CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, June 4, 2023 – When I was 16, God in his wisdom had me play Mary Magdalene in the musical “Godspell”. It was a high school production with all the missed cues, corniness, nerves, and occasional flashes of brilliance that characterize such productions. The lanky, long-haired cool guy who played Jesus was 19 and in a heavy metal band at the time (he’s a preacher now) and most of us in the troupe were either hard-core or closet atheists.

So there I was, playing Jesus’ closest female disciple while not even believing in God, let alone Jesus. But God, of course, knew exactly what he was doing in placing me in that role. I thought I was chosen to play Mary Magdalene because the character’s solo was more spoken than sung (I’m not a talented singer, to put it mildly) and God let me believe that at the time. Now I know otherwise.

Our conversions, when they happen, are sudden and monumental. The day I was born-again, I woke up an atheist and went to bed a Jesus freak. The actual instant of conversion occurs outside of time, in the eternal realm of God’s Kingdom, and involves the exorcising of the world’s spirits (demons) and the inrushing of God’s Holy Spirit. For me, the conversion happened while my body was lying dead on a beach in Australia and my soul was communing with God. As instantaneous and definitive as my conversion was, it was the fulfillment of a process that had started many years before and of which I was only made aware after I was reborn.

In the musical “Godspell”, Mary Magdalene sings (actually, kind of purrs) a song called “Turn Back, O Man”. I knew all the words to that song even before I auditioned for the part, because when I was 10 years old, I’d won a “Godspell” album as a prize on the radio (for being Caller Number 4! Yay!). I used to play the album on my little brown and white portable record player and then when I got older, I’d play it on my parent’s big wooden floor-model stereo, full blast. I knew all the songs in “Godspell” by heart, which you may or may not know is based on the book of Matthew, with a few of David’s psalms thrown in for good measure.

God must have had a good laugh watching me sing his Word off-key but enthusiastically as I warbled along with the album. He must have smiled the kind of smile that only God can smile, because I was a proud hard-core atheist at the time, having been removed from religion class when I was 7 after so disturbing the nun by something I’d said to her, she didn’t want to teach the class anymore with me in it. But there I was, a little nun-disturbing self-professed atheist, reciting Jesus’ teachings verbatim without realizing what I was reciting. Like I said, it must have made God smile to see me singing his Word, and then a few years later to watch me playing Jesus’ friend, Mary Magdalene. By exposing me to “Godspell”, God wasn’t so much priming me for my later conversion as he was providing me with a radically different perspective of Jesus than the mainstream church and society were offering.

And he was planting his seeds.

As farmers and gardeners well know, not every seed that’s planted germinates. And of those seeds that do germinate, not every sprout survives, and of those sprouts that do survive, not every plant makes it to fruition, and of those plants that do make it to fruition, not every fruiting plant continues to bear fruit. Farmers and gardeners also know about weeds and pests and watering and fertilizing, and about the heartache of frost and drought and blight. Some even know that some seeds take a long time to germinate – sometimes years, hidden away in the dirt and dung – and then yet more years, post-germination, to grow to strength and maturity. I was such a seed, trodden down and covered in filth and sludge, but God knew I was there and he never stopped watching over me. He never stopped moving things thisaway or thataway (though never interfering with my free will), all the time time betting I’d some day say “YES!” to him, while the devil kept on betting I’d say “No”.

From this blog, you can see who won that bet.

I took “Godspell” with me in spirit during my hitchhiking travels in my late teens and early twenties, singing God’s Word as a comfort (without realizing I was singing God’s Word) when things got really bad, which you can imagine they did with increasing frequency for an atheist who believed she was a law unto herself.

What I mean to say here is that we start our journey toward turning back to God long before we actually turn. And it may look like we’re moving farther and father away from God, when in fact we’re starting to go through the refining process. Refining involves burning, sometimes with heat and flames, sometimes with chemicals. It’s a crude and dangerous process that leaves enormous amounts of waste behind. But it’s how God makes us fit for his Kingdom by sloughing off all the worldly impurities we’ve accumulated living life our way rather than his.

But I’m here now, in God’s Kingdom. I turned back. I’ve arrived. It took a lot of behind-the-scenes shifting and digging and weeding and sloughing on God’s part, but I turned back. I finally said “YES!” to God. The song that I sang all those years ago as Mary Magdalene in my high school’s production of “Godspell”, I now know I was singing to myself. I was preaching to myself. I was begging myself.

I was warning myself.

I now sing that song to you.

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Turn back, O man

Forswear thy foolish ways

Old now is earth

And none may count her days

Yet thou, her child

Whose head is crowned with flames

Still will not hear

Thine inner God proclaim

Turn back, O man (mmm, I like that)

Turn back, O man (Handle with care)

Turn back, O man (can you take it?)

Forswear thy foolish ways

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Earth might be fair

And all men glad and wise

Age after age their tragic empires rise

Built while they dream

And in that dreaming weep

Would man but wake

From out his haunted sleep

Turn back, O man…

Turn back, O man…

Turn back, O man…

Forswear thy foolish ways

************

Earth shall be fair

And all her people one

Not till that hour

Shall God’s whole will be done

Now, even now

Once more from Earth to sky

Peals forth in joy

Man’s old undaunted cry

Earth shall be fair

And all her people one

************

C’mere Jesus, I got sump’n to show ya!

Turn back, O man

Forswear thy foolish ways

Old now is earth

And none may count her days

Yet thou, her child

Whose head is crowned with flames

Still will not hear

Thine inner God proclaim

Turn back, O man

Turn back, O man

Forswear thy foolish ways!