Gerard Windsor

It took no time at all to read this book of a scant 200 pages but it certainly provides food for thought. Heaven Where the Bachelors Sit is a collage of autobiographical writings from Gerard Windsor who was a Jesuit novice in 1963 but never took final vows. His depiction of a very muscular Christianity exposes a mindset as foreign to me as any from exotic cultures, and the past he writes of seems more of a ’foreign country’ [1] where things are done differently than the period would suggest. He’s certainly not the first Catholic author I have read, but his view of the world seems quite strange.

The book begins with an anecdote from his earliest days at school. A little fellow of five, he’s forgotten his lunch.

"When I got to school, I opened my satchel to take out my pencils and exercise book, and I saw there was no lunch. Nowhere. The satchel had no hidden compartments. There was no lunch. The absence horrified me. I was five, and I gaped, stock-still, on the edge of this blank. I had never not had a lunch before. The lunch was there, like the tram to school, like the bells sending the same orders to us all. But where the lunch should be, there was just an empty, stale space. All through the morning I could feel the emptiness". (p10)

Resourceful and independent - and with no adults about to supervise - at lunchtime this child makes his way alone to the ‘silent, out-of-bounds assembly hall’ to the headmaster’s study, to make what was ‘a confession as much as a request for help’. Father Scott escorts him to the Italian housekeeper who makes a jam sandwich with rough crusts. Can we imagine a child today negotiating this disaster with such calm self-possession?

To read the rest of my review, please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2011/04/03/heaven-where-the-bachelors-sit-by-gerard-win...… (mer)