Autobiography

Autobiography According to legend Victor Hugo locked himself in his room, took off all his clothes and vowed to stay there until he finished his novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. 6-9-24 Chapter 1: Saved at Seven I was saved at seven while kneeling at a discarded pew on a rough concrete floor. The setting, a musty basement of a small white clapboard church located on the corner of County H and Lewis Road, northern Wisconsin. Having failed to take the bait the previous summer at vacation Bible school, I was determined not to miss out again. I initiated the encounter on a sunny June noon hour, and coached by a VBS teacher, I invited Jesus into my heart. My name was now written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. The key word for me was written. Not printed. Written. I had just learned cursive and I could visualize Jesus writing Ruth Anne Stellrecht in that book—even spelling that last name correctly. There are several competing rivals, both men and women, as founders of the summer vacation Bible school. I vote hands down for Virginia Hawes who was raised in Charlottesville. Later living in New York City, she rented a “beer parlor,” a nice name for a tavern or saloon, and there for the purpose of teaching neighborhood children she organized in 1898 her “Everyday Bible School.” In 1900, her stodgy minister insisted that she move her ministry to his church, Epiphany Baptist, but the kids wouldn’t go there. So back it was to its original setting. Within weeks after I was saved, I was seriously doubting whether certain things I had been learning was actually true. I was troubled particularly about how dinosaurs could have possibly fit in the ark. Now looking back more than seventy years later, I smile at that ark conundrum. I’ve long since moved beyond these simple expressions of faith and doubt, but at the same time I cherish the memories. The church, now long closed, would become a critical setting for me—for me, more than anyone else in my family. Born in 1945, saved in 1952, very long ago as I write today at age eighty. In light of history, of course, it’s very modern. I ventured back a century for my doctoral work focusing on the Civil War era. My dissertation was on Marcus M. “Brick” Pomeroy, a nineteenth-century newspaper publisher who started his career in La Crosse, that being a miniscule particle of Wisconsin history—history which existed long before history even began. Some six hundred million years ago (the Cambrian period) northern Wisconsin was a shallow body of water which slowly drained. It would later be covered with water only to drain again, Then maybe one hundred million years later, give or take a few million, more water covered the land and again drained away. It’s perhaps best described in Genesis 1:2: “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters”—words as incomprehensible to me today as they were when I was a child in Sunday school. I was a happy child, not aware that we were no doubt considered poor. No electricity during my youngest years. An outhouse way out beyond the garage, the corncrib, and the machine sheds. One of my first memories is my mother bed-ridden unable to walk, diagnosed with acute arthritis. Dad fed us what he called “spoon-vittles.” An upshot of her very serious condition would be our getting electricity and indoor plumbing. Many farm families didn’t get bathroom facilities until much later—after, in fact, some of them had televisions installed. Having a bathroom, even apart from Mom’s serious illness, was far more significant than having television. We could visit Uncle Robbie and Aunt Freda every six weeks or so for the luxury of watching “I Love Lucy,”, but using a bathroom was a daily necessity—especially in the deep icy snows of winter. No matter how cold and how heavy the snow, there was work to be done—especially shoveling. I might have thought I was living right through the ice age, but hardly. Way back, more than thirty thousand years ago a glacial sheer spread across northern Wisconsin and didn’t start to retreat until thirteen thousand years. Like many country kids, I didn’t go to kindergarten. First grade was in a one-room country school, Gaslyn Creek, seven miles from our farm. Mr. Emerson, very tall, thin and incompetent teacher, was expected to teach all nineteen of us. I was the lone first grader and have no recollection that I ever had any help from him. He spent his time with the older children. I was to answer questions in a picture workbook and help Jimmy Melton with his. He was a year older, but was still working on his book from the previous year. I had my first “store-bought” dress that year—red and white horizontal stripes—which I wore for the school picture. My only friend was Kay Weaver who paid attention to me only when other children wanted no part of her abuse. A brother and sister, DuWayne (meaning little dark one) and Beulah Arbuckle, at the school who were older than I was, were native Americans. A few miles from our farm were Indian mounds and I was often told that people found arrow heads nearby, though none in my family ever did. I’ve recently learned that Wisconsin’s Woodland Indians had built burial mounds and began hunting with a bow some twelve hundred years ago. As they settled down, they also began raising corn that supplemented the wild rice found near the banks of what is now known as Rice Lake near the Kenowski Bridge. (Hank and Bea Kenowski’s River View Resort was a popular destination in the 1950s, right on county road H, a dozen miles west of Spooner.) Expertly fashioned birchbark canoes had long been used to harvest the rice. The bark was water proof and was also used in making tepees water-tight. Growing up there was a native family living closest to our farm. It never occurred to me that this might be something out of the ordinary. I simply took it for granted. On another farm maybe two miles away, lived Archie O’Mara, whom my father occasionally had business dealings. I recall visiting one time and listening to Dad discuss the purchase offence posts from him. Looking back, if only I would have approached him and inquired of his Indian heritage. I don’t suppose I was that brazen, but if I had been, I would hope he would have been flattered and eager to talk. What Indian tribes live in Wisconsin? Wisconsin is home to 11 federally recognized tribes: Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Ho-Chunk Nation, Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin, Oneida Nation, Forest County Potawatomi, Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior ... The Ojibwe (also known as the Chippewa or Anishinabe) of present-day Wisconsin are the descendants of a northern Algonquian people who originally lived in an extensive area mainly north of Lake Superior and Lake Huron. What tribal nation in Wisconsin was terminated at one point? On June 17, 1954 Congress implemented Public Law 108. This is known at the “Termination Bill” which was signed into law by President Eisenhower. This provided for termination of federal control of the Menominee Indian Reservation. By 1871, most American Indians had been placed on reservations and the government discontinued its use of treaties with them.13 The government changed its focus to "de-Indianizing" this population, creating schools that attempted to rid them of their cultural traditions and ways of life by breaking tribal ties and molding them into the image of white settlers.14 However, before this time, between the late nineteenth century through the 1920s, the federal government aimed to mainstream Native Americans through the policies of assimilation and allotment.15 Some of these schools included Menominee Boarding School at Keshena, Oneida Boarding School at Oneida, Lac du Flambeau Boarding School at Lac du Flambeau, and Tomah Industrial School at Tomah.16 American Indians represent diverse nations of people who flourished in North America for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans. The Menominee, Ojibwe (Chippewa), Potawatomi, and Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) peoples are among the original inhabitants of Wisconsin. American Indian people are heterogeneous and their histories differ based on tribal affiliation. These groups have tribal councils, or governments, which provide leadership to the tribe. American Indians continue to maintain a strong presence in Wisconsin, and traditional beliefs and practices remain prominent in American Indian culture. As with all groups, there are differences in social, economic, and geographic conditions in American Indian communities that affect health status and access to care. In their attempt to assimilate the Native populations, Congress passed the General Allotment Act of 1887, or the Dawes Act. The Dawes Act changed the ownership of tribal lands to individual ownership of 80-acre parcels. The extra land was sold to Whites to expose the American Indian population to mainstream society. Many tribes had lost even more of their land. For example, the Ojibwe lost more than 40 percent of their homelands to this Act.17 In 1934, Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA).18 This reversed the Dawes Act, and encouraged tribes to form tribal governments, draft constitutions, and provided political bodies that could assert their sovereign rights.19 In the 1950s, critics began to gain ground in their opposition to the Indian Reorganization Act and argued to dismantle the reservation system and free the federal government from the cost of protecting American Indians and their property.20 The House Concurrent Resolution 108 (passed in 1953) created goals of "termination and relocation," which were intended to move these populations from rural reservations to urban areas through job training programs and housing assistance.21 Most Wisconsin Indians who opted for this received one-way bus tickets to Chicago, Milwaukee, or St. Paul.22 This termination policy ended the federal recognition of more than 50 tribal governments, including the Menominee, who were one of the first tribes to undergo termination.23 Termination brought disastrous effects to this tribe, but with the help of a grassroots activist group, Determination of Rights and Unity for Menominee Shareholders (DRUMS), the Menominee were able to restore their status by 1975.24 I recall three memorable occasions that year. One was at the school picnic and celebration on the last day of school. One of the events of the day was a foot race which I failed to win and therefore get the prize. event was my failure to win a footrace on the last day of school. I must have assumed I would obviously win the prize. When I didn’t, I bawled like a baby. Another incident I remember is when our bus got stuck between Bass Lake and Ericksons. Dad brought horses and wagon to pull us out and when that failed took the kids home to their nearby farms. Sometimes snow drifts were well over our heads, but fortunately this was not one of those times. Still another incident occurred at Gaslyn Creek school. Brother David and another boy had played hookey one afternoon and went fishing in Gaslyn Creek. Mr. Emerson went out searching for them—leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves. When he spotted them at a distance, he yelled for them to come back. The other boy raced home; David obeyed, knowing he’d have to come back and catch the bus to get home. Anyway. When David returned, Mr. Emerson took off his belt and, in front of the class, beat David on his bare back until it was raw. Mom was livid. She went straight to H. J. Antholz, superintendent of the schools. Gaslyn Creek would be closed, and the students would be bussed to Spooner schools. Many neighbors were furious, but Mom never looked back. I am the middle child, David and Jeannine older, Jonnie and Kathy younger. We grew up on a two-hundred-acre farm with a river running through it I have faint memories of getting a brand new Farmall H tractor, but before that our horses, Dick and Colonel, served us well. Chapter 2 At the time I was saved, there had already been a decades-long history at the little white clapboard church. The church was started by rural missionaries, Miss Cowan and Miss Salthammer. If they had first names, I never knew them. They arrived in the 1930s, having been schooled at the Alliance Training Home (now Crown College) founded in 1916. They first announced a Sunday school, then church services. They evangelized, taught classes, preached sermons and were known for their daily deeds of mercy. They were not feminist preachers, demanding their equal rights to lead a church. In fact, they coached Harry Lawrence, one of their converts, and propped him up against the pulpit to preach the sermons they had written. When the church was on a solid footing, and able to call its own preacher, the lady missionaries moved on to other communities. They returned occasionally to teach vacation Bible school and report on their ministries. I remember thinking of them as odd ducks. But where would I be today were not for these two women, often only paid in sacks of potatoes or turnips, living and dying in poverty? Had they not carried out their sacrificial ministry, there probably would have been on church in the community—no church that so profoundly impacted my life. autumn of 1833 when a mission was established at the outlet of Yellow Lake by Rev. Fred Ayer and his wife. Miss Crooks was the teacher. A Baptist church in Burnett County 1869 but nothing about it When they first arrived, there was no clapboard church. When and how it was built I am uncertain. I could wish there were a record as detailed and funny as William Faulkner’s “Shingles for the Lord.” In that case, there already was a church and a minister. Reverend Whitfield had climbed up to be the overseer, though not in work clothes; rather in his “boiled shirt and his black hat and pants and necktie, holding his watch in his hand.” Each neighbor who had been drafted for the day’s work, was to bring his own tools, a froe and maul. Some didn’t own any; others had lent theirs out. Some arrived late, and the ones already there insist they make up their hours. The boy picks up the argument not only about hours of work but also about the worth of a dog alongside an hour of work: "I see," pap said. "I see. It's me that's got to come back. By myself. I got to break into a full morning to make up them two hours that you and Homer spent resting. I got to spend two hours of the next day making up for the two hours of the day before that you and Homer never even worked." "It's going to more than jest break into a morning," Solon said. "It's going to wreck it. There's six units left over. Six one-man-hour units.” Pap was standing up now. He was breathing hard. We could hear him. "So," he said. "So." He swung the ax and druv the blade into one of the cuts and snatched it up onto its flat end, ready to split. "So I'm to be penalized a half a day of my own time, from my own work that's waiting for me at home right this minute, to do six hours more work than the work you fellers lacked two hours of even doing atall. . . ."You're swapping me half a dog for a half a day's work," Solon said. "Your half of the dog for that half a day's work. . . ."And the two dollars!" pap said. "That you and Tull agreed on. I sell you half the dog for two dollars, and you come back here tomorrow and finish the shingles. You give me the two dollars now, and I'll meet you here in the morning with the dog, and you can show me the receipt from Tull for his half then." By the time the day is over the men are arguing about how many hours of work a dog is worth, or more precisely, a half dog. It turns into a comedy of errors, and in the end, when Pa and the boy sneak over at night to finish their hours, some of the dried shingles catch fire in the hanging lantern and the whole church burns down. There is no such record concerning the Green Grove church, although the was a shingle factory in Burnett County in the 1870s and the decades that followed. From historical records of Burnett County, we also know that there were religious services that were conducted in homes before churches were formally organized. Since those early days horses have replaced oxen, cars and tractors have replaced horses, new and modern buildings replaced the old log structures. Roads have replaced trails. Farms have been established, highways built and churches have been erected until today Green Grove is a pleasant and prosperous farming community. The old pioneers have passed on to another land, but many of their children and their children's children still live here and are carrying on in the same way to make Green Grove an ever-progressing community. In a few years, with the influx of immigrants the population of the community had been built up enough to warrant having their own post office which was established in 1897, where George Lewis lives at the present time on county trunk highway "H". It was named "Aaron" for Aaron Cornelison, one of the original settlers and he was postmaster. In 1908 it was discontinued and a rural route took its place. The neighbors surrounding the Green Grove church were in many cases our relatives: Stellrechts or in-laws, maybe in-laws twice removed. But in many instances were not involved in the church. My father’s people immigrated from Germany around the late 1900s, well before that country was shaped so drastically by the first world war and its aftermath. They settled for a short time in Muscatine, Iowa, and then moved to northern Wisconsin. A formal picture of my father’s nuclear family conveys nothing short of prosperity: an outstanding team of horses, father and mother dressed in fine fashion, a splendid buggy for an infant daughter, Hilda, and four young boys, Roy, Ervin, Robert, and Percy, all appearing healthy and well behaved, my father being the youngest. The significance of my father’s age (as the youngest son) when the photo was taken was far more momentous than he would have realized at the time—had his birth order not changed. But two more sisters, Pearl and Adeline soon came along, and when my father was seventeen, little brother Milton was born. It might be easy to imagine that a baby brother would be fun to teach the ropes of boyhood, but the consequences were enormous. Percy would no longer stand to inherit the farm. Milton, now the youngest son, not my father, would grow up to take over the farm, working along side his father until his father retired. How that affected my father is a something I’ll never know. He was not one to open up about his struggles and disappointment in life. There are old pictures, however, that show Dad in his late teens or early twenties as a lively and jolly sort of guy, especially when cousin Cora was around. She was the neighborhood prankster, the life of the party, and beloved by everyone. Milton, on the home place, would become the most modernized and prosperous of the five brothers. That, and the age difference, separated him socially from the other four. My father would find a farm to purchase only two miles away. With sheds and a house in disrepair, he set up housekeeping in the sawdust insulated ice house and slowly started building a herd of cattle and a flock of sheep while repairing the house. He hired his brother Ervin to build a barn with a large haymow and a splendid wood floor. When it was completed, as was custom, my Dad celebrated, inviting neighbors to a barn dance with musicians and potluck dishes of tasty cuisine. There would be many compliments about the wide-open space that would soon be filled with fresh mown hay. So Dad “batched” on that 200-acre farm for the next years, becoming more and more aware of an attractive young woman who was raised three miles further to the east on a non-descript farm. Jennie Carlton was a school teacher who had taught in a number of one-room schools in the region. Dad courted her and they married when she was twenty-six and he thirty-eight. After a very small wedding at her home place, they enjoyed a honeymoon, driving to Yellowstone park, stopping at the Badlands and Black Hills along the way. Logging on the Yellow River The 19th-century logging industry reshaped the landscape of central and northern Wisconsin, provided a livelihood for thousands of workers, and formed the roots of today's thriving paper industry. By the late nineteenth century, Wisconsin was one of the premier lumber producing states in the U.S., and from 1890 to 1910 forest products led Wisconsin's developing industrial economy. My grandfather did white pine logging along the Yellow River, helping to build Minneapolis and Chicago. Growing up on the farm Phone service in our area was a modern convenience—all party lines. Our “number” was a short and three longs. The phone was a large wooden box that hung on the wall with a six-inch long mouth piece to speak into and on the side a crank to ring the number. Neighbors, including my mother, sometimes listened in. I tried it once, and apparently breathing too heavily, my uncle Don, not knowing who it was, shouted, “Get off the phone you rubber-neck.” That was enough to set me on the straight and narrow. In addition to gardens that supplied vegetables for canning and later freezing, we had large strawberry patches. This sideline offered enough money for family savings, and money for us kids. We were paid four cents a quart for picking and an extra penny a quart for going to town with Dad and selling them door to door while Dad went to grocery stores to sell whole sixteen-quart crates at a time. I was the only one who took the bait for the extra penny per quart, and like my siblings started a bank account as soon as I was old enough to pick the berries. The money was to be saved for college. In addition to picking produce from our gardens, we picked up rocks from the fields. Whatever the scientific explanation may be, the fact is that rocks rise to the surface and must be disposed od before they damage machinery. On one occasion when Jonnie and I were having a heated argument, he hurled a rock at me, hitting me in the leg and causing a painful bruise that lasted for years. I don’t recall his punishment, but I hope he was consigned to do at least a double share of rock picking. Another major drudgery attached to our fam work involved going into the west forty and cutting trees for fire wood. Dad would hire Dave and Owen to come to our farm with their sawmill equipment to cut them in sixteen-inch chunks, most to be split by hand. The laborious job for us kids was to carry armfuls to the basement to dry before they could be fed to the octopus-furnace. It was hard work for young children, but in those days social workers weren’t lurking around. On one occasion, my mother leading the way, Jonnie the snitch, said: “Mommy, Ruthie stang her tuck out at you.” I recall carrying more than a dozen extra armfuls that day. Pleasant memories far outnumber unpleasant ones. I remember evenings made unpleasant by mosquitoes, but then Dad would bring out the smudge pot, as it was called. It was a metal pail with straight sides. A fire was lit on the bottom with dry sticks and perhaps a very small amount of gasoline. Then the pail was filled with sticks of green leaves—all smoke, no fire. And, no mosquitoes—at least within a two or three range of the pot On those nights and, in fact, any summer night, we would see bats flying overhead against the darkening sky. Bats were anathema to us—especially when one somehow got out of the attic and into our upstairs bedrooms. They can bite and some have rabies. We would scream for our father and he would come upstairs with a towel to capture and kill it. Mom paid Jonnie five cents each for killing then. He would set mouse traps with bait near the dormer roof and often trapped two or three a night. The bats were silent, but there were many other night sounds, some scary, others harmless and easily identifiable, especially the hoot owl and coyote. The most thrilling of the night sounds was that of the whip-poor-will. What I would give listen once again through a screen window to that one-of-a-kind song of a whip-poor-will. Back in those days when there was neither moon nor city light polution, the night skies were truly dark and the stars were unusually bright. The north star hung directly above the barn just north of the house, close by, the two dippers and my favorite constellation, Orion, the hunter with his unmistakable belt. But neither moon not star afforded enough light for late fall and winter chores. Kerosene lanterns were used in the barn and elsewhere before electricity was available—and after that, when the electricity failed due to a storm or an accidentally cut line. The lanterns cast eerie shadows on the walls and ceiling, but didn’t imped milking the cows—always by hand when electricity was out. Milking cows was not an arduous task as was loading bails of hay and stacking them on a wagon. In the years before we hired someone to bail our hay, Dad mowed and raked with horse-drawn machinery. When dry, Dad, Mom, and kids with long enough arms pitch-forked it by hand onto the wagon. I loved the smell of fresh mown hay, but was too young to be of much help. Stomping sileage was likewise a tiring job and the smell was awful. We had no choice of which day the silo crew would come with all its deafening contraptions. One year they announced they would arrive Sunday, which meant that we all missed church. I was high in the silo with Dad and Jonnie, when suddenly I turned to see our Sunday school superintendent. Here was Bill Voigtlander in his white tweed sports coat, looking through the door, having climbed the metal ladder in the chute. I was embarrassed that he had caught us working on Sunday. Dad paid him no mind. I caught on to milking by hand at twelve when David went off to Michigan State University on a full-ride scholarship. I liked the prospect of getting out of the kitchen and milking the cows—not that I was ever in the kitchen much anyway. I was a tomboy. Climbing trees and building tree houses was my bailiwick. Smell fresh cut hay Stomping sileage, Bill Voigtlander David ran through the screen door. Ed Gein November 17, 1957. Long before cable non-stop news—before we even had our first console television set at the farm west of Spooner. David had gone off to college months earlier; Jeannine was not a nightly chores kind of girl. So it fell on me to leave the house immediately after supper, go down the slope to the barn and milk the 19 cows. There was a chill in the air that day. Snow was on the way. No problem. I liked getting off by myself and escaping kitchen cleanup. But that Sunday, four months to the day after my 12th birthday, would be the last night I would do chores without a sense of terror as black and biting as the eastern horizon—terror that pierced every pin-point of my adolescent perception. For the next months and years I would be stalked by Ed Gein. True, he was now incarcerated. But that didn’t stop him from terrorizing me. He lurked behind hay bales and amid the cobwebs in the dark shadows of the calf pens. Or he was skulking just outside the milk house door, his stealthy prowling exacerbated with every twig that snapped and every branch of the giant oaks that quivered in the wind. Today when I mention him The Indians in this community were quite numerous, but they were friendly and never bothered these white people. Several summers after I was saved, I spent a week at Pigeon Lake Bible Camp. Responding to an emotionally-charged altar call, I stood, signifying I would become a foreign missionary—a career decision when barely in my teens. I would go to Africa and win souls for Jesus. But serious questions quickly arose. Searching the back pages of The Alliance Witness stored in a cabinet in the church basement, I studied the missionaries appointed for service. Some fifty percent single women—a troubling statistic. I studied their faces. Was I prettier than these women? Only beauty. Personality, intelligence, stamina, spirituality, mental health never entered the picture. Mental health. Yes. As a child and as young adult I struggled with no mental health issues. Son Carlton, however, disagree. After we had split from his father when Carlton was thirteen, I went to a therapist, thinking she might offer counsel on how to handle a strong-willed son who regarded himself man of the house. After two sessions she suggested I bring Carlton the following week. He joined me grudgingly and exhibited a sullenness throughout the session. On our way out of the building, her accosted me with: Why do you waste your money on her? She’s crazier than you are. I took that as a compliment and never went back. Serious doubts. Decade after decade. Far beyond the realm of dinosaurs. I probably should never been teaching at a seminary. But I loved my classes and the lively interaction with students Actually, I wasn’t crazy and have papers to prove it. In my late fifties, amid harassment and threats by Calvin Seminary administrators, I was ordered to be tested by a psychologist. After a lengthy written exam and two talk sessions, she pronounced me mentally healthy—nothing to flag. But I was the only fulltime woman professor, and they wanted me out. That scandalous story I tell in Fired at 57 (which will be dealt with later) Decades later in my mid-seventies, I did suffer a siege of mental illness, preceded by several incidents. Working with my husband on an outdoor structure, I fell backward on his drill lying on the concrete floor. An x-ray showed a fractured pelvis. Soon after, it was sciatica. Indeed, so serious that only steroid injections got me out of a wheelchair. Then a bad case of Covid. Following that the precise chronology is unclear but I recall a minor incident with my son, then weeping uncontrollably. Later that evening confronted by my husband, son and granddaughter. Had I taken their counsel and checked myself in and gotten evaluated and given proper meds, my illness might have been remedied largely through outpatient treatment. But I refused. Then after several hours of incoherence and a night of ranting, my husband, son and step-daughter took me to the emergency room of a nearby hospital. I know now that after a day or two of observation I should have been released to out-patient services with a prescription for necessary medication. Instead I was relegated to what would become months of institutional care. Unfortunately, my step-daughter had been playing an over-size role in determining my on-going care. I would end up confined at the hospital for two weeks before being sent to Pine Rest, the same mental hospital where I had sought counseling and was deemed crazier than the therapist. Sending me there was a bad decision. It is a terrible institution. The food was awful, the staff poorly trained, maximum of two showers a week, and two short weekly visits by family members. Some of the inmates were truly ill, including a man who had tried to kill his wife with a flaming frying pan. Others seemed to be more simpletons than mentally ill. John was harmless and fun to tease until a doctor gave him ECT, electric shock treatments, turning him into a virtual zombie. I lived in fear that he might force me into getting such a treatment. Several of the other ten residents on my block seemed normal, though not necessarily with more than a double-digit IQ. My best friend was bright and we had interesting conversations. I was sad when he was released into his wife’s care. While at Pine Rest, I became very ill and was twice taken to St. Mary’s Hospital for urgent care. The third time I was admitted and stayed more than three weeks. It was there I would have been resigned to hospice for end-of-life care, but for my son’s demand that they dare not let me die. From that hospital I was transferred to Mission Point, a rest home, one of many so-named rest homes in Michigan that have since been publicized for offering seriously deficient care. In fact, it was there where I was put on parallel bars before I was ready. I slipped and partially paralyzed my right hand. I reported it immediately, but no one cared. Had I been more proactive and perhaps threatened a law suit it might have been different. As it is, I can write and eat with utensils but most right-handed skills—like typing, using scissors or our business cash register—are very difficult to perform. From that facility I was sent home very sick, and it was there husband John nursed me back to health. From beginning to end, it was a long ordeal from which I’ll never fully recover. I now drive, work at our shop several hours a day, and hike a mile or two, but I just don’t have the stamina I had before I was incarcerated, as I have since come to regard it. Memories of the farm Of my four siblings, I’m the only one who has had an episode of mental illness, though two are recovering alcoholics. I look back at my childhood with great fondness, though, for various reasons, I’m the only one who does. I always had a sense that I was the favored child, and whether true or not, that might have made a difference. I was closest to Jonnie, two years younger. As young children we roamed the woodlands and fields and river banks of our 200-acre family farm, marking off spots to designate as camps: cotton camp, crick (not creek) camp, squirrelly camp, west camp. birch camp and more. As soon as the snow had melted in the spring. We would pack up our dolls, toy trucks, plastic farm animals and much more and move to the old car, a 1940 Packard that someone had left near our north driveway. From the Packard, we’d move to the brooder house (having long since housed baby chicks), then later in the summer making our daytime residence in the back of the old corncrib. Burnett County Burnett County was named in honor of Thomas Pendleton Burnett (Sept. 3, 1800 - Nov. 5, 1846), a genial and kind-hearted lawyer who was prominent during the territorial days of Wisconsin. As a citizen of the Wisconsin Territory, Mr. Burnett took an active part in the affairs of government. Mr. Burnett was born in Virginia and moved to Kentucky with his family as a young child. He became a lawyer and opened an office in Paris, Kentucky. In October, 1832, he was appointed Indian sub-agent at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and moved there the following June. • 1836 Mr. Burnett ran for Council in the Territorial Legislature, but was defeated, although he received almost the entire vote from his section of Crawford county. • 1836 In December he married Lucia Maria Brunson. • 1837 He moved to Cassville where he purchased a large farm and lived there until his death. • 1838 He ran for delegate to Congress but was defeated. He was elected as a member to the Constitutional Convention for the purpose of organizing the Territory into a state and it was here that his greatest work was done. • 1844 thru 1846 Through his work as recorder for the Supreme Court of the Territory he became well informed in government work. He did not live long enough to see the result of his efforts toward the formation of the state of Wisconsin. • November 5, 1846 Both Thomas Burnett and his wife were stricken with the same fatal disease and died on the same day. Ed Gein In 1957, brother David, a Merit Scholarship finalist left the farm for a full-ride to Michigan State University. I eagerly took his place, opting to do his evening chores of milking our nineteen cows. I had no desire to join my mother and older sister with kitchen chores. But then my childhood world was shaken to the core. His name was Ed Geen. The news broke November 17. Among other evils, he killed and dismembered women, skinned their bodies to make upholstery and boiled their internal organs. He lived in Plainfield, Wisconsin, 227 miles away from our farm. But I was so terrified in the months that followed that I could barely sleep. While schoolmates made jokes—as in herburgers (the name of a noted department store), I suffered. Yellow River The Yellow River gets its name from the yellow sand on the bottom, the first French explorers calling it the River Jaune. It was populated by native American, not only due to the fish and wild life, but also the wild rice that was plentiful near its shores as it flowed through Rice Lake—the very “heart of wild rice country.” Brother Jonnie as youths hoped we could earn good money harvesting wild rice there, but learn in no uncertain terms from our mother that only Indians were permitted to conduct such harvesting, which they did every year. In years past Jonnie often gave family members an expensive package of processed, hot-housed grown wild rice, of which native Americans have had no control. Their actual wild, however, no doubt tastes much better. Yellow River Inserts SPEARING SUCKERS My most memorable moments associated with the Yellow River are those spearing suckers. They truly were moments—often scary moments, fearing we would get caught in unlawful activity by game wardens. More accurately that my father my father would get caught and arrested. He was not a criminal in any other circumstance. In fact, he was extraordinarily honest in all his business dealings. But he justified spearing suckers because there was an abundance of the and he paid taxes on that river property; thus he was owed some remuneration. He never did get caught, but the possibility always added to the excitement of the sport. He would take Jonnie or me with him and his trusty kerosene lantern. The spears attached to 5-foot wooden poles were easy to handle and the suckers moved slowly, easily speared by Dad, less so by us. If I put five or six a night in my gunny sack, I was proud of my take. We cleaned (cut off head and fins, scaled and gutted them as soon as we got home, and Mom was to deep-fat fry them as soon as we walked in the door. The rest of them she froze for a later date. FAMILY PICNICS When I was growing up, I remember many family picnics at the nicest spot along the river—at least our portion of the river. I say our portion, though these days it belongs to Jonnie alone. But it’s in the very psyche of our five siblings, all still living at this writing in the summer of 2024, David the oldest in his 86th year. Our reunions are now every year, coming from Seattle to Rhode Island. And we will have a wonderful cookout around a fire at our wonderful picnic spot. Not far away from our picnic area is the old swimming hole, now so hidden in brush it can hardly be seen from the road. For old times sake, we’d clear the brush but it’s not on our land. Land has changed hands over the more than eighty years since I remember it. Yellow Lake Capone But the lake has also a celebrated - if not controversial - place in history, as a bridge was constructed in the 1920s between Big and Little Yellow Lakes, with a bizarre rumor for its need: Legendary Chicago gangster Al Capone loved a dance hall that was associated with the Yellow Lake Lodge, and Capone had the bridge built as a sort of “plan B” secondary escape route, if the “Revenue Agents” or local law enforcement tracked him down. But the lake has also a celebrated - if not controversial - place in history, as a bridge was constructed in the 1920s between Big and Little Yellow Lakes, with a bizarre rumor for its need: Legendary Chicago gangster Al Capone loved a dance hall that was associated with the Yellow Lake Lodge, and Capone had the bridge built as a sort of “plan B” secondary escape route, if the “Revenue Agents” or local law enforcement tracked him down. Railroad In 1882, the Division Headquarters were moved from Chandler two miles north and located here at Spooner, the center of this area, named after Senator John C. Spooner. A large passenger depot, freight depot, express office, restaurant, switching yards, roundhouse, locomotive and car shops, lumberyards and Division Offices for the superintendent, trainmasters, dispatchers, master mechanic, road masters, and bridges and buildings supervisors were constructed. In all, some 600 persons, including depot and freight agents, engineers, firemen, conductors, brakemen, switchmen, repairmen, baggagemen, expressmen and office workers were employed here during this time. Every day eighteen passenger trains, eleven logging trains, ten freight trains, 4 section crews and 55 chain gang crews ran out of Spooner. Passenger service terminated in 1961. Wood burning engines were used 1871-1885; standard coal burning, hand fired engines to 1912; Mikado (heavier) engines started to be used in 1913, stokers in 1930, and diesels in 1950. Spooner continues as an important railroad center of the Chicago & Northwestern, handling tremendous tonnage. Its large payroll is a vital part of the area's economy. Community Histories "An Early Description of Spooner, It's People and Businesses" Transcribed from the Spooner Advocate, dated Friday, 27 February 1903 Spooner is located at the cross at the great Omaha X, which shows so plainly on the railroad maps, and it lies 69.2 miles south of Superior, 84 miles from Ashland, 99.3 miles northeast of St. Paul and 82 miles northwest of Eau Claire, and is 403.7 miles from Chicago. This promising town, which is very near the geographical center of Washburn county and was named after the Hon. John C. Spooner, came into existence with the building of the railroad which now forms the important Omaha system in northwestern Wisconsin. it was founded primarily as a railroad town and for a number of years developed along this line. It contains a busy population and is a point of transfer of business from one branch of road to the other. As an eating-house point it has been well advertised and is well known to the traveling public, but more recently the village of SPOONER, having been incorporated the past spring, has changed from a strictly railroad town to a prosperous farming community. Pioneers of Burnett County The History of Some of the Pioneers in Town of Dewey, Burnett County Ole and Caroline Knutson and their three children (Olga, Ellen, and Elmer) came from Arcadia, Wisconsin to the Town of Dewey, Burnett County, in the fall of 1901. They bought land that was not cleared, and built a house of logs, also a barn and other buildings. Their place was one half mile south of the McCarty school house, or what is now known as the Dewey Town Hall. A log school house was there when they settled on their place. In 1908, the present school house was built. Mable Connor Israels was the first teacher to teach in the new school house. Three of the pioneer teachers that taught in the old log school were Ruby Fenton, Mrs. Henry Soecker, and Lacretta Deitreck Johnson. Other pioneers that taught in the new school were Cora Darling of the May school district, Ralph Zook of the South Dewey District, Emma Johnson from near Shell Lake, and Ruth MCarty from Devreau, her home school. Other pioneers that were here before 1901 are J. A. McCarty, Claud and Harry Berry and their parents. Henry and Susan Mansfield and their family. Charles and Mattie Mansfield and their boys came in 1901. The Ingalls, Bill Stelrecht, Atkinsons, Rileys, Reeves, Templetons, Rockaways, and Andrew Dahlstroms settled in the southern part of the township. Weather Tornado kills three in town with a broken warning siren • Tuesday, June 19, 2001 9:00pm Associated Press SIREN, Wis. – Hundreds of people picked through belongings and cleared trees from streets Tuesday after a tornado struck without any warning siren being sounded, killi ng three people and damaging dozens of homes and business. “This town is up and destroyed. Unbelievable,” said Dan McMonagle, a resident of Siren, a town of 900 about 65 miles northeast of St. Paul, Minn. McMonagle and his wife, LaWanda, huddled in their bathroom as the tornado tore down their house Monday night. They escaped with bruises. The storm injured 14 people, and four still were hospitalized Tuesday, said Mike Callen, a spokesman for the state Emergency Management Division. Their conditions were not released. The tornado’s victims were identified as Ruth Schultz, 80; Thomas Haseltine, 60; and Sylvan Stellrecht, 77. All were from Dewey, about 15 miles east of Siren. Schultz was playing cards with her husband and son when they heard on a police scanner that a bad storm was coming, said her son, Lennie Pfundheller. He said she had reached the top of the basement steps when a wall collapsed and pushed her into a counter. Pfundheller curled up in a fetal position and watched as linoleum tiles were sucked off the kitchen floor. About this same time, I began begging for a horse. Both Mom and Dad agreed the answer was no. Case closed. Instead, Mom said I could get an accordion, consolation prize of sorts. Maybe so. The horse would now be decades dead. But I still have that accordion. In high school, I lived for my French horn. I practiced religiously and I was the best—literally. In my senior year I won the top prize in the northern Wisconsin brass competition. After graduation, I enrolled at the St. Paul Bible College to prepare for my life’s calling to be a missionary. But I ran out of money after my first year and transferred to LeTourneau College, having learned that so eager was the school to change the nature of this once only men’s school that it was offering full scholarships to virtually any woman walking upright. I qualified. But the missionary training courses described in the school catalog did not exist. So I took literature and history courses, graduated, went on to Baylor University for my master’s degree, and to Northern Illinois University for a PhD in history, with every course and every degree getting me further away from my call to be a missionary. Marriage Before beginning studies at Baylor, I had taken a summer off to counsel college-age campers at Word of Life Island in upstate New York. There I met Randy Tucker, tall, dark, handsome who whom one year later I would marry. August 10, 1968, when we had been together for a total of less than eleven days. Having confessed that he had been expelled from two Christian colleges, he insisted that he’d had counselling and his problems had been solved. Not so. His lying, cheating, and stealing would continue until the end of our marriage. But he was very charming and suave, and most people really took a liking to him. But behind closed doors he was very different. Only months after we were married, he arrived home one afternoon to discover my absentee ballot was no longer on the table. When he asked where it was, I said nonchalantly that I had mailed it in. He demanded to know if I’d voted for George Wallace. When I said I hadn’t, he was livid: You know that was who I was supporting. So violent was he that I thought he’d hit me. Shortly after that I had said we were out of bread. He said I should have gotten a few days earlier when it was on sale, and that we’d go without it until it went on sale again. I need bread for my lunch sandwiches where I was working fulltime. I made a very modest salary but more than three times what he made in his Christian ministry, funded by his parents and grandparents. But as a man, he ruled me and the household. My role was to obey. And it was not just him. His mother intruded—seriously intruded. Before we were married, she insisted I wear her wedding dress which would have cost far more than a new dress to alter. Nor did I care for the scoop neck style nor the yellowish ivory color. But she was demanding until her husband finally told her to let it go. But the one incident that would characterize so many that would follow was her theft of my letters. One of the groomsmen at our wedding in Wisconsin agreed to drive my car to New York where he lived not far from my new in-laws, Doris and Lyman. They had said it was fine to leave it for a week at their place while we slowly made our way on our honeymoon to Randy’s apartment, which was fairly close by in New Jersey. The dozens of letters I had received from Randy during our courtship were all in their envelopes in a small box packed with wedding gifts in a much larger box—that box along with other boxes all in the locked trunk of my vehicle. So, she took it upon herself to open the trunk, go through the boxes. On finding the box of letters, she brought it in their house, took the out of the envelops and read them. When I discovered them gone, she denied having them and then falsely claimed that that they proved we’d been having pre-marital sex. Doris. Best described as a wicked woman. One year later, my mother Jennie Carlton Stellrecht was killed in a car accident, the worst day of my life. God, if there is a God, I surely must have asked, Why couldn’t it have been Doris instead? Sally, Betsy, Kate, Buttercup, Daisy, Valentine, Spot, Jackie, Little Holstein, Queen, Red Heifer, June, Ella, Sparky, Evelyn As a historian I’ve always been interested in counterfactuals—the what ifs of history and of our everyday lives. What if Lincoln had not been assassinated? What if Christian Stellrecht and his wife Magdalena had not immigrated from Germany to Muscatine, Iowa, and later to rural Spooner, Wisconsin, would Percy, one of his five sons, have married a local school teacher, Jennie Carlton, my mother? What if Miss Salthammer and Miss Cowan had never come into the neighborhood eight miles west of Spooner, Wisconsin and founded the beginnings of a church that became Green Grove Alliance Church? Where would I be today? Would my faith be central in my identity? Would I have gone to a Christian College? Would I have married the man who became Carlton’s father, albeit absentee father? Would I have moved to Grand Rapids, and eventually married my beloved husband John Worst? Sidebar Jane Austin’s mother’s family, the Leighs of Stoneleigh, had a spectacular history of madness, and her attitude toward madness and mental illness shows a lack of embarrassment and sentiment perhaps because od proximity to those affected by it. [Paula Byrne, The Real Jane Austin HarperCollins, 2013, 19] I sometimes look to biblical figures when seeking to understand pain and struggles I’ve endured. Lot’s wife might seem like an unusual choice. I picture her living on Pleasant Street in Sodom. We often imagine this town some sort of sordid ghetto, but it was presumably not always that way. it was surrounded by lush grazing pastures—"a well-watered garden”—and sometimes plundered by enemy armies. Abraham and his men, however, on one occasion rescued Lot and his people who would later return to what had become a lawless city. But was Lot’s wife part of that? Was she an evil woman? The biblical text never says she was. But she was exterminated for looking back at Sodom as she was running for her life. Indeed, her punishment is a stark example of overkill—literally—and she has gotten a bad rap ever since. Though not in the New Testament. Here she is accorded a three-word citation in Luke 17—"Remember Lot’s wife.” Most commentators believe that the reference relates to discipleship: true followers of Jesus should not look back regretting what they have left behind. So then, does her “crime” warrant instant immolation and the bad rap she has gotten ever since? I once lived in a small town surrounded by rich farmland and large dairy herds. It was an idyllic setting—a two-story, three-bedroom home on 532 Pleasant Street, only blocks from the public library. I took pride in our newly wallpapered kitchen and the freshly washed clothes blowing in the breeze? Life was good. I was a young minister’s wife and a new mother. But then there was that unforgettable knock on the door. Within minutes my world had fallen apart. Two members of the church had come to ask why a notice of my husband’s arrest had appeared in the local newspaper. Turns out he had repeatedly stolen the change left as coffee and donut money at the local courthouse. What makes this story even more cringe worthy is that he was there every week to visit a prisoner in an effort to save his soul. And he often mentioned these visits in his sermons. It was a huge embarrassment for the church. We would be forced to leave town. I looked back with anguish and guilt and utter sadness. God might have rained down fire. Indeed, the pain was searing. I shudder even now a half century later—still feeling that metaphorical sulfur singeing my skin. 5-2-24 Mental Illness I tell stories in Tender Mercies, one revealing my mental illness, and perhaps more should be told of that here, I take a cue for the telling from British author Charles Lamb writing to Coleridge. “I know not what suffering scenes you have gone through at Bristol. My life has been somewhat diversified of late. The six weeks that finished last year and begun this your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a mad house at Hoxton-I am got somewhat rational now and don’t bite anyone. But mad I was—and a many a vagary my imagination played on me, enough to make a volume if all told. . . . 27 May 1796 His letter ends the way all those of us who have experienced the mad house ought to end. He just carries on with his writing. And why not? “My sonnets I have extended to the number nine since I saw you.” ILLNESS Since last summer I have been seriously ill and handicapped. I can now walk quite well—not the fast walking I’m used to, but tolerable for a 77-year-old woman. My right hand is partially paralyzed, though I am capable of typing at a very slow speed. I work at the shop every day and I don’t look like I was a hair’s breadth from death, After suffering a fractured pelvis last July while helping husband John with a construction project at our little shop, I contracted a case of sciatica so bad that it required three injections before I could say goodbye to my wheelchair. Then it was Covid 19 and a three-week quarantine. One thing after another, finally confined to four different facilities: a hospital, then a psychiatric facility, another hospital, and an infirmary. Diagnoses ranged from a UTI to bipolar. Bottom line, I was a mess. Pine Rest. Th psychiatric facility was the worst part of my time in confinement. I had initially not objected to my transfer there. I had somehow imagined I would spend time when visitors arrived strolling along the tree-lined sidewalks in the park-like grounds. Not a chance. Two visitors were permitted twenty minutes each two times a week. Short showers twice a week. The food was awful. I was given a suite mate who howled all night. My slow recovery began only after I was discharged and released into John’s care in December. I couldn’t walk, take care of bathroom duties or eat. I was sent home with a feeding tube, plenty of diapers, and a hospital bed. Charge me with bias if you choose, but there has never been a caregiver that could even be compared with John. I was telling a friend who commented that she knew her husband would never have done that. What I learned today about my condition, however, was nothing short of shocking. I learned I was but a hair’s breadth from death. I casually asked son Carlton if he ever thought I might die while I was hospitalized. The question baffled him. Didn’t you know how bad things were? It turns out that, as my guardian, he was twice called in by doctors for consultation. Their reasoning: I was 77, terminally ill, not eating, saying to staff that I wanted to die, and occupying a hospital bed someone else would need. They had decided to remove life supports and have me transferred to hospice. I can’t even imagine Carlton’s outrage. Absolutely, categorically, emphatically, no. He would never under any circumstances permit them to just let me die. How dare you. Days later I would be transferred to an infirmary. There two critical things happened. They had me walk holding onto parallel bars. I slipped, paralyzing my right hand. On the positive side, they trained John how to care for me at home—home where I was given back the gift of life. Fur trading Burnett Count At the beginning of the nineteenth century, rival fur-traders for the Northwestern and the XY Companies competed fiercely with rum trade goods and credit for the fur trade of the Yellow River . . . band of the Chippewa Indians [who] maintained permanent villages . . . from the early eighteenth to the early twentieth century. [Washburn County] Forts Folle Avoine Historical Park is located near Danbury, Wisconsin on 80 wooded acres along the Yellow River. The park is a living history site with fur trade posts reconstructed at the actual site known to be active from 1802 to 1805. The park, a National Register of Historic Places site, is operated by the Burnett County Historical Society with support from its membership and Burnett County. The Forts Folle Avoine site is significant and unique for several reasons: • the exact footprint of the buildings of the winter trading posts was found, • the trading posts had been undisturbed for over 200 years allowing archeologists a pure site, untouched by future habitation or change, to investigate; this is unique among the other known fur trading posts in the United States and Canada, • it is the only known instance of two competing trading companies having trading posts in such close proximity to one another, • it is the only fur trade site in Wisconsin to have the contemporary journals of the traders at the site. Written records from 1802-1805 show that two trading companies built nearly side-by-side trading posts near the Yellow River in the area known as “le pays du folle avoine” (land of wild oats / wild rice) in what is now Burnett County, WI. North West Company built three buildings surrounded by a stockade or “Fort” which became know as “Forts Folle Avoine”. XY Company built their solitary building just 95 feet south of North West’s Fort. This is the only place on the North American continent where competing fur trading companies were close neighbors. These two trading posts were only used during the winters of 1802-03, 1803-04, and 1804-05. Throughout the winter, the traders bartered with the Ojibwe for furs, primarily beaver, which was prized in European markets. When spring arrived, the canoes were loaded with furs for the journey to Grand Portage on Lake Superior's north shore. Traders came to Grand Portage from hundreds of miles in every direction eagerly anticipating the summer rendezvous (an event that Forts Folle Avoine recreates annually.) At Rendezvous friends reunited, business flourished, and all enjoyed good times. Those furs from along the Yellow River then were carried on to Montreal and eventually to Europe. After Rendezvous, the traders returned to Forts Folle Avoine carrying winter provisions along with goods to be traded with the local Ojibwe who had befriended the fur traders, assisting in fur procurement as well as sharing their time-proven skills and knowledge. Detailed journals of traders George Nelson and Michel Curot along with other records show these trading posts were active in 1803 and 1804. At the end of the 1805 trading season, the fur traders once again loaded their canoes, pushed off into the Yellow River – and never returned. At an unknown time, the structures burned. How it happened and what the reaction was at the time, no one knows, but for current historians, it was a blessing. Rotting logs leave no remains; burnt wood does. For some 165 years the site of the fur trade posts remained hidden with only the journals of Curot and Nelson giving real clues about the site. A Wisconsin-Platteville State University professor, Harris Palmer, began studying the fur trade information trying to determine the location along the Yellow River. Local resident Lafayette Connor (whose ancestor John Connor was part of the XY Company) and his son, Gene Connor, joined Harris and Frances Palmer. For ten days, they searched the woods following geographic landmarks from Curot’s 1803-1804 journal. Another local resident, Lester Hammersberg, directed the searchers to a pile of rocks on the east side of the river – a significant clue in this otherwise sandy region! A test "dig" was completed and, after those many years, the elusive fur trade site was found! "We were lucky we got here when we did," Harris Palmer said, for the land was being platted for building lots. The land was purchased by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, enabling the historic fur post site to be preserved. To further protect the site, Harris Palmer filed papers to place the North West Company and XY Company Trading Post Site on the National Register of Historic Places. Charred remains enabled searchers to accurately detect the exact location of those wintering fur trade posts. During the 1970s and early 1980s, archaeologists from the Wisconsin State Historical Society studied and excavated the site, retrieving an astounding array of thousands of artifacts including, trade beads, axes, gun parts, and clay smoking pipes. In 1980, the Wisconsin State Historical Society discontinued funding the excavation and the Burnett County Historical Society assumed responsibility for the site. In the 1980s, 180 years after the fur trading posts had been abandoned, the Burnett County Historical Society, with financial help from a Wisconsin Economic Development Grant, worked on reconstructing exact replicas of the buildings and stockade and the new “Forts Folle Avoine” was born. The 80 acre Forts Folle Avoine Historical Park, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, opened to the public in 1989. EVE My name is Eve. Lying on a thick bed of luxuriant moss, I look up through the leafy canopy, the bright blue sky barely peeping through. Fruit trees and berry bushes of every variety. Around me are burgundy plate-sized Hibiscus, giant golden dahlias, orange cockscomb trimmed in yellow, brilliant red poppies. A kaleidoscope of color. Beauty all around. Indeed, my own six-foot long leggy body. Simply stunning, if I say so myself. My skin a dark sheen, my breasts and hips voluptuous, full lips, eyes that see right through you. Then there’s Adam. Dull, wearisome, Adam, fashioned straight out of the dirt. A skinny little pipsqueak. Hairless, freckled. Skin so white, it’s almost translucent. He says: God told not to eat the apples from this here one tree. I didn’t hear God say that. And can I really trust Adam? He’s not particularly bright. And that’s when the snake slithers over. Seriously, a talking snake. Good company though. Stimulating conversation. True. But all the while insisting if I eat the apple, I will acquire vast knowledge. Calculus, string theory, and the cure for cancer. So, I ate. Turns out the snake was liar. I was saved at seven. Not coerced as often young children are. I feared hell and wanted an escape. The setting, a dark dank basement of a white clapboard country church, two outhouses out back. Miss Buck, my vacation Bible school teacher was eager to accommodate me. Be not ashamed of the gospel, the Apostle Paul warns, but I told no one. And within weeks I was seriously doubting whether what I had been learning was really true. I was troubled particularly about how dinosaurs could have possibly fit in the ark. Indeed, my faith was shaken on that issue alone. But I persevered. At thirteen, amid an emotional appeal at Pigeon Lake Bible camp, I stood indicating I would become a missionary. 5-6-24 Typically, such passionate pleas are reserved for salvation. But this particular week at camp was sponsored by the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Founded by A.B. Simpson in the late nineteenth century, the Alliance evolved out of marital discord. As pastor of a Louisville church with an astounding yearly salary of $5,000 his wife, Margaret, enjoyed a beautiful home, fine clothes and the attention wealthy parishioners accorded her. Convinced God had called him to be a foreign missionary, Albert Benjamin faced a major obstacle. His wife Margaret. Go ahead and go, she told him. The children and I will stay here. Where would I be were it not for A. B. Simpson? Though never a missionary himself, Simpson had an enormous influence on missions particularly on individuals who would go on to establish mission societies. The founders of both the Sudan Interior Mission and the Africa Inland Mission studied at his missionary training school and were deeply influenced by his passion for overseas evangelization. Likewise, several evangelical denominations were transformed into missionary sending agencies largely through his missionary zeal. Beginning in 1883, he orchestrated interdenominational conventions held in cities throughout the States and Canada, featuring missionaries from various denominations and mission societies. These conventions would lead to the formation of Simpson’s own international mission society, the Christian and Missionary Alliance. His footprint is very large indeed. I tell his story in From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya. With six children, she had no interest in forsaking the comfortable lifestyle the Chestnut Street Church afforded them: “I was not then ready for such a sacrifice. I wrote him that it was all right—he might go to China himself—I would remain home and support and care for the children. I knew that would settle him for a while.” I would later learn that this missionary on furlough from Africa who was pressing vulnerable teens to make a career decision had been assigned to a boarding school where he molested young children. In fact, the minister at the little white church would be sent packing (with wife and seven children). The charge, hush, hush, at the time, was parking in nearby woods with a teenage girl. I loved him and wept at his departure. But I now realize he was grooming me. One incident in particular. I was pitcher for an improvised church-yard ball game. He came out to the mound supposedly to offer advice but whispered Seventy years later, mentally ill, I was forcibly swept into the arms of my son and taken to a hospital where I would be confined in four different institutions for the next several months. But before this white clapboard church had been constructed in a rural Wisconsin farming community 100 miles northeast of Minneapolis, Miss Cowan and Miss Salthammer arrived in the 1930s. They had been schooled at the Alliance Training Home, founded in 1916, three years before Simpson’s death. (Now Crown College, it was St. Paul Bible College when I enrolled in the fall of 1963.) They first announced a Sunday school, then church services. They evangelized, taught classes, preached sermons and were known for their daily deeds of mercy. When the church was on a solid footing, they moved on to other communities. They returned occasionally to teach vacation Bible school, and I remember thinking of them as odd ducks. But where would I be today were not for these two women preachers, often paid in sacks of potatoes or turnips, living and dying in poverty? 2-27-24 Memoir Books: 11-25-23:I had a very vivid dream last night. I was in a public place—a large beautifully paved area near an outdoor pool, part of a towering luxury hotel. It was a delightfully warm sunny day. There I met Bud and Joan Berends, both very tanned with no wrinkles. We talked and laughed for a while. We were then inside and coming down a wide staircase and I turned around to kid with Bud, as I often had. There the dream ended. But it was so real that as I was waking, I was thinking that I would have to tell them about it. I was fully awake before I realized that they had both been deceased for many years. I have since realized that this was a dream of heaven. What a lovely picture it is. Ed Gein and Me: Everyone Ought to Write This Book 1. Ed Gein and Me 2. Mischief and Me 3. Farming and Me 4. The Bible and Me 5. Port William and Me 6. Motherhood and Me 7. Big Bend and Me 8. High Tech and Me 9. Tank and Me 10. Air Travel and Me 11. Writing and Me 12. Biking and Me 13. Tell-all TV and Me 14. Music and Me 15. Marriage and Me 16. Disability and Me 17. Old Age and Me My Life as a Writer [Books folder docx, CG blog entry] Table of Contents 1 Family Album 2 Walking Away 3 From Jerusalem 4 Seasons of Motherhood 5 Black and White Bible 6 Biographical Bible 7 Fired at 57 8 Katie 9 Women in the Bible 10 Church History 11 Cults 12 Stories of Faith Preface An author of 25 books, I have become used to signing a contract with an advance. One of the 25 was self-published (Fired at 57) with editing done by John, my live-in editor, and publishing through Amazons free-KDP, without whose very reasonably-priced ($850) help from a publishing house editor I’d worked with before, would never have come to the light of day. The other book published without advance or royalties is comprised of 52 of my columns (Tender Mercies) written over the years is beautifully designed, and at no cost to me. My friends at Plain Truth Ministries are responsible. Agent We fought and we teased Who was the strongest? Jonnie and I argued over that endlessly. So, I challenged him to the test. Who could lift an 18” piece of railroad tie the most times over our head? I insisted he go first. He did. Perhaps ten times. I managed to do it one time more. I won. The dare was settled. He cried foul. But I refused a do-over. He never had the opportunity to prove he was stronger than his older sister by only two years. One evening during chore time Jonnie came in needing a pail of warm water, the only place to get it being the kitchen sink. But Jeannine in the midst of doing the supper dishes refused to let him at the sink. They argued. Finally, Jonnie exasperated, threatened her with the pail not realizing it, had a little dirty water at the bottom—or, maybe realizing it. She had just washed her hair and was furious. She took after him as he raced ahead of her out the screen door. Mom, for whatever reason, ran after them to stop a potential a fight. I had never witnessed a physical fight between them and wanted to see the show so I ran after Mom heading her away from them. For the life of me I can’t remember the outcome. I only wish a neighbor had driven in our driveway and witnessed the bedlam. Sometimes fights got serious. I was heckling Jonnie on spring day as the whole family as out picking rocks. He picked up a rock and hurled it at me, caught me above the shin. For years I had a sc ar and swelling on my leg. Picking rocks; David’s explanation to Sharon Camps Journeys ‘crick camp Picking strawberries 4 cents a quart, 1 cent for selling, David sitting in car reading a book Migrant work od picking cucumbers Introduction Am I fooling myself? I know I’m skilled in self-deception, and maybe for the sake of argument I ought to suppose I am. (Jayber Crow, 247) Maureen Murdock, Unreliable Truth: On Memoir and Memory (2003) Our memories are unreliable. If we have not thought about an incident since it happened, it might be more reliable than something we’ve repeatedly mulled over in our minds. But even as the incident is happening, our observations are unreliable. Two people standing together seeing a car accident right in front of them sometimes are at odds about what happened and who was at fault. We do well to look inward for bias and to recognize that we are skilled in self-deception. While incarcerated by the Nazis for plotting against the Third Reich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer questioned his own motives and honesty. “Who am I,” he wrote, “one person today and tomorrow another?” Was he a “hypocrite before others,” while knowing himself to be a “contemptible woebegone weakling”? We all do well to ask ourselves such questions. “Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.” I began this memoir at the same time that I was writing a regular column, “Tender Mercies,” for Plain Truth Ministries, after having missed the most recent deadlines. If I were titling the column, it would be “Sickness onto Death: Today is April 5, 2023. Full moon. Grand River is rising. Predicted to go four feet over flood stage. Our house is on the river, though 10 years ago (during the 100-year flood) it was in the river. The river as I’ve learned has a personality. The raging anger of a bitter winter ice jam when you fear the surge will bulldoze your house a full block downstream. Or the smiling face of summer when it floats merrily downstream. But, during a flood, the river doesn’t care one whit whether it’s driving past our house or driving right through it. So, we get our kayaks, our flood season transportation, and haul them a quarter mile up to dry land. The other aggravation of the day is that for some bizarre reason I suddenly lost the email capability that I’ve enjoyed for nearly two decades. A setback in transportation and communication, a mere aggravation but only in the broader scheme of things as I have come to realize. Since last summer I have been seriously ill and handicapped. I can now walk reasonably well—not the fast walking I’m used to, but tolerable for a 77-year-old woman. My right hand is partially paralyzed, though I am capable of typing at a very slow speed of about fifteen words per minute. After suffering a fractured pelvis last July while helping husband John with a construction project at our little shop, I contracted a case of sciatica so bad that it required three injections before I could say goodbye to my wheelchair. Then it was Covid 19 and a three-week quarantine. One thing after another, finally confined to a hospital, a psychiatric facility, another hospital, and an infirmary. Diagnoses ranged from a UTI to bipolar. Bottom line, I was a mess. My slow recovery began only after I was discharged and released into John’s care in December. I couldn’t walk, take care of bathroom duties or eat. I was sent home with a feeding tube, plenty of diapers, and a hospital bed. Charge me with bias if you choose, but there has never been a caregiver that could even be compared with John. I was telling a friend who commented that she knew her husband would never have done that. What I learned today about my condition, however, was nothing short of shocking. I learned I was but a hair’s breadth from death. I casually asked son Carlton if he ever thought I might die while I was hospitalized. The question baffled him. Didn’t you know how bad things were? It turns out that, as my guardian, he was twice called in by doctors for consultation. Their reasoning: I was 77, terminally ill, not eating, saying to staff that I wanted to die, and occupying a hospital bed someone else would need. They had decided to remove life supports and have me transferred to hospice. I can’t even imagine Carlton’s outrage. Absolutely, categorically, emphatically, no. He would never under any circumstances permit them to just let me die. How dare you. Days later I would be transferred to an infirmary. There two critical things happened. They had me walk holding onto parallel bars. I slipped, paralyzing my right hand. On the positive side, they trained John how to care for me at home—home where I was given back the gift of life. 1. Family Album The farm where I grew up was located some two miles away from the home place where my father, Percy Stellrecht, was raised. His parents were German immigrants who settled in northern Wisconsin near other kin. For a time, my father had assumed he would inherit the farm, but when he was in his late teens, his mother gave birth to her last child, a baby boy, who by inheritance tradition would stay on the farm where he would raise his own family—and pass the farm to his youngest son. There were eight children in the family: Roy, Ervin, Robert, Percy, Pearl, Hilda, Adeline, and Milton. So, like his older brothers, my father bought a nearby farm with a rundown house close by, initially living in an icehouse until the house could be repaired. He later hired his brother Ervin to build a fine-looking barn, celebrating its completion with musicians and a barn dance. The stave silo came later, purchased from another farm and reassembled next to the barn with a closed-in walkway between. Such a lovely setting, I couldn’t resist painting it in my younger years. When the land had been surveyed, my father realized that a machine shed and outhouse were situated on the adjoining forty acres. The wise thing to do, he reasoned, was to purchase that parcel of wooded land My mother, Jennie Carlton, grew up on a farm, three miles from my father’s farm (five from his home place). There were three children, Robert, Jennie, and Donald, who would continue to farm on the Carlton home place. From high school, my mother went on to normal school, giving her enough education to teach in one-room country schools. When they married my mother was twenty-six, my father, thirty-eight. My father must have been judiciously saving money because he bought some new furniture and a brand-new wood stove from Montgomery Ward, and they took a honeymoon to Yellowstone National Park. Though relatives were close by, there was little socializing. Work on the farm was a priority, leaving little room for leisure. In warm weather, however, we often went on lakeside picnics, with swimming to follow. And for me and my four siblings (David and Jeannine older, Jonnie and Kathy, younger), my mother always made sure our chores and schoolwork were balanced with relaxation. I had forgotten Abraham Lincoln was a poet, that is until I began exploring computer files, some decades old. The memory—"thou midway world Twixt earth and paradise”—conjure both pain and pleasure, the loss of loved ones as well as the delight in “woods and fields, and scenes of play, and playmates loved so well.” I resonate with those words, though he suffered more sorrow than I did as a child. My childhood's home I see again, And sadden with the view; And still, as memory crowds my brain, There's pleasure in it too. O Memory! thou midway world 'Twixt earth and paradise, Where things decayed and loved ones lost In dreamy shadows rise, And, freed from all that's earthly vile, Seem hallowed, pure, and bright, Like scenes in some enchanted isle, All bathed in liquid light. . . . Near twenty years have passed away Since here I bid farewell To woods and fields, and scenes of play, And playmates loved so well. Where many were, how few remain Of old familiar things; But seeing them, to mind again The lost and absent brings. I am forever grateful that I was born into a stable family. Five kids. I’m the middle child. Scandals and secrets were few and far between. In fact, my mind draws a blank. My brother failed to graduate from Michigan State University on time because he had been caught with a 6-pack of beer in the trunk of his car. My mother was humiliated. To her it was a scandal—and a secret. But she didn’t have to deal with any shotgun marriages or drunkenness, not uncommon in our neighborhood. Nor were any of us kids were suspended from school for cheating. We were a normal family without disgrace reaching our doorstep. A grandfather and uncle who lived nearby, however, were serious sex abusers, leaving cousins in psychological distress—one ending in suicide. My grandfather sought to groom me, and actually forced a slimy kiss on my mouth when I was alone in the barn one evening milking the cows. I pushed him away, and when I was done with my chores said to my mother, If Grandpa ever comes to the barn while I’m milking, I’m just going to walk out.” He didn’t. She made sure of that. But why didn’t she ask why? Why didn’t she tell him off? My sisters and I have postulated that she herself had been sexually abused by him. I had reason to be terrified by my grandfather, but it was another man who kept me awake at night. Ed Geen, fifty-one, Plainfield, Wisconsin. In 1957, my older brother went off to college, and I took over the evening chores of milking our nineteen cows. On November 17, after he killed a local woman who owned a hardware store, the news stories of his having killed another woman and his grave robbing and using the skin of these women for upholstery and boiling their hearts and other organs. It was the talk of Wisconsin and far beyond. My fear was, of course, irrational. Geen was in custody, and Plainfield was more than two hundred miles away. He was one of two children, the second son of George and Augusta Geen. From Wikipedia, I quote: Augusta was fervently religious. . . . She preached to her sons about the innate immorality of the world, the evil of drinking, and her belief that all women (apart from herself) were naturally promiscuous and instruments of the devil. She reserved time every afternoon to read to them from the Bible, usually selecting verses from the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation concerning death, murder and divine retribution. She hated her husband, an alcoholic who was unable to keep a job. George Geen died in 1940, his older brother Ed in 1944, while the two brothers were burning marsh vegetation. Asphyxiation was given as the cause, the later it surmised that this was a Cain and Abel scenario. Now surviving were just Ed and Augusta, wo died of a stroke in 1945, which left Ed bereft. My brother David (a Merit Scholarship finalist), on a full-ride scholarship to Michigan State University, left me behind with Ed Geen, and I managed to survive that fall and winter. Actually, we were all smart kids. Jeannine, also taking all the science and math our high school offered, went to the University of Wisconsin on a scholarship. Jonnie went to the University of Minnesota, graduating at the top in forestry. And Kathy, the youngest, became COO of a large charity, earning a Ph.D. as she was working her way up. In fact, they all achieved academic recognition in high school and college, all but me. My claim to fame was a small scholarship awarded for winning the top spot in a Northern Wisconsin brass competition—playing a Mozart French horn concerto before two sets of judges. After graduating from high school, I enrolled at St. Paul Bible College. My funds running out, I overheard a conversation about LeTourneau College giving scholarships to any female who applied. As an all-male engineering and technical school, it was seeking to become fully coeducational. I applied. Three years later graduated. On to Baylor University, completing my graduate work at Northern Illinois University, chosen because of its suitable driving distance from Woodstock, our residence until my ex-husband was fired from the Woodstock Bible Church. Because of our college and graduate education, we stood out in the neighborhood which included a lot of relatives. Drive a dozen miles west of Spooner, an you’ll encounter many more Stellrechts than Smiths. Our mother was the dominant parent. The neighborhood would have agreed. Percy, mild-mannered and passive; Jennie, watch out! For those who were deserving, she told them off. Her most controversial community activism was her petition to consolidate country schools, bussing the children to city school in Spooner. I understand the outrage. In his fictional stories, Wendell Berry painfully shows how closing small schools led to the demise of neighborhood businesses, grocery stores, barbershops and community connectedness. I for one will never regret my first grade at the one-room Gaslyn Creek school, still standing today. My worst day there was when David was beaten with a belt in front of all of us sitting at our desks. His crime: playing hooky. Going fishing in the creek. You can bet he faced a telling off by my mother. I was more than once the receiver of a telling off. She had a quick temper. Indeed, her fury had no measure when she spotted me across our large gymnasium, sneaking out of a hometown basketball game with my boyfriend. Although her love had a fierceness and I never for a moment doubted it, there were many occasions when I wished she might have kept her distance. Some of my mother’s flaws have been passed on—or picked up—and I see them when I look in the mirror. And the same process continues with my son. He is quick to praise me as a mother, but I must be ever aware of that mixed bag that I have bequeathed to him. My mother was a strong, intelligent, opinionated lady who would have served well as a New Deal congresswoman. Tall, toothy, and big-boned, she might have been mistaken on Capitol Hill for Eleanor Roosevelt. But women—apart from rare exceptions—didn’t go to congress in those days. Instead she was a teacher in a series of one-room country schools until she married Percy Stellrecht, my father. In my earliest memories she is working. She’s stoking the wood stove, checking the oven and watching over the kettles and frying pan; she’s stooped over in the garden weeding or picking beans; she’s feeding the ringer washer or hanging clothes on the line; she’s carrying wood to the basement for winter—all while supervising child labor with severity and a sharp tongue to match. She had a near obsession with education—determined that her five children would graduate from college. Indeed, she would single-handedly, if need be, pave the way for her children and others. Her initial efforts began when I was in first grade at a one-room country school—my sister and brother in grades ahead of me. After meeting with the superintendent of the school district, she began a petition drive to have our tiny school closed and the students bussed to the town school some ten miles away. She knew she would make enemies and she did, especially after she cajoled and argued enough neighbors into signing. For good or for ill, she was victorious in setting the stage for us five kids to graduate from college, though a tragic auto accident prevented her from seeing her youngest (now Dr. Kathy Stellrecht) from walking across the stage. But my mother was more than a hard worker and disciplinarian and avowed promoter of her children. I remember her as the one we sought for comfort and relief—a sliver, stubbed toe, or strep throat. My mother’s lap was the place to be. And when I was too lanky for the lap, she comforted me in other ways. One moment that will always stick with me is the morning I auditioned on my French horn, hoping to pass on to final competition. It was a good performance, with the exception of one major blunder. Work on the farm prevented her from staying to learn the outcome. But her parting expression of pain is something I will never forget. As it turned out the judge permitted me to move ahead, and late that afternoon, with my best performance ever, I won the top prize in brass for the regional competition. I was ecstatic when a phone call carried the good news that evening. Her words? Now don’t get big-headed about it. The Green Grove Alliance Church decades later was consolidated into the Lake Park Alliance. Three miles from our home, my family regularly attended. We were outliers, neither office holders nor ushers. My mother fiercely objected to alter calls and anything that smacked of hellfire and brimstone sermons. That we were farmers is in some ways the most distinct feature of my upbringing. I loved that 200-acre farm—the fields, the forests, hillsides—and the Yellow River running through it. I worked hard and played hard, every season boasting its beauty. With no close neighbors, I rode my bike to meet up with friends. There were four of us, Judy, Janice, Jane and myself, usually meeting near the church, a central location. And I had imaginary friends as well. I would meet them as soon as I jumped on my bike after school, the three of them joining me: Jean, Tom, and George. No excuses. More than friends, real or imaginary, I spent time with Buzzy, my pet goat. “Countless verses have been written on the puppy and the kitten.” These are the first lines of a poem written by my eighth-grade Latin teacher, titled, Why I can’t write a Poem about Buzzy.” The lines that follow note dozens of animals from the walrus and eel to “humpy dromedaries” and “giraffes six meters high. . . .[poems] on lions penned by literary giants.” So why can’t he write a poem about Buzzy? The last lines say it all: “But never has a bard of note said anything about a goat.” For years, I had tried to make contact with him. Then, having improved my own skills and with better Internet access, I found him in California. To my great disappointment, however, I learned from his daughter that he had just recently died. I was devastated—if I had only tracked him down a year earlier. I told his daughter about the poem and after sending her a copy, she called back with her mother on another line. I listened to stories from both of them, and I shared my own memories of Ron Barrens, my beloved Latin teacher. As a young child my favorite book had been Heidi, the story of a Swiss orphaned girl who lived high in the Alps. The text and pictures always identified her with goats. I dreamed of being a Heidi. Then the May 1954 issue of National Geographic had a cover-story of two women and their goats in rural New York—women who operated Thunderhill Farm. (I still have that issue in safe-keeping.) After reading the article and looking at the pictures, I was never the same. I wanted a goat. Four years passed before my parents consented. My grandfather kicked in the two dollars, and that spring he took me to a farm several miles away where we purchased a darling little white female barely a month old that I bottle fed through the summer. I named her Buzzy for a high school cheerleader who had been very kind to me. For miles around, I became known as the girl with the goat. Buzzy and I explored every hillside, field, stream, riverbank and trail on our 200-acre forested farm. True, she jumped on our car and over the fence into the garden, infuriating my folks. But they often knew laughed at her antics. I’ve always been somewhat bothered by the biblical take-down of goats. Had Jesus played with his own pet goat, might he have sent the sheep to perdition rather than the goats? In fact, today, sheep are far less prized than goats. Goats are more profitable for their milk, cheese and meat—even for shearing. They are rented out to clear brush and they “make adorable pets,” according to an online site, “because of their ability to form close bonds with their owners.” How well I know. Buzzy and I were almost inseparable. I should have been satisfied with Buzzy, but on into my teens, I began begging my folks for a horse. Riding the range of our 200-acre farm. Pure joy. The response: absolutely not. But my mother, feeling sorry for me, was willing to compromise. She would get me an accordion. I laugh out loud when I read that line. Seriously. A compromise? Had I gotten a horse, she would have been decades-long dead. However, I still have the accordion, though can no longer play that peppy polka, “Roll out the barrel, let’s have a barrel of fun.” Ed Gein November 17, 1957. Long before cable non-stop news—before we even had our first console television set at the farm west of Spooner. David had gone off to college months earlier; Jeannine was not a nightly chores kind of girl. So it fell on me to leave the house immediately after supper, go down the slope to the barn and milk the 19 cows. There was a chill in the air that day. Snow was on the way. No problem. I liked getting off by myself and escaping kitchen cleanup. But that Sunday, four months to the day after my 12th birthday, would be the last night I would do chores without a sense of terror as black and biting as the eastern horizon—terror that pierced every pin-point of my adolescent perception. For the next months and years I would be stalked by Ed Gein. True, he was now incarcerated. But that didn’t stop him from terrorizing me. He lurked behind hay bales and amid the cobwebs in the dark shadows of the calf pens. Or he was skulking just outside the milk house door, his stealthy prowling exacerbated with every twig that snapped and every branch of the giant oaks that quivered in the wind. Today when I mention him Scholarship to LeTourneau Matriculate……. Years later I had been asked to deliver lectures at Wheaton Graduate School. I opened by telling that story. How they laughed. 2. Walking Away VBS saved, “My story begins in a farming community. . . . For a childhood conversion, mine is actually rather interesting. It was the last day of vacation Bible school, WA, 17 ff Doubts: dinosaurs on ark, Farther didn’t bring home cantaloupe Annie Dillard, WA, 218-19 Emily Dickinson, WA, 108-111 Alvin Plantinga, convoluted Christian philosophy—SEE God Talk, 50-51 A Legacy of Faith My heritage of faith, as with other aspects of the legacy I inherited, is a mixed bag. One beloved minister, I learned years after the fact, was forced to leave the little country church that nourished my faith because of inappropriate relationships with teenage girls. I may have been next on his list. A visiting missionary who had a significant impact on my life was later charged with molesting children at a boarding school in Africa. But this legacy I inherited also included two women. I write about their legacy of faith in Women in the Maze: The setting was a rural community in northern Wisconsin in the 1930s. Enter two “lady preachers—Miss Salthammer and Miss Cowan—convinced that they were called by God to plant a church where there was no gospel ministry. In the years that followed they did just that. . . . Finally when the little church was on solid footing, they moved on to plant other churches. [Ruth A. Tucker, Women in the Maze: Questions and Answers on Biblical Equality (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 9.] Years later as I was growing up in the 1950s, they occasionally returned to conduct vacation Bible school. “I thought they were rather odd characters, and it has not been until recent years that I have begun to appreciate them for who they were and for the incredible sacrifice they made.” But I was a child. Surely the adults recognized and rewarded their sacrificial legacy. Not so. When “Miss Cowan died, she was buried in a pauper’s grave. The county paid for her burial because no one else—not even the people of my little country church—came forward with the money.” [Ibid.] Where would I be today were it not for the sacrificial ministry of Miss Salthammer and Miss Cowan? They might have imagined that they would be quickly forgotten. But as long as I live,I will seek to keep their legacy alive. As each one of us is involved in legacy-making, we are inspired by the legacies of others. We cherish the memories of the dearly departed as we pass their legacies on to the next generation. An important aspect of church planting and church growth in presenting a week of VBS (Vacation Bible School) in an effort to reach out to children—and their parents. Stephen Dunn tells of his experience in his poem, "At the Smithville Methodist Church." Thinking his daughter would be playing games and making crafts, he sent her off with no misgivings. But she came home with a “Jesus Saves” button and singing “Jesus loves You,” he writes, “it was time to talk.” But what could he say? That Jesus doesn’t love her? “It had been so long since we believed, so long since we needed Jesus.” He had no alternative story. Surely not evolution. It “stinks with extinction.” On the way home, after the evening program, she sang the songs. “There was nothing to do but drive, ride it out, sing along in silence.” Anyone wanting to avoid getting saved, VBS can be a dangerous place. For a childhood conversion, mine is actually rather interesting. It was the last day of vacation Bible school. I was six. The invitation was given, and my nine-year-old sister raised her hand. I reasoned that it she could do it so could I, so I raised my hand. I was then led to the back of the church where I waited at the end of a short line to get saved. But I missed out. A boy ran into the church to tell me my mother was waiting in the car, I ran out not wanting to miss my ride home. An easy decision—until the magnitude of that choice began to weigh down on me. If I died, I wouldn’t go to heaven. I’d missed my chance. There would be no VBS until the following June. I made it through the first morning session, but after my teacher, Miss Buck (a Bible college student), dismissed us for lunch, I caught up with her on the way to the parsonage. I had one very simple question: “Can I get saved?” she was floored. In fact, she started to cry. We returned to the church and there “knelt together on that cold concrete floor.” It was then “I invited Jesus into my heart.” Miss Buck assured me my name had been “written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.” The key word was written. I had just learned cursive, and in my mind’s eye, I could see Jesus writing Ruth Anne Stellrecht down in his book. No sooner had my name been written than the doubt began to surface. I can still remember going under my little lean-to, constructed against the well house and wondering how two of each of the different dinosaurs could have possibly all gotten into Noah’s ark. To a seven-year-old’s mind something seemed about seemed way too unbelievable. On a more selfish level, why didn’t God answer prayer. Brother Jonnie, five, and I went behind the woodpile and prayed earnestly that our father would bring home a cantaloupe when he returned from town. He didn’t. In college, with a Bible minor, I struggled with the canon of Scripture. If bible writing was infallible, why not the church leaders—who some three centuries after the last of the texts were written—decided which ones to include a which to toss to the cutting floor? None of my professors had a satisfactory answer. Inconsistencies in the Bible, so of them major, also gnawed at my conscience. Then came the biggest trial of al The Trial of God was a film shown to a plenary session of a large course taught at Calvin College years ago, with a Calvin professor each leading one of the twenty or so discussion groups. I was an outsider, leading one of the sessions. As I watched the film, I wondered why it had been presented and what we were to do with it I our sessions. I went out on a limb, knowing I was stretching the party line. The students, somber after the film, took their seats. I announced that we were going to put God on trial. I would go first. I told about a car accident on a rural, lightly traveled intersection in northern Wisconsin. Mid-afternoon, September 23, 1969. A truck slammed into a car. The truck driver and my s5-year old sister were not injured. My mother was killed. If God is all-present, all-knowing—and all powerful, why did he permit that fatal accident. I I could have prevented the fatality by standing near the corner, waving a red flag for traffic to slow down, but failed to do so, I would be guilty of at least manslaughter. If God could have prevented the accident but chose not to do so, isn’t that equivalent to manslaughter? My story over, it was an unforgettable discussion session—accompanied by a lot of tears. The next day when all discussion leaders were expected to report how their session, I didn’t flinch. I told it lie it was. There were gasps and an overall sense of shock. And perhaps some who felt that tears and painful stories were not out of line I discussion sessions. Article 6: God’s Eternal Decree The fact that some receive from God the gift of faith within time, and that others do not, stems from his eternal decree. For “all his works are known to God from eternity” (Acts 15:18; Eph. 1:11). In accordance with this decree God graciously softens the hearts, however hard, of the elect and inclines them to believe, but by a just judgment God leaves in their wickedness and hardness of heart those who have not been chosen. And in this especially is disclosed to us God’s act—unfathomable, and as merciful as it is just—of distinguishing between people equally lost. This is the well-known decree of election and reprobation revealed in God’s Word. The wicked, impure, and unstable distort this decree to their own ruin, but it provides holy and godly souls with comfort beyond words. I grew up with a version of the old-time religion that taught us to witness on the fly. The plan of salvation came wrapped as simply as a 4-page Wordless Book: a black page representing sin, red for the blood of Jesus, white for sins washed away, and gold for the streets in heaven. For literate victims who fell within our target range, we transposed colors into 4 spiritual laws. Or, if we thought they were ready for an air-tight biblical pitch, we hit them with the Romans Road to Salvation, pointing to six short verses that would save their soul. From Tender Mercies: More than a decade ago when I was recovering from an illness I listened to an audio version of the Pulitzer Prize winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard. All my life I had been reading books on the run. This volume seeped into my soul at a slow pace. I identify with Annie. We were born the same year—our birthdays a few months apart. Her hard questions about faith and life are mine. She had Tinker Creek; I had the Yellow River. Hers, a stream rippling through a valley in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Mine, a river running through the forests and meadows where I grew up in northern Wisconsin. I loved that river and I spent countless hours getting to know its meandering melodies and rhythms. I was a child then. Now the river is far away except for brief weekend visits every autumn. But when I read the words of Annie I’m brought back to a world I once knew so well in my childhood. I realize too that in such a frame of mind I sometimes, like her, see life most clearly: The sky is deep and distant, laced with sycamore limbs like a hatching of crossed swords. . . . My back rests on a steep bank under the sycamore; before me shines the creek . . . and above it rises the other bank, also steep, and planted in trees.. . . When we lose our innocence—when we start feeling the weight of the atmosphere and learn that there’s death in the pot—we take leave of our senses. Only children can hear the song of the male house mouse. Only children keep their eyes open. . . . In an era when the voices on talk radio and cable TV, whether preachers or politicians, are absolutely sure of themselves, Annie’s cautious understandings and modest self-identification are refreshing: “I am a fugitive and a vagabond, a sojourner seeking signs.” She is tentative about theological proclamations even as she expresses awe and a healthy fear of God: “I have never understood why so many mystics of all creeds experience the presence of God on mountaintops. Aren’t they afraid of being blown away. . . . It often feels best to lay low, inconspicuous, instead of waving your spirit around from high places like a lightening rod. . . . Invisibility is the all-time great cover. . . . And we the people are so vulnerable.” My husband and I are on the same page when it comes to matters of faith. I grew up Alliance/fundamentalist, he CRC. (He's John Worst, a long-time--now retired--music professor at Calvin College, twice widowed). At age 7, I invited Jesus into my heart and that's where he's stayed-----never got to my head. Madeleine L'Engle's words are mine: "With my naked intellect I cannot believe in God." I have not much in common with the atheists and agnostics except that (as Martin Marty puts it) I stake out my place on the barren landscape with those who have seen God excluded from their horizons. Belief and (mostly) unbelief easily coexist in my life---especially as we are in contact with others who tell their stories of evangelicalism past. And I do believe. Fanny Crosby's "Pass me Not O Gentle Savior" will be the tune that I dance to when I'm in my 90s. When I join the city of the dead, Jesus will be in my heart and Thanatopsis on my mind: So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 3. From Jerusalem Pigeon Lake Bible Camp. The summer I turned twelve. Rustic cabins with a toilet and shower unit nearby. Bible classes in the morning. Afternoon free time. Evening missionary meeting followed by campfire testimony time. Missionary Delmer Smith telling tragic tales of Africa. Millions going to hell without Jesus. The final night an alter call. All stand who hear God’s call. A call to become a career missionary. Seriously. Teens and preteens claiming to hear that call. I stood. Camp over, I had second thoughts in the weeks that followed. On several occasions I rode my bike to the church. Down in the basement there was a cabinet with stacks of church magazines. The back pages pictured missionaries who were returning to their field of service or heading out for the first time. Half of them were married, the other have single women. I studied the faces of the women. Was I prettier than they? Would I one day be a lonely old-maid missionary? I was a child. Was Smith's pushing for decisions child abuse. And that would not be what he was charged with. Delmer Smith, I would learn decades later was charged with child sexual. While he served as a house parent at a boarding school for missionary kids, he abused dozens of them Delmer Smith (not named) from Mamou Alliance Academy—web page 8. Male Staff Member #2 Sexual Abuse: Ongoing fondling of lst to 5th grade girls during post-bedtime 'tummyrubs' in girls dormitory, one known instance of digital penetration. There are five reported victims. One MK said, "I gave up my faith for a long time. I considered myself agnostic, and rejected Christianity for a long period, until the last ten years. I believed [the abuse] had happened to me because of Jesus. The children were sacrificed for the parents to do the work in the name of Jesus.' "Call” (Jayber), Delmer Smith, feet of clay and big-time sinners Epilogue—CHECK blog for quote That book ends with a personal reflection. I tell about growing up in the 1950s in a farming community in northern Wisconsin and attending a little country church, where it was to go through teenage years without getting a “call” to overseas missions. In most cases the sense of calling was quickly forgotten when other “calls” interfered. But for me and my younger cousin Valerie, it was different. I write in third person: They attended the same schools and the same little country church. Valerie too felt called to foreign missions. She, too enrolled at the St. Paul Bible College to prepare for her life’s calling. And she, too, longed for marriage and family. But her sense of calling to the foreign field came first. Valerie graduated from Bible college and soon thereafter bade farewell to her family and loved ones and set out alone for Ecuador, where she continues to serve today [now retired] with the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Two young women whose lives paralleled each other’s in so many respects. Two young women who felt called to foreign missions. Valerie went. I stayed home. SEE also “tender Mercies In the decades since its publication, the book still sells well, not only as a text but for leisure reading, no doubt because there are so many fascinating missionary stories—stories of great courage and dedication, sure, but also of marriage failure, mental illness, ministry quarrels and discord of every stripe. Over the years as I have taught graduate courses and traveled as a visiting lecturer, I have been asked about such problems. But the most frequently asked question has always related to the final twist—the story of Valerie and me. Students have wanted to hug me and assure me that I should not feel guilty about my choice (which, despite my purposely vague wording, I have not). I have, however, always had great admiration for Valerie. After serving for many years in Ecuador, she was transferred to the Dominican Republic and ministered there until her retirement in 2017, after nearly a half century of service. She represented the fear I had of being on the single side of the bus when women missionaries were transported around the world for a life-time of hard work and loneliness. But you only have to look at a photo of Valerie to see the joy and contentment she takes with her wherever she goes. She simply shines. And that is no doubt one of the first things Terry noted as he saw her again soon after she retired, decades after they both had graduated from the same Bible college. He had served as a missionary in the Philippines with his wife who had died two years earlier. How fitting it was that Valerie’s long tenure as a missionary ended with a twist. She and Terry became engaged, a wedding date set for August, 2018. Despite the inconvenience of leaving our little garden shop for a long summer weekend and making a 12-hour drive back home to Wisconsin, we knew this was an event we couldn’t miss. What a delight it was as we witnessed the ceremony, Valerie absolutely glowing in a packed church filled with relatives and friends. It can be a lonely life as a single missionary, as surely Valerie must have felt, But married with children sometimes calls for painful decisions that brings perspective to the issue. In a 1989 cover-story on missionary kids, for Christianity Today, I opened with this paragraph: In 1959, after seven years of missionary service in the Baliem Valley of Papua New Guinea, Dorie and Lloyd Van Stone faced a wrenching decision. Their young son, Burney, had not adjusted to the boarding school that he was required to attend. He was severely depressed, and after a visit home, had to be torn from his mother’s arms and taken back to the school against his will. The Van Stones decided they could not sacrifice their son’s well-being for the sake of their work—an attitude that was then an exception to the rule. There was no alternative but to leave the mission field. Missionary kid article at house 4. Seasons of Motherhood Riding bike to hospital Researching dissertation on microfilm with him under desk There was fierceness to the love that was born the instant I saw him that startled and bewildered me. It was uncivilized, crude, unquestioning, unreasoning. Sue did not begin to fully comprehend that love until some years later when she and her family were awakened one night while camping when "an old sow bear" wandered into their campsite and become separated from her cub. In the frantic moments before the cub wandered back, the fierce protective rage of this mother bear threatened the very lives of the startled campers. From this incident, Sue made analogies to her ow n life: In order to become an adequate mother, I had to learn to keep the old sow bear under control. Sow-bear love is a dark, hairy sort of thing. It wants to hold, to protect; it is all emotion and conservatism. Raising up a man child in the middle of twentieth-century America to be independent, strong, capable and free to use his wit, intellect and abilities required other kinds of love. Keeping the sow bear from making a nuisance of herself may be the hardest thing there is to being a mother. [Sue Hubbell, A Country Year: Living the Questions (New York: Random House, 1983), 89-91] How to set up your own Neighborhood Preschool From Tender Mercies: [Doesn’t seem to correlate with sow bear] One winter day when son Carlton was four, he spent the afternoon playing at his friend Elliot’s house. When he arrived home he commented with apparent confusion that Elliot’s mother didn’t study at all. He had assumed that all mothers spent most of their days “studying.” Some years later the two boys were having a dust up that quickly deteriorated into a shouting match—whose dad could beat up the other one. When that proved inconclusive, Elliot brought out his big guns. At least his mother would never sit him on the front steps with a clock and tell him to start walking to preschool when the alarm rang. Carlton returned home alarmed—and not just because he had no malicious dirt to hurl at Elliot’s mother. Had I really done that? Crazy thing is that I didn’t actually remember. But I did admit that it sure sounded like something I’d do. The church with the preschool was only four houses away; and the college where I taught was a block in the other direction. But, truth be told, I did raise a free-range kid. Carlton said “She’s crazier than you are.” From Tender Mercies: Carlton was a prodigal just out of high school. Refusing to live by house rules, he ran away, slept in his car and worked at Little Caesar’s on the far side of town. Attending a social gathering three days later, a woman asked me about him. Before I could finish a sentence, I started bawling so hard I had to excuse myself to the rest room. The next night I drove to Little Caesars, stepped in the side door and asked him to come home. He returned—no running to meet him, no celebration, no fatted calf. Some parables just don’t work for mothers. Within a year he had moved out to live with friends. Close by, albeit in a faraway country. I needed to get hold of him one afternoon. No answer. Finally, hours later after interrogating friends, I learned he was in the ICU. Rushing to the hospital and down the hall, I told the woman at the counter I was looking for my son Carlton, choking tears as I asked how he was. She glared at me. I’ll never forget her look of disgust. Her only words, “He was drunk.” I found him lying on his back, strapped to the bed. tears running down both sides of his head, strapped down because he had tried to run away. I told him I loved him. He would be okay. On another occasion, his girlfriend called the police, reporting that he was drinking and had been shoving and threatening her. (Fortunately, she wasn’t injured.) Police arrived and took him to jail. I learned of it from her the next morning. I was in my seminary office when she called. I had a class to teach in ten minutes. We always started with prayer. I asked if there were any prayer requests. Hardly had I gotten the words out when the tears started falling. There I was, the teacher, weeping in front of twenty students. I pulled myself together enough to briefly tell them my son was in jail. Students prayed for me that morning—for Carlton as well. The class would never be the same. Two years ago, a sober Carlton walked his beautiful daughter down a garden pathway to be married to a fine young gentleman. A crisis in his life had motivated him to give up drinking and smoking cold-turkey. He regularly goes to his nearby AA. Carlton stories in Seasons of Motherhood Carlton’s Story from first draft of WA I know a young man—now twenty-six—who has struggled in his faith since adolescence. His story is far more complex than a few paragraphs can reveal, but one important aspect of his journey from child to adult is symbolized best with a letter—a letter written with ink compared to a very different letter written on the heart. He grew up a preacher’s kid and would sometimes travel with his father, who would fill the pulpit at churches in neighboring towns—a man who appeared to be an upstanding Christian. But at home, his father lived a very different life. The son often witnessed his father physically abusing his mother—and even threatening to kill her—all this while condemning those who did not use the King James version of the Bible and those who did not believe in a literal 24-hour-day creation. And the son himself sometimes bore the brunt of his father’s wrath—once for not having his BMA (Bible Memory Association) verses perfectly memorized on Sunday night when he was scheduled to recite them. In 1987, after more abuse and threats, he and his mother escaped the home and his mother filed for a legal separation. Not long after that his father left the Midwest and moved to the East Coast. It has now been more than ten years since the son has seen his father—or has known where he lives or had a phone number for him. Before his high school graduation in 1992, he sent to his father a letter and photo of himself--through a New Jersey attorney, hoping it would be somehow passed along, In response he received a letter--the only letter he has received in ten years--dated May 8, 1992. In it, his father defends his being out of reach by phone because he said he had disconnected the phone. He did not say why he had not called his son, whose phone had not been disconnected. In the letter, among other things, he asked, "What is your grade point average?" But even more disconcerting to his son was the expression of piety that had no correspondence in behavior: Most importantly, I have been praying for growth in your spiritual life and your allegiance to the truths of God's Word. Have you by any chance resumed memorization of the Bible verses in the Bible Memory Association? How are things at church? Maybe you have had some interesting conversations and discussions in school with teachers or fellow-students about the Bible or salvation that you would like to share with me. By the way, although I have not called or written you recently, you have been in my thoughts and prayers daily . . . . [at that time it had been 3 years] He gave no return address—insisting that any correspondence would have to be sent to the attorney. After reading the letter, the young man threw it on the floor, and hissed, “What a phony! It’s all a pack of lies.” He never tried to contact his father again—through the attorney or otherwise—except by calling a great aunt in 1996 to request that she let his father know that he was getting married later that spring. His father did not even send a card of congratulations. Is it any wonder, I sometimes ask myself, that this young man has strayed so far away from things of God? I cannot say he has lost his faith—but he lives as though he has—and it breaks my heart. This young man’s name is Carlton, and he’s my son. He harbors no continuing bitterness toward his father—and he would never speak against God or the Bible or the church, but many who have been poisoned by hypocrisy do have hostility toward anything Christian. 5. Black & White Bible I once lived on 532 Pleasant Street in a small Midwestern town surrounded by rich farmland and large dairy herds. It was an idyllic setting, or so it seemed on the surface. But sin and scandal were all too real. I was a young minister’s wife and a new mother. Life was good. Then there was that unforgettable knock on the door. My world fell apart. We were forced to leave town unexpectedly and under a cloud due to the exposure of my husband’s hidden misdeeds—stealing coffee and donut money from the county jail where he visited a prisoner each week in the hope of converting him. God might have rained down fire on that town or on us, but he did not. When we left, I looked back with anguish and guilt and utter sadness. Yes, I looked back. For me the pain was searing and I can still feel that hot metaphorical sulfur singeing my skin now decades later. I’m reminded of Lot’s wife. Was she an innocent victim residing amid the corruption and debauchery of her neighbors, or did she have issues as well? Though referred to in the Bible as a city, Sodom was a small town in the Jordan River plain, a well-watered garden where cattle grazed and shepherds tended their flocks. Perhaps she too lived on Pleasant Street and took pride in her newly wallpapered kitchen and her freshly washed clothes blowing in the breeze. Like me, she fled with her small family, perhaps also burdened with guilt and utter sadness. And she also looked back. For this parting glance, she was struck down and sculpted into a pillar of salt—forever remembered for her disobedience, if not for her supposed wickedness. Is it even possible for us today to reflect on this woman with objectivity and a sympathetic heart? Can we come alongside her and learn things that perhaps no other woman can teach us? The English text referencing her is a spare one dozen words: “But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt” (Gen. 19:26, NIV). How can that one sentence possibly frame an entire life? Surely it cannot. Unlike many biblical figures who rate only a sentence, however, her days are lived out in the shadow of her husband and daughters. It is an implied life and legacy, ever so indistinct. It was a cold West Michigan evening in March. Spring quarter at Trinity [Evangelical Divinity School] had begun a week earlier. I recognized my husband’s mood before we had even sat down for the evening meal. When we finished eating, I tidied up the kitchen, took my books and notes and went upstairs while he watched his usual TV programs and Carlton did homework nearby, listening in as he typically did. After an hour or so I heard my husband’s footsteps on the stairs. I stiffened, dreading the worst. He entered our bedroom where I was hunkered down, and then seemingly out of the blue, with not so much as a segue into the topic, demanded to know my interpretation of a particular biblical passage that related to women. I explained that I was very busy in course preparation and did not wish to discuss the matter, particularly because I knew it would create problems. He proceeded to give me his interpretation of the passage. When I remained silent and refused to agree with him, he became irate and began very loudly threatening me and exclaiming that he would not let me fly to O’Hare in the morning. He yanked me from where I was sitting, my papers flying in every direction. Hearing his father shouting, Carlton was up the stairs two steps at a time. It was not the first time he sought to defend me. Normally, his crying out at his father put an end to violence. But not this time. My husband demanded he leave the room while at the same time squeezing my arms with all his might and viciously shaking me. Carlton did leave. He raced back to his own room and grabbed two knives, one no more than a hard plastic toy, the other a Swiss Army knife that he had managed to open before returning to confront his father. At twelve, Carlton was tall and lanky, but no match for his six-foot-two father who could do a hundred pushups without breaking a sweat. When I saw the knives, I screamed for Carlton to get out, but within seconds my husband had thrown him to the floor, taken the knives and was coming at me again. In a second, Carlton got back up and tackled his father crying out at the top of his lungs. And then somehow amid the mayhem it ended. My husband left the room still raging, ordering Carlton to come downstairs with him. The next afternoon I was in Deerfield, in my classroom greeting students and wearing a turtleneck and blazer that conveniently covered the bruises—black and blue finger marks on my upper arms. I had taught the course before and once I was into my rhythm and lively discussion was underway, I was in another world. After the class ended in the late afternoon and all the students had checked with me on term projects, I gathered my books and notes and began making my way over to the little apartment on campus where I stayed. My real life flooded over me, covering me like a shroud—like a shroud of pitch-black oily fright. A quick call home to Carlton relieved the tension. But the situation seemed hopeless. Our little family was a complete mess. Where would this all end? There are many underlying factors to consider in attempting to understand why a husband would beat and terrorize his wife. I’m certain a psychiatrist could write an entire volume on my ex-husband. But from my vantage point, his perspective on male supremacy and female submission was front and center. He repeatedly quoted Scripture to defend his headship and to enforce my unconditional obligation to submit—from the “kitchen to the bedroom.” He might have added to that list my home office where I prepared lectures. His rule was absolute and final—most notably during his violent moods. Black and white Bible, black and blue wife. Why didn’t I just pack up and leave with Carlton? That’s a complicated question and will be dealt with throughout this volume. Perhaps a more appropriate question that relates specifically to this chapter is: Why didn’t I tell this very story to that full house at Wheaton? It’s a story the audience—students, staff, faculty, and visitors—needed to hear. I was a professor, like Wheaton professors. The crowd could relate to that. And here I was, a woman, a wife, a mother standing before them. I was exhibit A. In fact, what if the forum for that evening at Wheaton College would have been not a debate but a storytelling forum—a session during which John Piper and I simply sat down and talked and interacted with each other about real people and about ourselves. We could have done that. We knew each other. I spoke one Sunday night about missions history at his church in Minneapolis. I was welcomed into his home. I commend him for his bestselling book, Desiring God and for his active involvement in mission outreach around the world. And he has commended me. In fact, in January of 1984, he wrote (now posted online): “Noël and I are reading together in the evening Ruth Tucker’s book, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions (Zondervan, 1983). Then we pray together.” In 1993, he made reference again to his and Noël’s having read that book together nine years earlier. Instead of debating, he could have related experiences of counseling married couples in his ministry and he might have talked about how he and Noël work through issues. I might have told stories about my parents’ marriage and revealed details of my own marriage breakdown. Imagine the impact we could have had on those students. I had a woman who was in a church that I served, and she was being subject to some abuse, and I told her, I said, “All right, what I want you to do is, every evening I want you to get down by your bed just as he goes to sleep, get down by the bed, and when you think he’s just about asleep, you just pray and ask God to intervene, not out loud, quietly,” but I said, “You just pray there.” And I said, “Get ready because he may get a little more violent, you know, when he discovers this.” And sure enough, he did. She came to church one morning with both eyes black. And she was angry at me and at God and the world, for that matter. And she said, “I hope you’re happy.” And I said, “Yes ma’am, I am.” And I said, “I’m sorry about that, but I’m very happy.” The reason he was happy, the Reverend Paige Paterson (then president of the Southern Baptist Convention) explained to a large conference audience in 2000, was because the man on hearing his wife praying came to church and when the invitation was given, “he was the first one down front. . . . And remember, when nobody else can help, God can.” Thirteen years before that in 1987, I scheduled an appointment with the president of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Dr. Ken Meyer. I had asked for the meeting to inform him that later in the week I would be separating from my husband. I was apologetic for the embarrassment this would bring Trinity, and I was prepared to suggest two other professors who would be able to finish my courses for the remainder of the term. In no more than a sentence I explained that my husband was violent and had beaten me on many occasions. Why hadn’t I come to him earlier, he demanded. Was I okay? Did I have a support network back in Grand Rapids? How was my son doing? Of course, I was doing the right thing to escape with my son. And then, without so much as a “poor baby” he launched into a lecture. In the many years he had served as a pastor, he had repeatedly counseled abused women to get out of their dangerous domestic situations. They took his advice until their husbands wept and apologized and pleaded for reconciliation, promising never to beat them again. But the violence always continued. When I told him that my husband would never apologize, he shook his head and sighed, “Mark my word, he will.” (And he did.) President Meyer insisted that I must separate for at least six months until my husband underwent serious counseling, and perhaps even then we should not be reconciled. Such violence is pathological and a class in anger management often serves as little more than a band-aid. Ken Meyer was spot-on in his assessment. With the help of a singularly compassionate attorney and an understanding minister at our church, my son and I escaped to safety. Through the court I was granted a restraining order, separate maintenance, and sole custody of Carlton. Soon thereafter my husband agreed to joint counseling sessions with a Bible church minister whose small church was on a country road forty minutes north of Grand Rapids. It proved very ineffective. My husband and I were not reconciled. Three years later I received a call from an attorney in New Jersey informing me that my husband, whose whereabouts neither my son nor I had known, was suing for divorce. I did not contest. In the decades since we escaped, friends, acquaintances, and even publishers have urged me to write my story. Why not? Writing is my primary profession. But the pain of reliving those years has always stood in the way. More than that, humiliation. Few can comprehend the depth of shame that still lingers. And not just the shame of being married to an abusive minister but also the awful acknowledgement of my own complicity—the failure to report my husband to law enforcement when his crimes involved an innocent individual. “This issue of wife abuse was addressed by Elisabeth Elliot a few years ago when she was speaking before a large gathering of seminary wives at a well-known evangelical seminary. It would have been naive to assume that there were no battered wives in that audience. Yet in response to the question ‘Should a wife remain in a home where she is being physically abused by her husband?’ Elliot pointed the women to 1 Peter 2, which speaks of slaves who were ‘beaten’ and ‘endured’ even when they had done no wrong. Elliot then quoted 1 Peter 3: ‘In the same way, you women must accept the authority of your husbands.’ In her spontaneous commentary on these verses, she said, ‘I don’t think that requires a woman necessarily to stay in a home where she is literally being physically beaten to death. But on the other hand, it might.’” How does headship and submission work on a daily basis? John Piper is the answer man. Suppose it’s Noël and I. I am about to decide something for the family that looks foolish to her. At that moment, Noël could express her submission like this: “Johnny [Who knew?], I know you’ve thought a lot about this, and I love it when you take the initiative to plan for us and take the responsibility like this, but I really don’t have peace about this decision and I think we need to talk about it some more. Could we? Maybe tonight sometime? Notice, he says: I am about to decide something for the family. Is this for real? If she doesn’t point out that a particular decision is foolish, does he just go about his merry way making decisions for the family? And is Noël really expected to respond in the way he has scripted? I can’t imagine how she can even breathe. I’ve met her and know her from a distance as a public speaker. She is a highly intelligent and capable woman. It’s just plain sad to think of her in these circumstances, though I suppose she’s used to it, having had more than forty years to measure her words and actions. Interpreted to fit headship perspective (SBC abuser), My take is that non-Christians should find the faith inviting 6. Biographical Bible Here is where I find the Bible speaking the loudest (see funny song in Intro): creation, fall, redemption, the Bible is not a book where we see a lot of godliness among its characters I’ve always been interested in doctrinal issues and the man-made classifications of systematic theology. But such is often as personally biased as hermeneutics—biblical interpretation. Take, for example the Canons of Dprt. Introduction When King Hezekiah learns from the prophet Isaiah that he is terminally ill (with a boil) and that he ought to set his house in order, he breaks down and weeps, pleading with God to heal him. Isaiah departs and is hardly out of earshot when the Lord speaks, telling him to inform Hezekiah not to worry—more precisely, that he has heard Hezekiah’s prayer and seen his tears and will reward him with fifteen more years of prosperous rule. With a lump of figs, per Isaiah’s instructions, the boil is healed. But how will Hezekiah know for certain that God really means what he says? He is apprehensive. He needs a guarantee. (Does he have a fifteen-year planner with appointments already scheduled?) He tells Isaiah he wants a sign. Isaiah gives him a choice. Either the sundial can go forward ten degrees or backward the same distance. Hezekiah, desperate for peace of mind, is determined to put God to the hardest test. He opts for backward. Isaiah cries out to the Lord and the sundial goes backward. Generations earlier the prophet Balaam has a short and rather routine conversation with his ass, leaving the reader with the distinct impression that the prophet and the ass may have conversed before. Later on Elisha is traveling with his students to establish a satellite campus near the Jordan River. As they are felling trees to frame out the student center, an axe head flies off the handle and lands in the river. Elisha tosses a stick into the water and the axe head swims to meet it, and the felling of trees continues. The prophet Hosea is ordered by the Lord to marry a prostitute. Jonah, swallowed by a big fish, lives in its innards for three days and is spewed out no worse for wear. Paul is caught up to the third heaven where he experiences such indescribable wonders that he is dumbstruck. John of Patmos tops that when he becomes more than a spectator in the most spectacular apocalyptic live production of all times. The Bible is the most fantastic book to fall into the hands of humankind. Its characters are alive, authentic and utterly unpredictable. They work miracles and serve the needy as often as they succumb to Satan’s wiles; they murder and rape; they marry, mourn, and manipulate; they confess sordid sins and worship God in ways that would today gross us out. Every predicament and emotion and enchantment found in the twenty-first century is somewhere lurking in the pages of Scripture. 7. Fired at 57 Named names, factual quotes, chronological details, emphasis on menopause, accused of ungodliness—feisty or phony The Menopausal Woman Three gospel writers tell the story of the woman with an issue of blood. I commend them. They don’t find such a matter too unspeakable to record. In my recent experiences, this is a problem that would not be raised in decent company. I taught for six years at a seminary that had never before in its one-hundred-twenty-five-year history had a full-time woman professor (much less a single mom and divorcee). The other professors were all married and obviously familiar with female issues, but such things were not the subject matter of lunch table discussions. Imagine the reverse. We’re all women except for one lone male hired a century and a quarter after the school’s founding. We would have talked about issues of blood as easily as the gospel writers did. In fact, I would have explained to my female colleagues (even if the lone male happened to be close by) that the reason I had been walking the halls like an old lady was because of my issue of blood. I was menopausal, a part of life we all would have naturally talked about. After weeks of dragging myself around, I made a doctor’s appointment. He was shocked. Ordered me immediately to get to the clinic down the hall and receive a transfusion of two units (pints) of blood. I followed orders, and as soon as they released me less than an hour later, I was back at the seminary, now almost skipping down the hall. What fun it would have been to knock on the doors of my sister professors and shout the news that I had been healed. But alas, there was no one to listen. The blood transfusion did nothing to lessen my grand mall hot flashes, since I had opted not to take hormone pills. My students were used to my carrying on with lectures and class discussion while I walked to the back of the room and opened a window to get a rush of cold air. They took it in stride. Not my colleagues. On one occasion, I left the table at a faculty meeting and went to the back of the room, opened a window and stuck my head out. The president asked me if something was wrong. I pulled my head back in and responded: Not really, I’m just having a hot flash. Except for my closest colleague who was so tickled he put his head down, my colleagues and the president appeared far less than comfortable with the information. Jesus would have taken it in stride. Except that Jesus didn’t take it in stride when a woman touched the hem of his garment. All we know about her is what the Bible says best in King James English: she had an “issue of blood twelve years.” Jesus is on to her. He stops walking and asks who touched him. The disciples are bewildered. Dozens of people were pushing and shoving to get up close and personal. He was, after all, a healer. Those with afflictions assumed they had to make a specific verbal request before any healing could take place. The woman did not. She had been to physicians but her condition had only grown worse. This was her last hope, and she assumed she could sneak through the crowd of curiosity seekers and simply touch his robe. If he were what people had said he was, this might be her lucky day. Luck? Her initial hope may have been based on superstition alone. She touched and “straight-way the fountain of her blood was dried up.” What happens next is one of the most beautiful passages in the gospels—and a consolation to menopausal women everywhere: But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague (Mk. 5:25-34, KJV). He called it a plague, knowing full well what some of us endure. In an effort to personalize her, tradition tells us her name was Veronica and she hailed from Caesarea Philippi. Nonsense. She would rather remain nameless and without an address. So shall she be. 8. Katie Luther Carlton Gardens comes in here Compare with Abigail Adams Of the two dozen books I’ve writte, only one is a biography. Writing another person’s life is a daunting task, especially when others have taken on the same subject. That I had something very different to say is key that spurred me on. Katharina von Bora. Tall, slender, dark haired, piercing eyes, passionate voice, stomping her foot in defiance, refusing to be intimidated. She was headstrong and determined. No shrinking, submissive, subdued, sweet lady was she. She knew what she wanted and not even Martin Luther could stop her. The crowd was riveted to her every word, clucking, cheering, laughing and clapping. I close my eyes and can still hear her distinct Kenyan-British accent. She had begged for the role. It was the class play for our final session of my church history course at Moffat Bible College, Kijabe Kenya. The previous year we had burned Polycarp at the stake—almost literally when his shabby black choir robe caught fire. He was tackled by fellow students who quickly put out the flames and the drama continued as though the football pile-up had been planned. The whole student body, faculty and staff had come out for the performance, and there was great anticipation this year. Word-of-mouth publicity had done its trick—much buzz about Martin Luther and Katie, staring Kotut and Beatrice. As a class we had chosen the topic. Parts were assigned—or rather fought over, with the loudest and most articulate students snatching lead roles. Indeed, voice projection was critical. If you were loud you were in. I was the director, no challenge on that, working with the students on choreography and chronological events. From there they created the dialogue with my insistence that they keep things snappy. No long speeches. They were ready and a tad nervous on that cool sunny morning. The crowd was bigger than the previous year now joined by students from the nearby nursing school. I stood backstage behind a small curtain crowded with actors, ready to push a Tetzel or Pope Leo X onto the “stage” if they didn’t hear their cue. Curbing his usual class-clown tendencies, Kennedy welcomed the noisy crowd and presented appropriate background information. There was a momentary hush. Then, wearing Polycarp’s shabby, now singed, black robe, Martin strutted out from behind the curtain onto the grassy knoll carrying on like a good sixteenth-century Reformer: hammering theses to a door, railing against indulgences, preaching salvation by faith and doing what my students loved most, building a fire—in this case to burn a papal bull. But it was Katie who stole the show. She entered Wittenberg in a wagon with my two other female students and several males dressed in drag—the best we could do for nun’s attire. Martin quickly finds husbands for them, all except for Katie. Having been stood up by the man she thought was her fiancé, she is already vulnerable and now she alone is left. Martin seeks out a worthy gentleman whom Katie agrees to marry (or, as she emphasizes, Martin himself), but the man is threatened by this sassy, assertive woman. Poor Martin. A confirmed bachelor himself, he has been assigned to find husbands for them all. So, with no other prospects, he brings out Casper Glatz. No! It can’t be. Casper Glatz? The students had unanimously picked our oldest white missionary professor for the part. He was perfect: short, bald, self-conscious, clueless. The haughty Katie sizes him up and shreds him right there in front of everyone. No way will she ever marry Casper. The audience howled with laughter. I have no recollection of exactly where we went with the drama from there but it was truly a smash hit, curtain calls to prove it. Katharina, wife of Martin Luther, was by any measure the First Lady of the Reformation. Important as she was, however, she would remain unknown to us were it not for her larger than life husband. Yet she stands alone in her own right, albeit as a woman: first lady, second sex. Katie Luther was not known for godliness nor could she have been rightly accused of phoniness. Yet, her biographers routinely present her as a woman of deep faith. She was a secular woman. By virtue of marrying Luther, Katie joined the Protestant ranks. That there is no evidence she actually made this new faith her own has gone essentially unnoticed by historians. She was nevertheless the most indispensable figure of the German Reformation save for Martin Luther himself. Take her and their twenty-year marriage out of the picture, and his leadership would have suffered severely. Had it not been for the stability she brought to his life, he may have gone off the rails emotionally and mentally by the mid 1520s. His emphasis on, and modeling of, marriage and family as an essential aspect of his reform would have been lost. Only Katharina von Bora—no other woman—could have accomplished what she did with this most unstable man. Without her, the Black Cloister would have gone to ruin—the result of which would have been no “Table Talk,” and that is only the barest beginning of what would have been lost without her. Although his colleagues surely must have been at least unconsciously aware that she was the key to his emotional, mental and financial stability, they were far more annoyed than appreciative of her commanding presence in his life. But the question remains, where would he have been without her? What if he had never married? What if he had married a sickly and submissive woman like Idelette Calvin? It is difficult to imagine him as the great Reformer he became. For me, making Katharina von Bora relevant to my Kenyan students was relatively easy. They were very familiar with the problems related to arranged marriages and extended families all living under one roof. They had grown up in homes without modern conveniences, no running water or electricity. They understood the backbreaking toil of farm work on their family shambas. They knew what it was like to carry heavy loads of wood to cook the next meal. They all had a cho out back with no toilet paper and they were all too familiar with the bloody rags women used during their monthly periods. Emergency rooms and good doctors were too often a tragic death away. Childbirth was perilous. Hunger was real. Indeed, times were tough for my Kenyan students. They identified with daily life in Wittenberg five hundred years ago. And like the folks around town back then, they could name women just like Katie—women who were not afraid to talk back in male dominated marriages and communities. Indeed, I have no doubt they understood the women, the customs and culture of that era far better than I did. So how do we make a five-hundred-year-old Katharina relevant to North American culture in the age of iPads? Is there anything she has to say to Western women and men today? Besides being one of the most fascinating women in history, why should we take time to make her acquaintance? In many ways Katharina’s voice echoes among modern woman, wives and mothers who have carved out careers of their own. And unlike so many of the Reformation women we read about, her primary vocation was not related to ministry. She was a farmer and a brewer with a boarding house the size of a Holiday Inn. All that with a large family and nursing responsibilities. In may ways, Katie could walk right into the twenty-first century—lean in, her motto. 2017 marks the 500-year anniversary of Martin Luther's posting his 95-Theses to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, which, more than any other event, ignited the Protestant Reformation. Luther was truly the Giant of the Protestant Reformation. Without his fierce determination, it is difficult to imagine how the sixteenth-century Reformation would have taken hold in Germany---or anywhere else in western Europe, for that matter. And Katharina von Bora, second only to Luther himself, was the most influential individual of the German Reformation. That's exactly what I say in this book, subtitled: The Unconventional Life of Katharina von Bora (a play on words here, un-convent; she did, after all, escape the convent). Indeed, her escape which has sometimes been summed up as a midnight caper was anything but that: 12 nuns who had taken vows of silence planned with tight-lipped outsiders to carry out a capital crime---the kidnapping of nuns. Due to very serious physical and mental afflictions, it is doubtful that Luther could have carried out the Reformation without his very strong and competent wife, Katie. She was a shrewd business woman who ran the Black Cloister monastery like a Holiday Inn; she bought farms; raised crops, cattle, swine and poultry; she planted gardens and vineyards, brewed beer, served as a midwife and was mother of six biological children and several orphans. Before all that came heart-pounding romance---though not with Martin Luther. Words were whispered and a promise was made, that is until Jerome returned home to visit his well-heeled parents and told them he would be marrying an impoverished run-away nun. Her marriage to Martin at age 25 was no romance at all; he was a brutish man who, by his own account, had not changed his sweaty, smelly bedding for more than a year. She was determined to change him, and she did. His friends and colleagues thought her to be a domineering woman, but Martin adored her, and she him. 9. Women in the Bible Dynamic Women, story of Woodstock---Lot’s wife Dynamic Women, story of taxidermy---Priscilla I love studying women of the Bible. Both the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible are loaded with them. Indeed, you hardly open Genesis and you’re face to face with Eve. And not a sweet, submissive godly lady either. After failing to talk down the snake, she becomes the mother of all living. And as such she represents all women who sometimes think they’ve endured more pain than humanly possible. The son who kills his younger brother is banished from the family, even as she and Adam are banished to thorns and thistles. The Bible begins with biography. The opening summary of creation quickly zeros in on Adam and Eve. The astronomer, the geologist, the botanist, or the zoologist looking for specialized facts finds the record wanting. But the biographer fares far better. Perhaps the most striking feature of Adam and Eve is that they have no history. They have no conversations that begin with Remember when . . . Nor do they have a context apart from the unpopulated haven in which they live. They name animals and eat from fruit stands in the Garden, but there is no chitchat about neighbors or the weather. Nor do they have aches and pains to discuss—no bickering or boasting in that perfect paradise. Life might seem mundane to a modern observer, but they know nothing else. Our heart goes out to Eve. And to Bathsheba. Was she, as many scholars believe, raped by David—murderer and rapist? He saw to it that Uriah, the Hittite (husband of Bathsheba) was killed on the battlefield. One evening Bathsheba was bathing as was appropriate on her back patio, apparently not realizing there was a peeping tom in the neighborhood. For many men, that kind of titillation would be all they could expect. But David was rich and powerful and took the widowed Bathsheba for his eighth wife. How might she have felt about that? Even as he stands in all his naked glory in Florence, it is doubtful a grieving widow would have regarded him as such. It’s not that David couldn’t knock women off their feet by his very presence—even before he became king. The married Abigail (who would become one of his first wives), rushed out to meet him with food and other supplies. She fell on her face before him, bowing herself to the ground. After marrying him (after her husband died, though apparently not in the manner of Uriah the Hittite), she gave birth to a son, Chileab. Even before that, however, David was in the habit of abusing women—locking them up for his own purposes, not allowing them to have lives of their own. Then there is Ruth. Oh, my! She sneaks into the threshing floor while Boaz sleeps heavily with too much booze on his breath. When the cock crowed at dawn, was she with child? We’ll never know but Obed came along not too long after. I like her (and Naomi’s) spunk—and not just because I was named for her. When it comes to Esther, I easily imagine that Vashti was seriously wronged. She apparently was a good queen but she wouldn’t parade in front of the King’s male party-goers. Esther was young a d beautiful—and she ended up doing a great service to her people, as is celebrated in the feast of Purim. When I read the Book of Esther, however, I easily find myself siding with the Bible’s first (and perhaps only) proto-feminist. Queen Vashti is the one who stood up against her husband when he sought to demean her. She was a dignified queen and she deserved honor. Because she will not do the bidding of her drunken husband, he sends her packing and issues a decree not only against her but all the women in the realm. Esther, by virtue of her beauty, comes along and takes her place. I surely know that this is all part of God’s plan, but nevertheless, my allegiance naturally slants toward Vashti. She had the self-respect to stand up against a bully, her husband the king, and she suffers for it. Unfortunately, this Persian queen often gets lost in the story of the great Jewish heroine. Many years ago when I was in my first teaching position at Grand Rapids School of the Bible and Music, I stopped by the office of student services to pick up the newly minted basketball schedules. On one side was emblazoned with the title Men’s Basketball, the other side Girls’ Basketball. I did a double-take. Something is wrong with this picture—or these titles. The players were the same age, mainly upperclassmen. Or, should I say, upperclasspersons? Why then men and girls? When I questioned the woman who had laid out the schedule and sent it to the print shop, she was confused by what appeared to be the initial stages of a snit. That’s the way we’ve always done it, she responded. I’m sure she must have I’m sure she rolled her eyes after I left, but to get rid of me she assured me that from now on there would be gender equality in the titles. And there was. Having been raised in a family that assumed the girls had full equality with the boys, I found anything that smacked of gender inequality unacceptable. And it never occurred to me that my mother had anything other than straightforward equality with my father. They were full partners on the family farm. Today ender inequality is found in every aspect of life. Too often we hear the minister officiating a wedding pronounce the couple man and wife. Now, unless a woman is marrying a boy who, by virtue of the wedding ceremony, becomes a man, the minister should pronounce them husband and wife. There are other aspects of wedding ceremony that needs shoring up that I might reference at this point, but I won’t. Vashti refused to prostitute herself before the king and his cronies. But prostitutes are a part of biblical lore. There Gomer a prostitute who became the wife of the prophet Hosea—on God’s instructions. As such this couple was to be an object to the people of Israel—people, metaphorically prostitutes—who were unfaithful to God. The most famous of the biblical prostitutes was that notable woman from Jericho, Rahab. First Paragraph on Rahab She is a harlot working in the world’s oldest profession, a career considered shameful not just among the Israelites but even in the ancient pagan world. Although prostitutes sometimes gained prestige by being associated with cults, they nevertheless often found themselves on the lowest rung of society and were regarded as morally deficient. Such a stigma was attached to Rahab. She lives in a condo on the massive wall of Jericho, referred to as the “city of palms.” She is not married herself but has family—parents and siblings (no mention of children)—in town. She makes a living by of- fering sexual services and overnight accom- modations. Life is anything but boring. As we move into the New Testament, we find the Virgin Mary who has more statues in yards today than Jesus, himself. Indeed, I’m guilty myself. I’ve had my Mary statues. Years ago after being out of town for several days, I was driving a freeway approaching my home in Grand Rapids amid blizzard conditions. I spotted a Catholic church with a large statue of Mary on a hill. Carlton was on my mind. He was spinning out of control, son of a single mother, now living on his own. I exited the freeway, wound about to the church, climbed the hill, kneeled down in the snow and prayed to Mary. Did she answer? It may have taken years, but today John and I join him and Molly for an Easter Sunday service at their church. Christ is Risen. He is risen, indeed! But Mary was no subdued push-over. From the time Jesus was twelve (and maybe many times before), she challenged him about his behavior. And when rumors came to her that he was behaving like a weird prophet she called his brothers and together the went to find him. They tried to get him to come home, wondering if he might be possessed by an evil spirit. Then as any broken-hearted mother would do, she wept at the cross. Why? Why? Why? But soon she became an ardent follower not so much of her son per se but of the risen Christ. She is a model for all of us—far more than a concrete statue. The story of the woman taken in adultery is found in John 7:53-8:11, True not in earliest manuscripts, but good story nevertheless. But was she actually caught in the sex act or was it presumed by others? I fictionalized that their encounter was planned. Her husband a merchant traveled often to Phoenicia, leaving her alone with four little ones under eight, three having died in infancy. She had known the young man since childhood, and now he stopped by regularly going door-to-door with deliveries. They would meet at the shed by the market before the rooster crowed the following Tuesday. But hardly had the laid down in the straw when they were caught in adultery—or, she was caught. We know the rest of the story. The Pharisees would have stoned her to death, but for Jesus, who appeared on the scene at the right moment. I have my own similar story though not being caught. I was in an abusive estranged marriage while living with my husband in the same house. My good friend, an older man (now deceased), was a beloved church elder, also a furniture salesman and short-term missionary to Kenya. I had confided in him about the beatings I endured. He was outraged and very sympathetic to me. Our relationship was innocent—until it wasn’t. No adultery per se but neither was it innocent. There are many men today, including my now, ex-husband, who would hurl a backpack of rocks at me before Jesus would have time to speak. 10. Church History My favorite course of study especially when it is balanced between men and women. I put myself in the church history text as a model for students to see themselves I history—not merely gratuitous. Check it out Chapter 1 I first learned about New Testament characters from a flannelgraph propped on an easel. The colorful paper characters and props set against a non-descript green and blue landscape made the stories come alive. I later taught a beginner Sunday school class in the same way. Life was simple back than and so were the stories. No longer. As I’ve studied the Bible over the years I have come to realize how complex it really is. I welcome controversial interpretations and unconventional insights. And I am not alone. The field of biblical studies is a dynamic and growing enterprise capturing the attention of scholars from wide-ranging disciplines and from vastly different cultural backgrounds and theological perspectives. This chapter on the New Testament era is foundational—the raison d’etre for the entire book. Without the first witnesses of Jesus there would be no church history. But the chapter is also unique in its source limitations because it is based on the biblical account without challenge to the its historical accuracy. I have often told my students that the freewheeling profession of historian is more suited to my temperament than that of biblical scholar and the constraints that go with it. If newly discovered documents, for example, revealed that Martin Luther late in life had recanted his “Protestant” faith, I could accept the verdict and add the documentation to this text. But I enjoy no similar latitude with the closed canon of Scripture. As a historical source book, the Bible stands alone[—a book I accept as the Word of God]. I do not challenge its accuracy as I would other sources. So it is with this disclaimer that I offer the first chapter—a chapter rooted in my faith commitment more than in my profession as a church historian. Chapter 2 What was she thinking, I ask myself. It is the beginning of the third century and Perpetua is facing her executioners. Here is a young mother leaving behind her infant son. Her aged father is pleading with her to consider his needs and spare her life. All she would have to do is put off her catechism class to a less dangerous time. But instead she willingly becomes a martyr remembered through the centuries for her sacrifice. If I try to put myself in Perpetua’s shoes, it is hard to imagine that I would have made the same choice. Leaving behind a motherless child was one of my biggest fears until my son reached adulthood. And I’m no doubt way to cowardly to face the executioner’s violence. I probably would have looked for an easy way out. This is not to say that I don’t have great reverence for martyrs and those who have endured persecution. Polycarp in his eighties was dragged out of the hayloft where he was hiding, only to be burned at the stake. Today from the Middle East to India and China and around the world, there are reports of churches and property destroyed and Christians terrorized, assaulted and killed. Most North Americans have little comprehension of persecution. “O, yes they do,” a student will quickly retort. “What about Debbie at the UCLA who failed her dissertation defense because of her evangelical beliefs?” Another example I have heard is the Christian minister who was not permitted to pray at the Colorado governor’s inauguration while a Native American spiritualist was. Such examples, however, do not deserve the label of persecution. For the one struggling to complete a dissertation, the opposition may truly feel like persecution but it dare not be ranked with the horror that accompanies a door kicked down in the night and a father hauled away to a dungeon never to be heard from again. American Christians expect tax breaks for their Sunday offerings and churches enjoy property tax exemptions. They take for granted religious programming on radio and television and freedom of religion on every soapbox and in every stadium. Anything that falls short of such freedom is easily labeled persecution. Not so, I tell my students. Before you use the term, put yourself in the place of Polycarp or Perpetua. Chapter 3 I sometimes wonder if I would have been a follower of Jesus had I been his contemporary and been aware of his teachings. I also wonder what position I would have taken in the swirl of the fourth century Arian controversy—with no access to the Bible as we have it today. Most people take for granted the Christian doctrines they confess, with no thought of how difficult it would be to devise a systematic theology if the only text available were the Bible—and worse yet if there were not even a complete canon of Scripture. This was the predicament facing Christians in the early centuries. Complicating matters were political factors and personality clashes. It is impossible to find a parallel situation today, but imagine a wide spectrum of American Christians trying to agree on a doctrinal statement. What if the President got involved, and in the end the Supreme Court settled the matter? It sounds preposterous, but in some ways it would not be altogether different from what occurred at the Council of Nicaea in 325. Emperor Constantine threw his considerable political weight around and influenced the outcome. Today the situation is made more complex by established denominations and entrenched hierarchies unknown in ancient times. Such institutionalized religion, infused with money and power, is rarely open to change or compromise. With centuries of scholarship behind us we stand on the shoulders of theological giants. But how would we ever agree—even on the broadest framework of a doctrinal formula? Would Mennonites and Quakers, for example, insist that pacifism be part of the formula? (They could argue after all that, like the deity of Christ, pacifism was almost universally affirmed by early Christians.) If so, would that derail the process before it could even got off the ground? Add to the matter of pacifism a hundred or a thousand other competing issues and we begin to realize the many differences to overcome in forming a consensus. So when we look back to the early church deliberations, albeit infused with back-alley maneuvering and political pressure, we ought to stand in awe. The Council of Nicaea—and councils that followed—set the parameters for Christian belief in the ensuing centuries. Chapter 4 Saints, we all know, are regular people. Or are they? The Catholic Church does not canonize saints willy-nilly. To be deemed a saint one must have reportedly lived a holy life and performed at least one miracle. Today in an age of cynicism, miracles are more difficult to prove, but from biblical times to the Renaissance and beyond their validity was often simply taken for granted. And miracles were performed in the names of holy men and women long after they died. Last year I was diagnosed with shingles, a painful neurological malady that is first manifested by a rash. In my case I knew something was wrong when I began feeling sharp pains above my ear radiating down my neck. Two days later I spotted a rash on my chest. I immediately called my doctor and got a prescription that promised to relieve the pain and irritation. The medicine worked, though more than a year later my ear still itches. Had I been living in medieval times a physician would have had little or nothing to offer me. I would have prayed for healing but not necessarily to God. I would more likely have prayed to St. Anthony, the saint called upon to cure infectious diseases—especially shingles (herpes zoster). Indeed the affliction is still known in Italy and elsewhere as Anthony’s fire. Ascribed with even greater responsibility is Laziosi Peregrine, the patron saint of people afflicted with cancer or AIDS. Saint Dymphna is called upon to cure insanity. But when all hope is gone—when other saints have failed—Saint Jude remains. One of the twelve disciples, he is the patron saint of “lost causes.” The prayer is “Saint Jude, hope of the hopeless, pray for me.” Modern medicine easily usurps the intercessory power of the saints. But with a looming health care crisis in many parts of the world the saints may rise again. Chapter 5 The funniest book I have ever read is John Kennedy Toole’s “A Confederacy of Dunces,” often labeled a cult classic. Ignatius Reilly, the main character, is a slob. He’s not just grossly overweight and a sloppy dresser, with serious intestinal and gas issues, but he’s lazy and disrespectful and—hard to believe—incredibly arrogant. His primary “occupation” is writing his book, each section beginning with “Dear Reader.” But finally his mother pushes her freeloading son out to get a job. He works for a time in a pants factory—the most hilarious portion of the book, second only to his short-lived hotdog-cart job that ends abruptly when his employer discovers he is eating all the profits. But what I find most amusing about the book is that Ignatius, himself a philosopher of sorts, looks to Boethius, the early medieval author of “The Consolation of Philosophy,” as his idol. I had memorized the name Boethius in order to pass a college philosophy test, but had never given him further thought until I read this novel. A late riser, Ignatius, lying in bed, ”pulled his flannel nightshirt up and looked at his bloated stomach . . . contemplating the unfortunate turn that events had taken since the Reformation.” He is worried about his bad fortune and fears he will go the way of Boethius and be tortured and killed. Later on in the book, the “large, elegant, limited edition” of “The Consolation of Philosophy” is used as a weapon by a crime suspect about to be arrested by an undercover policeman. Still further on, the name “Boethius” serves as a pick-up line for Ignatius who meets Miss O’Hara, a “Boethian” stripper, in a darkened dirty dingy nightclub. The last time we hear of the book, we learn that “Somebody stole it off him in the toilet”—a key piece of evidence in a conspiracy against Ignatius. Of all the medieval writers, Boethius is truly the most accessible today, and thanks to Ignatius Reilly, “The Consolation of Philosophy” has enjoyed a bit of a revival in recent years. Chapter 6 Years ago I spent an afternoon in the magnificent chapel of Princeton University where hundreds of icons were on display. I found them interesting but they seemed alien to my own evangelical heritage. I did not find them to be windows to God. The same was true as I visited and viewed the domed Orthodox cathedrals in Moscow. There was great beauty but nothing that inspired a direct connection with God. This morning after worshipping at our own church, my husband and I visited an Orthodox Church. St. George Antiochian and St. John Chrysostom Russian are nearby in downtown Grand Rapids. But we decided to travel across town to the much larger St. Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Church. Here we were offered an introductory session with Deacon Justin. He pointed out that the various “brands” of Orthodoxy in America are unique. Orthodoxy elsewhere in the world is simply that, with no prefix. But when immigrants began flooding into the United States they established churches in their own cultures and languages—thus Russian and Serbian and Greek Orthodox churches. As we entered the sanctuary, I was expecting a large open room with no seating. This is true in the old countries, Justin told us, but most Orthodox churches here have made concessions to American sensibilities and provide pews. But no compromise had been made on the incense and bells and ornate robes and high-church liturgy. Icons with gold-leafed halos adorned the walls and ceiling: Mary with arms outstretched and baby Jesus in her heart above the altar and Jesus directly above us in the dome, surrounded by great figures of the Old Testament. The people in the pews seemed sincere and no less genuinely Christian than those in my own church. Yet there was a chasm separating us. That we were asked not to participate in the Eucharist was as much their loss as ours. Chapter 7 In the late 1970s when I was a new professor teaching my first courses in Church History, one of the questions students sometimes asked as we moved into the Middle Ages was: “Do you think there were any real Christians then?” Though I should not have been surprised, I was nevertheless jolted by the query. My response today is the same as then: of course. Moreover, there is no way for Protestants to trace their heritage back to the New Testament era or to the Church Fathers except by going through the Roman Catholic Church. We may rightly ask whether certain popes were really Christians. But whatever the answer, they are our popes. The Western Church did not disappear in the generations following the Apostle Paul and then suddenly reappear as Martin Luther was nailing his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg. Nor is the matter solved by identifying “Protestant” stepping stones such as Waldo, Hus and Wycliffe Mormons maintain that the gospel was lost at the end of the apostolic age and that it reappeared in the form of the “Restored Gospel” when Joseph Smith dug gold plates from the Hill Cumorah. That is Mormon history. It is not Christian history—even if we were to shrink the “lost” centuries down to ten or fewer. If some medieval popes are sleazy slime-balls, so be it. They are nevertheless my popes. I am a Catholic through the Middle Ages. My people (Lutheran by ancestry, Reformed by adoption) came straight out of the Roman Catholic Church. Martin Luther and John Calvin were both Catholics, as were the vast majority of first-generation Protestants. As Protestants, we do our own heritage a disservice if we imagine that medieval Catholicism belongs to Catholics only. It is a heritage we share. With that perspective, it is natural for us to regard Catholics today as brothers and sisters whose ancestors, unlike ours, did not veer off the Roman Catholic road in the sixteenth century. Chapter 8 Illicit sex. Scandalous romance. Activities not typically associated with medieval theologians. Anselm and Aquinas and John Duns Scotus simply do not seem to have sex appeal. The same cannot be said, however, for Peter Abelard, theologian and teacher. He was the Brad Pitt of his day—handsome, intelligent, confident and the ultimate ladies’ man.. I first became acquainted with Abelard in college. I liked him for his outspoken challenge to his teachers and I took for myself his motto: “The first key to wisdom is this constant and frequent questioning. . . .For by doubting we are led to question, by questioning we arrive at the truth.” My regard for him began to evaporate, however, twenty years ago when I was researching my book “Daughters of the Church.” Reading about his love affair with Heloise, I became convinced it was no love affair at all. It was a case of shameful sexual abuse perpetrated on a minor. Perhaps he deserved what he got, I reasoned, when he was castrated. But then several years later I wrote an article titled “Heloise and Abelard's Tumultuous Affair.” I did further research, and as I came to know these two individuals better, my thinking shifted again. Heloise, at seventeen, though nearly half the age of Abelard, was considered an adult. She may have seduced him as much as he did her—though he does later admit to threatening her. After the castration, he repents and moves on, while she grovels in her undying love for him. They spend the rest of their lives separately serving in monasteries. Since writing that article, however, I have again wondered about my assessment. How much of the love affair and subsequent letters can we really trust? Is this history or legend or some of both? So compelling is the story that it was made into a film, “Stealing Heaven.” Here the sexy scholar is portrayed with his student, gorgeous and gifted. The thousand years of distance easily vanishes. Chapter 9 What most pleases God? Prayer and meditation or humanitarian service? This is an age-old, often unconscious issue facing Christians of every generation. Should our faith be weighted toward the contemplative or the active life? More than a decade ago, after delivering a series of lectures at Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington, I was on my flight home seated across the aisle from a nun in full habit praying her rosary. My curiosity mounting, I waited to greet her until our lunch was served. I forget my ”pick-up line,” but within minutes we were engaged in a lively conversation. She had taken a vow of silence, but was able to talk while away from the convent with anyone who opened up a conversation. She was pleased I had reached out to her. Here was a one-time executive office manager who had left her promising career and gone through a marriage ceremony with Jesus. In fact, she showed me photographs of her wedding. She looked lovely in her elegant lacy white gown. Although she had taken a vow of silence, she was now being released to teach at an inner-city parochial school in Cleveland. She was excited about this temporary opportunity for service. When I asked if she would like to be released to spend the rest of her life in such a service ministry, she expressed ambivalence. As exciting as this new venture was she did not want to leave behind her life of contemplation. As we consider monasticism in the Middle Ages we see extremes of both the active and the contemplative life—not so much in one individual as in individual monastic systems. Is one way more spiritual than the other? Is one way too much navel-gazing, as some would say? We come to understand our own perspective on spirituality as we reflect on historical models. Chapter 10 The prelude to the Reformation was both positive and negative. On the positive side there were many individuals demanding reform in the Church. On the negative side corruption was rife—all manner of fraudulent rackets right in the belly of the Church itself. But amid the corruption, creative juices were flowing, most notably in art, architecture, and literature. This is particularly evident in Florence, the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance On a trip to Italy in 2006 my husband and I were among the teeming crowds of tourists visiting that wonderful city—the “Athens of the Middle Ages.” Here one finds not only spectacular works of art but also places of great historical significance some of which tourists are unaware. The Piazza della Signoria is one such spot. To this square Girolamo Savonarola, the celebrated evangelist of his day, brought his followers in the spring of 1497. They joined in building a bonfire to burn “vanities”—everything from popular books and board games to ladies’ gowns and works of art. The next year the evangelist himself was burned in that very piazza. In that same piazza stands that grandest of all Michelangelo’s sculptures—high and lofty in all his naked youth and beauty—David, having not moved since he took up residence in the fall of 1504. The Medici family of wealthy bankers (with its close ties to the papacy) also took up residence in this city. While patronizing the arts and music, they controlled money and much more to their own advantage. Machiavelli called this city his home, and that is where he wrote “The Prince,” his political guide for rulers. Dante also hailed from Florence. Although his poetic writings were apparently not among the vanities Savanarola burned, they were surely considered burnable by popes and others whom he harshly attacked. Strolling through the piazzas and across the bridges spanning the River Arno, we almost sensed the cobblestones crying out in a clamor of voices from the past. Though distant in time and culture we were yet so near to those who once deliberated in the piazzas and walked the narrow streets. Chapter 11 I often wonder how I might have responded to the whirlwind of reform in sixteenth-century Germany. It is muddled and messy and mean-spirited, virtually devoid of the pious saints we imagine inspiring a reformation I sometimes play a little game with myself. What if I were not so different from who I am but living five hundred years ago in the German homeland. As an educated woman, I might have been a Roman Catholic nun. How then would I have responded to the Reformation? Would I have reacted like many nuns did and resisted any attempt to force “freedom” onto me? Would I have clung tightly to the bonded community of the convent? Or, would I have conspired to escape in the dark of the night, hidden on a wagon designed to carry herring barrels? So it was with Katherine von Bora—a nun who welcomed what she perceived to be freedom and biblical truth associated with Luther and reform. Like the feisty, outspoken Katie, might I have been the last one for whom a husband could be procured and have ended up married to Luther? Like her, might I have been more than a house frau and had a little farm of my own—entirely outside my famous husband’s oversight? Would I have enjoyed overseeing a manse with lively little ones under foot and celebrated scholars and students coming and going? Such is hardly a fantasy. Being the house frau of Martin Luther would have been a most difficult role. Katie Luther holds my deepest admiration—and sympathy. But there is another part of me that would have relished being at the center of theological turmoil in the very foundational years of this momentous movement. Would I have held true to tradition, courageously refusing to bow to this new “heresy,” or would I have heralded a new day, thumbing my nose at the convent, never looking back? For me the answer is easy. On my father’s side, I come from a long line of German Lutherans. I am in personality and in spirit and in heritage a true daughter of the Reformation. The influence Luther has had on my heritage and that of all Protestants is enormous and difficult to exaggerate. Thus, an entire chapter devoted to his life and ministry and closest colleagues. Chapter 12 I consider myself part of the Reformed family of faith. For good or for ill John Calvin is the recognized “Father” of this movement. His influence, however, goes far beyond the tens of millions of Reformed Christians worldwide found in such diverse places as France, Scotland, Korea, South Africa, Orange City, Iowa and Grand Rapids, Michigan. And Calvinists are found in Baptist and Bible and Pentecostal churches. Calvin’s ideas permeated secular culture as well. The Pilgrims and Puritans were largely descendants of Calvin. The Geneva experiment was carried to the American colonies and even today American culture cannot fully escape the influence by Calvin. The five-hundred-year anniversary of Calvin’s birth in 2009 drew attention to his important place in religion and culture. It also drew light-hearted reflections on this most serious Reformer—humor that reminded me of a spoof years ago in the Calvin College student publication. A popular party game was “Servetus,” named for the well-known heretic burned at the stake in Geneva. The object was “to think of a new excuse why JC was justified in giving Servetus the torch. . . . If you give a reason that is ethically equivalent to saying ‘everyone in the 16th century was doing it’ then the whole table has to drink a shot of tequila. . . . That’s the party equivalent of a home run.” In honor of Master Calvin’s big 500, I added my own attempt at humor with a re-write of a familiar nursery rhyme that begins with an allusion to the Heidelberg Catechism still widely used today. Chapter 13 In addition to speaking, teaching, and writing, I have for more than a dozen years operated a little garden and gift shop featuring outdoor furniture, birdhouses, chimes and much more. Lyle, my supplier for Adirondack chairs and swings and benches, is an Amish artisan from northern Indiana. His lifestyle is as simple as it is complex. The Amish, known for plain living, actually conduct their lives under a system of complicated rules and restrictions. For example, he has a toll-free phone number but to receive his calls, he must travel the three miles each morning in his horse and buggy to access them. There is no electricity on his farm—only a large generator that powers his very sophisticated woodworking tools. Why is he permitted to have such tools and not be allowed to drive a truck? Why can he use a generator to make furniture while his wife washes clothes by hand and lights lanterns to illuminate the rooms at night? It all makes perfect sense to Old Order Amish communities who each have their own variants of the given rules. Maintaining a plain lifestyle is the critical element in determining how modern implements and technology can be utilized. If a toll-free phone and power tools do not impinge on lifestyle, leaders of the local congregation may permit their use. Because his religion does not permit him to own or drive a vehicle other than his horse-drawn buggy, he teems up with Mennonite neighbors who deliver his furniture. Mennonites are spiritual cousins of the Amish, some of whom are still known for their distinctive lifestyles and separation from the world. A young man and his “spoken-for” friend, neither out of their teens, delivered one of my orders. They were a striking pair, not only for their good looks but also for their dress: he in a white shirt, black hat, pants, and suspenders; she in a light blue ankle-length dress, white sneakers and socks, hair pulled back in a bun with a small white head-covering. She worked alongside her future husband as they unloaded the truck. I talked with them as I have often talked with Lyle. They are at ease in their separation from the world, enjoying a sense of security and community that few of us in the hustle of our fast-paced lives will ever fully realize. They draw heavily on a spiritual and cultural Anabaptist heritage that arose in the sixteenth century—a tragic time of martyrdom at the hands of so-call Christians—Catholic and Protestant alike. Chapter 14 On a recent trip to Chicago my husband and I were exploring the city on a Sunday morning and happened on the Madonna Della Strada Chapel—an impressive structure on the Lake Michigan shore of Loyola University. Appropriately named, this particular Madonna had inspired Ignatius Loyola. What I found most fascinating about the chapel is its stained-glass recognition of dozens of church notables, including more than twenty Jesuits, not the least of whom is Ignatius Loyola himself and the most well-known missionary of the movement, Francis Xavier. But also in the stained glass are the four great Latin Fathers (Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great) and the four great Greek Fathers (Gregory Nazianzen, Basil the Great, Athanasius, and John Chrysostom). In another area of stained glass are depictions of other well-known saints, including Thomas Aquinas, Thomas More, and Vincent de Paul. Here in one chapel is a virtual hall of fame of church history—featuring Jesuits to be sure, but giving a nod to Dominican scholar Thomas Aquinas. Also depicted in stained glass are three nameless Japanese Catholic converts representing thousands of sixteenth and seventeenth-century martyrs. They, together with European missionaries, were killed by rulers suspicious of Christian priests and their religion. As I looked in silence at the stained glass that Sunday morning I was reminded of Shusaku Endo’s powerfully-written classic novel “Silence,” a story of seventeenth-century Catholic missionaries set in Japan. News that his mentor, a Portuguese priest, has apostatized prompts Father Rodrigues to search him out. In the process he too apostatizes and tramples on a fumie (an image of Christ) to save the lives of Japanese Christians being slowly tortured to death. Where is God in the midst of such suffering, he wonders, overwhelmed with “the feeling that while men raise their voices in anguish God remains with folded arms, silent.” For all of us who have known the silence of God, this profound story offers less consolation than understanding. Chapter 15 The English Reformation set the stage not only for the establishment of the Church of England, but also the Church of Scotland and the Puritan movement in its various guises. The era exploded with turmoil and excitement. Today religion in England almost seems to be a thing of the past. In fact, as my husband and I traveled through the English countryside a few years ago, we wondered at times if the Anglican Church might more properly be classified as a vast museum. Our vacation doubled as a speaking and study tour. As part of my research we visited dozens of old Anglican churches in urban settings as well as in small towns and rural areas. We were struck by their beauty—beauty often tempered by disrepair. In London we wandered in the late afternoon to St. Paul’s Cathedral for evensong. No more than a few dozen worshippers were scattered throughout the vast sanctuary. We stayed on for the weekly lecture, the speaker being Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, once a position of great power and prestige. Our travels also took us to Scotland where the once-vibrant Church of Scotland has now lost much of its fervor. Founded by John Knox, a sixteenth-century Reformer, its nineteenth-century mission outreach was second to none. We were disappointed to find the Knox home in Edinburgh closed for repair. I was curious to get a closer look at this man—in some ways a male chauvinist of the first order. I have since wondered how present-day Presbyterians feel about their founder. Two miles away from where I’m now sitting at my desk in Grand Rapids, Michigan is John Knox Presbyterian Church, one of many churches so named. This morning I called Rick, the interim minister, asking him about the man for whom the church is named. Does anyone ever clamor to have the church otherwise identified, I asked, considering Knox’s attitude toward women? His response did not surprise me. “I don’t think anyone knows anything about him.” His answer explains why I plow ahead on this text. Chapter 16 Puritans. Love ‘em or hate ‘em. When the term is used as an adjective (“She’s so puritanical.”) it has negative connotations—though in this permissive day and age such a stigma can be refreshing. On matters of religion Puritans truly were capable of being insufferable and priggish. They bemoaned and belabored the sinfulness of others and themselves, readily admitting their faults and failures. Today many Christian leaders exhibit a façade of perfection. Not so the Puritans. There was a time years ago when I took a page out of Puritan spiritual disciplines and kept a daily spiritual diary. I wanted to be hard on myself and my own sinfulness. I recently reviewed some of those entries. February 14, 1981: “Well, here begins a week of a Puritan diary that I assigned for my American Church History class. . . . The study of the Puritans has been good for me. They were highly organized and wasted little time. I need that. Also, they seemed to accept their faith almost blindly, without philosophical doubts.. . . . The Puritans were to a degree mystics, with their emphasis on meditation. I think this is more of what I need. . . . One of the strong points of the Puritans was their continual self-analysis which led to self-improvement. . . . If I can do that this week (and the rest of my life), this diary will be a success.” My plan to become a Puritan in a week, as the diary indicates, was cut short by a severe case of strep throat. Nevertheless, I continued to keep a daily record of my sins, believing Puritan parameters ought to be mine. Like the Puritans I tend to be hard on myself—beating myself up even when it is unwarranted. Yet, I have come to wonder if the continual striving to be more spiritual can at times be little more than self-absorption . I eventually gave up on my Puritan diary, convinced I simply was not and could never be like they were. I smile today when I look back at this period in my life more than a quarter century ago. Unlike some church leaders today who regard the Puritans as spiritual giants, I do not. Their positive attributes were offset by negative ones. We deceive ourselves when we idealize individuals or groups of individuals. Whether Moses or King David, or Paul or Augustine or a Puritan divine, the heroes of the faith have feet of clay. Chapter 17 One of my most memorable stops during a 10-day trek through the English countryside some years ago was spent at the Swarthmoor Hall in the Lake District. Built in 1586 by George Fell, the estate was passed down to his son Thomas who bequeathed it to his wife Margaret Fell, the “Mother of Quakerism.” Throughout her lifetime it became the command center for the Society of Friends. Now a religious retreat and conference grounds, the estate was closed the Monday morning my husband and I visited. A kindly caretaker, however, agreed to take us through the home: kitchen, dining room and parlor, and up the stairs to the master and children’s bedrooms. He told stories and answered questions in a wonderfully homespun way. Then he let us roam the gardens and fields at our leisure. What a memory-filled sunny morning it was. Whether wandering through the dewy grass or poking around her kitchen, I sensed the spirit of Margaret still lingering from centuries ago. Our time there reminded me of a comment made by a colleague, a professor of church history. He remarked to his students in class that Margaret Fell is famous only because she married George Fox, the founder of the Quakers. This is one way you women can make a name for yourselves, he joked. I find it interesting, and perhaps mystifying, that the highborn Margaret Fell married the rag-tag, smelly, eccentric, wandering prophet George Fox. But it surely was not to gain fame. She outlived him by more than a decade, and her singular accomplishments in many ways outranked his own. She helped to put the Quakers on a more solid scriptural footing; she set the stage for gender equality; and she paved the way for pacifism to become a key element in Quaker belief. As a wealthy widow, she might have lived out the rest of her life in ease on that most magnificent estate. Instead, she sacrificed her wealth and time and freedom for a higher cause. Chapter 18 We have a little farmhouse in northern Michigan where we go—MacBook in tow—to get away from phones, email, and the bustle of greater Grand Rapids. Located in the “town” of Isadore, we are the only residents except for Father Don who lives across the road next to Holy Rosary Catholic Church. On the far side of the church is Holy Rosary cemetery. Here in our town of three residents (two part-time), stands a living—and passing—memorial to the staying power of the Catholic Church worldwide. Whether the Church came into its own with the Apostle Peter or, centuries later, with Pope Leo the Great, its long history of endurance and expansion is impressive—and absolutely fascinating. The Church is anything but static and steady, however. Its ups and downs, its cruelty and compassion, its profligacy and charity, offer stark contrasts. Even the picturesque Holy Rosary Church situated in the timeless rolling hills of Leelanau County embodies the opposite extremes of its Mother Church. Traditions of community service and care-giving are everywhere. But hidden beneath the brick façade is a secret that lies in a nearby unmarked grave. Like many of the secrets of church history, this one is closely guarded, and even readers of the church’s one-hundred-year history (1998) are left in the dark. On August 23, 1907, Sister Mary Janina, a nun serving at the Isadore parish, went missing. Newspapers later reported that she was murdered by the priest’s housekeeper, apparently upset by the close relationship between the nun and the priest. The housekeeper was tried and convicted in 1919, but that was not the end of the story. In the 1970s, Broadway and Hollywood presented their versions in “The Runner Stumbles,” and history faded into fable. Last year author Mardi Link spent a long weekend at our little farmhouse (that doubles as Isadore Writers’ Retreat) writing perhaps the definitive story of this incident. Published in 2009 by the University of Michigan Press, it is a well-researched and absolutely absorbing page-turner. The title speaks for itself: “Isadore’s Secret: Sin, Murder, and Confession in Northern Michigan.” Chapter 19 Some years ago I stood on a gravestone and preached to an audience of one—my husband. We were outside an Anglican Church in Epworth, England on a weekday afternoon. The tomb in the cemetery alongside the church was that of Samuel Wesley—the very tomb on which his son John stood to preach when he was barred from preaching inside the church itself. In that same town of Epworth is the Wesley manse where Susanna held forth as the now famous Mother of the Wesleys. As we toured her home I imagined her—this feisty woman who stood up to her abusive husband—as my sister, brought together over the span of three centuries. But such idle thoughts are only that. She and I are far removed from each other. Hers was a very different culture from mine. I was reminded of that last night after returning home from seeing the film “Mama Mia!” It is a lively filmed production of a Broadway musical with a southern European setting and lots of fun and frivolity and dancing. Less than an hour later my husband was back into his usual nighttime reading to me, in this case George Marsden’s biography, “Jonathan Edwards.” The cultural milieu in that book could hardly have been more different from what we had just seen at the theatre. Edwards, a dutiful son of the Puritans, was a minister in Northampton, Massachusetts and was determined to stamp out any signs of silliness and mirth in the town. In “Mama Mia,” Merryl Streep and her middle-aged gal-pals are jumping on the bed and dancing down the stairs shaking their booties and laughing themselves sick. For my husband and me, the movie was a feel-good flick—an escape from all the bad network news of Baghdad and bank failures and floods and fires. For Edwards—or for Susanna Wesley—it would have been a shocking symbol of the evil times we live in when professing Christians are enjoying such frivolity. History challenges us as we identify role models, but we should not fool ourselves in imagining that we could easily reach across the centuries and find cultural—or even religious—commonality. For Edwards and Whitefield and John Wesley and his mother, the “worldliness” of twentieth-first-century Evangelicalism would be anathema. Chapter 20 When my son was an adolescent in the 1980s we traveled the Finger Lakes region of New York for a family reunion. On our way we stopped at various historical sites, among them Seneca Falls, the setting for the first Women’s Rights convention and the hometown of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a nineteenth-century feminist leader. Further west we toured the childhood home of Joseph Smith. We walked into the woods where Smith reportedly received his first vision and went to Hill Cumorah where he later claimed to have dug up a gold bible he subsequently “translated” into the Book of Mormon. It was this region where Smith, the same age as my son, roamed the hillsides digging for buried treasure and employing various kinds of magic, an activity almost any kid would relish. Spiritualism was also part of popular magic and superstition of this region. Of particular interest were the famous Fox sisters who conducted séances and entertained devotees from near and far. Besides feminism, magic, and spiritualism, the region was noted for revivals—so much so that it became known as the “Burned Over” district—burned over repeatedly with the fires of revival. But revival fires burned far beyond the borders of New York. Indeed, for anyone following the revival road of history, Cane Ridge, Kentucky beckons. Here, campfires shot sparks into the night sky as revivalists shot terrors of hellfire into hearts of weeping, sometimes barking, converts. We studied the map, watched for signs, and asked for directions, wondering how thousands of people could have found their way to this remote site two centuries ago. The destination proved to be a disappointment. There was a tidy building, marking with photos and newsprint the site of this famous revival—but not a caretaker or tourist in sight. We were relieved, however, to have missed the summertime Cane-Ridge-Day celebration, a specious effort to recreate an event forever lost in time. How easily we visualize such happenings with amusement and nostalgia, with little thought of how controversial and bizarre they were at the time and would be today. Chapter 21 Mental illness. A serious issue but also a point of humor as in comedian Steve Martin’s tag, “a wild and crazy guy” or “Crazy Moody—crazy as a hare.” A throw-away line that I have often used is, “No one has ever accused me of being mentally stable.” It’s supposed to be a joke, but I have often wondered aloud in front of my students whether I would actually be able to pass the extensive battery of psychological exams required of today’s missionary candidates. Early generations of missionaries would have been entirely bewildered by such tests. But today mission agencies order a rigorous set of exams to weed out those who do not meet the psychological standard—whether bi-polar or simply unable to get along with others. Despite the vetting process, however, it could be argued that today there are more missionaries with psychological and personality problems as there were generations ago. The first generations of missionaries were “born warriors and very great men,” wrote Pearl S. Buck, daughter of China missionaries and Pulitzer-Prize-winning author. “There was a very madness of necessity—an agony of salvation.” Madness is an appropriate term for many of these missionaries—mental illness and fanaticism and heavy-handed tactics that tore families and teams and communities apart. Writing in the 1940s, Sherwood Eddy lamented: “Here is the point where many a missionary breaks down. Every normal missionary sails with high purpose but as a very imperfect Christian. . . . His character is his weakest point.” Character analysis and psychological study offer fascinating windows into the psyche of cross-cultural missionaries. From Dorothy Carey and Adoniram Judson to Mary Morrison and David Livingstone, mental health and missions intersect, and history repeats itself in the twenty-first century. Chapter 22 Growing up in the 1950s in a farming community in Northern Wisconsin, I was actively involved in a small Christian and Missionary Alliance Church. At the time I was unaware of the painful divisiveness that tore apart our denomination decades earlier over the issue of speaking in tongues. Pentecostal inroads into Alliance churches eventually led to a split and the beginnings of the Assemblies of God, today the much larger sister church. When my little country church joined with other evangelical churches for occasional special functions, Pentecostals, still on our enemies list, were not welcome. Nor were Methodists who were too liberal for our tastes. Wesleyan Methodists, however, were part of the mix, having broken from Methodists over “holiness” issues nearly a century earlier. John Wesley was a hero of our faith as was Luther, though the local Lutherans were too worldly to participate in our functions, had they wanted to. As a young adult I was associated with breakaway fundamentalist movements, including the Bible Presbyterians and Bible churches affiliated with the IFCA (Independent Fundamentalist Churches of America). I remember a business meeting at the Woodstock Bible Church where discussion centered on the possibility of an outsider coming in and speaking in tongues (though no one had ever done so before). It was decided that a deacon would escort the offending individual out of the church. Today such actions appear harsh—if not humorous. (Unlike early Catholics and Calvinists, however, we did not even contemplate burning an offender at the stake.) The fragmentation of denominations that I encountered as a youth is a microcosm of the larger evangelical movement that stumbled and split its way through the course of the twentieth century. Chapter 23 Albert is not welcome in my church. He’s there every Sunday, but to most people he is either invisible or ignored—or dismissed outright by everyone except my husband and me, though we’ve never actually conversed with him. We give him a nod or perhaps an inconspicuous salute. He is a big man. Indeed, with the exception of Jesus he is the largest full-bodied figure in the wall of stained-glass that towers behind the pulpits and choir loft in front of the sanctuary. Albert Schweitzer, the great missionary medical doctor to Africa—and “heretic”—found his way into our church, not by invitation but by artistic license. The artist commissioned to create this spectacular set of frames took the liberty of giving him a place alongside recognizable “saints”—Martin Luther, John Calvin, and others. But Schweitzer unlike the others is considered outside the realm of historic orthodoxy. He challenged liberal interpretations of the gospel accounts of Jesus in his well-known book, “Quest for the Historical Jesus” but was himself outside the realm of historic orthodoxy. So what was La Grave Avenue Christian Reformed Church to do? Could this big man be taken out of the glass? Yes and No: No, short of firing a cannon ball through the glass, he was there to stay. Yes, we can rid ourselves of him if we simply deny he is who he is. We can say the figures in the glass are generic representations of generic people and that one of them may appear to look like a generic Schweitzer but it is merely an illusion. Schweitzer’s less than orthodox doctrine was balanced by his passion to follow Jesus in sacrificial service. It seems to me that he ought to get credit for that. How many Christians who are fully orthodox in church dogma, I ask, fail to follow Jesus as he commanded? “Take up your cross and follow me.” Chapter 24 Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church. The setting, Plains, Georgia. The lesson, Queen Esther. The teacher, Mr. Jimmy—former President Carter. His church is one of many churches I visited while researching my book “Left Behind in a Megachurch World.” Some were tiny chapels, others the size of stadiums. I also visited churches beyond the shores of North America, travels that took me to England and Scotland and several countries on the Continent. Whether Italy, the Netherlands or Russia, my words reiterate what so many others have said—the once vibrant faith is in serious decline. In some areas of the world Christianity, after generations of mission work, has barely gained a foothold. My time in Singapore, Malaysia and Japan confirmed that very fact, though I found some Methodist churches in Singapore were flourishing. In Africa the exploding faith is all too often, in the words of my Kenyan students, a mile wide and an inch deep. Korea is where I found the faith most fervent. Hosted by friend and former student Chung Ki Jun, a professor at a Korean Presbyterian seminary, I preached and he interpreted. Most Korean churches are offshoots of American denominations: Methodist, Presbyterian, Assemblies of God. This visit, however, was sponsored by University Bible Fellowship, an authentic Korean Christian movement that has expanded worldwide. My last speaking venue was at Bethesda Christian University founded by David Yonggi Cho, pastor of the largest church in the world Yoido Full Gospel Church, the largest church in the world. Here in a country where Christianity did not even gain a foothold until the end of the nineteenth century the faith is vibrant, churches are expanding and missionaries are carrying the gospel around the globe. What would the great Apostle have thought had he known his message would one day virtually die out in the cities and towns along the dusty roads of his missionary journeys while finding root in distant unknown lands? From Plains to Seoul his message of “victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” rings out, though ever balanced by “take heed, lest you fall.” 11. Cults and Alternative Religions Research involved significant travel, personal interviews, wide reading of primary documents (sacred books) and even fiction (Rapture of Canaan), ties in with church history and study of the Bible, films, TV documentaries (in my library). The most rewarding aspect of this work was the privilege of coming alongside of Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God as it transitioned from “cult” to Evangelical church Years ago when I taught a course on “cults,” I introduced the topic by drawing a horizontal line across the chalkboard. At the far left I wrote orthodoxy and at the far right heresy. I asked my students to think about belief systems and identify individuals and groups from left to right. I began the exercise by turning back to the board and writing Me in large letters on the far left. It always drew a laugh, but my point was to illustrate that any attempt to evaluate the beliefs of others starts with ourselves. We may gallantly claim that the starting point is Scripture, but Scripture is interpreted by individuals and communities. An important point that I learned many years ago in a class on hermeneutics (Bible study methods) was that the first and most basic principle is awareness of oneself as interpreter. A white Presbyterian American man, for example, will likely approach the biblical text very differently from a black Pentecostal American woman—even more so an African woman. Such is also the case in interpreting other religious movements. We must be ever conscious of our own identity and perspective. I encountered taking points many years ago when I was visiting a Kingdom Hall. It was a scheduled weekly training session. The one in charge went over the week’s lesson. He asked questions and sought audience participation from the scripted answers. After that session was over we broke up into small groups where roleplay was featured. One played the role of a witness at the door and another played the “householder.” Talking points had been memorized beforehand, and when the witness goofed up the individual in charge of the small group interrupted and made the correction. This encounter reminded me of my own evangelism training at the church I attended in college. The role playing was not as structured, and we were not so often interrupted and corrected, but we were expected to more or less follow the proper talking points. The Christian faith was presented as a set of answers to questions rarely asked. Christians are perceived negatively by unchristians. And cults are perceived negatively by Christians. None of this negative perception is helpful. We should seek to understand these religious movements outside historic orthodoxy primarily as they see themselves. It serves no purpose to magnify their faults. Didn’t Jesus say before you concern yourself with the sliver in someone else’s eye you should be conscious of the plank in your own? QUOTE: How would you survive if you were surrounded by a million Sothern Baptists? 12. Stories of Faith—Writing Career You write just like a woman. That was a student’s analysis of me back in 1982, on the last day of my History of Missions class. It was my first term at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School as a visiting professor. For the following seventeen years I held that post, flying back and forth from Grand Rapids to Chicago, two days a week, spring and fall quarters. I was in the process of completing a missions textbook, and my students were using the yet unpublished manuscript, spiral bound. The comment, though coming from a male student, was actually a compliment. He went on to say that the history of missions came alive through the telling of stories, rather than through dry historical facts. That I write just like a woman is not a surprising assessment since I am a woman. But such a statement is not mere anecdotal evidence. Studies bear this out. In her book You Just Don’t Understand, Deborah Tannen has shown that women typically write differently from men because they think differently. Men tend to be more analytical and fact oriented, while women are more emotional and story oriented. William Zinsser, On Writing Well, pick topic no one else has done, check introduction about honesty, tell stories (Stories of Faith), read wide range of topics, magazines (New Yorker, Atlantic) and books, fiction and non (wedding invitation asking for books), my favorites: Jayber Crow, All Over but the Shoutin’, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, “Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers,” 10. The book also demonstrates how to write a novel through letters only. The back and forth letters to main characters tell the story. Teaching writing—most memorable at tiny campus in Italy I tell stories in Tender Mercies, one revealing my mental illness, and perhaps more should be told of that here, I take a cue for the telling from British author Charles Lamb writing to Coleridge. “I know not what suffering scenes you have gone through at Bristol. My life has been somewhat diversified of late. The six weeks that finished last year and begun this your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a mad house at Hoxton-I am got somewhat rational now and don’t bite anyone. But mad I was—and a many a vagary my imagination played on me, enough to make a volume if all told. . . . 27 May 1796 His letter ends the way all those of us who have experienced the mad house ought to end. He just carries on with his writing. And why not? “My sonnets I have extended to the number nine since I saw you.” To be a freelance writer requires discipline—far more discipline than to get up every morning and go to the office of the Grand Haven Tribune as my granddaughter Kayla does. She has daily deadlines. She can’t spend the morning sharpening pencils as a freelance writer is tempted to do. As such managing my everyday life is often stressful. Even as I write I’m contemplating how will keep up with a dozen other responsibilities? For me, through the experience of writing more two dozen books (and dozens of articles), the solution has been to go into what I term “writing mode,” committing myself to writing an average of one thousand words a day. As with previous books, much of the research is done ahead of time as I’m preparing course lectures. But writing requires a special discipline. So in the midst of an otherwise busy life, I jot down word counts on my calendar: Monday, 1008; Tuesday, 656; Wednesday, 1326; Thursday, 1129; Friday 1438; Saturday, 611; Sunday, 328; Monday 1796; Tuesday, 1536; Wednesday, 1029. They’re not all good or final words, but they represent progress. The first draft is completed and I hand it to John, my live-in editor to correct and revise. We bicker about the revisions, usually coming up with something better than the original—all this in preparation for a draft to send to my publishing house editor. I need criticism—and truly covet it—as a necessary element in the writing process. My life-management details are not presented to demonstrate that I am a leader and to call others to follow me. Rather, I offer them as an example of how I struggle to lay the groundwork for a “well-done” legacy. For most people, life takes a very different course. How one manages everyday life must be designed for specific needs and particular personalities. I am a multi-tasker who is able to snatch short periods of time for writing. And the menial work of raking and mowing and weeding and house-painting offers time to mull ideas over. Epilogue. Leadership It was not until I began calculating my carbon footprint that I seriously began to recognize how my lifestyle was adversely impacting an already fragile planet. That carbon footprint consciousness prompted me to contemplate my legacy footprint and to wonder what I would leave behind that would be of lasting value. What we leave behind when we die is a legacy footprint. It is made up of the sum total of good and bad deeds weighed in the balance. This is not a wheelbarrow of works that gets us through the Pearly Gates. It is what is left behind—the footprint of our lives. Christians are so often programmed to think in terms of faith over works—salvation by faith alone. Legacy, however, forces us to think in terms of works over faith. If faith is our ticket to heaven (albeit, oversimplified), works are what we leave behind, the stuff of our legacy—the stuff we hope will rate that seal of approval: Well done, good and faithful servant. It was a warm sultry August in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I had prepared well for a course I was teaching first time around, Leadership 620. After previewing dozens of books and hundreds of articles, I had chosen two texts and twenty-five articles that I listed on the syllabus as required reading spread out through the short two-week term. The seminary students in my class were all preparing for ministry careers and were eager to gain knowledge on how they might become effective leaders. Although I had never had any formal leadership training myself, I had been teaching and writing in related fields for most of two decades, particularly from a historical perspective. As an introductory course, this was not rocket science. I was a competent teacher and whatever expertise I lacked I made up for in my teaching style. Parker Palmer was my guide. In his book, The Courage to Teach, Palmer challenges teachers to live their topics and to be more concerned with the questions than the answers. He counsels the teacher to avoid arrogance and certainty—to “be patient toward all that is unresolved” and to “try to love the contradictions.” So I introduced the course with tensions and uncertainties and used Palmer for support as I spoke of the “Objectivist Myth,” quoting him as an authority: In the objectivist myth, truth flows from the top down, from experts who are qualified to know truth . . . to amateurs who are qualified only to receive truth. . . .There are only two problems with this myth: it falsely portrays how we know, and it has profoundly deformed the way we educate. . . . In the community of truth, as in real life, truth does not reside primarily in propositions, and education is more than delivering propositions about objects to passive auditors. In the community of truth, knowing and teaching and learning look less like General Motors and more like a town meeting, less like a bureaucracy and more like bedlam. . . . .” [Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of A Teacher’s Life (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998), 85-86, 101.] As I teacher, I love the word bedlam. My only regret as I look back on my years of teaching is that I didn’t have more bedlam in my classes. But unfortunately teachers are forced to teach by the book—by the evaluations. And there is no category for bedlam. And if there were, it would no doubt be on the negative side of the ledger, comparable to disorganized and ditzy. Indeed, there was incredible pressure at the two seminaries where I taught. The pressure, as Jane Tompkins writes in “Pedagogy of the Distressed,” was to show “students how smart I was . . . how knowledgeable I was . . . how well prepared I was,” rather than “helping students learn what they wanted and needed.” [Cited in Ibid., 28.] The word bedlam derives from St. Mary of Bethlehem, London, an insane asylum. I want my classes in an ambiguous way to mirror an asylum. I am certainly not as mentally and emotionally invincible as I once thought I was. I sometimes speak of as the summer of my mental illness. I was over my head as a general contractor trying to turn a residential property into a commercial property and getting a gift and garden business off the ground. Cost over-runs, a hastily planned wedding for my son and his fiancé, an auto accident totaling my van, another car wreck causing the premature birth of a granddaughter, weeks of visiting the neo-natal unit every evening—it all took its toll. I was popping a half dozen Sominex every night, still unable to sleep, and I was described by an asphalt layer as “that skinny lady”—perhaps under his breath as “that skinny bitchy lady.” I imagined my extreme unhappiness was due to circumstances. I learned only later that I was no doubt clinically depressed, a condition that (as typically happens) just gradually dissipated. Although this was a very difficult time in my life, I recognize it as a good story with more than a touch of humor. Soon after that painful summer I was attending a professional conference. I had been avoiding a colleague from another school the entire day, knowing he was going to press me to finish my portion of a project that he had dropped years earlier. I had now moved on to other things and had no time to clean up his mess. But I could tell the way he was talking to others that he was persistent. He cornered me during a coffee break, but I was ready for him. I listened to his pitch and, with sparing words, I responded: “I can’t. I’m mentally ill.” After he recovered from his momentary shock, he stuttered, “I’m very sorry, I’ll find someone else to do it.” Had I responded with any other illness—rheumatoid arthritis or intestinal colitis—he would have persisted to the point of wearing me down. But mental illness is a conversation stopper. And, now thanks to a good excuse from that previous summer of my affliction, I was able to better manage my everyday life without one more project. Everyone has a breaking point, as I was reminded by a “Sally Forth” comic strip. The summer blahs are consuming her office, evidenced by expressions and sighs of co-workers. She is sitting at her desk benumbed and thinking: “I wonder how high I could count before losing my mind.” What a line. I claim it as my own. [Francesco Marcuilano, “Sally Forth,” Grand Rapids Press (June 25, 2007), D2.] But with the help of Parker Palmer I resisted the pressure of just another professor who teaches to the student evaluations And during that hot August summer-school course, I insisted that the students should not expect truth to flow from the top down—from an expert who is qualified to know truth. I told them that we would confront far more questions and answers. “Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one’s inwardness, for better or worse,” he writes. “As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together. The entanglements I experience in the classroom are often no more or less than the convolutions of my inner life”—convolutions of my inner life, something we too often fear. [Ibid., 2.] One of the struggles of my soul as I had prepared to teach the course and as I stood in front of my students on the first day of class was an inner voice challenging my qualifications. When I had proposed the course a year earlier, a new administrator and colleague had strongly objected, saying more or less outright that I was utterly unqualified. The members of my division apparently thought otherwise, however, and my proposal passed. But now I was in front of my students and the voice was growing louder. Fortunately, Palmer’s voice prevailed. As I had done in the classroom on other occasions, I expressed my insecurities. For many of the students, especially those who had not previously experienced me as a teacher, the self-revelation was no doubt troubling. After all, this school boasted an all-male faculty (except for me), and demonstrating one’s expertise in front of the students was the name of the game. Prompted by a question from Dick, a student whom I had come to appreciate in another class as outspoken and confrontational, I was forced to deal with the matter of whether or not I was a leader, and if not, how could I teach a course on leadership. I was not caught entirely off guard, because I had already mulled the issue over in my mind. But the short answer was No. I’m not a leader, nor am I qualified. I quickly caught myself in a free-fall and pointed out that bedlam would be our goal. (At least that’s how I remember it.) But it was in many ways a good beginning. I had nowhere to go, in the eyes of my students, but to improve. And as I did, they caught on to the slippery nature of leadership and that they had better love and live the questions since there are no easy answers. My own self-disqualifier alerted them in advance that I had no capability of transforming any of them into an actual leader by the end of the course or even the end of their lives. But getting back to Dick’s question: was I a leader? When I confessed to the class that I was not, I was somewhat apologetic. Some students quickly interjected that of course I was a leader. I was a teacher of the class, a writer, and, I suppose, a just plain decent person. Surely such credentials qualify one as a leader. In reality, of course they do not. But then how does one qualify to be a leader? Is my colleague, who dismisses the notions of Parker Palmer and conducts his class with the “truth” flowing from the top down, a leader? If his classroom style resembles that of a General Motors CEO or a bureaucratic chief, does that mean he’s a leader? What we learned in that summer-school class is that the definitions of leadership are infinite, as are the principles and philosophies that accompany the definitions. Throughout the course we developed a solid learning community. The books and articles and video clips and discussion and research projects helped us process the concept and its practical implications in our lives. But the course also created enough tension to make us challenge some basic propositions and to carry with us a healthy supply of skepticism. One of the issues I broached at this male-dominated seminary was women’s leadership. Indeed, there is a significant gender gap in the practice and theory of leadership. Women, due to both nature and nurture, often function differently than do men. But that women should be instructed to be ever conscious of potentially threatening a man’s masculinity, be it a stranger or co-worker, feeds a man’s insecurities as well as her own. Such insecurities serve to hold women back in leadership roles. As I typed these words into my computer several years ago, I was crowded into the middle of the row, seat 25B, on Northwest flight 365 to San Francisco. I looked around me on that Tuesday morning and saw what appeared to be primarily business travelers, more men than women but probably a ratio of about two to one. But first class was an entirely different matter. Due to the full flight, we were slowed down while boarding. Standing motionless in first class, I counted heads. There were twenty-one men and only three women—a ratio of seven to one This airline algebra is obviously anecdotal (though I have often observed similar ratios). And numbers certainly don’t tell the whole story. Perhaps all of the female CEOs were sitting back in the cattle-car section with me in their concern for the company bottom-line. Maybe the twenty-one suits in first class were house-husbands dressed up for their annual get-away. But I suspect the numbers reflect what we all know—that women, in large percentages, have a long way to go before breaking through the leadership glass ceiling. For those in my seminary class, the authority on this matter was not Jesus—rather the Apostle Paul. But what does it all matter? Two decades ago the debate over Paul and women was on the front burner of my concerns. No longer. I’m convinced that Paul probably spoke out of both sides of his mouth on the matter. We only have to read Romans 16 to know that he had many important co-workers who were women, among them Phoebe (a deacon), Pricilla (always named before her husband Aquila), and Junia, who is listed among the apostles. But Paul was living in a culture where women were considered little more than slaves and other property. I might wish that he would have spoken up like a man and made an unambiguous appeal for women’s full equality, but he did not. Even if Paul was as conservative on the matter of women’s roles as many people claim, he was also conservative on the matter of slavery and fashion and many other cultural norms that we no longer practice today. So, the issue rests not so much on understanding the precise words of Paul, but rather on how we interpret and apply those words for today. Nevertheless, the idea that men only should be leaders is deeply imbedded in religion and culture. Emil Brunner, a twentieth-century Swiss theologian, considered by some to be the chief proponent of neo-orthodoxy, summed up what for many has been the Christian perspective on men and women: The man is the one who produces, he is the leader; the woman is receptive, and she preserves life; it is the man’s duty to shape the new; it is the woman’s duty to unite it and adapt it to that which already exists. . . . The man must build, the woman adorns; the man must conquer, the woman must tend. . . . It is the duty of the man to plan and to master, of the woman to understand and to unite. [Emil Brunner, Man in Revolt (New York, 1939), 358-59.] On the matter of women’s leadership, biblical interpretations and applications have steadily changed over the generations. Based on the Bible, women were for centuries denied standard human rights such as testifying in a court of law, owning property, voting, holding office, and various other civil liberties that today are taken for granted. Interestingly, evangelicals in the nineteenth century were in the forefront of women’s rights (and anti-slavery) movements. In recent decades, however, when it comes to issues of race and gender, evangelicals typically bring up the rear—if that. For women who enjoy a significant measure of equal rights with men, the matter of femininity need not be troubling. Female is feminine; male is masculine. But many men—ones who are thoroughly secure—will admit to having feminine traits. For women it is easier. A girl who is a tomboy or a woman who is strong and assertive (if indeed such a trait is masculine) can be positive, especially when contemplating leadership. In my early adult years, men who were preparing for careers in nursing, elementary teaching, or secretarial work were thought to be stepping down to women’s work. Women who aspired to the male professions like law or engineering, on the other hand, were moving up the ladder. I remember the earlier days of the modern feminist movement when we were conditioned to hear certain words as put-downs. I flinched when I heard women called ladies. And the hair stood up on the back of my neck when I heard someone talking about the girls in the office. Today I’m more relaxed about the term ladies, probably because we’ve come a long way, baby. The most important aspect of leadership is legacy, and we should assume that legacy depends on leadership. Legacy is an all-empowering term that begs for interaction and innovation. What about utilizing what is bad for good. For example: climate change (including global warming) is bad, and we should do all we can to combat it. But it is what it is. So, we should likewise use the bad—the sun’s warming for solar energy, the storms and gales to generate wind-turbans. The concept is thoughtfully developed in a Washington Post article (4-16-23) titled, “What if climate change meant not doom but abundance?” But even as we look to the future, we must also consider the past. History infiltrates everything we know a d do. For my high school graduation many decades ago, I received a brand-new Webster’s dictionary. It has served me through the years, always reminding me how much language changes over the years. Noah Webster is not a model for leadership, but he left a legacy that will continue until the end of time. His motto for his dictionary was a fitting quotation from Samuel Johnson: “He that wishes to be counted among the benefactors of posterity, must add, by his own toil, to the acquisitions of his ancestors.” Shine, Jesus, Shine (disclaimer) Disclaimer: A statement made to free oneself from responsibility, also called hedge clause. A word highlighted on National Weather Service website. Tuesday, full sun over Grand Rapids. But if the sun don’t shine? Voila! A disclaimer. I came of age burdened to witness. My life—their lives—depended on it. Jesus Christ, Son of God conceived by the Holy Ghost, crucified under Pontius Pilate, risen from the grave, coming from thence to judge the quick and the dead. Today the burden fades. Dogma with disclaimer. If the Son don’t shine, don’t blame me. Free from responsibility, wrapped in my hedge clause. SECOND LARGE FILE Preface An author of 25 books, I have become used to signing a contract with an advance. One of the 25 was self-published (Fired at 57) with editing done by my live-in editor, and publishing through Amazons free-KDP, without whose very reasonably-priced ($850) help from a publishing house editor I’d worked with before, would never have come to the light of day. The other book published without advance or royalties is comprised of 52 of my columns (Tender Mercies) written over the years is beautifully designed, and at no cost to me. My friends at Plain Truth Ministries are responsible. Agent Introduction Am I fooling myself? I know I’m skilled in self-deception, and maybe for the sake of argument I ought to suppose I am. (Jayber Crow, 247) Maureen Murdock, Unreliable Truth: On Memoir and Memory (2003) 1. Family Album I am forever grateful that I was born into a stable family. Five kids. I’m the middle child. Scandals and secrets were few and far between. In fact, my mind draws a blank. My brother failed to graduate from Michigan State University on time because he had been caught with a 6-pack of beer in the trunk of his car. My mother was humiliated. To her it was a scandal—and a secret. But she didn’t have to deal with shotgun marriages or drunkenness, not uncommon in our neighborhood. None of us kids were suspended from school for cheating. We were a normal family without disgrace reaching our doorstep. A nearby grandfather and uncle who were serious sex abusers, leaving cousins psychological distress—and suicide—that lingers today. My grandfather sought to groom me, and actually forced a slimy kiss on my mouth when I was alone in the barn one evening milking the cows. I pushed him away, and when I was done with my chores said to my mother, If Grandpa ever comes to the barn while I’m milking, I’m just going to walk out. He didn’t. She made sure of that. But she didn’t ask why. Why didn’t she tell him off? My sisters and I have postulated that she herself had been sexually abused by him and she knew what he was capable of I had reason to be terrified by my grandfather, but it was another man who kept me awake at night. Ed Geen From a positive perspective, we were all smart kids, honor role students, and David oldest brother a national Merit Scholarship finalist. In fact, they all achieved academic recognition in high school and college, all but me. My claim to fame was a small scholarship awarded for winning the top spot in a Northern Wisconsin brass competition—playing a Mozart French horn concerto before two sets of judges. So, we stood out in the neighborhood which included a lot of relatives. Drive a dozen miles west of Spooner, an you’ll encounter many more Stellrechts than Smiths. Our mother was the dominant parent. The neighborhood would have agreed. Percy, mild-mannered and passive; Jennie, watch out! For those who were deserving, she told them off. Her most controversial community activism was her petition to consolidate country schools, bussing the children to city school in Spooner. I understand the outrage. In his fictional stories, Wendell Berry painfully shows how closing small schools led to the demise of neighborhood businesses, grocery stores, barbershops and community connectedness. I for one will never regret my first grade at the one-room Gaslyn Creek school, still standing today. My worst day there was when David was beaten with a belt in front of all of us sitting at our desks. His crime: playing hooky with another boy to go fishing in the creek. The other boy ran to his nearby home and was never punished. You can bet he faced a telling off by my mother. The Green Grove Alliance Church decades later was consolidated into the Lake Park Alliance. Three miles from our home, my family regularly attended. We were outliers, neither office holders nor ushers. My mother fiercely objected to alter calls and anything that smacked of hellfire and brimstone sermons. It was there that I was saved. See Walking Away. For a childhood conversion, mine is actually rather interesting. It was the last day of vacation Bible school. I was six. The invitation was given, and my nine-year-old sister raised her hand. I reasoned that if she could do it so could I, so I also raised my hand. I was then led to the back of the church where I waited at the end of a short line to get saved. 17 . That we were farmers is in some ways the most distinct feature of my upbringing. I loved that 200-acre farm—the fields, the forests, hillsides—and the Yellow River running through it. I worked hard and played hard, every season boasting its beauty. “The people who are bullying you, they’re insecure about who they are, and that’s why they’re bullying you. It never has to do with the person they’re bullying. They desperately want to be loved and be accepted, and they go out of their way to make people feel unaccepted so that they’re not alone.” Madelaine Petsch Imaginary friends: Tom, George, Jean Biking friends, Judy, Janice, Jane Scholarship to LeTourneau Matriculate 2. Walking Away VBS saved, Maze, Salthammer & Cowan 3. From Jerusalem Pigeon Lake Bible Camp. The summer I turned twelve. Rustic cabins with a toilet and shower unit nearby. Bible classes in the morning. Afternoon free time. Evening missionary meeting followed by campfire testimony time. Missionary Delmer Smith telling tragic tales of Africa. Millions going to hell without Jesus. The final night an alter call. All stand who hear God’s call. A call to become a career missionary. Seriously. Teens and preteens claiming to hear that call. I stood. Camp over, I had second thoughts in the weeks that followed. On several occasions I rode my bike to the church. Down in the basement there was a cabinet with stacks of church magazines. The back pages pictured missionaries who were returning to their field of service or heading out for the first time. Half of them were married, the other have single women. I studied the faces of the women. Was I prettier than they? Would I one day be a lonely old-maid missionary? I was a child. Was Smith's pushing for decisions child abuse. And that would not be what he was charged with. Delmer Smith, I would learn decades later was charged with child sexual. While he served as a house parent at a boarding school for missionary kids, he abused dozens of them "Call” (Jayber), Delmer Smith, feet of clay and big-time sinners Epilogue—CHECK blog for quote Missionary kid article at house A Rubberneck Reputation A short and three longs. Technically that was the only phone jingle coming from the kitchen wall box meant for us But juicy neighborhood gossip could be had on a long and two shorts or other variations of the ring. Too often Mom yielded to temptation with a well-honed technique of silently removing the receiver from the cradle undetected. Telltale hunches, however, made her a suspect. My own clumsy effort at eavesdropping only confirmed suspicions she was deemed a snoop. So astonished, I almost dropped the receiver when a male voice bellowed: Jennie, get off the phone, you rubberneck!. I was shaken but sadly never confessed though I did ponder the sin in my heart. 4. Seasons of Motherhood Riding bike to hospital Researching dissertation on microfilm with him under desk Carlton stories, Sickness onto Death 5. Black & White Bible It was a cold West Michigan evening in March. Spring quarter at Trinity [Evangelical Divinity School] had begun a week earlier. I recognized my husband’s mood before we had even sat down for the evening meal. When we finished eating, I tidied up the kitchen, took my books and notes and went upstairs while he watched his usual TV programs and Carlton did homework nearby, listening in as he typically did. After an hour or so I heard my husband’s footsteps on the stairs. I stiffened, dreading the worst. He entered our bedroom where I was hunkered down, and then seemingly out of the blue, with not so much as a segue into the topic, demanded to know my interpretation of a particular biblical passage that related to women. I explained that I was very busy in course preparation and did not wish to discuss the matter, particularly because I knew it would create problems. He proceeded to give me his interpretation of the passage. When I remained silent and refused to agree with him, he became irate and began very loudly threatening me and exclaiming that he would not let me fly to O’Hare in the morning. He yanked me from where I was sitting, my papers flying in every direction. Hearing his father shouting, Carlton was up the stairs two steps at a time. It was not the first time he sought to defend me. Normally, his crying out at his father put an end to violence. But not this time. My husband demanded he leave the room while at the same time squeezing my arms with all his might and viciously shaking me. Carlton did leave. He raced back to his own room and grabbed two knives, one no more than a hard plastic toy, the other a Swiss Army knife that he had managed to open before returning to confront his father. At twelve, Carlton was tall and lanky, but no match for his six-foot-two father who could do a hundred pushups without breaking a sweat. When I saw the knives, I screamed for Carlton to get out, but within seconds my husband had thrown him to the floor, taken the knives and was coming at me again. In a second, Carlton got back up and tackled his father crying out at the top of his lungs. And then somehow amid the mayhem it ended. My husband left the room still raging, ordering Carlton to come downstairs with him. The next afternoon I was in Deerfield, in my classroom greeting students and wearing a turtleneck and blazer that conveniently covered the bruises—black and blue finger marks on my upper arms. I had taught the course before and once I was into my rhythm and lively discussion was underway, I was in another world. After the class ended in the late afternoon and all the students had checked with me on term projects, I gathered my books and notes and began making my way over to the little apartment on campus where I stayed. My real life flooded over me, covering me like a shroud—like a shroud of pitch-black oily fright. A quick call home to Carlton relieved the tension. But the situation seemed hopeless. Our little family was a complete mess. Where would this all end? There are many underlying factors to consider in attempting to understand why a husband would beat and terrorize his wife. I’m certain a psychiatrist could write an entire volume on my ex-husband. But from my vantage point, his perspective on male supremacy and female submission was front and center. He repeatedly quoted Scripture to defend his headship and to enforce my unconditional obligation to submit—from the “kitchen to the bedroom.” He might have added to that list my home office where I prepared lectures. His rule was absolute and final—most notably during his violent moods. Black and white Bible, black and blue wife. Why didn’t I just pack up and leave with Carlton? That’s a complicated question and will be dealt with throughout this volume. Perhaps a more appropriate question that relates specifically to this chapter is: Why didn’t I tell this very story to that full house at Wheaton? It’s a story the audience—students, staff, faculty, and visitors—needed to hear. I was a professor, like Wheaton professors. The crowd could relate to that. And here I was, a woman, a wife, a mother standing before them. I was exhibit A. In fact, what if the forum for that evening at Wheaton College would have been not a debate but a storytelling forum—a session during which John Piper and I simply sat down and talked and interacted with each other about real people and about ourselves. We could have done that. We knew each other. I spoke one Sunday night about missions history at his church in Minneapolis. I was welcomed into his home. I commend him for his bestselling book, Desiring God and for his active involvement in mission outreach around the world. And he has commended me. In fact, in January of 1984, he wrote (now posted online): “Noël and I are reading together in the evening Ruth Tucker’s book, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions (Zondervan, 1983). Then we pray together.” In 1993, he made reference again to his and Noël’s having read that book together nine years earlier. Instead of debating, he could have related experiences of counseling married couples in his ministry and he might have talked about how he and Noël work through issues. I might have told stories about my parents’ marriage and revealed details of my own marriage breakdown. Imagine the impact we could have had on those students. I had a woman who was in a church that I served, and she was being subject to some abuse, and I told her, I said, “All right, what I want you to do is, every evening I want you to get down by your bed just as he goes to sleep, get down by the bed, and when you think he’s just about asleep, you just pray and ask God to intervene, not out loud, quietly,” but I said, “You just pray there.” And I said, “Get ready because he may get a little more violent, you know, when he discovers this.” And sure enough, he did. She came to church one morning with both eyes black. And she was angry at me and at God and the world, for that matter. And she said, “I hope you’re happy.” And I said, “Yes ma’am, I am.” And I said, “I’m sorry about that, but I’m very happy.” The reason he was happy, the Reverend Paige Paterson (then president of the Southern Baptist Convention) explained to a large conference audience in 2000, was because the man on hearing his wife praying came to church and when the invitation was given, “he was the first one down front. . . . And remember, when nobody else can help, God can.” Thirteen years before that in 1987, I scheduled an appointment with the president of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Dr. Ken Meyer. I had asked for the meeting to inform him that later in the week I would be separating from my husband. I was apologetic for the embarrassment this would bring Trinity, and I was prepared to suggest two other professors who would be able to finish my courses for the remainder of the term. In no more than a sentence I explained that my husband was violent and had beaten me on many occasions. Why hadn’t I come to him earlier, he demanded. Was I okay? Did I have a support network back in Grand Rapids? How was my son doing? Of course, I was doing the right thing to escape with my son. And then, without so much as a “poor baby” he launched into a lecture. In the many years he had served as a pastor, he had repeatedly counseled abused women to get out of their dangerous domestic situations. They took his advice until their husbands wept and apologized and pleaded for reconciliation, promising never to beat them again. But the violence always continued. When I told him that my husband would never apologize, he shook his head and sighed, “Mark my word, he will.” (And he did.) President Meyer insisted that I must separate for at least six months until my husband underwent serious counseling, and perhaps even then we should not be reconciled. Such violence is pathological and a class in anger management often serves as little more than a band-aid. Ken Meyer was spot-on in his assessment. With the help of a singularly compassionate attorney and an understanding minister at our church, my son and I escaped to safety. Through the court I was granted a restraining order, separate maintenance, and sole custody of Carlton. Soon thereafter my husband agreed to joint counseling sessions with a Bible church minister whose small church was on a country road forty minutes north of Grand Rapids. It proved very ineffective. My husband and I were not reconciled. Three years later I received a call from an attorney in New Jersey informing me that my husband, whose whereabouts neither my son nor I had known, was suing for divorce. I did not contest. In the decades since we escaped, friends, acquaintances, and even publishers have urged me to write my story. Why not? Writing is my primary profession. But the pain of reliving those years has always stood in the way. More than that, humiliation. Few can comprehend the depth of shame that still lingers. And not just the shame of being married to an abusive minister but also the awful acknowledgement of my own complicity—the failure to report my husband to law enforcement when his crimes involved an innocent individual. How does headship and submission work on a daily basis? John Piper is the answer man. Suppose it’s Noël and I. I am about to decide something for the family that looks foolish to her. At that moment, Noël could express her submission like this: “Johnny [Who knew?], I know you’ve thought a lot about this, and I love it when you take the initiative to plan for us and take the responsibility like this, but I really don’t have peace about this decision and I think we need to talk about it some more. Could we? Maybe tonight sometime? Notice, he says: I am about to decide something for the family. Is this for real? If she doesn’t point out that a particular decision is foolish, does he just go about his merry way making decisions for the family? And is Noël really expected to respond in the way he has scripted? I can’t imagine how she can even breathe. I’ve met her and know her from a distance as a public speaker. She is a highly intelligent and capable woman. It’s just plain sad to think of her in these circumstances, though I suppose she’s used to it, having had more than forty years to measure her words and actions. Interpreted to fit headship perspective (SBC abuser), My take is that non-Christians should find the faith inviting 6. Biographical Bible Here is where I find the Bible speaking the loudest (see funny song in Intro): creation, fall, redemption, the Bible is not a book where we see a lot of godliness among its characters I’ve always been interested in doctrinal issues and the man-made classifications of systematic theology. But such is often as personally biased as hermeneutics—biblical interpretation. Take, for example the Canons of Dprt. 7. Fired at 57 Named names, factual quotes, chronological details, emphasis on menopause, accused of ungodliness—feisty or phony 8. Katie Luther Of my two dozen books, only one is a biography. Writing another person’s life is a daunting task, especially when others have taken on the same subject. That I had something very different to say is key that spurred me on. Katharina von Bora. Tall, slender, dark haired, piercing eyes, passionate voice, stomping her foot in defiance, refusing to be intimidated. She was headstrong and determined. No shrinking, submissive, subdued, sweet lady was she. She knew what she wanted and not even Martin Luther could stop her. The crowd was riveted to her every word, clucking, cheering, laughing and clapping. I close my eyes and can still hear her distinct Kenyan-British accent. She had begged for the role. It was the class play for our final session of my church history course at Moffat Bible College, Kijabe Kenya. The previous year we had burned Polycarp at the stake—almost literally when his shabby black choir robe caught fire. He was tackled by fellow students who quickly put out the flames and the drama continued as though the football pile-up had been planned. The whole student body, faculty and staff had come out for the performance, and there was great anticipation this year. Word-of-mouth publicity had done its trick—much buzz about Martin Luther and Katie, staring Kotut and Beatrice. As a class we had chosen the topic. Parts were assigned—or rather fought over, with the loudest and most articulate students snatching lead roles. Indeed, voice projection was critical. If you were loud you were in. I was the director, no challenge on that, working with the students on choreography and chronological events. From there they created the dialogue with my insistence that they keep things snappy. No long speeches. They were ready and a tad nervous on that cool sunny morning. The crowd was bigger than the previous year now joined by students from the nearby nursing school. I stood backstage behind a small curtain crowded with actors, ready to push a Tetzel or Pope Leo X onto the “stage” if they didn’t hear their cue. Curbing his usual class-clown tendencies, Kennedy welcomed the noisy crowd and presented appropriate background information. There was a momentary hush. Then, wearing Polycarp’s shabby, now singed, black robe, Martin strutted out from behind the curtain onto the grassy knoll carrying on like a good sixteenth-century Reformer: hammering theses to a door, railing against indulgences, preaching salvation by faith and doing what my students loved most, building a fire—in this case to burn a papal bull. But it was Katie who stole the show. She entered Wittenberg in a wagon with my two other female students and several males dressed in drag—the best we could do for nun’s attire. Martin quickly finds husbands for them, all except for Katie. Having been stood up by the man she thought was her fiancé, she is already vulnerable and now she alone is left. Martin seeks out a worthy gentleman whom Katie agrees to marry (or, as she emphasizes, Martin himself), but the man is threatened by this sassy, assertive woman. Poor Martin. A confirmed bachelor himself, he has been assigned to find husbands for them all. So, with no other prospects, he brings out Casper Glatz. No! It can’t be. Casper Glatz? The students had unanimously picked our oldest white missionary professor for the part. He was perfect: short, bald, self-conscious, clueless. The haughty Katie sizes him up and shreds him right there in front of everyone. No way will she ever marry Casper. The audience howled with laughter. I have no recollection of exactly where we went with the drama from there but it was truly a smash hit, curtain calls to prove it. Katharina, wife of Martin Luther, was by any measure the First Lady of the Reformation. Important as she was, however, she would remain unknown to us were it not for her larger than life husband. Yet she stands alone in her own right, albeit as a woman: first lady, second sex. Katie Luther was not known for godliness nor could she have been rightly accused of phoniness. Yet, her biographers routinely present her as a woman of deep faith. She was a secular woman. By virtue of marrying Luther, Katie joined the Protestant ranks. That there is no evidence she actually made this new faith her own has gone essentially unnoticed by historians. She was nevertheless the most indispensable figure of the German Reformation save for Martin Luther himself. Take her and their twenty-year marriage out of the picture, and his leadership would have suffered severely. Had it not been for the stability she brought to his life, he may have gone off the rails emotionally and mentally by the mid 1520s. His emphasis on, and modeling of, marriage and family as an essential aspect of his reform would have been lost. Only Katharina von Bora—no other woman—could have accomplished what she did with this most unstable man. Without her, the Black Cloister would have gone to ruin—the result of which would have been no “Table Talk,” and that is only the barest beginning of what would have been lost without her. Although his colleagues surely must have been at least unconsciously aware that she was the key to his emotional, mental and financial stability, they were far more annoyed than appreciative of her commanding presence in his life. But the question remains, where would he have been without her? What if he had never married? What if he had married a sickly and submissive woman like Idelette Calvin? It is difficult to imagine him as the great Reformer he became. For me, making Katharina von Bora relevant to my Kenyan students was relatively easy. They were very familiar with the problems related to arranged marriages and extended families all living under one roof. They had grown up in homes without modern conveniences, no running water or electricity. They understood the backbreaking toil of farm work on their family shambas. They knew what it was like to carry heavy loads of wood to cook the next meal. They all had a cho out back with no toilet paper and they were all too familiar with the bloody rags women used during their monthly periods. Emergency rooms and good doctors were too often a tragic death away. Childbirth was perilous. Hunger was real. Indeed, times were tough for my Kenyan students. They identified with daily life in Wittenberg five hundred years ago. And like the folks around town back then, they could name women just like Katie—women who were not afraid to talk back in male dominated marriages and communities. Indeed, I have no doubt they understood the women, the customs and culture of that era far better than I did. So how do we make a five-hundred-year-old Katharina relevant to North American culture in the age of iPads? Is there anything she has to say to Western women and men today? Besides being one of the most fascinating women in history, why should we take time to make her acquaintance? In many ways Katharina’s voice echoes among modern woman, wives and mothers who have carved out careers of their own. And unlike so many of the Reformation women we read about, her primary vocation was not related to ministry. She was a farmer and a brewer with a boarding house the size of a Holiday Inn. All that with a large family and nursing responsibilities. In may ways, Katie could walk right into the twenty-first century—lean in, her motto. 9. Women in the Bible I love studying women of the Bible. Both the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible are loaded with them. Indeed, you hardly open Genesis and you’re face to face with Eve. And not a sweet, submissive godly lady either. After failing to talk down the snake, she becomes the mother of all living. And as such she represents all women who sometimes think they’ve endured more pain than humanly possible. The son who kills his younger brother is banished from the family, even as she and Adam are banished to thorns and thistles. Our heart goes out to Eve. And to Bathsheba. Was she, as many scholars believe, raped by David—murderer and rapist? He saw to it that Uriah, the Hittite (husband of Bathsheba) was killed on the battlefield. One evening Bathsheba was bathing as was appropriate on her back patio, apparently not realizing there was a peeping tom in the neighborhood. For many men, that kind of titillation would be all they could expect. But David was rich and powerful and took the widowed Bathsheba for his eighth wife. How might she have felt about that? Even as he stands in all his naked glory in Florence, it is doubtful a grieving widow would have regarded him as such. It’s not that David couldn’t knock women off their feet by his very presence—even before he became king. The married Abigail (who would become one of his first wives), rushed out to meet him with food and other supplies. She fell on her face before him, bowing herself to the ground. After marrying him (after her husband died, though apparently not in the manner of Uriah the Hittite), she gave birth to a son, Chileab. Even before that, however, David was in the habit of abusing women—locking them up for his own purposes, not allowing them to have lives of their own. Then there is Ruth. Oh, my! She sneaks into the threshing floor while Boaz sleeps heavily with too much booze on his breath. When the cock crowed at dawn, was she with child? We’ll never know but Obed came along not too long after. I like her (and Naomi’s) spunk—and not just because I was named for her. When it comes to Esther, I easily imagine that Vashti was seriously wronged. She apparently was a good queen but she wouldn’t parade in front of the King’s male party-goers. Esther was young a d beautiful—and she ended up doing a great service to her people, as is celebrated in the feast of Purim. When I read the Book of Esther, however, I easily find myself siding with the Bible’s first (and perhaps only) proto-feminist. Queen Vashti is the one who stood up against her husband when he sought to demean her. She was a dignified queen and she deserved honor. Because she will not do the bidding of her drunken husband, he sends her packing and issues a decree not only against her but all the women in the realm. Esther, by virtue of her beauty, comes along and takes her place. I surely know that this is all part of God’s plan, but nevertheless, my allegiance naturally slants toward Vashti. She had the self-respect to stand up against a bully, her husband the king, and she suffers for it. Unfortunately, this Persian queen often gets lost in the story of the great Jewish heroine. Many years ago when I was in my first teaching position at Grand Rapids School of the Bible and Music, I stopped by the office of student services to pick up the newly minted basketball schedules. On one side was emblazoned with the title Men’s Basketball, the other side Girls’ Basketball. I did a double-take. Something is wrong with this picture—or these titles. The players were the same age, mainly upperclassmen. Or, should I say, upperclasspersons? Why then men and girls? When I questioned the woman who had laid out the schedule and sent it to the print shop, she was confused by what appeared to be the initial stages of a snit. That’s the way we’ve always done it, she responded. I’m sure she must have I’m sure she rolled her eyes after I left, but to get rid of me she assured me that from now on there would be gender equality in the titles. And there was. Having been raised in a family that assumed the girls had full equality with the boys, I found anything that smacked of gender inequality unacceptable. And it never occurred to me that my mother had anything other than straightforward equality with my father. They were full partners on the family farm. Today ender inequality is found in every aspect of life. Too often we hear the minister officiating a wedding pronounce the couple man and wife. Now, unless a woman is marrying a boy who, by virtue of the wedding ceremony, becomes a man, the minister should pronounce them husband and wife. There are other aspects of wedding ceremony that needs shoring up that I might reference at this point, but I won’t. Vashti refused to prostitute herself before the king and his cronies. But prostitutes are a part of biblical lore. There Gomer a prostitute who became the wife of the prophet Hosea—on God’s instructions. As such this couple was to be an object to the people of Israel—people, metaphorically prostitutes—who were unfaithful to God. The most famous of the biblical prostitutes was that notable woman from Jericho, Rahab. As we move into the New Testament, we find the Virgin Mary who has more statues in yards today than Jesus, himself. Indeed, I’m guilty myself. I’ve had my Mary statues. Years ago after being out of town for several days, I was driving a freeway approaching my home in Grand Rapids amid blizzard conditions. I spotted a Catholic church with a large statue of Mary on a hill. Carlton was on my mind. He was spinning out of control, son of a single mother, now living on his own. I exited the freeway, wound about to the church, climbed the hill, kneeled down in the snow and prayed to Mary. Did she answer? It may have taken years, but today John and I join him and Molly for an Easter Sunday service at their church. Christ is Risen. He is risen, indeed! But Mary was no subdued push-over. From the time Jesus was twelve (and maybe many times before), she challenged him about his behavior. And when rumors came to her that he was behaving like a weird prophet she called his brothers and together the went to find him. They tried to get him to come home, wondering if he might be possessed by an evil spirit. Then as any broken-hearted mother would do, she wept at the cross. Why? Why? Why? But soon she became an ardent follower not so much of her son per se but of the risen Christ. She is a model for all of us—far more than a concrete statue. The story of the woman taken in adultery is found in John 7:53-8:11, True not in earliest manuscripts, but good story nevertheless. But was she actually caught in the sex act or was it presumed by others? I fictionalized that their encounter was planned. Her husband a merchant traveled often to Phoenicia, leaving her alone with four little ones under eight, three having died in infancy. She had known the young man since childhood, and now he stopped by regularly going door-to-door with deliveries. They would meet at the shed by the market before the rooster crowed the following Tuesday. But hardly had the laid down in the straw when they were caught in adultery—or, she was caught. We know the rest of the story. The Pharisees would have stoned her to death, but for Jesus, who appeared on the scene at the right moment. I have my own similar story though not being caught. I was in an abusive estranged marriage while living with my husband in the same house. My good friend, an older man (now deceased), was a beloved church elder, also a furniture salesman and short-term missionary to Kenya. I had confided in him about the beatings I endured. He was outraged and very sympathetic to me. Our relationship was innocent—until it wasn’t. No adultery per se but neither was it innocent. There are many men today, including my now, ex-husband, who would hurl a backpack of rocks at me before Jesus would have time to speak. 10. Church History My favorite course of study especially when it is balanced between men and women. I put myself in the church history text as a model for students to see themselves I history—not merely gratuitous. 11. Cults and Alternative Religions Research involved significant travel, personal interviews, wide reading of primary documents (sacred books) and even fiction (Rapture of Canaan), ties in with church history and study of the Bible, films, TV documentaries (in my library). The most rewarding aspect of this work was the privilege of coming alongside of Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God as it transitioned from “cult” to Evangelical church 12. Stories of Faith—Writing Career You write just like a woman. That was a student’s analysis of me back in 1982, on the last day of my History of Missions class. It was my first term at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School as a visiting professor. For the following seventeen years I held that post, flying back and forth from Grand Rapids to Chicago, two days a week, spring and fall quarters. I was in the process of completing a missions textbook, and my students were using the yet unpublished manuscript, spiral bound. The comment, though coming from a male student, was actually a compliment. He went on to say that the history of missions came alive through the telling of stories, rather than through dry historical facts. That I write just like a woman is not a surprising assessment since I am a woman. But such a statement is not mere anecdotal evidence. Studies bear this out. In her book You Just Don’t Understand, Deborah Tannen has shown that women typically write differently from men because they think differently. Men tend to be more analytical and fact oriented, while women are more emotional and story oriented. William Zinsser, On Writing Well, pick topic no one else has done, check introduction about honesty, tell stories (Stories of Faith), read wide range of topics, magazines (New Yorker, Atlantic) and books, fiction and non (wedding invitation asking for books), my favorites: Jayber Crow, All Over but the Shoutin’, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, “Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers,” 10. The book also demonstrates how to write a novel through letters only. The back and forth letters to main characters tell the story. Teaching writing—most memorable at tiny campus in Italy I tell stories in Tender Mercies, one revealing my mental illness, and perhaps more should be told of that here, I take a cue for the telling from British author Charles Lamb writing to Coleridge. “I know not what suffering scenes you have gone through at Bristol. My life has been somewhat diversified of late. The six weeks that finished last year and begun this your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a mad house at Hoxton-I am got somewhat rational now and don’t bite anyone. But mad I was—and a many a vagary my imagination played on me, enough to make a volume if all told. . . . 27 May 1796 His letter ends the way all those of us who have experienced the mad house ought to end. He just carries on with his writing. And why not? “My sonnets I have extended to the number nine since I saw you.”