Just Because "If I Only Had A Brain" Was Taken

"Jonathan Lair stood in the middle of Bethel Church's Healing Room on Dec. 5 and joyfully got straight to the point: 'I'm going to get new feet today.'

A pastor at a church in San Diego, Lair said he came to Redding so he could go to the Healing Rooms at Bethel and be cured of a painful condition that has caused his feet to be flat his whole life. Lair, 27, was barefoot and had rolled his jeans up above his ankles, exposing his flat, calloused feet.

'I will see my arches healed,' he said just before two women on Bethel's Healing Rooms Ministry team approached him. 'I really believe that.'

As Lair closed his eyes and bowed his head, the two older women stood on either side of him and began to pray quietly, tapping him on the chest and back. They motioned for another woman, one with a ram's horn known as a shofar, to come to where they stood. She began to blow the shofar at Lair's feet and in moments he fell to the ground, shaking.

Back in the Healing Room, Jonathan Lair lay peacefully on the floor, covered in a dark green blanket, while the three women continued to pray over him and blow the shofar at his feet. At one point he got up and hopped up and down in the middle of the room where people were painting pictures on easels, before lying back down again. Eventually, one by one, they walked away and left him lying still on the floor.

Lair slowly sat up 10 minutes later and looked around. He looked at his feet, then stood up.

He said he had expected bones to crack and form an arch but his feet were still flat.

'I look at them, and they don't look healed,' he said.

But his faith was not shaken,..."

-- Amanda Winters, reporting on some crazy church somewhere - promising some damned crazy thing or another - and also the crazy people who flock there, like blind DJs clamoring for The Record Searchlight.