Page 203 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 191

Responsibility for creating my specific priestly vocation rolled
down upon me. Already I prayed for souls I would meet at some
future date. That our coincidence, our mad falling together in the
human chaos of a divinely planned world would be grace-ful. I
always hyphenated that word. The punctuation made clear to me its
real metaphysical meaning. I tore down the walls of myself day by
day to grasp my true metaphysics, to bring my true self to the fore.
I had so much to prepare to bring Christ to the world.
I talked to Him on a level of personal relation that soothed me
with sweet rushes of grace. I cut dialogue short with the unfeeling,
unthinking seminarians about me. To only a few could I express
these thoughts. Someday I’d tell everyone about divine love in won-
derful sermons. I was so full of raw thought and soaring feeling that
I was frightening myself with a divine panic.
As if talking directly to me, Gunn preached a sermon in chapel,
and eyes turned my way. I looked down at my hands. Gunn thun-
dered that seminarians had no business writing or reading extrane-
ous materials, especially the works of rogue theologians.
“You will only hurt your grades and your spiritual life.”
But my grades were excellent. I wanted to stand up in chapel,
to cry out, to protest. I was stopped only by a tremendous interior
discipline that made me quietly strong against him and his kind. A
splendid sense of mystic isolation thrilled through me. I liked not
being him.
I kept to myself at free periods after supper and before rosary.
I was effortlessly able to sit tight at my desk, writing in my room,
resisting outside in the early October twilight a guitar and a couple
of ukuleles pounding out “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “Who’s Sorry
Now?” while those who didn’t know, who hadn’t found the secret,
sang and yelled around the drinking-water fountain outside the
back stairs, screaming occasionally as a water balloon tossed from
an upper window exploded among them, wetting the ankle-length
flaps of their black cassocks.
The Great Either-Or reared its head. The clock was ticking
toward Ordination Day. Time was short. Choices had to be forced.
Would I serve God or the world? I could take vows of chastity, but

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