Linemen for God
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Two days after we posted the story of the visions from the two Anishinaabe medicine men, Brad was taken to a spiritual classroom. He dreamed he was in South Dakota, sleeping in the home of an old friend and Lakota medicine man known for conducting the Yuwipi spirit calling ceremony. Here is Brad’s report:
Some people were sleeping in the bedroom sprawled across the bed and others were on the living room floor. It was like looking back at the past when I often hung out in such places. In the dream, I woke up just as my medicine friend, who was sleeping next to me, also awakened. He got up and walked into the other room. I then started to float above the scene. Without thinking, I wholeheartedly began to sing the song, “Wichita Lineman.” Written by Jim Webb and recorded by Glen Campbell in 1968, Rolling Stone called this “the first existential country song” and British music journalist Stuart Maconie was so excited about its melody that he deemed it “the greatest pop song ever composed.” Here are the well-known lyrics I sang in the dream:
I am a lineman for the county
And I drive the main road
Searchin’ in the sun for another overload
I hear you singin’ in the wire,
I can hear you through the whine
And the Wichita lineman is still on the line
I know I need a small vacation
But it don’t look like rain
And if it snows that stretch down south won’t ever stand the strain
And I need you more than want you,
And I want you for all time
And the Wichita lineman is still on the line
I woke up filled with emotion. I realized that the song’s words also apply to someone taking care of the ropes or lines to God—the power lines and telephone lines that connect us to the one above. This song was a hit in 1968 and is still loved by millions. People can hear its deep longing. Glen Campbell said he burst into tears the first time he heard it. I laid there in the dark feeling the vibratory power of the song inside me and used this inner stirring to pray for friends, relatives, students, and those in need.
After falling asleep again, I was soon filled with another song, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” The wave of emotion woke me up and I was even more invigorated than before. I remembered the time I was in a bar at the El Paso airport and found myself sitting next to the music celebrity, Glen Campbell. He told me his life story as a celebrated and awarded singer, guitarist, songwriter, television host, and actor. He was drinking a soda pop as he told me how his life later was ruined by alcoholism.Then he proceeded to offer his personal testimony of how Jesus was the friend who saved him from utmost despair. He sang a line of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” There was no one else in that bar except the bartender. At that time only a handful of people in our culture knew I had become a spiritual lineman, and in that moment I was talking to the man everyone knew as the singer of “Wichita Lineman.” That was a night to remember—Glen Campbell and I discussing Jesus in El Paso as two linemen for God. It felt surreal and every time I hear Campbell’s music, I remember that the rags to riches superstar found a true friend in Jesus.
Years later when I was living with the Shakers of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, I met a remarkable woman named Mother Samuel. She knew firsthand what the Bushman doctors experienced at the height of sacred ecstasy. Though the Bushmen speak of “ropes,” she and others familiar with ecstatic spirituality in the Caribbean speak of seeing “lines,” like power lines or telephone lines. One afternoon while sitting on her front porch drinking iced tea, Mother Samuel told me that she dreamed of working on these lines and repairing the broken ones. Sometimes she would find a burned out light bulb and have to go replace it. She was a St. Vincent lineman. The Bushmen also dream of repairing the broken ropes and strengthening the thin ropes they find in dreams. They are Kalahari linemen.
Now is the time to reveal that shamans, healers, and mystics are not what people have been told they are—soul retrievers, soul savers, fixers, curers, magicians, miracle workers, spirit mediators, and the like. They are linemen who help connect folks to higher power when you or someone else is in need.
It’s all about the lines, the ropes, and the hookup to wonder working power and the telephone operator who can also perform a spiritual operation on you or give you a song or two. Did you know that when the wind blows across a power line, the line whistles like an Aeolian harp? The same can happen to your cord to God if you get high enough in the air to feel the holy wind blowing. When you hear the singing in the wire, the power of the song is what enables you to repair the lines. Then you, like the rhinestone cowboy who got to Phoenix in time to rise again, can truly proclaim, “I am a lineman for the county and I drive the main road.”
Take us home, Glen:
-The Keeneys, March 28, 2019