The Long Way Up

At a young age, there are many things that a child may wish to become when they grow up. Some might want to become doctors or astronauts or scientists. Others might desire to become police officers or pilots or ballerinas. At the age of ten, I remember wanting to become two things when I grew up: a teacher, and a priest. Around that age, I remember playing with my action figures, setting them up in a ‘classroom’ scenario where I played the role of teacher and they, by no choice of their own, became my students. During this childhood play time, I did not only give them lessons to learn, but I also pretended to give them exams afterward. I was probably a little over nine. Not long after that when, again, I had to move to another school — a Catholic school, no less — the other of my childhood dreams was incepted. To begin with, I had always felt a closeness to God even before I left the clutches of traditional religion, but having been exposed to the lives of the Catholic s...