I'm not exactly sure when it first started, the feeling that I am unintelligent. But I think it may have been in my heavy-duty drug use days as a teen, when the psychedelic trips started turning bad. I became withdrawn. I had a hard time finding words in order to communicate. Thankfully I had enough sense left to stop the drugs.
I recall the moment as I sat in my bedroom upstairs. I was sixteen years old, my head in my hands, rocking back and forth, trying to rid the feeling of a bad trip without having taken any acid. I thought I was going insane, and maybe I was. But my one saving thought was, If I'm insane, I wouldn't know it. I clung to that thought. And I turned to Transcendental Meditation for help, which it did. I faithfully practiced for a few years interspersed with breaks. I gave up TM totally around July 1977 after I spoke in tongues for the first time at Resurrection Lutheran Church in Charlotte.
I then decided to go to college. I wanted to become a Christian counselor, and I wanted to learn Greek and Hebrew to get back to the "original" Scriptures. I chose Montreat-Anderson College in Montreat, NC, near Black Mountain. I chose Montreat because of the spirit-filled community in and around the school.
While at Montreat I got involved in a small prayer group where people got slain in the spirit and would speak in tongues quite loudly. It was more Pentecostal than Charismatic. I preferred Charismatic; it was gentler than Pentecostal.
During my first semester at Montreat, I was witnessed to by Way believers but not at Montreat. I was witnessed to in Hickory, my hometown, at the time around a two-hour drive from Montreat. This was in the days when Interstate-40 did not yet go up the mountain. That weekend I attended my first Way International fellowship, at the time called Twig. Twig was part of The Way Tree, as it was called.
I was a bit uncomfortable when the Twig Leader called on people to "speak in tongues and interpret." How could one control the Spirit of God moving? I was used to a different format, more free-flowing, where folks would speak or sing in tongues as they were "moved by the Spirit" and someone else might speak or sing the interpretation.
But everything else about Twig felt beautiful, real, like the Book of Acts. The music. The people, The Word. The love of God. I felt I truly had found "the way."
Bill, the Way believer who was one of the believers who had "witnessed" to me, told me about "The Class." As he was showing me the "green card," which is what a new recruit would sign to take The Class, along with $100 at the time, I thought, I can learn all this on my own, at college, as I learn Greek and Hebrew. Right as I was having that unexpressed thought, Bill said, "You can learn all this on your own. But why not try The Class? It can save you lots of time in learning the Scriptures." So, I signed up not knowing where the money would come from. I received a surprise gift from my parents of $100 without them knowing I needed the money to take The Class. This must be of God; He has provided the funds. Once I completed The Class, I dropped out of college to study and serve with The Way.
I don't recall the feeling of unintelligence at that time, but that feeling eventually crept back in. I struggled with it for decades. And it still comes up from time to time, mostly around folks who seem so confident and adamant that their viewpoint of life is the correct viewpoint. According to them, folks with viewpoints different from theirs are "stupid" or have "low IQs" or some other derogatory label. So maybe they'd think the same of me? I sometimes fall into similar labeling, but I endeavor to extend the benefit of the doubt without being naive. I endeavor, as much as I'm able, to put myself in another's sandals and to remember that I too am human.
In 1998 while living in Charlotte and volunteering as a Twig leader with my husband, I landed for a 3-to-5 day stay in the hospital while we were running a Way class in our home. Asthma, which for two decades sent me to the emergency room often. If I recall correctly, this hospitalization was about the fifth multiple-day stay (or the ninth, if I count the four sinus polypectomy surgeries, which were part of the mercury-asthma-allergy package), instead of just an overnight stay in the ER for observation.
During this hospital stay I looked at my chart which hung on the end of my bed. The doctor had written, "An intelligent middle-aged woman...." I didn't know this doctor well, but well enough to respect him. He was the first doctor to discover my mercury levels were sky high. And he had called me "intelligent."
Maybe I was intelligent?
~*~
"He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you Except to be just, and to love [and to diligently practice] kindness (compassion), And to walk humbly with your God [setting aside any overblown sense of importance or self-righteousness]?" ~Micah 6:8
“In my walks, every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
~*~
Todd Agnew is one of my favorite Christian musicians...
I saw him live in 2006 or 2007 in Mt. Airy, NC...
He performed barefoot.
Micah 6 brings to mind...
