Exorcism and Pound Cake


Most of my yoga friends are into the occult on some level; it seems the two go hand- in- hand. Just because you can bend funny, do you need to become a witch?

I'm not much for the stars, it scares me and I know why.


Call it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from all the deliverance attempts I watched my mother perform in our living room as I hung over the banister watching at age nine, with my clueless pajama-clad brother next to me, excavating his nose.


I always knew when Mom made coffee and pound cake; Satan was coming to visit.


I guess if you "found Jesus" back in 1974 you must have received some sort of certificate giving you the go ahead to drive out dark forces in a twelve-by-thirteen living room with worn green carpet without a second thought.

I think my mother expected dramatic results of head-spinning-mouth-foaming-seizure-inducing proportions to manifest,but all she got was some lost soul sitting in one of our plaid Lazy-Boys with a cup of coffee in hand, waiting for something to happen.

She would try to practice her new "spiritual gift" on others, sometimes cruising a party listening for any mention of illness. New catch phrases became commonplace in our household. Words like "church split", "seeker friendly church", "prayer circles", "rapture", "second coming", (has nothing to do with sex) "slain in the spirit", "under the blood", "tithe" "redeemed", "and "spiritual warfare".


These deliverances were new and exciting to my now "Earth Shoe clad" mother, but they didn't stop at mere mortals.

It soon became apparent as a handy venue for broken appliances, lost keys and attempts to raise our three dollar gerbils from the dead.

She once walked around the house in a frenzy verbally rebuking Satan and demanding he return her lost sunglasses, claiming "spiritual harassment."

(I always doubted that Satan got-off on screwing with sunglasses in all his spare time down in Hell.)

My skeptical father walked outside and located the glasses in her car,shaking his head. She insisted an angel returned the bug-eyed-wonders swearing they were not there before.

I wondered why an angel wouldn't have just put them back in her purse.

My Mother eventually started leaving tiny booklets in public bathrooms all over town, which outlined in grave detail "How to be Saved" with cartoon pictures of colorful hippie's in bell bottoms burning in hell.

I could never imagine someone dropping to their knees in a Walgreens restroom reciting the sinners prayer under a hand dryer.


Our home was also stripped of all remnants of a "secular" life.

Shot glasses were removed along with yarn "God's Eyes" from our trip to Mexico, all "Woman of..." calendars, Sonny & Cher, the Cowsills and Neil Diamond found their new home in the attic. Gone were all brandy sniffers,Donny Osmond records (including matching lunch box), Native American Art, poker chips, dice, family Vegas photos, questionable movies or books, and any Far Eastern furniture (unless we were prepared to say we picked it up on a Missions trip)

Christian magazines replaced lingerie catalogs in my parents bathroom and Bible quiz trophies magically appeared on our dressers (I think Dad had them made for the occasion..as I have never won a thing in my life).

Halloween was strictly off-limits replaced by fake substitutes called "Harvest Parties" meeting at churchs or "Home Group", decorated with scattered hay bales and cornstalks instead of witches and ghouls.

Every child showed up as a generic "Bible Character" in a sheet, belted with a rope from the garage, wearing borrowed sandals. If we chose not to go, we sat in the dark in the basement eating burnt home-made popcorn balls until all trick-or-treater's were safely back home with their pillow cases full of chocolate.


Soon my parents bought matching guitars for prayer meeting worship sessions. (The last thing I ever remember they bought that matched was a set of red-white and blue bowling balls for the "beer-n-bowl" league a year earlier.)

Always the Euntrepreneur, I quickly figured out that storage unit companies should market to newly converted Evangelicals to hide their crap so kids from other new Evangelical families won't accidentally stumble on their booty.

Then there was the time our washing machine broke.

I found Mom in the laundry room, kneeling on top of the groaning metal mass laying her hands on its bubbling lid, rebuking demons at the top of her lungs, with rollers in her hair,and her blue smiley face earrings swinging madly back and forth while forcefully demanding Satan to take his hands off the Maytag, restoring it in whole in the name of Jesus.

Looking on with a friend, taking in this washing machine revival for a minute or two, I decided I needed to get her out of there fast. If she told her parents, I was doomed. Any future overnights or birthday parties would be out of the question.

Walking upstairs we grabbed a handful of cookies, taking full advantage of Mom's dealings with the Devil.

Normal just was a setting on a dryer in our house.

Some years later my parents had a garage sale and got rid of the "Bible on tape" series, dozens of eight tracks of the Gaither Trio Singers, three worship tambourines, sandals, earth shoes, the miracle sun-glasses, guitar sheet music and mass amounts of literature and VCR tapes on The End Times.

Later that summer I saw Jesus at Walgreens wearing my Mothers old sunglasses, buying a Gaither Brothers CD.

He winked at me and walked out.

He was wearing Earth Shoes.