I devoured the word of my new Friend and Savior voraciously (who would not read the love-letters and life-story of a new-found beloved?). I still worked at Schrafft’s Restaurant on Lex in the mid-50s, and was living in a 2-room apartment at 336 E. 95th Street, paying only (in 1968) about $48 a month, with a wonderful view of the TriBoro Bridge. After I had gone back upstate to Croton-on-Hudson to tell Lea the vision I had seen while she was telling me of Jesus dying on the cross for my sins (I’d said nothing to her at the time – the story of these things told in “St. Louis Blues To Conversion”), she directed me to a small Pentecostal church in mid-Manhattan, and which I started attending, going to every meeting, three or four a week. I drank it in. I loved hearing about Jesus from others who knew Him.
I became aware of a great discrepancy between the supernatural powers manifested in the New Testament, by the Lord, the apostles, and the church, and what was happening in the Christian world I was becoming acquainted with. It greatly puzzled and perplexed me why there was so little supernatural power in the 20th century community of His followers. Remember, I had been – prior to conversion – studying Theosophy, the various adepts, the occult, and the Eastern spiritual paths, as well as being part of the LSD-Mescaline-grass counter-culture’s spirituality, and spiritual power was something I expected to see in the Path of the mighty One. I had experienced first-hand the power of God in His revealing Himself to me and saving me.
At the church I heard of a seminar on fasting being given by Christians in Brooklyn, so I went. These folks were into 2, 3, and 4-week fasts, as well as what they called a “complete fast,” which was fasting (drinking water only) until all body fat was absorbed and the body started taking nourishment from vital tissue and organs, which was when true starvation set in, and hunger returned with a vengeance (it goes away after 6 days or so). One then had to break the fast very carefully, first with juices or broth, and then light vegetables and fruit, slowly returning to a normal diet (the rule was, as many days as the fast, so long would be the careful breaking of it). The teachers claimed that this was the way to regain the spiritual power missing in the churches. That was all I needed to hear. I was hooked. And so I began my fasting. I would be the bringer-of-power-and-spiritual-life-to-the-church. Ignorance, pride, and false teaching make a potent brew!
This is a part of my life few know of. It lasted from late 1968 till 1970 or so; I was 26 in ’68 (born on the first day of Spring, March 21st). I was sure, from the Scriptures I read, and from some books, and from the fasting teachers, that after fasting for a length of time (3 weeks, 4 or 5 or 6?) I would receive what is called “an anointing” from God consisting of a powerful infilling of His Spirit which would enable me to once and for all quit smoking cigarettes, be entirely holy in my consciousness and behavior, and have the power to bring His healing and whatever was needed to His people, and those lost He would show mercy to. This “anointing” was sort of the equivalent, in my mind, of a further state of illumination and intimate closeness to the risen Lord. The evangelist Charles G. Finney seemed to have had this, from what I read in his memoirs, and reports of him, and John Wesley supported it – I thought – Biblically. I felt it was God’s will for me to do this, and to vary from this path of obedience was sin.
The trouble was, I see now in hindsight, I knew virtually nothing of a genuine life of faith and of God’s plenteous provision of spiritual sustenance for such refugees from the occult counterculture as I, and instead tried hacking my way through a wilderness of error and satanic obstruction. I knew no teachers of sound doctrine and spiritual power, as Paul said there should be:
And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God…For the kingdom of God is not in world, but in power. (1 Corinthians 2:4, 5; 4:20)
Thinking this was the path I was on, I would fast and pray 4, 5, 6, 7 days, and always break the fast “prematurely,” which was horrendous sin and failure to me, and when I was eating I reckoned myself in a state of sin. This was one of the primary condemning Scriptures:
…Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth. And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin. (Romans 14:22, 23; emphasis mine)
I knew this pertained to food issues other than fasting, but I took the principle concerning “doubt” (i.e., an uncertain conscience) to heart, and was guided by it. On the one hand I was so ignorant of the Faith that I did not have withal to stand confidently in God’s presence, even when I was fasting and had a clear conscience.
When I would “wickedly” break the fast I would right away start smoking cigarettes again, and I would so gorge myself with food (forget the rules of carefully breaking the fast!) that I would have to make myself throw up to feel normal again. I would then “repent” and begin fasting again, or perhaps start eating again. Before I knew it I had entered on the path of anorexia-bulimia! This lasted for a couple of years, I think. I didn’t have much money at that time, and my appetite when eating was ravenous, so I fell to eating out of garbage cans, or going downtown to the Village where there were a lot of restaurants and leftover food. I saw a book title once, Holy Anorexia, and the dynamic sounded somewhat familiar to my ears. The aspiring saint had fallen to quite some depths! Would that these were the worst depths to which I fell!
The only times of sanity and fellowship with my Lord in those days was when I was fasting; if I was in a state of obedience I had direct access to His presence, and joyed there. I would go for long walks by the East River next to my house, as the footpath along its edge, next to the FDR Drive, was just a minute or two away. Along this path, up into the East Harlem area, and down to the United Nations area, this was my prayer ground, joying in my Lord, and resisting the devil and his demons. The sight and sound of the river water was soothing to my heart, as were the “wide open spaces” of river, sky and land. This was my life for a while. I had no real friends at this time.
There was Mother Weston, a large Black woman I’d met at Rock Church, who sang hymns with a piercing power and heart. She sort of adopted me, as she’d had a son my age who died in the drug scene. She gave me some of his clothes – we both were medium height and slim build – and loved taking me with her to the various churches she visited in the Bronx and Mt. Vernon. I was her adopted Jewish boy upon whom Christ had shown mercy. She often took me home and fed me; she loved me like a mother. Jane Weston, I’ll see you in glory!
Even though I led this semi-tormented life the Lord still used me. I remember this one young Black man I’d befriended (from some church, I think); he fell ill and went to a hospital near my home; I got a lay minister’s ID card from the hospital chaplain, and visited him, encouraging him in the Faith before he died. Another young man, Fred, I befriended, and from our conversations he came to faith in Christ. Fred is still one of my closest friends these many years later! In fact, I moved from the Upper East Side down to the East Village to share the apartment Fred rented. We opened the apartment as a crash pad of sorts, working in conjunction with a number of storefront ministries of Christians reaching out to the counter-culture young men and women in the East Village. The names of some of these ministries – they took the form of coffeehouses – were The Living Room, His Place, and The Way Word.
I remember one young man who stayed with us at the apartment – older than most at 28 or 29, perhaps – who was among the more mature Christians I’d come across, Bill Ondre by name. He worked among the staff of the coffeehouses, supporting them, and caring for the young people who came in, bearing witness to the reality and power of the Savior. Late one evening we were home sitting at the kitchen table talking about the things of God – Fred was asleep in the other room – when suddenly Bill seized up in the middle of a sentence and fell to the floor, unconscious. It seemed to me he had had a heart attack, and I endeavored to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Fred awoke, and called the police and the ambulance, and they came quickly, but to no avail. Bill died there in my arms.
I knew he went directly from my presence into the presence of God in Heaven, in just moments. Somehow the living faith and godly death of Bill before my eyes braced my own faith, the reality of Bill bearing witness to the reality of God, in life and in death.
Lord, would You please give my love to Mother Weston and Bill, and I thank You for the blessing they were in my early days walking with You.
Nonetheless my spiritual strength and resolve continued to fail. These were the years, ’70-’71, and being some 33 years ago, the chronology of things is a bit jumbled in my mind. I know I began to see my old girlfriend, Donna Lee, and I began to take acid again. And smoke cigarettes. These grew from what I thought to be the root sin: eating again, walking in darkness. The anguish of being separated from my Jesus! My heart had rejoiced in the glory of His presence, and of being granted to walk the highway of holiness.
At some point in this period my time spent in “darkness” began to equal and exceed that spent in the light. Years later, after I began to write of these things, this was what I saw when I looked back:
The protagonist in this tale an occultist-poet warrior-priest who fell from his Master's presence into the abyss in the human heart, and found himself in the howling archetypal heartlands of humanity....where he began an odyssey in search for his own heart, and his Master’s....
This warrior and fallen priest found himself set upon his feet, even upon the heartlands floor of the howling Abyss. No Valley of the Shadow of Death, this – for that was in the world of the living – rather this was in the realms of archetypal horror, where the worst monsters are not those who beset one about, but that which one may oneself become, being impregnated by worse horrors than Sigourney’s Aliens of modern film.
I moved out from Fred’s and was on the street for a while. Fred was aware that I had fallen. I was glad he had the stability to maintain his own spiritual integrity and walk with God.
Barefoot In Winter: Righteousness In the East Village
When Fred moved to Staten Island I found lodging with a young Catholic Christian, Cliff Lichter, who ran a crash pad at 437 E. 12th Street. But before I learned about Cliff’s place I was on the street a while. I remember one evening I was sleeping outside Penn Station, the key to the locker holding my bag of belongings in my watch pocket, and someone very quietly took it from me without waking me. My few possessions were gone, but thankfully not my good stuff – only “travelin’ gear.”
I remember also one notable descent. I went to stay with Donna Lee (who had an apartment on 13th Street and Avenue “A”) and dropped some acid (I don’t think she took any). She was a dear and old friend (a former lover) from my pre-conversion East Village days. She’d owned a small boutique with exquisite clothing she’d made, and other items. She’d been a lovely aspiring actress (come into town from the Mid-West), and alcohol and pills attended her last days in NYC, before she fled back to a semblance of normalcy and sanity in Ft. Wayne. I greatly contributed to her unsettlement with my ups and downs. I’d sought to bring her into the fold of Christ, and the small community of us who clung to Him for life. My inconsistency cost her. When my life was falling apart, she sought to give me shelter from the storm. Alas, the storm was within, and no human shelter availed. I dropped the cid with her in the apartment. I was not “walking with the Lord” at this time (eating as I was).
It was very strange – I had a clear sense of being an elder or prince in Israel, in the spiritual realm of the people of God (not in a mere physical ethnic sense). This pertained to a spiritual consciousness of personhood, and awareness of the opposition and influence of demonic entities, as well as temptation to do evil. This was calmly and soothingly mingled with the cresting psychedelic energies rushing within my being. Donna, I think, was drinking wine.
I did not resist the beauty of my old friend. My identity crashed in the wickedness of sin.
I had been reading The Brothers Karamozov in those days and been struck with some of the things Dmitri said to Alyosha [2], depicting his own heart through a poem of the goddess Ceres,
…And where’er the grieving goddess
Turns her melancholy gaze,
Sunk in vilest degradation
Man his loathsomeness displays.
Dmitri explicates his own heart from these lines, and then cites more poetry,
Her gifts to man are friends in need,
The wreath, the foaming must,
To angels—visions of God’s throne,
To insects—sensual lust.
He then waxes eloquent on this theme of the sensual lust of insects having its correlative in the heart of the Karamozovs.
In my embrace of Donna I plunged into the horror of Dmitri’s theme – the two of us were as insects indulging this lust, but it was worse: this insect-like sense was due to demonic beings using us – possessing us in some less-than-Gadarene manner – to fulfill their own vile pleasure. It was truly a horror!
I remember shortly afterward trying to recuperate my wits and sense of heart, but could not shake the guilt and defilement that had suffused me. I was still tripping strongly.
I picked up a copy of Dante’s The Divine Comedy Donna had among her books [3] and began to read – I can’t recall if it was in Purgatorio or Paradiso, I never could find the place again – and while I was reading something that spoke of the Lord a great glory shone upon me, the majesty of His actual presence as He looked upon this foul worm with tender kindness (not the wrath I surely deserved!), and the glory of this grace smote me to the quick, and I was won back to Him in that instant, glory and majesty and joy flowing in my acid consciousness like fireworks of a home-coming in my honor on a black night.
My words to Him were (and these have been repeated many times in various circumstances over the years), “Jesus, forgive me for these sins I have committed, and cleanse me with Your blood.” And I knew from His word – written – it was done. To the devil and his spirits I said, “Satan, in the name of Jesus Christ, and by the power of His indwelling Spirit, I command you to depart from me, and all ground I gave you I now withdraw and give back to my God. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth I break and bind your power over me, and command you to go.”
Perhaps those not Christians may think me mad, but this is reality of life in the spirit world, in which all of us live, but most are blind, not having the Holy Spirit who gives vision.
I said goodbye to Donna Lee (I cannot remember if we talked much then – surely I told her of my giving my heart back to the Lord – but this may have confused her, and I think I felt it best to go), and when I got outside it was cold and snowing.
I remembered that the money I had been living on was the trust-fund allowance of $150 a month (one could live on that in those days) I had promised to regularly send to my elder daughter’s mother in Illinois to help them get by (this is another story), but as I had been broke I kept it for myself a few months. The boots and the belt I was wearing were bought with this money. I considered this stolen money (it was not mine any longer to keep or spend, by my word), and I could not wear the boots or belt any longer, so I took them off in the street outside Donna’s apartment and left them neatly by the doorway for someone to pick up and take. I walked over to the Christians’ Living Room coffee shop on St. Mark’s Place between 1st and 2nd Avenues to see if anyone there had some spare footwear. I’m sure I was a sight walking in there barefoot out of the snow, though it wasn’t obvious I was tripping. One of the men had a pair of military boots in the trunk of his car, which he lent me till I got some of my own.
I was comforted by the spiritual companionship of my friends (for I was known to them, and they to me), and I had them pray for me. This one fine young woman, Sandy (a worker for Teen Challenge, which supported the Living Room), said words to me as I left that have stayed with me over the years: “Steve…be strong, be true.” That profound simplicity – when said in love – goes deep into a person tripping. So I started a fast again. It didn’t last long.
It was around this time I heard of Cliff Lichter’s place. Cliff was gracious, and he had a heart for the young people who were casualties of the East Village dope scene. I think he went off to work during the day (as a cook, I believe) to support himself and us. Eventually the place filled up with Christians, and there were increasingly few who were not. Cliff left after while. We got to be a small community of believers, and when we heard there was another small apartment for rent across the hall (I think it was around $50 or $60 a month) we snapped it up (I borrowed the $120 – deposit and first month – to get the new apartment from some believers who had been missionaries associated with Watchman Nee in China, and currently attended an assembly in Queens, Christian Fellowship Center, comprised of many Chinese nationals who had known Nee, and some who were in ministry with him, as well as Americans from the area. They were good people, and glad to help). The new apartment was for the men, and the old one was for the women. This community thrived for while, and then broke up. A number of the folks joined churches or other Christian communes, which were plenteous in those days, and began to live settled lives.
Pretty soon I was alone in the men’s apartment, and a couple of women – young believers – stayed in the other one. I began to stray more and more, eating, and smoking cigarettes. Another great descent began as I met an old friend from my earlier travels in British Honduras (now Belize), Mustapha. He was a Black man from the Lower East Side I had met in a commune of Americans outside Belize City in 1965 or 66, and here he was on 2nd Avenue. He right away gave me some speed (Dexedrine tablets, I think), and introduced me to the heroin scene kingpins of the East Village, chief of whom was a woman, Emily, and next her male colleague, Lonnie, and a few young toughs who did their bidding. Being as I was tight with Mustapha they welcomed me, and this began my brief foray into heroin use.
I had a day job – working as a chauffer for the boss of a meatpacking plant on the Lower East Side. I was a good driver, and enjoyed doing that. I had worked as an orderly in a nursing home for a while, but the supervisor said I took too long to make my rounds cleaning up my folks, though she said she would give me a good reference as she saw I had a heart for the people and my tardiness was due to spending time and talking with them.
Evenings and nights I went to the heroin hub of the East Village. I had money so I didn’t have to resort to the crimes of the others. One tough guy, Doug – a short but stocky and muscular man – thought it sport to lord it over me, until I told him, “Look, Doug, I know you’re tougher and stronger than me, but you’re going to have to back off – I don’t take this from anyone.” And from then on we were friends. There were some very mean folks in this scene, though not in the immediate clique; this one guy, a tall Black man, I could see death in his eyes, a capacity for profound evil. There were only two white guys in the group, “white Bobby” and myself. All my adult life I have walked among Blacks and Puerto Ricans and have been accepted among them as an equal – would that all whites were so egalitarian!
Another man, “Tree-Top,” called such for his extreme height – maybe 6’ 8” – used to boss smaller guys around, till one man fed up with it sat waiting for him on the steps of what had been the Electric Circus on St. Marks Place with a sharp knife concealed in a newspaper, and when he came up to him deeply sliced open his mid-section. “Tree-Top” lived, but was a more subdued individual after that.
Around this time there was a “panic” in New York, that is, there was a shortage of heroin, and the addicts – my friends – were hurting and frightened. As I was white, and had my own money (i.e., was not a thief or rip-off artist), and a good reputation, I had this one mid level-dealer ask me if I wanted to work for him, for he had a connection that was intact. I did cop for my friends a couple of times, but I did not want to do this any longer. I remember one evening walking along the street mildly high (I think on ‘cid) I came across these two rough street hustlers who called me over and asked me if I knew where there was any heroin. I figured them to be capable of murder to get the stuff, and I told them no. But I could sense their own drug-heightened awareness strangely probing my mind, as if they could see into me and could tell that I did know where. That thoroughly spooked me.
I saw in a flash that if I continued as I was I would have to become a prince of death, one who must be willing to take a life if another got in my way, and to always be carrying a pistol for that eventuality. All of a sudden I saw the logical conclusion to the life I was leading, and it went right into the devil’s lair. Being a soldier in the Marine Corps was one thing, but this soldiering in the depths of evil quite another, and my heart (which despite all belonged to Christ) revolted against it.
I told all my friends in the scene I was leaving the area, and would not be reachable. I had had the prudence to tell almost no one where my apartment was, so I knew that I would be safe there – some half a mile from the St. Marks area – if I lay low.
Still, I was not of a mind to repent and walk again with the Lord, because it would involve another extended fast, which I had no confidence I could successfully do. This was a vicious trap, and I knew there was something amiss in my thinking this was required of me, but I could not see through it to extricate myself. You may say, “How could such a low-life character belong among God’s children, be one of His elect?” You’ll have to ask Him that when you see Him, but I would answer there are many such ensnared in false doctrines and satanic snares, and in part I write this to give such heart and hope, and to open to them the way of deliverance and authentic salvation. I am one of those low-lifes (former low-life, if you will) the Lord uses to reach down into the depths of evil and depravity to snatch others like myself from the pit, as David sings, “Bless the LORD, O my soul…Who forgiveth all thine iniquities…Who redeemeth thy life from destruction”! [4]
Back to the pit of my former life: I was deeply frightened upon seeing the path I had been walking, the path of a budding inner-city “prince of death,” I, who had been schooled in the royal courts of the Son of God, groomed as a member of the royal Family itself to be a warrior-priest in service of the King and High Priest, now on the brink of the devil’s service! And to have the devil’s hit-men keeping an eye open for me as they had “psychically smelled” I had knowledge of what they sought!
The woman next door, Suzanne, the one remaining Christian disciple from the community, became my friend and companion in this darkness. She also was not walking with the Lord. To make a long story short, we got married (this was 1972), and had a girl-child. We moved to a better apartment, and in 1973 I began to drive a yellow cab, which I continued doing for 5 years. In 1975 Sue’s mother died, and she had a nervous breakdown, taking off to Canada, where she had some relatives.
Although Sue’s mom had been an alcoholic, her last weeks were in a place in the Bronx called Calvary Nursing Home (or something like that), a hospice for cancer patients. My heart went out to her, and on days off I would go visit her, fasting and praying, often, and I believe she called upon the name of the Lord in reality, and went into eternity in His care, as Paul the apostle declared, “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” [5]
Still, I continued going downhill, despite this momentary triumph.
I got a small apartment I could afford, so as to care for my daughter, Nadine, and myself. I remained separated from Sue, even when she returned to the states later. We eventually shared custody of our child.
Spiritually I was in a strange state. It was to me as a limbo of sorts. When I stopped fasting (in 1972) and became involved with people the anorexia-bulimia symptoms ceased, and I ate normally. Every time, however, I was moved in my heart to seek the Lord and walk with Him, I was bound to commence a long fast. Even when I was not involved in any actual sins (violations of His commandments) I reckoned myself in a state of disobedience, and thus in sin.
In my life and heart I had fallen from the presence of Him I loved, and walked in darkness.
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1 Cited in, The Strong Name, by James S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1946), page 92.
2 In the section of Part One, Book III: The Sensualists, 4. The Confession of a Passionate Heart—in Verse.
3 The handsome 1948 edition by Pantheon, translated by Lawrence White and illustrated by Doré.
4 Psalm 103:2-4, King James Bible.
5 Romans 10:13.
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