When I graduated from high school in
the early ‘80s I knew a string of Mennonite kids who went on to a
bible school in the middle of the prairie grasslands. “Bible
Schools” were a sort of finishing school theologically aligned to
particular denominations — often dubbed “Bridal Schools,” since
marriage accomplished the same “settling down” effect, protecting grown children from heretical thoughts and activities and potential damnation.
I’d been to the place. It felt
like the middle of nowhere to me, but there was no denying its
students had a certain raucous ebullience that could be infectious.
I was friends with some of these
kids, and this was the place where the scene-crasher from my previous post worked, as a sort of Dean of Students — from here on he’ll
be M___. Anyway, none of my friends were letter writers, so it wasn’t
until some years after the fact that I discovered this place was
something of a locus for The Freaky Shit.
Some of it was fairly standard: you
assemble a group of people an hour or two after supper, or maybe just
prior to the conclusion of a day-long fast, get everyone to hold
hands and sing choruses, then move on to prayers and recitations and
surrender, and . . . stuff happens.
Other stuff was harder to pin down.
In mid-winter, on a late Friday
night, a group of guys decided they were keen to watch some
television. The school’s sole television was located in the student
lounge, which, thanks to curfew, was now locked. Easy enough to break
into, however, which the group did without damaging anything. They
turned on the box, and settled into the couches and cushions.
A few minutes later they heard
someone reaching for the doorknob. The door swung open, and there was
M___. He looked the group over, asked, “Where’s J___?” J___
emerged from behind the couch, where he’d ducked for cover.
“Alright, you guys. Back to your rooms. You know you’re not
supposed to be here.”
At some point
M___ told these guys he’d been in prayer while they were breaking
in. He had seen what they’d done, which he described with a clarity
of detail that unnerved every last one of them.
"They're watching television, M___!" |
I knew three of the guys who'd been
there. The first (#1) was a friend. At the time he was in hot pursuit
of the more charismatic gifts of the Spirit, so this was all sauce
for the gander. The second (#2) was a co-worker and fellow
ink-stained wretch at the Mennonite weekly. I knew him as a
good-humoured, sincere guy — he held the entire episode in contempt,
and M___ guilty of occult activity. The third guy (#3, naturally) was
only an acquaintance, a sweet-natured introvert, a terrific musician,
and a dear friend to #1. A year or two ago, #1 tracked me down and we had a pleasant catch-up. As we ran over the “where are they now?” list,
he informed me that #3 had gone all-in Materialist Atheist, and
couldn't be happier. #1's nature and temperament have mellowed a bit
over the years, but I still recognized him as my friend from 30 years
ago.
Back when #2 and I were filing
reports, I spent a weekend next to M___ at some event I had to cover.
The event was a slog, but M___ was a friendly and engaging fellow,
happy to speak at length over just about any topic I threw at him. I
relished his conversation, and eventually the event in question came
up.
He remembered it very clearly, and
while he didn't want to get into particulars, since this was really
between the boys and God, he didn't mind confirming it was pretty
much as described. M___ had been in prayer, seen the event, “sensed
that something in the spirit of it was not quite right,” so he put
on his coat and hat, and shut it down.
It did not occur to me until long
after we'd parted ways to wonder how he was able to discern the
appropriateness of the spirit that moved him to act as he did. All
three of my acquaintances insisted it had been an innocent gathering,
and I believed them. Did M___ have
to barge in and put The Zap on those boys, or was there possibly not
a subtler and kinder way to address the perceived shadiness of this
particular group “spirit”? Given how radically two of the three
finally reacted, the question seems pertinent.
The reflexive sideways retreat to hardcore Orthodoxy, in the face of TFS, is what
is notable to me.
2 comments:
Somewhat tangentially related, but perhaps of interest nonetheless, I came across both of these links recently and thought about our discussions:
http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/stevereads/2014/04/the-demon-haunted-world/
and
http://christopherbeha.com/2014/04/25/what-if-we-took-god-out-of-the-god-debate/
Thanks. I follow Donoghue, so I'd read the Sagan bit already. Well-read, and well-presented, as Sagan reliably (for the most part -- don't get me started about Contact) was. Still, while Sagan rightly considers the Cockatoo infinitely more astonishing than a collection of abduction stories, he fails (in my view) to express nearly enough astonishment at the amorphousness and permeability of human consciousness. And that's just for starters.
I can't say I'm terribly interested in Beha's argument. At root I consider the atheist/theist argument false, since we're all behaving and "believing" like pagans, regardless.
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