The Visitation (12 page)

I checked the price. I figured I could swing it. “Great.”

I followed him as he wheeled toward the front, executing snappy turns around corners and past merchandise. He rang up my purchase at a cash register built on a lower shelf just for his use. I paid him, he threw my goods into a sack, and then stopped to ponder. “Funny. I made some friends at the VA hospital, I’ve met some other folks in wheelchairs, and we got along fine. They never told me to go down and look at some crucifix or wash in some special kind of water or say some kind of magic prayer words. It’s always the walkers who know what you need.”

Our eyes met. We understood each other.

It’s always the walkers who know what you need.
Matt Kiley’s words, his cynical wisdom born of experience, haunted me for the rest of the day. Yes, I understood. I had been there.

I just didn’t want to go back again. . . .

I
WAS SEVENTEEN
the year my father took a hiatus from the ministry and relocated the family from Seattle to a small, almost nontown on an island in Puget Sound. Back in Seattle, we had a great church with great worship and a great youth program. I had a girlfriend. I was a junior at the high school my brother and sister and several uncles had attended and had school spirit that bordered on pathological. I had some friends at that school—it had taken me long enough to make them. Then we moved, and I began my senior year in a run-down, fund-hungry high school with caved-in lockers, sagging floors, and three hundred total strangers.

Like any plant torn up by the roots, I didn’t take well to the transplant. I used to have the acceptance of my peers, and now I couldn’t be sure I even had peers. I used to be part of something, but now I was an outsider. I was in pain. I was lost.

Lost, and absolutely certain that it couldn’t be right, much less the will of God.

You see, I
knew
God back then. I knew exactly what he expected from me and what I could expect from him. I’d grown up attending the Allbright Gospel Tabernacle, a Pentecostal Mission church in Seattle’s Rainier Valley, and when we gathered for worship, we always counted on God’s tangible presence. We felt no qualms about calling out to him aloud, right from our pews, right when we felt the need or the unction. We heard from God regularly in prophetic utterances that usually began with “Oh my people” and admonitions that usually began with “I hear the Lord saying . . .” We prayed for the sick and expected they would get well.

Dad preached the Word of the Lord from the pulpit, and we worked it in at the altar afterward. Our sessions at the altar were usually noisy, often tearful, and altogether glorious. I couldn’t tell you now how much of the commotion was due to the Holy Spirit and how much was simple Pentecostal fervor, but I know I did precious business with God in that place. I got saved in that church when I was eight years old. Being Pentecostal, I received the baptism in the Holy Spirit in that church when I was twelve, kneeling at that wooden rail with my head on my coat sleeve until the pattern was pressed into my face. Over the years, I dedicated and rededicated myself to the Lord’s service, repented, praised, confessed, and petitioned, all from that little brick building in Rainier Valley. That was where I knew God.

But Dad was tired, Mom was unhappy, and the family needed a change, so Dad quit preaching and we moved.

The church we found on the island was . . . restful, you might say. Kind of like a stalled car. These folks didn’t smile much, sang all possible verses of really slow hymns, and absolutely, positively, never, ever clapped. As far as I could discern, God was not expected to move, speak, or convict—he was expected to follow the printed order of service and keep quiet like everyone else. There was never an altar call after the service. Instead, people worked the sermon out of their memories over coffee, cookies, and idle chatter in the basement.

I was seventeen, living in a strange new place, enrolled in a school that felt foreign, and attending a church dedicated to deadness.

Which made me a prime target for the Kenyon–Bannister movement.

David Kenyon, a fellow senior I got to know in art class, pinned me down one day. “Hey, are you a Christian?”

“Sure!”

“Spirit-filled?”

“Yeah.”

“Speak in tongues?”

“Yeah.”

He extended his hand and we shook. “I knew it. I just knew it.”

It had been a while since I’d met anyone excited about what God was doing, so while I worked on a sculpture and he worked on an oil painting, David talked and I listened.

“The Holy Spirit’s moving,” he said. “Just blows my mind what God’s doing. I had a real confrontation with a demon yesterday. I think he knew we were moving into Satan’s territory. We had a prophecy last week and God told us to get our act together, get off the acid and grass and get high on Jesus. He was talking
right
to some of the group and it really shook them up.”

He started naming kids in school I’d known of but didn’t know.

“Bernadette Jones—” Wow. She always impressed me as being tough and unapproachable. She had a crusty mouth when she could get away with it and never missed a chance for a smoke.

“Karla Dickens—” I knew of her from drama class. It seemed every skit she did had something to do with marijuana.

“Andy Smith—” Very musical. Had a rock band and was already working on a symphony.

“Clay Olson—” Uh, no. I couldn’t think of a face to go with the name.

“Benny Taylor—” I didn’t know him at all, except that he was one guy in school who had more pimples than me.

“Amber Carr—” A quiet girl from drama class. I always liked her long brown hair.

“Harold Martin—” What? Harold? The guy was a creative genius, but lived and breathed The Doors and always played knife-wielding psychotics in drama class.

He named about five more. They were all strangers to me, but that wouldn’t be the case for long. During lunch period, David introduced me to every Christian he could find.

“Hey, guess who’s a Spirit-filled Christian!”

Bernadette Jones looked up from her fruit salad. “You’re kidding!”

“Hey Andy, guess who’s a Spirit-filled Christian?”

Andy Smith looked up from a copy of
The Hobbit
. “Well, praise God!”

“Hey Amber! Guess who’s a Spirit-filled Christian?”

Amber Carr pulled her long hair away from her face and smiled at me. “Wow. That’s really nice.”

Clay Olson was eighteen but seemed older, wiser, too cool to be in high school. He shook my hand. “Great to have you on board.” Benny Taylor not only had more pimples than me, he had more brains, at least as far as math was concerned. “God bless you.”

Harold Martin, who looked like he’d spent the night in a ditch, stared up at me blankly for a second or two. “It’s a heavy trip, isn’t it?”

Karla Dickens, blonde, bespectacled, and jolly, shook my hand and giggled. “I sort of figured,” she said.

I learned that this particular move of God centered around the Kenyon home on Wednesday nights, and the next Wednesday night, I was there to see it for myself. I wasn’t disappointed. I could tell this was going to be good stuff, powerful stuff—the kind of thing I grew up with and needed more of. The cozy living room became even cozier as more than a dozen high schoolers filled the couches, the chairs, and several cushions on the floor. Mrs. Kenyon led the meeting, sitting in her big stuffed chair in the corner. She was a pleasant, conversational lady, short in stature and beyond rotund, wearing a loose, tentlike dress and slippers she didn’t have to tie. Mr. Kenyon was quite “blessed” himself, sitting across the room with arms folded over his expansive paunch.

David, Karla, and Andy had guitars and we wasted no time launching into some praise songs, clapping—that’s right, clapping— and getting into Jesus.

We sang songs like:

Thank you, Thank you Jesus

Thank you, Thank you Jesus

Thank you, Thank you Jesus in my heart.

Thank you, Thank you Jesus

Thank you, Thank you Jesus

Thank you, Thank you Jesus in my heart.

That song must have taken the composer months to write, but I learned it the first time through. The next one was a little tougher:

You gotta move when the Spirit says to move, Oh Lord

You gotta move when the Spirit says to move.

When the Spirit says move, you gotta move, Oh Lord

You gotta move when the Spirit says to move.

Then we replaced the word “move” with
dance
,
sing
,
pray
,
shout
,
preach
,
kneel
, and anything else that came to mind, and sang the whole thing again. This was an easy song to wear out.

After several songs, when things got cooking and the joy was just right, Mrs. Kenyon lifted her hands and started speaking in tongues, and that was everyone’s cue. All around the room, hands went up like blooming plants and tongues started fluttering, making all nature of sounds with a commonality of rapid, repeated phrases, rolled r’s, and stuttered t’s and d’s. David was the loudest and maybe the fastest, speaking phrases that sounded like a dirt bike downshifting. Harold stood with arms outstretched and eyes a little buggy, rolling his r’s on a long string of rah-rahs. Amber wasn’t saying much at all, just standing there with her palms upward, looking sweet. Benny Taylor could have been addressing invisible troops like Patton the way he was barking phrases and throwing in an occasional clap for emphasis.

I’ll be honest: It was clamorous. This was not a convenient time to hear yourself think or compose a prayer of any substance. But that was okay. We didn’t have to pray with understanding because we were praying in the Spirit, and I was right in the middle of it.

Then Mrs. Kenyon called out in a bold, loud voice, “My children,” and we all fell quiet, our eyes closed prayerfully. I knew from my upbringing that an opening such as “My children,” “My people,” “Thus saith the Lord,” or “I am here” meant the start of a prophecy. This was God talking.

Mrs. Kenyon continued, “Surely I have heard thy praises, and I receive them as a sweet smelling savor. Continue to praise me, and I will walk in your midst. Drink of my Spirit, and I shall grant you a mighty increase on this island . . .” She went on like that, delivering words of encouragement as we thanked God quietly but audibly and praised him for speaking to us.

Then Clay Olson gave a prophecy much like Mrs. Kenyon’s, which really made my evening. I always thought this guy was so cool and sober about life, and now here he was, yielded and being used of God. Would wonders never cease?

By the time the meeting was over, we’d just about done it all. We had opened the Word, prayed for the sick, shared testimonies, even laid hands on some new kids so they could get the baptism like the rest of us. By the time I walked out of that house I was reeling with ecstasy and my emotions were in wondrous, healing reversal. Regret had turned to joy. Perplexity had turned to understanding. Loneliness had vanished. I was home. I belonged. “Hallelujah,” I kept saying, hugging everybody. Hallelujah! For the first time, I was glad to be exactly where I was. God had a plan all along! He brought me here to find this bunch, to be a part of this mighty outpouring!

But I had to stretch my thinking a little. At the Allbright Gospel Tabernacle, being a Christian meant you didn’t smoke. When we were kids we even equated condemning tobacco with preaching the gospel: “Mom, I witnessed to Robbie today. I told him we don’t smoke.” Well, not only did Bernadette, Harold, Karla, and Andy smoke; Mr. and Mrs. Kenyon smoked as well. In fact, the moment we said Amen to the closing prayer, she grabbed her pack and her lighter and started pulling down smoke like she was making up for lost time.

I think she noticed my discomfort. Between puffs, she let me know it was something she would be giving up in the Lord’s time. The Lord had given her a vision about it. “I saw a huge garden full of weeds, and I saw the weeds being plucked out around the outside of the garden, and then more weeds being pulled farther in toward the center, and in the very center of the garden was a big cigarette stuck in the ground, and the Lord said, ‘This is the garden of your life. I’m going to start pulling weeds, working from the outside in, and after I take care of these other weeds in your life, I’ll take care of this weed too.’” She laughed at the pun. “The Lord called it a weed. He really has a sense of humor.” Then she added as she crushed out a spent cigarette and lit another, “But praise is the answer. God is perfecting things and all we have to do is praise. Every Wednesday night there’s someone new at the door, and we just pray and praise them in.”

And that’s what we did, week after week, Wednesday after Wednesday, all through the fall and into the winter of my senior year. Every Sunday I sat in the quaint little quiet church, and I admit I got good preaching and teaching there, good meat and potatoes. But for spice, for energy, for a spoonful of Pentecost per week, I made it to the Kenyons’ and hung together with my on-fire buddies at school. We witnessed around the school, got into religious arguments with other students and sometimes our teachers. We won a few, lost a few. We developed a reputation, of course, but when people saw that Christianity was okay for guys like David, Benny, and Clay, they weren’t so quick to say it was only okay for kooks like Andy and Harold. Things were going great.

Pretty much.

Harold became a puzzle to me. I vividly remember the cold Wednesday night in November when he and I stepped outside so he could have a cigarette and we could talk. It was a rule at the Kenyons’: No smoking during the meetings, and only Mr. or Mrs. Kenyon could light up in the house afterward.

We stood out in the yard. It was dark and there was a cold drizzle. Harold hunched his shoulders and kept one hand jammed in his overcoat pocket as he used the other to hold his glowing cigarette. I could barely see him.

“Ever smoke pot?” he asked me.

“No.”

“You ought to try it. I can get you some.”

My answer came out halfhearted because he’d thrown me off-balance. “Well, no, I, uh, I don’t need that stuff.”