This is the seventh part of the story of my conversion to Catholic Christianity together with my wife Judith and our three sons.
There were some Catholics Judith liked a lot, when I was in seminary. The Graduate Theological Union included ten schools, three of them Catholic. I took half my classes with the Episcopalians, and the rest with the Catholics. Judith took a class with Father Bernard Bush on the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, never having read the Bible before. She loved it when Father Bush prayed and told stories. When he said the Our Father,[1] Judith felt he was talking to his father. Judith's favorite story was about Larry, the toughest prisoner in Alcatraz,[2] who crocheted an alb in solitary confinement for Father Bush's ordination and promised to be there. He was, but died two weeks after in an auto accident.[3] Later whenever her Protestant friends criticized Catholics, Judith thought of Father Bush.
Whenever we visited Judith's mother during these years, we went to church at Corpus Christi Monastery in Menlo Park. Not being Catholics, we could not receive communion, but we were glad to be there. Judith had found the monastery accidentally, walking past it. The cloistered Dominican sisters have perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Judith meets everybody, and she met one of the nuns, Sister Mary Holy Spirit, who was trained to be an opera singer, and whose name before she entered the monastery was Aida. She was our sponsor when we entered the Catholic Church in 1989.
Around 1973 I tried to pray by myself for the first time. Many Episcopalians only pray in church. Trying to talk to God who could not be seen, felt strange. I closed the door of my room, so that my wife would not hear me talking to someone, and wondered which way to face. I picked a wall and said something like, "Father I have heard people say they pray to you, and that you listen and answer, and I would like to do this too."[4] Around this time I began to read the daily office. The Book of Common Prayer, which is very beautiful, has Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, consisting of psalms and scripture.
In 1975 we were on our way to see an old friend of ours who taught zazen, when a big truck pushed us off the highway. Our car went down a bank and broke a wire fence. Then we rolled over four times in a field. Since cars are not round, we crashed on the sides and the top and the bottom, fifteen times. I was shouting, "God," many times, calling for help in the only way I could think of. My prayer was from the heart. The Highway Patrol said it was a miracle we were alive. Judith had a shattered ankle, and I was not hurt much. Aryae was hurt in the head, and taken to another hospital, because the doctors were worried.
A priest graciously let me stay at his house, but I lay awake and regretted not staying with my little son in the hospital. I prayed as best I knew how, and around one-thirty in the morning felt an assurance that Aryae would be all right. The peaceful feeling enabled me to fall asleep. In the morning the nurse at the hospital was glad to see me, and said my son had been awake and asking for me since one-thirty or two.
Judith says that at that time she felt no purpose or meaning in life, but after the accident, Judith was glad to be alive, and glad Aryae was alive. An Episcopal prayer group prayed for Judith in the hospital, and she felt a great peace. She says the experience of their prayer helped her conversion. A childhood friend of hers, Linda, belonged to a Pentecostal church near her childhood home. They prayed for Judith too.
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Layers of Rock
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A Brief Guide to Eternity
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Dwite
1. The Lord's Prayer, that Jesus taught his disciples to pray, begins, "Our Father who is in Heaven."
2. It was a federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. Tour boats go there now.
3. Father Bush writes, 3 August 2000, "He took a year and crocheted an alb in his cell for my ordination. His name was Larry Trumblay."
4. My son Elijah, who goes to the Franciscan University of Steubenville, says you are supposed to pray toward a door or window.