Meeting the Spirit: I get tongues, Gary gets slain.

The gift of tongues

Prayer meetings took place every Thursday at King’s Church, and Jenny, our resident saint, had assured me that the Holy Spirit turned up often, so I thought I should too.  It thrilled me to speculate on what gifts the Holy Spirit would inflict on me.  I was a teenager and I wanted super-powers as much as the next boy.  Some people, my mentor Anthony had told me, are given the gift of healing, some the gift of preaching, some the gift of prophecy, and some ‘the word of knowledge’ (which apparently entailed knowing personal things about people).  It was all documented in the epistles of Paul.  I’d decided that I’d like the ‘word of knowledge’, although any kind of supernatural ability would have been welcome.

  My friend Gary, on the other hand, who I was taking along for moral support, seemed nervous.

  ‘Will we all have to pray out loud?’ he asked as we walked to Pitcherwood Primary School.  ‘Do we have to take turns?  I don’t want to pray.’

  ‘Say you have a sore throat.’

  ‘What if they offer to pray for my throat?’

  There was a solemn quietness about the strange meeting we found going on in the primary school hall where King's Church gathered.  Huddled circular clutches of tiny plastic chairs were camped across the hall, bearing suburbanites whose torsos craned forward like anglepoise lamps.  Most of the people wore glasses, I noticed.  Many were standing in groups with their hands on each other’s shoulders.  Some held their hands at chest height, palm-up.  There were bibles underneath some of the plastic chairs.

  Nobody noticed Gary and me lingering in the doorway. 

  ‘Let’s go in,’ I whispered.

  We went into the hall.  Still nobody noticed us.  Prayerful voices moved back and forth in waves of moaning, giving the hall the air of a zombie stock-exchange.  We walked virtually to the middle of the hall and waited to be spotted.

  Suddenly a birdlike woman approached us from our blind spot, and laid a hand on Gary’s shoulder.  Gary let out a homuncular scream and the woman snatched her hand away.  It was Jenny.  I introduced Gary to her and they shook hands.

  A nervous, light-bearded man in glasses gangled over coughing and smiling.  I recognised him as Anthony.  He waved at me and Gary and said welcome.

  Jenny told us that tonight we would be focusing on the gifts of the Spirit.

  I looked at Gary, who didn’t know what she was talking about.  I said, ‘That’s what we’re here for.’

Jenny’s prayer squadron sat positioned in front of the curtain that concealed the school’s sports equipment.  Its members were all leaning forward earnestly in their plastic chairs, each with one hand on one knee and one elbow on the other, a hand in the air, palm curled into a cup shape as though anticipating Bombay mix.

  It was easy to believe that these people had genuinely experienced contact with a deity.  Otherwise why would they willingly look so crazy?  Jenny interrupted her group to introduce us and they awakened like puppies.

  Jeff, the elder of the church, was among their number.  The group members took pains to convey to Gary and me how welcome we were.  I’m not sure that Jeff recognised me as the boy who’d been haunting his services for over a month.  One guy, a young chap named Mark, gave us two thumbs up.

  Gary sat next to Paul.  I sat next to Mark, who had now clasped his hands together.  Prayers resumed, led by a large fellow with a long mouth.

  After a while people in the group started getting to their feet.  I wondered if the meeting was over.  But they weren’t leaving; evidently everyone had just felt like standing up.  I stood up as well and closed my eyes and screwed up my face in a manner suggestive of passionate prayer, or of having an injection in the spine.  Should I, I wondered, put one hand in the air?  Or both?  Mark, who had become my role model, had his hands up, I noticed.  Someone said something I didn’t quite catch, but I said ‘Mmm’ anyway, and then my hand was in the air, of its own accord.

  After what might have been one minute or ten minutes I opened my eyes and noticed that everyone else was standing in little groups, praying for each other.  Gary was talking to Anthony and Mark.  I was on my own, quite far from anyone else; they’d apparently decided to leave me to stand on my own with my hands over my head.  I think I may have been in a trance.  I spotted my reflection in the school window: I looked like a drama lesson tree.  I put my hands down.  Mark noticed me and came over.

  ‘Hey,’ he said to me.  ‘You were pretty sold-out just then!’

  I said, ‘What?’

  Anthony brought Gary over and suddenly we were all standing as though sharing a phone box.  Anthony put a hand on my shoulder.  Confused, I put a hand on Mark, which felt unnatural.

  ‘Dear Lord,’ Anthony rumbled quietly, intimately, ‘I just want to pray that you’ll really meet with us now, and that, Lord, you’ll just take away in the name of Jesus anything that is standing between us and receiving the fullness of your Spirit.’

  He paused, perhaps to let someone else have a turn.  I really wanted to take my hand off Mark.  I sneaked a peek and saw Gary giving me a ghastly one-eyed glare.

  After a while Anthony continued.  ‘Yes, Lord, thank you for bringing us here tonight.’

  Gary cleared his throat and said, ‘Thanks.’

  After some minutes of this there was a loud clunk and the sound of a chair scratching across the floor.  My eyes opened and I saw that someone had fallen over.

  ‘Whoa!’ I said, taking my hand off Mark.  Gary swore, but tried to cover it by coughing.  A guy was lying on the other side of the hall, sprawled, and a man and a woman were now kneeling down, praying over him.  Anthony and Mark paid no attention.

  Gary and I exchanged stern looks.  Gary was tense with gunslinger alertness.  I realised I was standing hunched, my arms wide, jaw jutting, like early man.

  ‘We come with confidence into your sanctuary, into the Holy of Holies…’ sighed Anthony.

  ‘Yes, Lord, we come!’ said Mark.  Now Gary was kicking my leg.  Why was nobody helping that guy up?

  I was going to tell Gary to stop kicking me but at that moment I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  Jenny had come over.  God, she said, had a gift for me.

  Jenny shepherded me away from Gary and his companions and, while Gary looked over helplessly, we went over to a corner of the hall and she made me sit down on a tiny chair.

  She lifted another chair over and sat opposite me.  ‘Listen.  You know you said you had a hunger for the gifts of the Spirit?’

  I couldn’t remember saying that.  ‘Uh-’

  ‘Do you have the gift of tongues?’

  I coughed.  ‘A gifted tongue?’

  ‘Tonight God wants to give you the gift of tongues.’

  ‘God wants to give me a gift of tongues?’

  ‘And I think God would like Gary to be slain in the Spirit.’  She gestured towards the guy on the floor.

  I wanted to say that if I knew one thing about Gary, it was that he would definitely not want to be slain.  I said, ‘Is that guy okay?’

  Jenny laughed.  ‘Of course!  Listen, how much do you know about tongues?’

  I had no idea how to respond to that.  Jenny searched my face.  It was pulsating with blankness.  She said, ‘Acts chapter two?  When the Holy Spirit prays through you in a new language?  So that when you want to pray and you haven’t got any words, you can just speak to God in your new tongue?’

  Perhaps, I thought, this church had a sinister side.  It appeared they practised some manner of voodoo spirit possession.  I said, ‘Oh, those tongues.’  I looked over at Gary.  Anthony and the elder of the church, Jeff, were standing with their hands on his head, apparently trying to push him over.  The other guy was still sprawled on the floor, with a filleted look about him.  I said, ‘Great!’

  ‘Recently,’ Jenny told me, ‘the Holy Spirit gave someone here an actual human language, one they’d never learned!’

  She smoothed her skirt and pulled her chair closer.  Then she closed her eyes, showing magenta shadow, and tilted back her head and thanked God for leading me and Gary here tonight, and she prayed for the Spirit of God to brood over me, just like he’d brooded over the waters in Genesis chapter one.  Meanwhile I tried to get Gary’s attention.  He had his eyes open, looking revolted as Mark and Anthony handled him and prayed.  He spotted me and I struggled to convey to him, via complex hand gestures, that he was about to be struck down in some way.

  Jenny grabbed my hands and squeezed them.  ‘Dear Lord,’ she rumbled quietly, intimately, ‘I just want to pray that you’ll really invade him now, Lord, and birth in him this wonderful gift of your Spirit.’

  I waited to be invaded.  It was like waiting for a poison to take effect.  For a few seconds I half-expected to be hit by some kind of force.  But the reality was, of course, more awful: I was going to have to pretend to have this magic tongue of which Jenny was speaking.  For a moment I actually considered trying to remember some French from school.  Hadn’t Jenny said that God could make someone speak human languages they don’t know?  Why not utter some phrases about Sonique and Marcel who live in La Rochelle, and say to Jenny, Hold on - I’ve just learned French!

  There was a loud crash and I heard Gary yell, ‘Jesus!’  Then he was lying on the floor, slain, with Paul and Mark and two other prayer warriors leaning on his head.

  Jenny ignored them and mouthed some sentences to God, gripping my hands.  Then she disentangled a hand from the slippery nest of fingers between us, and touched me on the temple.  Instinctively I braced myself, as though genuinely expecting a lobotomising inflow of mystical abilities.

  ‘Listen.’  Jenny opened her eyes and grinned.  ‘You’ve got it!’

  I had clearly missed something important.  ‘No,’ I said.  ‘No, I don’t think so.’  I tried to draw her attention to Gary, who was rubbing his head and sulking, but who was otherwise okay.

  Jenny rocked back, laughing.  ‘It’s not a matter of opinion!’

  She asked me if there were any strange words floating around in my head.  There weren’t.  But I discovered that if you strive to see whether there are strange words floating in your head, lo, strange words do in fact appear.  The word ‘falsh’ came to me.  This reminded me of a rude word, and a horrible smirky feeling rose from my lungs and moved my mouth around my face.  The idiocy of the situation had finally overwhelmed me.  I discovered a dark laugh crouching in my stomach.  I said, ‘Uh, I don’t know.’

  Falsh.  Splugget.  Flash.  No, that was a normal word.  I smirked again, wondering what Jenny would say if I told her, ‘I’m getting the word ‘flash’.’  Flash, of course, being the name of a household detergent.

  Plong.  Plaps.  Falsh.

  Falsh was persistent.  I said, ‘Falsh?’  I was unable to give the word dignity.  ‘Sorry -’

  ‘It’s okay!’ Jenny encouraged, squeezing my hand.  ‘Tell you what.  I’m going to start praying in tongues, and when you’re ready, just try to copy what I’m saying.  Got that?’

  ‘Got it!’ I said, thinking: all I have to do is endure a little more of this madness and I can pick Gary off the floor and we can escape.

  Jenny started to pray in a nonsensical but musical and quite beautiful language.  I opened my mouth a fraction and tried to mumble along with Jenny’s prayers.

  ‘Buransi,’ I whispered.  ‘Na falatri’.  It was incredibly difficult keeping up.  ‘Bran-’

  Jenny squeezed my hand.  ‘Good!’

  Her wild joy mortified me.  We continued, Jenny speaking slowly, me babbling, and eventually Jenny said, ‘Now, start to just speak out by yourself!  Say what comes to your lips.’

  I was terrified.  ‘Bleeuighh,’ I said. ‘Blaaurrg.’  I shook my head.

  ‘No, it’s good!  Don’t be embarrassed.’  Jenny continued praying under her breath.

  It was horrible beyond belief.  Odds were, I’d probably say a rude word at some point.  I tried to screen each word as it came out, but this just turned my speech to sludge, so I panicked and began attempting to flick simultaneously through mental copies of my GCSE Tricolore book and the Gideon bible they gave me at school, wondering if I could combine some patchy memories from each to make one or two profound-seeming theological statements in French.  But all I had learned in French was various ways of saying I didn’t know how to speak French.  I could, for example, say It is difficult for the English to learn foreign languages because our schools are bad.  Keeping my eyes closed so I didn’t have to look at Jenny, I began to murmur softly, distorting the words just enough so that they might sound not so much French as supernatural.  ‘C’est tres difficile pour le cheville… apprendre les langues etranger de Dieu.’

  Silence.  I opened an eye.  Jenny was staring at me.  She said, ‘What?’

  I tried to look post-possessed.  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘That sounded almost like French.’

  ‘French?’

  Worry was flicking over Jenny’s face.  Her nostrils were flaring a little.  She swept her hair slowly back from her collarbones and over her shoulders.

  ‘So I’ve learned French?’ I said.

  Jenny said nothing.  She put her head in one hand and scrunched her hair.

  ‘Jenny?’

  In a small voice she said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not good with jokes.’

  ‘Jokes?’

  She let out a heartbreaking sigh.

  ‘Jokes?’ I repeated, louder.

  ‘You’re making a joke.’

  ‘No!’  Holy cats, what had I been thinking?  ‘Of course not!’  Jenny blinked pathetically at me.  Finally I said, ‘I was just trying to do what you wanted me to do.’

  I looked miserably over at Gary, who was having what looked like a serious discussion with Jeff Gribb, the church elder.  Jenny stared at her lap.  Eventually she said, ‘I’ve been speaking in tongues for so long that I forgot how weird it must be just starting out.’

  I said, ‘No, it’s not weird, no.’  It was perhaps the biggest lie I've ever told.

  ‘And being self-conscious can get in the way.’

  ‘No, it’s fine.’

  She took my hand and told me that she was sorry for making me feel pressured.  ‘You should go home and go to your room and just let the words come in their own time.’

  ‘What if they don’t?’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ she said.  ‘You’ve got it.’

  I said I thought that Gary hadn’t much enjoyed falling over.  Jenny said that sometimes when God wants to work on some really deep-rooted problem in your life, he takes you off your feet, and it’s not always nice, but it’s good.  It had happened to her on several occasions, and some ‘deep healing’ had occurred.  ‘Sometimes you tremble and sob.  Sometimes you can just lie there for hours, and healing takes place deep inside you.  God works on the whole person, mind and body and spirit.’

  I said, ‘So Gary has been healed of something?  Is that why he fell over?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Jenny.  ‘But Jeff has been known to push.’

A great deal of hokum goes on in churches in the name of the gifts of the Spirit.  There are churches where you could fall over and lie there moaning for two hours with people praying on you before anyone realises that you actually slipped on some coffee and have broken your hip.  Nefarious evangelists exploit the gifts to rob the gullible and the desperate (surely an example, if there ever was one, of ‘blasphemy against the Holy Spirit’).  That is why the bible cautions us to ‘test every spirit’.  It would be worth avoiding the miraculous altogether if not for the fact that positive experiences do occur, and if you spend enough time around ‘charismatic’ Christians (meaning those who seek the charisms or gifts of the Holy Spirit), you will hear testimonies of these experiences, from people who seem genuine.  You may even experience things yourself.  The testimonies I heard, over the years, of healings and divine interventions were, if not proofs that a supernatural Holy Spirit operates in the church, at least indicators that the church is a place where something extramundane can be accessed by mundane suburbanites. 

  My own church-mates tapped into an area of reality that sometimes – often, even - led them to excesses of joy, without inhibiting their ability to hold down jobs as chartered accountants.  This was in itself sufficient reason for me to think it worth going to church, although I had certain reservations.

  I looked up the French I’d spoken: I’d told Jenny that  it is hard for hair to learn the foreign languages of God.  Which, if you think about it, is true enough.