“I’m her friend. She lives with me. She’s lived with me for a while; I can tell you she ain’t on drugs or alcohol. I’m a witness.” said the older of the two women that stopped by my office Monday morning. They knocked on the back door; I met them on the steps. They seemed harried. The younger woman, who spoke the way people speak in rural South Alabama, asked if she could see me in my office. I said yes, but wondered what kind of scam this would be. There was a weary urgency about them, disquietude.
They sat down; the younger woman spoke, agitated, speaking rapidly. Neither women asked for money. The younger woman told me that she had a demon. Psychosis, I thought. She continued. She said she had been possessed by this demon since she was two years old. The demon was tall, rough, with deep-set eyes, never spoke, would appear at inopportune times, mostly at night. He would wake her baby, scratch her on her arms and back. Upon leaving her he would rack her body violently, only to return over and again. She said it was a living hell.” Could I help her?”, she asked. I hesitated, my mind racing about how backward and primitive such a theology was. She needed psychiatric help. Sensing my skepticism, “don’t you believe in Demons,” she asked. I hesitated… “Well, our church tradition has no teaching on demons per se….” she interrupted, ” Do you believe in the Holy Spirit? ” “Yes, I do.” “Then wouldn’t it follow that there are evil spirits in the world?” “I guess so, when you put it that way, ” I said. She continued with her narrative… she told me how this demon was always waiting for her.. a stumbling block, debilitating… She told me she was abused by her father… I just listened. Seminary didn’t prepare me for this, I thought. Her words were clear, sober, sane, intelligent… She shared her life with me… the pain of it. Her friend sat in compassionate witness with her hand on the girl’s shoulder…. this child of God.
I was taught in Clinical Pastoral Education by Will Spong that the key to pastoral ministry is to live, for a time in another’s world. It is an act of humility and courage. In listening to this person, that thought crossed my mind… To enter the world of another… the land of unlikeness… a land of rare beasts and unique adventures… dangerous… beautiful. It’s what God does, I thought… enters in all humility our world, subject like us to the demons of transience and mortality. I told her that though I didn’t know much about demons, I did believe in healing and that I would anoint her with oil blessed by the bishop (she asked what a bishop was) and pray for her healing… and so I did. As soon as I anointed her with oil, she began to shake… to shake violently… She screamed a primordial cry from the depths…gritted her teeth, and broke out in a cold sweat… reverberations throughout the building… When she regained her composure she said she was nauseous, felt faint… but she gathered herself, thanked me and went on her way with her companion. She seemed exhausted. I was exhausted.
I am not sure why I tell this story. Perhaps it is a window onto what compassion is, what empathy is… To live for a time in another’s world… to live in that world without judgement, without expectation… just present, fully present. perhaps the young woman’s companion was the true protagonist…Such an awareness, if there be one, might serve us in the larger world…. To live with a deep and present sense of empathy and compassion for our neighbor… descended and descendants of God into the world as healing presence…. angels among demons, as it were. By whatever name, there is such conflict, such warfare….
The life of faith is not about belief, but about presence… loving, healing presence… I am a witness to it.
My neighbor up the street tells me Bill Cosby cussed her out on a recent vacation to Costa Rica. Her pastor has yelled at her, she says, and so did the kids trying to get a takeout business going up on Hwy 90. She’s going to ruin them, she says. The neighbors across the street won’t speak to her because she called the city on their loose German Shepherd. She looms over me with her rake, thin, tall and eighty years old last month. So angry…I sit with her a couple of times a week while my dogs run in her back yard, as long as I can stand it, feeling guilty as I type that I phrased it that way. I’m curious about exactly what these cursing people said to her, but don’t like to ask–surely it would add fuel to her fire? I tell myself to be present, to breathe, to imagine what it is to be a widow with estranged children. I don’t know about demons, but hell has an outpost in a ranch house in west Mobile.
Your words encourage me–thanks for telling this story. I needed to hear it today.
A wonderful narrative and a powerful message, Jim. Our world is full of mysteries that we will never understand, and probably aren’t supposed to understand. But, it is a grand world anyway and meant to be enjoyed to the fullest. Peace be with you my friend.
That’s a great sermon, Jim. It reminds me of Marcus Borg’s assertion that God’s nature is compassion.