Wearily, I focused my eyes on the large clock above the driver of the coach: thirty-eight hours since I departed Los Angeles and a world away from the last time I remembered being happy. Clearing customs in Seattle, I crossed the border into Canada with the feeble hope of being embraced by somebody’s caring arms who would love the unbearable and inconsolable emptiness away.
As I gazed out the window past my own mirrored reflection and into the darkened roadside, my heart searched for peace, but only sadness waited to befriend me. I reached into my tattered blue winter’s jacket to ensure I had my ID, for intuitively I had cause to believe I would not see morning.
With very few passengers on the coach, I thought my isolated seat would shield me from any unnecessary human contact. Yet soon the woman in the seat ahead started fussing slightly to get comfortable and in repositioning herself turned to start a conversation.
“Hello,” she said, disturbing my misery.
“Hello,” I replied, putting on my public face.
“How are you?” she questioned.
Could I disclose I was barely twenty-five years old, had just lost my girlfriend, was bankrupt, had no job, was running out of money, was in a foreign country with nobody to love me, and at the moment was hearing voices that threatened to kill me?
“Good, how are you?”
“So,” she asked, “what are you listening to on your Walkman?”
Concealing my frustration, I replied, “Ah, I don’t have a Walkman,” as I gestured that there were no headphones around my neck. She smiled and turned back around.
As the coach drove through the midnight-abandoned highway, the occasional streetlight threatened to reveal in my face what I sought to conceal. The mysterious woman, having barely warmed up her spot, once again turned around.
“Can I ask you a question?” she asked.
Masking my true feelings, I said, “Yeah, sure.”
She squinted her eyes, trying to probe behind the skeleton of a man that I had become. “Are you into astrology?”
My eyes widened, and on impulse I lied and denied that I was. Feeling guilt-stricken, I quickly retracted my answer, and I admitted to her uncanny, perceptive observation. Finally in confusion, I surrendered with a simple and puzzled, “Why?”
The mysterious lady drew a sigh. “Oh, dear boy, don’t you know astrology is against the Bible?”
I was bewildered, as my lips made no reply. I could only gaze in a state of overload as she continued, “The scriptures clearly state divination is an abomination to God.”
To say the moment was overwhelming would dismally fail to capture its essence. Yet so many things might now make sense if what she was saying was true. Completely scattered, I strained to ask, “But how do you know this? Who are you?”
“My name is Mary,” she said, “from Mississippi. I translate the Bible.”
I could only stare, dumbfounded. Mary then asked, “Do you want Jesus back in your life?”
Surprised at her assumption I replied, “I never asked him to leave.”
“Yes, you did,” she said firmly yet sympathetically, “When you practice astrology, transcendental meditation, palm reading, pendulums, tarot cards—you push God out, and although he can dwell in the darkness, he won’t.”
I remained mesmerized.
“May I pray with you?” she questioned with urgency. I nodded as she took my icy hand. As she did so, I felt heat in the tips of my fingers, and, as she prayed, the heat continued through my numb body, and the voices that had plagued me ceased. With every moment of her prayer, it was as though I settled deeper into a peaceful embrace with an intuitive assurance that the evening’s destiny and my tragic fate had been diverted.
When the coach pulled into the bus terminal in wintry downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, Mary and I exchanged numbers. My ex-girlfriend, who I had telephoned earlier and pleaded with, met me at the station reluctantly. Barely able to comprehend what had just happened, I thought it best keep the events on the bus to myself.
Once we got to my ex’s apartment, though, I felt directed to ask her—also a victim of the New Age through my doing —”Can we pray like we used to?”
To my surprise, she agreed. I felt inclined to pray the Lord’s Prayer but feared I wouldn’t be able to. Only a few weeks earlier, after waking up to the panging emptiness that greeted me after an alcohol-filled evening, I tried in desperation to pray to a God whom I had almost forgotten. I had commenced, “Our Father, who . . .” but I faltered. More than two decades of reciting this prayer on a daily basis, and I now couldn’t remember the words?
Yet this time the words flowed from my lips, and upon uttering the prayer’s concluding “Amen,” an incredible stir awoke within me. The room started spinning and the voices I had been hearing returned in force. Having vomited very few times in my life, I was no expert, but this certainly seemed like what was about to happen!
I raised myself from my almost horizontal position, fear-stricken and with an innate attempt to clasp onto life. Yet out of battle fatigue, I collapsed over the sofa’s armrest. It was as though there was a steel plate under my Adam’s apple that acted like a trap door not allowing the contents of my gurgling stomach to pass. I started to gasp. I felt like I was being asphyxiated. Tears started up in my eyes as my heart cried. With one last breath and broken resign, I blurted, “Oh, God!”
As I choked out this utterance that was more of a prayer, the steel plate was removed suddenly, and I vomited in a semi-projectile manner. My ex ran from me and quaked in the corner of the room. Collecting my breath, I looked at the mess. It certainly wasn’t the partially digested remains of my last few meals. Instead it was green, yellow, and foamy.
Caught somewhere between death and life, my body that had provided grounds for spiritual Armageddon lay withdrawn on the sofa. Though sleep forced itself upon me, horrific nightmares of being dragged by an eighteen-wheeler prevented any solace in the world of slumber. Upon waking, I felt even more exhausted. I stumbled to the bathroom to vomit again but this time discovered the left side of my body was partially paralyzed. I can only speculate that the loss of my senses in my left half was symbolic of my soul’s spiritual state.
The morning sun finally rose on my little corner of the universe. The date was February ninth, which suddenly jolted my memory and illuminated the cryptic nightmare I had had two years earlier, just prior to falling prey to the New Age movement. In this dream, in the dead of winter, in the middle of a graveyard, I had come upon a tombstone. To my shock, it was mine. Inscribed on it was my date of birth, November tenth, and date of death, which read February seventh. Now I realized that was the date I had left Los Angeles.
As the train’s doors shut behind me in L.A., it was as though I had stepped into death’s embrace, where all I could do was to sit and wait. Connecting from the train to the bus in Seattle, there seemed to be a suspended moment of divine intervention, a time for choice and a time for judgment. God placed at that very junction a motherly figure named Mary as an advocate who pierced through the dimmed eyes of my soul and intellect before I faced the eternal judge. The choice presented to me was overwhelmingly obvious. Within the wee hours of February ninth, nearly three days after having left California and embarking on my journey of death, by accepting Christ I was now being reborn in him, and, quite possibly, I was experiencing the labor pains of that rebirth.
In the days that followed—like my namesake Paul, who, immediately after his conversion, retreated into the wilderness to think, fast, and pray—I did as well. Even though I had been raised Christian, I had never fully understood the reasons behind my faith. I knew only that I was expected to lead a Christian life. When I entered my twenties, panic started to set in as I realized that my goals of achieving a musical career had not materialized to the scale my emotions had formulated and my heart had cradled.
Out of desperation, I turned to psychics and astrologers. I felt I had no time left to lose, and I needed guidance in choosing the right path out of an infinite number of possible paths that could be pursued. However, when I first entered into the domain of psychics and astrologers, the particular woman I consulted, though powered by occultist ability, still failed to accurately describe my past or my present. Yet I wanted to believe so desperately that I accepted her explanations for her inaccuracies.
Little did I know at the time that sin darkens the intellect, so as the days passed and I continued to commit the sin of divination, breaking the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me,” I began losing hold of my senses and innate judgment. In fact, I began to fulfill her prophecies by following her maniacal advice.
Yet due to my deep Christian upbringing, an inner struggle developed between what I was raised to believe and what I was learning in my psychic circles. At one point, I asked the psychic/astrologer, “Where does Jesus fit in?”
She replied, “Even the three wise men followed the stars.”
A satisfactory answer at the time but completely wrong. The wise men followed a star—singular. Later, when I questioned the validity of transcendental meditation, she responded that through the recitation of the rosary I had long been meditating anyway. This answer again left me satisfied for the moment. Yet I was on the road to ruin, for in the rosary the life of Jesus is meditated upon, whereas in the practice of transcendental meditation imaginary animal guides and an impersonal deity known simply as the universe is summoned for answers and guidance.
There is no doubt that every molecule in the universe has a purpose, but at no time does the creation become the creator. Yet in the New Age movement the planets, the wind, the trees, the animals, et cetera are elevated to deity, and knowledge and wisdom are sought from them.
Why would anyone ask the creation for answers and insights when one could ask the source—the Creator? In sound reason, one does not ask the painted canvas or the composed song what message is intended; rather, the painter or the songwriter is consulted for explanation. To add to the confusion, the New Age movement has co-opted many Christian terms and philosophies in an attempt to erase the boundaries of good and evil, thus leaving people to die unknowingly behind enemy lines.
Without a doubt, for me the entire conversion event illustrated and deepened my awareness that the Bible is not just a literary book of truths and morals. It is God’s divinely inspired word, giving us prototypes of what other believers endured and indications of what choices we must make in our own lives.
I believe I experienced a taste of what the biblical prophet Hosea meant when he, as God’s spokesman, wrote, “My people die for lack of knowledge” (Hos. 4:6). In my family, the devil was seldom spoken of, but I’ve come to recognize that one must know his enemy. Such knowledge provides a defense and safeguard.
The road to recovery would take twelve months, the exact amount of time that I had devoted to the “black arts.” During this time of purification, I experienced manifestations such as lights turning on and off, my bed shaking, and sometimes bodily assaults from an invisible foe. Days were long and nights lonely, but by grace I rebuilt on rock, the Catholic faith of my childhood, a foundation for eternal life.
True success came when I met and married Barbara Lee, and ten months later we became parents to our first child, Brett James. We continue to enjoy a happy home life and, like any parents, Barbara Lee and I are enthralled at Brett James’s every developmental change.
Not one for academics, yet undeniably fueled by my tremendous conversion experience, I returned to school through long-distance learning when I discovered the study of theology a worthwhile subject. As a result, I compiled an apologetic text based on years of learning and discovering about the true faith housed in the Catholic Church.