CLARICE: So the calling, the election and the selection, in the time of great crisis, came into my life. You know, it was just a time I was separated from everything that I could have loved or taught me anything.
KYLE: At five years old?
CLARICE: At five.
KYLE: And so, where do you go from that?
CLARICE: Well I’m telling you, you know from five, finally someone took me to church. My uncle Seville took me to church one time; it must have been a Pentecostal church. He picked me up and ran down the aisle and he says, “God, help this one. Help this child!” I mean, you know? And they all gathered around, I guess they were praying in tongues and doing whatever. I didn’t know what it was, but see you don’t have to understand it to stand under it. That’s the beauty of it. You know, God does something—it’s like walking in a room where there’s radiation. It doesn’t matter whether you want it or not, it’s there.
KYLE: Did you, in that moment, go back to that experience at five years old and realize it was kind of a one in the same type of thing?
CLARICE: Well, immediately after that experience, of course I wasn’t going to tell anybody about it, He put His arm around me and He said, “Do you know what? You’re never going to be lonely again.” And I said, “What’s your name, Mister?” and He said, “Call Me friend.” So He’s been my friend for a long time. And I never—it was just so great; it was so grand. I was comforted and somehow in my young mind I thought, you know, my dad’s in Germany and if I could speak German, it would somehow help him. And I’d get under the house and go [speaking in tongues], you know, and just pray, but I didn’t know that was speaking in tongues, I didn’t know. See, I had an experience, but not a doctrine.
KYLE: Oh, that’s good. I can re-use that.
CLARICE: And so, you know, that was the beginning and then of course the progression. I was an only child. Daddy came back from war; we established a home. And my Momma was Baptist, let me tell you what, thank God for Baptists, they teach you the Word of God.
KYLE: And this with your mom really began to shift some things?
CLARICE: Oh, everything. Well, mother was very traditional and she would say, “We’re Baptists. We’re Baptist born and Baptist bred and when we die, we’ll be Baptist dead.”
KYLE: [laughs]
CLARICE: She’d tell me, she’d say, “I’m more Baptist than Mr. Schofield.” So we lived three doors down from the church and so we went to church all the time. And mother believed that a woman could not do anything in the church. I mean, she could wash dishes, she could take care of children, if she could sing or play the piano, but as far as doing anything as far as ministry is concerned, her tradition was there and she had taught me that, you know, that a woman does this, this, this, and this. Somehow that did not stick to me.
KYLE: [laughs] Obviously not.
CLARICE: It didn’t take. And so one day—she would sit in the back yard and pray. She was a praying woman. And my husband and I came by to visit with her and she said, “I’ve had a vision from God!” I said, “What?” And she said, “Yes, I’ve had a vision from God,” and she says, “I saw you preaching.” Now this is a woman that doesn’t believe—
KYLE: –that women should be preaching at all!
