I LEARNED THREE NEW things that cold December day in 1968… first, that one discerned a vocation, one didn’t just discover it and that was that. Second, that one might do well to have a spiritual director if one was to discern a vocation. And third, that Thomas Merton was a monk who kept a journal. Little did I know then that I would be about all three in the new year.
The following year I found myself back at the Dominican monastery in Brooklyn Heights between Christmas and New Year’s. I was able to reserve two rooms six months in advance. The second room was my Christmas gift to Greta, who had never really made a week’s retreat. She was very grateful to have the time and the peace and quiet. It’s incredible when you can literally spend hours in the presence of the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Greta was in Bl. Jordan’s room. I was in St. Albert’s, who I learned was St. Thomas Aquinas’s teacher…how great is that?!
What a difference a year makes. That past year I had acquired a spiritual director, Fr. Meriwether, who was very willing to serve in this role. I met with him once a month for about an hour. It was comfortable because I knew him from my instructions three years ago. I think I was spiritually attracted to him because he seemed to have the gift of holding in reverence every human soul. He spoke more about the life of the soul, the life of Divine grace, than about other worldly things. Everything else flowed out from one’s spiritual life or spiritual condition. He was a tremendous help in guiding me through a way to do an examination of conscience and making a good confession. I was able to begin to see ingrained patterns, as he called them, of venial sin which I took for granted but which were really little roadblocks along the way. His approach to eradicating sins was acquiring virtues. He talked a lot about grace and the virtues. I liked this better than the hell-fire and brimstone some of the Christian preachers had.
Fr. Meriwether also knew what I was going through with my family, and, along with that, I think he knew how much I loved the Lord, loved His holy Catholic Church, loved the Blessed Sacrament, and loved St. Vincent Ferrer Church. Fr. Meriwether said I was practicing the virtue of fortitude very well, and cautioned me that the Lord allows us to become strong in certain virtues because of a share in His Cross later on. He didn’t say that with an air of impending doom, but, I think, out of his own experience.
We were now at the beginning of a new year, and a new decade: 1970. And I was trying to discern what God’s plan or calling was for me. The Sixties certainly proved to be a turning point in many ways: the Vietnam War, and the hippy movement, and the blossoming of the drug culture. There was the civil rights movement; the election and assassination of the first Catholic president; Vatican II and all that would bring to the Church; a kind of cultural revolution in the Women’s Movement, especially with the invention of the birth-control pill; the era of Rock and Roll evolved from the Fifties into the Beatles; the movies and the movements of the Sixties. I remember Ruthie and me doing the cha-cha to Diana Ross and the Supremes.
But most striking for me, of course, it was the decade that changed the direction of my life. There was the sudden and shocking death of my brother, Joshua, and the slow and expected death of Gracie. But for me the most important event was my becoming a Christian. Little Becky Feinstein became a Roman Catholic in 1966. It had been a wonderful adventure in grace, and not without its crosses. I used to wonder why Christians, and Catholics in particular, made such a fuss over the Cross. Catholics even began and ended their prayers tracing the Cross over themselves, but one soon realizes how much the Cross is woven into the very fabric of our lives. My Jewish ancestors certainly knew this, but would never call it “the Cross,” let alone see it as redemptive and transforming. Transforming—that’s a good word for it. Fr. Meriwether once gave a homily in which he played on the forming words: “We are informed by the Word of God in order to conform to Christ crucified and be transformed by the Holy Spirit. And each year we enter into periods to reform our lives and get back on track.”
And now in 1970 and a new decade, there was being formed in my soul the desire to give myself completely to the Lord in a life of separation from the world. I was beginning to know and feel the effects of silence, prayer, and penance. The seeds, planted ever so quietly, were now beginning to grow. It somehow overwhelmed me and amazed me, and certainly stirred up an almost anguished feeling of unworthiness and humility. I dared not breathe a word of this to anyone except Fr. Meriwether and Greta. I would even say that Greta was like a secondary or honorary spiritual director. Her life experience, now coming through the Catholic filter, as it were, was beautiful to behold and amazing at times in its wisdom. She and Fr. Meriwether were both gifts I found at St. Vincent’s.
My family. Sally was living in Chicago, near the Lake, around 3800 North, and worked for the Chicago Sun-Times. She lived with a roommate in a condo with a balcony overlooking Lake Michigan. She was doing alright for herself, Papa would say. She came home only for Thanksgiving and had to work during the other holidays. Mama suspected there was a boyfriend in the picture, whom Sally wasn’t telling us about yet. “She’s nearly thirty, she should settle down,” Mama would say. I don’t think Sally intended to settle down at all, not even at the Chicago Sun-Times; I’m sure she had her eye on the Tribune. I discovered that Sally’s middle name was Ambition, something which I didn’t feel driving me like it seemed to drive so many women my age. We were in the renaissance of the Women’s Movement. I often wondered where Gracie would be with all of it had she lived.
David was a resident at Cornell Medical by the East River and rarely made it across the park to see the family. Mama would have liked to show him off more, and maybe he knew that and stayed away. But what did I know? By that New Year’s Eve of 1970, he hadn’t spoken to me in almost four years. It remained a mystery to me, as he was not a devout Jew by any means. If anything, he was an agnostic secular Jew who was devoted to science, taking care of people, and making money, not necessarily in that order. He was ambitious, too, but in a different way than Sally. He would become what I’d later learn by the title a hedonist…a secular hedonist whose passion is a way of having the good and the beautiful, but for David this meant the best and the most expensive.
Ruthie was a senior in high school and applying to various colleges and universities. She wanted to be an actress or a nurse, go figure! The two extremes, I guess, were like our theatrical masks of comedy and tragedy. She was also very cute, and knew it. She never had a weight problem, unlike Sally and me, but neither was she Twiggy or Cher, her favorite female icons. And she was a bit too boy crazy in my poor estimation, but again, what did I know? I hadn’t been on a date since before Gracie’s illness, and what a significance that was going to play in my life.
I’m still amazed at how God sketches out each of our lives even without our knowing we are being painted! Ruthie was still the little sister, though, and we could laugh together over the silliest things and still play make-believe. She was better at it than I. She was trying to perfect her various foreign accents and would try them out in public. I could play along but was best in British English and French…she could do a Norwegian or Swede, Russian, and Spaniard… and get away with it.
Papa. Dear Papa was working hard, following the news, and seemingly proud of all of us, including me. He followed with much interest the social news, probably more than sports. In 1968, there had been the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy; this past year, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. It was on July 21st, and Papa was glued to the television. We all watched, even at the Library, in the new lunch room lounge.
Papa always asked me what I was reading, and I would tell him, and he still seemed genuinely interested. Sadly, however, neither he nor my mother ever brought up the fact of my being a Catholic. It would be four years in May. So it was also four years since I had moved out at their behest, although we never spoke of Mama’s letter, and in the retelling it would have seemed that moving out was my idea. But it didn’t matter. That I was still welcomed at home meant a lot, and I tried to tell them that.
Mama. Mama was less cold towards me but always just a little reserved. I could see the difference in the way she interacted with Ruthie and me. Probably three times each year she’d bring up the subject of “love and marriage.” Once I remember she actually had Sunrise, Sunset playing when I arrived for dinner. I had yet to finish my degree and may never get around to it, and that would come up about three times a year too. But never a mention of Mr. Goldman!
Speaking of Mr. Goldman, he was now Brother Matthew. He had completed his novitiate and had taken temporary vows just after Advent. I thought maybe they would let him keep Ezra, it’s such a beautiful Old Testament name, but they didn’t ask me. I had not seen him since he left, except for my one visit to West Springfield with Fr. Meriwether. He would be coming up for perpetual vows in another year, if all went well.
Gwendolyn was still Gwendolyn and a good friend to have. She didn’t know a thing of my discerning a vocation or having a spiritual director. I think she always presumed I would get married, and, at that stage, who knew? I wasn’t dating anyone, however, and was not looking to. I wasn’t hanging out at the discos or clubs my classmates were crazy about. There were a few men who frequented the Library who turned my head, but it never went any further than that. That I was not really interested in dating and finding a husband was of particular interest to Fr. Meriwether.
So Greta and I began the new year in style—monastic style! Our first night at the monastery was lovely, and I couldn’t see anyone except Sr. Mary Vincent and Sr. Grace Mary. The next morning, however, I noticed that there was a postulant and a white-veiled novice. Sr. Mary Vincent told me, upon inquiry, that the novice was Sr. Thomas Mary of the Annunciation and the postulant was Sr. Joanne. “Sr. Joanne?” I inquired.
“Yes, ah…you would remember her from last year. Joanne Meyers.”
So there she was. I had lost contact with her over the year, but apparently she had discerned herself right into the monastery. Later in the chapel I sat back, half kneeling and half sitting, on my pew and was lost in thought for a moment. I was so happy for Joanne and even a bit envious. How marvelous it must be to be a nun, I thought, and how scary. Greta touched my arm lightly. “Are you okay?” she whispered so softly that only Jesus and I could hear her. It was then that I realized there were tears running down my cheek.
“Oh yes,” I whispered, “I’m just happy to be here.”
I couldn’t say the new year came in with a bang, even though it was a change of decade, and Times Square, just over the bridge and uptown a bit, was mobbed with millions of people. There were fireworks here in Brooklyn Heights while we were all in the chapel. The nuns had all gone to bed early, after Compline. Greta and I stayed up drinking tea and reading in our rooms, I presume. But we were all in the chapel for the Midnight Office when 1970 came in. We could hear the noise outside: car horns blowing, noisemakers and the boom of fireworks…while the nuns were singing the psalms of the Solemnity of the Mother of God. I caught myself thinking: how happy and grateful I am to be here, and not out there, whatever that meant.
Fr. Meriwether had given me a few Scripture passages he wanted me to meditate on during my retreat, especially in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, and to write down my reflections, however simple they might be. He also gave me a project for the new year. He wanted me to copy and write out in longhand the Gospel of John. The notebook could be just any old spiral notebook that you’d get at a college bookstore, or even a supermarket. They should be separate notebooks, that’s all.
It wasn’t till that New Year’s Eve that I looked at the last Scripture passage he had given me. It was Hosea, Chapter Two:
So I will allure her;
I will lead her into the desert
and speak to her heart.
From there I will give her the vineyards she had…
She shall respond there as in the days of her youth,
when she came up from the land of Egypt…
I will espouse you to me forever; I will espouse
you in right and in justice, in love and in
mercy; I will espouse you in fidelity, and you
shall know the Lord.
The Scriptures Father had given me previous to this one were about vocation, too. There was the call of the disciples: Come and see…follow me, and I will make you fishers of men; the specific call to Matthew the tax collector; the call of the rich young man who went away sad because he couldn’t let go of his riches. These were all powerful passages to meditate on—they still are! They were directly from the Gospels, too, and Fr. Meriwether taught me to listen to the words of the Lord as if they were being spoken directly to me, which, in a real way, they were. But on the eve of the new year, I heard the voice of the Lord from the Hebrew Scriptures and the prophet Hosea, and He was alluring me into the desert and wanted to espouse me to Himself.
This was romantic and scary at the same time. It touched something in me that I recognized as having been touched before…in the deep inner space within me where I would often take refuge, even as a child, and the desire to be all His which touched my soul that chilly Saturday morning when I first went into St. Vincent’s. I had my eyes closed in the chapel, pondering these words quietly, and the image of the Sacred Heart statue came to my mind. And I saw the Lord, not just pointing to His Sacred Heart, but gesturing me to “Come to me…come here. This is the desert where I will espouse you and speak to you and you will know my love.” I don’t know how long I sat there, perhaps forty-five minutes, but I knew that that was all that really mattered…to be allured into the desert of His Heart. I realized too that this allurement had begun years ago, and perhaps I first only felt it or knew it that Saturday morning on my way to see Gracie. I wondered what Rabbi Liebermann would have said about that!
I didn’t fight such thoughts, which I had done in the past. Fr. Meriwether, again, was helping me to watch my thoughts, as he put it, as one watches an aquarium of tropical fish. Not to be afraid, but to remain peaceful, and in an attitude of listening. I was reminded of the wonderful words of Samuel sleeping in the temple: Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.
And so I tried to just listen. To be aware that one is in the presence of the Lord both within and without. I will espouse you in love and mercy…there was Our Lady at the Annunciation, being espoused in love and mercy by the Lord, and her response was, “Fiat.” Be it done unto me according to Your word.
That was the meditation that carried me through New Year’s Eve day and evening and into the night. And when the Night Office began, and the fireworks and car horns were sounding off outside all around us, I interiorly surrendered in my inner space—my soul—Behold, the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me.
New Year’s Day was glorious. It was cold and snowy, and the monastery seemed to be wrapped in a new peacefulness. I was feeling a little more sober, and I hadn’t had anything to drink at all! I had to take stock of my situation. You’d think I would be singing “Climb Every Mountain” like Peggy Wood in The Sound of Music, but I was humming Ron Moody’s song as Fagin in Oliver: “Oh, I’m reviewing the situation…” I could almost see him dancing out of his den of thieves with his treasure box under his arm. He had been nominated for an Academy Award for that role a year before, in 1968 actually. He didn’t get it, but did win the Golden Globe Award.
So on New Year’s Day in the chapel of the Dominican Monastery, I was reviewing the situation, and came to the cold and sober conclusion that it was absolutely impossible that I become a cloistered nun, and I should not fantasize about it anymore. My eyes were getting very heavy, and I could hardly keep them open…I’m too young and had my whole life ahead of me, I heard me say to myself…I was meant to get married…
And I guess I fell sound asleep right there in the chapel, planning my wedding…Greta was the matron of honor wearing a very un-matronly matron of honor dress, checking out books as she walked down the aisle, pencils sticking out of her hair, her glasses down on the tip of her nose. Gwendolyn appeared looking like a fat penguin waddling down the aisle in short flat steps with a teapot in her hand, smiling at and nodding to everyone on both sides of the aisle. Ruthie was there looking like an emaciated Twiggy with a Beatles’ haircut, wandering down the aisle, her eyes glazed over from just smoking a joint in the priory. And sitting in the front pew were Mama and Papa, looking like Tevye and Golda from Fiddler on the Roof in overalls and babushka. I ran out the side door and looked up, and there was Joshua playing a violin on the roof, showing me his violin and laughing. Standing at the Communion rail was Fr. Matthew Ezra with a long beard, waving at me coming down the aisle…next to him was a rabbi in tallis and yarmulke…David, looking angry because there was no canopy.
I glanced over to the Sacred Heart Statue, and there was Gracie lighting a candle for me, and I wanted to cry, but I held it back because her mother was there glaring at me from the pew. Sitting next to her was Sally, taking copious notes and not even looking at me, and behind her I heard Mrs. Melbourne say, “She’s the brightest of the Feinstein girls.” She was holding a package of leaking lamb chops. I got to the Communion rail by myself, and the groom turned to look at me; he was wearing a tuxedo with tails and a white bow-tie, and he had long hair and a beard, and piercing blue eyes…it was the…
I suddenly jumped a foot in the air, and woke up, realizing this was all a crazy dream. Sr. Mary Vincent was next to me with her kind smile, stroking my arm and whispering, “Are you alright, Rebecca dear?” I assured her that I was, that I had just fallen asleep. “I know, dear. You were hollering out loud.”
I apologized as profusely as I could, and then I dared to ask what I had hollered. Sr. Mary Vincent didn’t understand it, but Greta, who had been on the other side of the chapel, had heard it; she said that I hollered, “I don’t want to be an orphan; I don’t want to be an orphan.” They both looked at me, puzzled and waiting for an explanation, and I told them that I had been daydreaming about Oliver Twist when I must’ve fallen asleep. Sr. Mary Vincent smiled and said, “That’s nice, dear. One shouldn’t eat too many olives.” And she toddled off. Greta and I looked at each other and could hardly keep from bursting out loud laughing.
We scurried off to the kitchenette lest we disturb the poor nun keeping her guard, as they called their time of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. Greta put on the tea kettle, and I mused, “Sister thought I was eating olives! We should be so lucky, to have a couple martinis with them.” And we both laughed. Greta and I loved a martini or two after a long day at the old library.
I told her I was kind of reviewing the situation and the past year, and thinking of Fagin’s song in Oliver, and must’ve fallen asleep. She astutely pointed out that I was not Fagin in my dream, but Oliver, the orphan boy. I didn’t tell her about my wedding dream or her awful dress or Gwendolyn or anyone, not even the groom. But I thought about it all. Maybe I was feeling like an orphan, and becoming a nun would… would what? I didn’t know.
I wrote in my journal that evening about the dream, and told myself to snap out of it. I tried to reason it all out very clearly and sensibly. It would be nice to have a lovely apartment on the Upper East Side, be one of the head librarians or archivists at the New York Public Library, and marry a devout Catholic man who was also rich and handsome (well, it was my fantasy!). We would have a lovely duplex around East 65th Street and Second Avenue, in walking distance to St. Vincent’s, where we would be married, have all our children baptized, and we’d be patrons of the arts, and travel to Europe every other summer while the governesses looked after the children until they were old enough to travel and not embarrass us.
I couldn’t get old Fagin’s song out of my head: Oh I’m reviewing the situation… Maybe my becoming a Catholic was a way of becoming an orphan. My family was better than most Jewish families, I figured, they didn’t literally disown me, ah…but if I became a nun, especially a cloistered nun, they would, I feared. I would certainly have brought orphanhood upon myself. It was bad enough that I should cause them to suffer from my being a Catholic, although it didn’t seem like they were really suffering at all. Sally and David were mostly embarrassed and angry; Ruthie could care less; Papa seemed to be accepting, if I was happy… and Mama, well…Mama maybe suffered a little, but was it because she felt that she had failed in her being a mother; or was she suffering embarrassment whenever she was with her Hadassah friends and they’d whisper about me, or so she thought? Had I let her down because I wouldn’t be marrying a mensch under a canopy and giving her grandchildren to spoil and overfeed? Who was suffering here?
Those were the sentiments I left the monastery pondering that January 2nd. I had one semester left at Barnard and thought about graduate school in library science. Gwendolyn was always at me to become a lawyer, but none of it excited me as much as being at the monastery in Brooklyn Heights. Yet despite that, I was in complete denial that I could ever possibly have a vocation. Good for Joanne Meyers, but not for me. Amen.
I meet Ruthie at Tea on Thames the day after we got back; she was pretending to be the youngest daughter of a Lady in Waiting for Queen Elizabeth and talked about the rooms at Buckingham Palace where she had grown up. It was all made up, of course, and her accent was rather charming; she sounded a lot like Julie Andrews, and I was expecting her to break into “These Are a Few of My Favorite Things” when Lady Gwendolyn placed a plate of almond biscuits (cookies, for us Yanks) in front of her. Gwendolyn, of course, would put on a serving girl’s Cockney accent and curtsy to her ladyship. Even the other patrons in the shop were enjoying the show. Gwendolyn wanted to hear all about my retreat, and of course Ruthie was all ears and full of questions. She promised she wouldn’t breathe a word to “Mummy” (as she put it), as she (Mummy) thought it was very peculiar to be going to spend the holidays at a convent of nuns, and had said so more than once.
Ruthie also filled me in on the family news, which wasn’t anything too interesting, except that David was there for dinner on New Year’s Day with a cute little thing from New York-Cornell Hospital. It’s the first time that David ever brought someone home for dinner. “Mama was all aflutter, as you can imagine. And the girl was very nice; very well spoken and intelligent. I think she may be a doctor, too, or a medical student—I missed the beginning,” announced Ruthie, while digging into the almond biscuits.
We both devoured a cookie or two in silence. I took a big gulp of my tea, and said, “So, was she Jewish?”
Ruthie almost spit out her cookie when she blurted out, “No, she’s Irish Catholic! Her name is Kathleen O’Hara from County Galway,” (this with a bit of an Irish brogue). “I just made up the County Galway part; I think she’s from New Haven.”
Ruthie had left to meet a girlfriend before David and Kathleen O’Hara left, so she didn’t get the immediate post trauma reaction from Mama and Papa when they left. All I said was, “Maybe David will think better of Catholics a little now.”
And Ruthie just said, “Probably,” and she was off gabbing about school stuff, as she called it.
My monthly meeting with Fr. Meriwether was postponed for a week, as he was away somewhere. He never told me where he went whenever he was away, which wasn’t very often. I saw him finally the second week of January and kept the conversation light and superficial. He sat quietly and patiently until he told me that he wasn’t here to listen to my chatter about the monastic menu. He told me I was holding something back, probably because of fear, as most of us do, but I’d better come clean with him. I had never heard him so stern and yet so perceptive.
And so I told him about my envy of Sr. Joanne and about my crazy dream and how foolish it was of me to think that I could possibly have a vocation. The Scripture passages he gave me to meditate on were very beautiful and about the sacrament of marriage, right?
He leaned forward in his chair and told me that I was afraid that the Lord was calling me to be a nun, and from what he could see over the past year, I may very well have a vocation, and if that was so, what was I going to do about it?
I stood up and told him I did not have a vocation. He was wrong, and perhaps I should stop coming to see him and get on with my life. I didn’t wait for an answer, I turned and walked out of the room, threw my coat on quickly, and went out the front door, walking past the front of the church without any acknowledgement of who or what was inside. I was so angry at Fr. Meriwether for being so presumptive. I turned down 72nd Street and went east to Third Avenue, and on 73rd and Third passed a quiet little bistro that looked very warm and inviting. I darted inside, sat at a table, and ordered a gin martini—straight up with three olives, thank you very much.