More Letters About Encounters With God

Part Two of a Reader Symposium

Hello from Nashville. Very busy day here — which makes me so grateful to you readers for sending me more stories about your mystical encounters in prayer. Before we get to them, I want to share with you a story I heard today. I’m not going to be too specific, to protect the privacy of the man who told it to me.

He said his wife was diagnosed with a rare progressive disease that caused nerve-based facial disfigurement. They were beginning to reconcile themselves to the fact that she was going to eventually be housebound because of the disease.

Then they discovered that her great-grandmother in Mexico had been involved with a foreigner, with whom she had eight children, including the wife’s grandparent. But the foreigner, a diplomat, had a wife back in his home country. When that wife discovered her husband’s infidelity, she paid a sorcerer to put a curse on the descendants of her husband’s second “wife.” The curse was that every firstborn daughter of each generation of their children — that is, the children of the bigamist wife — would either die or suffer from a horrible disease.

And it happened. The man who told me the story said that this curse manifested just as it was intended. His wife, afflicted with the rare facial nerve disease, was the firstborn daughter of her parents.

They are charismatic Christians, and went to a healing service. The pastor prayed specifically for this curse to be broken. The man said he was looking at his wife as the pastor prayed, and he saw her face change physically as the pastor pronounced the curse broken in Christ’s name. She stopped her manic twitching, and was restored. The next morning, the man’s wife woke up perfectly normal, and looked ten years younger. This happened earlier this year, as I recall him saying. She has been in perfect health since.

Now, to your letters:

I had a beautiful experience two years ago. I was bringing the Holy Eucharist to several residents at a Memory Loss/ Nursing Home. One of the ladies I had previously brought the Eucharist to was a sweet woman named Viola. Unfortunately, her dementia had progressed so that she found my visits distressing, so I would avoid her. I was there to bring the Host to another resident in her hall. As I came around the corner, I realized that Viola was in the hallway, moving away from me so she did not see me. She was using her walker and was in the center of the hall so I decided to just hang back and wait until she reached her room. 

Suddenly, I saw, clear as day, that Viola was carrying a cross as she proceeded slowly down the hall. I had believed that we shared in Christ's cross in our suffering, but it was vividly, visually there before me. I am choking up even now at the memory. 

Beautiful Viola reached her room. When I looked in she was sitting on her bed and the cross was no longer visible. 

She passed about 6 months after that.

Here’s an interesting one:

You asked in the post below for some experiences of "mystical phenomenon".  I have one but it is minor compared to the one you experienced.  It was brief and somewhat inexplicable.  It was definitely supernatural, in the sense that I don't think what happened to me was physically possible.  Maybe there are those who think this can happen in the natural course of things but I have never experienced this before nor have I heard of it happening to anyone else.

So, one night approximately 15 years ago, I was taking in the snack I usually eat before going to bed. I was reading some political magazine, I think, or something religious, but it was an article that was definitely not with an emotional or spiritual bent.

I suddenly felt something on the palm of my right hand.  It felt like a piece of tape was stuck there, with the end folded up.  I looked at my palm and saw dead center an avulsion.  A chunk of skin was standing up there and my first thought was that I had dug my fingernail into my palm, causing a deep cut.  But it is not just a cut, there was the peeling back of the skin. The cut itself was "u"-shaped but with the corners at a 90-degree angle, not rounded off.  I can describe it as being in the shape of a staple.  It was about the size of a staple as well.  My first thought that I had dug it with my fingernail was disproven at the first sight of it.  A cut caused by a fingernail would be rounded, not with sharp edges like a machine or a tool would have done.

This struck me as very odd at once but as the cut was down to the subcutaneous layer and was bright red and looking as if about to bleed, I got up immediately to put something on it.

My apartment was situated so that the bathroom was around the corner from the kitchen where I was seated and down a short dark hallway. It's only about 10 steps. I got up, moved into the hallway and as I approached the bathroom where the light was already on, I looked again at my palm. The flap of skin was already lying flat from where it came and fused to the rest of my skin.  The outline of the "staple" was still there, however, and still bright red.  As I moved more deeply into the light I watched as the outline turned from red to pink and then disappeared entirely. There was no longer a trace of a wound.

First thing:  I was not tired.  Even though it was near bedtime, I was not sleepy.  I was not dreaming. I knew that what happened to me was not possible in the natural realm. It had to be supernatural, but what was it and what did it mean?  Was it from God or from the devil?

Because I was not feeling anything particularly spiritual or emotional at the time and not even thinking of a religious thought or praying, this could not have been psychosomatic.  Or so I surmised.  Could it have been a kind of pre-stigmatic mark? Was God telling me I could be a stigmatic if I wanted to be? Over the years I thought that this could be a reasonable interpretation but I have since rejected it. Though I admire many saints and mystics who had the stigmata, I had no hankering for it myself. The joining of our suffering to that of Jesus is admirable and to be sought after on some level. But I knew the stigmatics' stories too well and I knew the suffering the wounds entailed were mightily unpleasant. Again, as I said, this could not be a psychosomatic wound because I did not want one.

So what did it mean exactly? Was it even meant to mean something?

I had a conversation in a coffee shop with a fellow who is an assistant of the exorcist of our diocese. I had known him from the eucharistic chapel I frequented and I trusted his judgement and experiences in these matters. I told him the story which I have never told anyone else before or since.

He thought about it for a while but did not know what it could mean either. But he gave me three pieces of advice or information. He said the location of the wound was significant. He did not think it was of the devil, because he doesn't usually show himself in such an obvious fashion (in non-possession types of incidences). He doesn't want to give the game away that there is really a supernatural realm, if he can help it. Lastly, he urged me to pray about it and that the meaning of it would be revealed to me.

This was a few years back and I have prayed, but I have not gotten a conclusive answer in a flash. But a possibility of a meaning has occurred to me slowly over time.

First, a little background. I am a revert to the Catholic Church from agnosticism to a kind of liberal Protestantism (Bultmann, Tillich, Heidegger, et al.) back to the faith of my childhood. I can say all of the transitions and changes were primarily intellectual. Even my reversion I can credit, not to the emotionalism of realizing there could be something to what my pious mother and grandmother believed (though I don't discount that entirely either) but I needed to find some kind of intellectual sanction before I could return. I found that in reading Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy this was what I was looking for: smart people who believed, people much smarter than me. Why was the rich treasure of Catholic thought, 2000 years of it, kept from me?

Anyway, I am a faithful informed Catholic now, but I still am mostly on the outside looking in when it comes to the emotional/spiritual side of the faith.  Pentecostalism seems a world away from me.  Evangelical Protestantism could never interest me (God bless them anyway!). Even the fire in the hearts of mystics is more something I admire and desire than actually experience for myself.

Do what does this have to do with my experience? Because the event was clearly supernatural but not in any way explicable (not even in the normal range of spiritual "prodigies"), there was no way I could explain it away, with my purely rational mind. It was not a vision, or a moving statue or a voice from God, that I could later doubt and ask myself whether I had really experienced it or if it was something I just dredged up from my spiritual subconscious. It was real.  It happened. There was no explanation for my literal, rational, fixed-on-meaning intellect. But it was a solid, a supernatural occurrence. I could now say I had no doubts as to the existence of the supernatural. How could I now?

On the flip side of that, I believe, is an obligation. If it is real, I should not spend my time trying to dig out mentally these meanings, as if they were the only way of proving to myself that God existed. I know God was real now and my obligation was to go deeper.  Into his heart, into the fire, into that mystic "emotion" that maybe I feared. Knowing God exists is only the first step for an intellectual, but we can't be just an intellectual, we have to approach the fullness of God with every part of us.

That's my story, slight as it is.

Another:

I used to wear a small silver cross around my neck and it was a great source of allegiance and comfort. One morning, getting out of bed I felt the cross slip from my neck and fall to the floor. I picked it up and of course the chain was broken, so I placed the two pieces on the dining room table to take to be mended when I had the chance. I then showered and prepared for my working day ahead, but when I came to the table to pick up the cross it was no longer broken.  I just couldn't believe it. There was no way, in my house that particular morning,  in a solely material universe, that this could have happened.  I felt the profound significance of it immediately, and at once wrote down everything surrounding the event because I knew that in the future I would doubt that it had ever happened. I'm so glad I did. But what to make of it? I felt that because the experience was so precious and personal, I could not talk about it with anyone, but I did tell just one person, a nun who was acting as my spiritual director. She thought Christ was telling me that my very shaky marriage would be mended, but that did not feel right. Several weeks later my marriage collapsed in the most dramatic and terrible way, and then I knew, in that deep inner knowing, that the message of the cross was "I am always with you".   Some time later I was told of  a doctor who had witnessed several 'miracles', but he knew that there was a necessary silence around them. To be a witness was a privilege, and what was seen can only be talked about in exceptional circumstances - the holiness must be protected somehow.  I understood immediately. After much thought,  I've decided your invitation is an exceptional circumstance. (If you do decide to publish this I would prefer to be called 'reader from Australia', or some such, rather than my name.)

I'm ashamed to say I no longer wear that cross — partly because, the older I get  I feel generally unworthy, and also because nearly all my friends in the rural, university city where I live are, predictably, volubly, progressive Left, Trump-despising, and anti-Christian. These are otherwise good  people, and I value their friendship, especially as I live alone. (Church here does not supply social support.) However, just writing this, and really thinking it through, suggests that perhaps I should reconsider.

Another:

Music has power to draw out and uplift my spirit, as is true with many of us.  Music certainly was a component of an experience when the Holy Spirit  brought about an atmosphere of reverence and awe around me and several thousand people in one place.  

I worked with children and teens in a small Baptist church during the eighties.  At that time a popular ministry drew huge crowds of teens for two-day "Bible conferences" usually held in a convention center or very large church facility.  The format was led by a young man in his twenties who played keyboard and led us in singing worship and because this crowd was teens, taught us silly choruses for entertainment before a transition to worship and teaching.  Break times were scheduled between teaching "sets" and he would play Van Halen as we filed out of the center.

One year the conference was held in a large mega church auditorium which seated several thousand.  We had returned early this Saturday morning after singing and listening to teaching late on Friday night.  It was about eight a.m. and the keyboardist had led the kids in goofy, fun skit songs and then some worship choruses.  The middle-aged teacher walked out across the stage and asked the keyboardist to stay for one more song and requested that he play the hymn Holy, Holy, Holy.  He quickly blasted into an upbeat, embellished version and the teacher softly said, "No, no...play it slow", and he did...and we sang-softly, almost hushed but several thousand voices, even hushed, have a weight to them. 

Now, I have a creative soul and I can respond to Mozart, Handel, Debussy, bluegrass, Vivaldi, Verdi, hymns with uplift and even tears. This moment was not a private experience for just me, thousands of young kids and adults, some Christian, many as pagans, who just two minutes before had been jumping, laughing and singing silly stuff  heard thousands singing ... 

Holy, holy, holy

Lord, God Almighty
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee

Holy, holy, holy
Merciful and mighty
God in three persons blessed Trinity

Holy, holy, holy
Though the darkness hide Thee
Though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see

Only Thou art holy; there is none beside Thee
Perfect in power, in love, and purity.

It was early in the morning.  He played only two bars on his keyboard and stopped ... thousands raised our song to Him.  There was a very real and very evident and weighty power and presence that enveloped all of us in our praise, God's Holy Spirit.  The instantaneous, undeniable presence was spiritually stunning...the keyboardist placed his hand on the teacher's shoulder and quietly walked offstage.  The teacher looked across the crowd and stood silent for moments.  We knew that we had encountered the Lord, God Almighty.

When our small Lutheran day school in Southern California closed due to low enrollment, we decided to homeschool. As we were researching how to begin, we heard Martin Cothran speak on the value of classical education and so we tried to get into a local Classical Conversations Group. However, it was full. Not long after, a classics professor from Concordia Irvine was a guest pastor while our pastor was on vacation. We sat next to him at the potluck after service and he was telling us about a classical Lutheran co-op that met in San Juan Capistrano — about an hour away. Too far. But, he remarked that an hour commute once a week wasn't really that bad. We thought about it and figured it would be worth a try. The Sunday before we were set to begin, I was filling in on the piano for the offertory while the organist went downstairs to get ready to receive the sacrament. Usually, I would choose a hymn based on the sermon text. But for some reason, I had "I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light" stuck in my head, so I played that.  It stayed in my mind all week. As I braided my youngest daughter's hair the morning of our first co-op day, I sang to her:

I want to walk as a child of the light
I want to follow Jesus
God sent the stars to give light to the world
The star of my life is Jesus

In Him there is no darkness at all
The night and the day are both alike
The Lamb is the light of the city of God
Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus

We battled traffic on the 605 and the 5 freeways and barely made it in time for Matins. We nervously found our seat and the hymn of the day was . . . ."I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light." I sang with a lump in my throat, amazed and grateful that God would so clearly "speak" such reassurance to me. That co-op was a godsend for us as we struggled in our first full year of homeschooling. Each week, it anchored us in Christ.

It's been three years now and we have realized that homeschooling was not for us, but we were able to make our way to Fort Wayne, Indiana where our children attend a small classical school and we have been able to settle into our own Christ-centered community, much like what you describe in your book. The mom in charge of the co-op recently moved with her family about three hours away from us and our daughters are able to continue the deep friendship they formed.

This guy yelled at God:

My story is from many years ago.  My wife and I were struggling with infertility.  When everyone around you is pregnant and you are not, infertility is a serious emotional and spiritual struggle.  One day I decided to let Jesus know exactly what I thought of the situation.  I basically yelled at him (in my head) for about 20 minutes and then I finished by screaming "it hurts."  

His response was clear as a bell:  "I know."  Just those two words.  It was not what I wanted to hear. I would have preferred something like: "OK, you will get pregnant next month," which never happened (we have two wonderful adopted daughters who are now adults).  It is the only time he has spoken to me like that but it was what I needed to hear and I know it was real.  It has helped me through many rough patches since then.  

It also shows that you can yell at God and not get zapped by lightning (see the Psalms).  I think he might actually not mind at all that you do so.

This reader sent a very long letter, which I had to cut down somewhat to fit everybody’s in. Here’s part of it:

I have had two experiences during charismatic style worship where I was, as the say, "slain in the Spirit". This consisted of intense tingling throughout my body, similar to blood rushing back to and appendage where circulation was cut off, and intense weeping. Both times I felt "released" from an emotional attachment. 

I lived in Nicaragua as a missionary for 13 months right after I graduated from college. While I was there I encountered an orphan boy who was likely demon possessed. As a 10 year old, he would swing from giving these incredibly in depth sermons, connecting Scriptures in a way that I've never encountered, like some sort of prodigy. He would then start to slip into a sort of rage where he needed to be restrained, usually by multiple adult men because he would become insanely strong. Once that passed he would just sit and stare with a look that reminded me of a dead fish. I joined a group of missionaries to pray for deliverance one time and he just laughed at us and mocked us the whole time. He was eventually removed from the orphanage because he tried to harm and molest other children. Sadly, he ended up on the street and was shot and killed during the civil unrest that occurred 2 or 3 years ago. He was 17 I believe.

I also had a personal experience of possession while I lived there. I was having a dream that some dark figure was outside my room chanting something over me. I woke up and immediately was frozen in fear. I felt like I was trapped in my body and that my soul or consciousness was somehow being forced into the depths of my physical body. That's the best way I can describe it. I was looking out of my eyes, but I couldn't see clearly because it was like peering out of a window. I tried to speak but only mumbling came out, and I heard it the way you would hear yourself talking if you plugged your ears. I was terrified, but I had my wits about me, so I started to pray and ask Jesus to rescue me. Eventually I was able to speak His name out loud, and when I did I heard a shriek and then I was back to normal. Maybe it was me that let out the yell, but I couldn't tell you for sure.

When I was dating my wife, my father in law was not sure about me. Lots of reasons for that. He is Pilipino and a fundamentalist Independent Baptist. Probably just a few steps to the left of Westboro Baptist. So Asian honor culture mixed with uber conservative Baptist. Kind of a nightmare! So my wife and I decided to move ahead with our relationship without his permission (I was 26, she was 22) and he basically threatened to disown her if we didn't break up. He also told me to stay away from her. It was pretty nuts to say the least. There is a lot to this story, but the relevant part is that we decided to break up and seek God. I had a dream shortly after that we were getting married, which wasn't really on my mind yet, but I had a history of dreams being relevant at this point so I took it as a sign to persevere, whatever that meant. It was also made clear to me, although I don't remember how, that I needed to re-engage her dad on his terms and not tell her I was doing that. 7 months later he finally gave us the ok to date. We got married about 8 months after that!

After we got married, our spiritual lives deteriorated. Both of us had been highly involved in our church, but we both stepped away from all of that for various reasons. Our first three years of marriage were very difficult with lots of fighting. I got pretty close to renouncing my faith, and she wasn't far behind me in that. It was a dark time and it cast doubt on all of these encounters I have described to you. But then, over time, through various means (Jordan Peterson being one of them) we discovered Orthodoxy. We, along with our two daughters, were received into the Church this past Dormition.

I no longer doubt that I interacted with angels, demons, and the Holy Spirit. It's hard for me to say which was which unfortunately, but God, through his grace and mercy, used all of those experiences to lead me and my family to his Church.

I know you already published responses, but I wanted to finish writing this to you, somewhat for my own benefit. I feel like recounting these things has broken me out of a rut, which was mostly brought on by paying too much attention to our political climate. Diving back into the mystical that I have seen in my own life has reminded me that the world as I have been taught to see it is not at all what it seems. The material world isn't just material, it is enchanted with a spiritual world that I think most people have encountered, but can't level it with material secularism, so they kind of shrug it off as weird and move on. If we have eyes to see, we will see that not all is as it seems.

Here’s one from an Anglican priest:

I will share with you a dream I had years ago.  I've never shared it with anyone, but my wife.  It was so long ago that I don't remember when it was.  I can say it was before 1993; probably during the time I did short term-mission work in Egypt during the mid-1980's.

In my dream I was shown a map of the whole world; the focus of my eyes was on the US and European countries in particular.  The countries and the states were in various colors, as done in world maps, but the colors were dark.  This was not a pleasant dream.  There was a strong sense of oppression and spiritual darkness over the nations of the world.  (In my dream I wondered that the US seemed divided up like the rest of the world).  In my dream I received the impression that Islam had taken over the world with Shariah Law and so on.  (This dream was before 911 and before I started to read about the studies coming out about population decline in the West and how Muslim populations could take over Europe through sheer demographics alone in 50 years.)

In my dream I objected, how could Islam possibly take over the world.  I reflected (later, I think) that it need not be Orthodox Islam in the US and elsewhere, that I saw, but definitely a Christless expression of a theism which was concerned (as in Islam) particularly with rules and regulations and saying the correct religious things (phariseeism under any name).  This, of course, doesn't fit well with the secular "fundamentalism" we're seeing in the West at the moment.  But it would fit with a Western Christian accommodation with Islam) and is something I have been concerned to intercede against.

Finally, near the end of my dream, I was in the Middle East, and fleeing for my life, hiding in a cave.  And I saw armies from the East, from China,  invading the area.  I was seen by them, but first with some fear and then with joy, I realized I was now safe. They were "the good guys" coming to the rescue, to destroy the oppression I had seen over the nations.  An odd role to give the Chinese, but perhaps this alludes to the Christian Church in China, seasoned through long periods of persecution, finally evangelizing the whole of China and from there to the world.

Anyway, over the years this dream has remained with me and given me some perspective and direction to some of my intercessory prayer for the US and the nations.

Another:

I was a first semester sophomore at a public university when I had a gnawing, growing conviction God wanted me to pursue full time ministry, something I absolutely wanted nothing to do with. On Wednesday evening I lay on my bed and had a distinct inner conversation with God. It went something like this:

Me: I feel like you are pushing me to go into ministry.

God: I am.

Me: Well if I do it will be in the Christian Reformed Church.

God: Okay.

Me: But that means going to Calvin Seminary and that means dropping out of here and transferring to Calvin College to get seminary prerequisites.

God: Makes sense.

Me: But that means living at home with my parents because I can't afford room and board as well as tuition at Calvin. But Calvin is ten miles from my parent's house and I don't have a car. So if you want me to go to seminary you have a car waiting for me when i hitchhike home Friday afternoon.

God: silence

That was the end of the conversation. I hitchhiked home to surprise my parents two days later and after walking the last mile from the highway I walked around the corner of the house and saw a late model Ford Maverick in the back. I went in and greeted my mother and asked if she had company. She didn't, so I asked if Dad had traded in the car. She explained that on Thursday morning over breakfast my father had said that he was thinking of getting a second car for her to run errands and that I could drive when I was around. He went car shopping Thursday night, took his lunch hour Friday to go to the credit union to get a car loan and then to the dealer to pick up the car. He had dropped it off about an hour before I got home.

I've recently retired after forty joyful years of ministry.

This one is very relatable:

In college, I was a fervent Evangelical.  I met my wife through our college fellowship.  I started losing my faith in law school, about a year after we were married.  I'm not going to go into the details here because that's not the point, but essentially I had an intellectual faith, a lot of spiritual pride, and no spiritual discipline.  When the attack on my faith came, it was an emotional attack disguised as an intellectual attack: I was tempted to reject Christ because (I thought at the time) it was for gullible, credulous people.  And young, aspiring lawyer me desperately wanted not to be a gullible, credulous person.

I quietly rejected my faith about a year after my wife and I married, and I was an undeclared atheist for about ten years.  I finally declared my unbelief to my wife in early May 2015, a few weeks after our second child was born.

Fast forward to Sunday, April 17, 2016. My wife and I were fighting, and had been fighting, more or less constantly, for a week. The fighting was about my atheism, and everything else was derivative of it. The details of what we were fighting about aren't really important for purposes of this post, except to provide context for what happened. In short, I didn't believe there was anything better or worth pursuing more than the life I had right now, and I was satisfied with it. My wife was profoundly dissatisfied.  (Understandably -- I was selfish and immature, and on my way to becoming an alcoholic, and I didn't really care.)

It was about 9:00 at night, and we had been fighting that day for several hours. I asked my wife if we could pray together, and with some hesitance she took my hand and we prayed. She went first. I don't remember specifically what she prayed for, except she prayed for me, and for herself, and for our marriage. Then I prayed, and I asked God - if he was there - to come back into our marriage. She said "Amen" and I said "Amen", sincerely -- and suddenly I just knew God was there in the room with us.

It wasn't a feeling. I didn't feel anything, not with any of my five senses, and not as any kind of physical or mental sensation. I just knew - directly and inexplicably - that God was present with us right there, right then, in the living room of our house. I looked up at her and said, "He's here. Right now." I was surprised to find that I was choking up as I said it.

This was not the first time I had prayed in the previous year. I had prayed several times to God previously, but they were angry, defiant, sarcastic prayers -- "if you're so real, then show yourself to me" and things like that. Nothing had happened in response to those prayers, which of course I took as further evidence that there was no God in the first place. The difference between this prayer and those prayers was that I genuinely meant it -- I genuinely meant the invitation to come in and join our marriage. The "Amen" was sincere, and the knowledge of God's presence that followed was immediate.

I did not reason my way to knowing God was there -- it was completely supra-rational. That surprised the hell out of me. And there really was no evidence I could point to to explain how I knew he was there - no sensory impressions, no gut feelings, nothing. I just knew.

And with the knowledge that God - specifically, the Christian God - God the Father, Christ, the Holy Spirit - was there in the room with me as soon as had sincerely and humbly asked him in (the first time I had sincerely and humbly asked him for anything in a decade), all my reasons for not believing in him blew away like so much mist. I mean, sure, they're still there and I can recite them - factual discrepancies in the Gospels (which seem rather minor to me now), passages of the Old Testament that seem like they must be mythological or allegorical or that are just downright ugly, so many repellent people in public life who associate themselves with Christianity and especially so many Christians who support them (which, when I was an atheist, seemed like such good evidence that Christianity makes people credulous and gullible). But in the face of God being there in the room with me, all those things couldn't be proof that He didn't exist, because there He was. Those things are all still there, and I'm still sorting them out, but the direct knowledge that God existed and was there and responded to my prayer trumped them all.

And that's when I started following Christ again.

Here’s another:

I gave my life to Christ as a senior in college in 1979. I married a pastor's daughter in 1983. Originally from a Southern Baptist background, my wife and I long ago migrated to churches more in the Bible church or Evangelical Free church tradition. We have had some experience with more charismatic churches, but not settled there.

Though I've been in my faith for over forty years, by nature I am a very left brain-analytical thinking and have to remind myself to believe God for things that are beyond my human reason. I tend toward logical skepticism which often handicaps my faith walk.

With that as background, here's my dramatic encounter. In the late 1990's my wife and I were at a small Christian conference center hearing a charismatic evangelist preach. We know him personally through a family connection and love him, but his high octane pentecostalism has always been a hard to swallow for my rationalist approach to faith.

At the end of his message he called people to come forward for him to pray over them. People came forward and as he came to each one he would lay his hand on their forehead and they would collapse to the floor, "slain in the spirit". I was highly skeptical. I had found scant evidence of such a phenomenon in scripture, and I figured this was just emotional hysteria by the recipients.  I had also heard people in the past say that when they had gone forward at some pentecostal rally to be touched like that, the preacher didn't just touch them, he pushed them down. 

Since this preacher is a friend of ours I couldn't imagine he would be manipulative like that, but as I watched this happen to one person after another, I became cynically critical, judgmental about what I was witnessing.

Then I thought: I'm going to go forward, let him touch my forehead and pray over me, and see for myself if he's shoving people down. My attitude was hardened and judgmental. I went forward with an attitude.

When he came to me he touched my forehead so gently it was almost like he just brushed it. And I collapsed to the floor like a sack of potatoes! More importantly, I began weeping like a child because conviction over my hardened attitude swept over me like a wave. When he touched me and I fell, I was instantly convicted...deeply convicted...of my judgmental cynicism and critical spirit. I didn't have time to think about it and feel remorse. It swept over me instantly. I believe the Lord didn't just want to give me a supernatural encounter: he dealt directly with my hardened heart.

I certainly didn't go down to the front and collapse in some hysterical, emotional expectation of being "slain in the spirit". I went down with exactly the opposite expectation...that nothing would happen and I would be vindicated in my skepticism.

I laid there for a minute or two then was finally able to rise. I immediately left the building, went out into the night still in tears, repenting deeply before the Lord over my hardened, judgmental attitude.

Today, over twenty years later, I still do not consider myself charismatic. I'm simply a Christian believer without a category label. I still don't have a scriptural justification for being "slain in the spirit". But I know what happened to me. 

I've had encounters since then when pentecostals prayed over me and nothing supernatural seemed to happen. I would walk away with the impression the person was trying to gin something up out of their own mind. Yet I'll never forget that night.

My attitude today is much more open to God moving in a life changing way that defies my reason and logic. I try to be discerning of what I hear, with scripture as the filter, but leave room for faith that God can...and still does, move in dramatic ways that defy human comprehension.

Check out what happened to her husband:

Since you’ve asked readers to share their experiences, I will share a couple of memorably odd things that have happened to me.

The first happened on my wedding day many years ago. My father died of cancer when I was a teenager, and on that very joyful day I did have a twinge of regret that he was not there to walk me down the aisle. We were married in a Roman Catholic convent chapel in a beautiful ceremony. At our reception, the Mother Superior came over to me and said “I need to ask you about something. When you came into the chapel, I had this very clear vision of a man beside you, in a blue suit . . .” and she proceeded to give a very detailed description of my father as I had known him before he became ill. This was 12 years after his death, halfway across the country from where I grew up. She could not possibly have known him, or ever have seen him, but in her vision he was clearly beside me as I entered the chapel until I stood before the altar with my husband-to-be. I said “I think you saw my father. He worked for IBM and he wore blue suits a lot.” She nodded and smiled and said, “I thought so,” and walked away, leaving me oddly surprised but not really surprised at all. This wasn’t my vision, of course, and if one truly believes in the communion of saints, it probably isn’t even all that weird. But still, it’s one of those experiences that defy any rational explanation that I could come up with, not that I really tried very hard amid all the wedding joy and festivity. It was a gift on a day (and in a life) blessed with so many. And that it came to me through someone else made it easier to accept -- had it been given directly to me, I’d probably have dismissed it as imagination/wishful thinking.

The second happened many years later, when my husband was into long distance cycling and sometimes went on rides that spanned days and nights while I held down the fort at home. One night while he was on a ride, I woke up around 11:30 at night, suddenly terrified for his safety (I normally worry some while he’s off on these adventures, but this was different). I got up and got a St. Herman of Alaska card out of my Bible ( I had converted to Orthodoxy by this time and St. Herman was one of my favorite “new” saints, and I felt strongly that I should ask his help). I was so frightened, all I could say, over and over, was “Holy Father Herman, please help him.” This went on for about ten minutes, I think, and eventually that fear was gone, replaced by a profound sense of relief. I remember murmuring “Thank you, thank you so much,” as I turned out the light and fell asleep.

When my husband came home, he said “I have to tell you what happened, this was so weird.” He had been descending a mountain pass in the dark, going way too fast to stop, when at the edge of his light he saw a huge railroad tie across the road. He was sure was going to hit it at full speed and be thrown off the bike, and be seriously injured or killed. At that hour, on that road, no one would have found him until morning. But, he said, as he was about to hit it, it was as though a hand grabbed the back of the saddle and lifted up his bicycle into the air over the railroad tie and set it down on the other side, and he kept riding. He’s a pretty agnostic and rational guy, and just shook his head and said, “I can’t explain it, it was the weirdest thing.” I asked him what time this happened, and he said, “I’m not sure, sometime between 11:30 and midnight, I think.” I told him “I know you may not believe this, but somebody is looking out for you.” 

Coincidence? I am sure many people would think so, and they might be right, but then again, they might not. I am not especially convinced of many propositional truths these days, but the one conviction I absolutely cannot shake, no matter what else I believe or don’t believe, is that I live in what I can only think of as an enchanted universe, in which we are all profoundly connected to one another and to all creation in ways that are beyond the scope of our understanding. I remain grateful that my husband came home safely, when it could so easily have been otherwise, and that gratitude is inseparable from our love across the distance, from my waking in fear and my prayer to St. Herman of Alaska in the middle of the night, and from transcendent grace and the kindness of that holy man on the other side of the veil whose image I still keep in the cover of my Bible. 

I do think that the kinds of experiences we have had, as well as the kinds of experience we are open to, play a significant part in shaping the kinds of experience that we are likely to have. Perhaps these mystical or strange things happen when we are so full of joy, or fear, or desperate need, or simply so clueless, that we forget ourselves and become open to God, or mystery, in ways that we normally are not. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of paying attention to what is really there all the time.

Years ago I wrote “It’s been said that 90% of life is showing up, and that may be true of prayer as well. That God will show up when we do, that the holy synergy of human freedom and divine grace may offer an opening for events to unfold onto one course rather than another is never guaranteed, but it always remains a possibility, and a mystery.”

I still believe this, I think. Especially the possibility, and the mystery part.

I often don’t know what to make of my own experience, mystical or much more mundane, until I’ve lived with it for a while, sometimes for a very long while. I appreciate, in the limited way that a stranger can, how you have taken your profoundly disturbing experience to heart and how it has shaped your living and thinking and believing, without necessarily knowing the particulars of what it all means, specifically “what the horsemen symbolize.” Sometimes people of faith can talk rather casually about prayer, but it can be a perilous undertaking and true encounter with God can seriously rock our world.

I think the enduring value of sacred writings such as Revelation -- a book which the Church has traditionally been very cautious about interpreting -- is that their rich symbolism does not yield easily to an allegorical “this symbolizes this, and only this” kind of approach, so that hearers or readers in every age can hear God speaking to their own experiences in their own times and cultures. These may be vastly different from the original context, yet these writings still resonate deeply. It’s no accident that so many African American spirituals draw on the language of Revelation, a book written in an age when Christians were living under oppressive persecution. Attempts to figure out or pin down what this or that “means” may cause us to miss meanings that are multi-faceted and enduring. Attempts to identify the Beast, for example, with a specific person or power throughout history, tend to miss the mark and diminish the richness and power of the symbol (and lure readers into demonizing their human adversaries, sometimes with devastating results).  Perhaps similarly, the horsemen of your vision may not correspond to a single event, but rather are a true and powerful symbol that opens rather than limits possibilities, offering you a window into another dimension of reality and an imaginative lens through which to look that has been formative for your writing vocation and your spiritual life over many years. Or perhaps there is a specific meaning to be revealed in future, but sometimes the experiences that reveal the deepest truths to us are the ones that keep us wondering. Veiling and revealing may, paradoxically, be two sides of the same coin.

Last one:

Thank you for your writings. I have been a reader of yours for some time. Your blog posts on Dante have had an especially profound influence on me as I was going through a personal and spiritually crisis/awakening at the time that I discovered you. This was around the time that I turned 40. I am 46 now and not necessarily done getting through my personal crisis - although I believe I have a better perspective on it. Much of it is founded in loneliness. I never have truly fit in anywhere even though from the outside most people would say I am personable and confident. I like to say I am an extroverted introvert. Family connections between myself and my siblings are thin. I am as responsible as they are for not reaching out / keeping in touch. I think it right to say I am not a good friend for the same reasons. I don’t have a Facebook page and thus am cut off from a main way friends and family communicate. My siblings get more information about me from my wife’s Facebook page than from me directly. I don’t have people my age to talk matters spiritual, personal, philosophical. Again, lonely and cut off.

From time to time I fall into despair about the state of my relationship with my wife. Going from periods of time when I feel confident and secure in the belief and feeling that she is in love with me (infrequent) to times when I feel disconnected and taken for granted. I struggle through these times of doubt to get to the other side when I’ll be back in the confident phase. Deep down I know that I could fill this loneliness through a deeper connection with Christ. I have gone on a men’s retreat and participated in a weekly men’s discussion group (catholic). This has been greatly useful in helping me to gain perspective on my where I am at. But I know and can and should do more in my faith life. I am not a good prayer.

That I call it a personal crisis really comes out of having only recognized it from going through a spiritual crisis simultaneously. My problem is Love (disconnection) and yet the solution is Love (union). When I opened my mind and heart to God and contemplating God as Love when all of this started. In the midst of this crisis I had a mystical encounter that I can only explain as God intervening directly in my life and assuring me to not doubt, encouraging me to keep confident, embracing me with assurance that I am loved. The incident occurred during one of my doubtful/lonely periods. I was feeling particularly disconnected from my wife and unsure of what her true feelings were of our relationship. I was in our bedroom exercising on our elliptical machine. Tears running down my face, overcome with emotion and despair thinking about my circumstances. (Always too much thinking perhaps). On that elliptical I cried out to God and asked him if my wife truly loved me. I had never felt so down before on this question as I had at that moment.

I finished my exercise, showered, dressed and went downstairs to the kitchen where my wife was in the middle of cooking dinner. She had a smile on her face. One of reassurance. She went away briefly and came back to the kitchen carrying photo albums of our wedding day. These photo albums were stored on the stairs leading to the attic, so not nearby and not readily accessible. We had not looked at them for some time. There was no reason for her to get them and bring them down. Yet she did. And we cracked them open, there at the kitchen counter and both went through the photos, marveling at home young we both looked then and how radiant each of us looked. We shared more thoughts about that day, about being married, about starting a family and being in love. I asked for God, the God of Love, to assure my that I was loved, and in Love. And in that prayer of despair he answered me. Through my wife, answering in such an unmistakable way impossible for me to ignore.

God gave me an unmistakable sign. It is for me to have strength, faith, and confidence in his Truth to get through and to grow.

Thanks again to all who have participated in this roundtable. I have not turned on comments on this Substack blog because honestly, I don’t have time to monitor them. I do monitor them on my TAC blog, and it takes up a lot of my time. You’d be surprised (or maybe you wouldn’t) how many ugly souls there are in the world, people who want to publish racist or otherwise hateful commentary, anonymously. My readers don’t see it because I delete that stuff before it’s published, but let me assure you that it requires constant vigilance.

I’ve been thinking that when I go to a paid model for this Substack blog, I will turn the unmoderated comments on. If people have to pay for a subscription (I’ll do it at the lowest level, five dollars a month), then I feel confident that the trash-mouths won’t come around, and I can let comments go up without pre-moderation. It will be much easier to build a real community here without y’all having to wait on me to approve them before they publish. Of course if somebody abuses the privilege, I will end their subscription. I doubt that I will have to deal with much of that, though.

What do you think? I’ve been doing my TAC blog for almost a decade now, and people really like the comments section. But that’s 100 percent because I moderate it. Again, it’s difficult for a strong community of exchange to form, because everybody has to wait until I have time to approve comments. I figure that if this Substack thing gets to be popular, I’ll probably need to start charging something for it, because it takes a while to write it. But I’m enjoying it for now, doing it for free, and I want to put that day off as long as I can. Still, the idea of y’all being able to start a real discussion group under the posts is tempting — but not something I can do while the content is free. I’d sooner shut it down than have to take on heavy moderating for a second blog.

Let me know what you think: roddreher — at — substack.com.