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He had little choice but to pointout that some nineteen-year-olds have more growing up to do than others.
    When it became clear that the decision to send me home wasn’t discussable, that I wasn’t going to be given any chance to prove myself at all, I couldn’t hide the depth of my disappointment. I wanted to, believe me, but there was no holding back the tears.
    I was utterly crushed. I couldn’t have been more wounded if Father Louis had taken out a hammer and hit me on the head. This was a rejection that went beyond any rejection I’d ever known. This was rejection not only by Father Louis, this was rejection by God himself.
    Obviously this was the way I perceived it, not the way Father Louis presented it. He said something like this: “Look, I didn’t ask to be the novice master—or even want to be the novice master—but the abbot asked me to take on this task. Providence has put the disposition of these things into his hands, so I had to conclude that this was what God wanted me to do at this time. A different abbot might have chosen a different novice master, but this abbot is the one we actually have, and he chose me. And because he chose me, the disposition of things pertaining to the novices is in my hands. In other words, Providence has put it into my hands to decide who comes to Gethsemani and who doesn’t and to decide who stays at Gethsemani and who doesn’t.
    Father Louis called me into the little cubbyhole he used as an office and told me he had decided I should leave the monastery.
    “Another novice master might have made a different judgment in your case, but I’m the novice master you actually have, and this is what I judge to be the best thing for you right now. As your spiritual director, I think the best thing for you is to go back out into the world, and you can either shake your fist at the heavens for treating you unfairly or you can accept this as an act of Providence.
    “I’m no more important in the divine scheme of things than you are. I was put here, first, to make sure that you
got
here and, second, to make sure that you didn’t
stay
here. As far as I’m concerned, this is what God wanted for you. This says nothing about what he’ll want for you in three years or five years or ten years. If God wants you to come back to Gethsemani, then that’s fine. I’m not banishing you forever, I’m just sending you back out into the world to do a little more growing up.”
    I heard the words, I understood the words, but they couldn’t wipe away my feelings of desolation and abandonment and humiliation. I asked him if I could at least stay till Easter, which was ten or twelve days away, but he didn’t think that was a good idea.…
    What? Of course I felt humiliated! My God, I hadn’t even lasted a month! How was I going to explain this? Was I going to lie and say it was just too tough for me, or was I going to tell the truth and admit that I’d been chucked out? Those were the only explanations I could offer: Either I was a wimp or I was a sicko.
    I’m sitting here wondering if I really need to go through the next two weeks, which were very painful indeed. I suppose I’d better. To leave them out would just be sparing myself.…
    Merton’s enthusiasm for Freudianism was rather like a convert’s. He was sold on it and wanted everyone else to be sold on it. In a word, he thought I should immediately go into psychoanalysis, and he began to make plans for me to do this directly from the monastery. It’s easy enough to see now that he was seriously overreaching when he took it upon himself to operate in this sphere, but I certainly didn’t see it at the time. Psychoanalysis was all he knew about, so naturally it was his answer to every condition and situation. It didn’t matter whether I was a borderline psychotic or just a kid who needed to do some growing up, I needed psychoanalysis. I didn’t agree, but what did I know? This was my spiritual director, and to put myself in his