The Spakenburg Socks - finis

Here's the thing.

It's become something more than a game with us, which is not to say that there's no joy in it because there is. I keep a pile of clothes on a shelf high up in the closet, and that pile grows and grows until the whole lot of it gets delivered to Zestos, the relief agency just up the street, an organization who never has to buy anything but more space for the goods they so abundantly accumulate in our consumerist culture--of whom I am one, and a frequent contributor.  

The Spakenburg Socks, despite their historic significance, will soon, I'm thinking, become part of that pile of excess, in large part because I don't need them, or won't when I go to the Home, where I am bound. What's more, as anyone I know understands, it's an act of mercy to my children to get rid of life's abundant stuff so that my children don't have to slug their way through all the detritus and haul it out of the house, socks and shoes and pens and pencils, Christmas lights and big, wide canvas photographs. Whatever the two of us can get rid of is abundantly less work for our children.

So the socks will go, maybe to someone who really needs big, fat woolen socks. This winter, their numbers could be legion. 

What I've written for the last few days is something of an elegy, I suppose. After all, those died-in-the-wool Spakenburg-ers weren't wrong about the outlines of class: generally speaking, heavy wool socks aren't standard wardrobe for professors. Those old woolen socks weren't worn more than a dozen times. Once I put them up on the pile on the shelf upstairs, honestly, I'm not going to miss them. I'd forgotten about 'em, after all. I'm saying all of this only because, hey--there they were at the bottom of a box I hadn't opened for a year or more.

What I'll miss, however, is the story that emanates in from them. When I give them away, what I'll miss what they represent, the story they still tell. Neither of our children will remember much of that, and neither of them, post-funeral, will pick that pair of socks out of a drawer and say, "Oh, man, remember these?" 

Nope. I'm the only one who knows the story they tell. I'm the only one who hears it. When someone down the line pays a quarter for 'em at Zestos, that someone won't say, "My word, I can't believe Jim Schaap threw these things away."

Nope. A sock is a sock is a sock, and, this winter especially potential warmth is the only qualification of any regard--"You don't see real wool socks like that around anymore. I'll take them for Elmer. He'll love 'em." 

One of the most gorgeous cathedrals in the world is in Venice, where, once long ago, certain townspeople and clergymen understood that for the locality to get on the map, it needed a relic or two. So they went off to Alexandria, where supposedly Saint Mark was martyred, and pilfered whatever was left in his grave, then took the goodies home.

That cathedral is the Cathedral of St. Mark. Here it is. It's unbelievable really.

Relics--the bones purported to be the remains of St. Mark of the Bible, one of Jesus's disciples--made the basilica and thus made the town, Venice, Italy, a viable city/state. Just bones. Old ones. 

The odd reverence I hold for the Spakenburg socks is an almost obscene means by which to understand the jaw-dropping beauty of St. Mark's Basilica, but, impossible as it may seem, there's a connection. We come very easily to veneration, imbuing relics, artifacts, items drawn from our ordinary lives with meaning and beauty and truth far beyond whatever value that artifact has or will ever have, and we do it, often as not, out of love, devotion, remembrance.

Think of it this way--given our circumstance here and now in northwest Iowa, chances are that no one named Elmer will eventually wear the Spakenburg socks. In all likelihood, right now, his name will be Luis or Pablo or even Jesus, and he may well be someone here without documentation or awaiting a hearing. He may wear them to a milking parlor or construction site. Chances are, he may never have heard of Spakenburg, or the Netherlands, for that matter. Could be, when he pulls them off at night, he can't help but think how blessed he is to be here where his family is safe.

Now just telescope a bit. Maybe someday, his own kids will remember the Spakenburg socks because they've never forgotten how hard the old man had to work in those early years. Maybe they'll smile when they're picking through Dad's things. Maybe one of them will keep them, to remember.

Who knows? 

I'll give them up, but I want the world to know that they've earned some veneration in my heart and soul--and, with blessing from above, maybe someday they will tell yet another meaningful story. 

I like that. It's a story I can live with.

Morning Thanks--Spakenburg Socks - iii

Although I don't remember seeing any, we were aware that the Spakenburg locals would occasionally don traditional costuming and look--for all the world--like something right off the street in Orange City (during Tulip Festival, that is). It does seem to me, in retrospect, that we were aware of such manifestations, and that, should such costuming have appeared, we wouldn't have been terribly surprised. I don't think we did.

The Spakenburgers love of the old days was another indication that we were dealing with immensely conservative people, who, oddly enough, lived in a country and culture thought to be among Europe's most progressive. When we descended from the church balcony and reentered what seemed Noorderkirk's expansive social hall, we'd become celebrities. Among those conversant only in the Dutch language, we were, most certainly, the only young couple from America, with a real Dutch name too yet, and a Professor, in fact, at a Reformed college in the U.S. And we'd just come in off the street. We were a phenom.

I suppose it happens to any American ethnics: you return to the country of origin, look around at the people, and can't help but think you know them, not because any are blood relatives, but because Irish-Americans, like Greek-Americans and Dutch-Americans, host resemblances in their DNA. 

See that picture above? I picked it up off the internet, but if I were to name those Spakenburgers--from the left: Mrs. Kramer, Mr. Huisinkveld, Mrs. De Jong. The little boy is of Mrs. De Jong's daughter, Emily; and on the far right is Mrs. Van Kampen--chances are, you would believe me. 

The Schaap family, highly celebrated right then, was, oddly enough, quite sure that we were surrounded by relatives. In a sense, we felt like home. We weren't home, and there was this language problem; but I'm saying it felt as if we should know all of the people in that church--and their kids.

It wasn't a Sabbath, but the church was full of people, most all of whom had left their youth some time earlier. They were terribly proud of what was going on right then. They led us into yet another big room, this one full of stuff ("stuff in the basement" stuff) for sale because the church was raising money for a mission somewhere in west Africa. Sound familiar? We'd walked into a church fund-raiser. No, Toto, we weren't at all far from home.

I told Barb and the kids that we really couldn't leave without buying something and thereby proving our inherent righteousness, as well as thanking them for their hospitality. "If you see something you like," I said, and then nodded.

Just so happens that lying right there on a table in front of me was a neatly folded (you'd expect not?) work shirt, the style with two bulging pockets. I picked it up, admired it--it had to have been hand-made. Wherever we went by then, we drew a crowd. "Mooi," I said, or something similar--"beautiful." I tried to make clear that I liked it, and I did. I swear one of the women just about tore it from my hands. She wasn't angry, but she was serious, even insistent. "Niet voor een prof," she said, or something similar.

What she was saying was a work shirt like that simply was too blue collar. A professor required something more professorial. I honestly got the impression that a work shirt like that, for me, was off-limits. Something like this--

I don't remember if either of our kids or my wife bought anything at Spakenburg Noorderkirk, but before we left I picked up a pair of wool socks, so heavy and thick that, last winter, they probably never got out of the back room.

But last week, wind chills got ferocious--minus 50 for several days in a row. So I dug out the super-warm clothes, rooted around a bit, and came up with a pair of gray wool socks whose story I'd almost forgotten until I picked them out of the corner of that box. Just in case you've forgotten--here they are, the Spakenburg socks.

_____________________ 

Sorry, I'm too much the Calvinist to let this go. There's got to be a moral to this story. Tomorrow I'll see if I can't pick it out. BTW, today's temps should flirt with forty!

Morning Thanks--The Spakenburg Socks - ii

Thirty years ago, there were still some Hollanders who didn't know English--not many, but some. Still, it came as a surprise that the people in the church, the people we met that day, didn't understand me when I tried to explain how it was an entire American family had just walked in off the street--and it wasn't even Sunday. We knew that Spakenburg, an old fishing town, had a reputation as a really conservative place and that we'd be dealing with conservative country people, maybe those least likely to get along well with the English language. Today, I'd guess, the vast majority of Dutch are English speakers. 

We parked the car and even before we walked in we realized that something was happening in the church; ours wasn't the only car in the lot. I can't imagine that we didn't make quite a stir. Suddenly, a entire family of Americans walked into the church for no apparent reason. 

They were no unfriendly, but language was a problem. I'm fifth-generation Dutch-American, so the mother tongue is really some long lost ancestor. I'd taken German in high school and in college, long enough to realize that I wasn't blessed with extraordinary gifts, but also long enough to understand that things like word order in German and Dutch weren't all that much different. My kids were just old enough to be embarrassed and were at the way their dad used a combination of wild-eyed gesticulation, too much volume, and strangled German to try to communicate. 

Somehow, to my kids' chagrin, I went at it. "Professuuur," I said, pointing at my chest. "Schaaps," I told them, trying to lasso the whole bunch of us with my arm. "Professuur at Gereformeerde Universitat in America," or something lamely equivalent, I told them, trying to let them know these strange foreigners were not to be feared. They straightened up, looked at each other as if to share their vital understanding that as professor this American was some standing. Had I claimed to be a rock star, it wouldn't have mattered--but a professor!

Our initial attempts at conversation were enough for them to going to look for a man who knew some English--emphasis on some. To him, I was able to communicate that I was writing a book that included a story about Noordekerk. That was impressive, fascinating. I told them the book was about the occupation, told him, in the same language stamppot, that I wanted to see for myself the church where this young couple had taken communion on a Sunday night in 1944, resistance fighters very much in love.

He raised a hand and started walking. He wanted us to follow--I had no idea why. He took us into the nave--it's a big church--and then to a back corner stairs we took up to the church balcony. He wasn't explaining anything, just kept pulling us along as if what he had to show us was something I would most certainly appreciate, something, obviously, he did. 

When he got us up behind the balcony pews, he kicked at a fairly substantial throw rug, then reached down and swept it out of the way. There, beneath, was a door, maybe ten feet long and three feet wide, cut into the floor of the upper balcony. He grabbed at an inlaid handle and swung that door open and pointed.

I don't know if he used the word razzia or not, but immediately I knew the story he was telling me, or some equivalent. What he was showing me was an otherwise invisible hiding place where people like Diet and Hein could have gone in to that Sunday night they were together here--if the SS had suddenly pulled up outside the church to look for young men to ship to Germany to some munitions factory, an action the Dutch called a razzia. What he was showing me was a hiding place for onderdijkkers, those who "dived under" to avoid conscription or prison or even death at the hands of the Gestapo or the Dutch Nazis, the hated NSBay.

Hein didn't carve his initials into one of the pews, and there weren't any  inscriptions with hearts or valentines. Our tour guide couldn't have known either of them, of course, although he was old enough to hold memories of the Occupation. In all likelihood, Diet and Hein were in attendance at Spakenburg Noordekerk only once in four years, although, like the church itself, both of them were Gereformeerde.

What the man with some English had shown me was exactly what I came to see, to note, to witness. I could not have guessed that this particular church would have built-in hiding places for people like Diet and Eman, sanctuaries in the sanctuary to hide those who feared being discovered; but there it was, cut into the floor of the church balcony, visible proof of what only my imagination could generate from the harrowing tales Diet Eman had related. 

There were other great moments on that initial trip to the Netherlands. We did the normal things people do when they visit--found the towns where our ancestors lived before immigration, in the province of Friesland and on the island of Terschelling.

But the church at Spakenburg had already given me what I'd come to see, to witness. 

Not to worry. I haven't forgotten the socks. They're on stage only for Act III--tomorrow.

Morning Thanks--Spakenburg socks - i

There they sat, at the bottom of a box of real winter stuff, unused and totally unnoted because the winter just hadn't been cold enough. Last week--my word!--it got cold enough.

They may well be my only pair of woolen socks, but they are not the only pair of thick, winter socks. Chances are, if I hadn't been looking for a old and warm waffle-knit shirt, they'd still be in the back room, unused, hiding in the corner of that box of cold weather stuff--actual "stuff in the basement." 

The minute I saw them, I recognized them, not for being the only pair of warm woolen socks I have, but because of the story that resides with them--not in them, but with them, the story of how it was they came to be down here in the basement, our basement, my basement. 

We were in Spakenburg, the Netherlands, the whole Schaap family, because I wanted to see what that world looked like--I had to see it to write about it. We'd scored some cheap tickets--the early 90s--and thus decided to take a family trip to the Netherlands. None of us had ever been there. We were and are all of Dutch ancestry.

I'd come to know a woman named Berendina (Diet) Ehrlich (she would soon change her name to her maiden name, Eman), a Resistance fighter during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. I wanted to help her write her life story. I thought I'd be far more helpful to her and the cause if I knew what her world looked like, the world where she'd walked so many back roads through the years of the Occupation, working ceaselessly and dangerously to keep alive the Jews she'd hidden with Dutch farmers. 

Her Resistance work originated when her fiancé, a man named Hein Sietsma, read Mein Kampf and determined that Dutch Jews were in peril. Hein grew up in the country, a tiny town named Holk, where his father was the principal in a little Christian school I'd visited the day before. The two of them were working for a makeshift group of resistance fighters they'd come to call Group Hein, but the two of them, very much in love, had not been working the same 80 acres. They'd deliberately separated because they didn't want to know much about what the other was doing--and for a very good reason: should either be arrested by the Gestapo, they didn't want to know much because the Nazis employed fiendish tortures to get men and women singing. If you didn't know anything, you couldn't give up significant information.

Diet and Hein were Christian kids. This was, after all, a Christian organization, built on the premise that what was happening to Dutch Jewry was contrary to the teachings of the scriptures. Resistance was a terrible task, imminently dangerous, but, to them, something that simply had to be done. God wanted it done.

Barbara and I bought cheap tickets to go to the Netherlands because I wanted to see at least some of the places Diet told me about when we spent a week going through the her story. I wanted to see that little Christian school in Holk. I wanted to drive down roads north from Arnhem, roads filled with refugees when Operation Market Garden went bust, unable to take "the bridge too far." I wanted to see her world.

Diet and Hein were young and in love, and it hurt both immensely that they couldn't spend more time together. They were engaged--she had a ring, and her wedding dress hung in her closet in her parents' home in The Hague. But she didn't live at home, couldn't really, never got there once the SS started snooping around, visiting her parents and asking about their daughter. 

So they'd meet clandestinely, when they could, where they could, and one of those places was the church at Spankenburg, where they knew they could see each other. It would be some Sabbath night, a place to meet and celebrate communion together in a place no one knew either of them.

What I couldn't imagine--and still can't--is the immensity of their passion for each other in the middle of that cauldron of horrors the Occupation brought to every segment of Dutch life--from the Catholic south to the Reformed north, to cities and towns and even to a thousand Dutch farms and dairies. In the middle of all of that, and the omnipresent danger of being caught, these two young lovers would meet in a safe place, at church, for communion. One of the churches she mentioned was the church at Spakenburg. That's why we were there. 

I wanted to see the church. That's where the story of my gray wool Spakenburg socks begins. 

Noorderkerk (Geref. Kerk Vrijgemaakt), Spakenburg, the Netherlands

__________________

More on the Spakenburg socks tomorrow.

Handel for second-graders*

 

Visceral reactions aren't always pretty, not in an old men anyway. I get 'em and I'm not always proud of 'em; but not being proud of 'em doesn't mean they don't come anyway--they're visceral, after all. No one asks them to show up.

I'll give you one. We're obligated to attend Christmas concerts every December. I sound like Scrooge, and I'm not; but there is a you-better-show-up thing in full operational mode because every other grandpa and grandma in a three-state region'll be there, for pity sake. What?--you don't love your grandkids? 

'Course we do. Love 'em to death. And I wouldn't mind going to Christmas programs either if every other grandparent in the three-state regions wouldn't be there by the time we arrive. BUT THEY ARE. We've got to park a quarter-mile away. Listen, we're Dutch, which means cleanliness is next to Godliness, but so is being someplace ON TIME. 

So what? Just about everybody else is Dutch too, which means we show up 20 minutes early, park halfway to South Dakota, and then walk forever, up hill, to get to the auditorium.

When I'm huffing and puffing, I tell myself the adulation we lay on our kids is akin to idolatry. Four-year-olds play soccer and hundreds lug lawn chairs out to watch. An elementary school puts on a Christmas show, and it's SRO in a space the St. Paul Symphony Orchestra or the Boston Brass couldn't fill in a month of Sundays.

I can get owly. Viscerals'll do that.

Then I get inside. Place is packed. Here and there stripes of open benches beckon, but somebody's saving that space. Hundreds, no thousands of people. Seriously. If you want a good seat, you should have come yesterday.

So last night was another, a Christmas music program featuring a couple hundred kids--pre-kindergarten to fourth grade, all of them darling, I might add, all of them sweet Yuletide angels. Nothing spectacular, not some extravaganza, just plain music, Christmas music.

And then, halfway through, something I would not have thought possible--The Messiah. That's right Handel. Okay, it was a pee-wee version, but it was, without a doubt, the masterpiece. Don't know if Handel would have approved, but if he had a grandson or daughter in the bunch, he would have been all smiles.

I was. Our grandson is a kid one of his great uncles or aunts from the Netherlands once described as "a serious little boy," a kid who can lost in Legos, who could live for days-on-end surrounded by nothing more than Transformers. 

Second-grader. There he was amidst the throng, singing Handel. Second grade. Handel.

Imagine this, a couple hundred tiny kids in matching t-shirts walk on and proceed, many of them anyway, to wave to their grandparents a mile away in the auditorium. The director steps up, raises his hands. Silence. Then, just like that "And the glory of the Lord" fills an auditorium that's already overflowing by finding ample room in the wide open hearts of  a loving and totally beguiled crowd.

Did those little kids know what they were singing? Sure. Did they know that what they performed was perhaps the most celebrated piece of music in the world, an oratorio created in just a few weeks in 1741? Did they know how blessed they were? What they know is they sang parts of the masterpiece, even the "Hallelujah Chorus" to a standing room only crowd that got to its feet and stood.

He's just a little boy on a wide stage with a hundred other little boys and girls, second graders and third and fourth. Together, they sang The Messiah. I'm not making this up.

It's Christmas, and the world sometimes feels genuinely enchanted because, in so many ways, the story we celebrate is so much bigger than we are. Last night, when I left that auditorium, what was visceral in me made me wipe away a tear because I couldn't help think that it's so good for him to know--for all of us to know--that we are very much part of something so much bigger than we are. 

Listen to this. Last night, my eight-year-old grandson sang the "Hallelujah Chorus." 

From The Messiah. I'm not kidding. Handel. My grandson.

The walk back to the car didn't take long at all--all of it downhill. 

___________________ 

*From five years ago--Dec. 20, 2017. Can't help it. Still love it.

The Huron Carol

'Twas in the moon of winter-time

When all the birds had fled,

That mighty Gitchi Manitou
Sent angel choirs instead;
Before their light the stars grew dim,
And wandering hunters heard the hymn:
"Jesus your King is born, Jesus is born,
In excelsis gloria.

It's Christmas all right--“the moon of wintertime"; but this near 400-year old French Canadian carol is set some distance from the hills around Bethlehem. Gitchi Manitou? "wandering hunters?" We’re half the world away from Luke 2.

Within a lodge of broken bark
The tender Babe was found,
A ragged robe of rabbit skin
Enwrapp'd His beauty round;
But as the hunter braves drew nigh,
The angel song rang loud and high...
"Jesus your King is born, Jesus is born,
In excelsis gloria."

A bark lodge is the lowly stable, swaddling clothes have become rabbit skins, and shepherds are "hunter braves." 

"The Huron Carol,” the first North American Christmas carol, is almost as old as boot prints on Plymouth Rock. It predates the American Revolution by more than a century and was written and sung in the Huron language by a man some still call Canada's "patron saint," Father Jean de Brébeuf, a French-Canadian Jesuit.

I read about it, and him, in a publication of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, a booklet titled Hymn Texts in the Aboriginal Languages of Canada (1992), from a series edited by Bert Polman. Hymn Texts was sent to me by someone who thought I’d appreciate it. They weren't wrong.

As enchanting as it is beautiful, the old carol creates a quiet nativity fully furnished as Native American, “Silent Night” in beaded moccasins. Ancient as it is, “The Huron Carol, in a delightfully disarming way, plays fast-and-loose with the gospel account. I’m not sure my mother would approve. 

Father Brébeuf, a towering presence, worked hard to learn the Huron language and even picked up the rhetorical earmarks of the people he came to serve. Then or now, mission work was no picnic; for years, the only Huron he baptized lay at death’s portal. But Father Brébeuf, a powerhouse, was persistent, driven by what he considered his divine calling, so driven, in fact, that it cost him his life. 

In March of 1649, he was accosted by the Iroquois, who were at war with the Huron. The Iroquois thought the Black Robe a prize. They mocked his religion by baptizing him with boiling water, then finished an all-day ritual torture with a singular horror meant, strangely enough, to honor the man they'd slowly butchered: each of the Iroquois warriors ate from Father Brébeuf's heart, hoping to share thereby the bravery and courage the black-robed medicine man had exhibited so unflinchingly before death finally took him.

If you know that story, it's difficult to hear “The Huron Carol” without recounting Father Brébeuf's life--and tragic death. The path the old hymn takes resounds with his immense commitment to the Indigenous, who were, after all, the first to sing the Huron Carol, men and women who slowly came to love him dearly. He wanted nothing more than to show the light of the world to those he saw in darkness, to share with them, he might have said, "the peace that passeth understanding"--"peace on earth, goodwill to men."

Today, some claim Father Jean de Brébeuf to be among the very first colonizers, on a mission to begin the cultural genocide of the Indigenous he claimed he came to save. The Huron had their own religion, their own way of life. No one asked a French priest to come by and change their world.

It's difficult not to hear the colonizer beneath the lyrics of the hymn Brébeuf created, the story he wanted so badly to craft in order to offer the Huron the gospel's grand Christmas story. He wanted them to love the tiny baby in rabbit skins, their own infant Gitchi Manitou. He wanted them to depart what it was they believed before he arrived. 

I don’t know what to say about “The Huron Carol.” I’m sure I know some people who would spite the old hymn for its syncretism, its silly falsehoods--a First Nations Jesus born in French Canada? Really?

Yet, today, others believe the old carol reeks of rapacious colonialism and inherent racism.

The oldest North American Christmas carol is something you probably won't hear in Wal-Mart this season. Its well-meant baggage is certain to offend someone's dignity, cancel someone’s culture. "The Huron Carol" is difficult to talk about, and difficult to write about--believe me. I'm trying.

Some of you, I hope, will forgive me for saying it shouldn't not be played or sung or loved. “The Huron Carol” is a centuries-old Christmas hymn that not only tells an unforgettably complex story but also is one. Its concerns today are ours—its undercurrents, its subtext on the nature of our missions make any performance as much about us as it is about the wondrous baby in a broken bark lodge.

There’s nothing cute, nothing tinsel about it. Its has something to teach us. In a very complicated way, it adds a dimension to "a peace that passeth understanding." The old carol makes "peace on earth, good will toward men" seem even more bold a task for a babe in swaddling clothes or rabbit skins.

Troublesome as it is, "The Huron Carol" is simple and beautiful. If you’ve never heard it, take the time, just this once, this Christmas.

from out here in Alton. . .

 

Footnotes

I suppose someone did, but I'll not be far afield to say that no one saw it coming. It was all Hitler's dream--one great offensive, a half a million men, through Belgium's Ardennes forest, just like WWI--a huge German Army smashes through sleepy American force of rookies, and plows through Belgium to Antwerp, where the Reich regains a major world seaport.

The thing is, the entire operation went forward in silence. It was Christmas, winter had arrived, the bloody fighting after June 6 had somehow abated. On the Allied front, lots of American fighting men simply assumed that what remained of this long and costly war was a vast mop-up campaign that took them into Germany, all the way to Berlin. All of that might be costly, but the outcome no one doubted.

No one saw the Bulge coming, which is why America shuddered once the outlines of the Hitler's last and vast offensive became visible. It was huge, and it was scary and no one had seen it coming.

The Battle of the Bulge is far enough behind us now that the national consciousness would have to go back and familiarize itself with the fearful dimensions of World War II's most devastating battle. But President Volodymyr Zelensky pulled up the story of the Bulge from the history book in his own mind and used it as an analogy in the speech he gave to the combined Houses of Congress two nights ago. When he did, he gave his argument a historical heft that I found convincing, not simply because he knows something about WWII history (Ukraine knows a great deal about WWII history, believe me!), but because his reference to that immense battle lifted his appeal to us up and above the immediate. His noting that moment in history helps make me believe that the man is capable of seeing the significant affairs of this world in a wider context. In short, his referencing the Bulge was, to me at least, convincing.

It was Christmas then, and it's Christmas now, and last night, at devotions, we once again read through the Magnificat, Mary's song, the hymn some say is the most beautiful music in Scripture. Who was Mary?--a kid really, some say maybe 14 years old. She's visited by an angel who tells her, first, not to be afraid, but then imparts the most impossible news of all time: she will be visited by none other than the Lord God Almighty, who will leave her with child, "in the family way." She will be the vessel by which Jehovah God brings salvation to his people.

She's little more than a child, but when she responds in the Magnificat, she lays claim to this new and shocking role she's been given in song. It rushes out into the future (" From this day all generations will call me blessed") then catalogs the stories of her people, God's people:

He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children forever.
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

Had I been Mary's teacher, I could not have been more proud. She's knows her history. She understands her place therein.

The older I get, the more I come to see the immense blessing it is to know your history, like Zalensky, like Mary, mother of Jesus. History's blessing is humility. It regards sincerely what has gone on before and lets us know that we're just a part of a story that's ever so much bigger than we are.

And that's a blessing.

A theology for the bird feeder

In this, my tenth year of feeding neighborhood birds, I've expanded my largesse by dropping a hearty handful of bird seed, or two or three, beneath the feeder. We've got no trees close by, so squirrels are not a problem. Bunnies are, but I have not yet had my fill of them, and besides, they seem to Hoover up whatever doesn't get et; they're the backyard's sanitation crew, adept at mopping up.

I expanded my ritual in large part because my heart goes out to the juncos. I mean, someone has to sit at the bottom of the pecking order--someone has to be the Pawnee. Outside my window, it's the juncos, cute little hoppers. The jays rule the roost, but the sparrows cede the territory just as quickly to the cardinals also when red king and queen arrive. The sparrows are the teeming masses. They descend on the backyard by the dozen, little worry-warts who go up in an audible flutter when they sense the flimsiest danger.

I should be thankful for sparrows--God is, after all. He made a point of telling us he cares. But they're easy to take for granted: they're not showy; they're always here; they come and go in bands, like junior high girls. You never wonder if they'll show up. Of course they will. Maybe it's a good thing His eye is on the sparrow. Mine, most often, isn't.

Even though my benefaction has grown as of late, there's always been some cast off seeds in the snow beneath the feeder, and I've been at a loss to understand how. Why is clear. The top dogs, the ones who fend off rivals as they sit up top, don't eat everything that comes down the shoot. No ma'am. They only pick up the goodies. Look--

Down beneath him, some seeds are dropping as he kicks them out of the way. Or am I being too much the Calvinist? My view of this behavior--and it's repeated a thousand times every day--is that birds are just plain picky. He knows what he wants of the goodies he sees before him, and he's interested only in the chocolate. Anything else gets spanked out of the way for the rabble who circle up beneath the feeder. This guy is the Donald Trump of the backyard. He cares only for his own gargantuan appetites.

I MAY BE WRONG. 

It could be that an apology is in order here, if not forgiveness--and penance too. The St. Francis in me--yes, there is one of him too--couldn't help wondering, a while back, if this feeder-eater isn't dispensing food for the hungry beneath him literally--and in the pecking order. After all, his actions have immense benefits to the community at large, keeping the weaker brother and sister's stomach's from aching. This guy--have a look again--is kicking out seeds from the feeder because he's lovingly aware of those in need beneath him. His eye too is on the sparrow. Isn't that a sweet idea?

That's where I am this morning, just a few days before Christmas. Is the glass half-empty or half-full? Who wins in me, St. Francis or John Calvin? Total depravity or some smattering of the image of God?

Can't help but hear Ethel Waters, can you? "His eye is on the sparrow."

It's Christmas--think of the animals there in the stable singing carols? This super-cold morning, I think I'll throw my lot in with St. Francis, help things along a bit, and toss out a handful more. 

Morning Thanks--a roaring furnace

The only means by which the boys up in the attic could gauge the temperature on those bone-chilling mornings was by checking the thickness of the frost was on the nails protruding from the ceiling. Warn't no insulation up there, just a holiday chorus of frosty nails--thicker the frost, uglier the temps. You took your life in your hands by running down those steep stairs before pulling on your clothes. Doggone it, it was cold.

A man named A. J. Boersma told me how it was to wake up in an uninsulated attic, some kind of thick comforter pulled right up to your nose, the brick or iron or stone at the set bottom of the bed sunk, by morning, to room temps. You honestly hated to leave, he said.

Theirs was a rented place farm not far from the Big Sioux, just south of Canton. Could have been anywhere close. They were an immigrant family, almost destitute when they arrived, happy to take a shot at a new life in a new country.

Fifty years before the Boersmas, early 1870s, there were no protruding nails because there was nothing to nail down. Sod houses had plenty of insulation--the walls were a foot thick. It's hard to imagine Dutch mothers tolerating their children growing up in all that dirt, but if you'd like to keep out the wind and cold, a sod house is as good an idea as any. Just can't mop the floor. It's dirt--mud, although frozen solid mostly in winter. No matter. Nobody I know grew nostalgic about their days in the soddie, especially mid-winter.

Before that, the Yankton Sioux would have had to make sure the sides of the tipi were pulled down all the way, stones like watermelons keeping the hides tight and sealed. How anybody could live through the kind of howler we'll have going today is really hard to imagine. Likely as not those tipis were somewhere along the river where there'd be trees would keep off the wind if you didn't cut 'em all down to keep warm. Temps in the bottom of the basement, north winds whipping in with sirens blazing--doesn't matter how many buffalo hides you can crawl into and under in that tipi, I'd rather not try.

This morning, here we are--

Wind chills approaching minus 40. This morning, I'm greatly thankful to hear the furnace roaring. In a while, I'll go upstairs and light the fireplace. We're out in the country here, those terrifying winds as alive as neighbors, but when you imagine how it's been out here in some other eras, you can't help but give thanks for our blessed accomodations. We're blessed.

You too?

Small Wonders--Winter Solstice

People I know have tipi rings on their South Dakota ranch, circles of stones visible only in summer, and then, only when cattle keep the grass down. But they're there, broad circles of half-submerged stones that mark the spots where, years ago our indigenous ancestors pitched tents, footprints of a different time.

Those friends claim there’s a long, straight line of stones in that pasture they believe points to the exact spot on the horizon where the sun rises on summer solstice. I haven't seen it, but I believe such things exist--ancient clocks to remind people that the times, they were 'a'changin’. Once the sun aligns with those rocks, people knew, regretfully, that winter was just over the hill.

Frederick Manfred, the Siouxland novelist, used to claim he knew where to find a similar straight line of rocks on Blue Mound, up the road in Minnesota. I never saw it, and you can’t always think a writer; but I’d like to believe it’s there too.

Who knows?--maybe there are more. Out here on the edge of the plains, we still unpack our thick robes once we know winter is on its way.

The Lakota kept their history on buffalo hides. Maybe you’ve seen ‘em. Somebody—the appointed artist, I suppose—kept track of calendar years by a single picture: a mule maybe, because that was the year some feisty donkey wandered into camp. “Winter Counts,” the Lakota people call those sprawling history book hides “winter counts” because the Lakota once counted their years by the winters they endured. Winter Counts. For the record, I have lived 70 winters. Now you know.

Out here, winter is the only season we can’t wait to end the day it starts. No area Chamber of Commerce cheerleader tells tourists that people die here in sub-zero temps, but they can—and do. Thousands escape south, but most of us live with ice cube cars, frostbit ears, and a drop of clear liquid on the end of our noses. When it gets cold enough, you don’t go out at all.

Long lines of solstice stones remind the people that it’s soon to be winter. It’s coming. Pull that buffalo robe up.

And then, right in the middle of all that miserable cold, comes Christmas. Right in the middle of all that wretched cold comes Hannukah, and right in the middle of all that hopeless cold hope itself rides up, the winter solstice, the flipside of the sun’s annual pilgrimage.

In the Netherlands, Sinter Klaas arrives; in Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic, St. Stephen. And Santa Lucia, candles in her hair and sweets in her open arms, comes to Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.

In the middle of all that cold comes all that grace, all that blessed warmth.

The angels on high appeared to low-life shepherds in the Galilean hills at the very best possible time, a night of endless dark and awful cold, even in Israel. “Glory, glory,” they sang, and the music couldn’t have come at a better moment because those shepherds had to be sick to death of winter.

And thus Jesus comes to those who follow him, just when we need him most, in the cold nights of our winter counts.

Not all of us believe in the Virgin Birth, cattle speaking in tongues, or a King in a manger. Not all of us spend our nights lighting menorahs for a rededicated temple. Not many of us dance madly on winter solstice.

But out here where the wind blows out of some unseen northwest icebox, my goodness! do we need the joy of Christmas. We’d be groundhogs without the blessing of that first sweet “Noel.”

Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men and women and children and all living things.

Every winter, just when a frozen world seems hopeless, hope itself arrives to wipe that bead from your nose and mine.

Happy holidays.

____________________

A "Small Wonders" piece from 2018. 

Dr. James Koldenhoven--1932-2022

There's a telling line in his obituary. Goes like this: "He loved his grandchildren and would delight in visiting with them about school, careers, life, and faith." And then, "No subject was taboo."

I don't know Jim Koldenhoven's grandchildren. I know his daughters, one of them was a student of mine in the very first year of my employment at Dordt College; the other, was, for almost forty years, a colleague. His daughter's kids I don't know. What I do know is that whoever wrote the line in his obit had it right because with Grandpa Koldenhoven, like the professor, no subject was taboo.

And that's what separated him from the rest--there was no one around just like him "back in the day," in large part because with Dr. K "no subject was taboo." Here in Sioux County in the post-WWII era, believe me, there was a nest of taboos that could and did strike at any moment.

When, back then, former President John Hulst came to Dordt, dorm counselors would put heavy tape over the coin slots on Sundays to prevent students from buying a Coke. The Sabbath was holy after all. Even though no one believed people inside those machines were making change on Sunday, handling a dime or a quarter on the Sabbath was thought by some to be "unbiblical."

That's the milieu into which Jim Koldenhoven stepped when he took the teaching position the President B. J. Haan urged him to, a position in the English department that included doing the theater.

Theater, back then, among the almost thoroughbred CRC student body, still made some shiver. The CRC synodical warnings about worldly amusements were almost middle-aged back then, but still capable of overthrowing those who looked past them. Theater was, to some died-in-the-wool conservatives, shadowy and questionable, and still is among some now-fringe, then-stalwart constituencies of the college.

Running the theater at little Dordt College was going to be a job that required the the director bearing an armadillo's wardrobe. Even huge stage successes didn't mean there'd be no blowback. Students "acting"?--sounds sinful to me.

Jim Koldenhoven grew up in northwest Iowa and could not have been blind to the criticism his productions eventually created, for better or worse. But he did it, did them--directed theater at Dordt in those early years. As remarkable as it seems, his plays brought Shakespeare, Moliere, Beckett, even Thornton Wilder to the stage up high in the old gymnasium. 

He did so because he believed in theater, believed in art, believed in open expression--"no subject was taboo" with him, even though lots and lots of subjects were taboo with the constituency of the college. It was the Sixties, and confrontations ran through and around the the perfectly-straight row crops like the jackrabbits now long gone. Jim Koldenhoven was a Republican, even once ran for office; but he was never, by his own peculiarly good nature, a conservative. He was a classical liberal, a man of the world who believed good could arise from openness and honesty and faith.

During my senior year, I took a drama class with him--"Theory of Drama" or something similarly titled. Back then, I couldn't help but think he often came to class unprepared, simply sat up on the table in front and let it be known that questions were expected. And they came.

Like no other single course I took at Dordt College between 1966 and 1970, in Theory of Drama, Jim Koldenhoven created an atmosphere of good will, toleration, and acceptance because, impossible as it seemed then and even now, "no subject was taboo."

And I loved it. It was 1970, and I felt myself greatly at odds with students who carted along their parents' tired conservatism when they came to what might well have been the only institution of higher learning those parents would have approved of for their covenant children. In Koldenhoven's class that year, my last, I experienced something new--an openness spread before us by a classical liberal outlook of toleration. 

Today, we'll bury Dr. James Koldenhoven, my teacher, my boss, my friend. He's not, thank goodness, the last of the liberals in Sioux County, but by my reckoning, he had to have been one of the first.

A good man. A very good man with whom no subject was taboo.

Sunday Morning Meds:--We'll be there soon ourselves

When my father died, the poet Scott Cairns sent me a poem he’d written at the death of his own father. Like no other poem I know, it offered great consolation—and still does. Countless times I’ve sent it on to others who’ve lost parents or friends. It’s titled “Words for a Father,” and it begins with “and,” as if we’re probably overhearing some ideas that have been brewing in our own heads for quite some time.

“And this is the consolation: that the world
doesn't end, that the world one day opens up
into something better. And that we
one day open up into something far better.”

He’s talking about afterlife, of course—our visions of the eternal, of heaven. None of us know a thing about what the afterlife will look like, but our differing views (streets paved with gold, good fishing, no more wind) all share the same basic conviction: there, things will be better. That much for sure: things will be better.

Then he visits a possible vision of things, narrating carefully one possible scenario after dying:

Maybe like this: one morning you finally wake
to a light you recognize as the light you've wanted
every morning that has come before. And the air
has some light thing in it that you've always hoped
the air might have. And One is there to welcome you
whose face you've looked for during all the best and worst
times of your life. He takes you to himself
and holds you close until you fully wake.

There’s no Mormon Tabernacle Choir, only a sweet light and a single, strangely familiar face, a maternal God whose welcome is a blessed, wordless calm.

And then the lines that seem most memorable to me—or certainly were in those days following my father’s dying.

And it seems you've only just awakened, but you turn
and there we are, the rest of us, arriving just behind you.
We'll go the rest of the way together.

What hurt me most at my father’s death was the sense of his being gone, alone, the rest of us seated in the church he’d attended his whole life, all of us, his entire family. To the terror of that emptiness, Scott’s poem is sweet and grand relief, profiling eternity by promising us all—my father and his included—that a thousand years in God’s sight are like nothing at all. Nothing. We’ll be there soon ourselves.

That, is comfort.

Tragedy and Trump

According to Aristotle, who started the conversation, tragedy, real tragedy, occurs when a great man falls from grace on the basis of something he does, something generated from an individual and fatal flaw in his otherwise heroic character. Such a fall is instructive, but never pretty.

Our ex-President will never be a tragic hero because he never was a great man, nor was he ever particularly good, or even nice. The whole MAGA scheme was a fairy tale from the beginning, a conservative wet dream that made cranky white folks believe that somehow their hero was so rich and so powerful that he could, in fact, take the whole country back to, say, 1953 maybe. Make America Great Again created the illusion that there was a time when everything was sweet and peachy. 

Trump was a louse, a grifter, a textbook narcissist who must have been taking a leak behind the bushes when the rest of us were being factory-equipped with shame. He has none. For some reason, he finds it impossible to think of anyone other than himself. Case in point--Herschel Walker, his hand-picked candidate for the Senate. Once it was clear that poor Herschel wasn't a shining star, Trump dumped him, didn't give him a cent from that barrel of cash he's got from some scheme or another. Walker's great benefactor finally showed him how to get under the bus.

So this week, he proudly announced that a grand new strategy was coming, to be announced yesterday. Watch for it!

The great news, it turns out, was the grand release of a series of on-line trading cards ($100 @ pop) featuring guess-who. Stupid things, idiotic things that even Steve Bannon despised. For years, The Washington Examiner and the New York World wrote puff pieces about the Orange Savior. Yesterday, they lambasted him and his goofy pics. Even his besties turned their faces. 

It's not tragedy. Tragedy, Aristotle said, is personally purgative, cleansing because it's impossible not to see ourselves in the tragic hero. Nope. 

The nation will most certainly be better off with Trump under the bus, but his dying (metaphorically) will not prompt pity and fear, as Aristotle claimed. It'll do nothing more than a good aspirin does--it'll spell relief, awesome relief.

Still, the burn and crash won't be pretty. The Donald doesn't like to lose, and he's going to, big-time. His descent has already begun, and it's already moving toward some train wreck to come. It won't be pretty, won't even be particularly sad. I predict there will be very few tears, and a ton of I-told-you-sos. 

But this guy here--take a look. 

Superman is going down. You can watch if you will, but let me remind you that train wrecks are ugly. Not that long ago, this guy was President of the United States and leader of the free world. Now, he'd like to believe he's this--whatever this is.

When I left home, the sun was up and shining. We'd had two or three inches of snow a couple of days before, but all of that had fallen after rain that soaked everything and made the mantle of snow stick to every kind of tree limb, like hoar frost. Trust me, those were beautiful days, although you'll have to take my word for it because I didn't venture out with a camera. Most of the world hereabouts did.

On Sunday afternoon, I left for the pond in sunshine, but mistiness crept in from the west and swept over what had been an open sky. Overcast descended, albeit gently, not fearfully. The shrouded sun offered its own colors.

The path I take around the pond leads away about halfway through and then descends down a path toward the river, a path I cut myself in order to get to the edge. I hate to admit it, but by the time I've got a mile in, I'm ready to sit, and I do, right there at the river's edge, where, Sunday, I sat once more and looked across the river at this scene, still some blue sky but considerable cloudiness on the way. 

That's the Floyd River, named for the only member of the Corps of Discovery who didn't make the whole trip. He died of some internal problems at the point on the old map where Lewis and Clark couldn't help but note two rivers flowing into the Missouri. In 1804, there was no Sioux City, but that's where all of this flows. They named this one, the smallest, after the sargeant they buried in the hills above the Missouri.

Here we are, last December, same place, just a bit more sunlight and an inch or two more of snow. 

It wasn't the best day to try out the new phone's camera, but if you messed around a bit, there were some possibilities--like this

and this

or something even more mysterious--

So anyway, what began in sunlight, ended in a shroud that's been with us ever since--the Sabbath until Thursday. If the weatherman is right, today we'll get more snow, high of 27. 

A friend who's in-the-know on such things claims that the dirt work people working on a new gas station just outside of town are saying that six feet into this wonderful Loess soil all around us, the ground is dusty enough to break in your hands. That's a serious sub-soil moisture problem. In the last two weeks, we've had some sweet moisture, ice and snow. "Beauty," right now at least, as here has less to do with light than it does with rain and snow. 

We'd like more of this, Lord, more of this.

This week with the Titans

Couldn't help but locate a theme in yesterday's news--well, this week's news, I suppose. Let me tease it out a bit.

First, seems clear now that the ex-President's fortunes are on the wain--"cratering," the NY Times said. Recent polling shows the new favorite son of the warring right is the Gov of Florida, De Santos, who's still piloting his holy crusade against trans kids and the mere mention of LG. . .well, you know. The difference between De Santos and Trump is that nobody seems willing to die for the Gov; the ex-Pres, on the other hand, still has willing martyrs numbering in the thousands. Yet. Only true believers can't help see Trump's fortunes are "cratering." Seriously, this quest to regain the Presidency?--I say, "pipe dream," no matter who the Dems run. 

Second, the wunderkind of crypto currency, the kid with the hair, got himself arrested in the Bahamas and soon enough will get trotted back to the U.S., where he'll be arraigned for nothing more or less than ordinary back alley fraud--well, not ordinary, I guess, because the guy pilfered billions from all kinds of headliners, then threw cash, willy-nilly, at politicians, many of whom likely didn't sleep well last night. There are those who'd say he did nothing more than rob crooks to pay crooks. But let's just say it this way: Sam Bankman-Fried is on now wiggling fearfully on the hot seat, where it's going to get just plain torrid when the law focuses in on what turns out to be third-class fraud. He's cratering too. Well, forgo the present tense: Sam Bankman-Fried, the fabled 30-year-old genius, has cratered.

And then there's Mr. Musk, who suffered the indignity of recently losing his crown as the world's richest man. It just seems he had no clue on what to do after forking over all that loot to buy Twitter. Almost immediately, he fired half his staff, ruled the rest with an iron fist, opened the gates for all kinds of tripe and treason, and established kinship with the Q-anon-ers, all the while claiming that the world needed some kind of on-line Tombstone Front Street, where everybody whips out the weapons they carry and there ain't no law at all.  I don't need to say it, but I will anyway--Elon Musk gives every indication he too is cratering.

Meanwhile, Arie Melber hosted a very special guest yesterday, Jane Goodall, who has a new book that speaks with strength and authority about conservation of the world's natural resources. At the end of the interview, Melber asked Dr. Goodall, a contemporary saint, a series of questions meant to summarize her life and her views. "What gives you hope?" Melber asked. "Young people, the resilience of nature, and the human brain," Goodall told him. And then, "What makes you pessimistic?" She answered quickly. "That fact that money still plays such an major role in countries around the world."

Dr. Goodall, most certainly, is right. But this week at least--it seems the Titans are cratering. 

And that's okay. 

Morning Thanks--fusion

Don't ask me to explain it. Science has never been my strong suit, although once upon a time I aced high school chemistry and I know what the Doppler Effect is (we live a hundred yards from the railroad). I know little more than the perfunctory to explain what has happened, but enough to repeat it here--fusion somehow replicates the energy-producing action of the sun. There's your definition, and this morning that's a very big deal.

Real scientists have been trying to produce fusion in a laboratory for a very, very long time because those in the know understand fusion's benefits could be game-changing--well, life-changing, planet-altering. If harnessing energy from the process researchers have been working at for years--and now, reportedly, have done--the planet's dependency on fossil fuels will eventually--gulp!--come to an end, maybe by 2050. 

Today the U. S. Department of Energy will announce the amazing breakthrough, something so big it's hard to restrain the superlatives. It's, I mean, huge. What fusion uses as fuel is sea water. No open pits required.

The word nuclear is so heavily affixed to meltdowns, Chernobyl, and Nagasaki, that it's more than capable of launching a thousand red flags at its simple mention. Still, nuclear energy is the cleanest fuel we can generate, and nuclear fuel generated from fusion, unlike fission, its sibling, runs on nothing more or less than water and, listen up! isn't dirty, doesn't leave radio-active garbage in its wake.

I can't help thinking scientists creating energy from fusion a big, big deal, a mammoth blessing so big it's hard for a real Calvinist like me to believe--you know, "if it's too good to believe, it is." I'm that brand of Calvinist. 

But somehow I'm a "half-full" guy too, the water in the glass I mean, the kind of optimist some people might identify as a shade too sunny, too comfortably on a cloud nine homestead, too dad-blame naive and rosy. 

It's an unlikely one-two punch. My boss used to say after the crowds left the beach at the park where I worked, "Sheesh! In'it so?--people are pigs." That's the Calvinist. On the other hand, I don't take up residence with the doom-n-gloom bunch all that comfortably. Count me among those who thought the man most deeply shaken by "future shock" was Alvin Toffler, who wrote the book fifty years ago. 

It's hard for me to be dragged, screaming, into the dark night of global warming, in large part because (unCalvinistically) I tend to think those scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory may be on to something. Maybe we can, once more, sidestep doom, saved from all the horror by a brand new form of energy powered by what already covers 71 per cent of the planet and is growing--sea water.

Today, people in the know, real science types, will take center stage and tell us what blessings may be just around the corner. They'll also say that global warming is no myth.

So the Calvinist in me says, "Don't get your hopes up," but this other fellow, the eternal optimist says, "The whole world's in His hands," and we know very well what the rainbow says. 

This morning's thanks is for the divinely blessed human ingenuity personified in those white-smocked scientists at Lawrence Livermore. My word, if what they say is true, welcome to yet another brave new world.  Watch for it today. It's big.