Anomie

                                                       Anomie

It was a very  hot Saturday afternoon in the middle of August in the year 1940. I was walking down 9th avenue on the East side of the avenue trying to become accustomed to an avenue now denuded of the elevated railway,  the “el”,  which had been a staple for me since I was a child. It all seemed so strange in a strange world. And rumor had it that the iron was sold as scrap to the Empire of Japan  which was making omninous rumblings in the Far East.

I was 19, a college student, with no money. No job. I had  recently broken up with my girl friend, Dolly, the best looking girl in the parish. She was an extremely smooth ball room dancer which fed into my adolescent fantasy that we made a great team on the dance floor. But our dates over cherry cokes had become blah as we talked endlessly of Benny Goodman and Glen Miller. It wasn’t working!

I hadn’t the foggiest what I would do with my life. Engineering? Medicine— to please my father? Teaching? Nothing seemed to grab me. I had some ROTC  training  at CCNY. Should I go into the military?  Theatre —like my parents?  I felt no pull towards anything. The worst thing was that I didn’t  know if I wanted anything.  Nothing seemed to matter. It was dull. Drab. Deadly.  I was sleeping excessively and wasting time day after day.

I had had great academic success in my educational experience—honor student all the way.   Awards and recognition. But it didn’t matter.I was hanging out at Broker’s, the soda fountain watering hole on Columbus and 59th but my high school friends were disappearing  for one reason or another.Loneliness and boredom and alienation  were my affective companions.  Meaninglessness, a disease, was taking me over.

Even the most poorly prepared modern mental health professional would instantly recognize the  symptoms of what we call today  “depression.”

But some thing  happened  to me  that day in 1940. I had stopped  to look in the window of the huge Castle’s Pawn shop just opposite the Paulist Church.  I turned aound and looked across the avenue  and saw a priest in full soutane or cassock, wearing a biretta ( or priest’s head  covering) taking a break from his onerous job hearing confessions on a Saturday afternoon in a stifling box with no air conditioning (and which was heavily curtained to preserve the anonymity of the penitent).  He was leaning over the great gray stone parapet—which is still there to this day—  lazily watching the passing parade on the avenue.

I cannot explain or understand what happened to me —-in such a flash. He seemed so peaceful. So content.  So sure he had some thing important to give. He seemed not to have to explain himself to anyone. Even to himself. Priesthood! That was it !!  How come it never struck me? It took me  two more years  to make the move but  I became a Paulist, for never looked back.  The years of excitement and meaning and friendship  and God  have been all consuming. 

I learned later that this priest was Scottish, a convert to the Faith and an ex -British Naval officer from World War I. But who  he was personally doesn’t really matter, I suppose, but what does matter is that God writes His messages  through what ever messenger He wishes.

It doesn’t have to add up logically. I  believe  with A. Einstein who said:  “I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.” Whatever hidden cerebral and emotional pathways may have been at work are basically uninteresting to me. It is where I landed  that gives me cause for  gratitude and personal joy. A bolt out of the blue! An  “ah ha” moment!

Ultimately, it means  that my God spoke to me.