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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK220 Jack FritscherOh God, help me. My creative unbridled attitude is immature. I%u2019ll have to tone myself down no matter what my vocation. Or perhaps the priesthood will give me greater freedom than any other life. The point of my independence, after all, is freedom to express myself by creating something, anything, new, adding part of me to the sum total of humanity. But what am I trying to express except some weird metaphysics of life?Oh God, I%u2019m going to explode. I%u2019m dying. I need salvation. I need a play, a concert, a foreign film. A movie. A radio station. I%u2019m so worldly I can taste it. I%u2019m too young for this. Uncle Les said so. Maybe I should wait till I%u2019m older. If you%u2019re older, at least you don%u2019t have to live with your decisions so long. Saint Augustine waited till his death bed to be baptized. I mean, how much of me can I abdicate hoping God will fill the void? Is this the devil calling me like Bali Hai? Is this that first night, all over again in a different way, when the Polynesian girl sat on my bed, arms gesturing in a slow hula, trying to lead me out of the dormitory. Why not? The Jesuit, the crazy mad redheaded Irishman, says the Holy Spirit is talking to me.I realize the insane temptation.All I have to do is say God told me and they all believe whatever I say.So basically I%u2019m alone on my own.I could make all of this very easy for myself.The Jesuit sees my coming back perseveringly every year to Misery, despite my awful agony of adjustment to captivity, as a sign of my selfless wanting to serve. But why do I have this love-hate attraction to the people in the priesthood? These actual seminarians and actual priests. I could fubbing murder them where they fub-duk kneel inside their fubbing little cliques. What%u2019s one more Murder in the Cathedral?What don%u2019t I get?When will I get it?Perhaps I should spend all the rest of all the Sundays of all my life saying two Masses in the morning and in the afternoon sitting in the rectory basement slitting open the envelopes of dollar bills and checks from the parish collection basket. If I take that road, if I accept the cross of loneliness, of a long-distance runner, with all my priestly heart, I shall still, with all my human heart, my frail human heart, my unseeing, my fanatic heart, miss what could have been on the road not taken. No other vocation is forever, and no other vocation makes you be alone forever.Can God%u2013and I shook my head not wanting the question%u2013ever mean as much to me as does my possible life or my possible wife and my possible children and my possible creative work? But if it turns out I decide to follow Christ in the priesthood, then it will prove only that although Christ