THE CHURCH THE POLITICS and YOUR MIND

I first felt the thread in the dust of the Kalahari. Not a metaphor—grit between the teeth, the kind that stays for days. I sat cross-legged on baked earth, a hundred yards from a fire that was not for warmth, and I watched a man’s soul leave his body through his nostrils.

The shaman was old. His skin was cracked like a riverbed. His eyes were milky with age. He had been drumming for hours, a pulse that seemed to come from the ground rather than his hands. Women sang, high and keening. Children watched. Men waited.

Then his body jerked. His head snapped back. His breath came in gasps. His eyes rolled until only the whites showed. He was gone. Something else used his throat.

I had read about trance. Anthropology. Neuroscience. Psychology. Reading is not seeing. Seeing is not feeling. The vibration in my chest, the cold sweat on my neck, the certainty that something unexplained was happening—that I had not prepared for.