The story so far: Last episode introduced sad, cigarette-smelly Euphemia, and made mention of her steadily-increasing telephone calls to your humble blogonaut.

We’re skipping a few minor incidents like my deciding not to go on with college, deciding I wasn’t minister material, changing to another church, and so forth. As long as it doesn’t embarrass me overly much, or specifically identify one of my completely fictional characters, I’m prepared to look at doing stories by request. Just add a comment, and my trained software will pwn your identity details and pr0n browsing history verify your identity…

In this episode, your humble blogonaut has departed the church of Pastor Jolly for the dramatic (if doctrinally-dodgy) theocratic fiefdom of Pastor Softie.

Now read on…

Softie’s congregation, as good link-clickers or aficionados of this interminable trickle of bullshit will know, was prone to serve as a willing rookery for any charismatic-spiritual bird of passage: doubly so if its cry was raucous or its plumage sufficiently gaudy.

^{Indicative specimen of a raucous, charismatic bird.
Contents may settle with handling.}

I had spent an afternoon at a “seminar” at Softie’s church. Without going into an even deeper level of boring detail, let’s just say that some of the most bizarre happy-clappers are into generational curse stuff. It’s handy for adding a little more guilt to victims believers, and there is (let me make this perfectly clear), NO cognitive dissonance with supporting this while decrying very similar ideas like purgatory and baptising the deceased.

I think this kind of hooey preys on my polite side (or a morbid fear of being found out as different). While every fibre of my being is nudging the rest of me and hissing, “Psst! Time to go, the needle on the Weirdometer™ just wrapped round the right-hand stop.“…

^{…and here’s a picture, boys and girls…}

… I sit there, nod like I’m approving, and hope I don’t get picked for anything. Sometimes I wonder if everybody else is in on some vast Candid Camera stunt, or whether they, too, are sitting there squirming in a small pool of WTF.

I’d not long gotten home, when the phone rang.

Yup, Euphemia again. Still at it with the woes: she herself had been to a different Holy Sideshow during the past few days, and was batting on about Twelve Grievings, or something similar…

I’ll song you woe, Oh!
Twelve are my grievings-o.
What are your twelve-o?
Pay lots of dollars-o!
Twelve, twelve for disciples by the dozen,
Eleven when Judas went ‘n’ did hisself in,
Ten, ten for the ten lost tribes,
Nine for the square of the tri-nit-tee,
Eight the lunch the suckers bought for me,
Seven’s God’s number for the days of the week,
Six for the devil of whom I love to speak,
Five for the fingers on my grasping hand,
Four for the overseas trips I’ve planned,
Three, three for the tri-nit-tee,
Two for the cars that you’ve bought for me,
One is the number I look out for,
So render unto meeeeee!

^{– Green Grow Believers O,
by Semmin R Profitts
© 2008 I-Grasp Revolution Music.}

Sorry, the worship leader must have taken over for a moment there.

So, Euphemia’s still rabbiting on, sobbing into the phone, and probably in need of change of lifestyle/ hormone replacement therapy/ a licence to enjoy herself for once [pick one]… and she goes down a path that is almost inevitable when extreme charismatic church culture rubs up against prolonged unhappiness or a bit of psych trouble:

Deeeeee-mooooooons!

.

.

.

Oh, noes! Again, fundie-mentalists ridicule the benighted natives who practise animism while putting a spook persona into everything. Oh, the castings-out that have gone on…. Coca-Cola™ is one I’ve heard of, while students at a certain Large College Of Ministry (whose president’s wife was a bully to female students and staff alike) reputedly expelled The Evil Spirit Of Mrs College-President from some of their number in a late-night dorm ceremony!

So, of course Euphemia does a Flip Wilson: it’s far easier than admitting a weakness or shortcoming in yourself, innit? Blame Old Nick!

^{Please pardon Brother William Of Ockham; he always stands there looking from under his eyebrows and harrumph-ing when the bleeding obvious is ignored in favour of the abstruse.}

So, this is it, I thought. (Typical result of bloody-minded Dominionist doctrine: Joe Average, thinking assuming God is on his side regardless, or maybe even that God will be persuaded to cover his initiative, unhesitatingly girds up for a firefight with The Evil One.)

I had been reading my how-to’s, although we didn’t get to do Exorcism 101 at the Pastor Factory until second year. Permit no back-talk; take the initiative; give the orders; assume the position of power in Jesus’ name…

^{Hey, where’s all the concern for the PATIENT in this?}

Sorry, bud. there isn’t any. Those poor chicks at Mercy Ministries would have copped it roughly the same. I’ve seen deliverance ministry in church, and in private: it almost invariably ended in tears, upchucking, pain, unconsciousness or any combination of these.

Boy oh boy, could it be part of a cult thing? Maybe. (Sorry to pinch Sean’s material again, but have a look here!)

I couldn’t go alone though. Not because of fear of winding up like the fictional Father Karras, but because of the AOG version of the (American) Hays Act: you know, TV shows with two single beds, characters always with one foot always on the floor like it was Pot Black rather than family life…. Anyway, despite the tendencies of some pastoral types (like the one who was, er, attending to my tenant, or the various others who go madly shagging their way through the flock), or perhaps because of them, there were rules when I was at college. (If I was forced to be in the house with a woman and no witnesses, the best I could do was keep a door open or be in a visible outside place like a porch or patio.)

Fortunately, my friend Elder Hardyman answered his phone. He’d left Pastor Jolly’s church too, but we’d stayed in touch. Hardyman had once been a pastor, but had decided on a life in business: he didn’t like the fact AOG pastors are not allowed to drink, he said. Staunch bloke, sense of humour. He was familiar with Euphemia too: yes, he’d come.

We bundled over to Euphemia’s.

Now I’m going to ask you to remember the Observer Principle, as mentioned a few posts back: it’s a notion in physics, that the presence of an observer actually influences the outcome of an experiment. There’s also that idea I’ve been browbeating you with, that if you have a hammer, everything is immediately made of nails placed there by God, to be hit by YOU, because you’re Special.

When I had been asking Euphemia on the phone what was wrong, I asked a question (out of the blue, but definitely a stroke of the aforementioned hammer. Without going into the fine points, let’s just say that the old darling said, why yes, her $male_ancestor had been the chief $unchristian_mumbo_jumbo_thingy for the whole of $country_of_origin.

Okay: I have no means of verifying that detail. It’s not easy to ask a bloke if he’s affiliated with $unchristian_mumbo_jumbo_thingy for starters, and just too tough for me if he happens to be dead. William Of Ockham is looking at me from beneath a lowering forest of eyebrows, so let’s just remember she wanted attention.

The deliverance went swimmingly: the motions were gone through by all parties, with care to summon, rebuke and cast out the entity, and banish it into the outer darkness blah blah blah until such time as Jesus should waffle waffle waffle, paying extra special care to the prescribed form so it couldn’t wiggle its way out.

(Apparently deeeeee-moooooons are as legalistic as fundie elders in Fault-Finding mode.)

Result?

^{Not bad for a first attempt.}

I’d give it a good mark for theatre. As far as therapy goes, nah. Euphemia was still as sad and smoky as ever. Just like the amputees don’t walk out of Benny Hinn’s shows on brand-new legs, nothing was substantially changed.

The dogs have barked and gone silent, but the circus has passed through long ago.

G’night, Both My Readers™, and the fuming Great Cloud Of Witnesses.