My pastor asked if I would give a talk at our Wednesday evening Lenten services where we sing the Holden Evening Prayer – one of the most lovely liturgies I have every experienced.
The message was to be titled “My faith journey.”
I’m trying to be open to even “scary” challenges these days so I said “yes” to pastor Lori, I would give a talk about my faith journey.
Immediately after agreeing to do this, the Louise-who-hides-inside-me said, “What have you done? Are you crazy?” Why would anyone want to hear my story?
But rather than backing out, I hit it head on. First I thought about my faith as going on a journey – like starting out at one place and going somewhere else – I could relate to that – I have had several similar experiences going on trips to visit relatives or friends. Some trips involved going to large cities, like Los Angeles or New York City or Atlanta or New Orleans. I’ve actually done quite a bit of traveling in my life, both with family and friends and on my own.
I rummaged through my old desk and found some old sticky notes – one each sticky note I wrote about the rare “Mountain Top” experiences I have had in my life – times when I felt overwhelmed by the presence of God.
One of the first happened on a partly cloudy summer day along the shores of the Oahe Reservoir in South Dakota – a friend and I were searching for shells and arrowheads along the shoreline when the rays of sunshine pierced through the clouds in sudden shards of light.
I was overwhelmed with the beauty and majesty I was seeing right before my eyes. My heart felt as if it would burst, and I wanted to fall to my knees and worship.
But Greg was right there, he’d see me – so I blinked away my tears and swallowed the lump in my throat and turned my back to him until I had control of myself once more.
I had never experienced anything like this before.
I always loved going to church, singing in the choir at St. Olaf Lutheran Church but I would not say I was religious, by any definition of the word.
That moment on that summer day in South Dakota changed me.
I call that my first “mountain top” experience.
It was really like I had been walking in one direction and bam! I was turned around and walking the opposite way.
You see, I was a bit of a hippie child, a free spirit, you might say. One of my heroes was Janis Joplin – I loved her music and her wild lifestyle – not that I was ever as talented or wild as she was reported to be. She was cool and like lots of us from the 1960s, I wanted to be cool, too.
I kept this experience a secret, deep inside my heart for a long time. I didn’t even tell the friend I was with at the time.
After a while, a part of me questioned what I had experienced. But I held it deep inside me and revisited it from time to time. What the heck was that?
While attending UND I heard a speaker one night in the huge lecture bowl talking about how he had been a child evangelist and with his parents raked in the dough from all the “saps” who believed in God’s healing touch. He went on and on about how they would take the cash from all those old ladies and “crippled” people – his words, not mine – and spread it out on the bed of their motel room and roll around in it – laughing and making fun of the “fools” who’s financed their “mission.”
I got so angry as I listened to him bragging about this experience and calling those gullible people names like “suckers” and “fools.” I was angry at the speaker and his parents for exploiting vulnerable people, that moved me to investigate this issue of “faith” which led to going to church, Bible studies and prayer groups.
I even went so far as to visit one on one with one of the pastors of my home church at St. Olaf. I was 22 years old and I finally “got” what he had been preaching about all along. His response to me was a shock. He said, “Oh, Louise, for anyone to think that the God of the universe would want to have a close, personal relationship with you is just pompous arrogance!”
My response was, “If that’s what this church teaches, then maybe I don’t belong here.”
His response to me was, “Maybe you don’t.”
To quote newsman, Paul Harvey, “the rest of the story” will come next week in the Devils Lake Journal, so “stay tuned!”
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