When The Killjoy Came By

Stretches of sunny days passed this fall and I wondered when our neighbor would drop our hay. Then he rolled onto our field, he and his son, running up and down cutting an abundant third cutting. We weren’t afraid rain would ruin it like it did another neighbor’s field when their hay guy cut it the day before pouring rain was forecast.

I’d offered them the whole third cutting because we had enough for Mrs. Horse though second cutting was pure red clover, which isn’t the best hay for a horse. I mix that hay with first cutting. It’s candy hay. Bruce felt it was too rich and that we should swap out some grassy hay from third cutting for the pure clover. He had a point but because our neighbor was on a tight schedule, trying to put up his father’s hay, and since he farms around his teaching job, he was unable to accommodate us.

It had been a good day. We drove Mrs. Horse before lunch, her blood up and running. A stranger was walking around the northwestern edge of our field, so we walked toward him, Morgen’s ears up and on the alert. Like my cat, Smudgie, who wants to know what’s going on, I wanted to find out what he was up to. He was surveying the easement for the road—beginning to end– but didn’t know what it was for. “They just tell me to go and do the job,” he said. It’s pleasant to work in the country.” Bruce and I are on the alert because solar companies have decided the best farmland in the world is a good place to set their industrial solar plants making energy that will feed data centers or Chicago.

  We turned away and circled around the field, going the other way, which for a horse is an entirely different sight.  She wheeled so sharply she could have tipped the carriage if it weren’t stable. I grabbed her reins, tensed my thighs. My reins were way too long to gain control. My trainer friend has said, when that happens relax, so I started breathing deeply and willed my legs to loosen. Mrs. Horse broke into a canter for a few steps, her butt bouncing up and down like she was going to buck but it struck Bruce and I as funny. Good grief, Morgen you’ve seen that sign before and it wasn’t even jiggling. Joyous. That’s all I can say.  

Then I pulled books I don’t need any longer to make room for piles of books sitting on my coffee table, the clutter so bad I felt claustrophobic. It’s too easy to buy books people suggest, open them and find they aren’t all that. I could buy a number of books for what it would cost to have a library card. I have a few more bookshelves to look at before I take the boxes to a used bookstore or library. It seems like I can’t do both, write and pick up the clutter, so this blog waited till now.

I fell asleep reading the Psyche Eros myth in Martin Shaw’s Nightwatches, a book where he imagines sailing with his daughter on a raft to the Greek Islands from Britain. As they travel they encounter assorted people. The story took me back to C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces, another retelling of that myth. In Lewis’ story, when Psyche lights the lamp to reveal the god:

Though this light stood motionless, my glimpse of the face as as swift as a true flash of lightning. I could not bear it for longer. Not my eyes only, but my heart and blood and very brain were too weak for that. A monster—the Shadowbrute that I and all Glome had imagined—would have subdued me less than that beauty his face wore. And I think anger (what men call anger) would have been more supportable than the passionless and measureless rejection with which it looked upon me. Though my body crouched where I could almost have touched his feet, his eyes seemed to send me from him to an endless distance. He rejected, denied, answered, and worst of all he knew, all I had thought, done, or been. (172 – 173).

I fell asleep just as Psyche was going to descend to Hades to pick up a box from Persephone, the queen of the dead, to bring it to Aphrodite who had turned into quite the witch. I didn’t know if this version would have a happy ending. It’s never good to close a story at the lip of the descent to hell.

I went down to sleep, to an extreme nightmare, to a meeting with an energy, that barreled into me, a vague energy thing. I had no choice. Bruce could not wake me. He said he’d touch me, then I’d whimper again. What felt like a cattle prod jolted my legs. I said the Jesus prayer. Again I said the Jesus prayer. “Lord Jesus Christ. son of the Living God. Have mercy on me, a sinner.” I said, “Come out of me. Lord Rebuke you.” I woke up terrified. I could not shake the fear that day.

(That’ll learn me to talk about how I’m not aware of my sinfulness in the post before last.) I woke up afraid. And walked through the day afraid. I asked for prayer. I was as afraid of God himself, of how I turn my attention to the breakdown of our culture, a dry cistern instead of the fountain of living water. I have listened to hours of Matt Taibbi’s America This Week because both he and Walter Kirn are easy to listen to, and seem honest about what’s going on. But I felt like Lewis’ character’s description when meeting the god—that felt like my meeting God. As Moses sang:

For we are brought to an end by your anger;

by your wrath we are dismayed.

⁸  You have set our iniquities before you,

our secret sins in the light of your presence.

⁹  For all our days pass away under your wrath;

we bring our years to an end like a sigh. (Psalm 90: 7 -9)

For years I have felt a monster was perched just below the horizon, that the whirlwind, chaos, and the people choosing it, will overtake our ordered lives. Even Christians cheer on the destruction of “empire.”  I realized the need to dig deep into God’s promiseswhen I read Jim Geraghty’s words in The Political Class Can’t Break the Cycle of Violence:

I don’t want to alarm you, but right now, there is no visible way out of America’s intensifying political divisions and continuing rounds of ideologically motivated violence. For our governing class and the most influential public voices, all the incentives are to get angrier, louder, more accusatory, and more incendiary. 

We all need pointing towards God’s good news, that death, that chaos don’t ultimately win. We all need to turn from outrage. Perhaps that’s the resistance that is most fierce. Perhaps we need to stop it when the temptation to call someone evil, a Nazi, a fascist, or even names rises.

Prayer drops a shield. When people have prayed for me, joy returns. Contentment returns. I step out of fear and what Paul Young calls future tripping. It’s why I pray chronically for some people. My friends were unavailable. Bruce was unnerved.

The next night I was afraid to sleep, afraid of what might show up. I took out my prayer beads and recited St. Patrick’s Breastplate (am quoting an excerpt):

I bind unto myself myself the power of the cherubim,

The sweet “Well done” in judgement hour…

I bind unto myself today the virtues of the starlit heaven,

The glorious sun’s life-giving ray,

The whiteness of the moon at even,

The flashing of the lightning free,

The whirling of the wind’s tempestuous shocks,

The stable earth, the deep salt sea,

Around the old eternal rocks.

(Adapted for use with Anglican Prayer Bead by Laura Kelly Campbell)

 Our black cat, Smudgie settled at the foot of our bed. It was almost as if he was sent from God to guard our sleep.

I don’t get why I have these terrifying dreams and meet demons and not angels, though angels might scare me more. I don’t want to think I’m all that if one showed up. Often I feel my sleep takes me to another dimension, another life. It seems the Killjoy attacks when I’m feeling good, feeling love and joy. I get zapped with fear, fear of God, fear of death, fear. As you have just read, I hear the wrathful scriptures loudly. God himself has become a terror. Also fear of my writing, what will it bring. Recognition or not, both a cause for fear. 

Later that day, the thought came to me, that maybe this was some kind of flashback to when I was sexually abused, before I had language, how I had no choice in the matter. I’ve been aware of this for sometime.

The next morning I read Weapons of our Warfare by Meg Mittlestadt, Missives from the Edge where she said:

These last half-dozen years have been a great unveiling of what is really attempting to dominate our world. In the same way, the past week has demonstrated this unveiling yet again, as demonic voices vie for dominance of the airwaves. We’ve always known this hidden reality, but now we’re seeing it. At last, our true enemy is coming out into the open. Take heart. This means he’s desperate and afraid.

I perked up. It was as if God had sent her essay to speak to me, in my fear.

The easiest way for us to miss the moment would be to think that we should fight back against our satanic enemy in the same way that he is inspiring others to fight against Christians: attacking others with violence, with hate, with more evil, and in our own strength.

This has never been the way of the follower of Christ. While there are times to stand up and physically defend others and truth—and that day may yet come—the time to pick up earthly weapons is not now.

She went on to list the ways to respond:

Love, Goodness, Prayer, the Blood of the Lamb (meaning Christ’s suffering and death on the cross), Our willingness to die for Christ, Being Strong in the Lord (not in our own strength), the Word of God.

She spells out in wise terms what each of these things mean. Do check out her wisdom. I commented:

Oh my goodness this is what I needed to hear today. The other night I was attacked in my dreams. I said the Jesus prayer a lot. And was afraid to go to sleep last night. I said St Patrick’s Breastplate and my prayers. The cat sat at the food of the bed like a guardian. So thank you.

Meg offered to visit with me via Zoom. Our conversation ended up being a rich exchange of our writing work, our lives and how to fight the powers of darkness. She recounted similar experiences, but she came to realize that the powers hate to be ignored. They have no power compared to the Lord. “Didn’t C.S. Lewis say they were like cockroaches or something like that, miniscule compared to the power of God. We need to focus on that.” She said her response to the last time this happened, was, “Oh it’s you.” The raids on her sleep left.

We both agreed that we need to remember we are new creations, right here, right now. That we are seated at God’s right hand in Jesus, right here, right now. That we’ve been given the shield of faith.

I found more comforting words from St. Porphyrios in Wounded by Love:

I don’t think about death. Whatever the Lord desires. I want to think about Christ. And you too open your arms and thrown yourselves into Christ’s embrace. Then He lives within you. And you constantly think that you don’t love Him very much and you want even more to come close to him and be with Him. Show disdain for the passions and don’t concern yourselves with the devil. Turn to Christ. For all this to happen it is necessary for grace to come. The divine grace which ever makes good what is weak and supplies what is lacking. (112)

Finally, after nearly twenty years living here, we asked our pastor to bless our house. He is tall, dressed in his collar, full of light. He seems delighted in the world and in walking with the Lord. He asked if we had felt anything here. Yes, the place has felt like a horse getting ready to buck when we first moved in. Bruce mentioned that Mrs. Jesse was laid out in our living room, the place where I like to write.

“I was attacked by a demon the other night,” I said. Thank God, he didn’t act threatened or look at me as though I were a spiritual cripple.

“You are baptized. You are sealed as Christ’s own forever. Nothing can separate you from the love of God. Nothing.” 

Then he went on to read scripture and offer prayers for each room of the house, including the barn. He mentioned, “We usually do this during epiphany. And people don’t know the church does this.” 

Sometime later that week, storms passed by to the north and to the south. Lightning flashed in our bedroom. It was 12:15 and Mrs. Horse had let herself out of the barn. I pulled on jeans, tucked in my nightshirt and walked outside. The coyotes were yipping. I haven’t heard them in awhile. Mrs. Horse called for me. I brought her in and shut the big barn door. I tossed her more hay. I laid back down but Omalola was panting so I took her out. Before I opened the door, I saw Ma Cat sitting on the sidewalk. I wonder what she wants when she sits watching the house in the middle of the night. When I unlocked the door she ran to the shed. I walked Oma around the back of the house, the coyotes howling to the west and lightning flashing to the north.

Something has shifted since then. Finally I’m feeling how loved I am with many good blessings. I’ve found a kindred spirit in Meg. One thing lead to another at a luncheon with new friends and Bruce and I brought home a new pup. But I’ll tell you about him next week. He’s too fast for pictures.

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