Liberation Sunday

I've been putting together a collection of little stories originally published in a magazine titled Reformed Worship. Way back when the magazine was first published, the editors asked me to contribute stories avout how we worship, stories of relevance to those who look after liturgy. I did so for a long time. 

In an old file folder, I stumbled over this one. Don't know  if it was ever published, but a couple of decades after I wrote it, I found it quite moving, a very memorable communion Sunday.

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Thursday, April 18, 1945

The end is in sight!  Saturday evening Jan and I came from Kloosters and were just at the train crossing when four British Spitfires dove from the cloud cover to attack a passing train.  It was a hot moment, but once we were hiding in the manholes on the side of the little country road, we could see the air attack beautifully.

Today I should have gone to Amersfort, but there was so much fighting outside of Nijkerk.  People came and warned me that the Canadians were already at the river.  A German told me that I better return from where I came from, but now that it seems so close I cannot believe it may be true.

When you return, Adriaan, there will be so much to say, so much to tell you.  How strong our children are, too, in all of this.

When I arrived at Driedorp, everywhere there were Germans and cars and motorbikes, and on all the farms in that area were Germans.

I decided it would be safer to go back home, but when I passed them again they were sneaking off with their guns cocked, moving in the direction of the river.  And the Tommies were busy with their Spitfires in the air!!

After one p.m., everybody has to stay inside.  In the woods last night there was a fight between German and Canadian reconnaissance patrols.  Four Germans and three Canadians killed.

Heavy fighting around Apeldoorn.  Zwolle, Leeuwarden Meppel, and practically the whole of Gronigen and Friesland are liberated.

In Voorthuizen a landing of paratroops, approx. 1000 this morning.  The Huns are nervous wrecks.

 

Friday, April 19, 1945

Did the housework very fast, and went to Kloosters’.  Father Klooster is killed by artillery shell on the farm where he was in hiding since the Germans started looking for him.  Why, Lord, with the end so near?  Such a fine man, so much good during the war. All those allied pilots hidden and moved into the woods.  Such good work.  Now killed when the Canadians are so close at hand.

Mother Klooster is strong.  The six children are heartbroken, sit in silence at home. Many people visit, even though it is dangerous to be out and the fighting never seems really to stop.  Should I stay with Mother Klooster and help with children?

Everywhere, still, there are Germans.  I have responsibility at home.  Mother Klooster seems very strong.  Oh, but seems.

Planes in the air and all the shooting is very heavy.  Went by inside roads back home but shooting from Spitfires on everything that moves.

Farms all over full of Germans.  The school playground is green with their uniforms.

On my way home passed Vander Kamp’s farm and shells rained from two directions.  Cows lie dead all around, hooves up.  Such destruction.

Germans came to our farm after I returned.  “We have to go on,” they said, “but in two weeks it will be all over anyway.”  They were sick of it.  Wanted to see our cellar, but it was too small they said.  Thank goodness.  With our house so full of people.  And the Jews, too.

When they were gone, we put mattresses down there. Whoever was tired could sleep.  All the time the screeching noises of shells overhead and then waiting for the explosion.  Where will it come down?

 

Saturday, April 20, 1945

God up early and went outside.  Quiet for some time.  People killed and wounded.  The roads are full of people from Nijkerk, heading out to the poulders, to the meadows, crawling into shacks and henhouses.

Adriaan, where are you?  It seems too much for me to go on with everything, even though now the end is so near.  Adriaan, we will be together again soon.

The rest of the day passed slowly by, quietly.  People say that ‘t Oever and Putten also were taken, meaning “stay close to home.”  Flying still going on.  Now and then a burst of shellfire.  Fires in the distance.  A haystack down the road at Bethanien.

In the evening, with approximately 20 people, stayed in the cellar, but nothing happened so I went up to our bed.  Adriaan will come again soon.  Lord, please, bring him home.

 

Sunday, April 21, 1945

Everything is again QUIET.  All the barbed wire blockades are put in place and Jan had to go all the way around Watergoor to come home because the Allies are two kilometers away.  On the Holkerweg, every 50 meters there is artillery.  Not much flying now, and only little shelling.  This afternoon quite close by some machine gunning and even some regular rifle shots.

I think they will be here tomorrow!

The Germans seem almost to be gone.  Only the shelling continues.  It is still not safe to be out.

Piet van Meerfeld comes in the morning.  I see him coming on his bike up the lane.  He has bread in his rooksack.  He has flour, now, from the air drops.

“Mevrouw Hartog,” he says, “I have for the first time good flour, and today is communion Sunday.”  And he gives me a half loaf because he knows we have neighbors here, we have onderdykkers.  But I know he means this loaf is communion bread.

“Take and eat,” he says, and he smiles.  Then leaves for the next farm from our church.  Communion Sunday.

We have in our house two men in hiding, a family from Nijkerk--the Harts, running away from the fighting--Uncle Ben and his wife, Hannah, a man named Schneider--an American pilot--and our Anne, Henk, and Jan.

We have half a loaf of communion bread.  Schneider says he is Catholic.  The onderdykkers are Reformed.  Uncle Ben and his wife are Jewish.  The Harts are with us in our church, and I have our family, our own children.

Van Meerfeld pedaled through the artillery because he knew it was communion Sunday and he had communion bread.  And he knows it is liberation.  He wears a smile like this work he is doing is holy work.

So we eat the bread, all of us, this Sunday morning.  A communion like none other I remember.  Eat and celebrate, eat and profess. I tell myself, “take, eat, remember, and believe.”   Even the children have a bite.  It is a sacrament they will not forget, ever--I tell them later, when we are alone.  This is the children’s first communion.

Van Meerfeld is right.  He has now good flour.  It is good bread he brings.

Wageningen and Ede are also liberated and how long before finally Holland is free!

Mother Klooster is alone this Sunday.  There will be no funeral until all of this is over.  Tomorrow will come all the celebrations, and yet in all of it she must have the funeral and she will be alone with her six children.

Sometimes, I think I cannot go on with this, even though the Canadians are here--if not yet today, then tomorrow for sure.  Sometimes, even the joy is hard.

Adriaan, are you too liberated?  When I heard about Buchenwald, I turned ice cold, but Psalm 91 is for us: “Because he loves me, says the Lord, I will rescue him.  I will protect him for he acknowledges my name.  A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.”

O darling, the end is coming.  How happy we will be.  I have so much to tell you.

 

--Adapted from the personal stories of Diet Eman and Michael Van Wijk.

The Outback

 

A shot like this is all I need to explain our move to the country, post retirement. I didn't have to get into the pickup to gather this kind of bounty; I had only to step out of our back door to fill up a memory card with this show of "dawn's early light."

On mornings like this one--mid July, 2012--I couldn't help but wonder how it was we'd come to live so close to these big prairie skies and really never seen them.

With our move to the country 14 years ago, we became bit players in the drama staged daily in the immensity of our abundant open spaces. 

On more than occasional Saturday mornings, I'd been wandering around Siouxland for a decade already when we moved north of Alton, so skies like this--no matter how gorgeous--weren't exactly new. But they'd never been so neighborly, so showy, so close. On this particular July morning, I had only to walk a couple hundred feet from our back door--and there it was.

From under the canopy of a monster cottonwood that morning, I was visited by an ancient neighbor, gifted with the blessing of dawn. 

Siouxland had never been so much our backyard.

Hamnet--don't miss it

 

Way back when--in the years I was a graduate student--I took a class titled simply "Shakespeare" from a middle-aged prof who I thought, as did others, to be an expert on the Bard. He was, for certain, an apologist, very much in love with Will Shakespeare with an intensity that made every class period bountifully dramatic in and of itself.

What made Prof. Doebler particularly effective was his knowledge of the era--the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras of the English Renaissance--a culturally rich time in English history when the theaters were full and not just the province of society's elite. I remember him going on and on about how ordinary people, including the lower class, were entertained by staged productions, Macbeth being seen by loads of people right off the street. 

When he'd talk about the Globe Theater, Shakespeare's own stage sounded like something akin to a World Cup soccer stadium offering a game between, say, Spain and Brazil, a madhouse. It wasn't difficult to get a reading on how the show was going over. The teeming audience made sure you knew.

I thought of Prof Doebler during the last scene of Hamnet, the very popular movie now available on Netflix. You have to see it. It's riveting, beautifully shot and wonderfully assembled with just enough mystery to keep you attuned. Honestly, I can't say enough about it. It's just must-see.

That last scene lingers for a long, long time. Shakespeare's estranged wife has come to London for seemingly the first time and becomes one of the common people who are given the floor of the Globe to stand and watch the production, which happens to be a new play by her husband, a brand-new show titled Hamlet. 

What director Chloé Zhao does in that long scene is bring her audience ring brand new meaning from the most treasured soliloquy in all of Shakespeare and tie it into a story of loss and sadness in a way that gives all new meaning to "to be or not to be." How she orchestrates that long, final scene is just plain brilliant, unforgettable. 

Hamnet is, first of all, a story about unfathomable grief--anytime, anyplace. It's about losing a child, period.  It shakes the disbelief out of you by putting Agnes (Jesse Buckley) and her overwhelming sadness on the screen so succinctly that, even if you'd rather not experience the suffering Agnes does, you're powerless to turn away. 

But Hamnet is also about art, about what art can do for us, for all of us. "The play's the thing" in a fashion I'd never seen before, or experienced. What Zhao does in this movie is bewitchery, beautiful bewitchery; she determinedly rings brand new meaning--and redemptive meaning--out of a few words the whole world knows. Something deep as real human anguish gains a step toward healing when Agnes, amidst society's rabble, hears words her husband's most famous utterance convey to all right there in the madhouse theater.   

Hamnet streams right now on Netflix. It's marvelous, plain marvelous. Prof. Doebler would love it, I'm sure, as do his old students. 

Me and guns and Joni Ernst

 

One of the most read posts in the long history of Stuff is this one--2700 readers, eight years old.

I once shot a goose from the back of a motor scooter. Seriously, I did. I wasn't trying to show off, never guessed I'd hit it. We were riding along the Lake Michigan shoreline, putt-puttin' on the wet sand, late October probably, when a lone goose came by. My double-barrel, 16-gauge was loaded, so I aimed--sort of--let loose, and down came the goose. 

I'm not making this up.

We hunted crows with a phonograph. This old friend of mine had a record with nothing on it but a gaggle of crows gaggling. All that racket from the turntable would haul in crows from hither and yon, we thought, and we'd shoot 'em. That was the plan. Didn't happen, but we had fun. 

I hunted pheasants and deer and once upon a time got woefully lost in a Kettle Moraine forest hunting ruffed grouse I never once laid eyes on.

A day or two after JFK was killed in Dallas, a friend and I walked in a woods just outside of town, lugging our shotguns, supposedly hunting rabbits. Didn't come home with a bunny, but the two of us, not yet 16, had a memorable conversation about state of the union, as did the whole country.

In my Wisconsin childhood, I spent more time with guns than I did eating cheese. I learned to love the lakeshore woods by following an neighbor who walked as carefully through those pines and hardwoods as some Kickapoo might have a hundred years before. He taught me to love trilliums and buttercups and jack-in-the-pulpits. I watched him shoot a possum that stumbled into his trap, the first time I'd ever seen an animal die.

I've got my own treasured past with guns. I understand the attachment. I do.

On Wednesday night, a commentator on Fox News told the host that when he was a boy, he had a .22; but he never, ever entertained thoughts of shooting anyone. He was as dismayed as the rest of us, as perplexed about a problem that worsens with every passing month--18 school shootings already this year, eight inside the walls. In Florida, thousands are mourning 17 students and teachers who are dead.

I know what that guy was talking about. I shot a goose from the back of a Cushman motor scooter, but it never entered my mind to turn that 16-gauge on anyone else. Never. 

But then, I never carried an AR-15 either. Couldn't have. Wouldn't have thought of it. 

If the President can blame Democrats for the deaths of people killed by undocumented immigrants, shouldn't he also tag Second Amendment Republicans for the deaths of seventeen people this week in Parkland, Florida?

And shouldn't Joni Ernst, the hog farmer from Iowa, return the three million dollars+ her campaign blissfully received from the NRA? Shouldn't John McCain give back the seven million? Shouldn't the President himself fork over the $21,000,000 he got from a group who idiotically argue that Nicolas Cruz, a broken, parent-less, misfit 19-year-old, should have the perfect right to own a combat weapon as much like my 16-gauge as that Cushman scooter was to a Sherman tank?

What is wrong with us?

_________________________

For the record, On February 14, 2018, a mass shooting occurred when 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire on students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people. This post is dated February 18, 2018.  

Sunday Morning Meds--Transgressions (Psalm 32)

“Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven. . .”

 Alice Munro’s Runaway, includes a story titled “Trespasses,” a word only slightly less archaic, perhaps, than “transgressions.”  In typical Munro-vian fashion, she weaves together several plot lines and a gallery of fully human characters who move relentlessly toward an end that is as foreordained as any ending she’s ever written.  In fact, the story begins with a tableau—four unidentified people performing some unspecified ritual late at night, on a river bank—a scene which is also the story’s own dramatic climax.  In the story’s first page and a half, Munro shows us where we’re going; then she spends the next half hour of reading time explaining how we got there.

Great stories defy summary, so I’m on dangerous ground, but I’ll try anyway.  Lauren, an eleven or twelve year-old “only child,” meets Kate, who works at the restaurant where kids her age stop after school.  When Kate shows Lauren a ton of attention, singling her out from her friends, readers can’t help becoming fearful.  Slowly, the truth emerges:  Kate has spent some significant time finding Lauren, a child she believes to be her own, a child she once gave up for adoption. 

 But Lauren—still very much a child—knows a story Kate doesn’t because once upon a time she stumbled on a vial her father quietly explained held the ashes of her sister, a baby who was killed just before Lauren was born.  He warns her, however, never to bring up the story in front of her mother, who cannot bear any reminder of the accident which took the baby’s life.  That baby’s name was Lauren.

When Kate threatens to open up the whole story, something must be done.  Soon, the story of the accident emerges, a story which began in a fight about abortion because Lauren’s father wasn’t interested in another child.  Lauren’s mother took off in the car, an accident ensued, and the baby—the adopted child Kate had given up—was killed because she wasn’t fastened into the seat.

The story is rife with pain—her father’s, for not wanting Lauren; her mother’s, for her inattention; and Kate’s, for once, long ago, giving her child away. 

 So one night, in an attempt to find what people call today “closure,” the four major characters of “Trespasses” head out to the spot of the accident, repeat some lines from the Lord’s Prayer, and leave behind the baby’s remains.

 That’s not the end of the story, however.  In some ways, the denouement is even more horrifying because Lauren, the only child, is left carrying the greatest burden of all, the child of a marriage that has been bleeding grief ever since she was born.  Her parents are distanced, from each other and from her.  The only adult who’d ever shown her any love, Kate, now leaves, having rejected Lauren once she discovered the child wasn’t hers.

Munro doesn’t trumpet closure for the adults of this story; we really don’t know whether or not they’ll ever find the peace they’ve never felt.  What we know, however, is that this second Lauren will wear forever the livery of her parents’ trespasses. 

 It’s a story that reminds me of the great Old Testament curse of sin, that it will live for generations—“punishing the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”

 The Blessedness with which Psalm 32 begins is created by that most marvelous of nouns—forgiveness.  But forgiveness really can’t be appreciated with anything less than a full-bodied understanding of sin, our sin.  The miracle of our forgiveness works only when our sin is wholly acknowledged.

 The miracle of forgiveness—and it is a miracle—is experienced only when we know our sin.

Which is to say, those who know real forgiveness once knew, for real, their sin.

". . .and for Governor. . ."

 

It's not easy to pinpoint the specific feature that does it, but there's no dispute that something in Rob Sand's very countenance creates the impression that he should be running for student council--not yet, at least, for Iowa governor. 

Maybe it's the slightly jug-ish ears or the long neck. His clean-shaven face makes you wonder whether or not he could grow a beard at all. His clear blue eyes convey an innocence that suggests boyhood too. The fact that there ain't a bit of silver in the mop of hair that flops, kid-like, over his forehead makes you wonder how it is that a kid like the guy up front could be serious about running for Gov. 

Whatever combo of factors create it, his kid-dish looks are remarkable to just about everyone in the room, so remarkable, in fact, that he uses his shockingly youthful appearance, uses it himself when his campaign speech does a little winsome self-abasement. "How can someone with this face be a rotten politician?" He didn't say it exactly that way last night at a campaign stop in Sioux Center, but he gets a laugh when he says something similar.

Rob Sand is an interesting guy, a resident and native of the northeast corner of the state, a Luther College grad, a Dem who loves to hunt and fish (and is unafraid of saying it). He's the only Democrat to hold elective office in the state and has been, or so I'm told, a fierce critic of politicians who have a penchant for spending the public's money.

At times, he seems to want to project his innocence. He held forth last night, took questions from an audience that may have been entirely Sioux County residents, but wasn't all Dems, and throughout the evening spread lots of good cheer without being silly or childish. He accounted himself well and likely secured at least a few more votes from a corner of the state where the Democratic party regulars, people say, used to meet in a phone booth. 

Amazingly, his stump speech never once mentioned the word "Trump," despite the fact that he could have held our President over an open fire.  He never used the word "president" either, not because he has sympathy for our commander-in-chief, but because the heart of his appeal is his assault on a two-party politics that makes Iowa neighbors into enemies. He says if he gets elected, he'll work on making Thanksgiving a joy again (people chuckle--they know what he means!)

He was impressive, very impressive. That he can take Sioux County, however, is a real stretch, about as likely as a July blizzard. What works against him here, of course, is not his almost shocking youthfulness or his take on any of the most pressing political issues, but a long and deep conviction in lots of Sioux County hearts that voting Democratic is abomination, a sin, and no matter what Rob Sand says about the horrors of the two-party system, he's a Dem.

Last night in the Sioux Center library, I thought he was terrific.

When I can't seem to learn

I don't know exactly what the little machine looked like. What I do remember is that its sole purpose in your life or mine was to facilitate this new thing that tons of people had begun to use--e-mail, or electronic mail. That was its sole purpose. It was fashioned to resemble a work desk. The idea was that it would sit on an ordinary desk without getting in the way of other work. All it was meant to do was make the process of emailing easier than it was when it was only one function of a desktop computer. 

We're talking two decades ago here, I'm thinking, although I won't swear by the numbers. What I remember best is that it seemed perfect for my dad, who'd spent most all of his working years in offices. He knew his way around numbers and letters, but this whole computer-thing was sweeping its way into his life without being formally introduced.

I bought the little machine--it wasn't terribly expensive. I figured on a trip home I'd introduce it into the spare bedroom we'd sleep in and he used as an office when no one was using the spare bed. That was the purpose of the cute little email-er--make the processes of the new digital world a little less intimidating.

So the two of us went at it, sitting there at his desk. "Watch the words you type run across the screen here, Dad," I told him. His son was no expert, but this cute little machine was a great little foray into the tech world.

"Now hit 'Return,'" I said, maybe two dozen times. I don't think he was quite 80 years old at the time, about my age maybe. 

A thriving classroom requires a two-way street, equal doses of clear exposition and a willingness to learn. Dad was increasingly impossible. It seemed to me that he wasn't paying close attention. Nothing I said would go in. I was a teacher, for pity's sake. I knew how to find a way into a student's brain. This email thing?--there was no way he couldn't learn. 

My frustration level went through the roof, made me ever-increasingly angry. "Hit return, his return." I tried not to show it, but that frustration piled up like a bank of snow I hadn't seen coming. I'd never begun to imagine that with the help of this little electronic wonder, Dad couldn't learn a ridiculously easy task: to send us emails. Sheesh! Piece of cake or what?

I don't remember ever getting an email from him. That cute little machine got dumped, I'm sure. I don't believe he ever used it.

A few years later, Dad died. On our last visit, I stayed at his hospital bedside for a couple of days while he walked very much alone down a well-trodden path. When he died, his doctor left us a card expressing his sympathy and listing four or five causes for Dad's having passed away; one of those causes was a surprise--"Alzheimer's." 

That was news.

Our TV is just a few years old, our old TV set got soaked in the flood. This new one is a smart TV, I'm told, but it insists on showing us a donut that circles and circles and circles some more. We're trying to understand what a "cache" is and how to live with it, but it ain't easy to learn when you're approaching 80 years.

Ain't at all easy, I know.