"Mom, What Is That?"

 

I was eight or nine years old and working my way through (not straight through, but rather fast-forwarding through) my maternal grandmother's old encyclopedia set which came into Mom's possession at Grandma's death.

 

Face to face I found myself with the mysterious - and to a child, rather scary - sphinx. Not like the one in the illustration above, but rather an old black and white picture of the Great Sphinx of Giza - before it had been dug out of centuries worth of sand.

 

I didn't know how to begin to pronounce the word. I had never encountered that mix of consonants in any of my school readers. Mom put her face close to mine so I could I watch her mouth, and she slowly pronounced it for me.

 

Egypt held an especial fascination for me, no doubt because I was fascinated (and terrified) by the old Universal Mummy movies. I still remember strolling up my grammar school librarian and asking for a book about mummies. She told me that subject was a bit too gruesome for children, but she did give me a child's mystery novel that involved a whispering mummy. Yay! (Not really.) It was some years later, as a teenager, that I was able to check out some real books on the subject at our large public library.

 

I didn't realize that the Sphinx of Giza was missing it's nose. That face haunted me and actually figured in a recurring nightmare that featured that face atop a mummy's wrapped body. As if that wasn't terrifying enough, the Sphmummy of my nightmares was as tall as a tree. (Boy, was I glad when I outgrew that dream!)

 

Sometimes I think I stretched my limits as a child. (Sometimes I probably still do.)

"I'm After Bill's Mind!"

Shortly before my parents' divorced, when my folks were drowning in debt which they had foolishly gone deeply into because Dad had taken a higher paying job at his factory, when the systematic harassment of their creditors became overwhelming, when my parents were arguing almost constantly, Mom blaming Dad for having given up his higher paying position because the stress of it was overwhelming him, when my Dad had become a totally different man - all sullen and withdrawn, a sudden non-attender of church with his family, a man who spent long hours sitting and staring into space - during the time all this going on in their lives, my mom beheld a vision.

 

I heard her tell it in church at the time and heard her tell it to me personally many times. One quiet evening as my dad dozed in his easy chair my mother looked at him and saw a demon, which she always described as having the appearance of huge crab, crawling around his forehead, tightening a band which was wrapped around his head. The words came to her: "I'm after Bill's mind."

 

Now it wouldn't have taken a rocket scientist to figure out that my dad was in trouble. Mom blamed him for our financial woes because he gave up a job which brought an extra hundred dollars a month into our budget (not exactly small change in 1969/1970). I'm sure Dad blamed himself. When I think back now, with the wisdom which comes with age, to the troubled soul my dad had become during all that mess, it surprises me he did not take his life. I'm sure he thought of it more than once. Probably his deep abiding faith in his God and fear of Hell (which our church believed was the outcome of suicides) are what kept him from it. 

 

This is an example of what I wrote about the other day: people who believe in angels and demons tend to see them from time to time. I don't doubt in the least my mom saw - at least in her mind's eye - the thing she says she saw. It was a fitting picture, I think.

 

She had the church come and lay hands on my dad and pray, but he was too far gone for that. The noose of financial debt was lightning and very soon we as a family would experience the embarrassment of trucks backing up to our front door in order to remove the furniture and appliances that my parents had bought just months previously, when my dad's pay raise was in effect.

 

The demon did get my dad's mind, and I remember the night he cracked up. Long, loud, heaving sobs erupted from his throat as he banged his head on the floor and begged to be put away. I was ten years old. I was terrified. My dad had always been the very picture of calm, even in the face of trouble. Mom was the high-strung one. Dad was always mellow. Not only that, he had a sense of humor that wouldn't quit. But now I was looking at a totally broken man - and it scared me beyond words to describe.

 

Dad was institutionalized and drugged up. He was a stranger for a long time. He was released back to us in a few months, but he came back a different man. It was years before he was his old self again. (Well, maybe he truly never was his old self again, only similar.) In a move which I held against Mom for many years (and in fact still find distasteful to talk or think about), she filed for divorce and left him.

 

The divorce devastated my father, but he didn't exactly have a relapse. He did start hanging out with his brother, who conveniently enough also owned a local beer joint. In short order my dad was a drunk and a womanizer. He dropped his "nerve medicine" in favor of alcohol. It was two years or so before my dad sobered up and got back into church.

 

If the devil got Dad's mind it was only for a short time. Once restored to his faith, he never left it again and remained deeply committed, deeply serene until the time of his death. In fact, I used to marvel at how well he coped with the many physical and emotional trials that followed him in his last decades. 

 

I lost my dad in 1997 and have to say the loss was enormous. Because of the divorce my dad wasn't around nearly enough for me from the time I was eleven until I was eighteen. Then we lost touch again when I was in my twenties because he married a much younger woman who was jealous of my brother and me. When his health broke the final time I was finally able to really get to know my dad on a man-to-man basis. I'm biased, I'm sure, but I think he was a wonderful man. Had he not had the pressures of a wife and three kids, I'm certain he would not have fallen off the log that one time. His mind did eventually begin to give way to the strokes that robbed him of his health and the encroaching dementia. He never totally lost it, but towards the end I had to catch on his "good days."  

 

On the day I had my last visit with him at the nursing home, shortly before he died, I told him I loved him. The last words he ever spoke to me were "I love you, too, son" and with that he waved good-bye to me. I refused a final view of my daddy in death. I wanted my last memory of him to be sweet, and it is. He was cremated and his ashes are with me still. I think a large portion of his mind resides in my mind to this day. And fortunately for me I inherited a large portion of his kind, sweet spirit.

Cross Of Jesus In The News

Yesterday evening as I was sitting here in my favorite chair relaxing after a hard day's work and watching the evening news, a story came on that caught my attention. Some archaeologist digging around at an old church in Turkey have found, they claim, what could be a piece of the very cross Jesus of Nazareth was crucified upon. Certainly you don't hear that type of thing often!

 

Oddly enough, one of the few things on my agenda for this weekend was to watch a new DVD I recently purchased (at a huge discount!), The Lost Tomb of Jesus. These kinds of "discoveries" and stories go on endlessly, always educing much buzz among believers and unbelievers alike.

 

As a former Christian I do recall the excitement these stories would generate, yet we never placed our faith in such artifacts. Christian apologists do place great stock in some of the findings of archaeologists, but only in a confirmatory way. Faith for the Christian is rooted in tradition and The Book.

 

The nonbelievers will "make hay" of this opportunity to poke fun at the folks they consider simpletons for accepting the Gospel story. Authenticating this piece of wood as a chunk of Jesus' cross is surely a virtual impossibility, so there is great occasion here for the Christians to appear foolish.

 

This story, therefore, is that archaeology Professor Gülgün Koroglu claims to have found a piece of wood she believes might have been part of Jesus' cross. Woo-hoo! (Right; I was being sarcastic.)

 

Of course many secular historians have conceded that Jesus of Nazareth probably did exist and likely was crucified in the barbaric manner described in the New Testament. Even if it were possible to authenticate a piece of Jesus' cross, it wouldn't prove the grander elements of Gospel story. That is the point at which faith takes charge in order to breath life into the subject.

 

There came a point in my life when my doubts overcame my faith. No news story or archaeological finding will ever restore it. Perhaps that could only be affected by a personal Damascan Road experience. And life goes on.... 

Personal Demonology

(The Obscene Kiss)

My teen years were troubled, but also very much a time of discovery - both about myself and the world around me. The conservative Christianity that had been so much a part of my earliest years had taken a back seat to my explorations. My parents were "kicked out" of our church upon their divorce and, that being the case, although one doesn't emerge from a worldview overnight, I then felt very much "outside the gate." But my interest in Christianity (the only way I knew it at the time) didn't wane.

 

Growing up Pentecostal meant an encounter with demonology. I grew up hearing strange and fantastic tales about demons, supposedly from those who had encountered them. For the most part demons were invisible - unless they chose to appear to us. Our pastor told us that the very space surrounding us was filled with invisible demons, so horrid looking that if we could see them as they are we would be too terrified to stare.

 

Rumor had it that there was an actual cult of Devil worshippers who met in a remote area of Chattanooga's famous Lookout Mountain. So remote, in fact, that I've never been able to find it, despite the fact I've been all over that mountain! I never met anyone who claimed to be a Satanist (I did encounter one self-described Warlock when I worked part-time at a local magic shop, and he claimed to be able to place curses and cast evil spells; I thought he had delusions of grandeur), but I knew many Christians who claimed to have actually stared demons in the eye.

 

Because Chattanooga, Tennessee, where I grew up and lived for nearly the first forty years of my life, had a fantastic public library, I was able to do a lot of research about subjects that aroused my curiosity. Demonology was one of those subjects. In the summer months when I was out of school I would check out books and often read late into the night, even early into the morning.  

 

There was a surprising amount of information about Demonology at my local library, and I checked these books out and devoured them voraciously. The illustration above came from a book I had checked out (although I can't now recall the title) and which kept me awake into the early morning hours. Was this "obscene kiss" a part of what went on up on Lookout Mountain?

 

According to our world view, demons were the cause (though not the only cause) of many of the evils of life. Demons could afflict one with illness. I more than once saw "tobacco demons" allegedly "cast out" of people who came forward to pray at our church altar. Demons could even affect the weather and cause natural disasters. Satan was always on the prowl, it seemed, and his minions kept very busy. It's little wonder I grew up with a love of horror movies. These were mostly morality tales about the eternal battle between good and evil.

 

On reflection after many years thought about the matter, I do think demons are real for the people who believe in them. They are a part of that imaginal realm, from which springs myth and legends. We can laugh at the "stupid and superstitious" people who still hold these "primitive beliefs" in this modern and enlightened age. Or we can try to understand what goes inside the troubled human psyche. Sometimes it may even be helpful to give face to some of the "demons" that trouble our lives. I know I would like to exorcise the demons that have bedeviled me down through the years. Some I think I have, other still torture me with an almost unrelenting fury.