SPIRIT WOW: SIX MONTHS ON LEAVE FROM THE JESUITS--LESSONS LEARNED

Plus: Mel Brooks Writes a Song!

I’ve been on leave from the Jesuits for six months now. I can’t quite believe that. It’s gone really fast.

Over Christmas break I was trying to wrap my head around it all, and I noticed a couple things. Call them lessons learned, about me, about the Society, and about reality for people who have not spent their lives having taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and living in a religious order.

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You Don’t Need a Closet to Be Happy.

When I first came back to New York in the summer of 2021, it was only meant to be for six months. But once I got situated and working at America, things went so well that I asked whether that could be extended. My provincial liked the idea, but it turned out that the room I was in was already spoken for.

Normally this wouldn’t a big deal; I’d just move to a different room. But my provincial was told there was no room for me anywhere in New York City, and that I would need to move to the Midwest for six months and work from there until a room might become available.

This is not normally how things work in the Jesuits ha ha ha. Today I chalk it up to the craziness of the latter-stage pandemic period. But at the time it was pretty rough. I also found out on the day before Thanksgiving. Suffice to say, I went through a lot of this:

I don’t do ads or sponsorship, but it should come as no surprise to readers that I absolutely would for Ocean Spray.

With the encouragement of the guy in charge of my house, I asked the East Coast Jesuits whether I might not simply stay in a guest room of our community.  We had four, and in the winter of 2022 our house was not exactly being inundated with guest requests. Thankfully, the head honcho of the East Coast agreed.