair.
Nestled in front of the parish rectory, and next to the parish hall, his shop provides a quiet space, with only the sounds of his tools, nature and the radio’s classical music as a soundtrack.
“It’s hard work, but the payoff is peace and contemplation. I thank God a lot [for his blessings],” Father Coffey explains.
Recalling once again the carpenter foster father of Jesus, Father Coffey admits that “I think about Saint Joseph often” while working. Like Joseph, the priest says he strives to find and live a life of “beauty, through simplicity.”
“An idle mind is the devil’s workshop,” Father Coffey says as he pulls a foldable tape rule out of his back pocket. “If you rest, you rust.”
Father Michael Coffey’s birdhouses will be for sale at Holy Eucharist Parish’s annual craft fair, Nov. 13 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Along with crafts and gifts, there will be refreshments/lunch and baked goods for sale. For more information, call the parish office at 856-429-1330.
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