Miracles, etc

So what have we been up to? Funnily enough, I feel satisfied with that brief summation of my June Project experience and happy to move on. Always more thoughts about Christianity, of course – that it’s kind of a “beginner’s religion” – a “gateway drug” to God – but starting to think no point getting into that. I mean, I could spend my time trying to figure the whole thing out, and therefore put myself in a better position in order to – what? – win arguments and discussions but what’s the point? 2.2 billion Christians in the world; I ain’t gonna discourse with them all. Just makes me sad when they get all egoistic about it and think that their way is the only way or get all hung up on weird ideas about the devil and hell – but I guess that’s their cross to bear. What the hoo.

In other news…I came home the other day and a few people were round back – a couple that are staying with us while they find a place to live – and they were talking about times they’ve been prayed for and how it’s worked wonders for them. I was sitting there listening and thinking, hm, what am I doing with my life? If I have a wee bit of “the power” how come I’m not using it when it so obviously works? Seems a bit daft keeping it to myself. And what better use of one’s time than praying for/with people? So I thought I’d float it out there and share that thought and ask if anyone wanted to be prayed for. Out of the four of them the woman from the couple did. Told me she had a lot of pain in the top of her spine from a slipped disc. I got her to walk up and down a bit and she said the pain was there all the time. Then we prayed, for about a minute or two. Afterwards she said the pain was gone. Also that she felt “a cloud of energy, of love” descending upon her. She looked woozy and high. That was about three days ago and she hasn’t had any pain since, says that she felt the disc has gone back where it should be and everything’s perfect. Sleeping better and walking freer and all the rest of it. How cool!

Stuff like that makes me think. Makes me think I should be doing it more but not really sure how to go about it. Makes me think, also, that instead of calling it “healing”, as I’ve always done in the past, I should do as the Christians do and call it “prayer”. Takes away the emphasis on physical cures and shifts it more towards God doing whatever God feels is necessary. Which is what it’s always been anyways. My role is not to demand any specific result but merely to be the channel for the energy. Lessens the possible pitfalls of ego claiming to be “the healer”.

Anyways, yesterday her partner asks to be prayed for as he’s in a right old state. Very stressed and tons going wrong and just looks like he’s lost in the blackest of clouds. He talks a bit about it – I always think it’s good for people to talk first – and then we do the praying. I got one of the guys from the house involved cos…well, I’m not really sure, it was just an intuition and I’m trying to follow them these days. Maybe so he could help and maybe so he could see faith in action with his own eyes, something like that. So we prayed for the guy and then at the end I felt to ask him if he had any physical ailments and he said his heart. Said, actually, that he’d had a mild heart attack not too long ago. I put my right hand on his chest and sat for a minute or so in silence, repeating the name of God that I heard when I was on my 28-day wilderness solo. It felt to me like things were moving around inside his chest but I wondered if that was merely the normal machinations of the body. Mainly what I felt was light and happy and clear, which I generally take as a sign of something happening. And then when I got the feeling to stop I stopped.

I opened my eyes. He opened his eyes too. He was smiling. Light shone from him. The black cloud had departed and he was laughing and joyful and peaceful. Started talking merrily about things. In, basically, a right good mood.

He said he felt when I put my hand over his heart an energy, a heat entering into him and that he could hear the noise of chains being broken. We went for a walk then and he told me a tale of much childhood woe and trauma. But not in a negative or angry or repressed way, just matter of fact, like, “this is what happened to me but it’s okay now.” He was happy the whole time. A changed man from how he’d been all morning. I can only shake my head and marvel, and wonder what else is possible.

They’re very cool, these miracles. But they give me cause for thought and maybe concern too. Just what’s going on with me? Who am I? What am I supposed to do with this? And where will it end? I mean, is there anything God could not do? Because God seems to have done everything that’s been put in front of me so far and I’m not sure I can think of any reason why anything would be beyond God. And yet I’m such a child, a baby, a boy…

I was praying last week for a dent one of the housemates put in a neighbour’s car. I thought to myself, okay, if I see this pop out in front of my eyes I’ll be ready to believe anything. And as I stared at it from across the road and watched as the car went all woozy and started to disappear I was sure the dent was getting smaller and I got scared. I mean, if it happened where would that leave me? So I stopped. And when I looked at it I thought it was smaller but then I couldn’t be sure, couldn’t remember what it had looked like beforehand. I convinced myself that I imagined it. Probably I did. But it was interesting. The fear of what it would mean if it did happen. The fear of not wanting to go to that place. A journey into the unknown, I guess. But would it really be any more miraculous than the stories above, and the occurrences in years past, or the time I prayed for my ex’s laptop and it started working again after two weeks of being so dead the repair shop said it was only good for the bin? I guess all those things were internal, and explainable away. But if you see it with your own eyes…and seeing is believing…well, yes, I wasn’t quite ready for that. Which, like I say, is interesting.

The other day I sat down with one of the housemates and we were chatting about various things. I guess at some point he was asking me what I believed and I was trying to explain it in a way that wouldn’t harm his faith in Christianity and the Bible and Jesus, but without compromising myself too. Just trying to figure the best way to do it. For a change, I decided not to answer his questions directly but instead chose to float out a couple of the analogies or symbols that frequently pop into my head. And when he didn’t understand, instead of translating for him and explaining the whole thing I told him to think about it, like the old Eastern thing of saying, “meditate on it.” I don’t know why but that actually seemed more useful, like it forced him to put his mind into gear and try and figure it out himself, instead of being fed something that he could intellectually engage with. I’m not sure what happened but, because he couldn’t figure it out, his mind seemed to sort of stop, just as mine used to with John Milton. Things went woozy and he started to disappear, which I usually take as a sign of connection. He obviously felt it too. “Something’s happening in the spiritual realm,” he said. I got a bit scared then cos I didn’t want him to freak out or think that I was from the devil or something, ever mindful of the weird stories these young Christians get indoctrinated in from their youth. We kind of looked at each other for a while and he said my face was shifting and changing and he was seeing other faces behind it or on top of it or something. He wasn’t too freaked out though. I mean, he did at one point say, “you’re not of Jesus” or something like that – but then he said that was coming from a place of fear and relaxed into it again. I guess despite his teaching – he’s a big fan of the Book of Revelation, if you can believe that – he must be something of an open-minded guy. In any case, I wasn’t really sure where to go with it so just sat there and let happen what would happen. Was it useful for him? Did it bring him any benefit? Does seeing people’s faces change and shift and become other faces – animals, women, Chinamen – really have any benefit in the journey to God? I like to think that it did in mine – an openness to other realms? more possibilities? past lives? – but I’m not so sure. Still, it wasn’t me that was doing anything, I was just sitting there. I have no power to make these things happen, they just happen every now and then and I kind of go with it. It doesn’t seem to be a bad thing, and he was cool with it when the moment passed. Although things can change in that regard…

I’ve been thinking about something that seems really fascinating. The way people have certain experiences and come to something of a place of joy and excitement with it but then later “rethink it” and look at it again from a position, perhaps, of closed-mindedness, a re-writing of the story, to fit their previous worldview. It’s happened with me, no doubt – Shawn’s angels once told me that I ran eagerly towards the divine when I felt my own spirit, but then cringed at my existence when my mind got involved – and I think it happened with the other housemate last week, after that healing experience with the bike accident girl. What I mean is that, immediately afterwards he was giddy with glee at what he’d just seen with his own eyes, and seemingly in a place where his mind had expanded to take in a new level of reality. He wanted to talk about it loads, to know everything. Shook his head at – in his words – his “ineffectual generic Christian prayers” and my silent ones that worked. And even laughed at his knowing that I hadn’t prayed to his Jesus – who he imagined as the only possible source of all miracles – but to God. Seemed to me like he was in a really good place, and ready to open up to the idea that there was more to life than he’d until then dreamt of. But then the mind kicks in…

The Friday of June Project I was off work. I went downstairs in the morning and sat in the prayer room. On a large piece of paper people had been writing prayers for people they’d met as they’d been going about their community projects and evangelism. People who were due to go into hospital. People who were suffering various ailments and the trials of life. I sat there looking at it and, as well as saying, like, “bless them,” I started to think how kind of silly it was that I was there with this healing gift and how there were all these people that were asking for healing and how the two of them weren’t being brought together. So I decided to do something about it, and made a little sign – always unsure about that sort of thing, but remembering how I did it once outside a supermarket in New Mexico and how it was awesome – and then went to find Christian and tell him my idea, that I could sit in the park while I was making my devil sticks for the Saturday fun day and just see what happened. He was up for it – though a little unsure cos he didn’t want people getting confused – and so off I went. I sat next to the free coffee and cakes/evangelism tent and put up my sign and started making my sticks. And maybe after an hour one of the June Project people came up and told me about a back problem she had. I put my hands on her and she said what had felt like a balled-up fist had been made lighter and released. I was happy with that. And then a little while later some teary young girl came up and started talking about her scars and wanting me to do something and – before I could talk to her Christian came down and interrupted and had some people take her away and wanted to talk to me.

“She’s just given her life to Christ,” he said, “I don’t think it’s a good time for this. And also…”

He’d got the fear. He said it wasn’t right and he had a responsibility and because I wasn’t a bona fide Christian – in his view – he wanted it to stop. He thought people might get confused. He said he was confused. He said I ought to take the sign down and desist.

He wasn’t unpleasant. He was wrestling with demons inside, no doubt. He respects me and shows love for me, and is always interested in what I have to say. But I guess his religion was winning out. His ego, perhaps. Or maybe he was right.

He was heavy-hearted, and reluctant. And I was filled with a kind of sadness, and a load of words from his own Bible, about those who bar the way, the Pharisees and the Scribes. Words about “religion getting in the way of God”. Remembrances of times when involved with churches in the past, how the children in Wakefield used to follow me around and, without me saying or doing anything, sit in circles and pretend to meditate and Om and always ask me if I was holy, for some bizarre reason. I didn’t know what was going on, had no clue what to say or do. But I know it felt bad when the elders would come up and lead them away and ensure they stuck to their own ideas of God.

Very sad indeed.

Christian took the sign down and slowly tore it up. I did think I could just move somewhere else, away from their tent, but I felt somehow it was more important to sit there and let him go through whatever he was going through. He’s a good, heartfelt guy and he was certainly feeling something here. I didn’t want to do anything to stop that. Wouldn’t take the sign down myself. Wouldn’t help him in “doing what he had to do.” I don’t know why but that’s what I felt I had to do. It didn’t really bother me cos it’s not about me anyway. It was all for the greater good, I felt. And maybe I was right…

Funny thing is, I guess you can’t really stop God, you can only postpone it. So almost immediately after Christian left a guy sat down in front of me – a church guy – and said he wanted me to pray with him. We touched hands and he said he felt a wave of electricity shoot down his spine. He said he’d never felt anything like it in his fifty years and went off telling people to go and pray with me. He said people would think I was strange but that I had to keep doing what I was doing. It was all pretty weird and fun and – well what can you do?

As for Christian…I don’t know whether what happened later with him had anything to do with the things I’ve related above but not too long after that he went round to the house of one of the June Project team who was sick and he and the other girl from the bike accident incident said they wanted to pray for him. The guy was kind of an integral member of the team and they were struggling without him. But they’d read something in the New Testament about healing with oil and thought they’d give it a try. The guy was pretty much bed-ridden with headaches and a sore throat and stomach stuff but they got him up out of bed and into the shower and poured oil onto his head. I spoke to him later and he said that pretty much instantly wherever the oil touched him the symptoms left him and he was able to go right back to work. Christian related the story to everyone later that night and – I tell you, I’ve heard loads of Christians tell stories of healings – usually hearsay, I guess I have to add – but this is the first one that moved me. Christian had such a humility about telling it, and it had obviously had a deep effect on him. I guess he was amazed. I mean, he obviously had faith enough to get the guy in the shower and do something seemingly mad like pour oil over his head but never having done it before there must have been plenty of doubt too. And yet he saw it with his own eyes and saw that it really does work. In his testimony he talked about how I’d been saying I was surprised that people I’d met in his church had unbelief in these things, and that how belief needed to be transformed into faith, and I guess this was an example of that. I mean, the proof is in the pudding, right? And this was perhaps the fruit of that “greater good” that I mentioned earlier.

Here’s what I think: I think that believing something is possible is one thing, but knowing that it’s possible is another. I think back a lot to moments in my life when belief has been transformed into something more. Like how when I first wanted to hitchhike across America I was filled with fear and uncertainty, but then I met a guy – coincidentally? – who had done just that and it gave me faith that it would work out okay. Or how I always had this idea that it was possible to be happy but could never find the way until I met Lindsay, and saw that belief embodied in another, and knew that it could come true. I wonder, then, if something like this didn’t happen for Christian, and that the bike accident thing didn’t suddenly bring home to him that his beliefs about the Bible and healings and God weren’t just nice ideas but actual, real occurrences that he too could experience. He saw it with his own eyes. He saw it embodied in another. And he saw there was something that he wasn’t doing in his “generic Christian prayers” that I was.

The bike accident, I thought, was something for the greater good too. I mean, the poor girl and all that – but she’s fine now. Seemed to me like one of those “divine set-ups” I used to write about muchly back in the day when pretty much everything was divine and “set up.” It did something for all of us – I’m still fascinated by the implications it has for the so-called placebo effect – and, likewise, the story about the torn-up sign did something too. It didn’t much matter to me that I was denied the opportunity to pray with others – that’s all God’s doing anyway – but it did feel that it was something for Christian. That’s why, rather than keeping schtum or telling him it was all fine and that I didn’t mind I told him instead that I was sad and that it was another example of religion getting in the way of God and that he was more interested in prayers to Jesus that didn’t work than prayers to God that did. I mean, that’s a valid point and all – it really does seem like these Christians put Jesus above God – but it was something more than that. It was a challenge to him, I guess. And it perhaps forced him to find out whether there was any substance in his beliefs, and whether he could actually turn those beliefs into faith and use them to create the same kinds of results that the heathen New Ager seemed able to. And so he did.

He told the story later and the testimony was beautiful. So humble and true. Seeking to point somewhat in my direction, even as he wrestles with my refusal to credit everything to Jesus. Despite whatever religiosity he struggles with, he still stays open and engages with the part of him that knows there’s more to all this than we currently imagine. I felt so happy for him to have had that experience, to have seen his faith come alive and produce tangible results in the real world. From unbelief to belief to faith to knowing: that seems to be the path. And then maybe beyond that too. The path we’re all perhaps walking. Certainly the path I find myself on.

And things are getting so interesting of late, and I wonder where we should go with it, and what my role in the whole game should be. Does God decide these things? Or could I simply wake up one day and say, for example, that I’m going to give the next twelve months to prayer and serving others and teaching what I know of God? Is one chosen or does one choose? Do we really create our own reality after all? And the responsibility for the lack of movement in our lives, therefore, entirely down to us? Or is there more to it than that? Timing and patience and needing to learn more of the spirit before we plunge right into it?

To answer those questions, probably, I need to remind myself of the words of Shawn’s last reading, and pay attention to the life that’s going on around me and within me. To…

Funnily enough over the last week several people have told me I’d make a good counsellor cos I’m good at listening. Well there you go: a reference back to the idea I had of studying to be a psychotherapist or something; something which I really ought to get on with, I suppose, what with September start dates and application deadlines fast approaching. An answer to that, I feel, is needed, and for that I look to spirit and expect one to come, much as I feel my answer about when to go to Greece has been provided, or my answer to questions about Laura and relationship. I mean, I have found a place in Yorkshire that does training – came through word of mouth, which is always the best way – sod the internet, which merely overloads the brain – but I’m of course, as ever, unsure. So now I want to know. Should I go for it? And, if so, what should I go for and when?

Apply for everything and take what comes?

Do an I Ching?

Or pay attention to the weird signs and passing words of strangers, and be led to some interesting new place?

I guess we’ll see.

But, in a nutshell, everything’s gotten really interesting and I may be back in the flow once again. And for that, I can only say “thank you.”

Also:

– Nicky’s sent me a few messages in recent weeks. Told me the thing with the guy in Ireland is over – quelle surprise! – and asked if I’ll meet up for dinner on Saturday. Says she’s been thinking about things a lot lately – her grandma just died – and thinking of me also. Not sure where to go with that. I mean, obviously I had that whole really, really wanting her thing but that was kind of before everything got bad. Also, I was in a messed up place and now I’m not. Feels good to be free of thoughts of women and sex, and also to experience the company of these good, moral – and, it must be said, beautiful and lovely and fun – Christian women, and that’s more where I’m at these days. Though I have to acknowledge that whatever ways I’ve moved on from the follies of my past – all that daft ‘free love’ stuff – should also be possible for her, and that whatever temptation I have to think of her as the antithesis to “good and moral and pure and lovely” is to be avoided, for she was so much me she might as well have been my twin.

– Talking of lovely Christian women: I walked home from church on Sunday with the girl from the bike accident and we talked about relationships. Well blow me if she didn’t already know all the things I’ve only just come to realise! I shake my head: all those ways I think I’m somehow enlightened and then how far behind and retarded I am in others. She’s only nineteen! And here I am, having taken all this time to realise what these people know now. You attract what you are. The world is a mirror. And I think, maybe, my level of morality and relationship-wisdom has just about reached that of a certain brand of twenty-year-old Christian.

– I’ve got so much money! Like, once I sell those two expensive guitars I bought, something like four grand. This is getting a bit ridiculous: I don’t really need that much and it makes me wonder why I’m working. But perhaps there’s a reason for it somewhere down the line…

– Like, oh yeah, I lent/gave a hundred and fifty quid to the couple that are staying with us for a deposit on a flat. I say “lent” cos they said they’re going to pay it back next week. And I say “gave” cos I think “neither a borrower nor a lender be” is a good way to live and lending can often lead to heartache. Either way, I’m not too bothered. This is me trying to be less selfish and more ‘Christian’.

And I think that’s about it. Time for work! :-)