Having discussed politics in yesterday's post it seems the right time to tackle religion in today's.
When I was 17, I was religious. So much so that I decided I was being called to be a priest. Events would eventually show that the call I heard was a wrong number intended for someone else. But at the time I was determined to wear the collar. The next step was deciding what type of collar it would be, and I began shopping for religious orders pretty much the way Linda approaches the shoe department at Nordstrom's during their sale.
I liked the Jesuits' reputation, but their conventional modern black outfit had no pizzazz, looking just like an ordinary diocesan priest. Loved the Dominicans' white hooded habits, but couldn't get my head around what the order did. Trappists and their vow of silence were never a consideration.
Finally decided it was Franciscan sandals for me, but even then so much fashion choice. Franciscans come in basic black, brown and gray habits. Most wear brown. I went Goth.
And so it came to be that my folks drove me to St Francis Center in Staten Island where I was to stay overnight while undergoing a battery of tests to determine my fitness to enter the seminary. (Those were the days when parents didn't think twice about dropping off their 17-year-old son with a bunch of priests they had never met who were going to "check out his fitness".)
I don't remember the name of the psychologist priest who tested me, so let's just call him Father Sigmund. He ran the other wannabees and me through what I now know is a pretty standard set of profile tests. I am not sure what they were testing for, but it sure wasn't piety and longevity, because I lasted all of about three months in the seminary.
In a not unexpected turn of events, the head of the seminary called me into his office and told me to check my sandals at the door and hit the road. But first, he said that Father Sigmund was visiting this weekend and would like to chat with me.
I assumed with him being a shrink and a priest all rolled into one, he was going to comfort and counsel me. That wasn't it at all. No, Father Sigmund wanted to talk to me about one of the tests I had taken that weekend on Staten Island.
In this particular test, you are given a blank piece of paper and a pencil and told to draw a person. It must not be a stick figure. Father Sigmund explained to me that it is a pretty basic test to determine sexual orientation since heterosexual men invariably draw a man.
Let me point out quickly that I drew a man. But what Father Sigmund wanted to know was why I had drawn a black man. He told me only black men draw black men. White men only draw white men. In fact, he had consulted with virtually every psychologist he knew and none of them had ever had a white man draw a black man.
I was so unique, in fact, that Father Sigmund had written a professional paper that had been accepted in the most prestigious journal of its day. He was beaming, and in many ways I think he regretted that he wouldn't be able to chart my course at least through the remainder of the Civil Rights movement.
Forget comfort and counsel. Father Sigmund had but one burning issue. Why had I drawn a black man?
The answer is simple. I am absolute crap when it comes to artistic skills, and when I finished drawing my man, I was quite surprised to see that I hadn't done as badly as I expected. In fact, upon looking more closely, I thought my creation looked an awful lot like Sammy Davis, jr. So I colored in his face so everyone else would be able to see the resemblance, too.
But Father Sigmund was so happy to have discovered a unique subject like me that I didn't have the heart to tell him the truth. I just shrugged and said I had no idea.
And so, like the gentle Saint Francis I had so briefly tried to follow, I left with an act of kindness. And a place in the annals of psychology.
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