In Loving Pursuit

By David P Remy

What love has joined together even God cannot divide. Follow Colin and Carla's discovery of this reality as they pursue that illusive thing called love, each going down separate paths to find it. Through a variety of real life, but incredible happenings, they mature and learn the inevitable truths of life and love which are worked out through everyone of the diverse characters who come into their lives. Travel the world with Colin and Carla as they pursue that love which they already had all along between them, but needed others and their own life experiences to confirm.
The story is told in the memoir genre. The time is the 1960's and the world has a far different mindset than today. They were high school sweethearts, but when college comes along, they decide that they need to live their lives through separate callings to the church by becoming a priest and a nun. The story develops through the four years of their attempt to find the Holy Grail of love. Colin and Carla mature through the natural process of becoming involved in the lives of others. Life is not simple or boring. You will read how real people make up their minds and change their minds as the realities of life unfold. Will each find the love they pursue or recognize the love that they already possess inside themselves and between them? Does God or love win out in the end? Or both?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781620954034

Book preview

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or real persons, either living or dead, is entirely coincidental and unintended.

This novel is copyrighted by the author, David P. Remy. The novel in entirety and all parts of it are protected by the prevailing copyright laws of the USA and International copyright agreements. No portion of this novel may be reproduced either in print or in visual media of any type or transmitted in any form, including electronic and mechanical, without the expressed written permission of the author, David P. Remy. All rights are reserved to and by the author.

Copyright 2012 by David P Remy

DEDICATED TO ALL THOSE

WHO HEARD THE CALL

AND

OFFERED THEIR BEST

____________________________

YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It takes a community to write a book. The author is the person who has the good fortune of putting to page the story which that community helped produce. Though this is a work of fiction, is there anyone who doesn't understand that all fiction is based somewhere within the reality of the author?

I am deeply grateful for that reality, made up of the persons and experiences of my life. Let it be clear that the characters in this novel are fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons is due to the parameters of my life experiences.

I owe an immense debt of gratitude to those who nurtured me and filled my professional life with a multitude of learning experiences. You were the best of teachers. In particular, I mention my parents, Eldon (Al) and Aurelia, my sister, Patricia (Pat), the students and faculty of Mount Saint Bernard Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa (1963-1967) and my chaplain colleagues in the United States Navy (1985-2005). I thank Carol Kane Parker, who first read the very rough draft and gave her thumbs up to the project. I also sincerely appreciate the assistance of Gary Cooper, a friend from my D.C. days.

I'd recommend a short video on the Internet (Oldbluewebdesigns.com: Take Me Back to the 60's). Watch it and you will read In Loving Pursuit with a richer understanding of the milieu underpinning the story. You will more fully appreciate the era in which my fictional Colin Harris and the real I grew up and pursued the meaning of our life.

Lastly, I extend my eternal appreciation to Kathy (Dowd) Ulrich for stepping in at a critical moment and becoming both my volunteer proof reader and publicist. We, indeed, go back a few years to our days in education. Kathy, you're the best!

P.S.: I hope you will read and enjoy my E book fiction novels:

The LUCKY & LED CRUISE SHIP MYSTERY SERIES

They are available for download to your E reader device from your favorite E reader online store.

CRUISE TO MAYHEM

CRUISE TO HELL

CRUISE TO PANDORA

CRUISE TO YULETIDE

The fifth novel in the series will be published in 2013: CRUISE TO CRITIQUE

Thank you for your loyal readership.

PART ONE DAWN (1963-1964)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ONE ACCEPTANCE

TWO FIRST IMPRESSIONS

THREE THE PRINCIPALS

FOUR THE REFECTORY

FIVE THE CHAPEL SQUAD

SIX HEAD WORKER BEE

SEVEN PERTINENT BACK DROP

EIGHT HOLIDAY INVITATIONS

NINE ONE SIDE OF GENE TANNER

TEN THE UNFORTUNATE HAPPENING

ELEVEN END OF THE BEGINNING

TWELVE ANOTHER SIDE TO GENE TANNER

THIRTEEN INITIAL SLEUTHING

FOURTEEN A SUMMITT CLIFFS MUSIC STUDENT

FIFTEEN BACK AT THE BARN

SIXTEEN CONCLUSIVE RESULTS

SEVENTEEN MEMORIAL SERVICE

EIGHTEEN COMMUNICATION AMONG NON EQUALS

NINETEEN CONFIDENTIALITY

TWENTY MUSIC PROFESSOR AND FORMER ASSISTANT

TWENTY-ONE ENCOUNTERING THE RIGHT

TWENTY-TWO THE PROJECT

TWENTY-THREE THE SHERIFF COMES KNOCKING

TWENTY-FOUR THE DOUBTING THOMAS DEBATE

TWENTY-FIVE LIKE BAKER STREET GUMSHOES

TWENTY-SIX DEMONS IN THE PIT

TWENTY-SEVEN WHAT IT WAS ALL ABOUT

TWENTY-EIGHT PENULTIMATE

TWENTY-NINE DAWN IS DONE--THE SUN IS RISEN

END PART ONE

PART TWO NOON (1964-1966)

ONE SEQUEL

TWO SWEET PAST TIMES

THREE THE RETURN

FOUR THE LITTLE MATTER OF ONE

FIVE THE DEATH KNOCK

SIX THE SUMMER PAST

SEVEN ANOTHER SIDE OF GERI

EIGHT THE LETTER

NINE MAKING HEAVENLY BREAD

TEN AWAKENING

ELEVEN THE NEW JUNIOR

TWELVE SCULLERY ROMANCE

THIRTEEN ROMEO AND HALF JULIET

FOURTEEN PARTNERS

FIFTEEN THE NOVICE

SIXTEEN TWICE FORGIVEN

SEVENTEEN THE UNINVITED

EIGHTEEN HULA BUBBLES

NINETEEN TO BE OR NOT TO BE

TWENTY IT'S A WRAP

END PART TWO

PART THREE SUNSET (1966-1968)

ONE DIXIE

TWO DEVELOPMENTS

THREE OJT

FOUR REUNITED

FIVE RE-NESTED

SIX HOLIDAY GIFTS

SEVEN TIME AS SEAMSTRESS

EIGHT DECISION TIME

NINE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

TEN BACK TO MY FUTURE

ELEVEN 360 PLUS 1 DEGREE CIRCLE

TWELVE THE LAST QUEEN SINGS

END PART THREE

EPILOGUE

AUTHOR'S BIO

PROLOGUE

2001

Locking the doors of St. Clairvaux Seminary gave me severe heartburn and felt hideously sinful. The very existence of this place was too intimately connected to my Church to be culled like a useless appendage. It’s akin to a woman having an unwanted hysterectomy, tearing out the womb, forever thwarting the birth of new babies.

Undeniably, the incoming numbers of young men aspiring to the clerical calling had been irretrievably declining for years. The attrition rate among those already ordained, the last three decades, was appalling and, frankly, embarrassing to the powers. Concomitantly, the premier status once accorded, by the community to the clergy had nosedived.

This negative sentiment insidiously rendered the massive effort feckless in recruiting new seminarians. Dark days, filled with even more ominous clouds on the horizon, reigned over any foreseeable prospects for improvement. An institution, like Saint Clairvaux Provincial School of Theology, smack dab in the nation’s heartland, was simply no longer viable.

****

My flight from Honolulu had transplanted me back into familiar territory. I had spent four years on these grounds and in this building for my seminary training. Yes, I am a citizen of the state of Hawaii. I helped wear down the thoroughfares in Manoa Valley, graduating from UH, armed with a BA in social work and paid my dues in the field for a couple of years as your generic family counselor. I continued on to grad school to earn my master’s in social work, the highly coveted MSW for anyone with serious intent to be recognized as a true professional in the human welfare community.

Wandering around the island paradise, somewhat aimlessly, I kept coming back to the challenge of what I really wanted to do with my life. I should have been satisfied with the job I had, but it just didn’t seem to be enough for me. I sought my own career counseling and ended up requesting to enter the seminary.

Dad had grown up in this part of the Midwest. This provided an entrée to his personal connection with the once ecclesiastical head of the Dedbury diocese, the quintessential Bishop Clyde Barrington Price. Thanks to that relationship, I was accepted into the formation program at St. C’s in 1990, receiving ordination four years later. I then returned to my Pacific island home state.

Seven years of pastoral assignments in Hawaii brought me a great feeling of achievement. Surprisingly, Bishop Price's successor contacted me and asked if I would consider transferring to Dedbury. He had a proposal for me that involved my status and experience as a social work professional.

My MSW was the nugget in my educational treasure chest. It was proving to pay big dividends. The Bishop lacked anyone with the credentials necessary for the sensitive task. Upon conferring with my home-area church authorities, I was granted permission to return for this temporary special assignment.

****

I surveyed the walled-in square footage which, for years, had been the breeding ground of our church’s infant clergy, mostly from the rural Midwest. So many men, both inspired and high-minded, had come and gone through this institution…forever transformed. Some to rectories; others to make the return trip home...all affected in a significant manner…like myself.

Looking out across the once-fertile fields from the vantage point of Room 210, I was struck by the appearance of sprouting suburban houses rather than oak trees, dandelions and stalks of corn. Letting my fingers glide through the dust on the sill, my mind downshifted into slow motion as I slid into reverent reverie. Like a thin cloth of linen covering a dining room table, I envisioned the gritty film as it might be residual memory dust, having settled atop each inch of these once-vibrant spaces.

My fingers rubbed across the desktop in the former dorm room while I lazily reminisced. The sheet of film appeared to me like a theatrical silver screen. Focusing on it, the dusty lint attempted to roll out, frame by frame, the documentary account of a long-ago reality. A story captured in a past time, disclosing snapshots of real lives, real events, which it alone jealously possessed.

My own life, in an unbelievably surprising way, had been fashioned by the multitude of robed inhabitants of St. C’s; a cast of characters who previously wandered and wondered through these bygone hallowed halls. I sensed a good old-fashion haunting. And, I had no doubt; the ghosts of St. C’s past would be more than willing to confirm these feelings.

I gasped, short of breath, as if I were suffocating. Suddenly, my whole life seemed enveloped by these wispy specters of recollection. Then, just as suddenly, the unhinging moment of reverie related to the dusty memories was shattered. Snaking its way up the stairwell, the hissing sound of a high shrill voice reached my ears.

Yoo-hoo! Father Harris. Hello! Are you around up there, somewhere? It was one of the committee members from the Bishop’s office, in anything but a sotto voce volume, beckoning me. She had been placed in charge of helping me with the convoluted details involved with the closure and transfer of the facility.

Up here. Don’t bother yourself coming up. I’ll be right down. I needed to rejoin my colleague lest she be left out of making a decision about some trivial matter. That’s not acceptable for any bean counter.

Reaching the old rec room area where we had set up shop for overseeing the demise of St. C’s, we settled into a matching set of the old armchairs.

"This is really very difficult for me. I mean, being the Bishop’s representative who’s actually pulling the plug on this beloved institution.

Funny how we can get so emotional over these places. While we’re in them, we usually compare them to living in hell. Once we leave them, they become as revered to us as the home we grew up in. My throat tightened up a bit.

Sorry that you had to be the one for this nasty duty, Father Harris, Madge Bromley, the Bishop’s business manager and accountant, commiserated. I’m afraid I only see buildings as assets and liabilities. This place has definitely been one of our larger liabilities, lately. Maybe the Bishop should have picked someone who hadn’t been trained here and had your appreciation for its allure, as well as all its secrets.

I think he wanted someone who had lived here, so the closing would be honored with the best show of dignity that it deserved. You’re right, Madge. You said it...this building is sacred with its silently held secrets.

I would have given anything to have been that proverbial fly on the wall, in those days, Madge giggled. Madge was a darling. A real port in the storm for us, as far as the Bishop’s staff was concerned.

She had raised her family and now found herself challenged with a medically retired husband at home. Her guaranteed positive outlook, exhibited every day at the office, was like a trampoline. It furnished us with the bounce which we occasionally found necessary to lift our spirits from a temporary basement level of depression.

What really makes this building more than just brick and mortar, anyway? I fail to see any signs of excitement to be real honest, Father Lucky. Can you enliven my imagination with a few tidbits of historical gossip?

"As so happens, Madge, we have a bit of time before the bankers and real estate people arrive to sign the final papers. If you wouldn’t object, I’m in the right mood to tell you a story about this hallowed space and some of the characters who once made it so special.

"I’d like to give you a proper telling of some of the secrets of St. C’s. A few tidbits, as you call them, which were never documented in any of our Church records.

They’d be the type of human detail which would more than likely be handwritten in a family Bible. I’ll want to tell you the story exactly as it was told to me. That way I won’t ruin your chance to feel the characters, as well as simply hear the story.

I’d love it, she exclaimed. I’m tired of only knowing the physical specs of these assets. It’d be thrilling to be let in on the personal side of the equation.

The narrow bands of sun rays squeezed between the venetian blinds, polka-dotted with scurrying molecules of dust. It only served to highlight the unnatural quiet and emptiness of the rec room. Madge settled in, like a child nestled in her bed, waiting for the parent, at her bedside, to tell the nightly bedtime fairy tale.

What I was about to relate was no simplistic silhouette of reality, no myth nor fairy tale. The story contained an astonishing narrative filled with an improbable and unforeseen outcome…the astounding twists and surprising turns of events, which crafted my very place in the world of today. The excitement of expectation seeped into the environs Madge and I shared.

I began the proper telling of the search for the Grail, exactly as it had been told to me by the master storyteller in my life:

"During the summer, following my college graduation, I received the much-anticipated letter...

DAWN

FAITH

1963-1964

CHAPTER ONE

ACCEPTANCE

HOO—LEE—SHEE—IT! I got...accepted! The expletive-laden phrase slipped out of my mouth in multiple syllables like I suffered from a stuttering problem.

Repeating the phrase over and over in my mind, the other technical details of the letter faded in moot importance. The amazement shot out of my emerald green eyes like two lightning bolts, adding further emphasis to the surprise.

And relief. I’d been waiting over a month for this letter of reply to my application to Saint Clairvaux Provincial School of Theology. It had all started in rather serendipitous fashion one day on my usual trek home from class riding the city bus. Overwhelmed with a dread like every student has, I was befuddled about all the required reading hanging over my head. With a uniquely perceptive solution, I effectively dealt with that concern along with the boredom of the monotonous bus route in my usual resolute manner...I did my perfect impression of a zombie stare out the open window.

As the bus waited at a red traffic light, a midsize moving van pulled immediately alongside. The truck rested in the adjoining lane tightly snuggling against the same window that recently offered me multiple distractions. Written in large black letters on the white enamel painted side was the slogan,

WE HELP PEOPLE

I stretched my head and shoulders out the window to get a more complete view of the side of the truck. I was able to locate the name of the agency that sponsored the truck on its front door. As the bus started to move ahead thanks to a change to green of the traffic signal, I could clearly see the name.

"HEAVENLY HELPERS 208 PINE STREET DEDBURY

PHONE [phone]

I hen scratched the information on the cover of the notebook I always carried in my briefcase.

As usual, no one was in the house when I arrived home since my parents both worked. I dropped my school books on the floor, wet my whistle with a frog-like gulp from the milk carton in the fridge and reached for the telephone. With a pensive touch my index finger dialed the scribbled numbers, noted earlier on the bus. My chest heaved with nervous anticipation. The person who answered at the shelter breathed heavily and listened patiently.

Hi, I just saw your truck. Ah, I mean, I was wondering if I could find out about your organization. Damn, I sounded like a twerp, kissing up, begging for a job.

Hello. A truck, you say? Oh, you saw Jake driving our pick-up truck. He gets the donations from the stores and restaurants in town. Could I ask who is calling, please? His voice was calming and reassuring.

With a nervous laugh, Yeah, sorry, I forgot to say who I was. My name is Colin Harris. I live in Dedbury and was interested in maybe volunteering with you.

Hi, Colin. Well, my name is Jerome. I’m the commander. Janitor, as well as the chief cook and bottle washer around here, as they like to say, all wrapped up in one. How ‘bout you drop by any day between 10 and 3 in the afternoon. Those are the hours I might have a better chance to give you a look around.

Replacing the receiver back into its cradle, I reflected upon the invitation to come down for a tour of the facility. This would give me the chance I needed to meet other volunteers with like desires and see how I matched up. That simple bit of taking action launched the initial foray into the subculture commonly referred to as outreach agency.

Spending a great degree of my free time in that subculture almost every weekend, I grew comfortable with the complex ins and outs of the welfare system. I learned firsthand how welfare policies could help offer a solution to somebody’s problem. I also witnessed the sad consequences when that same system actually produced a life of addictive dependency on the very programs which were meant to do just the opposite.

The longtime staff and volunteers taught me some tried-and-true methods of helping. They had a Chinese quote posted on one of the walls:

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.

Teach him to fish and you feed him for life."

Jerome, the director of Heavenly Helpers, a weathered worker in the world of outreach, warned me not to help create welfare addicts. When we were involved side by side with a project, he would quip, Colin, remember boy, teach them to fish.

As a result of being a weekend welfare warrior, I had grown in the self-awareness of one overriding conclusion for myself: helping people was where it was.

When I was more honest with myself, working with and on behalf of people offered me the more true and long lasting feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment in my short, young life. My Heavenly Helper experience gave me a new and needed direction in life. I became a first-class driven disciple.

Walking home with Mom, after Sunday church, two months before my college graduation, I had sought her advice about this new twist to my thinking. Not that I was tapping into a never-before-discussed subject within the Harris family.

When this every-kid’s-question-about-life first came up, I was only in high school. That was before my life had reached the starting line. Now, on the brink of becoming a college graduate, the rubber was about to meet the road.

Decision time.

Actually, I had embraced two competing ambitions for my future, for this moment at least. Through conversations with fellow volunteers at The Heavenly Helper, I was made aware of the new global initiative called The Peace Corps. This worldwide outreach was sparked by the then Senator John F. Kennedy during a 1960 challenge to students at the University of Michigan. An exciting venture whereby volunteers in my age bracket could receive training in specialty areas for assisting others. And, for sure, when it came to an awareness of the world, I would have been rated globally illiterate.

Concurrent with their training, the volunteers would be tempted to consider the real prospect of being sent to exotic countries far and wide. This bold new idea played well over and over in my imagination, tantalizing me with the fantastic possibilities.

The other was a bit more homegrown and a lot less glamorous. This second ambition would keep me in my own backyard, so to speak, helping those with whom I was very familiar. This idea was to enter theology, become an ordained volunteer and to serve others through the church.

It’s worth noting that I had the questionable good fortune of being born during an especially culturally impaired period. I grew up in an extremely measured reality of parochial life. The era was bookended between the dominance of the Ozzie and Harriet family model and the yet-to-erupt flower power signaled by the Woodstock revolutions.

During this time, the major movers and shakers of my homespun culture were a southern boy from Tupelo, Mississippi, named Elvis and a British group named after insects, the Beatles. Most of our disposable income was invested in the 45 RPM recordings of their music. Even at that early age, in opposition to the contemporary penny pincher, I was totally enamored with deficit spending. But, back to the present conversation.

Claire Harris, not labeled, nor schooled as such, had the heart of a libertarian. She held tightly to the principles of individual freedom and the right to make choices for your life. Surprisingly, these beliefs pushed against the conservative nature of her beloved church.

Mom never missed her Sunday obligation to worship, but she would not ever have been accused of being in the mindset of a religious hardliner. On the other hand, she maintained that style of provincialism which was part and parcel of society in the '50s and '60s.

This was a time long before the changes that television and computers had on the broadening of peoples’ viewpoints and attitudes. One’s life was summed up by working hard, raising your family and being a good person in the eyes of your community...and the church.

Colin, you will always be my baby, but you’re an adult, now. A mature man makes his own decisions and those decisions make the man even more mature. I know you’re asking my opinion. It hasn’t changed. She took my hand in her own as we crossed the street.

Once a mother, always a mother, I thought as I played along with her ever-so-gentle guidance to the other curb.

Your father and I have talked this over many times. We agree on one thing, strongly. We just want you to be happy, whatever. If you feel drawn in those directions, I would say you owe it to yourself to give it the best you've got to give. Enough said? Mom was a straight shooter. I knew I wouldn’t get any better than that.

That was enough.

The very next day, when I opened the formal looking envelope I saw the decision typed out before my eyes.

I, being Colin Harris, was not the type person you would even faintly link to this high and almighty career choice. As a matter of personal record, not one fellow student had noted, on the front or backside of my college yearbook, anything whatsoever that had to do with theology, ministry or church work. A few lines were penned predicting my future as a lawyer, accountant, maybe a teacher, kind of, maybe, but definitely not a clergyman. Not one inkling of that notion. That lifestyle wouldn’t be any part of my future if you believed in any brand of peer group prognostication. Even Carla, my long time girlfriend didn’t have a clue.

Only the really astute observer would have garnered hints of this new gravitational pull. That observer would have had to zero in on my most recent choices of personal pursuits in later high school and my college years. When it came to filling in that huge amount of free time that all young people have, I had tended toward those activities which were oriented to humane causes and personal needs.

I decided not to be just another do-nothing onlooker adding to the problem. So, I volunteered to become a modern-day savior and work miracles supplying a major force to its solution. I made my decision. The whole push of my religious upbringing was meant to motivate me to crave to end up in heaven and live the way that led me there, every day. You know, that boring straight and narrow way-of-the-cross theme. Of course, there had to be lots and lots of suffering along the journey.

Not my scene. I had composed a radical variation on the theme of living one’s life. I wanted to play all the high notes in life; pluck the choicest bits to taste; wear life like an outfit...tailor-made for the opening of the gala season.

I figured I’d enjoy getting to heaven a whole bunch more, sort of on the slant. I used the Leaning Tower of Pisa as my visual model. It unmistakably points heavenward, even though it cheats a bit on the angle.

True to form, the summer weather was filled with blistering hot humid summer days. The surprise for me was how they characteristically scurried by so quickly. Two conclusions went through my mind about that: one, I sincerely dreaded losing the final summer of my freelancing youth; the other, I was consumed with the great expectations of things yet to come.

My attitude about entering this new institution needed an adjustment. I desired the end, but didn’t much enjoy the prospects of the means to achieve that end. With the final snap of the lock on the third and fullest suitcase, Dad, Mom and myself, the Harris’s once little boy, climbed into the family’s unfashionably used car. Of course, Dad always drove.

I’m relieved, Colin. I was beginning to think that you were going to be the textbook example of Shaw’s quip about wasting youth on the young.

With a twist of his head to the back seat, the smirk on his face belied a deep pride of paternal ownership. He shifted the car into gear and resolutely navigated the course of my pilgrimage to Saint Clairvaux Provincial School of Theology. Feeling like a crusader from the middle ages, I had mounted my steed, raised my banner. My overriding driving hypothesis was pushing me headlong into the search for my imagined Holy Grail. Life’s road seemed like it was all green lights ahead.

The school was twelve dusty miles distance from my childhood home at 2415 Windsor Street, Dedbury. It could as well have been light-years away...perchance a parallel universe aligned side by side...awaiting the immersion of the once and former me...Colin P. Harris.

CHAPTER TWO

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I didn’t know we needed our surplice for the dawn prayers, some anonymous guilt-ridden voice was overheard remarking. The owner of that voice’s body raced two steps at a time up the dorm stairs to seize the white sheer blousy looking top.

OK, I’ll admit it, I’m the anonymous voice. Shoot, I’m allowed a simple mistake. I’m only a first year student, a freshman, third time ‘round, in the unending progression of steps up the educational ladder.

In this environment, theologian would technically be the proper term used. The context I now find myself in, this new life, would reasonably dictate that I behave obsequiously and use the proper terms.

Selfishly speaking, truth be told, theologian might be the more self-aggrandizing descriptive title. We first theologians especially latched onto it. By our own figuring, the word translated from the ancient Greek, as a God speaker. We loosely transliterated, of course, to elevate our own faux self-esteem. The atmosphere around here possessed a perfect mulch for growing giant-size egos.

I had just finished matriculating into theology this first week of early September. The leaves of the abundant trees surrounding our confines were just beginning to hype their brilliant colors, especially the maples. Tree leaves have a much more flamboyant way of proclaiming their advancing age relative to humans whose hair only has the one-variation…dirty white mixed with gravel gray.

Servicing theology students from my entire state and even a sprinkling from out-of-state, the school was housed in an old building on the far outskirts of Dedbury. Some of the locals identified us as, you boys from out in the hinterland when we made trips into town. Built over a hundred years prior, it had been the cozy confines for a small order of nuns who had emigrated from across the ocean.

Seeing their calling for the New World, they left their beloved Ireland. The newcomers pitched camp on this lonely hill several miles out from the county seat, an area which fondly reminded them of their own Old-World homeland. As the years went by, in appreciation of their presence, the generosity offered by many in the county made it possible to construct what came to be called, The Abbey.

Now, well over a hundred years later, this honorable building had become too large for this gracious order of religious women. The Abbey’s maintenance and mortgage had both grown too overwhelming to be financially managed. Due to the imbalance between the declining number of new members joining and the advancing number of aging women, the order of nuns negotiated a swap of properties with the Church. They vacated the Abbey and they relocated into an old closed retail store building on the edge of Dedbury's business district that the church had inherited from an estate.

Some adaptations were required at the Abbey, like obvious modifications to the toilet and shower facilities which required consideration of the male element. A five-story dormitory was erected conjoined to the old mansion-style building which was the original Abbey. The Abbey itself could well have been the Hollywood set used for the early Gothic horror motion pictures. It wouldn’t take much imagination to envision Bela Lugosi, as Dracula, eerily wandering through the darkened hallways.

Several rooms were converted into offices, classrooms and a faculty lounge. A cement-block-style building was added as a freestanding gym for the budding holy jocks. With a change of name, the formidable result presented a usable institution for the newly-intended inhabitants. The Abbey for immigrant nuns existed no longer.

Out of breath, with my surplice dangling over my arm, I spouted, Damn, that’s like climbing Mount Everest.

Some four-letter words are best checked at the seminary door when one enters these sacred walls, a tallish second theologian pompously pronounced. And reading the holy rule will help you come to grips with every detail of our formation as we live it here.

I was in mild shock that the banter was allowed in this space. Beyond that disconcerting feeling, my reason for remaining here was actually being placed in question.

Wow, I had barely stage-whispered the minor-league expletive. I’m in for a long four years if I can’t even mouth a homely four-letter word around this place.

The second-year theologian, Jared Blanchard, was likewise from Dedbury, (dead and buried, as we kids used to sneer). At 6'2" sporting a football player’s body in appearance, his actual life activities had never seen a moment’s action on the field between any goalposts. He left that to his sibling brothers.

As a self-proclaimed historian and imbued with of the typical sophomoric attitude, Jared had returned to this year’s lessons with the mission in mind to get all those newbies in line before any temptation would lead them astray. Any temptation would be hard to summon in such an inhibited location to say the very least.

Jared had a fertile mind which he credited to a lifelong practice of conjuring up the