Category Archives: Memoir

The Ladder

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I’m working this morning on the familiar spiritual of Jacob’s Ladder, trying to unpack why it is so meaningful to people at different life stages and in all sorts of circumstances. I’m looking back now over 72 years of singing it or – or shunning it at one point along the way. I didn’t like the “soldier” part.

We are climbing Jacob’s ladder
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder,
Soldiers of the cross.

 

We are climbing higher, higher….

Why did it mean so much to me as a teenager “climbing higher, higher”? It was a spiritual journey, a confusing one that tried to connect the war-torn, racist world of Earth with heaven, and the call to climb higher, higher to close the gap. But I suspect psychologically it also gave me some assurance about the challenges of growing up, getting wiser perhaps, more independent, climbing into adulthood. The journey was a struggle that made me feel sometimes like a soldier inside my own skin and the world around me.

But long before I sang it in church camp, it was sung by American slaves. It expressed the faith and hope of liberation from chattel slavery. They sang without apology as “soldiers of the cross” (beaten, tortured and crucified like Jesus), on their way up “every rung” going higher, higher (farther north) to a land that lured them like heaven itself.

I go to YouTube and find Pete Seeger’s wonderful, cheerful rendition that replaces the original “soldier of the cross” with “brothers, sisters, all” and remember that I, too, have joined him in feeling the need to eliminate the military language. “Soldier” and “cross” are oxymoronic. It was the soldiers who did the crucifying, and it was the soldiers of the white militias who terrorized the slaves’ hopes.

No sooner do I listen to Peter’s rendition than I listen to Paul Robson who found no reason to eliminate the “soldiers of the cross” – perhaps because Robson knew that he and we are engaged in a kind of combat and the strange pairing of soldier and cross carries its own power and meaning. Robson, as you may know, was a Communist who would have seen every rung going higher, higher the way Pete saw it – steps on the upward course of human progress toward a kind of heaven conceived as classless society, a kinder world. “Thy kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven.”

I have been in all of these places a thousand times. Youthful, hopeful, visionary, climbing. But now I concentrate on things I missed in the earlier stages of youth, building a career, rising higher and higher on the professional and economic ladders of “success” or imagining and hoping the world was getting better.

I notice now as never before that the biblical text of Jacob’s dream is not of Jacob’s upward climb. Jacob never steps on the ladder. Angels (messengers) do, ascending to the heavens and descending to where he is in a kind of no-man’s land where everything he has ever known is at risk, the way I am in an in-between time between the today’s earthly beauty and climate departure, the scorching of the planet. Like Jacob, I have an “Aha!” moment: “Surely YHWH (the un-pronounable Hebrew name for G-d) is in this place, and I did not know it!”

So I’m reflecting now on the importance of this temporary, mortal, finite “place” in time where YHWH (the Breath of Life) is already present, and the need to surrender the idea that I need to climb to somewhere else.

The Mouse and the Six-Feet Eight Man

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Tough Guy

 

Suddenly a mouse is here
from nowhere.
I am so much bigger,
but startled,
jump up on the couch
and yell for my little,
but fierce, wife.
(Thank you Will S.
for just the right words.)
Her broom saves me.
I return to reading,
but scan the floor
regularly, uneasily,
fearfully.

-Steve Shoemaker, August 2, 2014

Steve’s memory prompts one of my own from years ago at our home in Cincinnati.

My parents were visiting at the time. My mother, like Steve, was lying on the couch reading when she spotted a mouse, her worst nightmare. She leapt up on the couch and screamed. “Ick! There’s a mouse in here!”

For the next 10 minutes the little mouse scampered around the living room, ran up the drape cord on the right side of the double patio door, across the top of the doors, and down the cord on the left side. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Maxine, the slow-witted cat, sat quietly, swiveling her head from right to left, watching with feline detachment while one of the humans got a paper bag and a broom from the kitchen. Whatever fear there was quickly turned to the side-splitting laughter as the oppressed little creature scurried past us and through the broom sweeper’s legs legs to the opposite end of the living-dining room, under the dining room table, back to the other end past the swishing broom until at long last it found its exodus from pharaoh’s persecution through the patio doors which, at long last, the tough guys had the good sense to open.

Over the years I’ve come to believe there is no difference between a man or woman and a mouse. We’re all mice. Somewhere a mouse is laughing at us.

– Gordon

The Forlorn Children of the Mayflower

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Uncle John claimed we Andrews descended from John Alden of the Mayflower. He spent many years, day after day, doing the research that confirmed what every Yankee wants to find: a connection to the true Americans. You know. The ones who came across on the Mayflower. The ones with funny hats who murdered the Americans who were already here. The ones who make their descendants “blue bloods”.

I always wondered, though, why such an important family as John Alden’s would live in South Paris, Maine where Mark Twain, had he known about the place, would have said of it what he wrote about Cincinnati: “When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati. It’s always ten years behind the times.”

I’ve lived in Cincinnati. I’ve also lived in South Paris. South Paris wins the contest hands down.

When I think of South Paris an eerie feeling sweeps over me. A kind of despair. I feel forlorn.

I went back to South Paris for my Aunt Gertrude’s memorial service. As always, I wondered why people chose to live there. My cousins grew up there. Most of them couldn’t wait to leave and did as soon as they could, and never looked back. I wondered why the others stayed. But even more, I’ve wondered why our forebears went there at all, being especially important blue bloods like the family of John Alden of the Mayflower.

The Andrews didn’t start out in South Paris, though. They settled a few miles away, before South Paris existed, in the pristine foothills of the White Mountains on wooded land with a trout streams over which they would build a red covered bridge and a paddle wheel sawmill to mill the lumber for things like caskets. The Andrews Casket Company and Funeral Home became a staple of the hamlet, the famed institution of an entrepreneurial Baptist minister, John Alden’s descendant, Isaac Andrews. The property remained in the family for over 200 years until my mother’s favorite cousin Lynwood (“Pete”) Andrews sold his home, the casket company, and the funeral home, along with the land it to some whippersnapper several years ago.

A smile always came across my mother’s face whenever she told us of playing hide-’n-seek with her siblings, Gertrude, John, Elwood, and Roy in the casket room of the original Andrews homestead in Woodstock. Imagine hiding in a casket. Maybe everyone in those woods had come there to hide from death, running from the haunting memory of the murders that followed their landing at Plymouth Rock where they once had “no property or position, no wealth, no fame, or profession, no beauties seen now or then, but … managed to have children.”*

As a child my mother and I often visited Grandpa Andrews, my great grandfather, who still lived on the original Andrews property with the casket factory, the trout stream, the red covered bridge, the mill, the funeral home, and the family home. By the time I came along, he was infirm, cared for by his live-in housekeeper. Angie was a sweet woman who dearly loved Grandpa Andrews. Angie made the best buttermilk biscuits anyone had ever tasted; no one could duplicate them, even with the recipe she shared. My mother always suspected there was a secret ingredient missing from the public recipe. There was a wink-wink when anyone spoke of Angie as the housekeeper. She was known for her biscuits. The rest was nobody’s business.

I was three and four years old when my mother and I lived in South Paris and made the visits to Grandpa Andrews. It was during the Second World War. My father was overseas in the South Pacific. Even then, I sensed the smell of death, knowing in my bones that one of the caskets in the casket room might be waiting for my father. Way back then I could smell the forlornness in the air.

Sixty years later, when I returned to Maine for my Aunt Gertrude memorial service at the Congregational Church of South Paris, I looked out at the congregation and wondered who they were and why they were in Oxford County, the poorest county in the State of Maine.

Two days before doing my Aunt’s service, I was on my way to the Mollyockett near the old Andrews homestead in Woodstock when, a mile or so before my destination – it was a Sunday – I saw a sign for whole belly fried clams. I love fried clams. We don’t get those in Minnesota. I pulled into the parking lot. A man whose home shared the driveway to the little restaurant was standing outside. “Can I help ya?” he asked. “Well, I don’t know. I saw the sign for fried clams,” I said, “but it looks like it’s closed.” “Well, it’s Sunday,” he said. “Where ya from? “Minnesota. We don’t get whole bellied fried clams in Minnesota.” “Wait right here,” he said. We’ll open up. Let me go in and get the Mrs.”

Inside the restaurant he asks where I’m from and what brings me to these parts. “I’m here for a funeral. I’m staying at the Mollyockett,” I said.

“You must be here for Pete’s funeral.”

“Pete? Pete who?

“Well, Pete Andrews.”

“Pete died? No, I’m here for my Aunt Gertrude’s service. She was Pete’s first cousin, and my mother’s favorite cousin. Pete died?”

“Gorry, he said. “I thought it was a little early. He just died yesterday, wasn’t it, Mabel? It was Saturday, right, Mabel? I thought you was here for Pete’s funeral. See that dollar bill up there? That’s from Pete. Our first customer. We’d just moved here from Rhode Island. Real gentleman, that Pete. Always had a different lady with him, a real ladies’ man, but always a gentleman. Always wore a white shirt and tie.”

I wonder if Pete carried the forlornness of the children of John Alden and the Mayflower, running from a murderous ancestral history he couldn’t identify, trying to resolve it playing among the caskets with my mother, or eating fried clams with the ladies, always the gentleman, just like Isaac Andrews, his grandfather, and all the other Aldens before him. Forlorn and wondering why.

*Quoted from Steve Shoemaker’s verse on the Mayflower posted last on Views from the Edge.

Saint Martin of the Handshake

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In the pecking order of academic life, Martin the kitchen manager is to the faculty and administration the closest person to the status of persona non grata or, maybe, what wives are called in the First Epistle of Peter, “the weaker vessel”, but what Jesus called “the least”.

In physical stature, Martin stands six-feet-eight inches tall. He’s a big man, hunched over at the upper back and shoulders from many years bending over the grill, serving up food from behind the lunch counter, clearing and washing the dishes of the seminary cafeteria.

It’s been a rough year at seminaries all across the country. Faculties, administrations, and Boards of Trustees have struggled with and against each other to make hard decisions that give some realistic assurance of institutional survival, or, as they euphemistically describe it, “sustainability.” People like Martin have little to no voice in whatever decisions are made.

Thursday morning, my third day staying at the seminary Guest House, I wander across campus to the seminary cafeteria for a cup of coffee. Martin is there. I ask whether he’s a student. He’s older – maybe 60 something – but that’s not unusual these days with second career people going to seminary.

“No,” he says. “I just work here.”

“So, you’re staff? How long have you worked here at the seminary?”

“Twenty years,” he says. “But I’m not on staff, I just run the kitchen.”

“So you’re an independent contractor?”

“Sort of,” he says with a delightful impish smile. “I’ve never had a contract. We do it with a handshake. They give me the space. I do the cooking. It’s all done with a handshake.”

————————-

Early in the morning Martin makes two pots of coffee and puts out the paper cup for the honor system. $1./cup. He chats with whoever comes by…if they strike up a conversation. He does not intrude. He’s just a peaceful, quiet presence who goes about setting up the kitchen and preparing the food for the daily lunch menu.

“Do you know that it takes 1.6 pounds of food for a chicken to produce one egg?” he asks. “Duck eggs are bigger and they’re better for you than chicken eggs. It takes 2.4 pounds of food to produce a duck egg, but the duck doesn’t eat grain feed; the duck just roams around and eats whatever’s there. It’s healthier and more sustainable.”

“Where’d you get that information? How do you know that?” I ask.

“Here, I’ll show you.” He takes out his iPhone and calls up the script from National Pubic Radio (NPR).

I pour myself a cup of coffee and go down the corridor to the bookstore.

———————

Half an hour later, Martin drops by the bookstore to say good morning to the bookstore manager. The bookstore serves free coffee but the first customer, who’s pouring herself a cup, says they’re out of artificial creamer. Martin raises his hairy eyebrows with a smile and asks why people would put chemicals in their bodies if they didn’t have to, but says it in such a playful way that no one seems to take offense. As a coffee drinker who uses that powdered stuff, I ask myself the same question but hearing Martin ask it throws a different light on the question.

Then it dawns on me. I hadn’t paid for my coffee at the cafeteria. I’d forgotten to put my $1 in the paper cup. I’d violated the honor system! I give Martin a five dollar bill. “I don’t have change,” he says. “It’s on the house.”

For the rest of the day, I keep running into Martin in his black t-shirt, black trousers, black socks, and black shoes. He moves slowly. People seem to seek out this gentle giant, the “weaker vessel” – the guy at the bottom of the pecking order – here at the seminary.

He catches me in the hall. He knows there are six of us who gather annually at different locations for renewal, reflection, and friendship. “I don’t know whether your group is planning on coming for lunch, but if you are, come early. There’s a large group coming. If you come by 11:30 you should be fine. Just wanted you to know.”

The group has different plans for lunch, but I need downtime. Time out from the intensity of group life. I’m an introvert who needs alone time. I excuse myself from the group’s plans and go the cafeteria after which I’ll take a quick nap.

During lunch Martin welcomes by name as they place their orders with him at the lunch counter. He looks them in the eye and smiles; they smile back. When most everyone has finished lunch, three faculty and the Academic Dean remain seated together in lively conversation. They signal to Martin to join them. The “weaker vessel” among the “stronger vessels” takes a seat and listens. I observe from a distant table, reading Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological – Economic Vocation, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda’s book I’ve just purchased at the bookstore. I’m wondering whether the Dean and tenured faculty who have contracts recognize the structural disparity in which they are all enmeshed. I wonder if “the stronger vessels” understand love the way Cynthia Moe-Lobeda does, as “ecological-economic vocation” that resists structural evil as it pertains to the seminary’s own structures. My guess, looking on from a distance, is that they have a sense of it, but I still wonder. They’re there on contracts; Martin is there on a handshake and doesn’t seem to want anything more.

By late afternoon I’ve spotted Martin four different times sitting around campus with students, faculty, and administrators. Even at six-foot-eight he floats like a butterfly, hunched over but still alighting gently wherever he goes, quietly engaging others where they are.

It occurs to me that Martin is the unofficial, unpaid Chaplain of this community. His eyes see everything but act as though they are blind. His ears hear everything – all sides of the issues that sometimes roil academic institutions into infernos of accusations, counter-accusations, warring camps, and gossip factories – but he hears nothing and speaks nothing. “I’m just the Lord’s humble servant, the guy who makes the coffee” he had said, the one working behind from the kitchen counter, serving up duck egg omelets with fresh vegetables, and offering good coffee for a buck on the honor system, on nothing more than a handshake.

I leave the seminary thinking: I want to be more like Saint Martin of the Handshake.

Black History Month: Buying on Credit

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Everyone today lives on credit. You might even say we’ve all become credit slaves, according to ex-slave Fountain Hughes, whose grandfather had been a slave of Thomas Jefferson. Fountain Hughes was 101 years old when he was interviewed about his life. The year was 1949. The complete interview is available HERE from the Voices from the Days of Slavery project of the Library of Congress.

Don’t want everything somebody else has got. Whatever you get, if its yours be satisfied. And don’t spend your money till you get it. So many people get in debt. Well, that all was so cheap when I bought it. You spend your money before you get it because you’re going in debt for what you want. When you want something, wait until you get the money and pay for it cash. That’s the way I’ve done. If I’ve wanted anything, I’d wait until I got the money and I paid for it cash. I never bought nothing on time in my life.

Now plenty people if they want a suit of clothes, they go to work and they’ll buy them on time. Well they say they was cheap. They cheap. If you got the money you can buy them cheaper. They want something for, for waiting on you for, uh, till you get ready to pay them. And if you got the money you can go where you choose and buy it when you go, when you want it. You see? Don’t buy it because somebody else go down and run a debt and run a bill or, I’m going to run it too. Don’t do that. I never done it. Now, I’m a hundred years old and I don’t owe nobody five cents, and I ain’t got no money either. And I’m happy, just as happy as somebody that’s oh, got million. Nothing worries me. I’m not, my head ain’t even white. I, nothing in the world worries me. I can sit here in this house at night, nobody can come and say, “Mr. Hughes, you owe me a quarter, you owe me a dollar, you owe me five cents.” No you can’t. I don’t owe you nothing. Why? I never made no bills in my life. And I’m living too. And I’m a hundred years old. And if you take my advice today, you’ll never make a bill. Because what you want, give your money, pay them cash, and then the rest of the money is yours. But if you run a bill they, well, so much and so much and you don’t have to pay. Nothing down it’s, it’s all when you come to pay. It’s all, you don’t have to pay no more. But they, they’ll, they’ll charge you more. They getting something or other or else they wouldn’t trust you. But I can’t just say what they getting. But they getting something or other else they wouldn’t want your credit. Now I tell you that anybody that trusts you for two dollars or have a account with them by the month or by the week, store count or any account. They’re getting something out of it. Else they don’t want to accommodate you that much to trust you. Now, if I want, course I ain’t got no clothes, but if I want some clothes, I, I ain’t got no money, I’m going to wait till I get the money to buy them. Indeed I am. I’m not a going to say because I can get them on trust, I go down and get them. I got to pay a dollar more anyhow. But either they charge you more or they say taxes are so much. But if I’ve got the money to pay cash, I’ll pay the taxes and all down in cash, you know. It’s all done with. So many of colored people is head over heels in debt. Trust me trust. I’ll get it on time. They want a set of furniture, go down and pay down so much and the rest on time. You done paid that, you done paid for them then. When you pay down so much and they charge you fifty dollar, hundred dollars for a set and you pay down twenty-five dollars cash, you done paid them. That’s all it was worth, twenty-five dollars, and you pay, now you, I’m seventy-five dollars in debt now. Because I, I have to pay a hundred dollars for that set, and it’s only worth about twenty-five dollar. But you buying it on time. But people ain’t got sense enough to know it. But when you get old like I am, you commence to think, well, I have done wrong. I should have kept my money until I wanted this thing, and when I want it, I take my money and go pay cash for it. Or else I will do without it. That’s supposing you want a new dress. You say, well I’ll, I’ll buy it, but, uh, I don’t need it. But I can get it on time. Well let’s go down the store today and get something on time. Well you go down and get a dress on time. Something else in there, I want that. They’ll sell that to you on time. You won’t have to pay nothing down. But there’s a payday coming. And when that payday comes, they want you come pay them. If you don’t, they can’t get no more. Well, if you never do that, if you don’t start it, you will never end it. I never did buy nothing on time. I must tell you on this, I’m sitting right here now today, and if I’s the last word I’ve got to tell you, I never even much as tried to buy a, a shirt on time. And plenty people go to work, go down to the store and buy uh, three and four dollars for a shirt. Two, three uh, seven, eight dollars for a pair of pants. Course they get them on time. I don’t, no, no, no. I say, I got, I buy something for five dollars. Because I got the five dollars, I’ll pay for it. I’m done with that.

In 2014 we live in a credit economy, a consumer market where instant gratification is too slow. Ouch! Thank you, Mr. Hughes, for the words of wisdom.

Black History Month: Fountain Hughes

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101 year old ex-slave Mr. Fountain Hughes’tape-recorded interview is preserved by the Library of Congress. Hermond Norwood interviewed him. Here’s an excerpt:


Hermond Norwood: Do you remember much about the Civil War?

Fountain Hughes: No, I don’t remember much about it.

Hermond Norwood: You were a little young then I guess, huh.

Fountain Hughes: I, uh, I remember when the Yankees come along and took all the good horses and took all the, throwed all the meat and flour and sugar and stuff out in the river and let it go down the river. And they knowed the people wouldn’t have nothing to live on, but they done that. And that’s the reason why I don’t like to talk about it. Them people, and, and if you was cooking anything to eat in there for yourself, and if they, they was hungry, they would go and eat it all up, and we didn’t get nothing. They’d just come in and drink up all your milk, milk. Just do as they please. Sometimes they be passing by all night long, walking, muddy, raining. Oh, they had a terrible time. Colored people that’s free ought to be awful thankful. And some of them is sorry they are free now. Some of them now would rather be slaves.

Hermond Norwood: Which had you rather be Uncle Fountain?

Fountain Hughes: Me? Which I’d rather be ? [Norwood laughs] You know what I’d rather do? If I thought, had any idea, that I’d ever be a slave again, I’d take a gun and just end it all right away. Because you’re nothing but a dog. You’re not a thing but a dog. Night never comed out, you had nothing to do. Time to cut tobacco, if they want you to cut all night long out in the field, you cut. And if they want you to hang all night long, you hang, hang tobacco. It didn’t matter about your tired, being tired. You’re afraid to say you’re tired. They just, well [voice trails off].You wasn’t no more than a dog to some of them in them days. You wasn’t treated as good as they treat dogs now. But still I didn’t like to talk about it. Because it makes, makes people feel bad you know. Uh, I, I could say a whole lot I don’t like to say. And I won’t say a whole lot more.”



Truth is stranger than fiction: No Obituary!

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The instructions of the deceased, left in his safety deposit box, were no viewing of his body, no visitation, cremation, and no obituary.

Why no obituary?

Here is and excerpt from the homily delivered yesterday at the memorial service for Kenneth Beaufoy (b. 8/4//1923; d. 1/24/2014), the former World War II “Tommy” (British soldier), who married Ilse, a former German soldier, one of only two women later decorated with the Iron Cross for standing at her post during the Allied bombing of Hamburg.

Ken Beaufoy left very specific instructions for his son. At the time of his death he wanted cremation, no visitation, no viewing of his body, no interment of his remains … and, most surprising of all, no obituary.

Why would a man leave instructions that there be no obituary upon his death?

Ken Beaufoy sat in these pews for the last 17 years. Every Monday morning without fail he was at the weekly Bible study at Auburn Manor, the nursing home where we moved the Bible study to accommodate members living there. On Monday mornings he plumbed the depths of Scripture and shared the parts of his story he told few others outside his family. Hollis and Patsy, Karin, Barb, Max. Jesse, Katie, Chuck, Bernice, Marge, Dana and Lorraine were all blessed by his sharings and by his well-worn King James Bible…. They were a very special group of healing for Ken. People who gathered around the Word to discover more and more of who God is and who we are as God’s children.

Ken knew himself to be a child of God – a beloved “sinner of your redeeming” as the wonderful line from the Anglican funeral service puts it. We will miss him sorely. His chair will remain in the circle, empty, like Elijah’s chair at the Seder meal of Passover.

But the question remains. Why would a man like Ken Beaufoy elect to have no viewing, no visitation,and no obituary?Why would a British signalman who cracked the German code in World War II want no obituary?

Why would a British soldier who fell in love with an enemy combatant. a German soldier named Ilse, one of only two women later decorated with the Iron Cross in Germany, not want an obituary?

Why would a Brit who walked in the woods alone each night back in England, worrying about his beloved Ilse, stuck back in Elmshorn, Germany, not want an obituary, unless he knew what Paul wrote to the Corinthians that the last enemy to be destroyed is death?

Why would a man with a great sense of humor not want an obituary? Ken had a nickname for everyone. In Shakopee he walked into the Subway and at other places he greeted people by the nicknames he had given them.” Hey “26” –“ Hey, Irish!” and he and “Irish” would break out in a duet of Danny Boy. He called his father The Prophet because his father was always talking about what was going to happen and it almost never did…. Only Ken could have gotten away with that. At the wedding of 12 people, the Prophet marched Ilse down the aisle, out of step with Ilse, changing step three times before they finally got it right. Ken wrote in his memoirs “Prophet didn’t have a suit! Had to borrow one for the day from a neighbor, Billy King! The jacket was too short for him. Prophet called it a Bum freezer!.”

They say that truth is often stranger than fiction. Why would a man whose life story rivals the very best fiction, the most intriguing novels created out of human imagination, not want his story summarized in an obituary?

There is no way to summarize his exploits. No way to accurately tell the story of the young street thief who ended up in charge of security for the bank in Chicago; the soldier who broke the German code, met the love of his life in a Canteen during the Allied occupation of Germany after the war; fought with the British Foreign Office to get Ilse a visa to Britain, and, when that failed, bicycled his way to the home of his Member of Parliament, appearing unannounced and without appointment – a man as bulldoggish as Winston Churchill and unafraid of any human authority – to get his German war-bride-to-be out of German and into England.

Why would a man so frustrated by the slowness and opposition of the British Foreign Office be willing to enter Germany illegally in order to get his bride not want an obituary? </strongWhy

“Late in August,” wrote Ken in his hand-written memoir, “I read in the newspaper that the first German girl to be married to a soldier had arrived in England. She would be the first German war bride in England! I couldn’t understand why Ilse hadn’t been issues a visa! I’d already made up my mind to take a merchant ship to Denmark, slip across the border into Germany, make my way to Elmshorn and marry Ilse in the German church. I’s somehow find a job in Germany and hope that one day we’d be able to enter Britain legally! I decided I’d go see Henry Usborne (the Member of the House of Commons) one last time I did, and he told me that the next Friday at Question Time in Parliament, he would ask Ernest Bevin, Britain’s Foreign Minister a direct question as to why Ilse Kuhl of Elmshorn, Germany had not been issued a visa to enter Great Britain for the purpose of marriage.

“The next Saturday, two German policemen knocked on the door of [Ilse’s home] in Elsmshorn. Gertrude Hesse, a tenant in the house had seen them approaching the house from her bedroom window. She ran downstairs and warned Ilse! Isle was scared stiff. She thought the police had discovered her black market dealings and had come to arrest her! The policemen entered the house and after ascertaining she was Ilse Kuhl, handed her British visa to her along with an authorization to board a military transport aircraft for her flight to London on the coming Thursday.”

Why would a man with a story like that not want an obituary?

We’ll never know for sure, but we can guess. He was a private man. He was a humble man. He knew himself to be what the Anglican church calls each of us, “a sinner of your own redeeming,” and so at the end it was not himself that he wished to focus upon, but instead the goodness and merciful kindness of his Lord.”

“All flesh is grass. The grass withers; the flower fades, but the Word of our God shall stand forever.” (Isaiah 40:8)

“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
“And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.” – Rev. 21

Their First Apartment

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This was so long ago they had
not been together much before
they married. She had not been poor,
but lived with ‘rents and sibs instead
of at the noisy dorms at school.

He was an RA in the first
year dorm for men–a small closet,
the bathroom was clear

Their first apartment seemed quite huge
to him: one wall, a kitchen–two
windows, a bed, a desk, a loo
right here behind that door… The rage

she felt was not at him, nor at
the smallness of the space, but dirt
was everywhere. They could not rest
until they cleaned this pit, her nest.

Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, insanely happy after all these years.
[Our first year was in a tiny one room efficiency]

A Long Road

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Yes, Race Street went from north to south
in front of my high school. I’d drive
each day from home and risk the wrath
of Mr. Rice when I’d arrive
five minutes late because I’d wait
for both the Larson twins who lived
with three more brothers down the street.

No, that was fifty years ago
and now I live a half mile east
of Race Street, but each day still go
that way to town. I drive right past
the football field where we would cheer
and hold the hands of those we loved.
How did we get from there to here?

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, December 28, 2013

God the Stranger

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I “know” less and less of what I thought I knew. The world has driven me into the unknowing silence out of which James A. Whyte spoke at the funeral in Lockerbie, Scotland in 1989.

During his term as Moderator of the Church of Scotland, The Right Rev. Dr. Professor James A. Whyte , still grieving the death of his wife, was called upon to lead the memorial service after Pan Am Flight 103 was blown out of the sky over Lockerbie. Among the most quoted parts of the sermon is this excerpt:

“That such carnage of the young and of the innocent should have been willed by men in cold and calculated evil, is horror upon horror. What is our response to that?

The desire, the determination, that those who did this should be detected and, if possible, brought to justice, is natural and is right. The uncovering of the truth will not be easy, and evidence that would stand up in a court of law may be hard to obtain.

Justice is one thing. But already one hears in the media the word ‘retaliation’. As far as I know, no responsible politician has used that word, and I hope none ever will, except to disown it. For that way lies the endless cycle of violence upon violence, horror upon horror. And we may be tempted, indeed urged by some, to flex our muscles in response, to show that we are men. To show that we are what? To show that we are prepared to let more young and more innocent die, to let more rescue workers labour in more wreckage to find the grisly proof, not of our virility, but of our inhumanity. That is what retaliation means.”

For James Whyte God is often silent. We are called to enter the space of God’s silence, the silence of the cross, the confusion and horror of the suffering of God at the hands of a world filled with man-made gods: security, freedom, nationalism, religion, muscle, revenge and self-righteousness, cultural supremacy. In the Jesus of the cross, Whyte’s eyes saw not only a naked man but God’s nakedness – a naked God stripped of all power, his arms roped to a cross-beam paradoxically spread wide to embrace the whole world of human suffering and folly.

James Whyte took time out of his busy life in 1991 to act as a conversation partner and mentor for an American pastor whose congregation had granted its pastor a sabbatical leave in St. Andrews. They met twice weekly for two months in his flat over tea and scones, the young American absorbed in the vexations of Christian claims to Christ’s uniqueness and universality, on the one hand, and religious pluralism, on the other, the good Right Rev. Dr. Professor listening attentively, maintaining a poignant silence that respected his mentee’s process. When the pastor left Scotland, he asked his mentor for a copy of prayers James Whyte had offered during worship at the Hope Park Church in St. Andrews. Each of the prayers was as thing of beauty. Each began with a quotation from the Book of Psalms.

James Whyte’s spirituality echoes that of an old Hasidic Rabbi (Barukh of Medzebozh [1757-1811]) reflecting on Psalm 119.

“I live as an alien in the land;
do not hide your commandments from me”
– Psalm 119:19

Rabbi Barukh of Medzebozh said of this psalm:

“The one who life drives into exile and who comes to an alien land has nothing in common with the people there and has no one to talk to. But if a second stranger appears, even though that person may come from quite a different place, the two can confide in each other. And had they not both been strangers, they would never have known such a close relationship. That is what the psalmist means: ‘You, even as I, are a sojourner on earth and have no abiding place for your glory. So do not withdraw from me, but reveal your commandments, that I may become your friend.”
– Martin Buber, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Hasidim-Early-Masters-Later/dp/0805209956(

” title=”Link to information on Tales of the Hassidim”>Tales of Hassidim – the Early Masters.

Thanks you, James Whyte, good and faithful servant and friend of God the Stranger. RIP.