Confused Spirits

My mobile rang just as I was leaving work. "Could you come and help me with an exorcism?" "When?" "Well as soon as possible, say 7pm.?" I don't get many of those calls (not being a specialist in exorcisms you'll understand) but when a brother priest asks you do go it's kind of hard to say 'no'.

Just before you get too excited, there were no stakes, large crucifixes, or hauting screams, just a troubled household - a world traveller come home to die, the live-in nurse and a dutiful son - seeking peace. My colleague and I broughts Biblical words of comfort, we said our prayers, we spinkled water, exchanges a few smiles and left. Walking home I began to wonder - what was there?, what have we done? and might my Nigerian colleague have done things quite differently? I believe in spirits - especially the one I call Father - and I know that they can be troublesome when we shut God out of the situation. But what really interested me was the cross-cultural dynamics of the pneumatology we talked through and prayed in that simple home tonight. The householder had spent much of his life in China, the nurse who first observed the 'phenomenon' was from the Philippines and the second disturbed nurse who prayed with us tonight was from Zimbabwe. Add to that a son from leafy Richmond and priests from Canada and Suffolk and you have some fairly interesting possibilities in terms of understanding the realities and challenges of the 'spirit world'.

But it worked - God understood, he cared, he spoke and his Spirit is truth.