Category: Memoir Publisher: Oak Tree Press
ISBN-10: 2015904231
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 162
Copyright: March 2015
ISBN-13: 9781610091640
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
A coming of age story about how my father's alcoholism, his early death, and my nine years in the Jesuits studying to be a Catholic priest affected my later decisions to marry, to have a family, and to study, teach and write about literature.
This is a story about how youthful unhappiness and misfortune helped me settle decisively on my true vocation in life. I attended a Jesuit high school, entered the religious order known as the Jesuits at seventeen, and then left the Jesuits at twenty-five. I then married and with my wife's emotional and financial support began a nearly fifty year career studying, teachng and writing about literature. This memoir allows the reader to follow my search for something indestructible in the customs and routines of daily life that have such seeming power to beat us down.
Excerpt
Though just two years older than I, Pope Francis entered the Jesuits in Argentina two years after I did in the United States. I feel a strong kinship with his observation than when confronted with a serious question, most of us lock ourselves into an answer that "looks great and strong" instead of taking the time to discern a possibly different one inside ourselves. Before I wrote this memoir I was never sure whether my leaving the Jesuits some fifty years ago had been the result of discernment or impulse, but writing it taught me that I had to take full responsibility for my own life. My parents, the Catholic Church and the Jesuits all influenced my development but they did not determine it, and my most important choices remained mine. I hope that sharing this story about my crisis of vocation and how it led me to make peace with my past can help you accept your own deeply felt decisions and increase your satisfaction with them.
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