I wanted to voluntarily give my time
in 2011
without any parental/outside influence
to build my own heart
and my own destiny.

I’m sure people have had plenty of dates
with Destiny,
leaving Fate to pay the tab.
What Destiny didn’t tell me
at age fourteen
are that churches that mingle together
are still different populations
with different works of focus.

In the Catholic tradition,
any Catholic can go to any designated church
for holy communion,
holding constant how anyone can attend anywhere.

I received more than the church
when I wanted to go to camps
with another church outside my family’s church.
Rather, I got a helping of obedience, discipline,
work, teasing, trouble, uneasy fellowship,
and a deacon who I believe was never true to the words
he preached.

This deacon, Dave Galvin, was not a personal
heart-to-heart person.
All he did, at least to me,
was assign me to loads of work,
answer my problems by pooling for other people’s answers,
and keep camps and youth of his church
[yes, not even being the lead pastor]
on as inflexible of a schedule as possible.

I almost think some days
he wanted me to starve,
because suffering makes him smile.
Most times around this minister
I would take my life as a failure
if I didn’t understand his instructions
Or didn’t have a faux homily lined up
in less than a minute
for a homiletics competition among
other high-school guys at the time.

He rarely smiled during services
unless the priest made a joke.
Gossip says that his family cheats
with religious obligations.
It wouldn’t surprise me
if this man’s family were another
cover-up story.

There’s no genuine fun with this man.
Being around his church and his mannerisms
almost trapped me permanently from recognizing life
outside being pruned as a seminary prodigy,
trapped as a Trappist.

And yet most people mimic him
and reference his motives and leadership.
Being the only one at most church activities
with Dave
from an alien church of another town,
I tried so hard to keep my mind from being controlled
and of being intensely Catholicized
to the point of breaking down.

Now, what I make of my former interactions
with Dave’s church
is meat for my resumes
and stories to recount.
I thought I was free-will from the Divine
not Dave’s puppet.