May 1970, it happened, and that evening became more life-altering and life-giving than decisions I would later make to move to other continents, get married, have children, get a PhD, get ordained. Fifty years on, I’ll share it, using part of my recent book OMG.
May 1970. My boyfriend promised a friend we’d go hear a speaker at a Presbyterian church. It’s a beautiful evening and I don’t want to go inside.
Okay, for a bit, just to say hi. Go in but be ready to leave. I’m disgruntled. I sit on an ugly carpet in the Fireside Room, dedicated to the memory of some upstanding Presbyterian. Frowning, arguing over who was predestined for salvation, what would he have made of these long-haired hippies talking about being “high on Jesus”? All I knew, as more people filled the room, was that I was beginning to feel claustrophobic: how were we going to get out?
I wore my faded t-shirt and Levis every day. What garb could be less appropriate epiphany attire? What decor less conducive to mystical experience? Why not white robes, sunbeams pouring down, a full arched rainbow? Or at least decent aesthetics—marble or mahogany, a cluster of candles and icons in low light?
I don’t remember what they spoke about, probably the familiar template– lives sunk in sin before meeting Jesus: “If anyone wants us to pray with them….”
How would my life been different had I been nearer to the door, able to stumble out of the room? That moment—that ‘not escaping’— will become the most profound moment in my life.
I raise my hand. It seemed to me I am saying, can I leave now? I need some fresh air. Can I go to the bathroom?
Someone saw my hand. Perhaps God, in her infinite mercy and good humor, took my request to go to the ladies’ room as a resounding “yes” to a life of faith, and that “yes” has echoed through the years of my life.
Slow motion, as they turn and lay hands on me. “Yes, Jesus we really just pray…” “Holy Spirit fill your daughter…” “We claim the blood…” primitive, meaningless incantations: I might have been whirling with dervishes half a world away. But warmth, light, joy rush over me, around me, through me. I’m under a warm waterfall of god.
I turned to Christ and he “saved a wretch like me.” For a few years I thought I had raised my hand to accept Jesus as my personal lord and savior. Done him a favor, like saying, “Okay Jesus I will go to the prom with you. (Though you’ll need to do something about that beard.)”
In a god haunted world, that moment is nothing and everything. I can disdain bad religious art, dreadful praise choruses, ugly Fireside Rooms, but my perspective is inherently so limited—my enlightened aesthetics evaporate as I meet the divine.
That May evening my hand reached up and another clasped it. Yes, I say, raising my hand toward mystery. The God who touched me that evening has never let me go.
And yet, so much has changed. More on this next time.
This is still the most crucial threshold in my life. Christ has proved to be faithful—always loving, holding—no matter what the circumstances.
My relationship with Christ has been there, but it has changed. When I ponder how it has changed…I see a number of things:
I no longer believe in the scarcity of God—that there’s just enough to go around and so you had better believe just like me or you’re out. Instead I believe mystery.
2) I no longer believe that the Bible can be read ‘flat’ as if it dropped down from God ready made. Instead I believe that
3) I no longer believe that I can understand God.
4) My early faith was very individualistic—Jesus was my PERSONAL lord and savior. And while it’s true that I know Christ’s presence in my life, I realize that we are meant to live this in community—working out the action, support, etc.
I meet so many people who have pushed their early religion away—understandably. They had bad experiences in the name of religion. Or they look at the way so-called Christians today act as bigots with a God who is scarce.
The one I met fifty years ago is big, full of mercy and mystery, and doesn’t shut people out.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Mary Ellen Ashcroft, Vicar of Spirit of the Wilderness Episcopal Church.
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