Amazing Adventures 1

THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF TOM AND THE HOLY SPIRIT

Or

An Old Man’s Musings Concerning His Faith Journey

Chapter 1

My First Decade as a Beloved Child of God

Where to begin? My earliest recollections of church are of riding the city bus to Mass at St. Francis Catholic Church with my tiny Irish grandmother on Sundays in Bakersfield, California. I was about eight or nine years old, spiritually innocent and naïve, and I adored being able to spend time with my paternal grandmother, Grandma May Dunham.

St. Francis Church was a classic Gothic-style edifice built of red brick with two tall towers on each side, both topped with crosses. The inside was cool and rather dimly lighted with high vaulted ceilings, stained glass windows all around the perimeter, interspaced with the Stations of the Cross and brightly colored, larger-than-life-sized plaster statues of some of the more famous saints and religious figures of the Church.

The nave was divided in half, intersected by a wide main aisle which led up to the elevated chancel and the high altar at its center, directly below a huge stained glass window. This was pre-Vatican II, so the priest celebrated mass with his back to the congregation.

My most enduring memories are of the palpable holiness of the place…the solemnity, the hushed quiet, the echo of voices, both the priests’ and the choir and organ during High Mass and of the pomp and the richness of the vestments and ritual of the liturgy. Hand in hand with these were the “smells and bells,” the lingering odor of incense, frankincense and myrrh, I realized many years later, and the jangling of the bells by the altar boy during the Elevation of the Host.

I can still see and smell, in my minds eye, the bouquets of fresh flowers nestled at the feet of the holy statues and the brass stands holding votive candles, flickering and casting fantastic shadows as they reflected from their ruby-colored glass holders. Often times there were parishioners striking wooden matches to light a candle or two for their prayer intentions and then kneeling, heads bowed and hands clasped in prayer before the statue in the niche.

Another memory is the preparation for baptism, meeting several times with the priest, since I hadn’t been baptized as an infant. My baptism occurred on Palm Sunday with several other candidates, dressed in white shirts, ties, black pants and shoes. We were gathered around the baptismal font with our families, in my case, my proud grandmother, godparents, two Catholic friends of my family, my mom dad and little brother and, of course, the priest. I have no memory of the prayers or ritual, but I do remember leaning over the font as the priest poured the cold water over my head as he intoned the proper prayers.

An interesting note on my godparents…my godmother was a French Basque lady and my godfather was an Irishman, a long-time drinking buddy of my father’s. Both had been friends of my parents for years, were devoutly Catholic, and had watched me grow and mature since my birth.

Between the times of my baptism and confirmation some two years later, I attended regular weekly catechism class. Picture this clueless little country boy attending class in the sheep barn of one of the many Basque sheep growers in Kern County, who lived about a mile from my house. I knew little of Catholic theology and dogma and was awed by the priests and Franciscan sisters who taught the class. On the first day, when my mom dropped me off, I was introduced to Sister Reed, a beautiful young nun who quickly had all of us in the class eating out of her hand. It wasn’t until at least three years later that I realized that her name wasn’t Sister Reed but Sister Rita. As was the custom in those days, when young women made their perpetual profession they chose a favorite saint’s name as their own.

One last recollection of this decade of my life is about preparing for Confirmation. We met for many Saturdays in a classroom of the old St. Francis Parochial school, across the street from the church. The room smelled of floor wax and chalk dust and desks were scarred and well used, being of the type attached to metal runners and having fold-up seats.

The nun who was our teacher wore the brown Franciscan habit of old, was quite stern and always had the dreaded “cricket,” clicker in hand, used often to “keep us in line.” We learned and parroted back the answers to the Catechism questions until we had them down pat and letter perfect. The admonition from the nun that we didn’t wanted to be embarrassed by mistakes when the visiting bishop of the diocese presided at the celebration kept us in mortal fear.

Of that day’s ceremony, I remember very little except that our group made no mistakes in answering the bishop’s questions and he was very complimentary. The other recollection, still clear in my mind to this day, is of him sticking his thumb into a little silver container and then marking my forehead with the sign of the cross.

That all of this happened over sixty years ago and is still indelibly imprinted on my mind is pretty amazing to me. However, the real meaning of all of this only came to me recently as I finally understood the amazing power and grace of the Holy Spirit. Like the salt in the dough mentioned in Scripture, my life has always been guided and influenced by that Holy Presence and I have always, from the moment of my conception, been “a beloved child of God.”