Rap-rap-rap. Three loud knocks on my driver’s side window woke me. Disoriented, I remembered where I was: a rest stop parking lot in West Virginia. I’d fallen into a dead sleep over my steering wheel.
“You okay, miss?” a guy with shoulder-length dark hair asked me through the glass. He wore a ball cap and shirt that identified him as the rest stop’s janitor. Between the outfit and his transparent green eyes, he didn’t look too threatening. I rolled down the window.
The janitor took in my ashen face, the imprint of the steering wheel on my cheek. “Are you going to be okay to drive home? Do you want me to call someone for you?”
“No,” I said, smiling a fake smile. “I’m okay.”
He shook his head in disapproval, dark hair moving in the wind. “I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but it’s not safe for you to be sleeping here like this, even in broad daylight. Does your mom know you’re out here all alone?” He checked my hand for a ring. “Or your husband? I don’t think he’d like it much.”
“Thanks for the advice. I’ll be more careful.”
“You do that.” His eyes searched my face in concern. I felt he could see everything I was so busy hiding from the world. “I’d hate to see you get hurt.”
Too late, I thought, rolling up the window and starting the car.
Winding my way from the rest stop in West Virginia through rural Ohio for the remainder of the day, I stopped at lumberyards to hawk my lubricated nails. Running only on coffee and resolve to make it back to my own bed, I followed Ursula the GPS’s electronic directions listlessly, barely registering my surroundings until near dusk, when the roads began looking familiar even though I was still two hours from home.
Bridgeville. My heart flip-flopped in surprise, Bridgeville Christian School, where Josh the bartender and I had learned to spell, do math, and follow Christ. Where I’d learned from my teachers and friends and parents exactly what it meant to be a Bible-believing, Holy Spirit–filled Christian who lived out her faith every day in every way.
“Better to not know the truth than to know it and turn away from it,” they’d all said. “Turn away from the truth and God will spit you out of His mouth.” The original text in Revelation 3:16 indicated God would “spew” or “vomit” out those who turned from the truth, as many a chapel speaker had explained ominously.
To me, Revelation 3:16 had always seemed the sad corollary to the love and life everlasting in John 3:16, the final, disgusting resting place for everyone who didn’t believe. It’s not a place I’d ever intended to end up.
How could I not stop, not turn into Bridgeville’s deserted parking lot?
Rays of sunset lit up the school’s red metal roof like a beacon, illuminating the empty sign at its entrance. All of the sign’s large block letters had been removed or stolen when the school had closed its doors for the last time in the wake of a bad economy.
Looking at the blank sign, I felt love and loathing in equal measure. Love because this had been such a beautiful, safe—almost charmed—place to grow up; loathing because all the beautiful memories were distorted by the idea of a God who would be disgusted at the person I’d become, even to the point of vomiting.
Getting out of my car, I walked a slow circle around the school’s brick facade. In the dying light, I noticed dented fences, growing weeds, peeling paint. Cupping my hands against the windows, I peered down empty hallways. I saw the girl I once was: pigtails and braids and perms and bad bangs and chunky layers. She was always praying. Praying God would never leave her, never dreaming that she would leave God.
I knocked on the metal red doors of the chapel, even though they were chained. It seemed that if only these doors would open, everything could rewind; I could go back to before the Breaking—when I believed with the faith of a child.
When the doors didn’t open I banged on them with both fists, as if someone inside could unlock my way back to peace.
There was no one but me.
Too exhausted to stand any longer, I sat on the blacktop. The dusk grew until I was crying in the dark. I looked out into the night through my tears as moonlight reflected off Bridgeville’s empty sign. I stared at it for a long time, until I realized I no longer wanted to rewind the tape to find what I had lost.
I wanted to change the ending.
WHEN I FOUND A Christian Spiritualist church that advertised, “Spiritualism meets Christ Consciousness,” and promised a day full of Christian energy work and a light lunch, I couldn’t resist. All that and a side of hummus? Sold!
I checked in at a table in the church kitchen. Incense and patchouli overruled kitchen bleach to create a scent that was distinctly hippie—minus the pot smoke. “Here’s your change and your number,” an elderly woman said over her reading glasses, handing me a paper slip bearing a #107 stamp. (Like the deli counter?) “The number is for your fifteen-minute readings,” she explained. “You sign up for different energy workers in the sanctuary; they’ll call your number when they’re ready for you.” She shooed me toward a wooden door that I assumed led to the main activity.
The sanctuary itself was traditional enough: stained-glass windows framed by white walls that soared into arches supported by dark wooden beams, and a huge pipe organ front and center. But the activity—well, I tried not to look shocked, but my eyes widened anyway. Around the central wooden pews, all manner of psychicsI and energy workers sat at small card tables using Bibles, tarot cards, and crystals to impart spiritual guidance to seekers. I’d entered an alternate dimension, where divination and Christ combined to create a haven for all things spiritually strange to me: one fortune-telling nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and communing with dead relatives for all.
The same painting of Jesus that hung in my mother’s bathroom (Jesus as a divine shepherd, surrounded by lambs) adorned the altar, but this Christian Spiritualist Jesus, whom I quickly termed Psychic Jesus in my mind, was not part of the Trinity I grew up with. That Trinity frowned upon divination, Ouija boards, alien abductions, and crystals of all kinds because they fell neatly under the label witchcraft.
Truth be told, I’d always found something incongruous about Jesus in Mom’s bathroom, but seeing Psychic Jesus amongst crystals and mediums was a whole new level of cognitive dissonance. I had never imagined a Christianity deep and wide enough to hold both Pentecostals and psychics.
I rolled with Psychic Jesus, though. I personally had nothing against the practices that used to get people burned at the stake—and still might get you exorcised of demons, depending on where you went to church. Frankly, I was curious about the whole psychic/medium/energy healing thing because (A) if there was any actual healing going on, the Sickness and I were so there, and (B) several years earlier I’d started feeling an Energy (for lack of a better term) as the nerves in my scalp, neck, and shoulders would occasionally tingle and buzz like someone was stroking my skin there. It came in waves, bouncing off random strangers at odd intervals: a grocery store clerk, the sandwich delivery guy, a girl in a cell phone store. Though feeling the Energy had become a regular occurrence, it was unpredictable. I’d lackadaisically hoped to run into someone—anyone!—who could explain what the Energy was and what to do with it, but it’s not the type of thing you go around telling people about, is it?
Maybe I’ll bring the Energy up with the Christian Spiritualists, I thought. Given the amount of leather fringe and gemstones in my immediate vicinity, I’m sure no one will judge me.
Desiring to have the full Spiritualist experience and get my fifteen dollars worth of fifteen-minute sessions, I signed up for everything that had availability. Reiki healing? Check. Mediums? Check. Qigong? Check. Dream interpretation, “angel whispers,” Tarot reading? Check, check, check.
“Number one-oh-seven,” shouted someone from the rear of the sanctuary. I turned around and raised my hand. The shouter was a strapping guy, maybe nineteen, with a huge amount of hair circling his head. (If I had that kind of volume, I’d be a Pantene model.) He wore jeans belted around his knees, and boxers featuring cartoons. His hulking frame easily filled out an oversize T-shirt. He approached me, heavy gold and diamante chains clanking together.
“Are you ready for Reiki?” he asked, towering over me but sweet as pie. His name tag read “Maverick” in bold print. I nodded and trailed behind him.
Friends, when I signed up for Reiki I never imagined following Maverick into a little room off the sanctuary; nor did I envision said room to contain two of Maverick’s closest bad-ass looking buddies (Goose and Cougar?) and a massage table covered with a woven blanket.
Goose slammed the door shut with a Cheshire cat grin.
“Please sit on the table and remove your sandals,” Maverick asked.
I gulped. First the shoes . . . “Ummm,” and stumbled to do as requested, reasoning that I was in a church and they were probably former altar boys.
“Now, lie down, close your eyes, and relax,” Goose said, moving toward me. I lay down. I squinted. I did not relax.
“You’re so tense, lady,” Cougar admonished, waving his hands over my forehead. “Are you under a lot of stress or something?”
Why yes, gentlemen. As a matter of fact, I am.
“I’m infusing healing energy into your foot chakra,” Goose whispered soothingly, moving his hands closer to my bare feet.
Just as I determined that this spiritual adventuring had gone too far and plotted to flee the scene, an angelic, white-haired oldster rose and emerged from a far corner. She was so tiny I hadn’t seen her before.
She hobbled over and hovered her hands over my forehead. “I’m channeling energy into your crown chakra,” she said. “Relax.” I relaxed—almost. Nothing truly awful could happen to me in the presence of Reiki Grandma. Right?
Over the next quarter hour, Grandma, Maverick, and Co. infused all my chakras, sometimes one at a time, sometimes in tandem. For the finale, they surrounded me on all sides. It was a very long few minutes.
“Namaste,” said Goose with a slight bow at the conclusion of my session, meaning: The Divine in me bows to the Divine in you.
“Namaste,” I replied, meaning: I would like to leave now. I gathered my sandals and went back to my pew, resolving to evermore avoid small rooms where the men outnumbered me three to one, even if there was a grandmother involved.
Waiting several minutes for my next session, I imagined what might happen if my dad circa 1990 walked into this sanctuary. I thought he would likely swing the yellow plastic bat around and throw everyone out, in the manner of Jesus and the money changers in the temple. From the armchair (or pew, as it were) of the future, it seemed inevitable that uptight, overprotective, über-religious Dad of twenty years ago would eventually morph into easygoing, chill Dad circa 2011, but I doubt anyone would have predicted the shift back in his demon-rebuking days. If Dad had a soundtrack back then, it would have been a military march, Soldier of the Lord edition. But by 2011 he’d become much more Kenny G than dictator.
I attributed this change in large part to Franciscan monks, bless their celibate hearts. A Monks, Live! CD came into my father’s possession when I was nineteen, right around the time he and my mother divorced. He went through a phase where he listened to chanting during his hour-long commute. I think we can all agree that, among other life changes, piping fifteenth-century religious chants through Honda speakers soothes the heart and starts one on the mellow path.
Dad married my stepmother Edie, whose fun-loving, upbeat attitude probably helped even more with his serene vibe. It wasn’t that Dad stopped being religious (whenever I visited him and Edie in Indianapolis, I invariably ended up at a Bible-study potluck); it was just that the carnage left in the wake of how the church reacted to a Christian divorce toned his religiosity down about three hundred notches.
He may have lost his yellow bat, but he still had the Word of God for a sword, his faith as a shield, and one righteous mustache. (Everything else may have changed, but Dad’s mustache would remain the same forever and ever. Amen.)
“Number one-oh-seven,” called a man in a striped pirate shirt and red bandanna. Approaching his table, I mentally added an eye patch, peg leg, and shoulder parrot to his look.
“Your angels are saying you need to ‘Dance more!’ ” he informed me.
“Like a jig?” I questioned, desiring celestial clarity. If my angels were into dictating dance moves, I didn’t want to offend them with the wrong ones.
The pirate tilted his head to hear their heavenly missive. “Dance the disco, baby,” he relayed, demonstrating a seated version of Saturday Night Fever. “You’re going to dance the disco.”
I thanked him and excused myself, privately wondering if this particular disco-dancing pirate had {taken one too many nips below deck} or {ingested too much seawater}.
Shortly after my next session, during which a woman wearing a pentagram necklace told me, “I may be Wiccan, but I’m a Jesus fan myself. Jesus rocks!” and flashed me a double thumbs-up, as though Jesus had earned excellent movie reviews, I decided to leave. The incense/patchouli was giving me a headache. I was gathering my things when Pastor Judy, a hip, middle-aged spiritualist minister with short dark hair and a kind smile, called my number. She beckoned me toward the altar.
“Sit down,” she invited, gesturing to the folding chair opposite her.
I sat, noticing that her table was placed directly in front of the Psychic Jesus painting. It seemed Psychic Jesus was watching over me placidly, petting his lambs and saying, There, there, Reba, there’s nothing to be afraid of.
Between Pastor Judy and me was a closed black Bible, as though our session was normal pastoral counseling instead of a metaphysical encounter.
“I’d like to open in prayer,” Pastor Judy stated. Uh-oh. Praying—both in general and out loud—was soundly in PTCS territory. My hands began to sweat. Pastor Judy offered hers, waiting expectantly. I felt like Psychic Jesus was looking over my shoulder, like, Get on with it already, and I was so discombobulated that I mentally gave up my resistance. I wasn’t going to pray myself, not out loud—no sir—but maybe I could let Pastor Judy pray for me.
The second before we touched, I was surprised to feel the Energy emanating from her hands. I bowed my head, only half-listening to Pastor Judy pray out loud and mightily, because I felt the familiar tingle buzzing through my arms, over my scalp, and back down again, like a fountain cycling water through my nerves.
Pastor Judy’s eyes snapped open, as if in psychic surprise or bad Botox. As she cocked her head and studied me, I had the eerie feeling that the whole Godiverse surrounded the two of us. It was like there were angels and—heck—maybe even a few ghosts standing at attention for what she was about to say.
“You are a Healer,” she proclaimed, with an authority that stretched beyond the stone church and into the infinite. “You will heal with your words. You will heal yourself and you will heal others.” She stopped, closed her eyes, and listened to a Voice I did not hear.
I waited, riveted by the Energy flowing through my entire body, stronger than I’d ever felt it.
“You will be transformed like a phoenix,” Pastor Judy foretold. “It has something to do with . . . huh.” She stopped again, appearing to check her facts. “It has something to do with the number thirty.”
Now there was nothing around us except her words; the altar faded, the chatter of the spiritualists quieted.
“The energy you feel is part of your healing medium; you are a gifted healer.” Pastor Judy opened her eyes, shook her head at me, and laughed a little. “Honey, if you’re not using what you’ve been given, you’re missing out.”
I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. A gifted SICK healer? What kind of cosmic prank is that?
She sensed my discomfort with the message. “A phoenix doesn’t have it easy. It has to be burned up before it gets up.” Pastor Judy peered at me. “Transformation. Rebuilding. These are the words for you. If you persevere, you’ll be an entirely different person. Reborn.”
Persevere. That word again.
She smiled broadly, patting my hand. “Please visit one Sunday; we’d love to see you for Fellowship.”
And with that invitation she stood up, excusing me like we’d just finished having a nice chat over tea instead of an encounter that tipped my existence on its axis.
I. I later found out many Spiritualists would not refer to their gifts or practices as “psychic” in nature.