Weirdly applicable...
Choose a band/artist and answer only in song TITLES by that band: GUSTER
? Are you male or female: Homecoming King
? Describe yourself: Happy Frappy
? How do some people feel about you: Either Way
? How do you feel about yourself: Love For Me
? Describe your ex girlfriend: Melanie (from 6th grade)
? Describe your current girlfriend (wife): What You Wish For
(alternate choices: Perfect, Mona Lisa, The Prize)
? Describe where you want to be: All The Way Up To Heaven
(alternate choices: Eden, Amsterdam)
? Describe what you want to be: Medicine
? Describe how you live: Careful
? Describe how you love: Come Downstairs and Say Hello
(alternate choices: Backyard, Scars and Stitches, Bury Me, So Long, What You Wish For, Red Oyster Cult, Long Way Down)
? Share a few words of wisdom: I Hope Tomorrow is Like Today
(alternate choices: Two Points for Honesty, Keep It Together)
I found this on
Dave Akins's blog. Fin.
A night to remember
A quick stop at Krystal and a sack-full later we arrived at the Classic Center for the Miracle Crusade featuring Isaac Prather, faith healer. I pulled into the Classic Center’s parking deck and was told I had to pay $4 for parking. Whoever invented reverse is a genius – I backed out and parked in an unmarked lot beside Boneshakers for free.
Xon and I walk up to the building and receive our tickets. Yes, this event had tickets. These tickets read, “End of times Miracle Crusade.” Wow. End of times. This is going to be good. Tickets ripped (yes, they had a ticket ripper!), we walk downstairs behind two very well dressed black women. So far, all we’ve seen is well dressed African Americans. Already my idea of the attendees is being proven false.
The door to the concert hall is opened by a Latino man wearing an impressive white suit with matching white scarf embroidered with gold crosses at the terminal ends. Fancy. He hands us two programs picturing the face of a long-haired, bearded, hippie type on the front with the title restated and the host church mentioned. The long-haired hippie is Sven, I guess (/inside joke). This Miracle Crusade is being held in the main theater of the Classic Center. I saw Harry Connick, Jr. in this same room. I saw the filming of Blue Collar TV in this same room. And now I was going to witness healing and worship. Gotta love Athens, GA.
There are so many ushers. So so many. We walk up to the first set of two, a man and a woman, and they ask, “Y’all are gonna sit up front, right?” We nod and show them that we already have programs when they try to hand us more. We head to the front and choose seats about eight rows back from the stage. I now notice the Jam Band on stage, apparently this is “Hearing Heart.” About ten people are either strumming, drumming, singing, or playing a keyboard. A bearded man sings praises in a style that can only be described as stream of consciousness. “He’s here, he’s here, he’s here….in this place tonight…this place, this place, this place. He’s here. Praise his name. Show us tonight, Oh Lord. Heal us tonight, Oh Lord. This place. Here. Lord. Heal. Show.” Something like that, anyway. A woman to his left sings words here and there throughout, sometimes echoing him, sometimes harmonizing with him. All the while the band plays an unrehearsed jam. The male singer took the opportunity to sing about praising God, about how a small child in the front row would prophesy the Word of God, how there were people with “the spirit of Deborah upon them,” and how certain members of the crowd were “Gideons” among other compliments of a spiritual nature.
I notice an older teen, possibly early 20s, with a walker. He cannot put his right foot down when he moves about – apparently due to some injury. I wonder if he’s a plant for Prather to heal miraculously, but I don’t think he is. He sits with three other young people. They appear as though they would by incredulous, but are willing to give anything a chance – I think they are believers, but skeptical (like me). Behind them a few rows sits a group of definitely incredulous young people. They are here to see what these crazy Christians are capable of. They are respectful throughout the evening.
At this point I notice that the program contains a section that you can rip out. It’s an offering sheet including a handy place to write your credit card information and your name, address, and phone number. There is no line for offering amount. Not even the Nigerians who need help with millions in unclaimed funds are this ballsy.
The program lays out the schedule for the evening and up next is Paulette Washington. A slightly overweight, black woman comes out and sings a handful of actual gospel songs. She sings well. She sings loud. She sings and tells a few stories about how she came to attend the church that is putting on this crusade. Two of her daughters sing with her. I can imagine one, the older of the two, being an intelligent girl who is called a “nerd” in school by the “keep it real” members of her class. The younger daughter seems to be the precocious, cute, chubby cheeked type. She belts it out like her momma.
A younger white man reads a poem supposedly written by a missionary in Africa who was killed when he wouldn’t deny his God. I think the reader was nervous, but he played off the nervousness by acting like the poem was choking him up and the powerful words were affecting him deeply. It was a decent poem in thought and intent, if not content and form. But, I’m not poetry critic so I digress.
Shift in Verb Tense.
Next up, the pastor of the Monroe church introduced Isaac Prather. The pastor was the firey, loud Southern type who would make any Pentecostal crowd proud. He waved his Bible and quoted verse. He yelled and stalked the stage. And then Isaac Prather came out.
Isaac was a man of average height. A man dressed in a velvety black jacket and pink shirt. His jacket looked almost fuzzy. It was nice. His tie was pink with stripes. He held the Word of God in hand and stalked the stage, pacing back and forth. His hair was almost shaved to the scalp on the sides and back and was very short on top. Sort of military, but with more gel in it. And then, he opened his mouth. He didn’t have a Southern drawl, but his voice reminded me of slightly slow or maybe mildly retarded Rev. Lovejoy on the Simpsons, if Lovejoy had attended pronunciation classes and stuffed his cheeks with cotton. His prosody is best described as staccato. At first I thought he had the appropriate exuberance of a Southern Pentecostal, but then I realized that his idea of getting worked up was to yell words in the same staccato style in which he spoke. So, it was, “dut-dut-dut-dut-DUT-DUT-dut,” all night long. I felt like I was being stabbed in the back on my head with every word he spoke. He pronounced the letter ‘t’ like no man I’ve ever heard. It was almost an over-pronunciation so that we would know there was a ‘t’ on the end of the word. He pronounced “happened” like “hap-penned.” He made “upon” two words, “up-on.” He added syllables to words and broke them down seemingly arbitrarily. Add to this the fact that his wireless microphone kept going out and suffering static, and you’ve got yourself quite an annoying presentation. It was almost like the mike would go out on any word that he said to make a point. Maybe that was more than coincidence.
He talked about agreement and hit the high notes necessary to set us up to believe. Most of the crowd didn’t need the set up, though. They didn’t need to be reminded that if more than two people gather together in agreeance, God is there. They didn’t need to be reminded of Amos 3:3, Matthew 18:20, or Ecclesiastes 4:10-12. I should note that Prather would say, “As i-teh is writ-ten in Matthew 18 and 20…” and then quote the appropriate verse. That just struck me as weird – the insertion of “and” between chapter and verse. The crowd was smaller than I expected. There were those who stood and spoke in tongues, those who stood and waved their hands, those who sat respectfully and clapped and sang, and those who were obviously there to see the show and probably didn’t believe at all. There was the woman sitting directly behind me who was not unlike people who ride in cars and try to sing the words to a song, but only know every fourth word. She would try to quote scripture along with whoever was saying it on stage, but would only hit every third or fourth word. It was painful, “...punish, mumble mumble, iniquities, mumble mumble, together...” It was scripture in stereo. It was like she was a backup rapper.
Prather says that if there is doubt in the crowd a miracle will not occur for that person. Prather says that he will heal broken bones and the blind, anxiety and AIDS, liars and the lame, goiters and the gay. Ok, he didn’t say those things exactly, but I wanted to give you an idea of his nifty alliteration. He did specifically mention AIDS and the blind. He shouted AIDS, but his mike went out right when he said it, so it wasn’t as awe-inspiring as he surely had hoped it would be. He made it clear that, to God, nothing was too big. Nothing was even hard or diff-i-cul-teh. All maladies would be healed. I got the idea that he was a congregant at the sponsoring church who had been told he had the gift to heal people, so they set up “Isaac Prather Ministries” in Monroe. I got the feeling that this was his coming out party. He probably healed folks in his church and local community, but this was his chance to spread his gift to the unwashed masses of the big city. I think with time, he could be a star in the South. Not tonight, though.
He had us bow our heads and pray with him. He did a typical Alter call – having those who wished to be saved before it was too late in these end times raise their hands, then to stand, and finally, Prather called them down front. His call did not include Christian believers who needed healing – the healing was included with a call to non-believers who wished to be born again. So, even if I had wanted to be healed, I wouldn’t have raised my hand or stood, because I am already saved. So, his call was sort of exclusive to non-believers who wished to be saved and who wished to be healed. I think this exclusion was unintentional.
I admit that I cheated and opened my eyes during the prayer to see how many raised their hands. I only saw two. Granted I didn’t crane my neck to look behind us, but directly to the sides and in front of us there were only two hands. Only two standing. Maybe there was a sea of hands behind me, like Prather seemed to see. He talked about how many people were raising their hands and standing. Only four people, the young man with the walker and a father with two children, moved down to the stage. The young man with the walker hadn’t raised his hand or stood prior to the invitation to come down front.
Change in Verb Tense
Prather prays over the father and then the injured young man. The father leaves with his two children in tow and Prather squats before the young man, who leans on his walker, head bowed.
“Wha-teh hap-pen-deh to you,” Prather asks in his agonizing pace. The young man answers, but we cannot hear what he says. It’s clear that his condition is not something he was born with and it is relatively recent. I heard “4 months” and “broken.” Prather relates that the young man hasn’t taken a step in 4 months and that his leg’s bones are broken. I didn’t see a cast or anything on the man’s leg – he was wearing a baggy plastic jogging suit. His hair was a trendy rat’s nest, longish everywhere and hanging in pieces across the man’s face. It was chunkily dyed a nice, dark reddish color. Prather kneels beside the young man and takes his leg in his hands, one behind his knee and the other in front. The man’s friends look on – their expressions passive and maybe hopeful. Prather commands God to heal the bones, make them go back together, heal his leg and let him walk. Prather stands after a couple of minutes and asks the man what he felt. The young man tells him that he felt a sort of firey feeling and he feels great. At this point I’m expecting the walker to be raised above his head and for him to run up the aisle. Instead, Prather steps about six feet from the man and tells him to walk. The young man stands in place. Prather again tells him to walk – God healed him after all. The young man takes a step...
A tremendously, agonizingly slow and short step. More of a limp, really. I think I could break my leg right now and take the exact same step he took. He continues to limp to Prather, barely putting any weight on his right leg and quickly moving his left leg to take up the burden. His arms flail as he moves across the floor to Prather, who slowly rejoices, “Praise Jesus, you’re walking.” Prather stands with the man and places a hand on his head. A man in the front row (I think another audience member who is well versed in this procedure) stands behind the young man in order to catch him. He will surely be slain in the Spirit as is customary after being healed. Prather then moves both hands to the young man's neck, one on either side -- anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of biology and anatomy will be able to guess why. After a minute or two of praying, the young man falls and is laid softly on the ground. That dang old carotid. So fragile and easily blocked. I wonder, could anyone be slain in the Spirit by having their shoulders grabbed for a minute or two?
The young man starts to get up after a short time (~30 seconds). Prather helps him back to his walker and talks to him some more. Prather drives home the point that he hasn’t taken one step in four months. Prather then heals his fractured skull (which we just now find out about) and tells him to go to the doctor and tell him to x-ray his head to prove that there is no more fracture. Then, once he does that, he should go and tell the world what happened tonight. The young man tells him that he feels no pain and that he now feels ready to start physical therapy. To work up the muscles in his leg so he can walk again and Prather agrees. At this point, I want to yell “heal his leg muscles, Brother Prather.” I mean, nothing is hard to God, right? Why did we just get this half-assed healing? You mean to tell me that we might see some healed of AIDS, we might see the blind given sight, but this kid gets healed enough to start a long process of physical therapy? I look at Xon and he’s wondering the same thing.
The young man returns to his seat not of his own volition, but using the walker with as much need as he did when he entered the theater. I watch as he talks to his friends and it seems he might have been being polite while talking to Prather. His leg still seems to hurt and while he might have been saved, I don’t think much was done for his leg.
Next up, the lesbians...but that will have to wait for another time….
Great Uncle Kingsley, is that you?!
Apophenia and
pareidolia are two words you should know. These two phenomena are responsible for our susceptibility to certain illusions, delusions, and pattern recognitions.
Mother Teresa as a cinnamon bun, the face and canals on Mars, demon faces in bricks or stone, Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich or a bank's window or the bark of a tree, the man in the Moon, hearing voices and messages in static, or reversed forward speech, or a coffee maker, or a digital recording of silence -- all of these can be explained by the aforementioned phenomena.
We seem to be
hardwired to see faces at birth -- something any mother or father could tell you. An infant will gaze at a face more readily than other non-face objects. As we grow into adults, we can see faces in almost any random visual stimuli, be it craters on another planet or satellite, the muck on a pane of glass, the burn patterns of toast, or the bark of a tree. This is probably due to the automaticity we have achieved as face seers.
We hear voices so often that perhaps a similar phenomenon is at work with our hearing. The wind sounds like voices, static can be heard as spoken words, audio recordings can sound like ghost voices that aren't heard by the "naked" ear. Neurons can even fire when there are no stimuli present -- sort of an echo effect in the brain. We recognize our names more readily than other words in a cacophony of speech -- known as the cocktail party effect. Meaningful speech is more perceptible than random speech, thus, inverting this truth, messages that are heard in static will probably be given meaning no matter what they say. The interplay of these occurrences surely has influence on how we perceive our world.
With the
arrival of
White Noise starring Mr. Mom, Michael Keaton, we might see an increase in the number of people who believe that their Great Uncle Kingsley is trying to contact them from beyond. John Edward, Sylvia Browne, Michael Van Prague -- people having these names have at one time or another been responsible for perpetuating these illusions and cashing in on people's misery. Sylvia was on Montel this morning, in fact. She frequents Larry King's show, too. A few years ago John Edward made millions by cold reading and lying to people on TV. Couple the sessions with book sales and mechandise and you've got quite a lucrative enterprise. This movie will probably be good; I'm looking forward to it. But I do not look forward to the uninformed public jumping on the bandwagon of the newest fad in the paranormal world that may result from the movie's popularity. Go see the movie, enjoy it, and then categorize it with other horror/suspense movies like Friday the 13th, The Ring, Sixth Sense, and Finding Nemo. Don't think of it as a neat movie based in fact. Don't think it's a clever way to make a documentary.
So, be on the look out for books on
EVP that will surely grace the shelves of your local bookstores and feel free to cover them up with copies of Skeptic magazine or Skeptical Inquirer or any other good representation of reality.
Or move them to the Fiction section. Or Sci-Fi.
For more, check out skepdic.com, randi.org, and mindhack.com (all can be found in my links section to the left)
