Yesterday, in the midst of this surprisingly painful recovery, I was taken back in time.
A side trip. My 12-15 year old Vancouver experience was spiritually formational. In both positive and negative ways I was awakened to ‘The Spirit’ in a revivalist charged church that animated the best and worst of my tradition.
Our pastor was young, friendly, intense and a picture perfect caricature of the preaching style of Neil Diamond’s “Traveling Salvation Show:
“Room gets suddenly still And when you'd almost bet You could hear yourself sweat, he walks in
Eyes black as coal And when he lifts his face Every ear in the place is on him
Starting soft and slow Like a small earthquake And when he lets go Half the valley shakes
It's love, Brother Love..”
His mom was a song evangelist, animated, loving, full of life and could make any room light up and any song dance to the rhythms of revivalist singing. Our young pastor would walk in sometimes just before or during Grandma Goldie’s praise-fest. It was like taking the best of the camp meeting experience home with you every week—which, ofcourse is the trick; emotive intimacy conjured up in vibrant inter-active singing amid intimate strangers translating back home in the weakness of pianists who could not play and singers with no stage presence but all of whom you knew well and whose stories were made of ordinary joys and sorrows—emotive intimacy possible only if built upon the “meaning” of the mundane instead of the show.
Yet in this Vancouver church of between 200-400 revivalism lived. I no longer want anything to do with guilt triggering messages focused on one goal, the altar call. I went, almost every time, my conscience easily awakened. I remember the fear of facing the questions surrounding my devotion to Jesus, again and again—usually coming up short. Yet I walked away having felt both Divine and very human affection. The after altar testimonies of the thirty or so still gathered was indeed emotive intimacy at it’s best, revealing human confessions that made the Jesus Story alive.
As I backed up my car from getting Chinese takeout I was aware that I was not 200 feet from our first duplex rental when moving here so my dad could reverse his Jonah moment and begin moving consciously toward becoming a preacher, landing us in Randle, WA and revivalism at its best; personal, reaching into and changing the lives of many who were impoverished.
As I pulled out onto 4th Plain boulevard I noticed a lonely convenience store, surrounded by concrete pavement and apparently a history of failed business adventures. Into my mind came the picture of a twelve year old boy returning ashamedly two cents to the proprietor because I thought he had short changed himself. Ashamed because I was old enough to know that no one cared about two pennies and I would look foolish obsessing over it. I cared, because I knew it wasn’t mine—or so I calculated—and so could never spend it. I’m confident it was a Monday morning when I went in having probably worked up the courage at an altar the night before. To this day I usually will not pick up coinage on the ground near a business entrance, wondering from whom I might be stealing.
Its late in the evening as I lay back to once again repeat the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God (David, Mary), have mercy upon me a sinner.“ That long known Spirit is awakening me anew in these days and nights, shaking my interior soul of its arrogance, hypocrisy, lust-centric needs and allowing me to see without even an ounce of judgment how far I have fallen from that overly anxious, guilty little boy who simply wanted to please Jesus. I have not only lost my first love for Jesus, but myself.
Even as Jesus in all these years has awakened me to the narrowness and judgmental-ism of that faith—noble in character often, but blind to a world of hurt beyond its middl-class privileges—I am in great need of its gift when practiced well, incongruence facing truth. In the 30 minutes after the altar call, the confessional testimonies were often given; when people I looked up to revealed awareness of their own sins, wounds, needs. I knew I was not alone.
Being respectfully awakened socially, culturally to my diverse neighbors and their stories is life giving. It makes real the Jesus Story, the Sermon on the Mount is alive all around me. Blessed are the poor, those who mourn, the vulnerable (meek), those reconciling voices (peacemakers), those seeking justice (hunger and thirst for righteousness), has lifted my soul to a Kingdom whose origins are not of this earth, but just as surely will one day fill Terra Forma.
Jesus looking around upon his ancient and suffering people group, including his disciples also blessed the pure in heart. Suddenly we have moved from sociology to psychology, from the inter-personal to the deeply personal—the only blessing that gives eyes to see and ears to hear—to see God and thereby assure our story is taken up into God’s writing. I do not believe social structures are human making of themselves. They can deny or celebrate humans in culture. Our social narrative can reinforce or diminish our experience. They are formative and powerful. But we are more than the sum of our experiences. Of all the creatures of the earth we are fully awake only as we look beyond ourselves.
What makes us is The Creator’s Spirit breathing in, around and through us. To that end interior nobility is required in a human soul that is capable of the worst and the best—of heaven and hell. Often it is those of us who proclaim we “know” the truth that do the most cancelling or devaluing of humans—left or right.
So again tonight I ask Jesus to fill me anew; “to receive my body, my spirit, my heart as God’s own. To pour through me what I cannot do or be—love and love only. I am so undone Lord Jesus and long for your return not to the earth alone but to the interior space that I have with great skill and perfectionism made a mess! Forgive, cleanse me, heal me I pray. Whatever becomes of the social fabric around me, please make me inwardly whole, newly awakened. Amen.“
Blessings! Terry :)
Check out Neil Diamond’s “Brother Love’s Travel’n Salvation Show”
Available at Amazon
For more on Revivalism check out my book:
“7 Faces of Jesus”, chapter 4, “On Eagles Wings—The Pentecostal, Charismatic & Revivalist Face“
https://www.amazon.com/Faces-Jesus-American-Devotional-Holy-Love/dp/1520513453/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?
For more on the need for a more authentic experience of the Divine explore this book:
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