When Melanie was twelve she was given an introduction to the Catholic tradition of mental prayer. From this instruction in the classroom there arose an exchange of letters between herself and the teacher based on the Carmelite tradition of prayer and St. Thomas Aquinas.
From a young age she had loved the stories of the saints and when she moved to the Catholic school in the city, away from the little country school she had attended for the first three years of elementary education, her great delight was the library.
In it she found the Bobsey Twins, which led to Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys but more importantly, a junior series on the lives of the saints. She had worked her way through them all before she sat in the desk in the Grade Seven classroom and became a student of prayer. In this peaceful and orderly setting she explored the questions that entered her mind and at the end of the year, with the permission of her parents, her teacher became her spiritual director.
The next year she entered the large public school and the teen-age years of emotional development with its ups and downs. That year she had had a premonition of the enormous cost of the spiritual life and she had recoiled in fright. The Divine fisherman had given her lots of line to run from Him and the results had been mentally distressing. Being lost in the woods of life was excruciating.
Her youthful pride had led her to believe that the graces she had received were very commonly given.
She was aware of external traps to be avoided but her effect upon other people and her own inner thoughts lacked awareness and self-control. Nor did she understand that idolatry is a subtle master.
Sitting on the Lourdes wharf, the summer camp not far from her home, one late autumn afternoon in the sunshine, Melanie faced into her fifteen year old self and found that she wanted a foot in both the world and the spiritual life. Why couldn't she have both, why was there a choice to be made? Now at fifteen, faced with the need to change sheer wilfulness into the pursuit of a real spiritual life she obeyed her director and settled down to become a docile student once again.
This choice brought her into conflict with the other adults in her life: her parents, parish priest and, indirectly, the bishop. She was forbidden the necessary contact with her spiritual director which resulted in great unhappiness as well as many rebellious attitudes on her part. It was a stormy year.
The summer Melanie turned sixteen she met some priests and young people from Kelowna at the summer camp. When autumn approached she made a last minute decision, encouraged by the principal, to move to that city for grade eleven in the only Catholic high school in the diocese. Her parents reluctantly agreed to this strange twist in events, perhaps feeling, as she did, that a break in the tension and impasse between them would be welcome.
It was a lonely year in many ways. It took four attempts to find a home, each move and circumstance made her grow up a little more.
Being young and full of energy she joined the school drama club and played the lead role in the autumn drama, an old maid who commits murder, and in the spring she had the comedic role in the school musical.
Guitar masses were sweeping through North American liturgies, youth movements such as Search were happening all over the diocese. She joined the youth choir, singing the folksy tunes that were making the rounds and more legitimately, she did music for the Search week-ends where folk music actually had a real place.
She taught Grade Two catechism and learned she wasn't a teacher. Controlling the rambunctious boys took all her energy and when they made their First Communion, at long last, she hoped that something real had penetrated their little heads. She also joined a Charismatic prayer group. She was the only young person involved and although the older women liked her company and were kind she quit soon afterwards. She had to admit to herself that she was just making things up and felt uncomfortable.
In the late spring a workshop was given by a free lancing Carmelite nun. The workshop's theme did not remain in her memory. What did remain was the experience of spiritual restlessness. Or was it just the novelty factor, the flavor of the month? Whatever the original intention, the week-end event turned into an experiment in defying Eucharistic discipline. Promoted by this nun, it was decided by the participants that Anglicans and Roman Catholics should be able to share the Eucharist and so they did. When Melanie reported this to her director he was indignant and scolded her for being involved. She felt ashamed but somewhat defiant, mostly through ignorance and not wanting to criticize the adults she had looked up to.
The summer of her seventeenth birthday saw her filled with the conflicting experiences of the past year. She wanted to return for grade twelve in Kelowna even though in her heart of hearts she knew it wouldn't work. She had to face into the reality of having a spiritual director who told her to return home and dig in. Melanie was torn in two directions. How could she obey? It was so difficult. She knew her parents could not afford another year yet, inside, she resisted the truth.
One hot summer day she rode her bike into town, buffeted by a spiritual headwind. All she could do was pedal and when the dreaded interview was over and she had agreed to obey she was astonished at how happy and free she felt. At peace once again with herself and her parents she found the freedom she had longed for. Her Dad gave her a small car and everything about her life fell into place.
The next autumn after graduating from high school she moved out of her parents’ house and into town to be with her spiritual companions and attend the local Catholic university college. Her life began to change. One day in the previous year upon entering the church she had had a brief vision of a man she did not recognize. Later she had another glimpse at this stranger and she began to suspect that for all her talk and activity in his name she didn't know him.
One day he appeared directly to her and asked her what penance she was going to do.
"Penance, what penance?" she had answered Christ.
There was silence. Her rudeness betrayed her inexperience.
She did not understand why she had been questioned about penance, but somehow she sensed it was the gate to a life with Christ, together on the road that beckoned: the salvation of her soul and those of many others.
It would mean criticism and rejection by those who knew her as she withdrew from that world into the embrace of penance. At nineteen, she was ready for her future, hidden in the will of Him, who was knocking on the door of her heart.
