“To some people the Spirit gives a message of wisdom. To others the same Spirit gives a message of knowledge. To others the same Spirit gives faith. To others that one Spirit gives gifts of healing. To others he gives the power to do miracles. To others he gives the ability to prophesy.”
Extra ordinary is ordinary plus plus. It is the humdrum, the common place with added zest. Some of the kids like my nieces and nephews today describe characters perhaps seen preening and drawing attention to themselves in an excessive, ostentatious, unnecessary and cringey way as being ‘extra’. But we all want more don't we? Please Sir, can I have extra? Oliver Twist 2.0 might have said. No one is anyone on Instagram or social media if they are merely ordinary. Only the fantastic need apply for the froth of internet fame.
My Mam and Dad took the upgrade and became holy rollers in the 1970’s. It was called Charismatic Catholicism, that is the Evangelical spirituality of the early church where the Holy Spirit appeared in tongues of flame above the heads of the disciples and filled them with bravery to go and preach to the powerful group of people who had organized for or benefited from the death of Jesus; the emperor, the local governor, the military and the church and state.
Mam and Dad’s thing was very much all of the Catholic stuff with added extras - signs & wonders, healing of hands, speaking in tongues, devotees physically falling backwards and sideways after being overcome with the hyper emotion of the experience of being slain in the spirit. Mam especially loved that and found it very comforting to go into a trance-like reverie afterwards. She was like the suffering woman in the bible, who if she only could ‘touch the hem of the garment’ would be healed. And afterwards she was calmer and more peaceful. It gave her ‘standing up’ life meaning to be always in search of a healer who had or reputedly had the gift of healing, and who could stir up the room or the gathering into a soft edged spiritual frenzy with loud praying in hymns, singing and enunciating in Indian raga like rhythms sounding like “lack a day al shar ma rababa lam ela" This syllabic and rhythmic chanting in tongues stirred up intense devotional feelings and an ecstasy in some. There was something happening, but was it what my parents believed.
I was a little standoffish on all of this. I was looking for the ‘signs’ of food in my belly and the ‘wonders’ of a clean table. How can they say they are Christian if they don't look after and feed their own children. I think and know by their actions that my parents believed in the invisible spiritual food of manna as being the most important thing to teach us and for us to have, rather than the real meat-and-two-veg of reality. If asked or given a choice, I would have settled for both.
In this faction of Catholic Christianity there was no breaking with the Pope; communion and mass was still vitally important and potent. As Irish Catholics there was not any literal interpretations of scripture, so mystery and drama was also allowed in. Mam and Dad would sit in the middle of our filthy kitchen drinking tea, gnawing on crusts of brown soda bread and listening to teaching Nuns like the wise Sr. Breige McKenna edify their listeners from boxes of green colored cassette tapes. She taught about the different charismatic gifts of the spirit: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment, speaking in tongues & interpretation of those words all the while cross referencing the New & the Old testament. So if I know the bible bits n pieces there’s a reason; I heard this stuff daily like other people hear the sports channel or the news on the radio at home.
I noticed though that a lot of people at prayer gatherings went in for the praying in tongues and the slaying in the spirit, but not so many in the more challenging discerning or interpretive gifts of what was happening, what it meant and what was being said in the babble of many words. Bible Paul warns in the famous 1 Corinthians 13 that:
“even if I speak in the tongues of angels and have no love, then I am nothing.”
My Mammy and Daddy absolutely awaited on miracles. And it gave them something to bond over. My mother began praying over my father for a week or more to get him to ‘give up the fags’ (cigarettes). Every time she stopped praying he reached out his hand towards the pack of 20 lying beside the ashtray on the cluttered kitchen table. And every time he did that, she started chanting and tying up the demons again , telling them where to go like a real old fashioned fire prophet.
“Praise the Lord” they did get the miracle they asked for, and Dad got the healing they sought. If he had kept smoking he was likely to have died of bronchitis in an attenuated time. The doctors had warned him of the consequences for his lungs and heart if he kept the smoking up. After that week of continuous prayer and intercession he developed the opposite to attraction, a super strong nausea and distaste for tobacco. He never smoked again.
For me the miracle I wanted as I intimated earlier was to be safe in the house, warm in winter, fed every day and the love of something and someone that wasn't invisible. I could have done with some of that loaves and fishes shit and less of the holy words and the babble of strange tongues. A clean kitchen and a hot dinner every day - now that would have been miraculous and extraordinary.
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