Spiritual Autobiography 4

On the first weekend of February, 1971, still fourteen, on a Saturday night, I believe, I was baptised in the Holy Spirit. I was sitting on the floor in a prayer circle in the basement of Shepherd's Call, and there was a very powerful sense of God's spirit in the room: manifested by joy, awe, love and peace. One or two people had just received the baptism through the laying on of hands, then someone asked me if I wanted it. At first I said no, but knowing that this was indeed my next step, I relented and they laid hands on me and prayed. I felt something trying to enter me, or come out of me, or both and it felt intense so I struggled with it at first. Then I relaxed, and then, oh the joy and peace and blessing that flowed, and I began speaking in an unknown tongue. This facility quickly developed and in the coming days it was clear that this was an actual prayer language. I also felt stronger, more at peace, stable, which runs very contrary to popular opinion about Pentecostalism and the charismatic experience, but this is actually a very healing and grounding experience for those who experience it. It is also deeply empowering, as I was quickly to experience. my mother was of course horrified, and when I spoke in tongues to demonstrate it must have sounded like an authentic language because she forbade me to ever do that around her again and she did look genuinely frightened. In some ways I thought it was all a lark, and it was hard to take this all so seriously, but it was true that I was now on a very true and different path and that my life would never be the same. During the week of my birthday in late February there were Jesus' People revival meetings being held in my community. I attended and several peers from my school went forward to be "saved." I helped facilitate, notably with two girls I knew at school who accepted Christ as their saviour while we were kneeling in the late snow with another member of the Jesus People. We all became very fast friends. On the initiative of people in the Jesus' People we found space in a local United church for Tuesday evening meetings and Bible studies which quickly moved over to the home of a kind Dutch woman who lived on a small blueberry farm. We knew her as Mom. She took in foster children and seemed to have an inexhaustible capacity for love. I had previously met her in February, while hitch- hiking. She gave me a tract and we had rather a stimulating chat about Jesus. The Ides of March, two weeks after my fifteenth birthday, I was baptised in the chilly waters of English Bay. None of these things made me into a particularly docile lad, by the way. I was still living with a lot of family stress, due to the bitter divorce that my parents were negotiating, s well as having to avoid getting beaten up or verbally abused by my older brother. I was doing terribly in school The problems at home and the dramatic changes in my life made it difficult for me to focus and concentrate on my schoolwork. I also had trouble sleeping and often came to school tired. A particularly objectionable teacher sent me out in the hall for yawning too loud in class one morning (I felt so tired), and when I slammed the door in protest, she sent me to the office. There was a miscommunication with the principal and I failed to show up for a scheduled detention. The next day he tried to give me the strap. I wouldn't let him, and I walked out of the office and out of the school and hitch-hiked into Vancouver where I spent the day with my friends in the Jesus' People. my mother managed to bail me out, and I was let back in the school. One of the "elders" (he wasn't even twenty!) in the Jesus' People thought I should have taken my medicine and I almost laughed in his face. A year later, corporal punishment was banned in BC schools.