In 1960 I made the momentous decision to leave home
for good. I was fourteen years old. This was not a decision that was made lightly. The idea had been formulated over the course
of my short life with the help of my parents, my local priest and of course the
good nuns that taught in my parochial school.
The story goes that my mother took me as a new born baby to the convent so that the nuns could see me. Overwhelmed by my cuteness the nuns carried me
into their private chapel and laid me on the altar and formally dedicated me to
God. Having been told that story, when I
became older and familiar with the Bible, I saw a distinct parallel to the
story of Abraham building an altar of firewood, and then placing his only son
Isaac on it so that he could sacrifice him to God. Of course, I have no memory of that event, but
I guess that I should be thankful that nuns don’t carry matches. The nuns certainly did their part to instill in me a love of God and a desire to work in God’s vineyard as a priest. They did it so well that after graduating
from eighth grade, instead of attending the local high school, I decided to
leave home to attend St. John’s Atonement Seminary in Montour Falls, NY. It was the first step in a thirteen-year journey
of becoming a Franciscan Friar. And, it was there at St. John’s that I began to
prepare myself to eventually take the three evangelical vows of poverty,
chastity and obedience, which were first made in the twelfth century by St. Francis
of Assisi and his followers.
Life at St. John’s was highly regulated, but there was
an order and meaning to everything we did.
I believed that I was part of something bigger and there was comfort in
that fact. There was a long list of
things we could not do, and we each had our own individual rule that we chaffed
under. For instance, we were not allowed
to go off the property for any reason unless we had permission. This was my cross to bear. While most of my classmates came up to St.
John’s from the New York City and Jersey area, I grew up on a farm about an
hour away. I would look past the
seminary’s property line and it looked like home out there. There were lakes and hills and streams to
explore just like where I lived, and where I had freedom to enjoy them at any
time. So, to suddenly have that freedom
taken away was difficult for me to accept.
Yet looking back through the fog of so many intervening
years I remember those years as the happiest times of my life. Despite the rules there was an allotted time
to thoroughly enjoy life as well. There were
always enough guys for a pick-up game of softball, or basketball. In the winter there were tobogganing and
skiing to enjoy on some significant hills just behind the school. There were also quiet places where I could
sit and read a book or write a letter home. There were field trips to
places like Corning Glass Works. We went
there every year and I loved it. I would
hurry through the museum of the history of glass, and head directly to a place
where I could watch artisans mold and shape molten glass into crystal vases and
engraved bowls. Once a year we would
also travel to Binghamton, New York, to attend an opera performed by the
Binghamton Opera Company. It was the
first time that most of us had ever attended an opera. Some were better than others. I fell in love with the music of Carmen and
sat in wonderment at all the special effects that happened before my eyes during
Faust. On our free afternoon, if the
weather was nice we could gather into small groups and then get permission to go
on a hike to either Havana Glen or Deckertown Falls. Now I grew up with a glen on our property at
home. It was where my sisters and I
would play and hang out during the hot summer days. There were pools of water that we learned to
swim in and waterfalls that we climbed up and around just for the fun of
it. And that was exactly what we did while
on our hikes at St. John’s. Both glens
were great for hiking, but Deckertown had the best pool for swimming.
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| Deckertown Falls |
In October 2017, I went to a high school reunion at St. John’s which now serves as a fireman’s academy for the State of New York. It was my first trip back in more than half a century, and it was great to connect once more with the friends of my youth who I came to think of as brothers. On Saturday afternoon, a few of us hiked up into our favorite glens to see where we had played and horsed around so many years ago. I took lots of pictures that weekend especially of the streams and the swimming hole. It was those pictures from that weekend that inspired me to spend the last couple weeks trying to capture those memories in oils on canvas. What a wonderful time it has been to ponder those happy days once again.
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| Havana Glen |
As a teenager, I lived the life of a Franciscan seminarian
for five years. I made it to within
three months of professing temporary vows of poverty, chastity and
obedience. You can probably guess which one
forced me to rethink my vocation at that time in my life. In hindsight it was more my mother’s dream than
a calling from God for me to be a priest.
You see God’s will for me was to first become a husband, a father, and a
grandfather, before accepting a call as an ordained Lutheran pastor. I did have a vocation from God, but God
needed to mold and shape me through many years of life in this world before I was
ready to stand at another altar where I could offer God himself in bread and
wine to all who would come forward to receive that gift.
Thank you, God, for the gift and joys of my life.
