A World of Our Own? Yes?
Brother X cranked up a portable record player in our religion class and played A World of Our Own by The Seekers. On the chalkboard he wrote: A World of Our Own? Yes?
BROTHER X BY STEVEN McBREARTY 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 100
Brother X cranked up a portable record player in our religion class and played A World of Our Own by The Seekers. On the chalkboard he wrote: A World of Our Own? Yes?
I sat surprised, curious, mesmerized almost, pondering the ramifications of this tour de force of an introduction to a religion class. I didn’t know what to make of it. Playing a pop song was so far removed from the norm that it was mind-blowing.
When the record had finished, Brother X sat on his desk—that was his signature move—swinging a leg up under his cassock. He waved magisterially in a let-me-have-your-attention kind of wave.
“So-o-o,” he said, pensively stroking his chin. “A world of our own. What do you fine young specimens of American manhood think that’s all about?”
One or two hands went up. Brother X clapped his hands. “Come on, gentlemen!” he said. “What do you think? You look like some pretty smart guys to me!”
Some more hands shot up. “There, that’s more like it!” He scanned the room with his finger, then pointed: “What do you think? You!”
That first student, and everyone else, thought pretty much the same thing. The song was the ideal, that to be in love and to live with somebody together sheltered from the trials and tribulations of the outside world, was what all of us half-baked 14-year-olds aspired to.
Brother X sat there shaking his head amiably, inscrutably.
“You’re all correct, that’s what the song is saying,” Brother X said. “But that’s not what God wants from you. God doesn’t want you to hole up and hide from the world. He wants you to share yourself with others, share your happiness, share your love.”
This was revolutionary stuff. Hands were going up all over the place. We spent the remainder of that first class in a rousing free-form discussion of our role in creation, our purpose as human beings, our place in the universe.
When the buzzer sounded ending class, I walked out in a kind of trance, navigating through the crowd in the hallway as if entering a new dimension. Being a good person meant being good to others, not blindly following a set of prescribed rules and regulations. Being a good person meant going outside yourself to serve others. Thinking I had any love to share at all was itself a profound deviation from my former mindset.