Beginning the Path That Had No Name

Looking back, it is clear to me that my spiritual journey began when I was twelve or thirteen years old, though I would not have called it that at the time. I definitely had not even heard of such journeys. It was a Hollywood movie that started it all.

Sometime in 1944 or 1945, I saw The Song of Bernadette, starring Jennifer Jones, at a small movie theater in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York. New movies from Hollywood came first to theaters in Manhattan, like Radio City Music Hall, accompanied by stage shows that included the amazing precision dancing of the Rockettes — their long graceful legs seeming to move as one. Then there was the New York Paramount, which offered the latest movies as well as top bands and singers of the day, like Frank Sinatra. The films then made their way to downtown Brooklyn and similar areas in the other boroughs of the city; then to theaters like the RKO Kenmore and the Loews Kings in shopping areas like Flatbush Avenue about two miles from where I lived; and finally to theaters in outlying areas of the city, like my neighborhood in East Flatbush.

It was always a treat to see a movie in "New York," but that was expensive and may have happened only once a year at Christmastime. On those occasions, my friends and I would wait in frigid weather in long snaking lines on the sidewalks that wrapped around skyscrapers in order to see a movie and the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall. I remember one year being there as a teen with some friends and taking turns running into a Woolworth's Five and Ten Cents Store for hot chocolate in order to defrost ourselves.

Mainly, though, we had to wait until a movie came closer to where we lived, and thus was much cheaper. The Song of Bernadette finally meandered its way to a small theater called the Rugby in East Flatbush, within easy walking distance of my home. For twelve cents (ten cents plus two cents city tax), I saw that movie, plus another full-length film, a newsreel, and cartons. Not a bad deal.

The Rugby Theater was wedged into a line of small shops on Utica Avenue. The only store I distinctly recall now from that row of retails was a Woolworth's Five and Ten Cents Store. The counters with their wares stretched from front to back, stacked with everything from penny candy and hair bows to kitchenware and underwear. It was always a treat to go there when I had a dime or a quarter to spend, which wasn't very often.

The theater had a small balcony for the smokers, so my friends and I would have found seats on the main floor; maybe we were even shown to our places by an usher in a gray uniform, with the beam of his flashlight leading the way. However, I think the ushers were mostly there to keep the noise level down on Saturdays and feet off the backs of the seats.

Honestly, I do not recall whether I knew anything about the movie before I saw it, or if I just went because it was something to do on a Saturday afternoon with friends. From where I am now, reviewing the many roads I have taken on my life's path, it is absolutely clear to me that seeing that film launched me onto a spiritual journey-one I never could have imagined in my wildest dreams. Of course, I had no way of knowing that at the time.

The film was based on the true story of a teenage girl named Bernadette Soubirous who had eighteen visions of a woman in white in a grotto or cave near where she lived in Lourdes, France, in the mid-1800s. No one else could see "the lady," who eventually identified herself as the Virgin Mary. This luminous figure in white looked down from a raised area at the opening of a grotto and spoke to Bernadette — advising her, among other things, to begin to dig in the ground nearby. When Bernadette got down on her hands and knees and did this, water began to flow. After a while, this water seemed to have healing properties for some people. Church and some town officials questioned the veracity of Bernadette's story. Because her sightings were of Mary, Queen of Heaven, she was made to join a religious order.

At thirteen, I found it startling that this or any teenage girl, probably about my age, had encounters with a spiritual being. In the small Rugby Congregational Church that I attended with my mother, father, and older brother, the only time Mary was mentioned was at Christmas when the story was told of Jesus's birth. She was not given much press in Protestantism.

All I knew after viewing the film was that I wanted to have a profound experience too. I never could have imagined where that desire would lead me. At that time, I thought, How can I have an experience like that? After all, I am not Catholic, and becoming one is not my aim.

In those earlier years of my life, I had two Catholic girlfriends, and I had been with them a few times when they went to confession at their church. Also, one of our occasional special activities on Sunday afternoons was to visit the Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery, which was around the corner from where we lived — not every teenager's idea of Sunday entertainment.

There was a high black iron fence that surrounded this resting place for Catholics. I believe the gate was locked most days of the week, except when there was a funeral, but on Sundays it was open to the public. My friends and I would enter through the gate on Schenectady Avenue and then slowly wind our way along the curving paved...