By Pawl English
Pictures By Aneta Rudnicka & Pawl English
Young and impressionable, or so they say.
At the tender age of fifteen, I was touched by the hands of God, or rather, God through the hands of my dear friend Paul. Paul and I were friends from way back but at this point, we had grown apart for maybe five years. Our 2-year age gap forced itself into our lives. We met again one evening on a bus and our friendship was once again up and running.
We would mostly hang out in his bedroom because at that age I was too young, gifted, and skint for pubs; and way to wound up for the world outside. I only sought sanctuary in music. Apparently some of us sought sanctuary elsewhere. Paul, I discovered, had ‘found God’ during my absence. He had been ‘born again’ which allied him with the Happy Clappys, those Christians who have a propensity to enlighten and thus convert gentiles who had not seen the light.
All ‘happy clappied’ up, my friend aimed in earnest to convert me and we began a period of intense theological ‘discussions’ which were fitting for my disposition for all things gothic. Sticking points included the unanswerable concept of the Trinity, the question of just how many sons God has, and just why-oh-why was there so much suffering in this world?
Maybe I used to leave these nights intellectually satisfied but I felt little affect. As you can imagine, all this was beginning to frustrate my friend’s attempts to save my soul and, incidentally, earn himself a few brownie points with God.
Then one evening, once the commonness of these discussions grew, he told me he was tired of this uselessness and had thought of a new way to convert me: since I wouldn’t go to God of my own accord he would bring God to me.
Paul set up his room in a holy fashion and started praying loudly as I watched. He asked me to kneel with him and got me to randomly scan the bible for passages that I was to read aloud; grippingly, many had an uncanny significance to the process. Suddenly his eyes rolled up into his head and he began talking in tongues. This ‘talking in tongues’ is indeed a strange phenomenon to experience though I am told it is a reasonably common event among certain sects. It was, to a young boy from the sticks, an impressive spectacle —picture this: The Poltergeist meets The Exorcism of Emily Rose.
After this had continued for a while he turned and laid his hands upon me. Immediately I felt a strong vibrating sensation spreading over my body from the point of where he was touching me. As the intense feeling coursed through my body, my mind vibrated equally with a rational explanation for the feeling. The experience certainly had a short-term effect, and for a while, I thought I too was ‘born again’ but the feeling removed itself quickly. It seemed to lack resonance. Was I to devote my life following the experience of one evening? Although the feeling was strong, so were many others I was experiencing in my adolescence. And the feeling had still not answered the myriad of questions I had for God.
Later, with age and experience behind me, I equated the sensation closer to the effect of euphoria one achieves with illegal narcotics than the power of God. It was a shame…a waste, probably. “Maybe this experience will serve me better at another time,” I have often reflected, although writing about it for Xpat Magazine was furthest from my thoughts.
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