The Homecoming
"Hello?", I answered.
"Mr. Allaire, please."
"Speaking."
It was a voice from the past. The brother, the kid brother of my best friend in grade school long ago in Manitoba. The big brother was now a "Mister" like me. The kid brother had become a "man" and was studying at Laval University, in Quebec City. After presentations, he came straight to the point: " I was told you have some children."
"Yes, a few."
"Well, I'm in charge of a coming edition of our student paper that will be on the family. Maurice [a Manitoban friend, living in Quebec City] said you might be willing to write something about the child…"
"OK. How long do you want it? When do you want it? What's your address?"
His voice expressed surprise: "You mean you agree?", he said with some disbelief. After all, he had not even begun to sell his idea.
"Yup."
Thanks poured forth. He gave me the needed information and we said "Good-bye".
Danielle had a inquiring look.
I answered it.
She would have liked more information about the kid brother. I couldn't give it. I had simply taken the order. Efficiency.
My wife is not very good in making short phone calls. She has empathy, compassion. Not me.
She invariably begins with "How are you?". One's self being about everybody's first preoccupation, she then finds it hard to cut short the flow of words telling her "how one is" in order to ask for the information she is seeking. My way makes things go faster but doesn't favour establishing new connections.
Also, I do not relish work. Really not. I suspect that a good part of the human race is susceptible to suffer from the same weakness, even if people will not easily admit it. After all, Garfield the cat gets much of his popularity from his indulgence in abject laziness. A second shortcoming partly balances the first: I thoughtlessly charge ahead. I say "OK."… as long as it is not group work. I weigh a project in a different compartment of the mind from the one that will suffer pulling it off. So the article was written and sent in time. Was it published? I just realise that I do not know. I never saw it and never heard from the fellow who asked for it.
But his question was a good one. What is a child? So went the answer:
* * *
A child in a family...
A child…
At first, he did not exist. And then he was there. That is the mysteriousness of childhood.
He did not exist. Not at all. He is a unique being, living off Nature's materials, melding elements that awaited him. But he is not the meeting of these materials nor the awakening of the elements. He is.
If he did not exist, where does he come from? The mind, life and person who will never be able to explain himself to himself, must come from the inner depths of Mystery, where He who is exists without ever having become. He who is without ever having become has accepted to overflow and to pour existence into this child. Which can only mean that He who is without ever having become is Love? For such is Love, to exist so intensively that one freely gives life to someone else out of pure generosity, just for the joy of giving.
There a child begins. The person who awakens is a product of the Person who Loves.
But that mystery is hidden in our world. Instead, we see a man who has looked with admiration and passion upon the woman he respects, whilst she has given herself to him to whom she is joined. In the ardour of their senses, they are carried on by the foolishness of the flesh, but in their loving minds, they plot the happiness of the little one whose name has taken precedence over their own. Thus, in a free adult exchange, a man and a woman accept to be overcome by the mystery of giving, the mystery of a total and reciprocal giving of self. They do not exploit one another. They disappear from their selves making way for the other, and are reborn in the eyes of the beholder in answer to the call of a new one. In other words, they are in love. And their love is deeper than their personal freedom. Their freedom commits them to serve their love. And the spiritual mystery of a love of burning flesh becomes a fact taking the form of life: a child.
A family...
Born of love, born into love; called to become love, possessed by love and giving love; such is a child. But he does not know it. Thus the family.
When he opens his eyes to see the world, a child knows not who he is. There, he sees eyes looking upon him. If the eyes are full of pride, the child learns that he is precious. If the eyes look upon him with tenderness, the child finds he is dear. If the eyes look upon him with joy, the child knows he is good. If the eyes look upon him with intensity, the child knows he is unique. With love? He knows he is someone.
An anonymous being becomes someone, because he receives a name as a gift from his parents.
An unformed heart becomes "my child": he is born into his most intimate substance, loving.
The rest of his story follows the varied swiftness and slowness contained in his nature. Having awakened him to his intimate mystery, his parents educate him to its understanding through the acquisition of words and language and of the sciences of the world, through the perception of his surroundings, and through the meeting of people and of God. They educate him into love by smiles and frowns, orders and incentives, advice and instigation. They shape the body called upon to serve the mind by teaching him to eat, walk, play and work.
This for a child to become a man, to come to Love, to live of love, to give forth love. Such is a child. Such is a family.
Each child is the mystery of love renewed. For his parents, each child causes their own rebirth into their own love and into Him who is Love.
The burden of a child is sometimes heavy. But through love, this burden is always light. When our burden presses upon us, always Jesus picks it up and carries the load with divine power.
* * *
With ten children, one can be considered a professional and no longer an amateur. A man of industry might be the correct expression. Which was in fact one of my jokes to help those who were too mystified to understand: "You are living in the pre-industrial age. As apprentices, you work to make one child, maybe two. And after toiling to develop your skills, you give up. We live in the industrial world, making good what we have learned."
Danielle said earnestly : "The five first ones are the most difficult. After them, things run smoothly."
This generated polite incredulity. But was she wrong? Of course, people who only read an occasional comic book cannot understand the enjoyment of those who read huge books of hundreds of pages. And yet, the true reading pleasure is best found at the expert level of reading. The same goes for skating and for work. Why couldn't it also be true of the family profession?
We had efficiently organised the entry of our tenth child in our family. The collective agreement at College did not yet allow for a week's paternity leave. (It is amusing to note that since this has been acquired, many men prefer not to avail themselves of it.) The school term was just beginning, and I had given an assignment to my students in order to be free to greet the baby. As for the twins and for François and Jean-Paul, Mrs. Simmons, our family helper had accepted to stay with us the five days Danielle would be in hospital and to come each day of the week during the following two or three weeks, to do the meals, care for the children and keep the house while the mother would be recovering and would be mainly taking care of the newborn.
Then the unexpected happened. Richard, already big, grew even more during the two weeks he was late in being born. Tenth child, he got to ten pounds and ten ounces before rupturing his amniotic sac. But he was now so big that his mother's uterus was extended to the limit and would not contract. There had to be a Caesarean section. Then Danielle got phlebitis in her left leg. In all, she was seventeen days in the hospital. All the while, the students had finished their special assignment and Mrs. Simmons heroically held her post, abandoning it only on weekends to be with her own family.
Yet this remained true: "Each child is a whole new mystery of love." Regardless of the Caesarean incident, the phlebitis hitch and an apparently endless stay in hospital, Richard was here. Richard was unique. And his mother was filled with happiness when she looked at him, when she had him in her arms and when she fed him. Of course, with her leg kept up till the blood clot dissolved, she could not do many things with Richard. Breast-feeding was a consolation and the need for nurses' help in handling him allowed many a joyful conversation with them.
After poetry came prose. The second part of truth would become acute: "The burden of a child is sometimes heavy."
Danielle came home to Christine (13 years old), Michel (11), Johanne (10), Claude (9), Philippe (7), Marie (5), Isabelle (5), François (4) and Jean-Paul (2), and also to her husband (37), a permanent child, as all men are. She had a scar from her Caesarean, a weakened leg because of her phlebitis, her reflexes and strength lessened after seventeen days of inaction and she carried lovingly her gigantic Richard.
"Mother!" "Mother!" "Mother!"
The call came from all sides. Mother had been absent more than three times the expected stay. Everyone had bravely endured her absence. But mother was now back. The clouds could dissolve. We could live again.
Luckily the father had said hello to his beloved wife at the hospital before leaving for home. Mrs. Simmons wouldn't get any personal attention till the next day. There was a short pause for everyone to admire the new baby and to put him to bed. Then things got rolling. Johanne showed a letter from her teacher inquiring when our daughter once again would do her homework.
Johanne innocently explained: "I had to help Claude and Philippe do their homework. I didn't have time to do mine."
So mother got to work. "Get your books and your exercise books, and let's get things done." Christine, in Secondary school, could do her own work, as could Michel and Johanne, in grades six and five of Primary school. But Claude, grade four, and Philippe, grade three, needed help. The twins had no homework. They were in kindergarten.
After the homework came supper. Then fifteen minutes of sleep and time for baby. Then baby during the night. And baby in the morning. Baby, five times per 24 hour period. Strength, zero. As for the father, he had papers to mark and courses to teach. Mrs. Simmons had done her best. She had been three weeks in our home while squeezing work at her own home on weekends. Now she had the flu. She would only come occasionally in the following weeks. So the bulk of the matter rested upon mother's terribly weak shoulders.
The mother felt fulfilled beyond capacity.
* * *
God first. The first Sunday after the homecoming, Richard was baptised. The baptism pushed a lot of people. It is our habit to have people move over instead having God and the newborn move over.
A baby is a miracle of power. So many people make way for a person who is quite useless in terms of efficiency and profit. This helps us understand why God chose that way to come and shake us up a bit in our world. It also helps us understand why it is fairly useless to count on God to make us attain practical goals. He transforms through love.
Thus Father Gilbert, a friend from long ago in Manitoba, who was now a monk at St. Benoît du Lac, had to be ready to come and baptise Richard at an unforeseen date. Father Gilbert had got the extraordinary permission for a monk to leave his monastery in order to admit a child into the life of God. It had taken him some courage to ask for the permission. Love of child is not a spontaneous reflex for a confirmed bachelor. His presence at our home allowed us to have the pleasure of Mass said on our kitchen table for all the family. And he indulged in the non-monastic privilege of watching television. He laughed at a TV commercial where monks were in divine ecstasy before the copying facility of a photocopier. "That's how people think we are," he mused.
Lison, Richard's Godmother, had just given birth to a lovely daughter named Myriam. Because of Danielle's prolonged stay, both mothers had been in hospital together. But Lison was still there. So what? She got leave for a few hours in order to be at her Godson's baptism. After which she went through the strange experience of re-entering hospital instead of going back home with her husband and children.
The ceremony was short, simple and heartfelt. What counted most was alive in our son's heart and soul.
* * *
As usual in our home, the previous newcomer in the family, Jean-Paul this time, instantly ceased to be the baby of the family. He did not lose a mother. He won a father. He was two years and eight days older than baby. He was now a big boy. And François lost the exclusive fatherly attention he no longer required. At four years old, François was master of the house each morning when the twins went to school, and remained ahead of his younger brothers in the afternoons by not having to go to bed.
It was time for Jean-Paul to accede to the family table… by rotation. There were only ten places at that table. Thus Marie, Isabelle, François and Jean-Paul took turns, a week at a time, to eat at a child's table. Since this was exceptional, it was deemed an honour. Of course, the time would come for a longer table. Without even considering another child, there were now ten children growing, outgrowing little tables. And someday, Richard himself would have to be admitted at the family table. That day was some way off, but we now had the experience of time passing. Our eldest daughter had even undergone her change into womanhood.
* * *
Danielle remembered the first loss of blood she had felt. Her mother had previously explained to her that some day the dams would break open. This was a time of great riches for a woman: the ability to give life. That day, Danielle had been proud. During the tender moments of our eldest daughter's pre-adolescence, Danielle tried to teach her the same pride. But adolescence had brought a marked changed in our daughter's temper. She oscillated from fury to gentleness. Still, we were fully confident that she understood and cared for the quality of her femininity.
* * *
The first weeks back home were tough; tough on Danielle, who had lost her strength at the hospital and couldn't manage to recuperate. Breast-feeding Richard five times a day, feeding, dressing (the incessant washes) and keeping company to the other ten (dad included) were keeping her down. She found it depressing to know that the household reflected her own state of mind. Everybody's moroseness mirrored her own.
These were not our first hard times. All human undertakings go through rough times and impossible moments. But people manage through. We were no longer at an age easily obsessed by immature doubts about a chosen vocation and wistfully looking elsewhere for Paradise. When times are rough, the thing to do is to carry on. That is life's recipe.
When times are hard, we would find strength and permanence in the mystery uniting us, the mystery of fusion: to become one anew. Genesis has taught this long ago: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh." Which was confirmed by Christ when he commented: "So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder."
But that is exactly where it now hurt. The Caesarean interfered in the ways of our union. It would no longer be enough to have a few weeks of pre-nuptial engagement, loving but putting off the explosion of joy. The usual breast-feeding infertility had a very low risk factor and allowing for a wife's recuperation time. Now the medical corps was telling us that our future children were enemies to ourselves and our present children. After a Caesarean, each new pregnancy would be a death threat for the mother and the child she carried. "Irresponsible" parents (the expression was never used but it best summarised the medical discourse) could at best have a maximum of three Caesarians. Better to have none. We had already used up one. Even in our folly, we should be sufficiently mindful to keep the third one for times of menopause when irregular menses make it possible to have an accident. Wherever we wished to place the second Caesarean, the medical command was clear: "No pregnancy whatever before one year." One risk-free year, not even the low risk factor of the breast-feeding period.
How about contraception? No. "What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder." Dishonesty had no place in our union. We would not break our fusion. Contraception was not something bad because God said so. God said so because it was bad. God is love and has made us into his image. After which, he insists that we remain faithful to love.
What then? Must we forgo the tenderness of fusion, the power of union. Would this become our cross?
God is our life. But we were consecrated by God in a special way of giving: the oneness of two persons in one flesh. He put the union of the spouses in that fusion. This is so true that his Church recognises the nullity of a marriage that has not been consummated, does not recognise the possibility of a marriage where the fusion is impossible, and yet recognises the indissolubility of a marriage where the fusion is made though fertility is rendered impossible by nature.
Therefore, the truth itself of conjugal union ingrains the strengthening of the spouses in the fusion of their bodies, hearts and minds united into one. This was not the invention of unstable minds and of deranged senses. And in our time of trouble, we had to go through a serious rending.
Not only were our bodies, hearts and minds put on hold, on a very long hold, but we also had to face an uncertain future. Would we be reasonable, medically correct? Would we be medically unreasonable and risk the improbable put possible situation of having ten or eleven orphans on their mother's side staying with a most certainly distraught father? Could we put in balance the joys of the spouses and the menacing death of an adventure into fertility?
The question was one year ahead. But the difficulty was present now. Danielle had gone through rough times. But this was the first time she had the impression of going through them cut off from her beloved. They were divorced by their union itself. Their love constituted their danger. The truth of their love showered them with death threats.
* * *
The coffee lounge at college (Cegep) is a place to relax, a non-alcoholic "bar" where everyone goes to unwind, to chat a bit, to talk nonsense after discharging his responsibilities. Yesterday's truths mix with today's rumours and become the untruths of tomorrow. Some linger on, others slip in between classes. During elections, the talk is about politics, during recession about economy, during negotiations about salaries and job description, during winter about snowstorms, then occasionally about cars, rarely about women (in a mixed environment), occasionally about students and of course about local management.
The support staff comes there at its allotted pauses and some teachers will often hang around much longer. Administrators dutifully make short visits in times of peace and abstain from showing up in times of crisis.
A colleague from the Arts Department hails me: "Hey, Georges, I saw you on television last evening." Excusing himself for the indiscretion, he explains: "I was going through the channels."
"I hope it was fun," I said defensively.
"You had a touch of originality," he answered in a non-committal manner. "Many people tuning in?"
"My wife." Which brings an end to an encounter neither wishes to push further.
The community television was just beginning when I offered a personnel project. The lone shoddy camera operated by a part-time technician roughly managed to put me on the local TV screens where some occasional onlooker might happen upon me. On one unfortunate occasion, I kept appearing in various modes of green, blue, yellow and red. How could any but a few loyal friends have endured through the explanation that the Bible cannot be the foundation of the faith in Jesus, since it has brought division amongst the believers through a diversity of interpretations all sincere?
The year before, the Parish Pastoral Committee of Ste-Anne de La Pocati re had done the numbers game and counted its living, its wounded and its dead. It had mandated a sociological study of its territory. One of its findings was the evident ignorance and confusion of people of Catholic persuasion towards Catholic doctrine, which had always been a frustrating experience for me. I found it absurd for people to claim to be Catholics whilst not knowing what it meant. Many people believe in God, without being Catholics. Many people believe in Jesus, without being Catholics. Many people believe in the love of neighbour, without being Catholics. Many people go to church, without knowing what it means. So what is it to be a Catholic? How can one be a Catholic, or not be a Catholic, without knowing or remembering what it means?
During my first year at college, where nearly everyone was at least nominally Catholic, there had been a pastoral survey and I had suggested that one useful activity would be to give a clear and distinct presentation of Catholicism. The suggestion had not been retained. It mustn't have been considered relevant.
At the time of the Vatican II Council and for some years thereafter, the national and international press had taken a notable interest in religious matters. Previously aloof, indifferent, sometimes hostile towards anything Catholic, it suddenly began courting the Catholic intellectuals, giving publicity to various feelers about change in Catholic morality and practice. A few people remembered the Judas kiss; most Catholics got the happy feeling that their religion was finally becoming fashionable and followed the fashion.
But what religion was that? Few could know. Learning "by rote" had been thrown out of the classrooms by the pedagogical experts of the local churches and yesteryear's language had been replaced by a new one whose relation to the previous language was not directly perceptible. Thus many parents had a feeling of ineptitude in transmitting to their children the faith they themselves had learned and sometimes they even felt obliged to relearn their own faith.
Challenge to their faith was everywhere but answers never came, in order to be respectful towards freedom of opinion. The uncriticized criticism often gave the feeling that dissidence had the monopoly on intelligence and yesteryears' beliefs the monopoly of stupidity. Practically, believing was becoming sentiment devoid of brains and thinking a liberation from this sentiment. And the churches were rapidly becoming empty.
We had no objection that people freely chose to remain faithful to the teachings of their fathers or chose not to. But how could people be free to choose a country if they knew not its borders?
The problem had been measured, numbered. Jacques, a colleague of the Department of Philosophy, was on the Parish Pastoral Committee (the PPC) and shared our concern for an honest presentation of the Catholic faith. While chatting, I once again precipitously charged ahead.
"How about if I gave a weekly series on the subject of our faith, on the community TV. It could be called: The Faith of Our Fathers."
He liked the idea. Very much. And the idea was rapidly presented to the PPC.
I too liked the idea. But I disliked putting it into practice. It meant work. So I entered conditions which couldn't be met.
"I will not answer to a board of censors. If people don't like the idea or the way I do it, all they have to do is say so and I'll quit right away. I am not going waste time in meetings."
Jacques knew me. He had no qualms and promised me the moon if need be. I was not counting on him to free me from the commitment. I was counting on the PPC. But what couldn't happen did: the committee accepted the idea without a hitch.
That is how my Arts colleague had haphazardly listened in to part of one of my "sermons". He hadn't been enthralled, only curious, and did not debate it. Religion was not in fashion.
Nobody ever measured the audience and I never got the impression that there was much to measure. Yet, The Faith of Our Fathers helped shed some light on some people's problems.
The goal was to understand as best we could what Christ taught through his Church. It was not a matter of believing what we understood but of understanding what we believed. If God is the Whole Truth, then we can't expect to stuff all of him into our head. But we have try to put our head inside this Truth. We wouldn't understand everything. But we would do our best to understand what God told us about himself and about ourselves. No difficulty could endanger our trust (our faith). As Cardinal Newman said: "A thousand difficulties do not make a single doubt." The proof of this is also found in other areas of expertise. A student does not doubt the truths presented by his science teacher just because he finds them hard to understand. If God is the expert on his own self, our difficulties understanding this subject should not be reasons of doubt. They only served to show that there is more of him than the mind can hold. But, if there is more of him than our minds can hold, then our mind should certainly fill up with divine truth as much as possible.
This was the challenge, and right from the start a heartfelt cry sought an answer of the mind. An elderly woman had suffered terribly from the death of a daughter, struck down by cancer in her early twenties. The mother's suffering was aggravated by an idea she got I know not where. "Do you believe, she said, that my little girl and I will recognise each other in Heaven? Some people say that God is so vast that we are only wisps of straw before him. We will be nothing before him. And I would so much like to see my daughter again. What do you think?"
Though Danielle and I gave her a spontaneous reassurance, it was The Faith of Our Fathers that spelled out the answer to her question. Briefly, it came to this: God is evidently beyond all our perceptions, a bit like a father is taller, more knowledgeable and brighter (so we hope) that his small child. But that is just the point. God is an infinite Father full of love. Therefore, he uses his infinite power to love us infinitely more that we can ourselves love. He gives us this love so that we can love him the more and also love others and ourselves. The great difference in our ties with others between now and in Heaven is our greater ability to know and love them in Heaven, since we will know them and love them directly through with God's own love.
Her eyes moist with gratitude, the elderly woman told Danielle: "Your husband has answered my question."
Another colleague in Philosophy, who was quite clever, hit me with this remark: "I personally like the God of the New Testament. But I dislike the God of the Old Testament." This became the "Two Gods in the Bible" question.
I enjoyed using my wits to criticise in vetting out such questions. I allowed myself a free hand to push the difficulties to the limit, before answering them, rather than to try to stash them uneasily somewhere. I tried to be the best "devil's advocate" there was. Danielle lovingly listened to the video recording of each of my broadcasts. Such is love. That week, I explained how the God of the Old Testament seems to be a totally different God from the one in the New Testament. Of course, if this were true, then Jesus must be a damned liar, a charlatan, since he explicitly treated both as the same. After listening for a while, Danielle thought: "This time, you won't get away with it."
Thus, God had planned the gradual extermination of the peoples in the Promised Land so that the land could be handed intact to the Hebrews much the same way Adolph Hitler wanted to gradually exterminate the Slavs in favour of pure German immigrants, had not our bombs and armies prevented him from doing so. God proved also to be fanatically intolerant in religious matters, ordering the Hebrews to stone to death anyone who wanted to switch to another religion, even if that person were a brother, a sister, a spouse, one's child, or one's dearest friend. This didn't stand well with the God of love. Then one had to kill adulterers, homosexuals, lesbians and anyone having incest or sex with animals. On the other hand, even if Jesus had asked the adulterous wife to sin no more, he had saved her from stoning and said he did not condemn her.
While exploring both the Old and the New Testament, I felt the sense of incompatibility between their "two gods". The problem was real. Without the certitude of the truth of Christ's words, of the only witness who knew first-hand what is going on inside God, one could intellectually make a good case based on the documents alone that there certainly are two gods in the Bible and that Christ was only an ingenious man who played upon popular beliefs to redirect the Jewish phenomenon.
But we know that Jesus is not a fibber, because God is not a liar. There is only one God in the Bible, the same God for the Old and the New Testament. Therefore, if "a thousand difficulties do not make a single doubt", that difficulty did not make a doubt. Of course, there remained the challenge for the mind to make sense of it all. Was the paradox comprehensible?
Of course. God is always the same, but people are not always in the same relation towards him. Those who do not follow his directions of love find him in their way, whilst those who respect those directions find in him a benefactor. Is he not Our Father? Everyone has known father's justified wrath and a father's smile. The two images are incompatible and yet are of the same person. The opposition stems from opposite attitudes before him.
The story of Abraham reveals the decay of human mores at the time of God's intervention to build himself a people in the Old Testament. God first proved his own divinity to Abraham by giving him a child, Isaac, even though Sarah, his wife, was sterile. God is the master of life. If he gives life where it cannot naturally appear, then he has signalled his presence. Then God asked Abraham to slay his child. We are so used to the story that it seems normal to us. Yet, wouldn't we be startled if God asked us to kill one of our children? The God of life is not a death-mongering god.
The astonishing point, which is the key to our question, is Abraham's lack of surprise. He isn't happy to be asked by God to kill his son. He is even saddened. But he finds it normal. Why? Because God is acting like an ordinary god. The gods of the land were the gods of human sacrifice. They were in fact devils. They stood at the infinite opposite of a New Testament where God dies (and resurrects) to save the people he loves. Their world was a world where the gods loved to have human beings sacrificed to them.
Abraham couldn't be surprised that God was a god. In fact, the opposite might have surprised him. However, when he was bringing down his arm to slaughter his child, God stopped him and said something that meant: "Hold it. I see you recognise me as a god. Know you now that I am not a god like the others. I am God and I do not tolerate the killing of the innocent."
Understandably, God cut down the murderous peoples and used force to reshape a people born in violence. He forced them to act as if they were gentle till the day came when he could tell them: " I am gentle and lowly in heart".
God had entered a brothel, destroyed the devils and devil-worshippers, and obliged those people who could to be chaste till the day they discovered the delight of love. — Those are the two epochs in the Bible.
"OK," Danielle said. "You did it again."
But, most important, my colleague took home an audiocassette of the broadcast. The next day he said: "All right. You made your point."
One can't possibly take interest in the Catholic Church today without noticing how much its sexual ethics don't follow the stream. But Church-people who take notice do not necessarily speak on the issue. It is easier to go down-stream.
When, perchance, one happens upon Christ's views on love and sex taught by his Church, a dissonance is often voiced: "The Pope (or the parish priest) doesn't know what he's talking about. It's evident since he is not married." The devil's advocate is quite proud of this one. That is why he has to be confronted by the faith of our fathers.
The first answer is that the priest is simply following in the footsteps of his role-model, Jesus Christ, who was himself a bachelor and who promulgated a major law of sex that is still hard to swallow: "Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?" He answered, "Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder." … And I say to you: "Whoever divorces his wife, save for unlawful union, and marries another, commits adultery." (Mt 19, 3-9).
Since Jesus also told an adulterous woman to sin no more, he must have here meant that, in his opinion, all divorce is sinful.
The devil's advocate noted that this simply meant that Jesus was as incompetent in these matters as are today's priests. The faithful could not follow the devil to that conclusion, but had to recognise there is a difficulty common to priest and Christ that has to be answered.
Insight into human experience offers two answers. First, a priest, as Christ himself, is totally given to God and to people and is therefore not tied to a given woman. Sexually speaking, this implies that he is castrated for everyone (a "eunuch" says the Gospel). Socially speaking, this means that he has to stomach everybody. Sexually speaking, married people are the same except for one person: giving oneself to a person in particular castrates one (makes one a eunuch) for everybody else. Marital life rapidly evidences that this fidelity is as hard to bear as the priest's fidelity. Sexual gratification with the spouse is quite rapidly sated. Then man's roving imagination comes back. And one has to say "no" to it as much as before.
Since priests and married persons both experience the fight for sexual fidelity, a priest can talk about it as well as anyone.
The devil's advocate quickly reminds us that marriage is not only sex, the proof being the many people who suffer from their marital status. For marriage implies enduring a person who may not be readily endurable. But that is exactly what a priest must endure every day. Only, he does not have only one person, man or woman, to endure. He must suffer everybody. Socially speaking, he is well served in abuse endurance and can therefore lecture others out of experience.
But the great advantage for a priest to speak on marital love comes from something which is his own: he is a dispenser of the sacrament of confession. He meets people when they stop fibbing about themselves and recognise their own frailty, their failings, their treason. Deep in their heart, they open up to truth and ask God, through a priest, to give them forgiveness and to renew their power of love. Thus, when a priest is true to his priesthood, when he is faithful to Jesus, he witnesses the fissures of love in human hearts and is in the best position to tell people the difference between sickly love and healthy love. — That broadcast of The Faith of Our Fathers reassured the parish priest who had accepted the PPC sponsorship of my uncensored broadcasts. They were allowed to continue during the full fifteen weeks of the season. So we went through heaven and hell, Mass, Christ's "egotistical" miracles, his divinity, the Virgin Mary, the historical nature of the Church and others.
At home, The Faith of Our Fathers was not a tremendous success. After a minute of excitement seeing father on television, the younger children who looked at television got bored and started jabbering, which irked my feelings and forced me to leave the room. As for the older children, they couldn't take a liking to a program that their eldest found verily unpleasant.
* * *
My great friend, G.K. Chesterton, that I got to know only through books, jokingly mentioned that his going to Mass confirmed the gospel truth that "faith moves mountains". He was huge. And before entering the Catholic Church, even whilst an Anglican, he rarely went to church. When he became convinced that Jesus, God, had really granted its mission to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church (that is the Roman Catholic Church), the huge man would get up in the morning (there was no evening Mass at that time) and move himself towards his Creator hidden under the form of bread and wine. It wasn't, as the saying goes, "the mountain coming to Mohammed!" It was Gilbert Keith Chesterton coming to God.
Considering the fact (aren't we all scientifically inclined?) that thousands, nay millions, of people go at least once a week to see a man raise bread and wine and distribute this tasteless bread around must surely seem strange. It might be understandable only cretins went there, as some believe. But, in fact, all kinds of people go there. There are scientists, sportsmen, artists, people of various careers, technicians, doctors, lawyers, computer experts, and there are parents and children, some people of exquisite beauty and others more common. In other words, almost anyone and everyone can be found there. That many do not go there isn't strange: that's banal. The stupendous event is that there is always someone there and sometimes many. It is something like a miracle. Could it be a natural miracle, such as having gone to the moon for the first time, of having been the first to see a horse, or of having blown up the first atom-bomb? Yet, there is nothing apparently wonderful in a cult about bread and wine. That this practice could had come down through time might convict nature of silliness.
Significantly, those who are satisfied with a "natural" explanation of the phenomenon hardly ever feel any attraction towards it and, if they were ever there, they end up leaving. Those who remain are the supernaturalised.
Amongst those who go to Mass, some like Mass, its atmosphere, the feeling of God's presence, the meaning of liturgy and what not. The certainty of Jesus' presence in the consecrated host gives Danielle great comfort. As for myself, I must confess that the feeling is flat. As with many who are conversant with this experience, I generally find Mass to be utterly boring. But there is nothing wrong in that. Mass is the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus who has come to us for our salvation… if we accept him. Since Christ was not particularly comfortable on the cross, it is appropriate that some Christians are uncomfortable at Mass. And since Christ conquered death through his resurrection, it is also normal that other Christians get comfort out of Mass.
Anyway, who says we should feel good at Mass? The point is that Jesus has fixed that appointment with us and that it would be wiser for us to be there. As Jesus answered to the invitation he got for his first Mass in flesh and blood: "Not my will, but yours."
Thus when a celebrant cleans his nose with his finger during mass and then gives communion to people, when the singing is hesitant or out of tune, when a sermon is uninspiring and boring, when time slowly inches on, I answer to the child who is mentioning it, "If Jesus can endure it, we can also."
The complete answer should be: "If Jesus can endure us with our distractions and our impatience, good for us." For the distraction we find in others' actions is mainly the distraction we have in our own prayers.
So Mass is, for me as for other people, generally boring. Which is not a sin.
But it was sufficiently evident to send shivers amongst liturgical specialists during the silly sequels after the Vatican II Council. Many then tried innovations geared not at bringing Christ closer to the people who prayed in the Church but at making liturgy itself more "interesting" so that those who did not come to church would feel the urge to come. God's cabaret, the faithful's assembly, a Sunday dope trip. The results were foreseeable: many who were used to an intimate prayer were shocked and disgruntled and those who preferred cabarets found the local bar still had the better atmosphere. Church-going dropped dramatically. It did not disappear altogether. The miracle persisted.
In that context, our parish of Ste-Anne de La Pocati re was an oasis of peace. Liturgical changes which were often nonsensical elsewhere were here brought about with great respect. Prayer, and not seduction, remained the priority for the persons in charge of liturgy.
As parents, we brought our children to Mass. During the trusting period of their younger years, the only challenge was for ourselves to want to go. And we did. But when suddenly an adolescent child placed a mirror between himself and the world, the trust (which is the nature of faith) has its thirty days in the desert.
In order to avoid a fight, a compromise was struck. Sunday Mass was still a must, but our eldest daughter could chose the Mass she preferred. It generally happened to be a Mass other than the ones to which father or mother went.
Danielle tried to explain at length to her resigned listener that no one can go through the snares and pitfalls of life with success without the presence of God. And The Faith of Our Fathers had tried to make the point concerning Mass.
Mass wasn't invented to seduce people towards God. That's the silliness of the idea of making it into a tourist attraction. Mass expresses our faith in God, in Jesus Christ. If we do not first believe that Jesus Christ is God and that his body, his soul and his divinity are that which appear to us as consecrated bread and wine, then it is loony to go to Mass. At best, it is a social gathering and there are far more interesting social gatherings than that one. It is not only loony, it is a false representation.
Mass only makes sense as a lovers' complicity. Lovers "sacramentalise" a place, a jewel, an expression, a song, or whatever becomes the mark of their commitment. For everybody else, that whatever has no sense, is nonsense. For them, it is a sign, a proof of their love. And so God has chosen bread and wine as the sign of complicity of his presence to us. He has even entered into this sign. He has put both his death and his resurrection into it and gives us his sanctity by it.
It is trust, faith, that leads someone to Mass and not Mass that brings someone to faith. "Mass is boring"? That's not the point. Instead the point is: Can our faith in God admit the fantasy that gives proof of it?
The broadcast was over. Our daughter briskly stated her opinion: "You're right. Mass is boring."
* * *
The Faith of Our Fathers caught the attention of someone outside our group of friends: the local evangelical preacher I humorously termed "my competitor", even though I didn't listen to his broadcasts. He was also on community television. He was sure I was the Catholic clergy's answer to him. I was flattered by the importance he accorded me, though he and I were in fact both largely unnoticed by the clergy, and I regretted that I could not confirm his importance towards me.
The Faith of Our Fathers caught the attention "higher up" from within. A diocesan senior official became irritated that I had dared confirm the Vatican II teaching that evil and death come not from God but from the sin of Adam and Eve. He insisted that one had to interpret Vatican II correctly and that, in the new Church, such inanities could not be proffered. He saw to it that The Faith of Our Fathers did not come back after Christmas. In a way, I was glad. I do not relish work. As for the point of Modernism I lacked, the highest diocesan authority privately conceded to a friend, later, that the Church did in fact teach what I had dared to say.
* * *
I knew a man a few years my elder. His daughter was in Secondary school, grade four. He was speaking with favour about his daughter's boy friend, who was in Secondary school, grade five. This made me shiver. One doesn't contradict an elder's way of managing his own life, especially when the fellow is but an acquaintance. But it doesn't mean one can't think of one's own life.
How can we train a child, an adolescent, to face up to the onslaught of love? The mad passions will hit him head on. They have the power to shake him up, to make him feverish, to send him to his own destruction and to the destruction of the people he loves. How do we make him (or "her", evidently) understand that the alleys of joy are in fact an obstacle course? How can one become the unconditional and pitiless ally of one's child instead of a charming and understanding accomplice in his demolition?
During our stay in Manitoba, some years back, while our eldest daughter was our only child, and still a baby, a couple, who were our friends, told us about some parents who gave contraceptives to their daughters. We would certainly never do that. Love isn't learned by way of prostitution.
"Prostitution" was an overstatement? No. Prostitution is the exchange of one's intimacy of life for a fleeting profit. The amorous encounters of young people are not a business transaction as explicit as the professional tricks proposed on city sidewalks or by escort agencies. But, in the strictest fact, they trade the intimacy of life for a moment of tenderness. The feverish feeling may block the mind. Imagination builds a paradise. One is "in love". Love, endless love. But, honestly, the partners "in love" know that their inloveness only hopes for an endlessness and has only proposed love. In fact, they have not married; they have not given each other up for ever. They know that they cannot do that right away, that are not ready for that. So, deep down, they know that they are picking pleasures of love, and leaving the matter of loving for an indefinite future.
A boy friend. What did it mean? A pal? An acquaintance? Someone with whom to chat and plays games? He may have been something of all that. But, as girls who claim to be knowledgeable will tell you: "Finally, all boys end up by thinking of THAT." It's not absolutely true. But it is true that tender patting ends up there. The boys know it. The girls learn it.
Once, in a mixed class, I asserted: "Girls say that boys have only THAT in their mind. But that's because you girls have THAT in your body." The boys immediately relaxed, freed of a guilt-trip they are so often taken on. These fellows were not all kinky, but they were all boys. Many could hold back their passion, but few could rein their passion if it was toyed with. A boy friend can't easily remain a pal if his girl goes after her take of tenderness. And a boy friend cannot love for real if self-restraint is not asked of him. Without self-restraint, he profits of the given pleasure at the expense of the girl who provokes it. The boy mayn't say as much. Because he also is feverish and in love. But that doesn't mean that he doesn't know it.
In fact, experienced girls are precisely those devoid of true experience. They do not know a tenderness that comes from the heart rather than the senses. They do not know the tenderness of love. One experience contradicts the contrary and it is hard to find what has been lost.
Therefore, how does one help a daughter — or a son — on the path to life when soft grass hides quicksand and pointed rocks?
Danielle and I both had good memories of our parents and appreciated their sacrifices for us as we now tried to do the same for our own children. But our last memories of our parents' "authority" necessarily had some measure of conflict. And the very last conflicts remembered were those when we were finally right, after having gone beyond adolescence into adulthood. The numerous times when our parents were fortunately right were lost into the distant past of our youth, where we lacked of judgement and abounded in irresponsibility. This being the fact for any new parent, what parent would want to resemble his own parents in the face of adolescence? What parent wants to take the same apparent outrageous severity that lingers in our own last memory? How can one accept to seem unloving to a child who, for years, has filled one's heart?
Danielle was gifted with firmness. I was gifted with benevolence. But Danielle profited from experience: the experience of a best friend for bad experience, and her own experience for good experience.
Her best friend had fallen in love with a college boy. She had leapt into his arms and had simultaneously awakened the fellow's desires. He wanted her. And she wouldn't have the strength to say no. But in those days, love had roots. Troubled by the contradiction of loving this girl and yet desiring her, the young man asked the advice of his spiritual director who was a Jesuit. The spiritual director helped his confidante to be true to his conscience. The boy knew he could not commit himself at the time towards the girl of whom he was enamoured and he knew that to sate his passion in her would be selfish and destroy both of them. So, accepting a paradox understood only by those who have gone through trials of love, boy and girl decided to break up because they loved each other.
Unfortunately, the boy found consolation in between the legs of the class vamp, a girl who had forgone the idea of love. Danielle's girl friend was so racked by the breakup and the following faithlessness that Danielle feared she might commit suicide. So Danielle stuck with her during through the whole ordeal till her friend got a firmer grip upon life.
As for herself, Danielle had stayed clear of the trap of a precocious and sterile love. When her man came into her life, she was ready to give herself in entirety, but only when she was convinced that their mutual gift was true and when they had both entered into the covenant of commitment. This meant giving brakes to a meteor that had very little. Her man had a clear mind — which was appreciable — but he wasn't any stronger than the common individual of his gender — which is quite weak. The strength of a man is his woman. So Danielle had kept the brakes on till the day of mutual giving, the day of sublime consummation.
How she now wished that her own daughters followed the path of love rather than the one of a dying femininity. There should be no loverboys for her daughters. That was for sure.
Georges' shyness had kept him away from the girls and Danielle's strength had kept him in line with love. Understanding his wife was right, he could only recognise the validity of her policy. He felt as if he was becoming the villain in the usual coming-of-age movie, where parents are always emphatically wrong. But this was real life and not the movies. So there would be no dates till their eldest daughter turned sixteen. And even then it should remain something exceptional.
The eldest daughter had felt, from the start, that bringing a boy home was out of question. Also, the family timetable, getting up at 6:30 and going to bed at 9:00 in the evening left very little time to slip in dates…
* * *
"I've been thinking about my summer job," I told Danielle.
A summer job? Everyone knows that teachers do not work during the summer, that they have the longest vacations of all. And amongst teachers, those who teach in a Cegep (junior college) are the fattest ducks around. They finish the winter session, exams and corrections, during the month of May, a month earlier than their counterparts in Primary and Secondary school, and begin their autumn session only towards the end of August, one week before Primary and Secondary school. Theoretically, they are at their post till mid-June and come back in mid-August. But that availability is loose enough to say that they have in fact three months of holidays instead of two, not counting Christmas holidays and the occasional breaks during the school year. University teachers ("professors", they like to be called), end their winter session in April, a month earlier than the college teachers, but the universities expect their teachers to produce some kind of measurable activity in the remainder of the time before their two months vacations. As a professor once joked: "After the winter session, someone hides something, and you search for it the remainder of the time. It's called research…"
That fellow had a right to his jokes, because he had really found something. He had developed a technique of auditory discernment that helped youngsters (and older students) to identify the various instruments and sounds in a musical piece. In short, he had taught the deaf to hear in an area where deafness isn't befitting. He who does, may laugh. Otherwise, research has an air of solemnity.
So college teachers have the longest vacations amongst teachers and teachers have the longest vacations in a country's work force. So other people can't resist telling us with an undertone of envy: "You're on holidays again? My, teachers never work."
If you can't beat them, join them. I sometimes reply: "Yes, were unfortunately on holidays. You can't imagine how hard it is for us to have such long vacations. Just think. After all that inaction, we have to go back to work, having lost our working habits. We have to start from scratch. You should consider yourselves lucky to have shorter vacations that allow you to keep in working shape. Our vacations are very hard on us."
The other person keeps a frozen smile. Then, in a last envious move, offers to have our vacations shortened. This I decline in the name of professional martyrdom.
Another reply I use: "Yes, students have left. We can finally get down to work."
Work? Yes, writing.
The school year leaves little time for writing. There's teaching to be done. And writing doesn't put the bread on the table, especially a reasonably large table. So college vacations are the best time to put facts and ideas in order and shoot them on paper, whatever may come out of these.
Oddly enough, from the start, a personal rumination about social responsibility, The Given Hand (Tendre la main), had found a publisher… though not a great public. I felt I had it made, and used three summers to write a novel called The Weirdo (Le concombre): a young priest, working in his parish, is also given the task to teach a religion class in a nearby junior college. What a "weirdo", teaching oldies to a generation of young people recently freed from old time darkness. Only my wife had applauded. I had got a batch of rejection slips and I finally dropped the manuscript in the bottom of some forgotten drawer. Since my bread was buttered by my teaching, the ups and downs, mainly downs, of my writing had no effect on the survival of family or effort. So I persevered.
The following summers, I put my philosophical ideas in order after the shock between the teaching I had got at Laval University, in Quebec City and in Fribourg, Switzerland. The Faculty of Philosophy at Laval recognised part of the study I had done during my stay in Fribourg, which allowed me to finish my Ph. D. at Laval. This meant writing a thesis, and I would study the Philosophy of Revolution in light of the writings of Charles De Koninck, the quasi-founder of that Laval Faculty of Philosophy. Some three hundred pages later, I was satisfied with my work, but the thesis director was hesitant. So the thesis lay motionless in his mind.
The present summer was free.
"I'd like to write our story," I told Danielle.
"Our story?"
"Yes. The story of our adventure of having ten children."
"Why? Nobody's interested in that. Hardly anybody has any children anymore."
"That's just the point. People no longer know what children are. Our story is banal, ordinary. But our times are extraordinary. In these times, our story is extraordinary. You and I know that we are living the simple life. But people no longer live this way."
"People no longer live this way because they don't want to," Danielle stated evidently. "Therefore they won't be interested in our story."
"Most will not be interested. But I'm not thinking of them. I'm thinking of those who still have a few children and who feel isolated and fingered. I am also thinking of those who are unable to want a child because they simply do not know what a child is nor what their mutual love is all about. They need a chance to know this in order to be able to want it. Also, they should be allowed to say: "We're not wacky like the Allaires. We don't want TEN (!) children. We only want a fourth or a third or even a second child." They will then feel that their choice is legitimate. And they'll be given a chance to love."
As I have said previously, I thoughtlessly charge ahead and later suffer the consequences. In our unified flesh, I'm the crazy and Danielle is the heroine. She knows what's awaiting us at the end of my brain-waves. So she formulates the problems before accepting to live through them.
"I do not feel like having our neighbours know everything that is going on in our household," said she. "Our private life is our own and not public property. Our children have the right to grow up in peace. They'll face the world when they'll be armed and ready for it and able to make their own choices."
I laughed at her fears. "There is no chance for our story to be published in Quebec. It can catch only a minimal readership. A book isn't printed at only two or three hundred copies. The Weirdo proved that. But there is the United States. With a population of over two hundred million people, a micro-market can be three thousand. And a book can be published at three thousand copies. I'll write our story in English. That's the advantage of being born in Manitoba: bilingualism."
Danielle was reassured. The Americans were another people, of another language, from a far away place that wouldn't bother us. Also, the book was not yet written nor a publisher found. Finally, it was just a long shot in time, space and culture, and the manuscript might prove to be a good family souvenir like family photo albums. So, why not?
Writing an autobiography at 38 seems pretentious? Maybe. But showing off was neither my goal nor my point. Through chance, God got me to know a person of rare gentleness and correct manners. A gentleman in the true sense.
Sheldon Vanauken, Van for his friends, had written an exceptional love story. A Severe Mercy tells the story of the inloveness that united Van and Davy excluding all encroachment, even that of children. Then these Pagans found Jesus Christ in an Anglican environment. Van's meeting with God slipped into a certain indolence whereas Davy entered deeply into God's demanding love. Soon Van was feeling the uneasiness of a love triangle. It had nothing to do with the loving Trinity in whom the Father and the Son are fused into the Spirit of Love. Instead, he felt something like a love of three persons tormented by the spirit of jealousy. Witnessing her husband's pain and misunderstanding, Davy offered her life to Christ in exchange for the conversion of the man she loved. The offer was accepted and Davy died a year later at the end of a degenerative illness. This slow death allowed both spouses to be dearly reunited in the love of Christ. C.S. Lewis, a personal friend, helped Van understand how God had dealt him "a severe mercy". Van understood and accepted it. End of book.
Having read the book, I sent a few notes to the author, who answered with such kindliness that we are still writing. At that time, Van was undergoing serious doubts about the Christian authenticity of the Anglican Church. It is not enough to know that Jesus is God. If he is God, his opinion must surely count. We must be ready to dial the correct phone number he gives us. And Anglicanism seemed to be veering more and more in line with the spirit of the times rather than the Spirit for all times. Van recalled Chesterton's observation: "We do not need a Church that changes with the world, but a Church that changes the world." During more than two years, we wrote to each other letters than ran from four to eight tightly typed pages. At the end, Van, who had also been getting insights elsewhere, finally recognised the divine railing of the papacy as the distinct mark of those who have insured the fidelity to Christ's teaching all along history. After the understanding, there was need for the willing. Van's ties with the Anglican community were very tight. Once again, he was confronted by a love triangle comprising himself, God and another human spouse, his parish. But, this time there was no need for a dramatic intervention in his life. It was August 15, during a postal strike, that I got a phone call. — On August 15, the Church feasts the Assumption of Mary into heaven with her body and soul. That event has a historical basis. We know where Peter was interred, but the early Christians never spoke of the Holy Virgin's tomb. The event is not mentioned in the New Testament. But the New Testament is only a part of the authentic witness of the life of Christ. The Church carries the full witness. Thus, in 1950, Pope Pius XII dogmatically recognised the absolute fact of the Assumption of Mary, which had always been honoured by Christians. Could there be a better Church feast?
Van was calling to tell me he had just been received into the Catholic Church. Whilst the church pews were being vacated by many, and many Church advocates (theologians) tried to devalue their client's testimony, Van was fighting the current. A friend reminded me of the saying: "Though Salmons go upstream, they are nonetheless right."
Van was not representative of what the people around him thought. Strong as his writing was, it wasn't powerful enough to make him a standard-bearer for his times. And yet, his book, A Severe Mercy, had become a best-seller. Best-seller means at least 100,000 copies sold, though this is little where block-busters sell into the millions. Thus A Severe Mercy had managed to become a leader of sorts in its own micro-market. In Quebec, it would have been the equivalent of 10,000 copies. I knew I could never attain such numbers. But it would certainly be easier to cover costs in the huge American market than in the tiny Quebec market.
Van's book was also a love story. So was ours. And through Van, I had also read another love story: the dramatic "Song for Sarah", written by Paula D'Arcy. Paula, a mother, wrote: "The letters to my daughter Sarah are taken from a diary I started writing the day I learnt I was pregnant. I could not have imagined then that, two and a half years later, they would become a memory of a time gone by, of a love brutally and tragically terminated. But in the end, death, by hurting me so terribly, allowed me to attain such depth and maturity that the words to Sarah ceased being a cry and became a song, a song about a love and a family which, for a privileged moment in time, was totally our own."
Our own children were still alive. But were they not also a marvellous song of love? My wife had not died, but God can also deal a sweet mercy. I did not have Van's writing ability but, if I was to be at the typewriter all summer, our story was still our best subject.
My beloved agreed. And her adulating secretary got to work.
* * *
Tastes lead a curious life. Though it is not for them to guide us, they can enchant us. Jean-Paul was fascinated by the garbage truck that came by once a week. The truck and the men working enthralled him. He stayed glued to the window during the whole time of the operation. His passion was such that everyone in the family was on the alert to be sure he did not miss the garbage truck. Missing the truck was tragic. Seeing it was divine. The obsession lasted a few years.
One day some of his brothers and sisters talked about their marriage, "when they would be grown-ups". Jean-Paul solemnly and categorically stated: "I will never get married."
The tone was so dramatic for a little boy that we asked him to explain.
"I will become a garbage man," he answered.
"But, Jean-Paul, you can still be a garbage man if you get married."
"Is that true?", he asked with astonishment. And he seemed heartbroken that such a life should not be a consecrated life.
Then the town privatised its garbage picking. One day, a blue truck came instead of the white truck. The spell was broken. Jean-Paul was no longer interested in garbage trucks.
His oldest brother, Michel, had the privilege of six years of flute lessons, all through Primary school. Since he had a secondary temperament and was slow in adapting to change, his mother deemed it useful to give him an advantage and assurance. At first, the practice lessons at home were lengthy and tedious because of his natural disinclination. But his mother persisted and consequently so did he. Then, one day, Michel had found his assurance and ability. After these years of labour, Michel was the proud product of his music teacher's efforts, his mother's, his family's and his own. And he automatically had a role in entertainment organised by school, cub scouts or whichever, instead of being a square peg for a round hole.
Since he alone had achieved such a privilege, when his older sister became impassioned about horses, we figured she could have a few horse-riding lessons.
As she had begun baby-sitting, she had the means to pay for horse-back riding in addition to these lessons. The experience of feeling, guiding and respecting the noble animal's energies, inclinations and disinclinations was both an enchantment and a responsibility. At an age of discoveries, she could thus direct her youthful passions towards a marvellous challenge.
