Rolling Up A Cleric, Part Three: The First Level

The moment I first wielded my holy symbol in prayer, I knew I was walking the correct path for me.

It was a dreary night in October.  It had been over a year since the baptism of my children, and I had not gone to church in several months.  Part of it was truly banal - the "Family" Mass at St. Elizabeth of Hungary Parish was 8:30 in the morning on a Sunday, and the night owl within me fought tooth and nail to keep from getting up, getting the family ready, and making the weekly pilgrimage to pray.

Part of it had been a crisis of faith.  You see, being Catholic is not an easy road to walk.  It requires walking a very narrow path, and it is very easy to wander off said path.  It requires belief in a world that increasingly demands a constant state of doubt.  It requires chastity (in both the literal and figurative sense) in a society that constantly rewards the accepting of temptation.  And it require obedience, even when you don't always agree with the way things must be.

Rolling Up A Cleric, Part Two: The Hound

It's a call I had been hearing my entire life up until now, and it took my entire life up until now to figure out what it meant.

I remember a young man, riding along in the truck with his father, and asking about the priesthood.  I remember the dad telling his son about how hard a job that would be...because a priest wasn't allowed to take a wife.  A priest had to devote his all to God, and to his community.  And despite how lonely that young man imagined the life of a priest to be, the thought about becoming one didn't leave him.  The call of God was in him.

Was in me.

Even after the "joys" of CCD was that call within me.  You see, my experience at Catechism wasn't a joyous one, as learning about the Catholic Faith really should be.  For a younger me, naive and sensitive, it was quite honestly a very scary placer.  Certainly I remember joyful moments, and sparks of the faith I was being taught about.  However, I more remember one particularly severe teacher, who I recall as a elderly Irish Catholic.  His lessons never seemed to be about joy...the all seemed to be about Hell.  About how if you didn't strive for perfection, you would most certainly burn for your lacking.  That, while there was the wonder of Grace, it was not for imperfect you, and that was only through the Goodness of God that received this wondrous gift of which you would never be worthy.  That the best you could hope for was a long, long time in Purgatory, as you were cleansed of your inevitable imperfections.

Well, my young teenage self didn't see the value in a faith that treated its adherents that way.  So, after First Communion, when the option to back away from such a faith appeared (along with the option to sleep in on my Sunday mornings), I did not think twice.

But while I found a few extra hours of sleep that I've enjoyed over the years, I did not find the end of my search.

Rolling Up A Cleric, Part One: Discovery

Every time I create a roleplaying character, I always seem to end up making a Cleric.

The very first character I ever created for Dungeons & Dragons, at the tender age of 13, was a Cleric.  He was a derivative character named Ashe, heavily inspired by the Army Of Darkness character of the same name.  He worshiped Yahkoob, the God of Gleeful Chaos (who was also highly derivative, being a characterization of a dear friend of mine).  I remember him favoring ranged weapons, an explosive crossbow in particular, and I remember him very much wanting to own a warhorse.

Little did I know that, despite the strangeness of this particular character, Ashe would act as a prophecy for my RPG choices throughout what would become a lifelong hobby.  Whenever I play a character in a one-shot game, I pick up the Cleric.  When I played the Star Wars d20 game, I played a Jedi Consular who evolved into a Jedi Healer...becoming the Star Wars equivalent of a Cleric.  Heck, I remember one time creating a D&D 4th Edition Warlock who drew life essence from opponents, turning him into a dark and twisted version of a...well, you get the idea.  It seemed that, even when I wasn't trying, I would find myself drawn to the Cleric.

And it wasn't just pen and paper roleplaying games either.  Whenever I'd start a game on my computer, or on a portable device, I was drawn to the Priest or the Paladin.  There was something that inexplicably drew me to wanting to play a character who had such a deep connection with the divine.  I couldn't explain the pull - all I knew is I had an undeniable need to play such a character whenever I had the chance.

The fact that I would play the Cleric became a little bit of an expectation amongst my gaming friends.  My nickname "Friar Tuck" became more than a friendly moniker - it became gameplay vocation, one that I was more than happy to fill.

And for a while, I accepted it as just that - Cleric was my favorite class.  However, a seed of change was planted when a friend of mine asked me why I always played a Cleric.  I pondered the question deeply...and what I found out about myself was interesting.