A New Level of Craziness

My life has settled into a calm, if not dull, routine. I’ve gotten into the habit of playing it safe. I probably got a lot of the desire for adventure out of my system back in my Asbury days.

You might wonder how much craziness I could get into at a small Christian university nestled in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky. I’ll start by bringing you some of the escapades my buddies and I pulled off in the great outdoors.

Many Saturdays were spent at Jessamine Creek Gorge. Walking along the creek, one might easily miss the cave entrance in one of the cliffs above. After all, there’s enough beauty at eye level to make the four- mile walk from campus worth it. And even if you got word from a fellow student or a “townie” of the amazing cavern, there was no guarantee you would be able to climb the rock wall between the creek bed and the entrance.

Some buddies and I were, however, adept enough to gain access.  During our freshman year, we often went spelunking. The system went back for hundreds of yards and encompassed five levels.  Right off the bat (no pun intended), we had to pull ourselves through the 30-inch-high first level with our elbows. The floor was thick squishy mud. I am sure with enough rain that level would totally flood. One time we shared that passage with a cauldron of bats as they flew out at dusk, and we made sure we were never in the cave during one of their mass exits again.

Spider-Man would be proud of our footwork navigating up 20 feet through a wide crack in the ceiling to reach the third level. To gain access to the fifth level, we had to be hoisted up to squeeze through a circular opening in the ceiling of the fourth. Water rushing through the hole added an additional challenge, but at least we were able to wash off some of the mud we had accumulated earlier in our tour. We made it all the way up to the fifth level only a time or two. It was well over an hour from the entrance.

You may think we hit crazy when we crawled through the mud in level one.  But it gets worse, with a little stupid thrown in. We took no extra flashlights or any other survival gear. We could never have navigated out in the dark, especially from the upper levels. Let alone ferry somebody out who slipped and broke something on one of the cliffs inside.

Not all of our antics took place below ground level. Some were 300 feet above the Kentucky River on a train bridge. It wasn’t enough of a thrill to simply cross High Bridge on the narrow cat walk, which has long since been closed. A few of us walked out on the beams underneath the tracks. We didn’t walk nearly all the way across the river, but we went out far enough to make me shake my head as I sit here now recalling it.

We could also be crazy without even leaving our dorm. If we weren’t pulling off a prank we were thinking one up. I’m surprised we had any time left to study.

One of the best stunts took place three rooms down the hall from me.  Both occupants were gone for the weekend, so a group of us convinced the monitor to let us into their room. We constructed a mountain from hundreds of empty pop cans. When the first resident returned and opened the door about 2 AM, a string attached to the door knob pulled out a key can from the bottom of Mt. Dew (sorry). You could hear the crash all over the second floor. I’m glad I didn’t room directly below it.

They left the cans on the floor all week and kicked them around, especially during the wee hours of the morning to wake up everyone else.  I love people with a sense of humor.

Most pranks weren’t that elegant, though. If you forgot to lock your door while you were napping, you might get awakened by an evil monster mask yelling in your face. Or you may wake up with your hand soaking in a bowl of warm water.

The bathroom was dangerous too. You might get baptized by pouring as you sat in the stall. Or worse, if you didn’t check the toilet seat before you sat down, you could end up adorned with a horseshoe-shaped coating of black shoe polish. One of the coolest indoor stunts, though, happened not in the bathroom, but in the chapel!

We were required to attend three services a week, the last one occurring at eight on Saturday morning. It was all a lot of us could do just to get there and stay awake. This Saturday chapel started out like all the rest. A music student was playing a familiar classical piece on the huge pipe organ as the last of us were sleepwalking to our assigned seats.

The bell rang as the organist’s deft fingers continued to bring out the best from those majestic pipes. It was then I felt a subtle shift in the atmosphere in the huge auditorium. The classical hymn that we all knew was morphing. Maybe it was the Holy Spirit . . . or just an exquisite prank by the music student.

The piece started getting a rhythm that it never had before. Nobody knew what was coming, but I noticed a few students swaying in their seats. The beat became more distinct, and the tune more familiar. We started staring at each other as we began to realize what was happening. The organist had slowly and seamlessly bridged the sacred song into “Hey Jude”! The climax came when a host of us began singing: Na, na, na, nananana . . .

The opening hymn may have been a little sacrilegious, it certainly wasn’t in the program, but it was unforgettable. I know the organist got demerits, probably a bunch. That’s why I’m not mentioning his name here. If he happens to read this maybe he’ll identify himself in one of the comments.

I think it’s fair to say that 1969 was a crazy time at Asbury. One might even say turbulent, as it became a year of increased division among students and between students and faculty. Just like in the rest of the nation outside of campus, authority was being questioned. The atmosphere and behavior on campus made simple dorm pranks or the “Hey Jude” surprise seem like child’s play.

One example is when students used snowballs to break out windows in rival dorms. Campus security, and even the dean, feared getting out of their cars to approach the buildings. Likely they would have encountered a hail of snowballs themselves. Things were as ugly as it sounds.

I found out later that some students were praying for peace over the campus. I wasn’t breaking windows out, but I wasn’t one of the ones praying either.

One day weirdness of a completely different kind took place, in the same auditorium that featured the cover of a Beatles song a few months before. It took place on February 3, 1970.

Because of a last minute change in the chapel program that day, there would be a student testimony service. I figured it would probably be the praying students who would participate. It might be a little boring, but it would be a nice change from the typical program.

To everyone’s surprise, among the first people who went forward was one of the most popular kids on campus. Not one we expected to be involved in this service. And definitely not a prayer warrior. He started by apologizing to the faculty and student body for his attitude. His voice cracked. Sleepy eyes widened, his every word drawing attention. And I thought “Hey Jude” had changed the atmosphere in this room!

More students followed, certainly not students with the reputation of being spiritual giants. A line formed. The altar filled. Students and faculty alike started to sense that this place was ground zero of a spiritual explosion. The service went on for a solid week. And it was too good to stay in the building.

Now here’s me at my craziest ever. The following weeks and months, I went out on witness teams to tell people what had happened. Mostly perfect strangers. This wasn’t me. I’m an introvert who socially distanced way before it became normal. Most of my activities up to then were with a small group of close friends. This was more frightening than stepping out on an iron beam on High Bridge. If there was a level six in the cave system, this was it.

One evening one of the campus cool guys stopped his motorcycle beside me. Before the revival I had been way out of his social league, but now he asked if I wanted to ride with him to UK and share the revival at a basketball court. I can’t say I wasn’t nervous about going, but Something trumped my fear and I went. Another time I went with a small group to Lexington Mall to talk to people. They might not have come that evening to shop for God, but some were saved right there in the building. A mall cop came over to check on us, and he got saved too!

With true recklessness and courage, students traveled to churches across the country. We spoke and people responded. But it wasn’t us they were responding to. One weekend I went to the church where my dad ministered. I spoke for five or ten minutes on a last-minute devotional I threw together while traveling overnight in the back seat of a car. I think it was something about George Harrison and his song “My Sweet Lord”—not real theological—but apparently it didn’t matter what I, or any of the other students who went out on the teams, said. I didn’t even get to finish. The long altar at South Bellaire Methodist filled two rows deep with people seeking God. Dad stood in the back shaking his head, dumbfounded. He had ministered to the church for two years and no one had come forward.

I doubt I’ll be going back to the cave. I’ll never return to the bridge beams. And I won’t be scaring my friends with monster masks. Their hearts probably couldn’t take it.

But I still get a kick out of “My Sweet Lord” and “Hey Jude.” They both take me back to the days of the great Asbury revival. I don’t know if there will ever be another one, but if there is I won’t be able to resist heading back, even without survival gear. Crazy or not.

Feature image by Mohamed Nuzrath from Pixabay