Watching out for a divine sign calling me to the priesthood was a stressful part of childhood, recalls Laurie Taylor in his weekly column. "Have you prayed again for a vocation?" Facing the priest for confession was nerve-wracking "Yes, father." "And again nothing happened?" "No, father." "Nothing at all?" "Nothing at all, father." I always left the confessional box at my Catholic boarding school with a deep sense of failure. It was bad enough knowing that I'd have to miss playtime in order to spend at least half an hour on my knees reciting the long list of Our Fathers and Hail Marys which the priest had handed out as a penance for my modest collection of sins but what made matters worse was that I'd once again had to confess that I was a failure on the vocation front. For even though I'd lain in bed every night in the dormitory praying for Jesus to enter my soul and announce that I had a vocation for the priesthood, he just never seemed to come knocking. FIND OUT MORE Hear Laurie Taylor's Thinking Allowed on Radio 4 at 1600 on Wednesdays or 0015 on Mondays Or listen to it here on the iPlayer My friend, Wright, who'd already had his vocation, told me that I shouldn't worry too much. After all I was only 12 years old and Wright had heard of people as old as 18 who'd had vocations. But deep down I suspected that the reason why Jesus kept his distance was that he could sense a certain lack of concentration in my praying. For no sooner did I steeple my fingers and go down on my knees than my mind raced away to matters which had little to do with goodness, reverence or piety. Much of my praying, for example, took place in the back row of the church where there was a large mosaic of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. But instead of inspiring thoughts of divine creation this merely prompted what the catechism called "indecent thoughts". Boswell rescue What, I wondered, as I stared at Eve, lay behind that large green mosaic fig leaf. Suppose I were to unpick the mosaic piece by piece I might then discover that secret flat white woman's place which Riley had once pointed out to me in one of those airbrushed pictures in Health and Efficiency? "Dear Jesus. Please call me to the priesthood as soon as possible." Adam and Eve conceal their nakedness My failure to solicit a vocation - "You'll know when you have one", Father Isley once told me, "there's this sudden blinding flash" - meant that there was no good reason to remain at a school which chiefly prided itself on producing priests. But praying never became any easier. As soon as I assumed a prayerful attitude in church my mind immediately raced away to matters of the flesh. It was only when I reached the sixth form and read some of Boswell's diary for the first time that I realised I was not in the grip of a purely personal pathology. There on the page were my words of liberation. "What a curious inconsistent thing is the mind of man", wrote Dr Johnson's wonderfully self-revealing biographer. "In the midst of divine service I was laying plans for having women and yet I had the most sincere feelings of religion." It made me feel a great deal easier, so did the trip back to my old boarding school which I made at about the same time. My first port of call, of course, was the pew near the Garden of Eden mosaic where I'd prayed so often and unsuccessfully for my vocation. I knelt down and let my eyes wander to Eve's fig leaf. It was no longer there. Over the years since I'd left naughty wandering fingers had slowly unpicked it piece by piece so that what was now revealed as Eve's secret was no more than a flat irregular area of white studded mortar. Health and Efficiency readers would have recognised it immediately. Below is a selection of your comments. Forced to pray for a vocation... Laurie Taylor got off lightly. At my convent school, we were made to pray that we might have the privilege of being martyred for the faith.

Teresa, Hook, Hants I was six years old and at morning assembly at my infant school in Lincolnshire. The teacher said the words "hands together, eyes closed" as she always did (this was 1966 after all). For some reason I chose not to close my eyes but instead looked at everyone else closing theirs. That was my moment of revelation if you need to call it anything. At that moment I knew that there was no god, that there never had been one and that there was no need for one. Everything was fine, life was exciting and there were all these people around me. I still remember the moment.

David Blake, London I always find it quite sad when people report praying without answer, and unsure whether to answer from my own experience. But mine is that God does not answer rigged questions, but is much more liable to do so the more open possible answers are. There are justifications for this from atheist and believer alike, that the vaguer question fits more coincidence as answer, or because God has his own thing to say that is not what we expect. My experience is closer to the later, with repeating answers to the same effect from different sources, providing some confirmation to the unexpected nature of God's plan. If this is true, then Eve had nothing to do with it, although your interest in that area suggests that celibacy was never going to be for you.

Josh W, Swansea, Wales A perfect example of the damaging effect of religion on children. This boy had done not a thing wrong, but spent years living with feelings of guilt and inadequacy because he didn't receive a magic message from an imaginary being.

Stephanie, Plymouth What a wonderful honest reflection on ones youth by Laurie Taylor and his struggle in coping with the the call of Christ and the wanting of flesh, which I admit made me laugh also, God does have a sense of humour after all. As for Eve's secret, hopefully her White Studded Mortar will at last be the foundation stone in which to build the long awaited sacred marriage, who needs a leaf when you have a forest? Who needs the calling of Christ when it is within? Thank you Laurie, you made me smile.

Jane, London I feel sad about the view that sex and a vocation are mutually exclusive. It is a Catholic custom, but not supported by the Holy Scriptures, the Bible. Right from the start God created mankind male and female; and he gave them a powerful urge to reproduce coupled with the command to fill the earth. I wish the young Laurie Taylor had been taught that celibacy is a calling too; and that if a man doesn't feel inclined that way, he is free to marry. I hope that one day Catholic priests are free to marry and carry out their service as priests. Scriptures teaches us in Ephesians and other Pauline letters that marriage itself is a reflection of the intense love Christ has for his church.

Johanna Pillinger, Thame, England You just didn't recognise that you were more vocationally qualified than the pure and chaste. As St Augustine said "Oh Lord, give me chastity, but do not give it yet." As to the fig leaf - DH Lawrence pointed out in his poem Figs:

"But now they stitch to adorn the bursten fig, not to cover it.

They have their nakedness more than ever on their mind, And they won't let us forget it."

Cue seeing Women in Love in a flea-pit cinema because our friends, the convent schoolgirls, wanted to see Oliver Reed naked.

ChrisJk, UK I didn't even know that I was waiting for the call to a vocation. But he came knocking anyway and here I am a priest after 20 years in local government.

Revd David Messer, Stanton Bury St Edmunds



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