Demon possession has come a long way since the days of Linda Blair and The Exorcist. Back then, possession was a messy, visceral business rife with fluids and ejaculations of one sort or another. For average folks confronting a demon, sturdy raingear came in just as handy as a Bible and Holy Water. These days, demons do a better job of blending in. For example, on the TV show Supernatural, the demons who take over the bodies of hapless humans appear to bathe regularly between bouts of evil. Nevertheless, one constant remains for demons: They do evil. Perhaps they slit the throats of schoolchildren, or take a machine gun to a crowd of fair-goers. Whatever the specifics, they are action-oriented, full-throttle evil-doers.
Consequently, I was surprised to learn that my mother is possessed by demons. She has twice been informed of this fact by fellow church members. (She’s lost count of how many times she’s been accused of not being a Christian.) Mama first experienced the sacred when she was seven years old. No one in her family had ever taken her to church or Sunday school, but one summer day, she was lying on her back under a tree in her front yard when she looked up through the canopy of green leaves and saw glimpses of the blue sky. At that moment, she knew that God was there with her. So she hied herself off to Sunday school with a neighbor family to, as she describes it, “find out what the sacred was about.” ...
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