Talking in Tongues
I have been a spiritual adventurer for about thirty years now. I imagine myself an amateur Huston Smith, surely some of you religion scholars reading this have heard of him. Huston Smith not only wrote about the different religions of the world, he jumped in there with both feet, and tried them out. For instance he just didn’t write about Zen Buddhism for a college text, he studied Zen under a Zen Master. Similarly I have been to a church or worship place of just about every Christian denomination, including snake handlers, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, and Orthodox Christians. I have visited synagogues and mosques. I have also dabbled in the Eastern religions and have tried dozens of different meditation techniques, and currently have a hatha yoga and Chi Kung practice, which accompanies my meditation technique. Thus I call myself a spiritual adventurer.
In the late 1980’s I visited a large church, it is probably a “mega-church” today, that was in the Assembly of God denomination. There was a surprisingly number of young people there, had a large singles group, and at the time I was single, so this looked attractive. They also played “Christian Rock” at the service. This was something new and I found it refreshing after years of hymns written two and three hundred years ago that was the norm in “high church”. They also spoke in tongues.
