The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows by Dolores Hart, Richard DeNeut Read Free Book Online

day she would get me on my knees and teach me the Rosary, which we did in the back bedroom closet so Grandpa wouldn’t hear .
    At Mass I watched when the children received Communion. I began to put together the fact that the presence I experienced when I was alone in the church—the reassurance, the well-being—was somehow associated with the wafer the children ate. Soon I would be able to participate in a new way—not only going into the church but actually receiving the wafer kept in that box, the tabernacle. It was hard to explain as a child—there I was finding this wonderful thing, and there I was eating it .
— It’s hard to explain as a grown-up too .
    After school, some of the Saint Gregory kids would go swimming at the YMCA, and not wanting to be left out, Dolores went with them, never admitting that she didn’t know how to swim. One day, she took a dare and jumped off the high board. She bumped into the side of the pool and was taken home, badly shaken and very groggy. When she didn’t recover as quickly as Esther expected, a doctor was called. The doctor administered penicillin, unaware that Dolores was allergic to the new drug. That night she had a serious reaction and great difficulty moving. Esther was sure it was polio. In the 1940s there was a polio epidemic in America, and public swimming pools were high on the list of places to contract the disease.
    I remember everybody being so sad. Granny slept on cushions on the floor next to my bed, and whenever she couldn’t be there, her friend Lola Menary was. The atmosphere was decidedly gloomy, and I couldn’t help but pick up on it. When a playmate slipped in and placed a lily on my chest, causing Granny to burst into tears, I believed I was going to die. I couldn’t explain it, but I felt the presence of something that I accepted as the presence of authority—the presence of God. I spoke—not prayed, but spoke—to God: “If You want me to go to You, I’ll go. I’m not afraid .”
    I had awakened to the possibility of that kind of direct communication during the times I had sat alone in the chapel at Saint Gregory’s. But this was the first time I knew I could speak directly to God, that I had that privilege. Out of that moment I found the gift of faith. Out of that moment I became a Catholic .
    That same day Dolores was given Benadryl to counteract the penicillin and decrease swelling. Within a short time she was fully recovered. She didn’t realize until many years later, after her entrance into the monastery, that this unusual, casual, direct conversation with God had been her first interior response.
    I was baptized at Saint Gregory’s Church on October 4, 1948, a few days before my tenth birthday. When the priest sprinkled me with holy water, it was the greatest moment of joy in my ten years of life. I experienced a sensation of acceptance that any child, and especially a child in my circumstances, would find quite empowering. Even though my grandfather, grandmother and mother all had approved, I had crossed a boundary that was really of my own doing. I had found something that was now my own place, above and beyond all that had been cruel and dishonorable in my parents home .
    By the time I was ten years old, I had a very dramatic imagination. In becoming a Catholic, I thought of myself as part of a colorful new cast of characters in an exciting new story. I was a member of the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of the Saints, the Kingdom of the Angels .
    When I was first introduced to the sacrament of confession, I had difficulty grasping some of the things the sisters taught us. I knew stealing was wrong and sassing your mother, forgetting to feed a pet and being mean to somebody—that all made sense. But I did not understand why the sisters were always warning us to keep our bodies covered, as if there were something sinful about the body. Mom had always taught me that the body was natural, something to rejoice in .
    I started to keep a list