Jaci Dawn

We are in the midst of a pandemic and race riots, the latter of which remind me of growing up in the 1960’s and watching Los Angeles burn on the television. I am reminded of Angels. My Angels.

The Bible tells us that Angels can come to us disguised in Hebrews 13.2: Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

I have met some of those angels and like the angel in The Shack by William P. Young, they have taken surprising form.

1977 I am traveling north from Louisville, Kentucky on the midnight bus. My destination on this leg of my trip is Toronto, Canada. I have no real plan, just my back pack and my heart. I will go through the three C’s of Ohio in the dark: Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland. I am 20 and alone.

A man boards the bus in Cincinnati and sits a few rows ahead of me, in the aisle. He keeps looking back at me and I avoid eye contact. The hairs on the back of my neck are working overtime. Even the hairs on my arms re pricked up. We stop briefly in Columbus, but no one gets off, only more get on. A little African-American woman gets on and sits down behind me somewhere. She doesn’t meet my eyes. She’s just about her business.

In Cleveland, we need to change buses and take a late dinner break. Everyone has to off-board. I am nervous as the man has been checking me out more frequently and he stares hard at the Cleveland bus station. I dilly dally getting off.

A soft dry hand touches my arm. “I seen that man. You follow me straight to the women’s restaurant like you know me.” She leads me off the bus and through the crowded bus station. We say nothing to each other and the man stares on last time as we disappear into the restroom.

There, the woman does her thing and I wait. We leave together, never touching. She scans the bus stop and nods. “You safe now.”

I never got her name, never touched her except for that first brief moment. I never saw the man again. She changed my life and I know it, want desperately to tell her thank you. She is gone.

Many years later, my friend comes to stay with me while her father is dying in a Portland area nursing home. My friend is broken and I am trying to be her strength. I drive her often to the nursing home to visit her father, going in with her every time but often feeling at odds about the experience.

On this day, there is a wizened African American woman in a wheel chair near the door My friend passes her, but she reaches out to me as I step by.

“You Pentecostal.” It’s not a question. It is a statement. She’s read my spirit as I walked past and I cannot deny to her that I am a Christian who has been ‘baptized in the Holy Spirit with the gift of speaking in tongues’ – I am Pentecostal.

She takes my hand and says, “Follow me.” I follow.

We go to her room which is in the basement. She only has a small window to the outside and it is in a well. I can’t tell you what the room looked like or anything else, because the minute we were in that cell of a room, she lifted her hands heavenward and began to call on the Holy Spirit. She spoke in tongues unlike anyone I have heard before or since. She sang. She praised God. Loudly. the entire nursing home could hear her. She was unashamed. She was glowing. She was touching the hem of Jesus and I was but a weak witness to the glory of her prayer and praise.

I did join in. I raised my hands. I felt the glory of God pass through that pitiful room. I knew I was bonding with someone but I couldn’t begin to tell why.

When she stopped, she told me she was the mother of a well-known Pentecostal Black preacher in North Portland. She knew me for who I was in the Spirit as soon as she saw me. She told me I was a prayer warrior. She blessed me as I left her room.

I never saw her again. My friend’s father passed and I had no reason to visit the nursing home. I had small children.

I feel her all the time. I feel her right now. She has her hands on the back of my neck and is speaking in tongues I don’t understand.

My angels. We are the same. These women formed me. They protected me. Sheltered me. Gifted me. And they are not the only ones – they are merely the ones who spring to my mind first. The others are there.