I was a college dropout. Working for an oil company. Dating an executive. Enjoying martini lunches. It was like a “Mad Men” throwback, and I loved it.
There was only one problem. My job was “human fax machine.” I walked up and down the Denver streets, delivering documents. Without a degree, I had no hope of advancement. So, I just wanted to finish that degree as quickly as possible.
One beautiful July day, I was talking to a friend at the bus stop, bemoaning my career prospects. “And get this,” I added. “My Dad wants me to go to some school in San Francisco.”
“Really?” she replied. “That’s awesome! San Francisco is cool.”
This took me by surprise. Because, since this was my father’s idea, I had naturally assumed it was lame.
My bus arrived and I climbed on. And on that bus ride, God spoke to me as clearly as he has ever spoken to me, before or since.
“You’re going to San Francisco.”
It wasn’t audible, but it was unmistakable. “You’re going.”
Walking home from the bus stop, I was looking at the beautiful Rocky Mountains, waving my arm and saying, “Shut up. I love it here. I don’t want to move to California.”
And I was laughing. Because I knew I was moving to California.
Six weeks later, I packed up my ’74 Oldsmobile and drove to the West Coast.
The “lame” program was a Great Books program, the St. Ignatius Institute at the University of San Francisco. The classes went chronologically through history, starting with the Old Testament and the ancient Greeks, reading only original works. No textbooks. The program, while critically exploring all faiths and philosophies and ideas, was faithfully and unabashedly Catholic.
I had already elicited an agreement from my parents that if the institute or its students turned out to be “lame,” I would drop it and finish my degree as a regular university student.
That did not turn out to be the case.
I wound up falling in love with the classics. Far from being boring, as I had expected, I found these ancient texts had a lot to say to a young woman in the late 20th century. A lot that I wanted to hear. And far from being lame, I found in my fellow students a whole new level of friendship. Our shared faith gave us a foundation. And our love of fun gave us an amazing college experience.
One memory sticks out. We were on an institute trip to Yosemite. Several of us were in a tent, playing a drinking game, when somebody came in and informed us that the director’s son was lost in Half Dome. Everybody put their drinks away and pulled out their rosaries.
And I thought, “I have found my people.”
My senior year, the institute sponsored a speaker series on the Theology of the Body, which nobody had heard of at that time. That series changed the course of my life, as I became one of the first speakers to take the Pope John Paul II’s beautiful message outside of academic circles and to the “people in the pews.” Everything I have done in the ensuing 40 years would not have happened otherwise.
It all happened because God spoke to me on a bus.
But that wasn’t all. My faith grew. My intellect grew. I learned to think critically. But, to me one of the most important gifts God gave me there were my beautiful, amazing, lifelong friends.
At my previous college, someone once told me that your college friends are your forever friends. And I looked around and thought, “seriously?”
But now, I am on a plane, flying to San Francisco for a reunion. And I could not be more excited. So many of these people are still my very closest friends. Others I may not have seen for 20 to 30 years, but I still consider them my close friends and some of the greatest gifts God has given me.
Why do I share all of this with you? Well, for one thing, I think it’s a good story. But I also know that the new school year is starting, and a lot of seniors are starting to look at schools.
And I want to remind you that the school your children (or grandchildren or nieces and nephews or godchildren, etc.) choose matters. It really can completely change the direction of their lives. Unfortunately, the program I studied in no longer exists. But there many more excellent options for Catholics than there were in my day. Franciscan University of Steubenville, Thomas Aquinas College, University of Dallas, Christendom College, Ave Maria University, University of Mary, the list goes on.
Or perhaps your student is being called somewhere else. God can have his reasons for calling us all kinds of places.
The key is to find out.
It is so important that the college decision is made prayerfully, so that the God who loves and sees into the future can guide us.
“But my kid won’t pray.” Yeah, I know. Do you think I was praying? I was too busy drinking martinis at the Petroleum Club. But my dad was praying. And he was gently persistent in making his lame suggestion, over and over.
And God took it from there.
Bonacci is a syndicated columnist based in Denver.
