When Greg came in, I was relaxing, having put my feet up on my desk. I kept them there while we talked. Later he told me my position had made him uncomfortable.
“In some cultures showing the bottom of your shoe is an insult,” he said.
“Greg, I am so sorry. I was comfortable, and thought you were.”
“But I didn’t have the power in the situation,” he smiled. “To put my feet on your desk.”
“I know.”
As I remember, the miners in a recent video had given him a hard hat. By going deep into the earth with them, and being blackened by coal dust, like them, he won the miners’ hearts, getting stories from them they would have never told him, had he remained aloof.
Greg seemed to get along with everyone, but he really didn’t, for he had left his wife and young son a couple of years ago, and soon began keeping company with female seniors in this college town of 18,000 students. Every fall he took a new, pretty one as his production assistant. Before long he took her to his apartment to live. In the fall he carried a big smile, in spring not so much.
One Saturday in 1980, I had an urge to call Greg. I had no reason, but it seemed to be the right thing to do, so I dialed his number.
“Hey buddy,” I said.
“I am really glad you called,” he said. “Amie is graduating.”
“And you will be alone again.”
“Yes.” There was no smile in his voice.
A few days later Greg came into my office to talk. We may have been in pre-production for John Hartford (think “Gentle On My Mind ”) video which required a special board for him to dance on as he sang, but we had no funds for the kind of plywood he required.
While I was calling around seeking money, I noticed Greg stop from time to time, look at his watch, then turn his head away.
“I noticed your new watch,” I said, after finding the needed funds.
Greg nodded. “My therapist loaned me that,” he said. “Whenever it goes off, I take a moment and stop thinking whatever I’m thinking about. Interrupting the thought stream,” he smiled.
“What do you think to interrupt the thought stream?” I asked.
I wish I could recall his answer, so I could say whether he was meditating on something, or simply emptying his mind.
“You know, I can’t help I keep falling in love with these girls,” he sighed. “But they are not nearly as romantic as I am.”
He may have looked at his watch.
“We both know that they move in with me because I can help their careers,” he said. “They have no illusions about the relationship.”
To paraphrase Hartford: And it’s knowing we’re not shackled by forgotten words and bonds and the ink stains that are dried upon some line …
I would have liked to interrupt the flow of negative images myself, but I had already been to a shrink, and the only other meditation I knew of was transcendental meditation, whose process made me uncomfortable. I did not like the idea of turning over control of my mind to the entire universe, to be summoned by my intoned “Om.”
So, I didn’t ask Greg anything more about his meditation. Pretty soon he moved to Los Angeles to seek his fortune, and I moved back to North Carolina. I didn’t think about meditation again until the spring of 1983, when a student in my class on prayer collapsed on a golf course. He sent us a message that he was unable to walk. Tests at the hospital were not conclusive.
The class prayed for him, but after a week Keith was not getting any better, so I felt impressed to pray a different prayer from the one I had been praying. After I knelt, and called on the Lord, I felt led to pray for Keith by pushing him up to Christ. I had never heard of such a prayer, but I closed my eyes, and in my mind moved behind my friend and pushed him upward. Although Keith outweighed me by 50 pounds, he felt as light as if we were standing in neck deep water. I think I must have pushed him farther up, each time, until I saw his head nearly touch the border of Christ’s robe, but the image of the Lord did not move….at all. The next time I prayed, I pushed Keith up a little farther. Later, his head must have reached the level of the Lord’s waist.
On Saturday morning, I woke up at 6:45 a.m. with the urge to pray, so I slipped out of bed and crept downstairs, through the dining room and onto the deck, to kneel in the west corner, with my knees on the decking, and my head against the brick of the wall.
This time, in my prayer, I pushed Keith up, until his head was almost level with the Master’s chest.
“Whoa!” I said, as the image moved … His arms reached out to Keith … and hugged him.
“I was not expecting this,” I said, as surprise and fear over took me; along with the absolute assurance that the Lord had made Keith well.
I stopped praying and stumbled away.
On Monday Keith came to class completely well. I never told him — or anyone else — what happened that Saturday morning; no one would believe me if I had, and even if they did, I was way too afraid to pray that way again.
Fast forward to March 2019, and a book called “Christ Centered Therapy,” which describes a clinical procedure called “Theophostics,” in which Christ is invited into a hurtful memory. The following information is based on this procedure.
After a prayer reminding each other of the absolute authority, power, compassion and loving kindness of Christ, the therapist asked, “Lord Jesus, take Shirley to a memory you want to deal with today,” then paused and said “Lord, you are in complete control, and we welcome you.”
“Shirley,” she said softly, “let yourself go where Jesus takes you.”
In a few seconds, a memory came to Shirley, in which she saw her daddy coming home from the war, picking her up, and hugging her, then putting her down and hugging her mother. Shirley had believed for 50 years that her father had totally rejected her when he put her down.
After allowing Shirley to deal with being “alone, surprised, unhappy, and left out,” for a while, the therapist asked her how it felt to be left out. Shirley rated the strength of the emotion as 10 out of 10.
“Now let’s ask Jesus to come into the memory with you,” the therapist said. Shirley agreed.
Pretty soon, the Lord came … gave Shirley a big hug, then lifted her up to the same height as her parents.
As the memory unfolded, Jesus spoke: “Shirley, you matter. Your daddy loves you, and your mommy, too. Now He is telling her he loves her too….the same way he told you.”
After a while the therapist asked if there was anything else in the memory that caused Shirley pain.
“No,” she said. The Lord had taken the power of the memory.
The therapist thanked Him for his grace and mercy, and asked that He continue to strengthen and protect Shirley. Then both of them opened their eyes, to recount the entire experience, and to fix it in Shirley’s mind.
Of all the ways to interrupt the flow of hurtful thoughts, I like the direct intervention of the Master best, who is the only one I would trust my mind to. I have ordered a book on theophostics to learn more; maybe someday I’ll try that 80s prayer again.