A Prayer at Midnight

Adrienne comes to visit at night.

She is a night owl like me. On school nights she goes to bed early, but school doesn’t start for two weeks yet, so when she can’t sleep at one or two in the morning, she comes to see if I’m awake. Of course I always am, so we sit up and talk. Sometimes she brings the guinea pig, Lady McFluff, who enjoys sleeping burrowed in my quilts. Sometimes we talk until almost dawn. Sometimes we talk about serious things, but mostly we goof around.

The other night, Adrienne mentioned a “tambourine app.” Of course, I had to have one of those.

I explained to Adrienne that when I was a little girl I played the cornet in the homeschool band in the back of the music shop in Westerville. I had a good head for music and I always practiced carefully, but because of my braces and retainer, I was a horrible cornet player. And because we were a ragtag group of random homeschoolers, the band had no rhythm section at all, just brass and a couple of flutes. Because of this, in certain songs that required it, the band teacher would hand me a wood block or sand blocks and another sheet of music. I played the clock ticking in “My Grandfather’s Clock” and the softshoe routine in “It’s a Grand Old Name.” That’s how I learned percussion.

And, of course, I was in the Charismatic Renewal. Growing up in the Charismatic Renewal, you learn your way around the tambourine. Especially if you’re the hopeless one who can’t pray in tongues or do anything exciting during Praise and Worship. Eventually, someone hands you a tambourine so that you, too, can make an irritating noise unto the Lord. I just had to have a tambourine app.

It turns out that there are not one but several tambourine apps. I selected one based on the star rating, and installed it.

Immediately, I was disappointed. I’d thought a tambourine app would let you use your phone as a tambourine: I could do an Esmerelda dance while brandishing the black rectangle, and the phone would make percussive music to accompany my antics. In fact, a tambourine app is just a picture of a tambourine that you tap on with your finger. It gives one placid “ting” for every tap, and another “ting” if you shake it very hard. You can’t tap it in quick succession like you can when you drum your fingers on the head of a tambourine. It doesn’t make a different noise when you run your finger against the jingles. You get no response at all when you hold the phone and jerk your wrist around the way you’re supposed to to make that noise like a rattlesnake rattle. It only goes “ting.”

Sitting there in my bed at two o’clock in the morning, I started tapping with one finger on the tambourine app, and I sang. “SHINE,  JESUS, SHINE! FILL THIS LAND WITH THE FATHER’S GLORY! FLOW, RIVER, FLOW! SET OUR HEARTS ON FIRE!” `

Adrienne rescued the guinea pig from the cacophony and ran away with her, giggling.

What a horrible song.

It was too horrible even for my Charismatic community in Columbus, and for Masses at Franciscan University.

Not all Charismatic hymns are as terrible as that one, of course; some are delightful. “Unto the House of the Lord” is good cheesy fun. “You Will Be Clothed with Power from On High” will make you want to wave your hands in the air. “Let the Fire Fall” is always a crowd pleaser. Those fun, bouncy, flowy songs to get the blood pounding, and you call the pounding the Holy Spirit. Everyone sings at the top of their lungs. People clap and cheer and jangle their tambourines. The emotional contagion catches on. You’re happy because everyone else is happy, and you call that happiness the Holy Spirit.

There’s nothing wrong with loud emotional music, of course. God gave us our emotions. God made us with brains and bodies that are pleased by rhythm and would invent music. There’s nothing wrong with emotional contagion; it’s just one of the things that comes with being the kind of herd animal that we are. We worship with our whole being,  our bodies as well as our psychology. We can worship with emotions and let the trance state take over the group. Many faiths do this. But if you confuse a feeling with the Holy Spirit, you will be committing idolatry.

When the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles, they all spoke in the tongues of the different peoples who had come to Jerusalem. This was a wondrous miracle, the healing of the breaking that’s described in the story of the Tower of Babel. Everyone heard the apostles in their own language. Everyone got the message loud and clear. But when the Charismatics started praying in tongues, they babbled like babies so that nobody could understand. I always waited for the gift of babbling in a language that nobody could understand to come over me, but it never did. The Holy Spirit apparently didn’t like me. So I played the tambourine.

When the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles, they were no longer the cowards who ran off and left Jesus to die. Now they were emboldened. They would leave the city and preach the Gospel to everyone, even though it cost them their lives. But Charismatics were always afraid. They were terrified of the coming persecutions, the Great Chastisement, the Three Days of Darkness. They were terrified of demons. Demons lurked around every corner, and could possess you and ruin your life. You had to pray and act just right to keep the demons away or you were finished. Everything was a conduit for demonic possession. You could spend your whole life running from demons and still fall into their trap. So I went to the exorcist for deliverance prayer. And he became an idol as well. And things went on from there.

Eventually I found myself sitting up in bed in a tumbledown house I’ve rented for nine years, with a child I love more fiercely than I could ever say, whose spiritual journey is her own and not something I will be writing about. I only have my spiritual journey to tell you. I haven’t been to Mass in six weeks because of the colitis and the broken car. I don’t know if I can go in the morning. I’m getting healthy enough that I can probably stand somewhere without a bathroom for an hour. I would genuinely love to go and worship in a church. But sometimes, the thought of going to Mass with a ride from someone else instead of in my own vehicle that I can flee to if I panic, makes me panic in and of itself. I was spiritually abused in the Charismatic Renewal, in Columbus and then here in Steubenville. That sect of the Catholic Church took everything I had. Church can never feel quite safe. I’ll probably be standing in the foyer trying not to panic for most liturgies, for the rest of my life. That’s what the Church did to me.

I still believe in Jesus, though. That’s the terrible thing. Every time I can’t stand it anymore and would like to give up, I find Jesus here with me. So I keep trying to find a spiritual life.

Shine, Jesus, Shine. Shine right here in the darkness so I can see you, because it’s the most terrible dark. Speak to me in a language that all can understand. Tell me something that makes me not afraid anymore.

Adrienne came in again, having fed the guinea pig her midnight snack and drink of water. We chatted for half an hour more, and went to sleep when it was almost morning.

Shine, Jesus, shine.

I will keep saying that ridiculous prayer until I see Him again.