Demons

We were finishing our normal prayer time at CCAP’s Chawama Prayer House when it happened. But this was no average prayer time for a muzungu who grew up in the PCUSA. Prayer time here starts with song. The leader comes to the front of the church and begins a call and response type song that is typical of Zambian music. After a song or two or beautiful, belting harmonies, the prayer begins. First here. Then there. As the song fades, speaking voices grow one after the other. Pretty soon the room is booming with layer upon layer of words of thanksgiving, petition, and praise. People pace the room. Hands and arms shake. Where a few moments before there was harmony, now there is the dissonance of sixty voices speaking on top of each other. Normally prayer time comes to a close once again with song. The leader sings out a melody and soon the voices fade back into song.

But this Sunday one voice did not. One man kept talking and talking and talking, rather agitated as it were. Not being able to understand his language, I was totally lost as members in the congregation slowly pulled his arms leading him into the vestry, or back room of the church. As the pastor, began his sermon, a few more people sauntered into the vestry. Soon the pastor had to speak louder to stifle the shouts coming from there.

He turned to his congregation and said, “Not all spirits are from the Lord.”

Turns out I was in the presence of a demon.

Weeks later, my good friend invited me to her baptism at her Apostolic Church. It was a very special day in which I traveled with her and some in her congregation, traversing the rain and hail on the roads, to the Kafue River where the sun peaked out to shine on those who waded into the great stream and submitted themselves to the water for baptism.  We left after a church service, which ended in deliverance. Again, this prayer/act began with song, but pretty soon people were surrounding those overcome with something. The possessed’s eyes were closed. They would fall to the ground, one quite painfully with his body completely straight. The pastor would yell, “What do you want with her?” And the person/demon would say, “A gift.” Then people would yell, “Fire, Fire! In the name of Jesus, come out!”

                                                                  My friend praying

My friend then asked me if I would like to be prayed for. I agreed and together we went up to the pastor. He took my hands and in his fiery speech, he prayed and periodically shook my arms. I felt the urge to follow his lead and as he shook my arms, I released the tension in my body and let my body shake with his tremors. When he finished, an older man took my arm and led me to my knees. He then grabbed my head and began to move it around and around in circles. Hands were on my shoulders and I could sense a crowd of people gathering around me. My eyes were closed and the song continued all around me. Pretty soon my arms were in the air. It was at this point that my friend photographed me.

I had taken some pictures of the deliverance a few minutes earlier. My friend was adamant that I do so, so I joined another man walking around snapping pictures.  This was against my inclination. I didn’t want to identify myself as the stranger in the room more than my skin color already showed. Also, I categorize religious experience as a very personal. To each her own as far as I’m concerned and I didn’t want to intrude. The times in prayer I have felt closest to God have been through the silence and meditative songs of the Taize worship style. Something I can do by myself, or silently with others. But this was no Taize worship service. When I look at the picture my friend snapped of me: this woman, kneeling on the floor, hands in the air, being delivered… I don’t recognize myself. The first time I looked at the picture, I snapped my camera off within seconds, feeling embarrassed. I worry about prayer and even religion being showy or self-important. IEach week at my church here I have trouble praying because it feels like I would be yelling at God, even performing for those around me. I believe that volume, eloquence, and duration in and of prayer don’t necessarily make a difference.

I believe all this, but none of that was my motive as I submitted myself to deliverance last Sunday. I had been welcomed into the church of a dear friend, and her dear, dear community welcomed me with open arms, shaking with passion. They offered me a most precious gift to them: their prayers. The greatest way to thank them was to humbly accept. So I put myself at their mercy. I surrendered my body as they moved me this way and that, so much that I was sore hours later. And much to my surprise I felt something in their prayer. A spirit? God? I don’t feel the need to use those terms although I certainly could. I felt like the people around me were offering me their energy and in return I was giving them back the only thing I could: myself. I felt the presence of those around me. I could see their shadows from behind my eyelids. I could hear their voices all around me.  There was a community surrounding me, and they were choosing to put their focus into me. I could feel emotions rising. When it ended and the pastor asked me how I felt, I simply said, “I feel loved.”

So many things are different here in Zambia. Demons are real. People speak in tongues. There is witchcraft. There is Satanism. People talk about the devil. There have been times that I honestly feel like I had left Planet Earth. What book did I enter? Where am I? But I am on the same Earth I have always lived. This is reality.

I’m not here to scientifically prove or convince anyone, even myself. When I say, these things are real I mean that they are beliefs, and therefore forces, that actually affect people here in Zambia. I am here to be in relationship with Zambians so I have chosen not to judge and attempt to meet those around me just where they are. They live in a world with demons and I want to know them, so I live in a world where they experience demons too.

In my first weeks in Zambia taking culture classes at FENZA, we heard from an amazing Catholic Father who researches demons and spirits and has experience with them in his ministry. He found that when his parishioners come to him complaining of a demon he hears everything they have to say but then asks questions to name and classify the person’s suffering. He accepts the demon, and then seeks understanding of the earthly manifestations of human suffering that might be behind the spirit.  He sees the person as someone in pain and then as he gets to know the person he asks to bring in people around the possessed person, usually their family members, to solve the problem relationally. He told us that the Catholic Church used to have an Exorcism Department in Zambia, but the lines were so long each day, they had to close the office. His relational method works wonders.

I think Father Bernhard is doing good work in Zambia. He meets people where they are, with the terms they use, and works to build and save relationships. When I saw deliverance taking place at my friend’s baptism service, I watched a woman surrounded by others. In the moment, the focus of those around her was not on themselves, their energy was directed at her, they were giving their minds and spirits, their voices.

When talking with Father Bernhard and in that moment, it struck me how things like depression, grief, low self-esteem, and mental illness can be demons. To me, this is more figurative, but I can understand how those very real problems can become something classified as true and real demon. Call it what you will, persistent problems are real. In the service of deliverance, I imagined this woman as bogged down with the dispirits of depression, of feeling lower than low, of having something hanging over her that she couldn’t shake, holding her back, keeping her from being her true and free self. And around her were people… People who wanted to pull that madness out of her. People in her community danced vigil with her and waited for her self to return.  People loved her.

It makes me think, what demons are in my own life? And who will be there to help deliver them out?

Finally, all this musing brings me back to YAV orientation back in Stony Point, NY, when we looked at Mark 5:1-20, in which Jesus casts out the demon, “Legion” from the Gerosene Demoniac. Usually when I read this story I thick, “Oh boy, one of those bible stories!” On the surface, it’s a story of magic; a story of the spirit world crossed over into this world, a reality I certainly have not experienced in this life. In the story, Jesus casts the demon into a herd of pigs, driving the swine into the sea where they meet their death. In the past I’ve read this as an unexplainable miracle in which Jesus shows some wicked Hogwarts-like skills. With the help of some Biblical history, our leader told us that the story takes place in a location occupied by the Roman army and that the swine are the food source for the soldiers. Jews certainly would not be eating pork. With this reading, Jesus’ act becomes not a display, but a subversive act of defiance and protest of the Roman Army: Jesus’s Boston Tea Party, so to speak. Whether he waved a wand or physically moved the pigs himself seems like a lesser point to the fact that Jesus committed a very political act, sticking it to an oppressive military regime. It seems there is a lot more to these demon stories than meets the eye. So what else is behind the demons people experience here? Demons aren’t just the modern manifestation of African Traditional Religion, they are found in the Bible. They are even found in the lyrics and title of Imagine Dragon’s hit song: “Don’t get to close, it’s dark inside. It’s where my demons hide. It’s where my demons hide. “

Demons are real here in Zambia. Where are they real in your life?

                                                                  At the Kafue River