"The Sioux Center Affair" (iv)

Be assured, the consistory of the Christian Reformed Church of Sioux Center, Iowa, felt little "peace on earth" on Christmas of 1919. The consistory's skirmishing with the upstart Teachers Meeting had become almost a daily thing, producing conflicts that had no visible exits. The consistory had laid down the law; the Teachers Meeting had thumbed their noses, behavior that belittled the authoritative council of congregational life. It looked and felt like plain old insurrection.

Meanwhile, as if they weren't sufficiently oppressed by the teachers, the consistory was visited by two men with heads full of steam, two men whose cause was two-fold. They demanded the language used in Sunday worship be changed from Dutch to English, and, furthermore, that an additional name be added to the list of consistorial candidates for election, Watse Bierma, whose position on the Teachers Meeting battles was well-known: Bierma sympathized with the rebels.

Essentially, the consistory tabled both demands with reference to the calendar--it was a day before the congregational meeting. They couldn't be expected to engineer drastic changes in the practices of the church on such short notice. 

But their appearance before the consistory didn't bode well. Van Dyke says, "An attempt to place [Bierma's] name in nomination made it appear as if there were an organized effort on the part of some members of the congregation to challenge the consistory's decision-making authority," which, of course, there was. Temperatures around that table continued to rise.

Still, it was the consistory's ruling that did all the emotion-stirring in the Teachers Meeting: if the teachers would not abide by the terms of the Sunday School's original constitution, there'd be no more Sunday School. Period. End of discussion. 

On December 25, 1919, the congregation, some happily, some not--went off to church for the Sunday School Christmas program, hoping to sing carols, watch their darling kids, and enjoy the blessings of the season of good will towards men.

But the Teachers Meeting was in no mood for reconciliation. When the program ended, they moved front and center to declare, first of all, the happy successes of the congregation's Sunday School program (200 kids attending Sunday School in English, forty more in Dutch), and then announce that a shortfall in teachers had triggered a conflict with the consistory concerning how exactly to fill those positions the success of the program had created and required.  

Up there before the entire congregation, the Teachers explained their position, even citing the Acts of Synod, including the specific provisions for consistorial rule. They did not mention the matter of how Sunday School teachers be chosen, but declared right there that afternoon in church that the conflict had come to a conclusion by way the consistory's determination that there would be no more Sunday School at Sioux Center CRC.

Imagine that--just after the Sunday School program, the teachers announce the death of Sunday School.

Every last moment of their presentation must have served to raise the consistory's ire. No one had seen it coming. They were gob-smacked, AND blamed entirely for bolting the doors on Sunday School. At Christmas in Sioux Center CRC there was no peace on earth. Van Dyke says the consistory considered the actions the Teachers had taken on Christmas "a declaration of war." 

In the context of ordinary church life, a breakdown such as the one that Sioux Center CRC was suffering through could not be seen only as a personality conflict. These were God's people, doing God's work, in God's world in God's church. When the consistory met again after Christmas, they found it difficult not to think of what had happened as full-blown rebellion--and that their own undershepard, Rev. De Leeuw, as part of the rebel front and to see all of that high drama in biblical terms. Sin. There had to be sin. Only sin could have so shrouded the Teachers' sense of righteousness, and sin, public sin, had to be confessed. Thus, the consistory accused the Teachers Meeting of violation of the 9th commandment. They had, surely, bore false witness before the congregation. All had seen and heard. Confession of sin, public confession of sin was essential. 

Still, when, a few days later, a petition was sent to the consistory, signed by several members of the congregation, members of standing within the congregation, the consistory simply told itself that there now was full-fledged opposition.

The Sunday School responded in like-mind:

We thus regard the demands of the Consistory as an interference with the rights of the teachers and the terminating of the Sunday School as an unlawful deed below the dignity of the Consistory which is appointed over the congregation as a serving and not a ruling power.

Christmas 1919 was memorable but by no means beloved. 

Sunday Morning Meds--from Psalm 42*

 “Why are you downcast, O my soul? 

Why so disturbed within me? 

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him,

 my Savior and my God.”

 

The morning is dark; the day will be cold.  Northwest winds will make any foray outside something of a chore.  But we’ve had a beautiful fall, and no one is complaining.  Winter is coming.  Squirrels scramble across our lawn and up our trees in anticipation, but they’re fat like hedgehogs. 

 It’s Thanksgiving Day, and, upstairs, the kitchen is full of empty bowls and pans and all kinds of food ready to be ladled, poured, mashed, and baked.  In the fridge, the naked turkey sits, a fourteen-pounder, queen for a day.  That may be overstatement, and it certainly is if you’re the turkey.

 Years ago already, after reading an interview with Garrison Keillor, I began to take some time each day to give thanks for something—that my Dell works, for my glasses, for Walden, for the cat across the room, snoring right now. I started a daily-thanks business, betting on Keillor’s idea that we could be better folks if we started our days with gratitude to God, who doesn’t need our thanks as much as we need to give it.

 Still do occasionally, years later. If you follow this blog, you know what I’m talking about. I’m not as disciplined as I once was, but I still try to get some in once in a while.

 So here’s the lay of the land this Thanksgiving.  My son-in-law has a new job, my daughter is happy, and the two of them love each other and their kids. Our parents, all three of them, despite their age, are doing well, as well as can be expected. Lots of darkness is behind our son; he’s married now and delightfully happy. And did I mention those grandchildren?—they show up here and I giggle.  My wife and I love each other, and take our coffee every morning in the great room of our new house.

 Here’s what I’m thinking this Thanksgiving morning:  I’m thankful that there’s always something, always hope, always the dawn.

 And I’m thankful that I’m David, in a way, because I know as he does that no matter how dark the day or cold the winter, no matter how impossible life might look, there’s always hope, there’s God the rock.  He’s reason alone for Thanksgiving.

 Psalm 42 is a major psalm, maybe the most famous song of lament in the whole collection.  What’s here is brokenness and despair, and I’m thankful for whoever penned this poem because he’s written our story too, for all of us. 

 All that wailing doesn’t appear on anyone’s Christmas list, but at one time or another in all of our lives it hides somewhere behind the tree, ready to spring. And then does. I can’t imagine any believer who doesn’t feel the despair of Psalm 42 at some point or another in life—“why so disturbed within me?”

 But even in his despair, the poet who blessed us with Psalm 42 is a pit bull:  “I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”

 I’m thankful for that double-fisted determination, thankful that my faith, while maybe not a pit bull is at least a mutt with attitude. I don’t know why, but God has blessed me with a light in the darkness that is very capable of growing dim, but for some mysterious reason, undouse-able. 

 It’s the gift of faith, a gift of love, for which I am—this Thanksgiving morning especially—deeply thankful.  

 Psalm 42 is a song of triumph, even in our deepest anguish.  Psalm 42 is a song about faith. 

__________________________    

  *Today is not Thanksgiving, and this meditation wasn't penned yesterday. But I'll stand by what I said--except for this: our parents are still doing well, but they are, all three of them, gone. It's not a Dell I'm working on, but a Lenova--big deal. The picture is from out back, just yesterday. That having been said, I'm just as thankful as I was when I wrote this little morning meditation--and there are two more grandchildren!        

"The Sioux Center Affair" (iii)

Stained glass window donated by Willa Cather to her Episcopalian Church in Red Cloud, NE

[Today's post was meant to be yesterday's, but our wi-fi went out and stayed out until late morning.]

Professor Van Dyke's story of the battle records few names, but one he does mention arrives at an inopportune moment, just as the sides were getting into trenches for what would turn out to be an epic battle. He is identified here--as elsewhere--as C. DeLeeuw (capitalization and spacing differs), but was more respectfully known as the Reverend Cornelius De Leeuw, whose term of service at the new church was in all likelihood cut short by the mess within the church. 

It seems that C. DeLeeuw quite quickly determined to side with the "Teachers Meeting," both in terms of prerogatives for language usage as well as the immediate cause of the furor, the answer to the question, "Who's in charge here?"

From a century's distance, it seems impossible that such a wild fire could ignite from a list of new Sunday School teachers. Sides must have begun to form earlier, but Van Dyke notes that what lit up the church--barely 30 years old--was a list of teachers submitted to the consistory by the Teachers Meeting in February of 1919, a list which included five names not on the consistory's original list. The Teachers argued that they were adding names only because there weren't enough names on the consistory's list; the operation of the Sioux Center's CRC Sunday School required more teachers.

The greater problem, it seems--the shocker behind that short list of names--was the arrogation of power the consistory read into the Teachers Meeting actually telling the consistory who was going to be teaching the next year. Van Dyke claims that the approach taken by the Teachers Meeting wasn't new; rather, he says, Synod's 1918 warning about the danger of the Sunday School had sharpened the consistory's fears about the whole program. The consistory was wounded and wary.

That's when the new pastor arrived from Pella, where he'd been for ten years. Little is known about the Preacher DeLeeuw today, except the list of churches he served in his close-to 50-years in CRC pulpits. Both his previous charge--at Pella--and his succeeding charge--at Lansing, Illinois--were seemingly successful. Post the trials at Sioux Center, he was at Lansing for 20 years. 

Van Dyke does more than suggest that Rev. De Leeuw fell in with the Teachers and was more progressive than the consistory with respect to the way in which the congregation operated. "It soon became apparent," Van Dyke writes, "that De Leeuw differed with the consistory over the nature of consistorial power." Given the nature of young, immigrant churches in that era, consistorial power was not something with which to trifle, even--and perhaps especially--when the trifle-er is the pastor. 

Meanwhile, the Teachers Meeting did more than roll their eyes at the consistory's response to their newly abridged list. They determined the only way to fight was to revise their constitution, to redraw the lines of political power. So that summer they did just that, in a fashion they had to know would only raise the temperature of the conflict. There were other points of difference, but the one most specific to the matter of who chooses teachers found reference here:

The Sunday School is under supervision of  the Consistory. They will acquaint themselves with the teachers that give instruction, with their teachings and also with the papers that are used in connection therewith. 

Professor Van Dyke italicizes "acquaint," pointing at their direct takeover of power, at least as seen by the consistory, then goes on: "If the consistory had previously suspected that its authority was being systematically undermined, the proposed constitution removed all doubt." 

That's when, right there in church, the fecal matter hit the fan. 

The Consistory said no. In response, in November of 1919, the Teachers Meeting insisted they were right and that their new constitution diagrammed the way in which they sought to live. Furthermore, they quoted from the estimable Rev. Louis Berkhof, a highly esteemed seminary prof, whom they'd recruited to bolster their arguments. Letters that delineated each side of the argument flew back and forth between teachers and consistory until December, when the consistory, on an 8 to 1 vote, determined that unless the Teachers continued operations under the guidelines of the old constitution, after Christmas there would be no more Sunday School. It was that simple. 

As you might imagine, that ruling set up a most memorable Sunday School Christmas program.  

"The Sioux Center Affair" (ii)

It's altogether unlikely that, where two or three of Sioux Center's pious folks were gathered, there was much talk about "Americanization." Ecclesiastical big wigs knew the meaning of that word and feared the consequences of any dancing with what they considered "American" values; but even those who didn't know the word understood acutely that a new world order laid siege just outside the city gates ever since the Koster family had set claim to a parcel of land that would become the city's Central Park.

Amazingly, the vehicle Americanization would create to sneak perilous new country values through the gates and into the ethnic fortress was Sunday School. You read that right. What split 150 families of like-minded religious folks wasn't dancing or movies or late night poker down the road in Hawarden. What sparked a decade-long religious war was Sunday School--yes, Sunday School, a uniquely American invention and, thus, fearful.

Lest you begin to think that such fears arose only in Sioux County, Iowa, it is helpful to remember that, already in 1918, the Synod of the Christian Reformed Church had made clear to its churches that Sunday School loomed over church life as a wolf in sheep's clothing might have.

Sunday School as an evangelization tool must arise from the Church as institution. Because the Sunday School is an aid to home catechism, its origins should come from private initiative. The Sunday School should be under strict church supervision so that an attitude of "Christianity above differences in beliefs" does not arise. 

Let this be understood: catechism per se came over from Holland in immigrant trunks. Catechism was a Dutch thing, approved for generations of old country saints. But what exactly was this new American invention? What was, really, Sunday School? How did it differ from catechism or from what covenant children would learn in a "school for Christian instruction"? The Synodical report goes on to say that "Perhaps there is nothing in present time that advances the weakening boundaries as much as the Sunday School."

The story of the Sioux Center CRC begins with war over Sunday School, an authentic American import and phenomenon, and enough to make people wary. What the CRC's most faithful feared more than anything was theological weaknesses that accompany movements that promise "no creed but Christ." 

Already in 1872, when the town barely existed, Dwight L. Moody formed the International Sunday School Association and created a web of Sunday School Teachers, who then worked hard to create a Uniform Lesson Plan meant to standardize weekly lessons throughout this nation's Protestant churches. Throughout the rapidly colonizing west, Moody and others determined that an institutional program was required to follow up on the work of circuit riding revivalists to provide "a constant means of grace."

Fancy talk that, but not at all Dutch.

Within Dutch communities like Sioux Center, Sunday Schools--despite the synodical warnings--could and did become hot items. Because their formation was, at the outset, aimed at children, in many churches the Sunday School was the first organization to put away the Dutch language. What's more, Sunday School tended to band together some of a church's more creative types, as well as those who practiced a more lively and energetic piety. If dour old men in smoke-filled consistory rooms caricatures the old church, lively Sunday School teachers--speaking the English language--soon came to energize church life.

Thus, two sides formed in Sioux Center: on one side sat the consistory, whose determination was to rule over church life; and on the other, the Sunday School teachers, bright and creative, most anxious to burn the wooden shoes. Meanings change, but the forces that shape them do not: you can call the opposing forces "traditional" and "progressive" if you like, or "conservative" and "liberal." Choose your weapons.

Meanwhile, in 1924 the Synod of the Christian Reformed Church doubled down on its Sunday School warnings by insisting that churches promote doctrinal truths. "We need this added preservative for the instruction of our covenant youth against the perils of liberal teaching with which the air is full." 

I don't suppose wars are ever waged in the immediate wake of a single event. At Sioux Center CRC both sides in this conflict must have been poised for battle long before the teachers, who the notes call "the Teachers Meeting," wrote up a new constitution. But that's where it started, Professor Van Dyke says, the summer of 1919, with the liberals, the Teachers Meeting, stumping for change.

"The Sioux Center Affair" i

Old First CRC, Sioux Center

"How you going to keep them down on the farm,

Now that they've seen Paree?" 

It was a popular song just after the "war to end all wars," written and recorded in 1919, when the country was plump with vets home from France. Whether or not Sioux Center, Iowa, welcomed its fair share of fighting men, I don't know. There had to be some, but the numbers likely weren't high because at the turn of the century the town, just a few decades old, saw itself as just another Dutch village with some significant water between them and Friesland or Zeeland. To some, to many, to be "American" was anathema.

The idea of that 1920's pop ballad was pervasive, even if whole bunches of Sioux Center young men didn't hanker for one more Paris romp before coming home. They'd seen the world "over there," and what they recognized when they returned to Sioux Center was that home just didn't cover the subject anymore. What's more, in the Twenties, the town fathers (and they were) had some trouble facing the fact that their children, not just their veterans, were becoming English speakers and much more, well, "American." 

In its short history, no change in culture was more significant to the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) as the cleavage wrought by World War I: some believed with all their heart that they were Americans now; others were just as heart-felt despising it. A few Dutch-American vets reported being both shocked and embarrassed by their ability to follow what Germans were saying just a trench away, while they had no clue deciphering their doughboy buddies from New Jersey or Kentucky. 

To understand what some called at the time "the Sioux Center affair," the first item of business is to imagine how immensely difficult it was (and still is) for a people--Dutch or Danish or Luxemborgian, Mexican or Sudanese, to forsake the mother tongue. A friend of mine, whose parents immigrated, told me that his mother told him, late in life, that coming to Canada meant losing her sense of humor, most jokes built on double meanings. "I met a girl in a revolving door, and I've been going around with her ever since" is not funny at all if you don't know the language. 

Among northwest Iowa Dutch, no fear weighed quite so heavily than their antipathy toward of something they wouldn't have called--but we can--"Americanization." But they were here, in Sioux County, Iowa, and had been since 1870. To cope with the changes created by WWI required vigilance and fortification because they reckoned the force exerted by the New Country to be inestimably scary.  

"The Sioux Center Affair" was a breach in familial and confessional character that created two churches where there had been only one, a conflict among good Christian people that, a full decade later, ended anger and dissolution.

The story is not endearing. A church split bled for generations of people who simply refused to talk about a breakdown that lasted for an entire decade. 

Dr. Louis Van Dyke, a Professor of History at Dordt College is, penned the only story about "the Sioux Center Affair." My telling is totally indebted to his unpublished paper, available only in the congregational archives for First Sioux Center CRC. 

I remembered the paper only because I was a colleague during the time he wrote it, in the early nineties. I remember him saying that then, a half century later, those who remembered the fight didn't care to talk about it.

Van Dyke stated his mission this way: "The role of history. . .is not to dredge up old quarrels or to gossip about people who are long gone but to learn from the past in order not to repeat its errors." 

As a member of First CRC, Sioux Center, he was writing a history in a time of turmoil. Some area pastors, as early as 1980, had determined a distinctive new Reformed seminary had to be created because theological drifting within the CRC had become, to them, as painful as it was obvious. The insistence on a new seminary right there in Sioux County begat significant controversy. 

There's nothing new about church fights. Even New Testament churches were victimized by "schisms rent asunder" and "heresies distressed." In the 1920s as in the 1990s and even today, lay members had to face conflicting horrors--would it be schisms or heresies? 

"The question for us," Professor Van Dyke says in a short introduction to his study, "is not whether certain things had to happen, but whether they have to happen again." Given the track record of church fights here as elsewhere, the story Van Dyke documents is always worth remembering. 

Minimalist me

What now seems today long, long ago, a woman came up to me after I'd read a story at a teachers' convention. I didn't know her. She wanted to tell me something, she said, wanted me to know that what she did with pen-and-ink was a first cousin to what I was doing with words. If I'd give her my address, she'd send me some prints. "I think you'll agree," she said.

Her name was Natalie Boonstra. She taught art one of the schools at the convention. A few years later, I would meet her husband, Juan Boonstra, the long-time Spanish-speaking minister of a broadcast ministry named the Back to God Hour.

That image up top is an old collection of stories, and that image on the cover is a Natalie Boonstra drawing. She was right. What I was doing with stories and what she was doing on paper was governed by an aesthetic at that moment in vogue--a kind of hyper-realism that became known as "minimalism." 

I didn't know all of that at the time. I didn't dedicate myself to an artistic theory; what came out of the keys I tapped to create short stories simply was "minimalism." Let me try to explain this way--there's nothing particularly exceptional about that dining room chair, but if it is examined closely--as the drawing begs you to do--it invites you into a world of meaning--minimally, you could say. 

You have to look hard to find Michigan's Fayette State Historical Park. It's in a bay on the south shore of the Upper Peninsula, the fingernail on what amounts to an isthmus of land. It's not on the way to anything, really. It's a ghost town, although there were a hundred or so tourists there when we arrived (don't get your hopes up). 

Last week we hunted the place up, a state historical park that celebrates what remains of a "once-bustling industrial community that manufactured charcoal pig iron between 1867 and 1891," or so the guides say. What's there--a few buildings and old stone foundations remains--is all 150 years old. It's that kind of place--sort of "must-see" for museum crazies. The Jackson Iron Company created Fayette to smelt iron ore. Once upon a time it was an old-fashioned "company town," with all the sins and blessings of any 19th century village dependent on a single business owner. 

Yesterday I used an image from inside one of the buildings, a picture of a corner of a building where a window shed minimal light through an old-fashioned dainty shade behind a dining room chair in silhouette. Here 'tis again.

I like it. The image conjures a story, just as Natalie Boonstra said. You can't look at it without engagement--or at least I can't. It begs your imagination to fill in the space with a story. Here's a couple more, same late afternoon light through different windows. 

 

Maybe you see something different--perhaps Barbara and I watch too many episodes of Call the Midwife, but this one conjures a story that I can't help but think is profoundly sad. 

But all of these pictures are vintage Natalie Boonstra's; all of them covers for yet-to-be-written collections of minimalist fiction. 

Alas, in the age of fantasy, minimalism has lost even minimal appeal. Another book of minimalist short stories, no matter how imaginatively adorned, won't ring up the sales. 

But if you're looking for a ringing endorsement of a visit to Fayette Historical Park in a far corner of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, you got it. Oddly enough, amidst all that's old and useless today, it's still a wonderful place to dream. 

Sunday Morning Meds--from Psalm 42

“I say to God my Rock, 

‘Why have you forgotten me? 

Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?’"

 

The present tense in this verse suggests the event the psalmist is describing has happened often. He’s not telling us something bizarre here, reporting on some weird epiphany gone awry. Seems to me that what he’s saying is, “Whenever I feel estranged from God, I say to him. . .” Not just once did this happen; sadly enough, I’m abandoned more often.

           

If that’s true, then what he says makes better sense. “I say to God my rock—which is to say, my fortress in times of trouble—‘why aren’t you my fortress in times of trouble?’”

 

What he feels is a hybrid pain only believers feel, because only someone who knows God as a rock can feel the terror of quicksand. Only a believer continues to talk to a God who seems to be out of state.

           

Makes no sense, really, but then neither does faith itself, often enough. The odd paradox of the psalmist’s supplication is understandable only to someone who knows, who says “been there, done that.” Like me . . . and you, probably.

           

And the question, this time at least, isn’t “how long (as it is in Psalm 13, for instance),” but “why?” “Why” is a question that also suggests significant distance. We don’t have time for “why” in the middle of battle. “Why” arises only when the battle doesn’t quit, or when we begin to look at our wounds and realize the pain.

           

In “The Wonders of the Invisible World,” Cotton Mather, the firebrand Puritan prelate, makes great claims for New England’s founders. They were “a chosen generation,” he says, “so pure as to disrelish many things which they thought wanted reformation elsewhere, and yet so peaceable that they embraced a voluntary exile in a squalid, horrid, American dessert.” They were saints.

           

But, alas, Mather says, along came their children, who like “many degenerate plants,” were altogether “otherwise inclined.” The founders were grain; their children, weeds—that’s what Mather sees and how he explains why the Devil is rampaging through New England. Everywhere he looked, after all, he saw witchcraft.

 

Why? “We have all the reason imaginable to ascribe it unto the rebuke of heaven for our manifold apostacies.” Mather, unlike David, appears to know the answer to why. It’s all our fault. Lo and behold, we’ve departed from righteousness.

           

But Mather’s explanation fed the madness that filled prisons around Salem, Massachusetts, and finally took 25 lives. Thank goodness God isn’t Cotton Mather.

All of us want to know why; all of us seek understanding for what can’t be fully understood. It’s a human thing, and it’s been a great blessing. Why is the source question of science, the foundation of education itself. Why is the beginning of knowledge.

 

But the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And some questions we ask, questions from the heart and soul of our lives, may not have easy answers, and that’s the phenomenon David is describing. Remember—it has happened more than once. Why have you left me alone?

 

And really, that’s the story of the psalm: even when he doesn’t seem to be our Rock, he is. It’s all here in this lament, in his pain and his joy. Even when there are no answers, he is.

 

Makes no sense at all unless you know it too. Praise ye the Lord.

The Apostles' Crusoe

If you look closely, you'll see a man dressed in khakis out front of the middle building in this scene from Robinson Crusoe. I'm kidding, of course. But he's just as alone as Crusoe. Well, more so--Crusoe had Friday. This guy's obligations are few--keep your domicile and its surroundings ship-shape, as they say, and occasionally, when an island ferry cruises past, make yourself visible and be friendly--wave (see his hand?) 

Otherwise, the guy is on his own. There ain't no neighbors, none at'all, and if he gets groceries or other must-haves, those items are lovingly left on the dock, which you can just see on the far right of the picture. No quick trips to town. I'm sure he gabs with the delivery man, but one of the obligations of the job--I doubt it's a paid position--is to stay there, not bounce back and forth like some lost beach ball.

Here's another shot of the Apostle's Crusoe, just a bit pre-wave. 

I witnessed all of this from a ferry taking nosy vacationers out to see the Apostle Islands in Wisconsin's far, far north. I'm ashamed to admit that this real live badger's son had never heard of the Apostle Islands. My parents weren't big vacationers, and this series of incredible outposts lie way up in Lake Superior. You can hardly get farther away from the neighborhood.

We were there last week (if you're wondering about the almost week-long vacation from blogging), and I couldn't help wondering how I might do out there if I took the job, by myself, for a couple of months. Would I go bug-eyed bananas? I don't know. Something about the isolation looked interesting, even compelling. I could blog to my heart's content--if I had something to say. Would I? Don't ask me to do it without wi-fi.

The Crusoe thing reminded me of an old story, however. Goes like this:

Some war vet gets left behind when his army unit evacuates a South Sea Island--let's just say this happens after World War II. Poor guy is all alone. When, fifty years later, an adventurer determines to visit this unmapped jungle island, he's stupefied to walk into an entire village, a small one, but a full collection of houses--and, oddly enough, only one inhabitant.

 

When he finds the islander, the traveler discovers that the man he's talking to is, in fact, all alone, and that, shockingly, he's spent the last fifty years building this entire village, piecemeal. "That's my post office," the islander tells him, pointing up Central Ave, "and that's my laundromat and next to that is my elementary school."

The bedazzled visitor points to a pleasingly designed building at the other end of the block. "And that's your church," he says, getting into the swing of things. The islander nods proudly. "But then, what's that?" the traveler asks, pointing at another fancy building at the far corner.

"Why that's the church I used to go to," the islander says, proudly.

You might just think the islander's name was Vander Poot or Flipsma. Entirely possible, of course. But I first heard the story from a gang of Jewish musicians--I'm not lying--who used the word synagogue, not church.

I don't know how I'd do if I was the khaki man. Two or three months? Wow! I'd like to think I could stay out of church fights, but, even though I'm of one mind, I rarely am. You really think Mr. Khaki never fights with himself. 

Still, you can't help but feel sorry for the poor islander--can you imagine how painful it must have been to realize that, once more, he's got to cut down more trees and carve out another fifty pews? 

I wonder if the Khaki guy argues with the people who bring him toilet paper. I bet not. No man is an island. 

CRT and me

A bit of an explanation. Not from this blog, but from another publication I received some strident criticism for being far too CRTish. You can find that publication here if you would like to read it. The letter isn't yet printed.

At first, I thought not to respond at all--it's a page from this nation's culture wars, and my critic was standing his ground and telling me to straighten up my act. 

Then I heard the Oklahoma Superintendent of Schools, a MAGA man, talk about the Tulsa Riots on 1921. I have a precious family in Oklahoma, but I drove to Tulsa for the commemoration. It's an awful story, and it's all about racism.

So I came up with this, my reaction to his accusation.

____________________________ 

What seems so clear is the cause/effect sequencing of the entire, awful story--how this led to that and that led to this and so forth and so forth and so forth, an almost inexorable chain of events. 

Begin here. I have no desire to be unkind to Oklahomans, but what needs to be said is that its white founding fathers were not Puritans. Oklahoma, once called Indian Territory, was home to more than its share of tough hombres.

After the Civil War, scores of ex-slaves left the cotton-picking South following dreams of what the West offered. In Oklahoma, those emigres were Southerners especially, many of whom had hated Lincoln, considered "emancipation" talk astutely unnatural, a foul attempt to change an entire way of life. 

By 1890, the Five Civilized Tribes who'd suffered through the Trail of Tears (1830-1850) assessed their plight in Indian Territory and signed on to the provisions of the Dawes Act (1887), which offered land ownership to Native people if they would give up their tribal governance and associations. The effect, in Oklahoma as elsewhere, was to free up land for thousands more white pioneers, many of whom were embittered Southerners not so much leaving Dixie behind as lugging losses and grievances with them.

Thus, while freed slaves moving into the region expected self-governance--freedom itself, in Indian Territory--the movers and shakers in city hall were, often as not, ex-Rebs who were not particularly interested the freedom of ex-slaves, or "equality" (whatever that meant!) for, well, the people for whom they used the n-word.

Thus, a town like Tulsa, before the oil strikes, was the very model of segregation in the late 19th century, and racism that was maybe not as blatant as it was in the Jim Crow South, but as racially divided as apartheid South Africans. There was Tulsa--the white world--and there was Greenwood--the black. It was very simple, very clearly drawn.

Segregation or not, those ex-slaves not only survived but flourished. Right there on the streets of Greenwood, their city, they did well, did better than well, in fact, so much so that some people called the place Black Wall Street.  

Then something happened. Exactly how, no one knows.

Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old African American who made his living by shining shoes, touched a white girl when the two of them were in an elevator and was, soon after, arrested for attempting to assault her. Rowland admitted he put a hand on the girl, but denied trying to harm her.

For a moment in time, old Dixie-level racism threatened the barriers already set between the races in Tulsa. To white folks, what a black boy did to a white girl was an abomination that often ended in lynchings throughout the South.

It all seems so perfectly understandable. Thus, when a couple thousand white men began milling around the courthouse where Rowland was held, dozens of African Americans in Greenwood, some of them WWI vets who'd only recently returned, determined that what seemed inevitable was, this time, not going to be. They went, single file, to the courthouse and offered their protection to the Sheriff, who waved them off. 

Tulsa became a tinderbox. On May 31, at 10:30 at night, a white man attempted to disarm an African American World War I vet. A shot rang out. Thus, it began. 

An estimated $1.5 million in damages resulted. An estimated 10,000 residents were left homeless, 6000 were interned, 1256 homes were burned, 215 looted. Almost 200 businesses were burned; almost 200 people were hospitalized. No one knows the number who perished; estimates range from 55 to 300. For a century, the whole story was locked up tight in some psychic vault, not to be spoken of.

Two years ago, Tulsa stopped willfully forgetting. The horror, created by white supremacists, arose from the kind of grave we dig for our most awful stories.

Today, Oklahoma, like many other states, has created legislation to make teaching Critical Race Theory illegal. Definitions remain vague. The letters “CRT” stand for something difficult to identify except to MAGA politicians who use it self-righteously—and often. Just this week, Ryan Walters, who ran on a campaign to eradicate CRT and “wokeness” and thereby became Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Schools, told an audience that teaching students about the 1921 Tulsa Riots wasn’t wrong, but that it had to be done in a fashion that didn’t make students feel bad. Most specifically, it had to be done in a fashion that wouldn’t make white students feel bad or in any way responsible.

There’s a kind of silly sweetness to his idiocy. But, honestly and truly, how can one teach the truly horrifying stories of our past without horror, without—in this case—the reality of the evils of Jim Crow? Without talking about who was truly guilty and who was truly innocent and why?

You can teach students about the Tulsa Riots, but you really shouldn’t mention much about race, or so said the Superintendent.

The sequence by which the Tulsa Riots developed has a clearly present cause-and-effect structure—this, then this, then this, then that. All of it, perfectly understandable. That may be Ryan Walters’ lesson plan: what happened in Greenwood in 1921 was inevitable because of the background of the individuals involved.

There’s a silly sweetness operating here. “Don’t mention race. Don’t let white kids feel bad.” I get that.

But I can’t help thinking that if I were African American, I’d call it something other than “silly sweetness.” I’d likely call it racism, and that, of course, would make me unforgivingly “woke.”

Maybe so.

Sunday Morning Meds -- from Psalm 42

By day the LORD directs his love, 

at night his song is with me— a prayer to the God of my life.

Half of all marriages fail. Why? Good question.

Some of the best researchers on the subject, professionals who’ve listened to hours and hours of conversation between ordinary married people, have come up with very interesting findings. Good lovin’, they claim, may not be at the heart of long and happy marriages, even though good lovin’ is what we’d like to believe in; a marriage drenched in passion isn’t necessarily a marriage which will last.

Okay, what then? What some researchers have come to understand is that the success of a relationship may be more dependent on the ability to fight than the ability to love. Go ahead and read that again. Marriages fail, they claim, when spouses can’t deal with inevitable conflicts. Maybe I can put it this way—couples who learn how to fight, learn how to love.

Conflict occurs even in the best of relationships. Those marriages that make it do so because spouses learn to keep those conflicts from escalating into the kind of murder that kills love and respect.

I don’t know how our fights—my wife and mine—rank with others. There have been some stiff ones, I know. Thankfully, I’ve not been around enough other couples’ tiffs and rants to judge the relative nastiness of ours. But we’ve been married now for 51 years, and I seriously doubt we’re in any kind of trouble, thank the Lord. We must have learned to manage our brawls, I guess, but don’t ask me to write the “how to.”

The fact is, it’s impossible for me to imagine myself alone now. In the give-and-take of marriage, I’ve pretty much lost the egoism that being single affords. I’m not perfect, and I still want what’s mine—and then some; but I can’t remember the last time I told myself, bitterly, that the only reason I’d done something I didn’t want to do was because, dang it, I was married, done something totally (grrrrr) for her. It’s been a long time, thank the Lord.

All of which is not to say we’re home free. I’m not too old to be shocked, even by myself.

Mostly, this great psalm, Psalm 42, is lament. Three times (vss. 5, 8, 11) when he’s almost lost in the dark night of the soul, David has to pinch himself to God’s goodness, push himself to engineer a way out of what seems pathless despair. Twice, in fact, he falls back into the darkness after trying the best he can to pull himself out.

I don’t want to be prescriptive because God’s love comes in so many shades and sizes that no one size fits all; but I’m wondering, when I feel the wild emotional amplitude of this famous, short psalm—I’m wondering whether some believers, not all, need to understand that, like a marriage, God almighty and his people—some of us at least—stay together only because we’ve learned to fight, and in so doing, how to love.

No one ever talks about that in Sunday School, but the proof is here in one of David’s roughest song, shadowed as it is with darkness. And there are others like this one, lots of them, more than we’re often willing to admit or certainly advertise.

Maybe David—or whoever wrote this great psalm—has learned how to love the Lord in all his mystery, only because he’s learned also how to fight.           

Birthday greetings

Happy Birthday to Barbara Kay Van Gelder Schaap, 

who is today. . .well, you'll simply have to get it from her.

RW -- Communion Circle (a story) iii

At a conference in Alberta, where I was the speaker, the whole crew--maybe 50 people, circled up one night after a speech or sermon and took communion from whoever was standing next to each of our left. Then, once served, we turned to our right and served the next in the circle. I'd never taken communion like that before, and I found it quite moving. That was years ago, and it's not happened since. There are rules, but some rules get left behind at retreats. That service is, as you can tell, central to the story.

______________________________  

Anna Terwain knew nothing and everything. When she saw them in the parking lot, she didn't hesitate for a moment. She went to them, the two of them bundled in each others' arms, and she took them both on, wrapped her arms around the whole bundle.

Anna Terwain is an old woman, maybe forty or fifty pounds overweight. Pete was a city bus driver for most of his life, although in the last years he worked at the Christian school, a custodian. They'd never had a lot of anything, but two of her kids were divorced--Lord only knows how many prayers she'd sent up in their behalf and still did. Pete was dead three years already, a man who never said much at all while he was alive, but whose absence created an empty silence all around her.

Marian Anderson, that black gospel singer of long ago—it was Marian Anderson whose voice always came back to Anna in the middle of her woes. "Nobody knows," Miss Anderson used to sing in a way that Anna herself used to mimic when alone, "nobody knows the trouble I've seen-nobody knows but Jesus."

Those were the only words that came to her, so those words were the ones she used on the two women bugging each other in the parking lot. "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen; nobody knows but Jesus," she told them, and she took them, both of them, back towards the sanctuary, to the celebration.

Pastor Jake de Meester missed it all, as did, by far, the majority of parishioners of Bethel Church, because the whole thing-people handing each other the grape juice and the bread-it didn't go as smoothly as de Meester would have liked. Half the congregation was finished before a quarter of the congregation had even seen the elements. He'd have to have an extra set next time and choose the spots to begin more wisely, he thought.

He didn't notice the three of them sneak back into the sanctuary, and neither did he realize how it was that Anna Terwain stood between those two women and made sure each of them dipped the bread. In fact, he didn't realize-and no one else did either-that Anna didn't partake herself because she was making very, very sure that the two of them looked straight into each other eyes and knew what it was they were doing and saying. "The body of Christ," she said to Tracy Leonard, "broken for you."

Tracy Leonard dipped the bread into the cup of grape juice and did what she thought she shouldn't-couldn't. She took it despite herself, took it because she knew, really, what it offered was so much more than her own sin, so much bigger, so much greater, so much more to be prized. And when that soggy bread was in her mouth, it tasted, as it never had before, like Christ himself. She took the cup and plate of bread from Anna, but instead of turning to the right like everyone else, she turned back to Anna Terwain and said, "The body of Christ, broken for you; the blood of Christ, shed for you."

And then Anna participated too, smiling.

Pastor Jake de Meester thought the whole celebration was something of a success, figured, with a little better planning, he could try it once again sometime when he started to think of things getting too routine.

MaryJane Amundson cried all the way home. She told her husband, who kept shoving her Kleenex, that she didn't remember ever in her life being so happy.

Tracy Leonard told Will she didn't feel like making dinner. "You know that great little Middle Eastern place we heard about on Marley Drive?" she said. "I been dying to go there-just you and me."

Anna Terwain went home to her apartment alone, praising the Lord.

And that's just one of the stories of a single Sunday's fellowship at Bethel Church.

RW -- Communion Circle (a story) ii

Once upon a time, a woman I knew came up to me, grabbed my arm, and said "You have to tell my story." Her story is Tracy Leonard's essentially--she and a good friend were both childless, were planning on a book to tell their stories when her friend, miraculously, it seemed, announced her pregnancy. The story she wanted me to tell is how that announcement affected the character who is, in the story, Tracy Leonard. What she wanted me to explain was, plain and simple, her almost unforgivable anger--at everyone and everything. "Communion Circle" carries the story of that woman who grabbed my arm.

_________________________________  

MaryJane Amundson deliberately directed her husband to the seats just behind Will and Tracy Leonard because of what she'd seen yesterday at Hubbards--no matter what words hadn't come from Tracy's lips. She knew what Tracy was feeling. She knew very well because she would have felt it herself, the two of them so close through years of insufferably negative pregnancy tests. MaryJane wanted to sit near Tracy because she had to speak to her, had to touch her.

Pastor Jake De Meester had no clue about Mary Jane’s totally unforeseen pregnancy or Tracy's God-defying jealousy. He knew his parishoners' lives, he thought. He knew that both women wanted children badly, but he also knew about Madeline's unending gossip, Mark's corporate greed, Vangie's blind arrogance, and Brett's flirtation with adultery. When he planned out the service, he knew the church, like every one he'd ever served, was full of sin. But when he planned the service, he wanted to breath new life into an old form because he wanted them all to know and know deeply that the body and blood of Christ was broken and spilled for all of their sin. So that Sunday morning, he had the members of Bethel Church stand and step back to circle the entire sanctuary, forming a ring, a human chain, to celebrate the sacrament.

It wasn't the first time Bethel Church had celebrated the sacrament that way. Not everyone liked it, of course; but then any innovation Pastor Jake had attempted at Bethel had encountered some understandable resistance. That particular Sunday morning, he was trying to be sure that everything worked smoothly, that there were no wrinkles in the celebration because he wanted the people of Bethel Church to be more comfortable with change. And the fact is, he didn't see Tracy Leonard walk away from her husband and leave the sanctuary. He was busy with the elements.

MaryJane Amundson, however, couldn't miss Tracy’s leaving, since MaryJane and her husband had taken chairs just behind the Leonards. W So when Anna saw the two of them leave the church as everyone else moved toward the outside walls of the sanctuary, she knew the entire story in a moment, and that's why she left too, unseen.

Tracy Leonard went directly to the Explorer, but found it locked, of course. Will had the keys. She couldn't participate-she was sure of that; but the circle business would have made her not participating far too public. What she'd decided not to do was a private decision between herself and God. It had involved no one else, not even Will. That's why she'd raised her hands and coughed into them. She wanted to make him think a cough was the reason she couldn't stay.

She looked back at the church and saw MaryJane coming from the front doors, thought about running, but knew it would be silly and stupid. She wasn't a child. She was a sinner all right, but she wasn't a child.

MaryJane Amundson said absolutely nothing. She stood beside Tracy for a moment, then reached for her, her arm, her shoulder. She tried to hug her, something she'd wanted to do ever since yesterday's horrible conversation, and Tracy allowed her to, holding herself, however, stiff as plaster.

Neither of them knew any words at all, so there they stood, in the hot sun, holding each other, MaryJane crying, even though she was the one who had every reason in the world to thank God for the miracle that had happened within her. 

______________________ 

Tomorrow--the conclusion.

The Reformed Worship Stories--Communion Circle (i)

For a decade or so, I wrote stories for a magazine once named Reformed Worship. The objective was to create stories that had something to do with the way we worship in our churches. "Communion Circle" is one of those stories, maybe the most touching of any in the scrapbook.  It has a genesis, but I'll wait to introduce that story until you get into it. 

___________________________ 

Tracy Leonard was planning on not taking communion, but not a soul in Bethel Church knew it. That morning, she got into the Explorer in silence, brought both hands up in front of her face, almost as if praying. Her husband drove. He didn't know a thing about her decision either, but then there were lots he didn't know.

This is the path her determination had taken. The Lord's Supper is a means of grace-the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ broken and spilled all over the earth for the sin of mankind, hers included, hers foremost maybe, because hers was the only sin she knew deep within the marrow of her bones, deep within the tangled sinews of her heart, deep within her own barren womb. She knew she could look around Bethel Church and pick out other's sins-Madeline's unending gossip, Mark's corporate greed, Vangie's blind arrogance, Brett's flirtation with adultery-but the only sinner she knew to be worthy of judgment was herself. With her heart overflowing with sin, she was in no shape to accept God's grace. She knew her jealousy. She knew her envy. She hated what she felt in her heart, but she was powerless before its rapacious appetite.

Like Othello's, her jealousy had begun to eat upon itself. The green-eyed monster grew in her like ghoulish serpent; it prayed upon her, a deviant murderer cutting her heart up into pieces. But she wasn't its victim; she was its perpetrator. She did the sinning. She envied, horribly.

The tires sung at a different pitch when they crossed the bridge. They were almost at church. She knew the body and blood would be passed that morning, as always, in complete remission for all their sin. She'd taken communion for years, understood every word of the forms, knew, from the inside out, exactly what was happening. She was 35 years old, a successful head hunter with a reputable firm, salaried far beyond her own expectations, capable of moving into new jobs by way of offers that came at least once a month. Her closets were full of clothes, she and Will had a cabin on the lake, in addition to twice-yearly vacations which had become more and more exotic-Peru, Mongolia, Tanzania. But she couldn't have children. Or at least it hadn't worked. But that wasn't her sin.

Will, still in silence, pulled into the church parking lot in that patient way he had, so as not to make the trailer hitch scrape against the pavement. There were times when she hated almost everything he did, even though he didn't deserve it.

Nothing of this was his fault. She looked up at him as he parked, third row away from the door. She spoke to no one, kept her face down as they walked to church and Will found them seats. The only thing she was ready to proclaim at this communion service, bread and wine in hand, would be her own sin. She'd flunk the self-exam, just as she had flunked countless others in the privacy of her own bathroom. She knew very well the Lord would take her repentance, but she had no will to repent. She wasn't ready. That was her sin. She knew she took great joy in her envy, because envy was all she could feel after years of trying to have children, years of countless tears at the mere sight of baby toys, of cribs, of grocery store diapers, years of wishing and hoping and worrying about every last period, years of trying, a millennium of unanswered prayers that never rose above the ceiling in that empty room they'd so long ago designated for the baby who never came.

And after all of that, her own best friend, another barren Sarah like herself had announced, in tears, that she was. . .Tracy couldn't say the word. When she couldn't be, her own best friend, the only soul on the face of the earth, the only woman who knew what she felt, Mary Jane Admundson was.

They’d met at Hubbard’s, a booth in the back, where Mary Jane had reached for Tracy’s hand. They'd done that before, the two of them, crying through mutual sadness. She didn't say the word either—Mary Jane didn't. She sat there and held her hands and said, "Jeff and 1. . ."

That's all—just enough of a hint of smile for Tracy to know what didn't need to be said, what couldn't be said.

For the first time Tracy understood the Old Testament story, how a childless woman could have wanted a baby so badly she'd take the birth mother to Solomon's court. She knew because she wanted, like nothing else, that tiny little organism clinging to MaryJane's insides.

She and Will rose for the first song. That's why she wasn't going to take communion. She wasn't deserving. She was as full of sin as she was empty of child.

___________________ 

Tomorrow--the sacrament. . .

Radiant Birth (for Christmas)

New book of Christmas readings--"Advant Readings for a Bright Season." It's from InterVarsity Press and features a number of familiar names and faces, including someone not mentioned on the cover. Hmmmm.

You might want to note that the flyer includes at 30 percent off discount with the use of the promo code OFFER23F.  (To be honest, I'm not sure what it costs.)

For many years I was a member of something called The Chrysostom Society, a group of Christian writers who met annually. Just two years ago, I resigned (yes, there are members who are older). I just thought it was time.

This collection of Christmas readings is put together by present members, who were gracious enough to includes old members in the compilation. 

Makes a good Christmas gift, I would think. . .

 

Sunday Morning Meds--from Psalm 42

“Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; . . .”

I first heard the line years ago from my wife’s grandmother, who I knew only for a few years as a rather elegant woman with a radiant crown of silver hair. I don’t remember the occasion, but I’ll never forget the comment because it seemed so out of character for a fine old Christian matriarch. “When bad things happen,” she said, eyes almost averted, her head shaking slightly, “they always come in threes.” She meant it.

I had no clue where she got that idea, nor why she believed it. Grandma Visser, whose people were hearty Calvinists for generations, could not have pointed anywhere in scripture for that idea, as she well could have for most of her foundational beliefs. But this ancient bit of folklore—does it have pagan roots?—never fully left her psyche, even though she probably read the Word of God every day of her life. “Bad things happen in threes.” She wasn’t—isn’t—the only one to say it or believe it. Google it sometime.

Can it be true? I don’t know that anyone could do the research. But it must have seemed a valid perception for generations of human beings caught in the kind of downward spiral that David must have been in when writing Psalm 42. And, as we all must sadly admit, and ex-President Trump daily proves, often as not perception creates its own realities.

Is it silly? Sure. If we expect it to be true, we may be silly. But the sheer age of that odd idea argues for some ageless relevance. Whether or not it’s true isn’t as important as the fact its sentiment has offered comfort and strength to human sorrowers.

True believers expect something more than they’ve already gone through, some additional misery if they have already got stung twice. By repeating the old line, Grandma was steeling herself for the next sadness, anticipating that three would mean the end of sorrows, at least for a while.

My guess is that such ancient folk wisdom finds a place in the human psyche not because it’s true, but because it’s comforting: it brings order to chaos. Sad to say, there are (or will be) three, but at least that’s it.

Interesting, I think, that Eugene Peterson uses the word chaos in his version of this verse: “chaos calls to chaos,” he says. And he’s just as right as anyone, I suppose, for it’s impossible to claim biblical inerrancy when it comes to a verse like this. The KJV says “waterspouts” where the NIV says “waterfalls,” wholly different phenomena. The fact is, nobody really knows what specifically is meant by “deep calls to deep.”

Yet everyone who’s faced a march of consecutive sadnesses knows very well. “When sorrows come, they come not as spies but in battalions,” Shakespeare says in Hamlet, an even more depressing assessment than Grandma Visser’s.

We really don’t know what David means here, but many readers of Psalm 42 somehow get it. Our lives on occasion feel like Thomas Hardy novels, when things simply seem to get worse and worse and worse, and don’t get better.

There are no vivid pictures embedded in the line “deep calls to deep,” but that doesn’t mean there isn’t meaning enough for most of us to find ourselves therein.

We can’t avoid the painful reality of the soul that’s sliced opened to us in Psalm 42: the singer who believes in the Light but sees nothing but darkness around him.

Maybe, thankfully, what’s there is the outline of a third bad thing.