The Broad and Narrow Way--chap. 3

Turns out this thing, oh my, has been around. I could have guessed. 

A Brit street preacher named Rev. Gawin Kirkham had it reproduced as a large painting which, somewhere around 1870 or so, he used for reaching the lost. We're talking large large--massive enough for him to require an assistant with a pool cue to point out the mini-sermons Kirkham would deliver when interpreting the thing. So it turns out the Broad and Narrow is not ancient at all, the first one created, in Germany, about the time of the American Civil War. 

But there's more history here, and it's grand. 

Rev. Gawin Kirkham was Secretary of the Open-Air Mission, which was--and is (google it sometime) a society of street preachers who held and hold forth on street corners in Britain's cities. The Broad and Narrow was Kirkham's own flannel graph. Up it would go on a street near you. 

There's more. Contemporary accounts are amazing.

During the season just closed, it has been expounded fifty-three times-- frequently to the poor without payment; but of the sum of £ 200 collected by the Secretary on his year's journeys, covering nearly 9,000 miles. . .. It has thus been carried to the North in Lancashire, Westmoreland, and Yorkshire; to the West in Worcestershire; and to the South in Hants and Dorset; and the testimonies to its usefulness from mayors, magistrates, and ministers are very encouraging'. During the winter of 1882 the Secretary expounded on it more than fifty times. From October to May 1883 he preached about it seventy-two times. In 1886 the number of expositions was one hundred and twenty-four, and in all seven hundred and eighty-nine over seventeen years. In 1892, Kirkham had expounded on its meaning one thousand one hundred and eighteen times, the last time only six days before his death. 

Been around is right. The very first Broad and Narrow was the dream of a well-heeled woman from Stuttgart, a devotee of the German Pietist movement, another group (there's always one) convinced the church had departed damnably from the paths of righteousness, a movement who determined that freedom from the tyranny of the liberals was a platform of their own restrictions--no beer, no cards, no dance, and a heap of Sabbitarianism that rivaled Deuteronomy itself--all of which was required to clean up rampant faithlessness.

That woman's name was Charlotte Reihlen. Ms. Reihlen knew she wasn't blessed with the artistic talent to create The Broad and Narrow on paper or parchment or canvas, so she sought and found yet another committed pietist, an artist named Herr Schacker, to bring it to life, which means the language of the very first B and N was German.

Ms. Reihlen contributed a booklet of explanation with the formidable title Erklärung des Bildes f Der breite und der schmale Weg' , mit Anführung der auf dem Bilde meist nur angedeuteten Schrift, which I won't try to translate because it's just too much fun to try to read it in the original. Besides, if you've seen B and N, you know what the Deutsch means anyway.

Eventually, someone noticed, published a few hundred, and the Broad and Narrow caught on, the first legitimate German pietist meme. A pastor from Stuttgart gave one to a judge from Utrecht, who passed it along to Amsterdam's leading religious publisher, H. deHoog, who published it in 1867, in Dutch. That's the version on our wall.

Pastor Kirkham of the Open-Air Mission spotted it in deHoog's front window, and soon enough The Broad and the Narrow Way was off and running to England too. Listen to this: it was Kirkham who brought it back to Stuttgart, as reported by his friend: 

The lecture had been well advertised and on two successive nights a crowd of a thousand people crowded every corner of the Concert Hall, the finest building in Stuttgart. Mr. Albert Reihlen [Charlotte's husband] presided. At the close the people crowded round Mr Kirkham, and at least five-and-twenty kissed him on both cheeks! 

All of that history in that curious print. Yet, I swear I never saw it until the auction on the far corner of our block forty years ago. I'm sure my parents didn't have one, nor did I see it on some friend's bedroom wall. 

But I knew it immediately on the auction table forty years ago because I was in it. I was part of it, and just as importantly, The Broad and Narrow Way was part of me.

Tomorrow--yet another blessed reiteration.

On the narrow way

The Broad and the Narrow--chap. 2

There it is, on the wall in the library. I didn't take it home from the auction, but somehow it's there.

I doubt whether I chose it to hang on our wall. The woman who helped us decorate this new house told us we had such odd and interesting stuff, tons of it from 30 years in the old place, including this weird Dutch print featuring heaven and hell. So there it is, center stage.

How did it get there?

That's chapter two.

Once long ago, at a time that's beyond the reach of my memory, I must have found that rolled-up print in a closet or drawer, looked it over, giggled again, really loving its plain-and-simple sermon. I brought it to a frame shop.

Who knows when that happened? Not me. I don't remember. What I know is all of that happened before the time the Dordt College English Department moved into its new digs, our own space, something we called a pod--as if we were all drawn from Moby Dick. Of a sudden, we had our own little corner of the world, with lots of wall space and nothing to hang. "Schaap, you got stuff?"

Sure. I grabbed the Broad and the Narrow from the basement--yes, Stuff in the Basement-- and hung it up on the wall of the English Department pod. 

Some years later, my son happened by the office. He'd graduated from Dordt some years before. The dialogue must have gone something like this:

David: Hey, you got my old Dutch print hanging up here--that's okay, as long as you remember it's mine.

Me: It's yours?

David: I bought it, remember?

Me: You did?

David: You forgot?

Yup. Turns out we were in the Netherlands, 1990 or so, and he was just a little shaver. I'd determined that if I was going to help this woman I met, Berendina Eman, with her war-time memories, I'd have to at least see the places she'd talked about, places like the Veluwe and Arnhem, Gelderland and Friesland, places of my own origins, but places no one in my family had ever visited.

I'd decided that we should at least visit Terschelling, the Frisian island just off Harlingen, the place my great-grandparents left in 1868 for the enticing possibilities of a new land. That's where we were, at a little island town named Midsland, where the church cemetery is so chocked full of Schaaps that someone just had to leave. My son said he'd bought that print in a souvenir shop in Midsland, across from the church our ancestors attended. He was just a kid.

Did I tell him to buy it or buy it for him? I don't think so. Did I spot it, giggle, and show him the Broad and Narrow Way? I'm guessing I did. Was I a salesman? Maybe. Did I encourage him to buy it? Wouldn't have been out of character. Whatever happened in that tourist-y shop across the square from the Hervoormde Kerk in Midsland, Terschelling, the Netherlands, the entire story had blown away and out of my memory.

But he remembers, and never fails to remind us that it's his too, The Broad and Narrow Way, I mean. 

But there's more to this goofy little saga of heaven and hell. Tomorrow, more origins.
___________________________

Should you be of the frame of mind and, like me, love to get lost in the minutia here, go to https://www.swangallery.co.uk/view-print-image.php?sid=3c3b07b712189cdd91f97892ef2cd4a0&printid=1003245&catid=

You can create your own tour of the Broad and Narrow Way. Keep a Bible handy. English'll do.

The Broad and the Narrow--chap.1

Let me scratch this thing. 

I've been itching to say something about a wall hanging in our library, for at least two reasons: first, because it's a wall-hanging in our library. I put it in a frame and gave it a place beside all sorts of treasures, including the old samurai sword my dad grabbed on his way home from the South Pacific, and my grandfather's 1897 Parkersburg High diploma. 

There it hangs, on the wall, for mysterious reasons.

And second, because this old religious print somehow came alive. 

I didn't know the lady well, just enough to tip my hat maybe--I never wore a hat--probably said "hi" is all. She lived on the southwest corner of the block, a widow, her husband gone long before we moved into the neighborhood. In those early years of our marriage, we had house, a place to live, but not much at all for furniture. I went to a lot of auctions, and this one was right on our own block. When the widow passed away, her earthly possessions made it out on her front lawn, among them a print of this odd Sunday School lesson--men, women, and children going one of two ways most everyone who's reading these words can identify, even if you don't know the language (Dutch).

Let me bring some of it closer.

As you can imagine, there are far more people on the road to eternal fire (upper left) than are on their way to Celestial City across the way. I have no idea what that train is doing up top, but by the looks of things it's not "bound for glory." The way to perdition is wide and widely peopled, and it includes some major businesses--that place  across the street and to the left is, of course, a bank. (For the record, I have a few bank stocks I inherited when my father died. Yes, he was a banker.) 

Let me bring some of this fascination in for closer inspection.

Here's the demarcation zone. The thin striped sign at the entrance, shaped like a cross, communicates caution and features the essence of the choice: Dood (death) or Leven (life) on the cross section. I'm sure I don't need to translate or explain it all away. The three dandies hiking up in the wrong direction are behind a street sign that says, simply, Rijk der Wereld ("the rich of the world"). Politics aside (no, this isn't socialism--put away your MAGA hats), remember what Jesus said about rich men finding their way into and through needles' eyes. Those are his words, not mine. I'm pretty well off actually.

Meanwhile, there's an un-fancy young dominie with his arms raised like a traffic cop, pointing toward destruction while simultaneously directing a mom, a daughter, and her son up the path that leads to door they'll all have to bow to get through. Behind him, John 3:36 is set upon the wall: "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." It's that simple.

The open Bible at the base of the cross is turned to II Timothy 3:16 and 17, proclaiming the divine inspiration of the scriptures, as you might well imagination. 

At the auction on the corner, I dug this old print out of a box of sale items, found it perfectly charming, in large part because although I knew no Dutch, I understood enough of what was going on, even the scriptures. I loved it, in the way I can love a museum piece because the Broad and Narrow had me in it somehow. Some part of me was born and reared in this remarkable cartoon, at least somewhere not far away.

But I didn't bid--or, if I did, I didn't want it bad enough to pay what others did. Couldn't have gone for much either, I don't think--old print, cheap frame. Besides, how would I explain the odd sense of my being in this whole scheme? I went without it--not really missing it either. I'm sure I walked back across the block smiling. What stayed was the memory, which, mysteriously, in a way I had even before I saw it. Does that make sense?

Then how did the Broad and Narrow get up on my wall? Tune in tomorrow for chapter two.

Day #42--a miscellany

So, yesterday, church again--yet another virtual meeting of the Covenant CRC diaspora. Like a million other services here and around the word, the pastor drew the text from one of the Bible's most memorable stories: post-Golgatha, two disciples, on their way to Emmaus, are joined by a thoughtful stranger. Even when he was no longer human, Jesus, by his own slight of hand, his tomfoolery, shows himself still to be. It's a perfectly wonderful story.

We tune in via Facebook. When our worship ceases, another begins almost immediately. For a couple of weeks it's been Nadia Bolz-Weber, the tattooed Lutheran, but yesterday our gathering was followed by a man who told his faithful that the death of Kim Jung-Un, the tubby North Korean demi-god, was clearly prophesied in the minor prophets. 

I remember reading somewhere that the net's biggest peddlers offer buffets of faith and porn in similar volume. Anybody who believes Christians are persecuted need only do some Sunday morning surfing. Millions upon millions worship on-line, where the menu stretches off the map on all sides. I'm sure we could have watched worship from Teaneck to Tallahassee to Teec Nos Pas and Tulare. 

'Twas a gorgeous Sunday. Or old friend Emma used to say that people used to say what I'm about to say: that here in Siouxland, we get about ten perfectly beautiful days. That's it. Yesterday was one of them. We went for a walk with family, who've not been here for dinner for six weeks or so, just a walk on a bike path along the Floyd. It was great. At times, a traffic light might have been convenient, but people were great, thrilled to be out of the confinement. 

Big day today, Iowa's gov, who's conservative, hasn't been draconian with her thou shalt nots, which, depending on your political persuasion, is either cause for bountiful thanks or thoughtlessly reprehensible. The Guv will lay out new Covid19 guidelines. Most people expect loosening, but life has certainly not been insufferable here, although the explosion of cases in packing plants--believe me, we have packing plants!--has been scary as of late (Sioux City leads the state in new cases, I hear). But then, who really cares about the people who cut our meat? Certainly not the Pres. They're taking perfectly good American jobs.

By the way, I know people who will give away their hogs because the Smithfields of the world are shut down. It's sad--worse than that, it's tragic. Can you believe it?--we actually needed all those immigrant people?

It could be a big day on the national stage too: the end of the POTUS's two-hour fireside chats. The idea of a daily news conference had some currency three weeks ago, but they have long since devolved into mini-rallies without the MAGA caps. 

The thing about Trump is that he not only makes a habit of stepping in it, as they say, he generates his own, a pile of it, right on stage, then, like a four-year-old, insists on tramping around as if it were a mud puddle. He's never seen a superlative he didn't like. But it's all the media's fault, you know, for fake news on the bleach front. And how do we know that's true? The media tells us so, his media, voices of great Americans, like Rush Limbaugh. 

I greatly look forward to seeing something other than his Orangeness, late afternoon. 

So today here in Iowa, restaurants may open today, holding fast to some social distancing.  We'll see.

My sister lives in Georgia. When I called yesterday, she told me she couldn't talk. She was going bowling, only first she had an appointment at the tattoo parlor. 

She must have been on Facebook, catching Nadia Bolz-Weber. 
____________________ 

So happy to announce that we now seem to have sufficient trees in the neighborhood to offer housing to a pair of cardinals. And they're here! This isn't our new neighbor. He still lives in Sioux Center. I'll get a picture of our new friend sometime soon, I'm sure. 

Reading Mother Teresa--Voices from on High

   When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
   When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. John 11:32–33

In the 1820 throes of the Second Great Awakening western New York was aflame with spiritual passions. All kinds of people were seeing visions, dreaming dreams, Joseph Smith among them. Smith was living there at the time, speaking directly to God – his father and grandfather and dozens of others had too. No big deal.

What’s more, Smith was a scryer, someone who could be professionally employed to see things psychically – “have crystal ball, will travel.” Even better, he made his living by treasure hunting, seeking buried fortunes in fields. Enough. I’m prejudicing the case. Mr. Smith told those who knew him that he was regularly visited by an angel named Moroni, who told him the location of some buried golden plates. Smith couldn’t find when he went to retrieve them. However, sometime later, he did. Those plates were inscribed in a language Smith called “reformed Egyptian” and therefore needed translation.

When finally the plates were translated, what they said became The Book of the Mormon.

Today, no one knows where those plates are, nor whether there is or has ever been a language called “reformed Egyptian.”

It was a vision, Joseph Smith said, another Joseph the dreamer. And it was also the beginning of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

To me at least, this vision thing is really tough. Mother Teresa was so sure that Christ himself had spoken to her during the retreat in Darjeeling that she likely had trouble sleeping – if God wants you to do something and you’re his little bride, how can he be denied? When she told her spiritual mentor, he told her to forget about it.

She couldn’t. Mother Teresa became the Bible’s own persistent widow (Luke 18), constantly pressing everyone including her bishop to speak to Rome about what she’d been simply told to do – to go into the darkest corners of Calcutta’s ghettos and bring love to those who know so very little.

The bishop waited, not sure, so had her spiritual mentor. Time passed. Mother Teresa was upset; her letters burn with her frustration. The command was vivid. The responsibility was hers. She had to act. The church was in her way.

It took some time for the bishop to allow her to move in the direction she felt called to do, but months later Mother Teresa was given authority to minister to the unloved of Calcutta, a task Jesus himself, she said, had instructed her to take up.

Joseph Smith claimed to hear from on high too, but he determined to start his own fellowship. He didn’t wait to hear from church authorities. He didn’t have to cool it. He didn’t have to bow to any authority but his own.

I fear I will forever be skeptical of those who claim to hear Jesus’s own voice. I don’t know why exactly, but I am.

The Mormons today are wonderful people. Last election, a Mormon was one of the candidates for the Presidency of the United States; another, with totally opposite politics, was the Senate Majority Leader.

But if I’m going to believe that Jesus Christ chooses individuals with whom to speak, as Smith and Mother Teresa both claimed, I’m going to side with “the little bride of Christ,” not because I knew or know either of them, but because one of those visions was tested strenuously by church folks who may well have been as skeptical as I was. They didn’t want to believe it either, and who knows but that they granted her wishes over against their own better judgment.

Did Jesus Christ, son of God, speak to Mother Teresa on a train to Darjeeling?

Maybe he did, but what he told her is something she’d heard before – a command to minister to those in need wherever you find them. She's not the only one who has heard that. He’d said all of that before, after all, in ways all of us have heard. 

Still does.

Day #39--an old ethic

Dad's gone. This post is 11 years old, written one early morning in the throes of the 2009 economic doldrums. What it says--what he says--is poignant and relevant.

_________________________

My father-in-law calls with a question. "There are six tapes in this box," he says. "I got to wondering about who paid for them."

It's not a question I couldn't have predicted. It's very much like him to wonder about such things, about, as he used to say, "settling up." We bought him a set of choral renditions of the psalms, one of the few really good gifts we could come up for a man in the Home who's ninety. Wasn't a birthday. We just dropped them off and hoped he'd like them. He seemed to.

"Not to worry, Dad," I told him. "It's no big deal."

I'm sure he'd thought of that answer too.

"Well, you know there are six of them in the set," he said. "You could take a couple along back home with you and that way we both could enjoy them. Then, next week or so, we can exchange."

That was a proposal I couldn't have predicted, but once he offered it, I wasn't surprised.

Now the fact is I would not have thought of such an offering, and neither would our own kids:  we can share this blessing—that's what he was saying.

My wife's father—like my own—is a child of the Depression. Call his ethic cheap, call it skimping, call him Silas Marner, call him anything you want-- what he was offering originated in a desire, deeply-held and graciously offered, that such our gift of six tapes--music from the psalms--was that good that it should be shared.

Our present economic doldrums might still exist if everyone thought that way, but I doubt it. His desire to share good things with us might well wreak havoc on industries throughout the country, but if more of us—me too—had a touch of ye olde ethic, all of us could well be a whole lot better off.

Nobody wants joblessness or recession or, certainly, another Depression. But there are lessons to be learned, methinks, in that single phone call from an old way of life—lessons about making do and about considering others.

He's 90, probably too old to send off to Washington. He wouldn't want a job anyway.

This morning's thanks are for what once was.

Day #38--the dawn chorus

Make no mistake, it's dark outside my windows right now, black-as-tar dark--all I can see is my reflection in the glow of the monitor above my computer. But they're out and up already--the dawn chorus is making music. 

Mostly robins, I'd imagine. Robins we've got lots of. Every year they nest up in some elbow of the house. I haven't found that brush pile yet this year, but eventually it'll show.

The music is quite stunning, full of chatters and peeps and warbles. It would appear the black night is no reason to make melody, but they're at it, in a concert that, I'm told, is particularly seasonal, attributable to spring. It's all about mating, all about love. And that's just fine with me.

Their music is downright inspiring at some deep fundamental human level. Some birders claim the soloists most prone to start singing are those blessed with the biggest eyes, the first ones to spot or simply believe they spot first light. 

I can't help thinking the world would be a better place if we'd use that pair of phrases more often: "a dawn chorus" at "first light." 

Let me honor them with capitals because this morning I'm thankful for the anthem of hope they're piping. Their remarkable performance hits the stage, pestilence or not. Give a listen some time to the world renowned Dawn Chorus of First Light. 

Deserves upper-case, don't you think?

Hope is the thing with feathers.

Day #37--the stakes

If my father-in-law ever stuck a dollar token into a slot machine, I'd be shocked. Same with lotteries--I don't know that he could even have recognized the machines. But he was not shy about admitting that he was, to be sure, a gambler his whole life long. He was a farmer. 

We all gamble. We bet on organizations or friends who need financial help. We bet on financial services. We buy insurance. We gamble all the time.

And we do so in the sweepstakes going on all around us right now. Some put their trust and money on constructing rigid lines of caution. Some believe this "novel coronavirus" will continue to kill many hundreds or thousands of people if we don't "shelter in place." If our businesses stay closed, our streets empty, our schools shut down, some believe more of us will not go to agonizing death. If we minimize contact with each other, we can beat this thing. If we drop defenses, we do so at not only our peril, but the peril of others.

Some believe we shut down the economy, the country itself, to save lives. 

Other gamblers put their money elsewhere. They're falling into bankruptcy, they say, as are we all. They fear food lines and mobs of unemployed. They don't want to lose their jobs when their employers can't get back on their feet. They want their kids in school, and they want to be at work. They want to hunt and fish and go to ball games. Since last weekend, they gather at state capitols for protests, wave signs and flags and listen to speakers who are sure the solution is worse than the problem.

If we don't go back to work, if our society doesn't turn its wheels once again, function as it should, we're going to suffer a worse fate than we are presently. That's where they put their money.

We're all gamblers. Both sides want, above all, to return to productivity and good health. Both sides want this damned virus to vanish. But we put our money and our faith in different courses of action.

In the middle of the mess is a President who can't make up his mind. Far and away, the protesters wear MAGA hats and quote FOX news. There are more than a few confederate flags, but mostly they tote American flags, lugging their guns over their shoulders. They're protesting guidelines that even the Presidential Task Force calls "Presidential." They claim some Democratic governors have gone stark, raving mad. They're passionate about religious freedom. They want to worship, and even though they don't care for "social distancing," something their President advises. But they love him and he loves them.

The gamblers on the other side dislike him, even hate him. They can't stand seeing his fat, orange face on TV every day. They can't handle his endless falsification. He is, to them, the king of lies. They'd vote for a three-toed sloth before the carnival barker with his mysterious flying do, a man who cares about nothing but himself

It's not all politics, but politics are huge.

This morning, 45,373 Americans have died from COVID-19. In New York the misery is torrential. Bodies are being buried in mass graves. In Iowa, 83 have died. In Sioux County, none. It seems clear to those who watch such things that the COVID-19 virus is a discriminating killer, taking victims from the weak, the elderly, and marginalized. Many of the dead are people of color. 

Hitler would consider COVID-19 a blessing.

Right from the start, I've been hoping, even believing that, as a nation, we could come together and lick this thing, and we have.

But day by day, the old sinkhole is widening. Even tragedy can't bring us together. We live in two worlds that exist in treacherous opposition. Can we survive?

It's a gamble.  

To preach or not to preach

“It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry hasn’t been as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated the Indians.” 

So says President Donald Trump's good friend, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro, who wants to move into uncharted regions of his own country to harvest the natural resources he and others claim are locked away. A rigid national policy bars development of any kind among indigenous people, thereby allowing those tribes to maintain a way of life he obviously believes to be unevolved, primitive. 

Bolsonaro is confident Brazil would be better off if its isolated peoples would take a few steps into the 21st century, realize the significant economic possibilities their regions hold, and cash in on the dividends. To that end, not long ago Bolsonaro appointed an ex-missionary, Richard Lopez Dias, to run a government commission called The Coordination of Isolated and Recently Contacted Indians. Brazilians who oppose contact of any kind with its isolated, tribal peoples feel President Bolsonaro's appointment of Dias to that position indicates a clear shift in national policy--away from protection and toward development.

Thus, when the mission organization formerly known as New Tribes announced a new helicopter ministry in regions of the country unreachable in any other way, some--those who oppose interference in another culture--were horrified. On the other hand, those who comprise the nation's new and growing evangelical minority feel the sea change clearly to be God's will.

Vine De Loria, Jr., who wrote Custer Died for Your Sins, the first attempt at telling American history from a Native point of view, was brought up in a family of Christian believers. Both his father and his grandfather were leaders in the Episcopal Church. His father once said he believed that Native people knew the difference between right and wrong before the white man came; but when they did come, they brought with them the best good his people had ever seen (the Word) and the worst wrong (a force which destroyed their culture and them). 

That's a line that has always struck me as instructive.

I know people who have given their whole lives to New Tribes mission work. Those people, high school classmates, were, long ago, good people; I have no reason to believe that they've ever been anything but. They are remarkably strong believers. Children in the community of my birth have been taught to look up to those New Tribes missionaries and support them as God's own servants bringing the gospel to the ends of the earth.

Their commission is eternal. They believe, I'm sure, what the Bible says: that someday the Lord will return when His word has been brought to every far corner of this world. New Tribes missionaries, I'm sure, have a passion for finding the lost and bringing them into the fold of Christ's own. They're empowered by a strong belief that God almighty has given his people no greater task than sharing the love of Christ.

I know stories of 19th century missionaries, Catholic and Protestant, that are perfectly wonderful. Great things have been done in the name of the Lord where whole nations had never heard. It's easy for a believer to see that kind of selfless, devoted mission endeavor as true Kingdom work (upper case K). 

But Vina de Loria, Sr., wasn't wrong about the other side of the equation either. Ever since white people landed on this continent, immense horrors resulted, million of deaths by viruses for which the indigenous had no immunity. Whole nations were wiped out by cholera, smallpox. White men brought liquor. Ever increasing numbers of white people moved into woodlands and prairies where Native people neither wanted or needed them. 

Some of them were carrying a Bible. 

This country has a history. I live in Sioux County, Iowa--two of those three words we've adopted from people who are now long gone, pushed out.

Should Brazil allow New Tribes missionaries to bring the Good News to people who aren't asking for their attention or their help or their religious faith, not even looking for good neighbors? Is a ministry that strikes at the identity of an established community of people really what we think of as "the Great Commission?"

Those are question whose answers I. Don't. Know. 

Day #35--signs and wonders

Just because we're sheltering in place doesn't mean we don't take visitors. When these guys show up--and they're doing so far more regularly a year after the third 100-year flood in a row--it's an occasion for rejoicing here in the Schaap house.

It's still early spring; grays and browns still abound. Lifeless detritus--look at the grass this guy's in--still dominates in the death-like way it has since late November. So when someone like this gentleman shows, we should be creating a festival.

The truth?--I was washing dishes when all of a sudden, from the window, I spotted these hearty souls proclaiming life anew. It's spring, right, and while emerald is hard to come by on any other square inch of our backyard, these warriors, hearing the call, triumphed from the grave. Just a couple of days later, two blessed blooms appeared, bright yellow beauties.

Then this, our backyard. 

Sunday, April 12, I took the picture. We suffered a disgusting snowstorm that might well have been beautiful any other time of year. Left a blanket over everything, which might have been forgivable if we hadn't so consistently battled temperatures below the freezing mark All. Week. Long. Those six inches of snow insisted on staying around.

Our backyard garden lies between two field stone retaining walls blizzards are eager to fill. Even though the winter we've just been through wasn't nightmarish, in March, before any thaw at all, two feet covered most everything in a giant sling drift that might have seemed elegant if we didn't see the same clog every winter. 

You can guess where this is going. That sweet parade of promise up top there, some kind of daffodils, I think, lay cold as death itself beneath the deepest snow in our entire backyard. Six to eight inches covered all that joy until last Saturday, the 18th, which was our first halfway balmy day, when finally that white drift melted away. 

I thought all that spring delight was history. You got to love their blessed annual temerity, but a foot of snow covering them for all that time convinced me their life story had been written.

Voila!

Okay, the blossoms have been in a brawl, but they're still there, still full of early spring color. Hope has not been blasted, and there's at least a bit of a promise of more.

We could do much worse on the Day 35 of our enforced isolation. There are three points in that daffy story, all lined up, ready for service.  You don't need me to write the sermon, so I'll just quit and give thanks.

Reading Mother Teresa--To Be a Saint

To the church of God in Corinth, 

to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, 

together with all those everywhere 

who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ – 

their Lord and ours. . . . 1 Corinthians 1:2. 

Sometimes I envy the Roman Catholic world because they get to help the rest of us identify who is and who isn’t a saint. Protestants use the word saint almost like a metaphor – the saint who, out of nowhere, stops along a highway to help with a flat; the saint in the parking lot who picks up your wallet and sends it home, leaving every cent of the $100 you’d just withdrawn from an ATM. You know – “Gee, I swear that guy is a saint.”

Not really. But almost.

There’s no almost in the Roman Catholic tradition – well, there have been also-rans, I’m sure; but the Vatican finally judges who is and who isn’t, recognizing, even certifying sainthood. Getting into that elite club is not easy.

In September of 1946, Mother Teresa took a train to an annual spiritual retreat, and while aboard heard directly from Jesus, who spoke in no uncertain terms, telling her, not asking her, to get out of the education business altogether and bring love, in Calcutta, to the poorest of the poor. “Come be my light,” he told her.

In intervals, this conversation continued throughout the entire retreat. Jesus was calling, calling her name, calling her mission. The language was clear and forceful but memorably endearing. She told others that he spoke to her lovingly: “My own spouse” and “My own little one” (44).

The mission he called her too, however, was daunting. She claimed – and what the church certifiably recognizes – is that it was the very language voice of Jesus Christ as he spoke to Mother Teresa, not once but many times in those few days: “Come, come, carry Me into the holes of the poor. Come, be My light” (44).

The book I’m reading, titled Come Be My Light, chooses to print the lines Jesus spoke in italics, like this: “Come, come, carry Me into the holes of the poor. Come, be My light.” I’ve walked through dozens of language and grammar texts in my 40 years of teaching English, but I never encountered a punctuation rule that applies to quotes from the Lord God. I don’t know who chose to put Christ’s words into italics, but it makes sense that someone would determine that, on the page before me, his words deserve some kind of unique ornamentation.

The 1946 retreat at Darjeeling, India, determined Mother’s Teresa’s future. After all, she’d heard from Jesus. She’d listened to his voice. She had no choice but to follow.

I’m not sure how to talk about what the Roman Catholics call “interior locutions” because, the Lord knows, millions of people, over time, have heard voices they registered as emanating from God, many of them demanding bizarre things. I’m not sure how those direct quotes should be printed, but I’m willing to give the Roman Catholic authorities the freedom to believe that, in Mother Teresa’s case, the voice was so real and true and divine that we simply have to italicize.

Here’s the paradox we all live with, Roman Catholic and or Protestant: that such communication seems impossible doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

Maybe Mother Teresa did hear him on the train to and all during her retreat. Maybe Jesus Christ, from his throne at the right hand of God, decided to stop by the train to speak his word to a bird-like Albanian schoolteacher in India. The Roman Catholics believe he did because, in part, they know she listened.

To Roman Catholics, Mother Teresa is a saint.

On that most all of us agree, even though our two traditions ascribe varying definitions. Maybe I’m too much a Protestant, too much the skeptic, but I think I would have avoided the italics.

Still, in my book, she is a saint.

Day #33--Sweats

I pulled this one out of retirement (I'm trying to finish a big essay). But I know very well it fits, sort of--at least it's comfy right now because the truth is I have not been out of sweat pants for something close to a month. It's been a comfy lock up that way.

So here's an old piece from February, 2010--nine years old, but, amid the pestilence, still of some use.
________________________

The fact is, I wouldn't go anywhere without six-dollar, Wal-Mart sweat pants (well, that's not true--times have changed, or I have). I probably wouldn't wear them just anywhere--call me Puritanical--but I wouldn't leave home with them. They get me through the weekend. Shoot, they get me through most nights.

I wouldn't have admitted that last week. I'd come simply to assume that those of us who wore sweat pants most of the time were either bona fide jocks or aging plump people, like me--well, and pregnant women; in short, those who wore them as a badge of honor or those who, like me, simply couldn't wear much else and manage timely breathing.

I was wrong. According to Sean Macauley's wonderfully silly blog on the Daily Beast, Adam Sandler wore his hang-out pair of sweats to Sunday brunch recently and, by that eye-popping gesture, brought sweats out of the closet and family room, so to speak. His was, by Macauley's account, making a California-level, verifiable fashion statement.

My students have been wearing them to class for years already, with my blessing. I have no idea if they wear them to movies or shopping or whatever, but I haven't seen them in church, although those huge colorful water jugs have been lugged along for at least a couple of years already. Who knows where Sandler's brazen act might lead? It's not hard for me to guess that sweats for worship is comin' round the mountain.

According to Macauley, Sandler's iniquitous choice was on display for all of LA. Not only that, the pair he flashed were legitimate "home-only" sweatpants, not fancy designers. Macauley calls them "the universal wardrobe shorthand for sloth and lassitude," and a way of tragically admitting (as Seinfeld must have said somewhere along the line) that you have simply given up.

No matter. I love 'em. Here I sit on a bed in a tiny motel room, cross-legged, breathing easily and smoothly, my fingers dancing over the keys. In jeans, I'd feel corseted.

If Sandler wants to wear them to brunch, I say good for him. He wants to be, as I am right now, comfortable. In fact, I think I'll wear them to breakfast, even though I'm a visiting professor.

Well, maybe not. I don't quite dare, and the fact is I'm a long ways from Hollywood.

But I say bravo to Sandler's brazenness. Even though I'll pull on khakis to teach tonight, I'd druther hold forth in my sweats. Maybe there's a new day a'comin' (there is).

Long live lassitude.

Day #32--Morning Thanks

The numbers are staggering. The death toll here will soon reach 30,000. Around the world, more than two million have been been struck by the Coronavirus, and about 140,000 have died. That's this morning's toll. The numbers are guaranteed to change quickly. 

Here's Iowa's chart.

While Iowa's numbers overall seem almost insignificant--just less than fifty deaths--the line  indicating new cases is not flattening. And now, with the explosive outburst of cases in a packing plant in nearby Sioux Falls, even here in the far northwest corner of the state, COVID19 creeps closer. Our President calls himself a cheerleader. Let there be no doubt, we need it.

Yesterday, an ex-student just about cried her story into Facebook. Tore away at my heart. Taking care of a table full of little kids who want to be in school is no picnic. Stress magnifies when there's so much to worry about. The elderly are suffering greatly, thousands are dying alone. Nurses and doctors are obscenely overworked and endangered, scared to death themselves of bringing a killer home, which many have done. Millions of Americans are unemployed, businesses locked up and shuttered. 

Yesterday the President accused New York of deliberately padding their stats to get more of what they and the rest of the nation need. He loves to accuse others. That the World Heath Organization played footsie with China seems clear, but jerking funding from an organization vitally needed at this most treacherous time makes our fearless leader seem even more the slap-happy bully he's long proven himself to be. Besides, he left a trail of his own blindness and lies scattered through a dozen February videos. At times, our cheerleader-in-chief couldn't seem more ridiculous if he pulled on a skirt. But worse--far worse, he's dangerous.

Now a protest in Michigan, where a significant chunk of populace believes the governor has vastly over-regulated their freedoms, so much for Pure Michigan. I can't imagine we won't see more of that. Somebody will ask for Fauci's head, if they haven't already. How dare he question the King! We don't need more stress to show us our seams. Those seams have been stretched for years.

Things are bad. 

But I have to tell myself that. 

I'm counting this as Day #32, but that number is arbitrary. I began my count when the NCAA called off March Madness, the news I heard when I knew this whole thing was serious. It might have taken a week before we began "sheltering in place." Most of us, like Dr. Dirx, already use the phrase "social distance" as a verb, as in "If people social distance, then we will. . ." What am I saying? It's what we're doing. It is a verb. In many parts of the world, it's not Day #32.

Honestly, right now, at this moment, with the birds singing outside my window and a gentle dawn arising, it's hard to imagine someone less affected than I am. We're retired. We have very few responsibilities anyway, and both of us keep very busy. Neither of us have had to "make work," and if outside temps finally melt away what's left of last week's blizzard, the backyard and garden will beg for a cleaning. We may make forty today.

For a decade or more, three of our parents lived in retirement homes that would have them locked up right now. Like so many others, we'd have to visit through the windows. But all of them are gone.

Our children have paychecks, our grandchildren are fine--and, my goodness, there's a brand new one, a little girl who may, one day, tell her own grandchildren that she was born smack dab in the middle of an epidemic that killed millions.  

Joy, like success, can sometimes seem so arbitrary. By choosing to live here have we mitigated the possibility of our own suffering? We could have it so much worse. Why are we so blessed when so many languish? 

I don't know answers to those questions. Meanwhile, I'll just keep recording the Boxcar Children for my grandson. 

So much of the world isn't, but all of this is just to say, "we're doing well." 

And for that, this chilly, beautiful morning, I'm very, very thankful. 

Day #31--The Tyger

Blake's original illustration for his poem

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 

In the forests of the night; 

What immortal hand or eye, 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

All I had to do was open the book and William Blake carried me back 50 years to a high school in southwest Wisconsin and a classroom I considered mine, first room on the left, lower floor--"Mr. Schaap--English."

I was a late-summer hire. I'd made no plans before my draft physical, and when I flunked--a goofy heartbeat--I felt stranded. College grad was not the most wonderful moment of my life because I felt as if all of my life were behind me. I had no idea what lay ahead. It was scary.

I was offered the job in July. I'd followed up an ad from the Sunday Milwaukee Journal. Blackhawk School District needed an English teacher who could coach freshman basketball and do the drama too. Oh yeah, did I mention newspaper? I was a first-year teacher, four years older than my students.

"Senior English" was Brit lit. I'd gone through most of a fat anthology in college, but I'd not been the most ardent student, so while the material I was to teach wasn't new, it was neither familiar nor beloved. 

Farm kids filled that classroom, kids who either milked cows or made cheese. Not one of them had ever heard of William Blake. Truth be known, I hadn't really met Blake myself, but a contract in my desk drawer told me it was my job to "teach" him. I'm wasn't sure what that meant exactly.

So last night that Tyger turned up when I turned the page in a devotional book we're into, the Lenten things back on the shelf, Easter o'er. This one is "A Year of Christian Poetry," a gift from a friend culling old books from her library on the occasion of her retirement: "Maybe the Schaaps would like this one." Oddly enough, we've found it interesting.

Last night, the Tyger showed up, flashing his fierce danger and Blake's bewonderment about evil--where did the beast come from? If God is good, who's creating the evil? It's a human question most every kid in that room would face--and likely has--sometime during their lives. Me too.

There was the Tyger. I remembered that school room and had to giggle because it seemed an what I had to do seemed impossible.

Not then. Back then, it was my job. I'd suffered the miseries of Brit Lit as a high school kid. I knew what it was like to look at The Faerie Queen or Chaucer or Joseph Addison with no idea what to make of them. Fifty years ago I knew I was taking over a well-established cultural task loaded into the back pack of what we called an education, a rite of passage. Blake was everyone's misery. Those cheese-makers had to suffer through it too.

Seems now as if it was a herculean task, downright foolhardy, just plain impossible.

But I did it--because I had to, and also because I rather quickly began to believe myself that those farm kids might actually be better dairymen if somewhere along the line they learned something of vengeful evil from Macbeth or all-consuming passion from the Bard's star-crossed lovers.

I believed that. Still do. As a culture, we're no longer sure of the place of literature, but I wouldn't be typing these words right now if I didn't believe that I certainly did no harm fifty years ago trying to open "Tyger, tyger burning bright" into vital questions of the nature of good and evil.

I'm not making a case for Brit Lit, although I could. I'm making a case for nurturing the human imagination with the very ideas that have come to define us.

That's why I feel the loss of something rich and fully human in the college down the street, where beloved members of the English department were released from their contracts because, really, who gives a darn about William Blake? The liberal arts, long the heart and soul of higher education, have been at risk for decades, but when they are gutted from a college education they are gone.

I hadn't thought much about William Blake for fifty years. My first year of teaching was the last time I went through Brit lit, but all I had to do was see the first line, "Tyger, Tyger, burning bright," and I was lost in all of this.

I know, I know--life goes on. Things change. Just give me a few minutes to lament.