Star Back into
Orbit
Little pilgrim ... you found your way
back home.
Love song, "Little
Pilgrim"
As a teen-ager Michael had sometimes liked to wander in the famous Roman Catholic wooded retreat in the heart of Portland called "The Sanctuary of Our Sorrowful Mother," but better known as "the Grotto." Usually accompanied by a girlfriend named Patricia, he would drop in after school and visit the stations of the cross, then slip into the chapel and say a prayer. He did so frequently following the death of his brother David. It was one of the tender interludes in a tormented adolescence. The officiating priest was friendly and dubbed the pair "Saint Mike and Saint Pat."
Prayer had always come easily to Michael, although he could never be sure God was listening. At difficult times, such as when he was staring at a picture of his dead brother or retching from a ghastly drug trip or reading a heartbreaking letter from an ex-girlfriend, it seemed to him his prayers were bouncing off a sky of brass. Still, he liked the feeling that prayer gave him; and on his twenty-sixth birthday, March 26, 1970, he thought he would like once again to find a quiet church and say a prayer. A year
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had passed since Sandra and the children had returned to California. He had just received a bittersweet birthday telephone call from Sandra the night before. She said she had baked a cake, and would he like to come over to Tustin and enjoy it — and see the children?
He would.
At the time Michael was still living in Huntington Beach and had picked up a road-weary 1948 Buick station wagon known as a surf wagon or "woody." It was quite a comedown from the sports cars he used to sell so successfully. Riding with him on his weekend pleasure jaunts to the beaches, and just about everywhere else, was his comical poodle-retriever, Arnold. Michael set out that afternoon with his scruffy companion alongside and stopped first to look up a blond girlfriend in Newport Beach. He found her sitting in her sports car with her brother, smoking a joint.
"Take a hit, Mike," she said.
"No. I don't want to smoke dope any more."
"Why not?"
"I don't need it. I've got Jesus."
What Michael really meant was that he was off drugs, and this was a cool way of putting it. He drove on to Costa Mesa and pulled into the parking lot of Calvary Chapel. He was curious about the church because he had heard a lot about it. The building was located in a field of string beans on the border of Costa Mesa and Santa Ana. The parking lot was empty. Leaving Arnold in the woody, Michael walked across the Spanish-style courtyard to the front entrance. The sanctuary was empty except for a cleaning woman. At the front of the church he boldly mounted three steps to the platform and knelt at the communion table. An open Bible and a menorah rested upon it. Michael read a psalm from the Bible, then prayed silently. After a few moments he returned to his car enveloped
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once again in the quiet peace he had known years before in the Grotto. He had turned down a joint and had used the name of Jesus. It felt good.
Climbing into his trusty woody, Michael started it up but discovered it would not move. The emergency brake was apparently frozen. He got out, lifted the hood and tinkered, then crawled under the car and attacked the brake rod with a wrench. Nothing happened. By the time he emerged from underneath, serenity had evaporated and prayers were forgotten. He filled the air with hearty curses and gave the woody a swift kick. This set Arnold to barking furiously. The dog leaped from the car and Michael was forced to chase him and toss him back in. When the contrary brake finally broke loose, Michael was grimy and disgusted. He proceeded toward Tustin in a chastened mood. The best the birthday party could do, he sensed, was to show him what he had lost. And so it proved. The children ran to greet him and he played with them, wrestled on the floor with them, kissed them, laughed with them, and all the while sadness constricted his heart. Little conversation passed between Sandra and Michael. He stayed for dinner, blew out the candle on his cake, and that was it.
Three weeks passed, and one day Henry Cutrona spoke to Michael in music class. "Hey, Love Song is on tonight at Calvary Chapel."
"Yeah?" A long pause. Michael had heard the group sing and play and knew all about them; they had achieved wide popularity in southern California. "I wouldn't mind hearing them again."
By this time the woody was temporarily immobilized, and Michael was reduced to a bicycle. He stood up a date for the evening and pedaled his way ten miles from Huntington Beach to Calvary Chapel, but was hardly prepared for what awaited his arrival. The church sanctuary,
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designed for 350 people, was jammed with over a thousand; and what was most amazing, they were all young and casually dressed. Further, they were singing their hearts out and lifting their hands in the air.
Something's wrong here, he thought. Church people don't look like this. Where are the white shirts, the conservative suits, the bow ties, and wing-tip shoes? Where are the girls with white gloves and ribbons in their hair? Where are the old people? The robed preacher — where is he? And the choir? How come no hymnbooks? This place is wholesome. That's it, wholesome. The people are young and alive and happy. Not square. They're not embarrassed to be here, not embarrassed about Jesus.
Love Song finished their concert, were enthusiastically applauded, and left the stage with their instruments. Their place was taken by a long-haired, bearded man wearing a hippie-style shirt and jeans and carrying a Bible. He couldn't have been more than twenty-one years old. This was Lonnie Frisbie, a hippie who had come to Christ in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco and was later befriended by Pastor Chuck Smith. Chuck used the young man's gift of communicating to reach the flower-power generation with the gospel. To Michael the man looked like the paintings of Jesus he had seen, and he conveyed a kind of authority that Michael didn't seem to mind.
As the message began, Michael looked around. People seemed to be absorbed in listening. Bibles were open. He studied some of the faces, almost all serious, but some smiling as if they knew a secret. The atmosphere was electric. What was going on? To Michael the speaker's message was no different from what he had heard as a boy in the Montavilla Baptist Church. Same old gospel; nothing had changed that he could tell. The language was more up-to-date, and there was no doubt that the man could deliver the message. But at the end there was the same old
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invitation, just as Michael remembered it: "Does anybody here want to receive Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord? I want you to stand right now."
Fifty or more people stood immediately, and Michael twitched. He was seated on the floor, his back in a corner, and was virtually hidden from the front. It was the only spot he could find. I'm not going to join them, he thought to himself. I know all this. I did it once before back in Portland; and anyway, there's no room. I couldn't stand if I wanted to. It's just too humiliating. I'm not a teen-ager; I'm twenty-six years old. If I stand up with these people, I know what it means. What girl would want to date me if she knew I was a Christian? Why should I do it? No way am I going to stand up!
Now the speaker was looking over the congregation, and his hand was moving back and forth. "Is there anybody here tonight," he asked, "who has left God? Maybe as a young boy or girl you knew Him, and now you've left Him. Would you want to know Him tonight personally?" Those words landed in the target area. Michael remembered waiting for the angels to come through the Oregon clouds, and the teacher who wept because he, Michael, had eternal life. His heart was struck and pierced. "God," he whispered, "that's You. Only You knew that. And You knew I was thinking about it."
Something was indeed happening in the universe. It happens every time a human being finds his way home. A wandering star was coming back into orbit. The freaked-out flower child, the apotheosis of the lost generation, was about to turn into a servant of the Most High. Whatever his reservations, Michael knew his moment of decision had come. There on the floor in the remotest corner of the packed church, Michael MacIntosh surrendered his life to Jesus Christ, not as a boy, but as a man. This time the war was over. He had put down the gun; the capitulation was complete. He was forever changed.
