Conversion, Chapter 1: Something To Live For

1.

I'll never forget the first time I was caught off guard and filled with the Holy Spirit, in the most unexpected of places.

In the way Augustine as a young man had fallen in with the Manichaeans, I was attracted to and adopted the Straight Edge life--a kind of monastic discipline of the underground hardcore music scene. 1990's Straight Edge hardcore was a reaction to the intoxicated nihilism of 1980's punk rock; its tenants rest on three main pillars--no alcohol, no drugs, no promiscuity--a kind of secular moral code. Adherents marked black X's on their hands as a sign of their discipline. Music was the religion, and Straight Edge was the praxis. It gave us something to live for.

It was 1997, my junior year of high school, and I was at a basement hardcore show at a church in Lansdale. Sets were fast and furious, adrenalin was pumping everywhere, the guttural energy intense. The crowd was drenched in sweat from moshing and panting when a bearded middle aged man came on stage.

He was a preacher, I assumed the pastor of the church where we were. He wasn't lame, and he had a few words to say, though I didn't remember what they were exactly. What I do remember was him extending his hand over the crowd, and praying.

I was not expecting this, nor did I sign up for this, but I also wasn't opposed to it. It's hard to describe, but as he prayed over the crowd I felt a kind of rush, like a wind or something--not physical, but in my spirit--and a tightening conviction that there was a kind of vague and unnamable void in me. It was Introduction to One's Own Sinfulness 101. The preacher invited anyone who wanted to learn more about Jesus after the show to talk to him. So I did.

I don't remember anything he said specifically, but he prayed over me and I started crying, which was weird. I can't describe it--I just knew I was a "sinner" like he said, though I didn't know what sin was, that that was really the foundation to build on, that nothing could really happen without laying that first stone down. He offered to follow up with me, and I gave him my phone number.

Back home, he did follow up a few days later by phone, and by then I had kind of shaken out of it and said I wasn't really interested but thank you anyway. Besides, I didn't want to have to explain any of this to my parents. A few days later I was back to normal and had forgotten about the whole thing. Until a few months later when I found myself in the wilderness of upstate Pennsylvania, lost, alone, and calling out to an unknown God for help.

[cont]