Chapter 20

    It would have been just about this time of the year, in the month of February, 1964, that I was mysteriously advised by the Holy Spirit to start thinking about looking for, in a young soul. the appetite for theological perfection. These instructions did not specifically limit the search to only one, as even Divine intimations incline to go into a man according to his disposition, and I was disposed to remain a classroom teacher for the rest of my working days; so I interpreted the inspiration as a prod to continue my teaching and research within the normal classroom grouping. I was by then at the helm of a Grade Eight class, in my second year at it, and had done quite well with an introductory course in philosophy, concentrating on basic metaphysics, as well as with a bit of instruction on individual mental prayer, or meditation. There was also a lot of music, and art, and creative writing. I was feeling quite pleased with myself, but I had also been advised by the pastor that my growing family was becoming too expensive for the minimal salary structure of the Frontier Apostle programme of the diocese of Prince George and I would have to move on.
    Of course I was pondering my future, but that had to include meditative reflections on the past, which for a good six years had included periodic profound inspirations to wind up in Nelson. Moreover, Providence had come up with, that year, a new series of literature texts for Grade Eight, including a book devoted only to poetry which contained a lovely and prophetic line regarding an orchardist looking down to where "The Kootenay snaked black." The spiritual intimation worked most formidably on my understanding; the poetry drew with equal power on my imagination and my heart, and my fate was irrevocably sealed. Yet, as I say, I thought I was headed for, simply, further research an accomplishment within the ordinary classroom setting, albeit in a Catholic school.
    Furthermore, in the late winter, I had read in the B.C. Catholic of the establishment of a Catholic high school - or the first couple of years thereof - in the city of Nelson. This seemed like the perfect opportunity for me. I could enroll in the little, growing, Catholic university, to finish my degree, and at the same time carry on my teaching and research in a Catholic high school! The school in Terrace by that time proceeded only to grade nine, and the B.C. Catholic story spoke of hopes for grade twelve in Nelson. Of course there would be grade twelve, not long after I arrived, and of course the university would become the greatest Thomistic institute in western Canada! For what other purposes could all my energy and insight be devoted? I actually wrote to the bishop of Nelson, spelling out some of my intentions, and he courteously replied, and further asked me to call on him when I came to the seat of his diocese. I was not offered a post at the high school, as these positions were then all nicely filled by members of the religious brothers who had founded the school - in the buildings of what had been previously the hospital where my wife's younger brother and sister were born - and the school was not expanding at a great rate. But I did enroll in the university.
    Yet this decision was months away. In that late winter in Terrace I was experiencing a number of different ideas and thought processes and spirits, all of which were preparing me, as I later realized, for the years ahead, none of which would have anything to do with presenting Scholastic principles to classrooms full of grateful students. Nor was I always personally convinced all of the time, or even part of the time, that I would be moving to the Kootenays.
    Sometimes I felt very strongly like returning to the Lower Mainland, so that I could sniff again the smell of the ocean, so that my poet's fancies would be let loose to roam through my other life's work, the Great Canadian Novel. At other times I was sure I should go back to UBC and pick up a degree in literature, even though I had grown quite discontent with studying the same subject with the University of Ottawa, by correspondence. My beloved, who has always had a most wonderful love affair with Vancouver, could not object to either of these motives.
    And then there was the startling, very clear and powerful, intimation that I perhaps should get involved in the recording and broadcasting industries, as both a performer and producer. This last had hit with a sudden smack, late in January, while the four members of the Exiles, of which I was one - guitar, banjo, and vocals - sat over coffee in the restaurant of the Lakelse Hotel, taking a break from Sunday afternoon rehearsals. 1963-64 was the first winter that Terrace had television, most of it flown up from Vancouver in a can, with an hour or so every evening set aside for local events and even local performances. There was no taping. The Exiles - two lads from Ireland, one of whom knew the youngest of the Clancy Brothers, a girl from Ontario, and myself - were to do an hour show that night. We had a MC, a switcher, two cameramen, a monitor, and as comfortable a studio as I have ever been in since. I was enjoying the chance to perform, of course, but I was enjoying the process of the mechanics even more, for the moment, as much as I had enjoyed the mechanics of the classroom. Great God in Heaven, thought I, as the comprehension of the possibilities of spiritual satisfaction in this business hit me, are we all supposed to turn professional? That evening, actually, we did do rather well, prompting all sorts of phone calls to the station, and the four of us pondered what kind of debt, professionally speaking, that we might owe God for our talents. Yet I missed the performing company of my wife, who I considered the best of all of us, and left the group after two more appearances - one for television, one for the stage - and years later realized that the inspiration to a new career had really been for one of the Irish lads, who married the girl from Ontario and took her home to Ireland, where he wound up with his own radio programme.
    And then there was the darker side, in that year of interesting events, both interior and exterior.
    Once I had established contact with the bishop of Nelson, I experienced, for the first time in my life, a setting upon me ugly spirits, some kind of obsession, which could be driven away only with the use of the discipline. I had to take the belt out of my pants and use it vigorously on my legs for a dozen or so good wacks.
    This was not a form of mortification I had never expected to use, ever. Of course I had heard of flagellants, in medieval history studies, and I admired their courage and sense of penance on behalf of their own sins and those of their fellows, but I habitually shrunk, in my own disposition, from outward display. For one thing, I think I had always known how to suffer inwardly, even before I was understandingly aware of the hard side of the mystical life; and once I was done with my first two years of university, during which I had been properly spoiled by consolations, in spite of my grand neglect of organized religion - and God had begun revealing the rougher patches, I could only assume that the various suspensions of the faculties, the aridities, the scruples, and the steadily growing incursions into the horrors of the second night where more than a match - as indeed they were - for any legitimate series of swats on the shoulders or any other part of the physical anatomy.
    So what was this new, and somewhat negligible, self-inflicted onslaught all about? To tell the truth, as best as I can remember, I did it only once in Terrace, and not again, for more than a year, until one strange summer evening in Nelson. In neither case, at the time, could I connect a particular cause to the devils in question, but the whipping was cause enough of their departure, and I was led further into understanding the life of a good monk. And not for a quarter-of-a-century would the police and the courts establish the reasons for my surprising acquisition of that part of the monkish tradition.
    The other workload, much larger a consumer of time, and of what until that time in my life had been a great facility for getting a good night's sleep, was the thought, as I interpreted it, of going to teach on an Indian reserve. Once our pastor had told us our Terrace days would end with the school year, the reserve idea came again and again, waking me up in the middle of the night, and keeping me awake for rather a long time. Even though I had done a kind of practicum fortnight in the Indian day school, in Alert Bay, four years previous, and quite enjoyed that, this was a radically new notion, because my focus had fastened more and more on the idea of training teachers with an interest in philosophy and the arts. The force of the idea moved me to think that natives might be even more open to metaphysics and music than whites, but the thinking on the subject, even though it temporarily eclipsed the old inspiration to settle in Nelson, did not lead me to any concrete action, and when the thought of perfection came, the reserve plan passed away. Where perfection among the young was concerned, God already had a soul in mind, and she did not live on an Indian reserve. But there were victims of sexual abuse by clergy and religious living on reserves, and this was the Lord's way, I realized years later, of having me start to pray for that horrific situation.
    Those who live by passive prayer must be, unquestionably, by the graces of God, the wisest souls on earth; yet they also must be, in so many ways, the most uninformed. They are very much aware of God, in admirably special, mysterious, and to the unexperienced, inexplainable fashions, but of the specific reasons for the particular joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, of their prayer life, they can be the most ignorant of men or women. By the time I was seventeen I had made a few choices as to the long term intentions of my life from day to day, but I was to learn that there were and would be others I would not currently identify, some certainly not at the moment, and perhaps not for some time, while the rest would have to wait for Heaven. "Do not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing," He said, and that made one hand different from the other.
    The logic of the contemplative situation can be annoying, can seem even somewhat criminal to those who think only by the standards of the world, and even, on occasion, by contemplatives themselves, who have as much appetite as anyone for seeing the evil done in. But the contemplative is, by definition, not an active. His role is influence toward perfection and the interior life, and even formation of the same in any souls qualified. Unless he is an abbot or a bishop, punishment or dismissal is unlikely to come under his authority, except in cases of spiritual direction, which are not what is herein under consideration. The contemplative, in fact, is so bound to pray for those in grave sin, which is always so common to both Church and State, that he is ordinarily allowed to do very little to those in possession of it. This at least has most certainly been my experience of the great majority of situations particularly in the face of my actual natural temperament being passionately inclined toward action. God only knows how hard He has had to work to keep me tied to my chair of reflection.
    This is not to say that I have never been allowed into activity, and I have also to say that I have from time to time been quite definitely inspired to it, being given an idea, a direction, a targeted soul or two, and further given no rest nor peace of mind whatsoever until I have fired off a telegram, a phone call, a letter, or taken on the culprit face to face, even or perhaps especially when I had no idea just how much of a culprit I was sent to warn. My modus vivendi in this regard was established early on, even before I became a Catholic, just before, in fact, I undertook instruction in the Faith, and it came in no less authoritative a form than within only the second locution of my life so far, some fifteen years and more after the first one.
    "I want you to see what kind of priests ordinary Catholics have to put up with." This was Our Lord's answer to my question, in the early summer of 1958, as to whether I should take my catechism from the Basilians, stationed at the UBC campus, and specializers, of course, in the supposedly complicated and subtle minds of university students; or from the more middle class oriented Redemptorists of my neighbourhood parish, Our Lady of Perpetual Help. I had left my basement apartment - I think on Thirteenth Avenue - on a lovely balmy Vancouver morning in the beginning of June, and was headed for Tenth Avenue, the only commercial street in that part of West Point Grey, and the principal access to the university. I was pondering within myself whether I should turn left at Tenth and head out to the campus and the Basilians, and through them submit my intellect and will to Rome, or if I should turn right and stroll down the hill to the church I had first noticed five years earlier, on my initial bus rides to the campus, from the east side of the city.
    To tell the truth, I had already had a couple of good experiences, in terms of evaluating the Faith, and the priests of the Faith, on the campus. The priest introduced to my medieval history class, when I was in second year, and then a most energetic moral theologian from Europe, who gave a few days of a Lenten mission, just weeks prior to my decision to inquire, were both profoundly provocative to my processes of selection. I was, after all, a novelist, a student and creator, hopefully, of strong and interesting characters. Both priests, in their own, probably unconscious, ways, had exhibited, to me, clarity, energy, and self-possession greater than anything I had ever seen in my other teachers or professors to that date. I knew I could go to either or both of them, and no doubt get involved in a fine series of intellectual and spiritual conversations.
    But was that that the bravest and most useful road for a writer who so very much, he thought, had the common man on his mind? Especially when he already had a Catholic girlfriend who read good books as habitually as most people breathe? Nor was I incapable myself, of looking up the relevant texts. What did the ordinary fellow do? Thus were my musings as I neared Tenth Avenue in the lovely sunshine, and thus spake the Lord to determine the direction my steps would take.
    I have written earlier that I ran into a dear old Redemptorist brother who immediately reminded me of my eminently prayerful Baptist grandfather, and I have probably also said that the priests that I met at Our Lady's were generally that kind and helpful that I for some years puzzled at the fair degree of negativity in Christ's instructions. But finally, in this diocese, I realized quite what He had in mind, and also took comfort in understanding, as He pinned me down, that I had no obligations to act as a good bishop should. I should simply see, as best I could, what was going on, and make my writer's notes. None of this standing on the sidelines, of course, would in any way prevent me from guiding others - none of them clergy - who had the faith and courage to do the same.
    Is there a country in the Christian world where the spiritual life is generally so badly understood as in Canada? And where this condition is general, who can be at fault other than priests and bishops? And how, in the general acceptance these days, of so called inclusive language, have these Canadian clergy and bishops so radically revealed their complete and utter failure to grasp the most fundamental and elementary principles of the life of the soul? The truly inclusive use of either masculine, or feminine, or neuter, by the mystics, is absolutely necessary to even beginning to comprehend the doctrines of the soul as bride, in relations to its divine Bridegroom; so necessary that all true sons of prayer have no recourse against the current practises than that of cheerful, but implacable, contempt, laced with the mercy of praying for God's lightening as much as possible the bishop's ordained punishment in purgatory.
    Have I wandered from my original intentions? Not at all. Some of the perfect souls it has been my honour to discover in the diocese to which I was sent for precisely that purpose were no doubt set out long ago in God's plan to pray for just that modern stupidity, and being female, their prayers against exaggerated feminism, have in a sense, a better chance with God than mine do.