My Roma history will be for another post, because what I’m full of today is a topic that rarely gets a mention as a serious object of study: the supernatural.
This is not the best word to use, but is commonly understood.
I usually wrap what I’m going to write in caveats, because, you know. I don’t want people to think I’m crazy, but today I’m going to tell it straight.
An Awakening
I should have died before I was four. I fell off the back of a chair several feet onto a concrete floor and suffered a cerebral haemorrhage that in 1954, should have killed me, but my mother prayed and a miracle happened. I woke up undamaged from a severe bleed into my brain. Even the doctors called it a miracle. My mother tells the story of how she was sitting on the toilet in the hospital and heard a matter-of-fact voice say, “Mary’s going to get better.” Convinced someone was in the bathroom with her, she pulled up her drawers in haste, and ran.
My father heard the voice, at the same instant and he ran too, they met in the corridor and told the same story: “I heard a voice ...” The next day, I woke up.
“God gave you back to us.”
Those are the first words I can remember my mother saying to me. I remember them because an enormous well of gratitude arose in me, and I woke up.
I have no other way of saying this. I became connected, I was truly alive. But I’m four years old. As far as I know, this is what happens to everyone. Maybe it does, I have no way of knowing.
My family were working poor, my childhood idyllic. That’s blogged of elsewhere.
Growing in Love
Moving on. I remember skipping down Matson Lane singing to Love in a language I made up in my head. I remember saying, “When I have the English to tell you how I Love you, I won’t need to do this any more.” And one day, I stopped.
Matson Lane is the site of St Katherine’s Church. I went there often as a small child, alone, this was the 1950’s, we kids wandered unsupervised everywhere ... I went to talk to my best friend, Gary who was buried in the graveyard, He died of polio when I was five. That he never talked back, didn’t phase me in the least.
I was twelve when the Inner Voice said of St Katherine’s, “That’s my house, and those are my people, and it’s time you joined them.” So I did, I became a choir girl and at sixteen I was Confirmed in the Church of Christ, Anglican flavour.
(I am a mystic, not a saint. This is an important distinction, because I am not a ‘good’ person. I jokingly tell people I have broken eight of the Ten Commandments on a regular basis, and I leave the two that I’ve left untouched to your imagination.)
I can see this is going to be more of an autobiography than a blogpost, I apologise, but I’ve started, so I’ll finish.
I never was a regular church-goer. I am now, but as a Roman Catholic: the telling that story can wait, but to say that I owe much to the Anglican Church and am grateful for everything I learned there.
The Healing of the Demonised
I learned, rather surprisingly you might think, to be a “ healer of the demonised” . Let’s go there:
In 1982 I was a breastfeeding mother of a nearly two year-old daughter whom I was failing to wean. So when Michael Porter, my Vicar suggested a team of us go off to the Anglican Church in York (St Michael le Belfry) to be trained in the healing ministry of Christ, I thought this would be the ideal opportunity to move on maternally. So, no great spiritual motivation there.
The group met to discuss which of us would attend the various training seminars everyone else plumped for one or other of the aspects - physical/emotional/memories ... not sure I can recall what the others were. No-one volunteers for, “The Healing of The Demonised” Can’t think why ... Not touching it with a barge-pole, probably.
In tense moments, I cave, it’s my one weakness, so because no-else would, I volunteered to go get trained to cast out demons. Incredible. In an Anglican Church in 1982, I learned how to perform what used to be known as an exorcism.
Let’s be honest. I only believed in demons and the casting out of them, because Christ did, though not in an experiential way. At best, I thought he was using the language of the day, dealing with that which we would have termed, “psychosis” because we know more and have moved on. I seriously did not expect to have much to do. And, full disclosure, thank Love, I haven’t!
Now this is important. I’m writing this post to “out” myself as someone who knows there is a. whole aspect of experience we daren’t normalise because it’s too crazy. We experience a reality that defies logic, that is untouched ( other than to be derided) by science, and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. We have known good and seen evil. Some of us have connected with the dead, others have glimpsed past lives or future realities. We are conscious of “other”.
Think. Two random people like Chrissy and myself begin a conversation and there it is. If there are two, there are more. I want to continue the conversation with others: to be conscious of the full range of human experiences, with an open mind, to remain curious and sceptical but also to be affirming and accepting, because many people may be helped by having people trained in the healing of the demonised standing by. The church in its widest most inclusive sense must leave the building, because the people who need it’s supernatural ministry have already gone.
Power Healing
John Wimber, who founded The Vineyard Church in California made a huge splash in the 1980’s with his books ‘Power Healing’ and “Power Evangelisation” I don’t know the history, but I guess it’s through Wimber’s testimony that he connected with David Watson, rector of St Michael Le Belfry Church in York, and through that connection, David Watson put on the course that I attended in the Spring of 1982. Boy was I educated!
The rest of this blogpost is my lived experience resulting from what I learned back then. Like I promised, no caveats, no embellishments: I’m telling it straight.
Jan
Imagine a very ordinary Anglican Women’s Prayer Group. We met for prayers and intercession every Monday Morning. We began by invoking the Holy Spirit and set to work. One day, Jan joined us, lovely lady, new to the church. Immediately after the recognition of the presence of Love, Jan fell to the floor and began to writhe and make weird noises.
Shocked, surprised, uncertain. I turned to Viv and mouthed,””Is this what I think it is?” She nodded, and quietly, without fuss or ceremony, just as I’d been taught to do, I said, “In the name of Jesus Christ, Son of God, I command you to come out of her and never return.”
We then prayed for the infilling of the Spirit of God from feet up, just as we’d been taught, and saw before us a woman transformed.
Was this a spiritual healing, or a deep psychological one that replaced years of therapy? I don’t know. To Jan, I doubt it matters.
As an Anglican, I was under the authority of the church, and straight after the meeting went to report to our vicar the unprecedented event.
“What must I do if it ever happens again? I wanted to know. Mike thought a bit, then said he’d ask the Bishop.
A while later, I received my answer, I was permitted to perform what John Wimber termed an, “expulsion”, within the Diocese of Chelmsford, but, “Only in an emergency.”! The wisdom of those words lives on. Only EVER in an emergency. This business is not something I’d seek out. I do believe that everyone should, though, be prepared for such an emergency.
Betty
I did find Betty quite hard to like, because it probably isn’t possible to like everybody. Frankly I put her behaviour down to attention-seeking. This was very wrong of me, a judgemental attitude is one of the biggest hindrances to a just society. I’m on Twitter, I know.
Anyway, her weird tales of demonic possession became more lurid. This particular day she reported that an evil presence had held down her daughter in her bed, scaring her. Finally, I decided to tell Ron Davis, the new vicar that I was concerned, and that maybe something should be done?
Ron gave me permission to go and “ pray in the house”. Technically this was beyond my training, I knew nothing about possessed buildings, and honestly, had I thought about them at all, a 1930’s terraced house in an outer-London suburb, would not have been on my radar.
So to respect the suffering of a deeply disturbed woman, I went to the house, alone ( something I would never do now, we are, ‘sent out in pairs’ ) armed with a small bottle of holy water and a wobbly sense of authority.
Oddly enough, I am immune to psychic experiences. I don’t see visions or dream dreams, and this I see as a huge help, because I don’t suffer from them. And suffer is often a very apt word. I do, however, practise the gift of discernment of spirits. I know they’re present, and can name them, but that’s it. So imagine my amazement, when, entering the room where the child was attacked, something laughed at me. A horror-film sort of laugh, deep and theatrically dastardly. Not imagined and not human.
My reaction? A visceral anger. “How DARE you attack these people!” I stood up on the inside and COMMANDED whatever it was, that ten minutes before I’d doubted existed, to be gone by all that’s Holy and never return.
Prayers of protection and blessing followed and that was it.
Disaster Strikes
An honest account admits failure.
Carol’s husband was seriously ill with depression.
Clinical depression is a serious physical ailment and is an all-too common experience: I have suffered it myself. it is nothing to do with spiritual oppression. I know this: spiritual oppression or possession is in my experience very rare. I don’t move in circles where the demonic is sought after, so this is to be expected. Others may have different stories to tell. This is mine.
So, as healers, we should not have prayed as we did, because though our motives were good. The result was terrible.
Nothing had helped this poor man. Drugs and therapy were of no avail. He was literally bound to a chair by his illness. He could not leave it.
So we prayed for him to be able to leave his chair. That seemed harmless enough. He got up left the house and killed himself by jumping into a canal.
Yes, I do hold myself partly responsible.
Family Matters
Mum
Demonic oppression is rare. Demonic possession even rarer, so I was taken off-guard when it showed up in my own family. This predates the encounter with John Wimber’s team, and may be the beginning of the story. Perhaps I should have noticed the link beforehand.
In the 1970’s my parents and younger brother and sister lived in a Victorian semi in Gloucester. As usual, I detected nothing sinister about the place, and I really hadn’t the language or experience to formulate these memories. I have to say, I initially thought the participants were delusional, and I remember returning from visits home with these weird tales recalling them with a degree of morbid humour.
My father, much like me, experienced nothing. My sister was under-five and not affected either, it was my mother who was afflicted first. In her own words:
“I was carrying Janette up to bed and there was a man in army uniform standing on the landing. He smiled and said, “You’ll know me by my hat.” Which he tipped, and then disappeared...”
I’ve often wondered about the sheer banality of reports of most spirit encounters. “You’ll know me by my hat!” How ridiculous. I laughed. Mum then described the “hat” it was a triangular army regulation forage cap. Dad went white. The only person he knew who wore such a cap was his brother Leonard who died of TB contracted whilst serving in the army in 1946.
A photo was found and mum confirmed. It was Leonard. Or looked like him.
After that first encounter “Leonard” appeared regularly,. One night my dad observed the encounter. He woke up to find mum sitting bolt upright in bed, in a trance-like having what appeared to be a one-sided conversation. He was “bloody terrified.!
Mum was aware that dad was awake because Leonard told her so, adding,” He can’t see or hear me.”
As I said, mum’s accounts of these conversations made -for me - amusing stories. It all seemed harmless enough, and to be truthful, I don’t remember most of them. Then things changed. Mum was becoming apprehensive about them, the tenor changed. When she reported that she’d been told,” David (a cousin) will gamble away all his money, then gamble away his life.” I became frightened for her, and discussed the problem with my vicar. My parents had no connection with a church, so that put me in the frame. I prayed to break the connection, and as far as I know, it worked. I heard no more about it. But I do know that David if ever he was a gambler, did not gamble everything away, and is still alive!
Trevor
Not everything odd in that house was bad. We were what would be called today a ‘blended’ family. Trevor was one of my five “Pitt” cousins that came to live with us when they were orphaned. It was my 21st birthday party, going full-swing, when Trevor shouted, “Mervyn needs help” wd rushed to the bathroom to find a very drunk Mervyn choking on his own vomit. Trevor had no idea how he knew that Merv’s life was in danger.
Mervyn
Mervyn is a lovely man, yes he’s my brother, I’m supposed to say that, but it’s true. He is like my dad in that he is a happy man, generous and kind. He’s like my mum, in that in him too, the veil between the material and the ethereal world is thin and sometimes lifted.
He’s a man of great conviction and has always been so. We argued a lot about religion when we were young, and one Christmas, I gave him a copy of, “The Thoughts of Jesus Christ” a little yellow book to be read alongside “The Thoughts of Chairman Mao” which Mervyn was apt to quote at me at length. The millions who Mao pulled out of poverty would have one view, those persecuted under the Cultural Revolution another. I do not pass judgement. The relevance of the Yellow Book will become apparent.
Mervyn’s room was at the top of that house in Gloucester, and after one horrendous night he bolted for the guest room where Ray ( my new husband) and I stayed when “coming home”
Mervyn tells it like this:
“I was woken by fear. My face was to the wall, it was pitch black, the middle of the night. I could hear the room being turned over, and a young child’s voice asking over and over again, “Where is it, Mervyn, where have you put it?””
I asked Mervyn what the child looked like, he replied,” There was no way I was going to turn round to look” and when I asked what the child was looking for he said “That little yellow book.”
I asked him if it could have been a nightmare. “Only if I trashed my own room!” He remained awake, staring at the wall until daylight and he heard my father moving around below.
We neither of us made head or tail of the incident, but when I returned home later, requiring the guest room, I took my large wooden cross ( it was the seventies, we all wore them round our necks in those days) and hung it over the light switch.
“There’s no magic in the wood, Merv, but it’s here to remind you that prayers have been said for your protection.” Three days later, I collected it from his headboard. A decade later, Mervyn became a Christian.
In conclusion
Tell your own stories of the supernatural ( extra-natural?). Let them teach you. I was lucky, I woke up as a child, it’s easier then. I woke in a Christian culture with a Christian framework, so I describe a Christian experience (and one limited to a Western mindset too) but it is short-sighted and very wrong to believe Awakening is restricted to any one paradigm. Christ, after all, was not a Christian, and wherever there is Love, there is God.
For anyone vexed by tangible evil, the simplest prayer of all, “God help me!” works.
I and every person of faith reading this blog, will be praying for your freedom.