Sunday Morning Meds -- Forgiveness

“. . .and you forgave the guilt of my sin.”

No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; therefore, we are saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.

                                                        Reinhold Neibuhr

 

            Perhaps the Scarlet Letter is the American classic it is because its central characters—the seemingly fallen Hester and her partner in crime, the seemingly self-righteous Arthur Dimmesdale—are so, well, seemingly complex.  Invariably, it seems, first-time readers in my college classrooms, early on, come to love Hester as much as they hate her guilt-wracked lover, a spineless phony.  But I’m not sure Hawthorne intended my students’ sentiments to move so incontestably in those directions.

            I side with those who claim that the trajectories of those two characters, in the novel, appear to move in totally opposite directions.  Hester is clearly central in the early chapters; Hawthorne seems to have fallen in love with her himself, in part because she gains so much heroic strength by accepting her red badge of shame.

            The Rev. Mr. Dimmesdale, on the other hand, is a sham, a man who receives the accolades of the community in spite of his secret sin, a man who, by refusing what Hester openly accepts, loses our sympathy as quickly and surely as she gains it.

            But slowly on, Hawthorne allows Dimmesdale to take over the novel, giving him greater billing—or so it seems to me. 

            The climactic scene, when he finally and torturously bears his sin to the community and dies, forgiven, rarely engages my students, despite the fact that they are almost all believers themselves.  It’s too little, too late—even though good Christian readers probably should see the eternity of what just occurred:  his sin, like David’s, has been forgiven. 

            I’m really not sure Hawthorne could have done better. It seems to me that while stories—the ones we read or the ones we hear—can map out what it is that happens in forgiveness, those stories cannot give us the experience. No one’s testimony of forgiveness—David’s or Dimmesdale’s or your neighbor’s or mine, can do that. By way of what some call “felt life,” stories bring us as close as anything can to experience.  But there is, finally, an experiential—an existential—character to forgiveness and faith itself that is beyond my words or Hawthorne’s or even the word of the scriptures.

            We can talk and we can share and we can testify. We can read the Scarlet Letter or Crime and Punishment or the 32^nd Psalm. We can hear the story time and time again.  We can know how forgiveness operates; we can theorize and theologize.

            But, finally we know forgiveness in our hearts and souls only when we, like King David, know it’s been done to us, within us.  

You have to have been there to know.  In that sense, the 32^nd Psalm is our song, even if I can’t explain it or even describe it, as no one can. 

We really know what David knows only when we too have been forgiven.

 

Mom's birthday

 

Our son's absence couldn't be avoided. He's got a new job, and taking off for a couple days simply wasn't a possibility. Still, he and his wife were missed. There was a bit of a hole in our holiday.

Otherwise, it was all just about perfect. My wife, who ritually takes on the turkey singlehandedly, did it up wonderfully once again. Starting, well, Monday or so, she sweats about the menu, then works like a coal-miner all by her lonesome for 48 hours straight to come up with a meal that defines the holiday. 

This year her first-grade son mentioned to his mother that he hoped Mema (their name) would have cranberries. Wish morphed immediately into mandate. Two varieties, including something called, "Pink Stuff," were on the table on Thursday, even though "pink stuff" is at least 98% marshmallow and therefor not her cup of tea. If the Thanksgiving table is a book store, Pink Stuff is a silly romance novel. But, voila! there it was. 

My mother died three years ago already. She was 95, and her leave-taking, honestly, was just about as sweet as anyone could wish or imagine. Some kind of snarling cancer was discovered on Friday, and Monday morning she walked away quietly, as if she didn't want to bother her loved ones. That wasn't like her. For most of her years she loved bothering people, her loved ones especially.

Particularly me maybe, about politics especially. Once upon a time, she set her life's compass by way of the words of Dr. Joel Nederhood or Rev. H. J. Kuiper, or whoever edited the denominational magazine. She grew up in an era when the sturdy walls of her Christian Reformed culture was all she needed for guidance. What the preachers thought, she simply determined to think herself. 

By the end of her life, those walls had largely disappeared; her newfound dominies were a glossy array of TV preachers, her truth-tellers talk show radio hosts like Michael Savage. As she aged, the world she saw from her window in the Home got much smaller, and what got left behind became less understandable and therefore more to be feared. She was convinced that the Lord would come sometime before next Tuesday, if not sooner, given the rampaging evil right there on doorstep of Pine Haven Home.

That her son didn't share her politics or her fears was of great concern, because Mom was born and reared in a world were there were only two paths to the celestial, only one of them the straight-and-narrow. The other led to Las Vegas or the Democratic party. Mostly, she let Michael Savage draw up definitions of who was and who wasn't on the right one.

Every visit home, she'd bait me for a political inquisition, set me up with some "when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife?" question. "So, honey, you still like Obama?" That one, she used more than once because she knew it would open the door. 

She liked to fight, my mother did. Loved it. 

But I missed her too this Thanksgiving. She wasn't here and I wasn't there. 

Today is her birthday, which meant that for years and years a trip back to Wisconsin covered two bases, two holidays in one fell swoop. All I really had to remember was Mother's Day, which always falls on a Sunday and therefore "shouldn't be Mother's Day at all because it's really the Lord's Day." That having been said, she expected you'd remember and told you if you didn't.

This weekend I found myself missing the long trip home for the holiday, something we did most of our married lives. I found myself missing the lakeshore, missing the woodlands all around, missing family who stayed in the place that for some remarkable reason I still find myself calling "home."

And Mom and I made our peace, in case you're wondering. Not long before she died, I told her in no uncertain terms that she didn't have to worry about her son's salvation, that she could go to her eternal rest unsettled, all that Obama stuff notwithstanding.

The last time I visited, I was alone. I took her to Culver's, where we drove through and picked up a couple of butter burgers on a gorgeous Indian summer afternoon. Then we stopped at a south side park. I got out the wheelchair and pushed her up close enough to the lake to pick up just a little sand in that burger as we munched away. 

People quite naturally address old people in wheelchairs. They condescend sweetly, just like they might do to little kids. They're not afraid, and Mom loved attention as much as she loved to preach, loved to attribute all that lakeshore beauty to the Lord, or so she'd say to whatever strangers said hello as they walked by.

It took her a while to finish that burger, but when she did we went back to the Home, and for the first time in my life--and the last--we sang together, just the two of us, "Blessed Assurance," Dad's old favorite. A month later or so she was gone.

Some instinct in me is pigeon-like, I guess. Truth is, on Thursday I had a terrific, a blessed Thanksgiving. I'm not complaining. But this morning, her birthday, I just can't help feeling that somehow we missed something this holiday, something back home.

For better or for worse, I think it was Mom. She'd smile at that, I'm sure. 

Good night, she could drive me nuts, but this morning I'm thankful for her.

Now Thank We All

The Thirty Years War (1618-1648), like most, was obscenely messy. What's worse, like most horrendous conflicts of our day and years gone by, it was, quite frankly, religious, fought by antagonists perfectly confident that their enemies belonged to the army of Satan.The Thirty Years War wasn't among Christianity's finest hours.

Want to see for yourself? This excerpt from Cicely Wedgewood's history of that war may be all you wish to read. 

At Calw the pastor saw a woman gnawing the raw flesh off a dead horse on which a hungry dog and some ravens were also feeding. . . .In Rhineland [city magistrates] watched the graveyards against marauders who sold the flesh of the newly buried for food. . . .Acorns, goats' skins, grass, were all cooked in Alsace; cats, dogs, and rats were sold in the market at Worms.

People suffered. Political and religious hatred teamed up in a particularly rowdy fashion to create a war in which the Austrians and Swedes and just about anyone else looking for a fight on the continent took turns thrashing the very life out of the German people and countryside. 

To those who lived through it, the steel wheels of that war must have seemed to grind on endlessly. Thousands deserted their farms and homes for protection in old walled-in European cities. Soon enough, there was no room. At Strassburg, Ms. Wedgwood says, the living shut their windows to death groans just outside the walls of their homes. In winter, people stepped over dead bodies all over the streets.  Finally, when the city knew it could do no more, the magistrates simply threw out 35,000 refugees into the terror and death outside the the walls.

Spring came in long days of warm rains that kept the earth moist and rich for disease that flourished in the hot summer sun that followed. Plagues wound through the streets in gusts of warm wind., Outside the gates, law and order crumbled into chaos as men formed marauding, outlaw gangs that killed men, women, and children for food.

Sometime toward the end of the Thirty Years War, picture a man named Martin Rinkert, a servant of God, a preacher in his own hometown of Eilenburg, Saxony. In 1637, at the height of all the horror, Rinkert, the only clergyman left in the city, held funerals for up to fifty people per day. Even his wife died of the disease.

But sometime during those years--during the groaning persistence of war's evil--Martin Rinkert sat and wrote a magnificent, stately tribute thank you to God, the ruler of a world that must have seemed crumbling or burning all around.

Imagine. Thanksgiving in the middle of that unthinkable carnage.

"Now thank we all our God," he wrote and many of us will sing today. His nostrils may have been filled with the stench of war, but his soul seems to have been overflowing with confidence. 

Eilenburg, Saxony, 1637. The Thirty Years War.

Thanksgiving.  

Amazing.

If you've got four minutes, listen in to the Mormons. 

 https://youtu.be/K7gMDXylzW8?si=bIjZjRm24aSUs6uQ

Thanks for beauty all around

 

A dozen years ago, I kept a thanksgiving journal. It was all Garrison Keillor’s idea in a 2003 Christian Century interview. “Gratitude is where spiritual life begins,” he said, and then offered a lesson in daily thanks.

Thank you, Lord, for this amazing and bountiful life and forgive us if we do not love it enough. Thank you for this laptop computer and for this yellow kitchen table and for the clock on the wall and the cup of coffee and the glasses on my nose and for these black slacks and this black T-shirt. Thanks for black, and for other colors.

And then he said, “I could go on and on and on. One should enumerate one’s blessings and set them before the Lord. Begin every day with this exercise.”

Terrific idea, I thought. And then he made a promise:

. . .you will walk through those gates of thanksgiving and into the fields of joy, break through the thin membrane of sourness and sullenness – though we should be thankful for that too, it being the source of so much wit and humor – and to come into the light and enjoy our essential robustness and good health.

Some people might question my listening to Garrison Keillor sermonize instead of John Calvin or St. John of the Cross. But what prompted me to walk that path was what I read between the lines: Keillor wasn’t bound and determined to save my soul, only to make my life – and his and yours –somehow better, “to enjoy our essential robustness.” (Makes me giggle, that line--but it makes me thankful too.)

I was convinced. I determined to try it – and I did, starting every day with thanks for an entire year, writing it all down.

I’ve just been paging through hundred of those thanksgiving notes, and I came on this.

Day 135

The sky was perfectly clear when I left the house, stars shining so brightly I swear you could hear them. That’s good, because a clear night sky promises a bright sun; but it’s also not so good if you’re lugging a camera: clouds create drama, and good landscapes, like good stories, require conflict, some roughing up. 

What seemed a single cloud moved quickly east when I was out in the middle of a field, awaiting the dawn. That’s when I realized the sky was going to fill, and fast.  And it did. That single cloud grew into a shield that itself reflected the brilliant rising sun. The two of them – sky and sun – burnished everything. I stood in a Midas world turned to gold. There I was in a plain old soybean field, but I was there at exactly the right moment.

This morning it’s for that marvelous light show I am thankful.

That was my morning thanks a dozen years ago. When I read through those words now I can’t help thinking how easy it seemed to be to see God’s hand in everything – and how hard it might be today to remember to think that way again.

I doubt we come from the factory as little fountains of thanks. Thanksgiving, I've learned, requires discipline, even when you count things as mundane as a momentary glow in a bean field.

There's something human in us that makes it work to think in thanks, even though here in God’s world it’s so marvelously easy. 

You don’t need a camera. You just have to look, I guess, and smile. Robustly.

A year ago, it seemed easier. Our new digs seem miles from the blessing of a wide and notable sky. I'm mobile, but barely. It's been a long, long year. 

This old meditation--from a decade ago--reminds me to keep looking, God help me.

Siouxland Revisited again

 

It  happens to have been one of my all-time favorite places to visit even though, if I'd take you there, you would likely say there's nothing there. You'd be right, but something in the angle of the land right here captures at least something of its spaciousness, and while there are no landmarks anywhere near, somehow, just an average day in the sky east can transform anything into beauty. 

Same tree, same place, just a few minutes later: same result--something beautiful, just a lighter shade of pale.

Once, of course, there was a tree here, but a succession of prairie winds took it down, slowly, I'd imagine, branch by branch, so that given the early morning sun's drama, it becomes a cemetery stone, a marker that reminds me, at least, that when white folks came to this land and determined where there'd be a town named Orange City, one of those first settlers claimed that when he'd just stand there on his plot, his own chunk of haloed ground, he could look over the earth before him and around him and see only one blessed tree. 

This one is shot looking west,  catching the early morning sun.

If you've never lived or visited here, on a good bright day, this is what the land looks like--well, maybe even less festooned since just about every farmer these days rolls his refuse into huge bales and uses those rolls for food and bedding. But this is the kind of bare nakedness that's blindingly obvious wherever you look.

And then, the dawn well passed, the sky became a character--all the same place, all the same  morning.

This one has been published and printed time and time again. It's the composition that lives here--the mess of wire against an orange dawn. I took the picture, but I certainly didn't create the image.

One more.

Look, if I'd taken only this frame, I would have considered myself blessed. This is a Siouxland print. Two days ago it showed up here. Here it is again, just in case you missed it.

They  are all of a November morning, 2007, just eighteen years ago, maybe eight miles west of Sioux Center just off Dogwood Ave.

The mysteries of God

"While the mighty things of the Bible may be clearly defined on the background of life and surveyed with general accuracy, as mountain peaks are visible and definable to  passing vessels far at sea, yet they are dimly outlined--clear, in mass, immutable, solemn with steadfastness, sentinels of that other country, yet clothed in the mystery of God."

Frank C. Haddock, The Life of George C. Haddock. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, Publishers, 1887.

Couldn't help but think of this picture when I read the paragraph above. The picture is a gorgeous shot I just happened to snap on my phone last summer, when a bunch of us spent some time ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the remarkable beauty of the Pacific Northwest, specifically Olympia National Park. Whether or not Haddock is right about the Bible's "mighty things" is a decision that's yours to make; but I think he's not wrong about mountains being "clothed in the mystery of God." 

Frank C. Haddock's biography is really a long argument for prohibition, a sort of useless agenda for today. I found the book on-line. You can download it yourself if you'd like to read more. Haddock, Jr., is a fine 19th century writer, but 400 pages trumpeting the truth about filthy liquor gets a big wearying.

The subject of the bio is his father, a martyr for the prohibition cause when the good Episcopal pastor was shot dead in downtown Sioux City on August 3, 1886, at the height of community discord concerning the whole business, so to speak, of prohibition. What Haddock the biographer is saying in that quote is that the ways of God are clear from afar, but when one comes up close--as in, can a man (or woman) have a drink? the answer is less stark. Let me be clear: this old book (if you want a totable copy, it'll cost you an arm-and-a-leg), available as a download, is one sustained argument for running saloons out of town. Period. 

But the quote's theology isn't bad--the broad strokes of the Christian life aren't left up for grabs, but get up close to God's law and things, remarkably, get less, not more distinct. 

When two juries failed to convict the shop steward of a local brewery for shooting Rev. Haddock, Senior, the prohibitionists had even more reason to crow. Twice. There had to be intimidation, tampering, and there likely was. 

Iowa went dry in 1882 already, but Sioux City, on the edge of the frontier, gave ordinary people a wink and a nod, allowing saloons to flourish as long as they paid a not-absorbent tax. The Reverend Herrick would have none of that. His agenda, like his son's, was to save America by outlawing liquor altogether. That was fundamental to the Herricks and their gang of fundamentalists.

So, on that fateful night, at 3rd Street and Water, Rev. Haddock went down on wet pavement, having just brought his steed back to the livery stable. He'd been out trying to find saloons not following Iowa law. When he was shot, murdered, he became the greatest champion of prohibition.

For a while, prohibition was the law of the land, but eventually, December 5, 1933, FDR ended it, when the 21st Amendment displaced the 19th. It was mid-Depression, and prohibition had seemingly increased gangland violence, like the cold-blooded murder of Rev. Haddock right there on the streets of Sioux City.

Twice the perp was tried. Both times, he walked away when juries failed to convict. The man's name was John Arensdorf, an employee of a Sioux City brewery. 

He died on July 8 of 1909.

JOHN ARENSDORF IS DEAD

Death Claims Principal Actor in Haddock Murder Mystery at Sioux City.

Death has claimed the leading actor in the Haddock murder mystery at Sioux City, which a score of years ago, during the days of the prohibitory war, was the sensation of Iowa.
John Arensdorf is dead at his Sioux City home, and it recalls the fact that he was tried for the murder of Rev. Haddock three times, the last trial taking place four years after the murder. Arensdorf was acquitted and lived down his unwelcome notoriety so that upon his death he was given all the honors due a leading citizen at his funeral.
The younger generation has no idea of the intense feeling that was aroused by the passage of the prohibition law in Iowa. The divine right to drink was acknowledged in Sioux City, then in its booming days, and also in the river towns generally. Rev. Haddock was active in trying to enforce the law and lost his life at the hands of some unknown person, but suspicion was focused upon Arensdorf, and he was arrested and tried, the trial being one of the most sensational in the history of the state.

The mountains are perfectly distinguishable, even though you can't really see them up close, clothed in the mystery of God.

Omission

 “I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’

—and you forgave the guilt of my sin.”

 I’ve not murdered anyone.  When I was a boy, I stole cigarettes—we used to call it “hocking,” as in “let’s go hock cigarettes.”  But I haven’t hocked a thing in close to 70 years.

 I never committed adultery—per se.  I guess I may have to confess, like Jimmy Carter, that I’ve sometimes ogled a bit too sumptuously; but I’ve have not blazed my way through some tawdry affair.

I’ve eaten too much—just two nights ago, in fact.  It started with the smooth guacamole. . .  But that’s another story.  I’m in a perpetual battle with love handles. 

I love a beer now and then, but I’m light years from alcoholism. The love of money may well be the root of all evil, but greed or avarice has never been a weakness of mine. Ask my wife. 

I’ve come to that point in my life where covetousness isn’t much of problem either. Here I sit in a little office space, surrounded by books I’m couldn't get rid of, file drawers full of stuff I can’t toss, and a collection of flim-flam filling every shelf, every last bit of it worthless beyond anything but sweet sentimental value. Even though a flood swallowed half of what I’ve saved through the years, I could use a couple healthy trips to Goodwill.

I don’t think I’m crochety, although my wife might argue.  I’m not bitter. I love a good story, and I’ve become convinced that humor is, as the Readers Digest has long insisted, the very best medicine for the soul.

 The 77-year path of my life—check it for yourself—contains no spectacular sin or reprehensible acts. I was in Vegas once, but I was ten. All I remember is sudden bright lights. 

My biography would never sell.  A fourteen-year-old with an eating disorder makes a better chapel speaker than I do. There are no bank heists or car chases. Thank the Lord, there never was a Bathsheeba, nor Uriah. 

For the most part, mine are sins of omission—and they are legion. 

I wonder if, through my life, I worshipped the task I’m at right now, if I placed a god before me that obscured the one who forgives.  I often wonder if I neglected to love my children or spouse because of my love of writing, if my profession of faith had more to do with the letters appearing on this screen than it did with the Lord God Almighty.

I wonder, as I never have before in my life, if I’ve done the best I could with what I’ve been given.  I really do.  When I look back, I wonder whether I did it right at all. 

I don’t wonder, not really.  I have no doubt that in many important ways I’ve failed.

I doubt my confession would be easier if I could point at a Bathsheeba or too much bourbon or some kind of abuse and say, “there—that’s the sin for which I need forgiveness.”  I’m thankful there are no such lurid misdeeds.

But I’m old enough to know that, just like the wanton King, I can stand only if I’ve been on my knees. 

 For what I didn’t do, Lord—for what I didn’t do right and for my idolatry, my pride—please, forgive.

Finals -- xxxv

Diary entries stretch out longer late in his telling of the story. Entries begin to be more comprehensive and more preachy as he summarizes, or tries to, the war and his experience within it. 

Even though he faces endless ruins every day, Chaplain Van takes full advantage of the car he has been given to get around. He takes trips--one day, two day, three day--all around vanquished Germany and even into adjacent countries. He visits Hitler's final hideout several times, taking groups of soldiers to see the famous hideaway. He was born in Rotterdam, probably had limited memories of "the old country," but is shaken by the destruction of that city when he goes home to visit relatives, most of whom, he sadly admits, don't go to church. He gets around quite nicely, or at least the diaries seem almost a travelogue. He's an officer, he's got a car, and he's got a reputation for hard, hard work, setting up and preaching in spaces where he can get a half-dozen people in to listen to the Word of God. He's highly respected, a fire-and-brimstone preacher who never fudged on the Word or its demands. Once the fighting stops, he manages quite nicely to get along through the disaster that is western Europe.

The book of diaries is itself more clearly shaped as he moves it toward completion. Chaplain Van worked on this project during the 1980s, when the world he looked out upon daily had changed immensely from Paris in 1944. That's observable in the inclusion of this line of reasoning: 

In the early months of 1944, Germany lost the battle of the skies. Our Air Force dropped 2,700,000 tons of bombs on Germany. At the peak of its strength, the United State's air force had 28,000 combat planes and 1,300,000 men in its command. 

All the destruction of many cities and towns, the death of millions of soldiers and civilians, the concentration camps, the suffering of the people and the demoralizing effects of the war  -- defies the imagination. 

Every Christian must believe that all of it is an expression of the judgment of God upon an apostate people. 

And then he pulls out a brand new argument, the abortion profile, so much a weapon in similar arguments during the late 20th century, rarely spoken of during the war:

We as Americans cannot boast that we are more civil than others. Since the Supreme Court legalized abortion on demand some 15 years ago [it seems he's finishing up the manuscript in the late 1980s], it is estimated that about 15 million unborn infants were killed in the wombs of their mothers. An unprecedented crime wave is sweeping through the nation. Some are saying that the United States is a decadent nation. Even though an atomic war does not destroy the nation, the judgement of God could be sent in another form just as devastating. America too must repent of its evil ways. Many churches and ministers must at least assume part of the blame for the moral and spiritual condition of our nation. 

~   *   ~   *   ~   *   ~

Somewhere in the time when he was finishing preparing the manuscript, I met Chaplain Van--"Rev. Van Schouwen"--in the post office in town. He'd been retired for years by that time, about the time he was working on his memoirs. Strangely enough, he recognized me. "So Jim, you're a senior now?"

I'd graduated almost two decades previous and been teaching at Dordt College for about five years. 

"Magoo," I thought, smiling, I'm sure. 

~   *   ~   *   ~   *   ~

Sioux Center News March 8, 1994

Born: 4-16-1903

Died: 3-2-1994

The Rev. Cornelius Van Schouwen, 90, of Sioux Center died Wednesday, March 2, at the Sioux Center Community Hospital.

Services were Friday, March 4, at 1:30pm at Bethel Christian Reformed Church, Sioux Center, with the Rev. Robert Holwerda and the Rev. Andrew Van Schouwen officiating. Burial was at Memory Gardens Cemetery, Sioux Center.

Van Schouwen was born April 16, 1903, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, the son of Joseph and Cornelia (Van Hoeven) Van Schouwen. His family immigrated to South Holland, Illinois, in 1907. He graduated from Calvin College in June 1928. He married Henrietta Vander Meyden in South Holland, Illinois on September 20, 1930. He graduated from Calvin Seminary in June 1931 and was ordained a the Archer Avenue Christian Reformed Church September 20, 1931. His second church was the DeMotte Christian Reformed Church, 1937 to 1942.

He was a chaplain in the U.S. Army from January 1942 to May 1946. After the war he became a Bible instructor at Western Christian High School until 1949. His wife died February 10, 1949. He was a Bible instructor at Lansing Christian High School from 1949 to 1953. He married Sue Walstra in Hammond, Indiana on June 8, 1951. He taught Reformed doctrine and psychology at Dordt College from 1954 to 1968. He received a master's degree in education from the University of Indiana at Bloomington in 1953 and a master's of theology from Winona Lake School of Theology at Warsaw, Indiana, in 1964.

He was a member and associate pastor of Bethel Christian Reformed Church and preached, led societies and taught catechism at various area churches. He enjoyed gardening, fishing and walking.

Survivors include his wife, Sue; two sons, Neil and his wife Pat and Joe and his wife Shar, all of Sioux Center; one daughter, Susann De Stigter and her husband Paul of Spokane Washington; one brother, Harry Van Schouwen of Lansing, Illinois; two sisters, Dena Swets of Lansing and Cornelia Boot of Oskaloosa; and 11 grandchildren.

He was preceded in death by his first wife, Henrietta; three brothers, Jacob, Joseph and John; and three sisters, Jennie, Sophie and Johanna.

Looking back -- xxxiv

 

Chaplain Van mentions "points" frequently, points that every veteran in Europe had to accumulate/total to determine who went home first. The more points a soldier had, the sooner he could be discharged and sent home.

The Army's formula went something like this:

• Months of service: 1 point per month in the Army

• Months overseas: 1 additional point per month served abroad

• Combat awards: 5 points per decoration (e.g., Bronze Star, Purple Heart)

• Campaign participation: 5 points per campaign

• Children under 18: 12 points per child (up to 3 children)

To qualify for discharge, a soldier initially needed 85 points, though this threshold was lowered over time as more troops were processed.

In September of 1945, five months after the end of the war in Europe, Chaplain Van, for no good reason that he can explain, gets a transfer. He is not particularly pleased, but he is not a complainer. He will be part of the 759th ROB, stationed somewhere near Frankfurt, Germany. 

I shouldn't be surprised, I'd guess, that the diaries contain no spite whatsoever. He's been working diligently ever since the war's end, setting up worship services wherever he can, whenever he can, and listening in to endless personal problems. 

Among the GIs left in Europe, the problems he spent so much time trying to help find their way back into the ranks.

The 759th ROB 

September 7: 

The 759th expects to leave this month for the United States. This ROB [Railroad Operational Battalion] is composed of all high-point men. They all have over 80 points. This ROB operated in Africa, Italy, France and Germany. If HQ does not transfer me to another unit, I will be going home this month. 

This last line is recorded matter-of-factly, far less enthusiasm that I would have guessed, although it is typical of Chaplain Van, who is a man seemingly unaffected by the kinds of emotions one might expect. Undoubtedly, that beefy constitution served him well in the time he spent in the war.

Then again, maybe there's little joy in that last sentence because this man's attachment to his work--God's work--was quite simply overpowering. The war may be over, but his work is not.

The 762th ROB called me to hold a funeral service for one of their men. This soldier had experienced service in Africa, Italy, and  France without being hurt. He was ready to go  home; but unknowingly he stepped on a German mine and was killed.

The officers of the 746th used a lot of profanity; the offers of the 759th seldom do and neither do they talk about sex.

Lt. S. . . of the 746th was a faithful church-goer in civilian life. He had a strict Christian upbringing, but he couldn't stand on his own feet in the Army. He was out with another woman when he received word that his wife had a baby.

August 26, Sunday

I received a letter from Rev. De Korne, the Secretary of the CRC Mission field. He wants me to consider foreign missions as my work after the war. However, I have  become persuaded that the home base of missions must be reinforced before effective foreign mission work can be accomplished. In other words, I feel that Christian education for the youth of our church is more  important and is basic to the work of missions.

It may come as no surprise then, that when Chaplain Van returned to the States and to his family, he began teaching in Christian schools--first at Western Christian High School, Hull, Iowa, and then at Dordt College, a new regional college in Sioux Center. 

He has, several times, made very clear to his diary that strengthening the schools, Christian schools, is the best Christendom can do to restrain worldliness all around.

The 759th ROB

The officers of the 746th used a lot of profanity; the officers of the 759thsedom do and neither do they talk about sex.

Lt. S. . .of the 746th was a faithful church-goer in civilian life. He had a strict Christian up bringing, but he couldn't stand on his own feet in the Army. He was out with another woman when he received word that his wife had a baby.

Paris

I went to Paris to attend a meeting of all the ROB chaplains in the ETO.. . .It is about a year ago that ai first came to Paris. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then--the Bulge, the Rhine Campaign, the Central Germany offensive, the Rhur, the surrender of Germany and Japan. When I first came to Paris, I felt lost. I didn't know how to begin, yet I soon found myself and my work and enjoyed all of it immensely.

It's not difficult to be taken aback by this last sentence--that this righteous man, so driven by doing right and avoiding wrong would say, honestly, to his diary, he "enjoyed all of it immensely," seems preposterous. On the other hand, I've heard Vietnam vets describe their years in the armed services as a horrible experience they wouldn't trade for the world. That's where I put the source of his exuberance.

Reflections of character -- xxxiii

Ziegenheim POW camp

Some reflections on character.

June 8:

I went to the postal clerk and asked which soldiers did not receive any mail today. I placed a Banner in their mail boxes. 

June 14:

The question arises --why write about the destruction of German cities and the awful atrocities of concentration camps? Because God was warning European nations and in fact the whole world what the consequences will be when people forsake God. These warnings should never be forgotten by nations and churches. And yet the Second World War with the death of millions of soldiers and civilians, the destruction of whole cities, and the concentration camps have not brought the Nations and churches to repentance. 

Ziegenheim Concentration Camp

[History says that Chaplain Van was wrong about the name--the camp at Ziegenheim was not a concentration camp but a POW camp, primarily for Allied soldiers. It was liberated in late March, approximately three months prior to Chaplain Van's visit. The stories he relates suggest that the camp held mostly German prisoners. Soon, it would hold many more displaced persons, especially Jewish people who had no home to return to and were awaiting passage to other places, including Israel.]

June 17:

Service attendance at Marburg was 100 soldiers, Treysa 25, and Kassel 50.

After the service at Treysa, I stopped at the Ziegenheim Concentration Camp, also known as the North Stalag No. 9. In this camp 300 American prisoners were kept and also a large number of Russians and Poles.

One German here was in solitary confinement. He had killed an American aviator who had been forced to land his plane. This German threw the American aviator, after he had killed him, on a manure pile. The men in solitary confinement are fed bread and water. As soon as an officer opened the door to show me this prisoner, he stood with his back to the wall and his arms straight up in the air.

We went to one of the barracks where 188 Germans were confined. As soon as I stepped inside, one prisoner yelled "Achtung," and all the prisoners jumped up to attention until we left.

Many political women were incarcerated here pending their trial. Two trucks loaded with more prisoners were being brought in. A jeep with a machine gun followed the trucks. 

A Dutchman told me this story: a 12 year old boy was very disobedient. For punishment, his mother said that he could not go out after supper. Her son replied, "If I can't go out after supper, I will tell the Jugend Bund that you listen in to British broadcast." Her son won the argument.

The officer in charge of this camp asked the prisoners "How many of you would die for Hitler?" Immediately, three prisoners raised their hands. The official said to me, "Every one of these prisoners would be willing to die for Hitler."

The recently released Nuremberg features a recalcitrant prisoner, Herman Goehring, highest ranking post-war Nazi, who comes off as a good man, a loving husband, a conscience human being until being asked about his baseline priorities--"Would you still serve the Fuhrer?" he's asked. His answer is chilling because so unexpected.

And this self-referential note, written without reference to self. Imagine what Chaplain Van must have thought when he noted these figures.

Chaplain casualty figures up to March 30, 1945: 49 chaplains were killed, 51 died of other causes, 168 were wounded in action, 22 died at the hands of the Japanese and three died in Japanese camps. Total: 293 casualties. A total of 543 chaplains received 680 decorations. 

Buchenwald --- xxxii

This is the picture Chaplain Van included in his diaries

After the war, Chaplain Van was not sent home immediately. His stay in Europe extended his opportunities to do a variety of things. He traveled around in occupied Germany, even visited relatives in the Netherlands. 

He also spent a great deal of time visiting labor and concentration camps, where he was often witness to what was left of the incalculable toll of human suffering. In just a few weeks, Allied forces had uncovered dozens of camps, not all of them death camps, but all of them careless and predatory about human life, all of them chokingly ugly. 

Literature of the Holocaust contains lots of stories in which a survivor--sometimes stories written by a survivor--goes through all kinds of trauma as he or she fears the advent of age--and loss of memory. 

What makes memory loss especially traumatic for Holocaust survivors is that those men and women begin to understand that they won't, somehow, remember what they feel they must to make sure that what happened to them should never happen to others. 

Chaplain Van has sufficient time to visit a number of death camps, but his telling the tales is often, decades later, similar. Work camps became death camps, discovered by Allied troops who often had no hint of there being death factories anywhere near. Their frequency--like their barbarity--was unforgettable. 

That kind of barbarity is difficult to talk about or write about. Yet, to a GI like Chaplain Van, seeing, first hand, what was perpetuated on others--German or not--was something he seems to have felt he had to see. There's more in the diaries than I'm telling you, showing you, mini-tours of horrors.

But I'm going to not tell you all of it, not because I'm sparing you the misery of having to look at pictures or read descriptions of man's inhumanity to man, but because in the many decades that have passed since the end of WWII, just about everybody, somewhere along the line, has seen similar horrific pictures and read similar accounts. Chaplain Van recited the terrors because I'm quite sure his dear ones back home wouldn't believe what he saw.

The biggest camp Chaplain Van visits, as well as the one he sees first following the end of the war, is Buchenwald. I'll share with you his descriptions of Buchenwald. He's obviously now writing for us, for readers who are believers, maybe even readers from his family. These diary entries are less diary than they are reportage, pure descriptions, helped along by wider reading, as well as the stories he must have heard from officers, like him, left behind. They were telling stories they sometimes heard, sometimes actually witnessed.

For the record: history shows that Buchenwald was not classified as a death (or extermination) camp, but it was one of the largest and deadliest concentration camps in Nazi Germany, with an estimated 56,000 to 70,000 deaths. 

Here's Chaplain Van telling what he imagined, what he saw, what he heard, what he believed about a place called Buchenwald. It's very clear that he's telling us some things that he couldn't believe, some things that he felt very strongly he had to tell.

May 24:

I visited the concentra­tion camp Buchenwald--perhaps the most brutal and most inhumane of them all. It is located about 100 miles east of Marburg. It is esti­mated that about 77,000 people were killed or died of malnutrition in this camp. About 5,600 bodies were cremated every week. 

When new prisoners entered this camp, they were told "You enter through this gate and you go out through the chimney." On the inside walls of the crematorium, I read, "It is better to be cremated than to be eaten by worms." 

When this camp was liberated by American soldiers, the place was littered with dead people. German workers in their hasty departure did not have the time to dispose of the dead (see photo above). When General Eisenhower came to in­spect the camp, he was so horrified that he asked Prime Minister Churchill, of England, to come and see it. He also ordered all the peo­ple of the community to walk through the camp, so they could see for themselves what their Nazi leaders had done. 

It was impossible for anyone to escape from this camp. It was encir­cled with an electrified fence with guardhouses placed at intervals. In the center of the camp was the crematorium, surrounded by a high stone wall. Unwanted prison­ers, the sick and the maimed, were brought to this building at night, and as soon as they stepped inside  the wall they slid down a chute into the basement and were killed in­stantly. An elevator took the dead bodies to the main floor, where they were cremated. I counted five ovens in the crematorium. Human ashes were dumped on a pile out­side of the camp. I took a handful of human ashes out of one of the ovens and sent it home to tell the story. 

The man who was our guide and an inmate said that the flames of the crematorium shot up five feet above the chimney every night. Every morning a wagon picked up the dead from the hospital and brought them to the crematorium. 

Disorderly inmates were hanged on makeshift gallows in view of all the prisoners to keep them obedient. I picked up a whip with five leather straps which was used to beat the disobedient. I still have it in my home. One of the teachers of our local Christian School takes these souvenirs to show them to the students. 

When the Americans liberated this camp, dead bodies were stacked five feet high against the outside wall ready to be cremated. I have pictures in my album of all the things mentioned above. 

In the hospital of this camp the doctor had a private room. Here he injected medication into an un­wanted prisoner under the pretense of giving a treatment for some dis­ease. In a short time the prisoner was dead and was then pushed into a hole in the floor where he fell into the basement. The following day the dead bodies were brought to the crematorium. The papers re­ferred to Buchenwald as being a death house. A book has been printed on The Hell of Buchenwald. 

As far as I can tell, while there are countless books about Buchenwald, there is not a book titled The Hell of Buchenwald. I'm going out on a limb here, going to guess that the book Chaplain Van is talking about is The Theory and Practice of Hell by Eugen Cogon, which was published in Germany (and German) in 1946, then again in English is 1949, a book commonly considered a very fine diagnosis of the mind that created places like Buchenwald. Interesingly, Mr. Cogon was himself a political prisoner in Buchenwald. He was asked by the Allies to try to help the world understand the mind that created death camps.

What was found when the war ended -- xxxi

Nursing staff at Hadamar Killing Camp

 May 7:

According to reports, the war in Europe was officially declared ended at 5:30 this afternoon. If the war is over, it is not noticeable. No celebrations. All is quiet.

All around him the world is in flux and transition. Literally thousands walk country roads. displaced persons from every occupied European nation, all of them determined to get home, no matter what the distance. Often, Chaplain Van notes the rubble--rubble everywhere, sometimes 15 feet high. Germany is a horrific mess.

Even worse, what arises from the madness is camps, dozens of them, big and small, and the impossible stench they raise, often piles of the dead rotting. I'm guessing that simply viewing the horror is, at least at first, as compelling as it is horrifying. What happened in those death camps made the war's death toll somehow noble--Chaplain Van visits several places where dying was preferable to living. 

May 9: 

At Kassel a vast number of ci­vilians were killed and buried beneath the rubble. When the siege was over, relatives threw wreaths of flowers upon the rubble, where they thought their dear ones were still lying under the rubble. 

May 10, Thursday: 

I went to Giessen today to make arrange­ments for Sunday services. Giessen is a large rail center and is located about 25 miles South of Marburg. Next to the railroad station was a medical school, which had been hit by our bombers. In the basement of this school, we saw 20 large tanks filled with human bodies. Other dead bodies were piled high, like cord wood and covered with lime. Some boxes were filled with heads, arms and legs. 

I do not know whether those dead bodies were victims of atroci­ties or not. But there were too many parts of human bodies for such a small school for experimentation. It is a very gruesome sight to see large boxes full of nude bodies, heads, and limbs all mixed through each other. 

According to Stars and Stripes, dated May 8, 1945, the war thus far cost the United States $85,000 per minute. Cost of the war for all participants is $250,000 per minute or one trillion dollars.

May 11, Sunday: 

Two hundred and fifty soldiers attended services at Marburg, 30 at Treysa and 10 at Giessen. Giessen was badly damaged. All rail equipment was demolished. I held a Sunday service in a box car, in which the soldiers lived. 

All of nature is beautiful around here. All hills are covered with trees, mountains, valleys, streams, and birds. What a contrast to the scars of war, which I see every day. 

That he still notes the beauty around him is remarkable.

May 16: 

I visited the Death House of Hadamar. The German doctor in charge showed me the inside of the entire building. About 500 insane people are housed here. Finally, we asked to see the place where the in­mates were gassed and cremated. He showed us the gas chamber and said that 46,000 people had been ­gassed and cremated. When I ex­pressed my disgust, the doctor said, "Well, they were all useless they could not serve their country." 

The first site of purposeful Nazi atrocity Chaplain Van witnessed was at Hadamar, an institution first used as a psychiatric hospital, then converted into one of six major Nazi euthanasia centers under the Aktion T4 program, Nazi strategy initiated in 1939 to exterminate men and women the regime determined to be “life unworthy of life,” people with mental illness, disabilities, and later, other marginalized groups.

Hadamar inaugerated its horrors as early as January of 1941, long before people outside the camp knew much of anything about Aktion T4. Ten thousand individuals had their lives snuffed out by later in the year. The "doctor" Chaplain Van spoke to tells only half-truth. Among those murdered at the Hadamar death camp included European displaced persons incapable of work, elderly men and women who'd lost their homes due to Allied bombing, and children thought to be "half Jewish." 

Late in the war, busloads of men, women, and children came in daily and were met by a staff of one hundred men and women who determined to do one of two things--either look the other way or buy into the program. 

The picture is just as unimaginable as any photos of dead bodies. How could those nurses, ordinary people, day after day, go to work in a death camp. Human beings are capable of unimaginable horror--that's the lesson of the picture. 

According to Stars and Stripes, 20,000 political prisoners were put to death at Hadamar. Five thousand were killed by drugs and buried in a common grave near the asylum. They were all foreigners shipped into Germany to work in their fac­tories. This building was in operation since 1941, and the facts and figures were confirmed by two inmates who operated the plant. Hadamar is four miles north of Limburg and 50 miles south of Giessen. 

May 17: 

I visited six soldiers in the hospital. I sent a large Nazi flag home and several Army news­papers. I also wrote a letter to my relatives in Holland and informed them that if ever possible, I would make a trip to Holland. I sent my mother seven German darning nee­dles, seven crochet needles, and straight pins. 

Col. Pruett told me that he read all my sermonettes and sent them to his wife. 

 May 23: 

I attended the service at the University Chapel. A negro chaplain had charge of the service. A negro choir sang beautiful Negro Spirituals. Of course all this was contrary to the ideas of Hitler and his super race. But Hitler is dead and the Word of God goes on for­ever. What a contrast. 

But there is much of the war that doesn't end with armistice or homecoming.

Pinelli and his problem. He is married and has one child. He was 13 months overseas and was wounded in combat. A few days ago his unit was creeping up on the Germans. In the distance he saw a German soldier and shot him. As his unit moved up, he passed the soldier which he had shot and looked at his face. Now he sees the face in his dreams every night and cannot erase it from his memory. He told his buddies about his prob­lem and they merely laughed about it. He came to my office with his problem and I tried to ease his con­science. The experience of Pinelli indicates that it is an awful thing to kill a human being even in combat.