THE TRIQUETRA OF LIFE: Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness

An Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Nine

Path Perilous: My Search for God and the Miraculous

Summer, 1968, Age 26

Abandoning hope of joining the Trappists, I still longed to meet Thomas Merton at the Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky. With that firm intention, I hitchhiked to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for my second visit. The monastery had given me a room, shoes, and a spring bed. Now I was reduced to a backpack, blistered feet, and only straw to sleep on. My appearance slowed cars that seldom stopped.

Having stepped away from the sheltered monastic life, the moment I definitely committed myself, Providence moved too. Determination issued from my decision to go it alone. On campus, I read bulletin boards line by line, tore off phone numbers, and fed my begged coins into a pay phone. Cold-calling tightened my throat. More than once, I hung up before the first ring. But hunger overruled my pride. Within a few calls, someone said, “Yes, I’ll pick you up. Wait there.” That felt like help from above, even while doubt pressed on me.

I was nearly exhausted, but by dusk I was sitting in the warm kitchen of a country home north of Amherst. Doris tended her stove between her questions; Jack, a college professor, studied me with steady eyes. I knew what I looked like — thin, bearded, emaciated, my clothes torn, worn thin.

In their place, I might have hung up on that phone call. Instead, they invited me in. Food, then a warm bath. Hot water and soap stung my cracked heels and abrasions. I slept that night under clean sheets.

My sandal strap had snapped. Jack took it without ceremony to a cobbler. They set a plate before me three times a day. Soup and bread, vegetables and yogurt— nourishing food that stayed down. Conversation followed supper and lasted long into the evening. I remained for a full week, breaking the three-day rule of St. Francis, meant to prevent attachment. They treated me not as a passing drifter but as kinfolk.

I was a stranger, and they took me in.

Doris even invited friends for dinner and placed me at the center of the table. That gesture required uncommon trust in their discernment, since I could just as easily have become an embarrassment to them.

After a week, it was time to move on. Doris knew of a yoga center in Connecticut. She made a call, then drove me there herself. Another door opened. Joan, my new hostess, had been broadcasting a popular radio show, but now was teaching Hatha Yoga in her home.

Shortly after our arrival, the three of us went for a walk and passed a nearby turkey farm. Prompted by the Spirit, I did something that later struck me as strange. I stopped, turned toward that flock grazing a good distance away, and slowly raised my arms until my body formed a cross.

A few turkeys noticed, gobbled an alarm that rippled through the flock, and soon we had the whole lot of them rushing toward us. Within moments, they were standing before us, wings spread, gobbling loudly. We stood on a dirt embankment, looking down as they crowded the fence beneath us, necks stretched upward.

“Well, I never saw such a thing,” Joan said. “I walk here every day. That’s never happened.”

We walked back without speaking. Gravel crunched under our sandals. Each of us carried the moment privately.

At her house, Joan turned to me and said, “I host a dinner each month. It’s this weekend. I want you to be the guest speaker.”

From the memoir-in-progress, nearing publication:
Path Perilous: My Search for God and the Miraculous
—a spiritual epic for truth-seekers, contemplative mystics, and all who long for God.

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