My Experience of Praying in Tongues, and the Baptism in the Spirit

 When you are tired and downhearted, and in a bad mood, if you are a blogger with an audience, it is vital not to write before praying. (I am not one of those bloggers who has a stack, alas. I write, revise, post.)

And how do I find myself praying when I am tired and low?

In tongues.

Yes, I am mildly Charismatic, though this may not be obvious from my blog.

* * *

How did I land up praying in tongues?

Well, 30ish years ago, when I was 17, I was visiting my grandmother in Mangalore, a pretty Catholic seacoast town on the west coast of India, where both my grandparents and Roy’s were born.

And there was a visiting Spanish priest called Marcellino Iragui who was running a Charismatic retreat.

It was a little like the Alpha course. We went through forgiveness, repentance, renouncing occult involvements, and on the last evening, the priest was to pray for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Well, I drank it all in like mead. Not so my father, who was amused, and a trifle bored, and flatly refused to take me to the Charismatic Crusade for another day.

* * *

And so I asked a friend who knew the priest to introduce me, and asked for the Baptism in the Holy Spirit there and then.

(I’ve have an instinctive distaste for rules--Anita Antinomian, my friend Paul calls me--and it amuses me that even in this holy encounter, I sought to jump the queue and do it my own way.)

“Is she hungry?” he asked my friend, Joyce Fernandes. “Yes,” she assured him, having no idea at all. (Indian women can be very nice!)

And so we went through the theory--tongues, gifts of the spirit, fruits of the spirit—and then, he laid his hands on me, and prayed for the Baptism of the Spirit, having me repeat after him.

When he came to, “Lord, please give me the gift of tongues,” I interrupted him.

“I don’t want that,” I said. “It would be too embarrassing. My family would tease me.”

“You can’t pick and choose among the gifts of God,” he said severely.

And so we prayed. I felt nothing. I guess I was both disappointed and relieved.

I rejoined my father. “So are you now a Charismatic?” he said, amused by the whole business. “Have you the gift of tongues?”

“No,” I assured him.

* * *

    

Well, I spoke too soon. I woke that night with rushing, gushing joy, a river threatening to break the bounds of my personality. It was overwhelming: joy so seismic, it was akin to pain.  

I knelt by the side of my bed, and prayed in tongues, praising God for the beauty of the world, for himself, the strange, barbarous-sounding language bursting out of me.

I prayed in tongues, and I prayed with my mind, in rapture, in sentiments and words I had never used before, in English or the spirit-language, thanking God for his incomprehensible goodness, which I suddenly perceived.

* * *

And well, that language never left me. A month later, I was in Mother Teresa’s convent, as an aspirant, training to be a nun. I asked her in a one-on-one meeting, “Mother, what do you think about speaking in tongues?”

“One tongue is enough for a woman,” she said brusquely.

And that was that!

* * *

Well, but I still prayed in tongues—remember that Anita Antinomian bit?--and have done so for the last 30ish years.

Tense: I find myself praying in tongues. Anxious: Are we going to catch the plane, get round the bureaucratic no-men--I find myself praying in tongues.

And when my spirit soars, swells, for no good reason, I find myself again praying in tongues.

When I am unreasonably happy and exhilarated in my garden, or by the seashore, I find myself praying in ecstatic tongues. And, more restrained but slowly coursing into joy, I pray in tongues when I am sad, stressed or overwhelmed.

It is the greatest mood-changer I know. The greatest shortcut to joy.

·      * *

And how did this language of my own come? Out of the blue, hours after I first heard about it--by the laying on of hands.

And it sounds rather ugly to my years, barbaric even. It’s not Greek, or Latin, or French, languages I love. Perhaps it’s a cave man tongue long forgotten.

And that’s just as well, for if I spoke Old French, I would have been tempted to show off about my lovely spirit language. Instead, I have kept quiet about it, and prayed quietly as God meant, no doubt, for the last thirty years.

People say that one’s spirit language develops as we mature spiritually. Well, I have matured spiritually (ask Roy what an angel I am when he is impossible. Well, sometimes, at least), but my language has stayed basically static.

   * * *

Rejoice always, pray constantly, in everything give thanks. How on earth is that possible?

Well, praying in tongues is one way. I pray when I go on my 40 minute very slow runs, and flag in 15 minutes. Or do manual work. Or in the winter when the night finds me too tired to read or write, but not quite tired enough to sleep. Too tired to pray coherently, but not tired enough to fall asleep.

And then the Spirit, left within my spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing my inheritance, prays in sounds without any words I understand, and God hears His intercession, and so I know that all will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well.