Fr. Dwight Longenecker
My time as Camp chaplain is part retreat, part vacation and part work. On Monday I went with a van load of kids to take part in a rock climbing competition. Lots of enthusiasm, sweat and skill. I managed to get on the wall myself and it was not a pretty sight. Anyway, we won.
In the priest’s cabin I found a complete collection of Flannery O’Connor’s stories. There are a good number I hadn’t read, so I stayed up late re-reading my favorites and finding a few new ones.
An old favorite is A Temple of the Holy Spirit. I love the two goofy airhead Catholic girls, and the moment when they’re on the front porch and their two Assembly of God suitors sing a gospel song and they reply with Tantum Ergo. A new one that I really enjoyed, and laughed out loud is The Enduring Chill about a conceited young intellectual who comes home to die. He wants to meet a Jesuit priest, and visualized an urbane intellectual only to be visited by a fat, half blind, half deaf Irishman who tells him like it is.
Hilarious. Anybody want to comment on their favorite Flannery story and why?
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