An Agnostic in Bismarck Healing Rooms

[This story originally appeared in the July 2011 issue of Prairie Independent]

There are several reasons a healing might not work, Bob Copenhaver, tells me. “Sometimes roadblocks have to be dealt with. Roadblocks like unforgiveness.”

But here in Bismarck’s Healing Rooms, the walls are papered in testimonials from people for whom the healing has worked.

“I walked in limping; I walked out not limping from the Healing Room” reads one of the hundreds of yellow sheets tacked to the wall. Another reads, “I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma … the doctor was totally amazed at how fast the chemo worked.” And so on.

It doesn’t always work the first time, Copenhaver is saying. I might have to return. Plus, not truly forgiving others might not be my biggest barrier to healing. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

This is my first time at the Healing Rooms of the Northern Plains.  Lola and Bob Copenhaver opened the nonprofit in north Bismarck eight years ago, and today they work with a team of more than 30 intercessors, volunteers who pray for healing on the behalf of others.

“A wide range of people walk in,” says Lola. “We might get someone who just wants a blessing to someone with three-weeks to live.”

They don’t just walk in either. Prayer requests arrive on the phone or by email. At times, intercessors travel to see individuals at home, in hospitals, or in residential facilities as well.

“What if you’re not a Christian?” I ask.

Lola cautions that non-believers could lose their healing, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t welcome. “We’ll pray for anyone,” she says.

Soon after, she brings me a single page, like an intake form. I fill in my name, address, and phone. It asks about my church affiliation, and whether I’ve been born again or baptized in the Holy Spirit. I decide to answer honestly. Under Prayer Need, I request help for this hip pain. The rest of the page is basic liability—I understand this is not professional medical care, counseling, or therapy. I sign my name, turn in my paper, and then wait alone in the room with all the testimonials on the wall.

Bob and Lola Copenhaver, Healing Rooms of the Northern Plains directors

Nobody gets paid at the Healing Rooms. According to tax filings, not even the Copenhavers make anything for providing this service. Intercessors work here “for the joy of being used” as God heals through them, says Lola. Intercessors may be retired or working, young or old. “We’d love to see some teenagers volunteer, too,” she adds.

Becoming an intercessor requires producing a note from one’s pastor or other faith leader followed by classroom training.

Volunteers come from many denominations and churches according to the liability statement I just signed. “Lutherans, Baptists, Catholics …” Lola lists some of the faiths. But the history of Healing Rooms suggests their origins are largely Pentecostal.

Bismarck’s Healing Rooms of the Northern Plains is affiliated with the International Association of Healing Rooms in Spokane, WA. Launched in 1999, the Healing Rooms Ministry drew inspiration from the 1910s Healing Rooms run by John G. Lake, also in Spokane. Lake’s team of more than 100 trained intercessors participated in over 100,000 healings between 1915 and 1920. Today, intercessors pray out of 1400 Healing Rooms around the world, according to their own literature.

My intercessors are Val and Bob. Val stands behind my left shoulder murmuring prayers I can’t quite hear, while Bob directs most of the healing. I hold my hands out while Bob smears ointment on my upturned palms and forehead. Then silence while Bob listens for guidance from God.

Soon, Bob asks me to sit in a chair. Squatting in front of me, he lifts my ankles level with my knees. That’s when he sees it—one of my legs is ¼ inch shorter than the other. Val sees it too, I think.

I am the only one who doesn’t see it, but maybe I see it. I allow that his hands wrapped around my ankles aren’t even, so maybe that means ….

We pray.

Well, Bob and Val pray. I close my eyes because I don’t know what else I am supposed to be doing.

When the prayer is over, Bob notes that my legs evened out almost the moment he began praying.

I admit, my hip isn’t throbbing at that moment…though it doesn’t feel healthy exactly.

Bob says God has healed me, but as others have said previously, I am at risk to lose those results. Bob says Satan may try to take away my healing. And that reminds Bob of a bigger problem—my faith. He picks up my form and verifies the information: “You haven’t been baptized? You haven’t accepted Jesus as your Savior?”

Bob and Val are ready to fix that too, but I decline. Bob says my healing will be harder to maintain, but to their credit, Bob and Val don’t pressure me. Instead, they say a final blessing, thank God for bringing me there that day, and hand me pamphlets describing the value of baptism and speaking in tongues.

We hug and I thank them for their generosity and volunteerism.

James Randi, magician and skeptic, says it’s one of the most common tricks in the faith-healing repertoire, leg lengthening.  He documents it in his book, The Faith Healers, and in numerous YouTube videos where you can see faith healers from decades past lengthening legs and then Randi replicating the illusion.

Closer to home, Marv Mutzenberger, Bismarck State College Religion Professor, says he has doubts about “transcendental magic” too.

A Lutheran clergyman in Bismarck since 1960, Mutzenberger says he doesn’t discount the possibility of faith healing, but he’s never seen it. “The only healing I’ve seen that works is medicine, eating right, taking care of your body—and your mind.”

A few days later, I visit my physician about the hip pain, which still bothers me off and on. She takes x-rays and says she’ll call. Her assistant phones just as I sit down to write this story:

“The doctor looked at the x-ray. She doesn’t see anything wrong.”

North Dakota License Plate Ideas

The North Dakota license plate is supposed to raise awareness for the Peace Garden, I suppose.

The Peace Garden State

But I don’t think it’s working. There simply are not enough of us to get the message out. For example in 2007, the politicos made an example of the Peace Garden when they were upset about earmarks and pork spending.  Rep. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said, “No one in America seriously believes that … peace gardens … are more important national priorities than bridge and road repairs.”

Speak for yourself, Senator. The International Peace Garden is like a National Park to me, but we don’t call it a national park because Canada pays for part of it.  And there are some touching monuments donated by various other countries. I’ll blog more about that later, though.

Traveling around, I thought, then, what SHOULD our license plate represent if not the Peace Garden?

I started thinking about state pride. I started thinking about attention from the national media and our quiet Northern European heritage. Then I started thinking about all those poor states and countries going bankrupt everywhere.

I came up with this idea:

Quietly minding our own business state

And I was pretty happy with that until I went downtown Bismarck last night. I walked all over. Kuntsler would call it a horror:  Buildings with blank walls facing the sidewalk, 1960s urban renewal. There’s  nothing to look at. Nothing to discover. It’s bad.

So, without naming names, I talked to some people who explained why this is such in downtown Bismarck and, without going into too much detail…

I have a new idea for our state license plate.

The don't make me walk state

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Dear Lenny & Susan: My 4 reasons you should road trip North Dakota

[My old Fort Collins friends have said politely, in the comments of this Bismarck blog, that they might come for a visit...someday. Lenny is a folk music DJ, trolley driver, and bird watcher. Susan is a hiker and lookout tower historian/preservation activist. I know nobody ever vacations here, but okay, here's my best shot at luring friends to Bismarck and all of North Dakota. If you write and say YOU might come here, I'll find four reasons for you to visit too.]

Dear Lenny and Susan,

Here are my 4 reasons you should road trip North Dakota:

1. A lookout Susan has not yet visited. It’s just feet away from the geographical center of North America. That is, the farthest you can be from the ocean. Susan, can you even resist clicking through to see this full size?

2. The potholes. Thousands of vernal pools and sloughs all along the central flyway. Surely you will add a duck to your life list.

3. The view from atop the State Capitol. See Bismarck the way the local turkey vultures do.

4. The Metisfest at the International Peace Garden August 26-29. I just got back from hanging out at the Peace Garden with a bunch of Canadian and Chippewa fiddlers, and I can vouch. They are the coolest people in the world.

There is also a trolley near Bismarck. The Missouri River. And as an added bonus: If you are here on a Sunday, I know a place where they will speak English at church:

What do you say?

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Lost and found fence

On the south side of Bismarck, on 12th street before you get to University of Mary, they take interesting trash and nail it to fence posts. My friend Sue says, “I pass by almost daily on my way home and always look for something new.”

Sue calls it the Lost and Found Fence. Which I think is perfect.

We have rural trash on display on my end of town too. We have acres and acres of it right across the street from the new Super Wal-Mart up here on the north side.

My son and I drive by it most days. We don’t really look for something new each day. Instead we argue about who should clean it up. I have my opinions:

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Hazelton

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. –Oscar Wilde

When I was blogging in Fort Collins,  I was concerned with problems caused by gentrification, new urbanism, and development in general–the town seemed to be racing to shut out its working class and hide signs of its agricultural past.

But now I’m in North Dakota,  and little of that matters.  Here, we worry about  losing historic resources, not to development but to neglect. And we worry about losing population and declining property values as the young people move away to places like, well, Fort Collins.

In fact, towns worry about it a lot here.  I started learning about “brain drain” reading this fascinating blog out of South Dakota. Then, in my first week here, it became front page news when a Miami family gave up on Hazelton, North Dakota.

The short version of the story is this: Hazelton, a town of about 250, offered free land and even some money to anyone who would settle there. The town’s one taker, a family from Florida, stayed for 4 years and then decided to leave. The Tristani’s cited small-town cliquishness among their reasons for leaving. People were unfriendly; they gave dirty looks and talked about you behind your back. There was even some talk that Mr. Tristani had been slipped a mickey at the bar.

The AP story appeared well beyond North Dakota’s borders, and everyone was taking sides. The town was a bunch of unworldly, racist Germans. No. The Tristani’s were a bunch of gold chain-wearing city folk who underestimated the rigors of North Dakota life.

Who knows? But for our weekend something-to-do,  John and I drove to Hazelton.  It’s about 50 miles south of Bismarck…just down the Lawrence Welk highway.

Lawrence Welk highway leads to Strasburg, ND--Birthplace of Grandma's favorite entertainer.

The landscape is beautiful on a sunny February day, with rolling snow-covered prairie lightly spiced with stands of trees.

If you put Hazelton near a large town, it would be a primo candidate for gentrification. It’s a compact, walkable town of old houses with a bar, a gas station, and a coffee shop. And with Linton and Moffit more than 10 miles away,  you could say it’s got a green belt around it. But here,  half the houses are abandoned, and the sign says the coffee shop is only open for three hours in the morning–if it’s really open at all. There’s a gorgeous old school, but like everything else in North Dakota, it’s since been replaced by an uninteresting steel structure–the same construction they use for all 21st century barns, factories, etc.

I didn’t stay long, and I didn’t talk to anyone. But John saw a local he knew in the gas station.  ”We came to Hazelton because we’ve been reading about it in the paper,” John said.

“We don’t want to talk about it anymore,” the local said.

Okay. We won’t talk about it. But I will say this, Hazelton:  Having just come from 15 years of living, working, and volunteering in Fort Collins, I think there’s something to be said for living in a place so small that the world notices when you leave.

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Looking from the new school toward the Hazelton water tower.