The last couple days have been brutal on the sleep and dystonia fronts, which delayed (and then canceled) last night’s musings. I’ll post it here instead, with a bit more meat on its bones, but this won’t be edited until tomorrow.
“Faith Healers and Blue Heelers,” a very silly post I worked on this afternoon, is unfinished; interruptions abounded online and off and the remainder of my night’s already spoken for. In case I don’t return to it (some Internet fascinations are more ephemeral than others), I’ll direct any interested parties to the video Crankenstein texted me that started it: Faith healer Cathy DeGraw praying for your thyroid health. This wasn’t the first DeGraw video she shared and probably won’t be the last, but its intensity reminded me of Terry Meeuwsen’s gory praise music lyrics and was good for a laugh.
It begins with a solemn “In the name of Jesus, I apply the blood of Jesus to your thyroid. I command the oil of the Holy Spirit to flow over your thyroid.” I’m not sure if it’s DeGraw’s voice or the fact that Crankenstein and I are rewatching King of the Hill for the 800th time before its continuation premieres on Hulu in August, but I heard it in Luanne’s voice and imagined a Manger Babies skit about thyroids. The specificity of DeGraw’s prayers, a skill she’ll teach you for a fee, is also amusing, but she offers another course that caught my eye: Freedom from Witchcraft, Control, and Jezebel Attacks.
If, like me, you already learned everything you needed to know about those subjects from A Smoky Mountain Christmas, you can hold onto your $29.99. But if you’ve not yet wrested control of your life from the grips of witches and jezebels, Cathy can equip you to “dominate spiritual battles and crush oppressive spirit [sic].” Here’s her pitch:
Not everyone has a deliverance minister to go to to set them free. We understand this and that’s why we created a top notch course. You will see teaching, me casting Demons out of people, and you can receive that same freedom. You will receive all my teaching notes, scripture, study questions and the same freedom that people received you will receive while at the same time being trained for deliverance ministry check out the deliverance intensive at training@kathydegrawministries.org
–Cathy DeGraw, thyroid protectress and demon evictor
This opens a can of worms that will require a deeper exploration of DeGraw’s course catalog when time permits. Maybe she can help us cast demons from Muriel once the vet is certain of what’s wrong.* Meanwhile, Crankenstein and I will stick to Synthroid for our thyroids.
I’ll save what this segued into (complaints about the A.C.L.U., an organization I once proudly belonged to, and unexpected praise for the New York Times) for a separate post later this week, because there’s not enough time tonight to artfully pivot from faith healing to this week’s Supreme Court ruling and questions of whether a deliverance minister is about to command a mass exodus from the LGBTQ+ community (and whether they’d do it with holy oil or Astroglide).
* Muriel is part Australian Cattle Dog (heeler) and part 10 or 11 other breeds. Her largest DNA percentages are Rottweiler and American Eskimo, each at almost 20%, not that you’d guess either at first glance. I was going to write more about her in the body of this post, and our uncertainty about whether to proceed with the eight-hour Cushing’s test or wait a few weeks to see if her liver labs continue to improve. But we’re still waiting to hear back from the vet and don’t yet have answers to our questions.