Taking a bit of a leave

 

Those of you who watch this blog more than occasionally will get a rest, just as I will. That's me and that's Barb beside me, downtown Oostburg, Wisconsin, forty years ago. We lived just across the street from Mentink's Foods. 

It'll be tough for me not to write in the early mornings, but we're off to Arizona, where our married life began, our whole family, kids and grandkids, coming with. 

It's our fiftieth. You only get one of them. I'll likely start up again somewhere around the Fourth.  

Thanks for reading--

jcs

A Burning in My Bones - i

Reading through Winn Collier's A Burning in My Bones, the authorized biography of Eugene Peterson has been its own kind of revelation. I knew Eugene, and I knew his wife, Jan. Both of them died within a short time a few years ago, and we all miss him, and them, dearly.

Burning is like no other book I've ever read because it examines a man's life, a man I thought I knew well. I suppose, like most everyone else, what we choose to say about ourselves is only part of the whole story. I was surprised by some things Collier includes--I had no idea his mother was a celebrated Pentecostal preacher. I knew he grew up Pentecostal, but I had no idea that as a preacher he was following, to some extent, in her footsteps.

But mostly what I discovered in the biography was much more about a man I thought I knew pretty well--all blessed discoveries. Is it the best biography I've ever read?--don't know that I'd go that far. But it did something no other biography I've ever read accomplished--it made me respect him even more, a man I knew and thought I knew well.

I'd like to do a number of little meanderings about Eugene and Jan and A Burning. I hope you'll bear with my reminiscing.

*   ~   *   ~   *   ~   * 

At the last meeting I attended of the Chrysostom Society, the Pres, Paula Huston, as if out of nowhere, asked--well, told--me to lead in prayer. Eugene and Jan were asserting, quietly, that this would be their last meeting. Throughout the weekend it was painfully apparent that Eugene was suffering, mentally, although he remained almost blissful. He bore the marks of Alzheimer's, attended Jan like a lap dog, a puppy. She was his means of staying a part of things.

I’ve never been big on public prayer, and I’m not particularly good at it. Burning makes very clear that for Eugene, prayer was a beautiful rite and privilege. I'm afraid I don’t measure up that way, so when Paula, out of nowhere, asked me to pray, I was startled and shocked. But I did—I couldn't say no--and I think I did a credible job. It’s difficult to avoid pretense in public prayers. I tend to side with the Savior myself, who wasn't thrilled with the performance aspect and suggested that praying in closet was preferable.

But I prayed at that moment—about the Petersons, about us, about all of our lives. I wish I had a recording of what I said because when I finally climbed to the Amen, I was telling myself that what I’d contributed as the moment was neither simple nor tedious, and may have even been a blessing. I don’t know if saying it this way is spiritually worthy, but I thought I’d prayed very well.

Perhaps the Petersons had brought them along—I don’t remember. It would have been unlike them to do that, but there were dozens of copies of The Message sitting there, a sufficient number, I think, for the whole group of maybe 25 people. The Schaaps already had a copy, and I knew we had several of the smaller editions of individual books--when I wrote devotions on the psalms, I used his psalms a lot, simply to see how Eugene had rendered what I’d have read in the NIV or KJV.

I took a copy. Eugene was sitting at a table signing. Now let me be clear about this—I’m now 74 years old, and more than aware of the way things thin out with the years—from hair to skin to tooth enamel. We wear out, period, which is itself wearing.

But I’d spent hours with Eugene and Jan—not at this their last hurrah with the Society, but at other meetings and even by ourselves. The biography says a great deal about their hospitality, how they loved to entertain there in Flathead country, at their lake cabin. Honestly, I’m sure they’d invited the Schaaps up a half-dozen times—both Eugene and Jan, probably Jan most forcefully. "Please come by sometime, we have plenty of room."

When I came to the front of the line, I opened the cover to the first page and laid the book in front of him. I’m sure I said some things about how we’d miss him. Then, he set the pen to the paper, then lifted it, stopped. It was painfully clear that he was riffling through a mental notebook of names and faces, trying to remember exactly whose name to write.

Honestly, it could just as easily have been happening to me, but I didn’t know how to play the silence. Should I simply tell him my name—and risk embarrassment, or should I wait for him to ask and pretend I didn’t know what was going on in a mind that was painfully and regretfully, even embarrassingly uncooperative?

“And who again?” he said, looking up.

And it hurt, I’m sure, when I said “Jim Schaap.”

He smiled.

Eugene had a lovely smile, and he wore it constantly. Then he told me, clearly and without flinching, that things weren’t working all that well anymore. He raised his right hand, the one with the pen, and pointed to his temple, nodded a bit, still smiling, then finished the dedication.

That was five years ago. I was 69 years old—far beyond being shocked or embarrassed by memory lapses.

That wide smile made it clear that he wasn't either.

What Eugene Peterson wanted to be, Winn Collins insists in his authorized bio, is a saint.

When I came home from the Red Rocks around Colorado Springs my very first meeting with the Chrysostom Society, I told my wife I’d met this lanky gentleman in a flannel shirt and a vest—Eugene Peterson. I’d known of him by reputation (this was pre-Message days), but I had never been in a room with him, certainly in a position to have meals with him and Jan. I said to Barbara that one of the writers in the group really stuck out to me, although others did too for different reasons. “This one,” I said, Eugene Peterson, “I can’t help think of as something of a saint.”

I’m not so bold as to believe I can determine a worthy definition. Eugene Peterson spent hours and hours contemplating the word saint, I'm sure. That very first reaction was quick-draw, shot-from-the-hip. What I knew was that this Westerner in the vest was somehow extraordinary. He conveyed the kind of paradox he himself found joyful: he took great joy in the things of this world, the flora and fauna all around, his friends, his loving wife, his Montana holy land, his prayers and thoughts, because to him it was all of a piece, as real and earth-bound as it was perfectly divine.

Mysterious ways

The Walkman came along. She was greatly proud of it, thrilled to have one, if for no other reason than all of her friends likely had one too. I don't remember if my wife and I actually discussed her having her own back then--it seems entirely innocent today--but I know the Walkman was just purchased for a California vacation.

The vacation was for them, my wife and kids, not so much for me. I'd been invited to speak at a youth conference, read stories actually, not preach--I've never been much of a preacher.

I'd picked out stories for particular reasons, but don't ask me to remember which stories and why and when. I'm sure the leaders allowed a modest honorarium, but the invite--and the bucks--were enough for us to think that maybe the Schaap family should drive out to California and back, and see the sights of San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and whatever else we might find out west and back.

It was maybe 35 years ago, and the camp--and the kids--were somewhere close to Santa Cruz (I remember going to a theme park there, part of the conference and far more interesting, I'm sure, than the speaker).

Memory's mysterious ways are far beyond our control. What will stay and what won't are not choices we make. Our consciousness has little say in the matter. What sticks from that whole trip, what I'll never forget is a dining hall dinner when all those kids got up from their chairs at once and zoomed to the windows. I remember the chandelier swaying, but it took me far more time than it took them to know we were in the middle of a California earthquake. 

The Schaaps, Iowa flatlanders, had never felt an earthquake before, so we didn't know that watching swimming pools was great fun, the only time a pool could host white-water rafting. In a second, they were all at the windows, watching the show.

Now AJ, our daughter, had been invited to eat dinner with some big kids. Ball and chain wouldn't have kept her with us--of course, she wanted to, but when they dashed off, she had no idea why she'd been left deserted. 

The quake was over in a matter of seconds, but it registered with all of us--and with AJ.

The conference center had cabins. We were given a beautiful little bungalow in the trees. That's the front porch up above. I was the speaker, but the powers that be had determined we'd be comfortably apart from whatever shenanigans went, late night, at the dorms, an arrangement that was sweet and greatly satisfactory.

Late that night we were all in bed when a timid little voice said, "Dad," stretched that word out in vivid fear and trepidation. "Daaaaaaaad"--not loud, nothing close to a scream, but a trembling, brow-beaten still small voice.

"What is it?" I said. The truth?--I wasn't interested in getting out of bed. 

"I can't get to sleep," she said. 

Our daughter wasn't a 'fraidy cat, but her tone was mousy enough for me to understand that this wasn't just childish. She was scared. 

"The earthquake," my wife said.

I figured I'd better go to her room, which I did. Her mother was right. Our daughter, not all that far from her teenage years, was scared. Who knows how such fears arise? She was afraid.

I tried faith. After all, I was the speaker--the seer. "You don't have to be afraid, honey," I probably said. "Jesus is always with us"--or something to that affect. It seemed like the right thing to say because it always was, right? I'm sure I embellished it somehow and held her hand.

But it took a second strangled little voice before I actually prayed with her. When I did, I thought that would do it for sure.

I was wrong. "Daaaaaaaaaad"--weakly, a third time, not wanting to frustrate her father, but still frantic. That time I did a cultural analysis, told her that if all those kids were in Iowa, they would be scared to death of tornadoes; yet, we lived with the possibility, right? Tornadoes were scary and awful, but we didn't let them shape our lives or make us shiver in the night. "Just ask Jesus to help," I said again.

Nope. Once more, a half hour later. It was now after two, I'd guess, and I had no easy answers. 

This time I didn't leave the bed. "Honey," I said, "just turn on your Walkman. Just listen to music." 

And that was it. Technology quelled her fears, allowed us all to rest. Prayers were okay, I guess, but the Walkman finally put that earthquake to rest.

I'm quite sure I didn't mention that whole story when I had to speak, didn't bring it up. It wouldn't have been fitting exactly, and AJ, had she been there, wouldn't have been thrilled to hear her anguish exploited. 

I've long ago forgotten the name of the camp, nor do I remember where it was, nor what I might have said. When I found that picture a couple of days ago, I remembered the night our little daughter couldn't sleep and the way I had impiously given her fear over to a Walkman. My mother would not have been pleased.

Mysterious ways, sure enough.

Couteau de prairies

I wasn't born and reared here. My home--I'm not sure how anyone finally defines that word--is really the western shore of Lake Michigan, where sunrise is almost always worth catching, but sunsets are, well, meh. When, initially, I lived out here on the emerald edge of the Great Plains, my most immediate adjustment was to realize that there was an east. Where I was reared, the big lake was all there was to "east." (See that M on Lake Michigan? Go west to the shore. That's where I grew up.)

It's not difficult to simply look over or past the neighborhood where you live, to be taken in and to love particulars, its cities or towns. Out here, even counties are quite colorfully distinguishable--"Sioux County" isn't "Lyon County," as citizens of each are likely to say, rolling their eyes. Neighbors we are, but the labels mean more than simple geography, things we learn to love and hate, things that can consume us.

A couple of nights ago I stumbled on a French phrase that was new to me--coteau de prairies, a name given to a landform that doesn't so much describe us--it's a more clearly visible north of here--as it has come to define us, living as we do in its wash. Those two blue arrows designate lobes created long, long ago by a melting glacier, a space where a mighty meltdown split around a point of land that wasn't inundated. The James Lobe--the blue arrow to the left--follows the James River Valley--"follows," is deceptive: the James Lobe created the James River Valley, would be more accurate.

To the right lies the still distinguishable track of the Des Moines Lobe, which, as you can guess, formed the Des Moines River watershed. You may already have noticed that the divide at the northernmost point of the coteau de prairies, in far southeastern North Dakota (got to get there someday soon!) created a real parting of the ways because the James Lobe is Missouri River bound. It's brother (or sister) is Mississippi River-bound; all of which makes the couteau de prairies more significant than it may seem if you're trying to make good time to Winnipeg.

Today, the plateau--for that's what it is, in a way--is home to innumerable wind turbines, and you can guess why. The wind--always blustering here--is most clearly distinguishable along the spine of this ancient land form. Hundreds of windmills churn out power that goes east, where it's dumped into the grid that powers the east. Thank me when you turn on your computer.

Here's a close up, along with some points of significant interest.

It's a bit of a stretch, I suppose, to say we're a part of the coteau de prairies. Chandler or Leota, MN or Bemis or certainly Sisseton, SD residents would likely mount some derisive laughter at my assertion. But we do garden in loess soil right there between the James and Des Moines Lobes. We are somehow recipients of what created the land form.

I don't think it would have made any difference if I'd known all of this 40 years ago, when I moved to the southernmost limits of the coteau de prairies. Maybe if I'd grown up here, I would have heard about it, wouldn't have had to stumble over it when I was an old guy. But I did, and at least I know now.

It seems to me there's something scary about looking at maps like this, old maps largely a-political, maps so old they don't distinguish a whole lot more than what the Creator has so marvelously fashioned. To know I'm part of what's there and yet so foreign--it makes me feel kind of small.

And this one too--Lewis and Clark's incredible attempt at mapping out a region known only to its strong aboriginal inhabitants. The Corps of Discover is trying to figure out just exactly where they are. And here we are again.

When Lewis and Clark left upriver, they called the place where they'd buried Sgt. Floyd, "Floyd's Grove"--you can see it right above where I've located Sioux City. If you look closely, you'll see the Floyd River there too, right now barely a waterway two hundred yards north of where I'm sitting. And if you're wondering about Prickly Pear River, so am I. 

Of course, what the Corps of Discovery created on this parchment isn't anywhere near to scale, but it's marvelous anyway, isn't it? What's written in are the names they had and used for the region's teeming first nations--Yanktons, Tetons, Ricaras, Sisatoone, Wapatoota. 

It's more than a little silly to think that when the Creator God looks down, somehow this is what he sees, something akin to Google Earth. Besides, we like to say he looks into all of our hearts, which makes maps beyond silly and God almighty a power beyond anything we can sketch out on parchment anyway. 

A couple nights ago I stumbled on these old maps when I noticed that odd French phrase; and when I did, I stumbled, oddly enough, into my own world, as it is and as it was. 

And at least for a while again, I felt deeply humbled because such spaces are huge and mighty, aren't they? And somehow they have their own lives. It's just plain daunting to see how this everyday world we know is someone else's too and even something else altogether.  Or was. 

And still is, and forever shall be. Amen. 

DNA

"You're going to be someone's ancestor--act accordingly." 

A big African-American man--I didn't catch his name, but I'm sure he's someone with standing--was holding forth at what I thought to be the Hollywood Bowl or someplace similar, participating in a big Juneteenth celebration yesterday.

"Juneteeth" honors the day the Galveston (TX) slaves were freed, a day two months after Appomattox and two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863, the day Lincoln freed the country's four million slaves. The very last American slaves walked away from bondage on June 19, 1865. Thus, Juneteenth--some places more than others--is a national holiday.

What the man said with that one line reminded me of someone else's discussion, something I read somewhere to the effect that we would, as a nation and culture, be more responsible if we thought more about our grandchildren. In other words, if people didn't live "for the day" as much as "for the future," America would be, in every way, a better place to live. I can't help thinking that's right.

I'm sure some conservatives--and white nationalists, for that matter--would have approved of what that speaker told the crowd: "You're going to be someone's ancestor--act accordingly." But the line has resonance in any community, mine too.  If I thought more about my grandchildren's world than I did about my own, we all would prosper.  I didn't. That's for sure. 

And it reminded me of a story I once did on an African-American couple from Albuquerque, a couple who had chanced upon a Christian radio program called the Back to God Hour (BtGH), and became, thereafter, devoted followers. I was doing a series of stories for the BtGH, stories that invited readers into the lives of people who were enriched and encouraged by the Word the BtGH was offering.

Because I've always believed that we are, in many ways, created by identities given to us by those who've come before us, I liked to begin an interview with a simple request: "Reach back and tell me about grandparents and great-grandparents. . ." I always found that information useful. Still do.

The Robinsons of Albuquerque were native-born Southerners whose parents had come north in the Great Migration to escape Jim Crow and find jobs, mid-Depression. 

"I can't go back very farther than that," Mr. Robinson told me. "You know--slavery."

He knew nothing about his great-grandparents and little more about his grandparents. Neither did his wife know much about hers. "You know, slavery."

The truth is, I didn't know. I hadn't thought of the reality of it. I mean, I knew about the horrors of slavery, but I'd never sat in the living room of a married couple who claimed to know very little about their kinship because well, "You know, slavery."

I thought of the Robinsons when that Black man was speaking. I thought of the discussion of how we all should think more about our own legacies than we do about ourselves. I thought of my own grandfather, who used to tell my father that he would be able to determine what kind of father he had been when he observed his grandkids, me included, a line that stays with me as if it were actually in my DNA.

Other than five minutes of a Juneteenth celebration on TV, I didn't spend much time thinking about the Emancipation Proclamation, Jim Crow, the Great Migration--none of that. 

We've got an anniversary coming up--a big one, the 50th, so my wife and I are putting together what seems a half-million photographs of our kids and grandkids, a job that's taken us most of last week. It'll be fun, I'm sure, and we'll have all of them around when we gather less than a week from now in Arizona, where Barbara and I started our married life. 

Maybe I should have been thinking about Juneteenth more than I did. Maybe. But somehow I felt forgiven because I was thinking a ton about my grandkids, riffling through sweet pictures from what was but doesn't seem all that long ago. 

"You're going to be someone's ancestors," that man said, over and over. "Act accordingly."

That line just stuck with me, I guess.     

Sunday Morning Meds--Home Visit

“As they pass through the Valley of Baca, 

they make it a place of springs; 

the autumn rains also cover it with pools. 

 They go from strength to strength, 

till each appears before God in Zion.”

Psalm 84:6

This afternoon, I’ll fly off to British Columbia, where, in the next few days, I’m scheduled to do a number of things, including visit some old folks in an independent living facility named Elim Home, a couple dozen or more seniors who want to hear me read a story. That was the plan.

The word got out. The good folks at Elim Home got the news of their being visited by a writer, who was going to read something he’d written, the man who’d written things so often in their church magazine. “You know him, maybe, eh? He’s from a long ways away—from Iowa, in the States—and he’s coming to Elim Home. Ja, sure.”

Lots of Dutch brogues in this place.

One of them phoned the man who arranged my schedule on this visit.

“’Ve was yust now talking,” he told him, “and ‘ve ‘vere ‘vondering whethder Mr. Schaap might yust come a little early ant’ help us learn to write our own stories.”

Some requests simply aren’t to be denied.

It ought to be a kick. I’m sure I’ll live through it and have plenty of laughs along the way.

I’m not sure why, but that polite request makes me smile. Maybe it’s because I just finished another couple of semesters of teaching. Sometimes—not all the time, and I don’t want to overstate—coming into class can be like walking into a wake. Not a student in the room is really interested in Ralph Waldo Emerson. But this Vancouver class, this gaggle of seniors, they want more time, not less, and more attention, not less. They want real teaching. They want to learn. I know, I know, I sound really whiny.

But the possibility of assuaging my wounded pride is not the only reason the Elim Home request has made my week. The other is what it is those old folks are demanding: they want help writing their stories. Good night, they’re all seniors, and they’re just now getting started thinking seriously about writing their life stories. “How can ‘ve do dat best?” they’ll say, I’m sure. There’s just something so good, so strong, so hearty about a home full of old folks wanting to learn. Whether they can is a good question; that they want to is unmitigated blessing.

It seems the older I get, the more I have to learn to pay attention to those kinds of blessings or I miss them altogether. Honestly, the prospect of visiting a couple dozen retired Dutch immigrants who want to write their life stories—it’s sheer joy to consider. It’s a peppermint in a snoozy sermon. It’s enough to make you smile.

I don’t know that anyone has a clue about the Valley of Baca, although I’d guess that some biblical scholars will be happy to hazard a theory. But then, I’m not sure that the relative glories of that place are all that important to understanding the psalm. What’s at the heart of these verses of Psalm 84 is a tribute to people who pay attention to joy, who let it fill them, who let it carry them over the dark places. These are people of pilgrimage, who take their strength from God, whose very footsteps make the desert bloom. These are people who sing in the rain.

And Thursday I’ll be blessed by being among ‘em.

_______________________ 

Oh, my goodness, it was. It was absolutely wonderful, but that's another story for another time.

And one more thing

I can't help thinking that what was missed in the long and difficult discussions about LGBTQ+ issues at the Synod was one salient fact about life at the Neland Avenue church: at Neland, not everyone believed or believes that electing a deacon married to another woman was or is a good idea. It's not as if the entire church went gangbusters toward her ordination; the move had, and still has, I'm told, its nay-sayers. Some members may be more happy today than they were at any time since the deacon in question was elected.

And it's probably equally important to know that at Neland, elections for church office are still done by the congregation. No names in a hat or a collection plate or in an old sock from years past, the congregation elects office-bearers with their vote. It's quite old-fashioned. Most churches are happy to let God or the luck-of-the-draw do the discriminating.

What the facts thus illustrate is that Neland Avenue is struggling with an issue that has split just about every other ecclesiastical body in America, save those who don't have any queer people, which quells dissent, of course, and makes life much simpler and easier, if ease is the way of the church.

Neland Avenue shares membership in the denomination with every other congregation represented at Synod. But they're also, like every other church, trying to figure out how to work through the problems our changing culture has put front-and-center. It's becoming difficult to remember that as late as 2008, Barack Obama said he was decidedly against gay marriage. Change is in the nature of things. I feel sorry for the good CRCs of Colorado, who would have to question whether or not they could countenance their governor, should he profess his faith, as a member. 

That the good people of Neland, both for and against single-sex marriage individuals serving in church office, could and do stay in the pew together is, it would seem to me, a goal worth striving for, not a situation to be damned.

Somewhere through their deliberations, the 2022 Synod determined that a new concept should capture our churches, something called "radical hospitality." On the floor of synod it became a much-beloved buzzword. I suppose I shouldn't venture an opinion on a definition I wasn't there to hear, but I can't imagine that, with respect to the means by which our churches deal with LGBTQ+ issues, "radical hospitality" couldn't be more clearly illustrated than the way it is every Sunday at Neland Avenue CRC.

Neland has its struggles with the issue, and those struggles go on. What they're doing is "radical hospitality," doing something no one else does and trying to understand if what they've done is blessed. 

The Synod said nope, not allowed.

I can't bring myself to believe that Neland won't forsake trying to be hospitable radically, after the pattern of none other than the Jesus they worship. 

The deacon is gone

For the second time in a year, the Vinton, Iowa, public library begins a search for a library director because the most recent person to hold that office has resigned, under pressure, under great pressure, we might add, because of the books the library chose to purchase and set out on the shelves. Second time. Less than a year.

The source of the furor is matters pertaining to the LBGTQ+ world. Books were purchased, displayed, the set out for borrowing that didn't meet someone's expectations, offended sensibilities. A fuss was raised, and things got hot for the librarian. Thus, the new one who'd replaced the previous one who'd left, left herself. 

Apparently, someone on the conservative side suggested a MAGA book, some children's book describing and defining the MAGA world. When the library decided that book didn't reach the library's standards for the children's literature, a match was struck. 

The story made the front page of this morning's Des Moines Register, yet another iteration of the culture wars raging all around. That a librarian would purchase books that don't make some arch-conservative's approved list is one thing, but that the library's refusal to put a MAGA book on the shelf would end up in a pitched battle is totally understandable.

I didn't need to read that story this morning. Yesterday offered more sorrows and woes than I need to suffer, although I wasn't surprised at the outcomes. In fact, if anything, the sheer number of the progressives was shocking. Almost a third voted consistently against rulings that would put homosexual sex in the same fire as porn and what not other abhorrent abominations. 

Yesterday, the conservatives won big. The church is still anti-gay. Many of those who voted in the majority would hate that word, "anti-gay," some would reject it outright. But in effect that's where people in my denomination come down--they'd just as soon get that LGBTQ+ stuff out of circulation. I don't own a crystal ball, but it doesn't take a seer to guess that that's not about to happen.

At the heart of the church story was a somewhat progressive congregation close to the inner city of Grand Rapids, MI, a church where a woman serving as a deacon had been voted into the consistory while being married to another woman--making that, you know, "same-sex marriage." 

Can we allow that? asked the denomination. Synod's answer was definitive: no. Anyone who held out hope that something other would be said was dreaming. To most people, gay sex is abominable, thus evil. Bible verses condemning homosexual acts abound, they say; and they might be right, depending what you make of the Bible itself. 

Thus, denominationally we dodged a bullet, or so the majority will say to their friends and their churches. We stand with the ages, centuries of doctrinal disapproval and outright hostility of such licentiousness. We sided with truth. We sided with the Lord God Almighty because we know very well what He thinks about those sinners. 

This morning, once the smoke clears, we can all rest safely because the truth is now written plainly and neatly for all us to see in our confessions. Rest easy, folks, the deacon is damned.

Brother (and Sister) hood

That he was an orphaned as a twelve-year-old only adds to the story. That after attending a revival by none other than George Whitefield, that shining star of the Great Awakening, is a fact also certainly worth mentioning. That he had no silver spoon only makes his work more remarkable.

When John Fawcett became a preacher, a Baptist preacher, in England, in 1764, he served a woebegone church, a place called Wainsgate, for seven years, during which time he and his wife Mary had four children. His congregants were illiterate and, by some reports, not all that far down the road from their ancestral paganism. Because the people had no money, the Reverend John Fawcett's salary was a pittance, most of it coming to their door in potatoes and beans. 

So, when an opportunity arose for them to go to a bigger church in London, a place with a wholesome salary, John and Mary Fawcett determined it was time to move on. Still, they loved Wainsgate, and Wainsgate loved them; it was just that Wainsgate didn't have the wherewithal to pay him the kind of salary his growing family stood in need of. 

Must have been tough to announce his departure. I'm sure people were shocked and saddened to think their young pastor and his wonderful, growing family was leaving.

The Reverend John Fawcett sent many of the family’s meager belongings on to London however, because it seemed to him that he had no choice. What things he didn't send, he and Mary determined to take with them in the final wagon full.

When the departure day arrived, the whole church turned out to see them off.  You've heard people say, of course, that "the Devil's in the details," and sometimes that's true. But sometimes the Holy Spirit hangs out there too, and in this little story the details are just too good to have been left behind.

When the good folks of Wainsgate stood there around him, broken hearts poured out love that was radiant and unmistakable. Mary was the first to break, telling her husband with a tug on the sleeve that she just couldn't leave. At her urging, the Reverend John Fawcett looked around--maybe even a tear or two in his eye--and tallied the love all around, the love he couldn't help but witness.

And so the story goes that he stood in the wagon that would take him to London, and right then and there told the good people of Wainsgate that he and his family were not going to leave. No, they were staying.

And they did--for 54 years.  

True story, people say. 

Here’s the thing. Sometime later--not long--he wrote a hymn that is almost as widely known and treasured as "Amazing Grace," a hymn that, through the years, may have wrung more tears than any other in your hymnal or mine: "Blest Be the Tie that Binds." 

Morning dawns in our broken world. The synodical decision on the Human Sexuality Report in the CRC will come this morning. People will, almost certainly, part ways, no matter what the outcome. 

Partisanship writ large has only rarely been so bloody evident. Everyone knows it, but no one knows what can be done. “Blest Be the Tie that Binds” seems a lyric from a time long past. 

No matter. If you feel the pulse of the Fawcetts sitting there ready to leave Wainsgate, hum along. Call it praise, call it therapy—call it what you will.

Just this morning, go ahead a hum along. 

I say, our ex walks

He'll walk. That's my prediction. I may be wrong.

"They say I have the most loyal people -- did you ever see that? -- where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters," Trump said, illustrating his point by pulling his fingers into a gun shape. "Okay? It's like incredible."

It was and is incredible. 

That's how the Washington Post wrote the story after Donald E. Trump, loudmouth candidate for the Presidency of the United States, spoke at Dordt University on January 23, 2016, to an overflow crowd (literally). The 1500-seat BeeJay was full; hundreds more didn't get in; Dordt kindly offered an extra room or two for his still-forming patriot crowd.

That line is, was, and forever shall be the most quoted line to which any human being has given breath in Sioux Center, Iowa, a meme the minute it hit the internet. What he said that day has come to characterize him like no other single line. And it's still true, a year and a half after Joe Biden beat him in the 2020 Presidential race.

That loss is at the heart of things. Literally millions of Americans don't believe Trump lost, just as millions of us still shake our heads in astonishment at his messianic control of people's attention and favor. At least 100 of the Republican primary winners this spring still believe Trump won. 

This may well be the least of his sins: yesterday's hearing made vividly clear that he took in 250 million dollars from the "incredibles," those who can't get enough of him, or give enough of themselves. This is all post-election, designated for a supposed fund that would help the fight to contest the vote count. The thing is, all that money--$250,000,000--ended up nowhere near its intended target, a target that has never really existed.

That, friends, is fraud on a grand scale, mega-criminal fraud. But I'm saying Trump will walk--not simply because he always does, but because Merrick Garland, who got royally dissed by the whole Trump circle, understands too well what President Gerry Ford did after Watergate. Taking Nixon to court and forcing the nation to suffer through another divisive year-long trial simply wasn't worth doing, not when Nixon was already suffering the asterisk his resignation affixed to his name for years to come in the long list of American Presidents.

I remember that decision. I watched the Watergate hearings feverishly. I was enrolled in summer school at Arizona State University, where televisions were hung in the hallways outside classrooms so we could catch every minute when we weren't in class. 

Once President Ford took the reins, he pardoned Richard Nixon. I hated it, but I understood his regard--more and more court trials would only fester in the wounds his Presidency had created. They were more than the country could or should bear. Ford let Nixon walk. 

That Donald E. Trump is a criminal grifter has been firmly established. That he knew he lost the election but continued/continues the gambit that, even today, has the country split like an overripe melon is perfectly clear. Yesterday the nation saw his inner circle, all Republican, all the once beloved, state unequivocally that the Donald knew/knows damned well that he lost, even though he persisted/persists in "stop the steal."

He's a liar, a grifter, and a pernicious racist, and we will, whatever happens, live with the legacy he still creates from his humble abode in Florida.

But people love him. Why? I don't know. Just about 80 percent of the county I live in voted for him. In January of this year, a UMass poll found 71 percent of Republicans believed the election had been rigged. What Trump said at the BeeJay continues to frighten me because he hasn't done it yet--hasn't shot someone on Fifth Avenue. He's done just about everything else. Still, his astonishment--and ours--was and is, I'm sure, that people still love him. "It's incredible." Yes, it is.

Peter Baker, in the Sunday NY Times, wondered whether the hearings we're witnessing right now may be the only real trial our ex-President, twice-impeached Donald E. Trump, may ever see. For the record, in this one, he's losing, badly.

But don't look for him in stripes any time soon. I just wish he'd finally go away.

My Sabbath

They're invasive, I'm told, and they show up every year at this time, this year not in as great an abudance as last, but with enough vigor and power that they turn absolutely untended native quarters into something approaching Japanese gardens. They go by the name of Dame's Quarters, and I honestly wish I had some in my backyard. Look at that belt of beauty just across the river. The offending flowers themselves are tiny actually.

But when they come, they come not as spies, battalions (that's Shakespeare, and he's not talking about Dame's Quarters). They come en masse, which doesn't make them French.

I am olfactorily challenged, if you catch my drift. Thusly, I don't--which is to say can't--smell them. By reputation, they do cast a fragrance into the air they inhabit, a fragrance that is said to work aphrodisiac-ly, a sweet thought that, at my age, could be fatal. And no, I didn't bring a bountiful bouquet home for my wife. 

One man's bitters is another's blessing, I suppose, so don't tell the yellow swallowtails all those lavender blessings are invasive. Yesterday, I sat beside the river after carving a path through a jungle of underbrush (we've had wonderful, almost daily rain showers) and watched as three or four swallowtails drew what pints they could from a million Dame's Quarters.

It was a river-front feeding frenzy. They didn't pay me the least attention. They're easterners mostly. They range from Boston to the Black Hills, which puts these Sioux Countians a significant distance out west for the tribe. All I know is that they were terribly busy and evidently thrilled by the Dame's Quarters, of which there was more than enough to satisfy the crew hanging around the river. 

I was tired and sweaty from breaking a trail through all that undergrowth, so I sat there and waited for them to flit close enough for me to get a good shot. While I waited, I created some parables with the Dame's Quarters. With any spiritual vision whatsoever, a preacher should be able to create a sermon from this one, don't you think? 

or it's reversal--

This is the world of Infowars--and that Russian thistle is Alex Jones (I watched 15 minutes of the Jones special last night, then turned it off--15 minutes is more than enough.)

Or how about this?

The detritus of long-gone floods outlines the banks of the Floyd right here, a big bundle of old branches that won't move until the next deluge. Lo and behold, even there, with very little good earth, the Dame's Quarters takes root and diffuses its sexy smell (I'm told) by muscling out a place to grow and glow. 

My inherent Calvinism creates a powerful penchant to preach, but then I could have done worse on a hot Sunday afternoon than dream up moral visions--why apologize? It was fun. And nature offers a wonderful pulpit--just think, this beautiful bit of lavender is a scourge. There's a sermon there too.

When finally I left the river bank and walked back into the prairie on my way back to the pickup, I was beat, tired, sweaty, and hot, lugging a camera, a bag, and a grass shear in 90-degrees heat, nary a cloud in the sky, the air was full of song--if you can call it that. 

The dickcissel's raspy voice swept over the neighborhood, the soundtrack of the prairies, someone called them. This little visitor with the huge chattering voice is back, once again, all the way from Chile, reminding me that even in a woods thick with underbrush, splashed with Dame's Quarters, and a covey of 
Eastern Swallowtails, I was, just yesterday, very much a citizen of the world. 

By the way, rumor has it those Chilean dickcissels are undocumented. Don't tell Fox News. 

Sunday Morning Meds--Mercy

“Have mercy on me, O God,

have mercy on me,

for in you my soul takes refuge.” Psalm 57:1

Psalm 57 is not about sin. Forgiveness is not at stake here. David may well have reason to cower in the face of the almighty, but that’s not what’s going on. He’s tired and oppressed; he’s sick of this horrific, deadly, cops-‘n-robbers thing he’s got going with King Saul, the Lord’s anointed, and he can’t see his way of out of it. He’s tried to be charitable; when he could have killed the king, he cut out a shard of robe but let him live.

But nothing changed. He’s on the run, as he has been for too long, dozens of his people with him. They’re all refugees, scared to death. He’s got nowhere to turn in a cold wet cave, so he goes to his God. “Have mercy on me,” he says, “for in you my soul takes refuge.”

A man stood up in our church last week to ask for our prayers. It was sad and very painful to listen to him stammer, one of those moments when you wonder whether we should so easily spill out our guts in such a public forum. It was painful to hear him speak, in part because it wasn’t all that easy to understand what he was saying.

He and his wife have a baby on the way, and a doctor had told them that week that the baby wasn’t healthy. I’m not sure exactly what the problem is, and I’m not sure how bad the condition; but it was clear from the recitation that the world that family had been living in was shaken deeply by the startling news of the baby’s precarious health.

Later, I was told that the mother—the father had done all the talking—was telling people she simply wasn’t sure anymore that God existed. It probably never dawned on them that there were other families with kids with significant problems sitting right there listening, not to mention the kids themselves.

I don’t worry about that woman or that family. Probably I should. When I was younger I would have. I know mothers in our church (fathers too, of course), people with kids with real problems, who would be glad to take her hand, hug her, and let her know that sometimes great blessings are not all that beautifully wrapped.

Which is not to say that anyone would tell her that her life, from this point on, is going to be a piece of cake. Some people are specially blessed to be able to say to her, right now, that what lies in wait for them around blind corners isn’t what they might fear or despise or even recognize. They know. They too have suffered.

Maybe—I don’t know—this young family with their two beautiful children has never before sat outside a cave like David did, the morning sun or an evening sky laid out before him promising a silence that he just can’t know, besieged as he is by seemingly insurmountable problems. Maybe it’s first time this young couple has felt really beat up.

Maybe I don’t worry all that much about them because of David sitting here with a shard of robe in his hand, convinced he did the right thing in not murdering the King, when he could have—yet knowing, as he does, that his life is imperiled because of the envy and pride of a man whose life he just saved. There seems no way out. “Mercy,” he cries.

At one point or another in our lives, all of us will cry mercy at the open and dark mouth of a cave, I believe. We have to.

Road Trip, Iowa

This is pure weird, but not long ago I stopped at the Grotto of the Redemption, and for the life of me I just don't know what to think of it.

What I'm proposing here is an little road trip. Stay with me. 

Father Paul Matthias Dobberstein designed his agate mountain from the story of shepherds who carved out places of worship from caves and crevices and then decked out their grottos with whatever religious iconography they could create from the caves themselves--grottos has come to mean "holy places."

I think Iowa has holy places galore, but only one Grotto. The ancestors are all in Spain or Portugal or some such place. But no matter, let's go on a bit of a road trip anyway, a tiny architectural tour. 

First, Mason City. You may or may not be aware that the most famous American architect grew up one state east of us and left behind a dozen or so creations in Iowa. Really distinctive places because, well, Frank Lloyd Wright certainly was. Mason City's George Stockman House is open year round for tours.

The Stockman House has uniquely flat lines and an odd roof, creating a peculiar squat stance where it sits. Wright created the odd shape into something that seems to grow from the setting, like some huge, square-cut vegetable, a house so comfortable in its setting that you get the eerie feeling the the whole big house mushroomed up of the ground, that it wasn't built there, but grew there.

Mason City is doubly blessed with another Wright creation, still up and running. If we need an overnight, we'll take one therein. There's nothing but cement all around it, but when you see the place, you can't help but note that the Wright's characteristic flat-land style.



In case you're wondering, "the prairie style" may well suggest something familiar. You're right: Sioux City's own Courthouse, whose distinctive character, the city's pride-and-joy, got drawn up by the same Chicago "school" as the Stockman House and Wright's hotel. Makes them kissing cousins.

Wright's designs display something distinctive of their own region, our own landscape, in this case the long, flat lines of our own prairie homeland.

Right now you're thinking Adventureland next? Nope. Leave the kids at home. Tell you what, if we go straight east from Mason City, we can stop off that Algona and take in the museum of that huge prisoner-of-war camp AND the Algona Nativity. Amazing thing.

If you don't have the time, it'll take you a good hour-and-a-half to get to West Bend, a place that glories in its grotto the way Orange City flashes its Tulip Festival, except West Bend's goes all year long.

The Grotto is almost merciless in piety. Some call it "the Eighth Wonder of the World." The story goes that Father Dobberstein suffered a bout of pneumonia that put him at death's portal. He prayed and prayed to the Blessed Virgin, promised her that, if granted recovery, he'd put up a shrine. Did he ever.

In every last possible way, the Grotto, an immense mound of shining stones and petrifactions, annually leaves a hundred thousand visitors google-eyed and slack-jawed. It's a miniature mountain of precious stones, millions of dollars' worth, all sculpted into holy caves created from Father Dobberstein's rock-solid devotion. Took him a lifetime and more--he had help, from here and above.

It's a monstrosity of devotion, a portly hill of precious stones, any one of which emits nothing but glory--multiplied by millions. It's an amazing place that'll take your breath away, a holy, goofy creation.

Father Dobberstein' statue stands off a corner, looking more like a geologist than a priest in his baseball cap and zippered sweater, a chunk of quartzite in his proffered hand. His mammoth grotto may well be "the Eighth Wonder of the World." I'm not sure it even has a rival.

Wright's creations grow out of the very earth they inhabit, but there's nothing about Dobberstein's grotto that comes from Kossuth County. One is all about the here; the other all about the there. One is about the what Frank Lloyd Wright saw all around him; the other is built on Father Dobberstein's vision of the hereafter. They're polar opposites. Who says Iowa is monoculture?

So what do we make of all this? I don't know that the stops on this particular road trip could be more abidingly different.

Mary Oliver, the poet, pulled soul-full inspiration from a blue iris. But, she said

“It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones, just
pay attention…

There's the joy maybe, huh? We've just seen some visions. "Just pay attention," the poet says. I like that.

Tell you what, on the way home take Highway 3 and stop in LeMars for ice cream.

Sometimes it wins

 

Yesterday's news, like the day's before, was difficult to stomach. A fourth-grade girl told the story of smearing her own blood. . .

You probably heard it.

The news from the Ukraine is that Putin will continue to destroy and kill in a war of attrition. He has the firepower to do it.

This morning the January 6 Commission begins public hearings. There are three ways of seeing what's about to take place: 1) it's a Trump smear, another witch hunt;  2) it's an investigation into what exactly happened on January 6, 2021; 3) it's a final chance to put the Great Deceiver away somewhere for what he's done.

I'm a two-er, but I can't help leaning a bit toward three. Still, it's not going to be pretty because half of the Republican party still believes in The Big Lie and The Big Liar. Fox News won't run event--I guess it's not news. Will anything change? Don't bet the farm.

Last night's skies were rather typical early-June. Some deep azure blocked off-and- on by braggart clouds that rolled through threateningly, but delivered not much more than spectacle. The mix creates shades of sunlight that spread that Midas touch over everything. That backyard shot up top--that's what a half a stormy sky does to any ordinary thing. A camera makes you look. Here's more.

The Siberian Irises are out, like a chorus of Naked Ladies. Here and there out back there's color, but nowhere else is it as radiant as it is right now in the company of this kind of elegance. You can almost hear them sing.

It just seems as if everything is bathed in grace.

I don't mean to be impious, but sometimes I can't help but think that those who say "beauty can save the world" aren't all wrong. 

It's there, but you have to look for it, I guess.

I don't think I'll watch tonight's hearings, but I'll read the summaries and listen to the pundits, and hope, too, that something can happen to bridge all the hostility.

Simple subject. Simple beauty. 

Sometimes it wins. 

The Admiral wins

The Admiral's ship is ready to sail. After yesterday's stunning upset of Abby Finkenauer, a young woman most everyone thought would cruise, Franken came out of nowhere (actually Sioux County, far northwest corner, somewhere out there where no one visits) to take the Democratic nomination for U. S. Senate. As far as I know, no one hated or even disliked Abby--she's energetic, a real fighter for Democratic politics, and an old style libs, a mighty union scrapper. 

But Iowa Dems couldn't have made a wiser choice. Abby had experience, having served a term in the House; but the Admiral has a story that includes commanding a Navy ship or two and working in D. C. at the Pentagon. What cornfield Libs  couldn't miss is that an established veteran stands a much greater chance of defeating Senator Chuck Grassley, whose been around as long as Iowa dirt. 

Grassley chose to run again for yet another six-year term as senator. He's an Iowa farmer who's done some very good things in his lengthy time in Washington. The man has earned a solid and honored place in the state's history. But his time has come and gone. Take it from an 74-year old, 88 is not the time to think about yet another six-year term. 

What's more, Grassley's been a lapdog for a man who has endangered American democracy like no other single human being--Donald E. Trump. Every chance Grassley had to disagree with, to wrangle about, to say no, he didn't. He's passed on two impeachments and the necessity of some sort of January 6 investigation. 

There could be more despicable moments, but his duplicity, teaming with Mitch McConnell's horrendous self-appointed guardianship of Supreme Court nominees, was almost evil. Together, he and McConnell refused hearings on Merrick Garland--who demonstrated his sense of justice, then swept in Amy Coney Barret for exactly that reason--her political agenda.  All of that and more, in a political sense, is unforgiveable. For a ton of reasons, Grassley need to go back to the farm. 

And Admiral Mike Franken is just the candidate to do it. I'm not proud to say this, but Mike Franken is the man to do it. His presence and his gender won't hurt him one bit in November. 

Franken grew up here, in Lebanon, Iowa. He will--if he hasn't already--put Lebanon on the map. It's a one-horse town with a population of 100 on Sunday, during church--maybe. But Franken's surprise win will bring all kinds of attention to the place, and all kinds of money to Franken's coffers. If the Democrats can beat Chuck Grassley, they'll gain a seat in an election that otherwise looks far too much like curtains.

Grassley's indebted to the gun lobby too. He's cup runneth over with their loot. But it's going to be impossible for Chuck to pull a 2nd Amendment offensive against lily-livered libs because Franken was career military. 2nd Amendment b.s. is moot. Chuck's going to have to have load up with other ammunition.

Me? I'm greatly pleased. For the last several years I've been represented at every level with Trump lapdogs, people who refused to vote for his impeachments, people who write bills banning the evils of Critical Race Theory (whatever that is) as if it were a plague, people who consistently vote in a block, people who want to write lesson plans for public school teachers, reps scared to death of the disfavor of the MAGA sycophants. All of them--every last one, every governmental rep--has snuggled up to the worst President in American history and his outlaw minions at every step.

No more. There's a beautiful sunrise outside my window this morning, but even if there wasn't, I'd tell you it's a new dawn for Iowa Dems. Abby would have been a fine candidate, but Mike Franken is going to give Iowa Dems a voice once again.   

Beginnings

Oh, my word. That's my gorgeous wife. She's wearing a flannel shirt, not because she's trying to be cool, but because she's trying to get warm. There's a deflated air mattress over the picnic table--I'm quite sure it is. That's our two-man (one woman, one man) tent in the background; it folded up into a satchel only half as big as a sleeping bag. The box on the table held the camp stove--it was that new. So was everything else. We were newlyweds. Everything was brand new.

After an actual whirlwind courtship, we were married six months, no more, after our first date. When I look back on all that haste, I wouldn't have it any other way. Like great American adventurers, we were on our way west to a life we knew very little of. She'd signed a teaching contract at Phoenix Christian School, where the principal was an old high school teacher. I was enrolled at Arizona State University, Department of English, where I planned to get a masters degree and whatever else it took to somehow garner a teaching position in a college. That was the plan. In our case, it worked out.

I'd been accepted at ASU before my first date with her. In fact, I was committed to going to grad school when, a year before, I took a teaching job in southwest Wisconsin. I remember telling the administrator, a man named Batchelor, exactly that one day, like an idiot. He wasn't thrilled by the news, told me it was fortunate I hadn't told him that before. 

June 27, 1972, we were married in Orange City, Iowa, in Barbara's home church. For six weeks or so we lived in a little rental place in my hometown, Oostburg, Wisconsin, while I worked at Terry Andrea-John Michael Kohler State Park, as I had several summers before. Barbara got ready for the way west--we were off in early August.

We came heir to all kinds of things my mother tossed before moving to the Home--one of them was the picture up at the top of the page. Somewhere, I'm sure, we had one like it--along with this one, a spoof on Barbara's fear of snakes. See that smile?--and bare feet too, part of the set up.

When I think of it now, I can't help remembering that the whole deal was an adventure, the two of us, only recently married after six short months of courtship on little more than weekends. We were both teachers, under contract, and I didn't make the three-hour trip to Chicago's far south side every weekend either. I don't know if I'd want to tally how infrequently we'd dated, and Arizona was brand new, at least to me. Barbara had spent a summer teaching Bible school there with a mission program, but I'd applied to ASU during the fall of 1971 for only one reason--I'd never been to Arizona, and it sounded like an interesting place.

So off we went, the two of us, knowing, quite possibly, no more about each other as we did about Arizona. I know the picture at the top belonged to my parents because there's handwriting on the back--mine. 

And there lies another story. That little vial parked at the corner of the picnic table, beside the camp stove box, does more than suggest some constipation. I'm not surprised, given the inherent drama of all the changes. 

But I remember this too--that my new bride was not pleased with my opening my big mouth about her gastric system. I don't know if her chagrin became our first tiff--I doubt it; but I remember she wasn't pleased, just as, should she read this, she wouldn't be pleased with my bringing it up today again, a half-century later. 

She'd married someone who wanted to write. Even I wasn't sure what all of that meant; she certainly wasn't. She'd married someone who found all of life fascinating and loved--sometimes too much, I'm sure--of telling the world. 

Every marriage has its seams, its points of tension. We've had tiffs and tussles and long drawn sentences of silence, but I don't remember any of them. They're gone completely. It would be interesting to know if she'd say the same thing. If I know her--and I should after a half-century--I'd think she'd tell me there are moments she hasn't forgotten. 

I remember that vial, not because of constipation but because she was not entertained by my parents knowing their son's new wife needed a laxative, an obviously private matter I'd willfully made public.

All of that was a half-century ago. It's now a quarter past six. In less than an hour, I'll be back in bed, beside her. She'll only half acknowledge my presence. Her sleep, especially in the mornings, goes a significant distance into some deep blue sea. 

Some things don't change in a half century: defining what's public and what's not, and snuggling warm in the morning at some Colorado state park or living together in a house we built not all that long ago just outside of Alton, Iowa. 

Okay, maybe I shouldn't have said all of that this morning. If so, I'll probably find out soon enough.