Nine Things You Might Not Know About Michael May, S.J.

Michael May, S.J., has been handing out fresh-baked cookies to residents of Reinert Hall every Monday since the early 2000s.

Students know him as their favorite baker, a great math professor and a listening ear. But May has some stories of his own to tell.

1. He’s picked up some baking skills and tips.

“[The cookie recipe] starts with a basic Toll House recipe and has shifted through the years. I use all dark brown sugar. When I started making the Toll House recipe, there was no light brown sugar. I’d never seen it in the store before. The normal recipe was half dark brown sugar, half white – but my sister taught me that if you make it all dark brown, it darkens them a bit and you’re less likely to burn them. It also makes them chewier. I also use all shortening. There’s a range from shortening on one extreme, margarine in the middle, and butter on the other end. As you go more to the shortening, you get chewier. When you use butter, you get more of a crispy cookie. I prefer the chewier.” 

2. He was surprised when he learned not everyone knows how to bake cookies.

“I’ve been baking cookies since at least 1970. When you’re old enough to read the recipe, you can start making desserts. I tell people I learned to read by Betty Crocker. It wasn’t until I got to college that I learned there are people who don’t know how to make cookies.

I’m also of a different era: You mean you can live long enough to get to college and not know how to make chocolate chip cookies?! People ask if I do break ‘n’ bake. I say, ‘no!’ You get a bowl, and a big wooden spoon. That’s the only way.”

3. He’s (almost) always known he wanted to be a Jesuit.

“I’ve wanted to be a priest since at least age five. I’ve been told I had different ideas before then, but I don’t remember. I joined the Jesuits in 1976, after one year at SLU. I came to SLU in part because I wanted to be a Jesuit and figured I should meet one. I went to a public high school outside of Houston, so I came to SLU and sent a letter to the University: ‘Dear Sirs: I am an enrolled freshman. I’d like to join the swim team, the debate team, and the Jesuits.’ After my freshman year, I dropped out of school and entered the Jesuits. At some point in formation, most Jesuits go to teach high school. Instead, I went and picked up a Ph.D. in math at Berkeley. That started after my spiritual director suggested it to me.The fun thing on the application was where it asks why you’re applying to the Ph.D. program. I wrote down, ‘It is the will of God that I get a Ph.D. in Math.” 

4. For him, cookies are a spiritual experience ...

“I have been making cookies since at least 1970. I believe chocolate is proof of the existence of God. As I tell people sometimes: when you have a cookie fresh out of the oven and it kind of wilts as you hold it and it melts on your tongue, try to deny the existence of God. It’s much more convincing than the arguments you hear in your theology class.” 

5.… And the best way to minister to people.

“The cookies provide a convenient excuse for people to come talk to you at the age where talking to a priest, sometimes you lose street cred for admitting it to someone else or yourself. But no one’s ever had to justify getting a cookie. And as I’ve gone through the years, there’s a part of me that says, ‘Oh, come on. It’s not much, it’s just a cookie.’ But the number of people I run into who years later tell you how important it is – at some point, you listen to those people.

It also provides an excuse for people to come out and talk to each other, as well as to me. Where people might not otherwise come to see the priest, no one has to justify chatting while sitting around eating cookie dough. Not all my helpers have been Catholic or even Christian, so we have all kinds of wonderful conversations. I often get the question of what do my wife and kids think of me living in the dorm.

And then just handing them out, and having hordes of people come up to you with love and affection telling you how wonderful you are. One of the campus ministers said, ‘why wouldn’t you do this every week? You’re affirmed absolutely in how wonderful you are.’”

6. He doesn’t limit himself to just chocolate chip cookies.

“At various times, I’ve had other variations of cookies. For a while, there was the Mrs. Fields variant, which is oatmeal run through a Cuisinart to make oat flour. That shows up from time to time on the web with the story that someone asked for a cookie recipe and was told that it would be two-fifty and said, sure! Not realizing that what they put on the credit card was $250, not $2.50. Since they had paid that much they decided they would distribute it widely. That was the recipe I used in Theology.

I’ve done other things too. You learn with cake mixes. Those are pretty easy: 2 eggs, ¼ cup water, a stick of butter. Then you learn to do icing, which is basically cocoa, butter and sugar mixed together. I have learned to do a couple of other things. The one that impresses people the most is I do truffles. I have a couple other recipes I got from various friends in grad school – flourless chocolate torte, white chocolate cheesecake, crème de menthe squares, cocoa fudge drops. There have been several parties that I’ve been told my desserts are welcome and I may accompany them if I wish.”

7. He’s gotten into some sticky situations at the airport.

“When I was in theology, I visited home. There was a new Sam’s Club, so my sister got me a couple bags of 10-pound chocolate chips. You wouldn’t want to put that in checked luggage, so I carried it on. You know what 20 pounds of chocolate chips looks like in an X-ray? I got this, ‘sir? What’s in the bag?’ I said, ‘chocolate chips!’ And they said they needed to look at the bag. This was the time that you could have guests go through with you, so my mother was with me. We went in and they opened the bag, and the chocolate chips were there, so I said, ‘would you like some?’ and they said, no, never mind. The guy came back muttering to the other person at security, ‘it really is chocolate chips!’ at which point the other security agent turned to my mother and said, ‘what’s he going to do with them?’ And she said, ‘sometimes he gets hungry on the plane.’

The other fun transportation story was that at one point I visited a friend in grad school, and there was a salmonella scare going on. He asked if I could bring eggs. So I got on the plane with two dozen raw eggs. They were appropriately wrapped, in carry on luggage in plastic and aluminum foil. But trying to explain to the people at security – I believe the appropriate phrasing is they looked at me and said, ‘I don’t even want to know. There is no answer that makes sense, so I’m not even going to ask.’”

8.  He lives in the residence hall, and he loves it.

“At this point I’m the last of the breed [of Jesuits living in residence halls]. As I tell people, I live with 600 of my closest 18-year-old friends. My phrase is, it’ll either keep you young or make you old.

The comment I make about what I think is valuable about living in the dorms, to allude to one of the translations of scripture, is ‘I have pitched my tent among them.’ This says, without any words, that your life is important enough that I will simply share it. I will live where you live, eat what you eat, and I think that says something at a deep level at an age when they’re not convinced anyone thinks they count.”

9. At the end of the day, his relationship with the residents on his floor is like nothing else.

“In the constellation of the people living here, I’m the adult that’s not really connected with them in a power relationship of one kind or another. I’m just the weird old dude that hands out cookies. And I’m a different generation than them, and so the fact that I’ve been around here forever and know how all kinds of things work means I have useful information but I also have a level of perspective that they don’t.

But for the most part, they’re really good kids trying really hard and in some ways at this point I’m in the grandfather mode. Sometimes, what’s really nice is a white haired old guy to come up to you and say, ‘would a cookie make it better?’”

Story by Molly Daily for University Marketing and Communications