Meditation on Peace:
Remembering Pastor Karl
Pastor Karl made the suggestion. He and his wife, Viola, had come to our little church from Wartburg College in Iowa. Their strong German roots were appealing to my father and the other members of the search committee. His suggestion to light the sidewalks harkened back to Mom and Dad’s days in Frankfurt, where they spoke German, marveled over Christmas trees with real candle ornaments, and blessed each meal with Guten Appetit!
Our driveway was long and split the Lien and Nasett fields into two unprotected sections of accumulating snow. That night we were left to forge our own path. Dad, Mike, and I kicked through snow, single file, as we marched toward the little church from our house in the woods. Encased in wool and flannel we became the wind’s instrument akin to Thoreau’s cabin that became an Aeolian harp – it blew through plucking our strings and chords.
We arrived to stand inside the door beneath the thundering iron clamber of bell reminding people that we would be ready in an hour. Then counted supplies: 40 brown paper lunch bags, two big buckets of sand, and simple white candles. Pastor and Dad began to fill the bags with just enough sand to hold each candle in place. Mike and I ran each bag to its position on the sidewalk, leaving five feet between each one. We lined the area from the Rockdale store to the Leuder house, marking our nod to a prior time.
The luminaries framed our Christmas Eve: light to guide us out of darkness. At the organ, the aerobic pulling out of stops and tapping pedals created just the right Christmas timber. Judy’s workout was successful as we joined the song in “grateful chorus raising.”
Ours was not a fancy church; it was built of stone to ensure that fire would not take her too as it had the original. Every move we made was amplified by creaking wooden pews. When our songs were held hostage by slightly out-of-tune pianos or guitars, the alter painting of Jesus pulling Peter out of the water relieved our “doubts”, offering a figurative hand to guide our faith.
The ritual that I sing “Oh Holy Night” for midnight services had not been established. Instead, I sat quietly curious about a hymn whose melody still strums slowly and quietly through my mind. My connection to it was explained years later when I learned it was a song about surviving a suicide attempt. It reflected a woman’s personal struggle: “In that moment I was not allowed to die, and something happened to me, which is very difficult to explain. I had an eternal moment of truth, in which I knew I was loved, and I knew I was here for a purpose.” The song was “Let There Be Peace on Earth.”
The song’s melody is as simple as our crude luminaries. But the light of both is far reaching. It is a folk song, a song of the people, a song by a person who turned fear into faith, to help others with our obstacles. Mostly it directs me what to do now in the present moment, to change.
“To take each moment, and live each moment, in peace eternally.”
For years I have written about peace. What is it? How do we achieve it? Is it possible? Like a driveway dividing two fields, things accumulate to separate individuals from their communities. Is it a lack of “peace” on the inside? Perhaps it is irreconcilable differences drifting in our souls to separate us from each other. My own damaging rhetoric blows about when I am ashamed of my own actions and fear that others will see me as weak. It is, then, a “solemn vow” that we pledge. It is a vow that requires hard work. I know no greater task then being honest about who and what I am, and then living to let others do the same. Diplomacy within our own hearts must not dominate. It is this moment toward love that challenges all we have been taught.
Becoming the wind’s harp and standing in the light of those luminaries so many years ago created a peaceful state of mind I strive to recreate daily. I wrote a poem that describes how considering the moment allows for peace:
Notice the lock bar and the mullion,
Oak pieces that cross
And the wreath that hangs
Like a crown of thorns.
Welcome.
You are the neighbor to love.
As ancient songs proclaim:
Reconcile yourself
And reconcile the world
Love yourself
And love the world.
Peace is inside
After all the ornaments of greed
Have fallen
And a single branch of swaddled light
Illuminates the manger of the soul.
To be a seeker, you must be a forgetter. As the writer Pamela Traverse says, “forgetting is uniquely human and it is because of this forgetting that we spend our lives seeking.” When I try to remember I am seeking reconciliation between my present and my past. I feel this need strongly at Christmastime.
To make peace is to make things right, an act of reconciliation. If I come to the table at peace in my own soul, I will act in ways that deliver the promise of peace eternally. As Aristotle so famously said, “go the place and memory follows.” Maybe the lack of peace in our world is because we have forgotten, forgotten to visit the places where memory will heal our differences.
Thank you, Pastor Karl, for the luminaries; I must share the memory with others that all good things are built from the inside.
Written in 2016 | Published April 28, 2017