“Is that why you jerk your body to the left when you pray in tongues?”
“That’s a manifestation.”
“Why do you do it?”
“I don’t do it. It comes over me when I give myself over to the Spirit.”
“Does it happen to everyone who speaks in tongues?”
“Some people fall down like they are dead.”
“That’s slain in the Spirit.”
“Right. Some people fall into fits of laughter. Some people bark like dogs, but not too many people. I don’t want to judge, but I think sometimes when that happens a lot it can be for show. But I don’t know.”
“That’s something that worries me. It’s a little bit frightening, don’t you think, like on TV, when a lot of people are doing it all around, and there’s this ungodly cacophony?”
“That’s the fear of the Lord you’re feeling.”
“How can you be sure?”
“How can you be sure of anything? You know. I know. I know that I know that I know.”
“Here this stuff is at odds with logic, maybe, I think.”
“I think that’s a wrong way to think about it, but tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I took this philosophy class. Dr. Willard Reed. He was talking about the distinction between belief and knowledge. He said knowledge is problematic. You can’t really know stuff that isn’t somehow verifiable. Like you didn’t see it with your own eyes or experience it yourself or there hasn’t been some kind of consensus among the people who study the thing. And even then there’s problems. How do you know you aren’t fooling yourself? Or how do you know the consensus might not be wrong. Like the consensus used to be that the earth was flat. And on top of that, how do you know that the universe didn’t just begin two seconds ago. After a while, everything starts to be belief.”
“I don’t guess it matters much which is which, then, if it’s all so slippery.”
“I don’t guess it does.”
“But what kind of way is that to live? Walking around not being sure of anything. Everything tentative. No place for boldness. No place for meaning. Wouldn’t that just throw you into some kind of paralytic feedback loop or something? Wouldn’t you just be staring at your navel forever?”
“Not necessarily, but I don’t know. You just described a lot of the way I think a lot of the time.”
“That’s why you have to let go control. That’s what praying in the Spirit is. You’re letting go that control and giving yourself over to your creator. It’s an act of faith in the unseen. Although, I have to tell you, there are things I have seen.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Visions. Gold dust.”
“Gold dust?”
“There have been meetings where the Spirit of God has come down and the manifestation was gold dust that began to appear on everyone’s shoulders.”
“Manifestations, like the jerking to the left.”
“I’m not going to say anymore if you’re going to mock everything.”
“Honestly, I’m not mocking. I really want to know. Tell me about the visions.”
“Once I was praying in the Spirit, and I had a vision of a golden vessel.”
“Like a ship?”
“Like a vase or a container. It was on a cloth of purple silk. There was an angel there, and he was holding out his hands.”
“What did the vision mean?”
“For a long time I didn’t know what the vision meant. But then my friend who is a prophetess — quietly, quietly a prophetess, like, literally, hardly anybody knows. She said it was a message about being a vessel for the Spirit, and about a royal calling, but I had to give myself to it.”
“That’s why you write the magazine articles?”
“That’s why I’m writing the books. That’s why I’m traveling around so much. To speak into people’s hearts and lives.”
“But you like it, too. You’re good at it. You don’t want to work at a desk job.”
“That’s true. I don’t want to be chained to a desk. I was made this way for a reason.”
“Any other visions?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“Another time. Later.”
“All right. It’s a lot to risk, right? Telling me all these things?”
“It’s nothing to risk. I already have given myself over to all of it.”
“I can wait. I want to get to know you.”
“Would you hold me now?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t come over here inside my blanket. You stay inside your blanket and I’ll stay inside my blanket, and you can hold me that way, with the separate blankets.”
•
“Do you like it here?”
“I’m uncomfortable here.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like the cold, and I don’t like all the soldiers in their uniforms, and I don’t like all the military songs. I think I might be a pacifist.”
“But these are the men and women who give their lives to keep us free.”
“I like watching the football game, and I don’t mind cheering for Air Force, but I am uncomfortable with the whole martial atmosphere. It seems to me to have a lot to do with death and killing.”
“But sacrificial death and killing, don’t you think? Not death or killing that anyone wants to do.”
“I don’t know if that’s true. That’s what basic training is for, I think. To break down the part of a person’s conscience where they have this inhibition against killing, so they can want to kill, so they can kill at will, to save their lives or save their buddy or fulfill their mission.”
“I think that’s a selfish way to think about it. Because it’s because of these guys and gals here that you have the freedom to say something like that.”
“I can’t deny it. I know that’s true. That complicates the way I feel about it.”
“You are shivering. Here, let’s combine our blankets.”
“Can we put them under our legs, too, because these bleachers are so cold.”
“You know, if you moved out here with me, I wonder if you could take the cold all winter, if this is what it does to you.”
“Are you really here for good? I mean, you were in Florida, and now you’re here, and you’ve been back and forth. But maybe you would just end up back in Florida.”
“I don’t want to be anchored anyplace. I want to be free to move around. But I like cold places. I wouldn’t mind moving to Alaska. My aunt has a hotel in Alaska. I like the idea of spending some time there with her, helping her run it for a while.”
“What if you — even we — had children? Wouldn’t you want to stay put for a while, for the sake of stability?”
“I don’t want to have children, ever. I mean, I love children. I think I would be an okay mother. But the things I’m meant to do with my life would, I think, make it very difficult to have children.”
“I didn’t know this about you, that you wouldn’t want children. It surprises me.”
“This is why it’s good, I think, you came out here. We need to sort these things out. We need to find out if we love each other.”
“I feel like you’re holding some things back.”
“That’s true, but here we are, and I want to watch this football game since I paid forty bucks each for the tickets.”
•
“Is it okay with you if I put my hand on your knee while I drive?”
“Yes. I’m very happy that you put your hand on my knee.”
“It’s interesting, you know. Whenever I relate to you in a physical way, you respond very positively. But whenever I relate to you in a spiritual way, it gets complicated, and I don’t know how to read you, exactly.”
“I feel like in some ways they are different issues.”
“I don’t think they are in any way separable.”
“I feel like the physical expressions of love are very important and they mean something.”