Wedding Anniversaries, Love, and Shakespeare

I remember with fondness some long-ago but very special family days, like the golden wedding anniversary of my grandparents.

I remember it because my sister and I were allowed to leave school early that day; because infrequently seen uncles and aunts and cousins came from everywhere; because the cigar smoke was so pungent, I think it lingers in my nostrils still; because there was merriment and drinks to sip and sweet pastry to chew.

But I remember it especially because that whole great company of descendants was in one place, happy together, gathered around a pair of aging human beings without whose wedded life there would have been no celebration.

Celebrations, national or personal, accent our relatedness, express the joy of our unity, and renew the strength that comes from belonging.
Celebrations are communal expressions of gratitude.
Maybe that’s why they’re so important.

For what is a nation without its Independence or Freedom Day; what is a community without its festival; what is a Christian Church without Christmas and Easter?

And what is a family without its birthday, anniversary, and holiday celebrations?

Taking celebration out of life is like leaving the yeast out of your bread or taking the yolk out of your egg or leaving the spices out of your pizza: you don’t have much left but a flat taste on your tongue.

Sometimes celebrations get a bit extra special, like golden or even silver wedding anniversaries. Strange, now, to think that we’ve already passed both of those plateaus.

But yes, it was on August 7 55 years ago that a young bride looked up at the boyish face of her groom and promised to be his loving wife.

And my, how she has kept that promise!

The journey that began on that stormy, rainy August 7 day has scaled mountains of adventure and challenge, and wandered its way through valleys of stress and strain. Somehow, we never stayed lost; we always found each other again.

And, thankfully, it’s not done.
Though, we admit, these are the sunset years.

But I’ve always savored the pensive moments that come when watching the sun sinking into the horizon while splashing the heavenly canvas above with its palette’s most brilliant colors. The best sunsets “do not go gentle into that goodnight.”

Fifty-five years accumulate a lot of memories.
Much more is forgotten, of course. And we’re getting painfully good at forgetting.
But we rarely forget those experiences that made deep imprints.
And we are blessed when most of those continue to give more pleasure than pain.

We are blessed when on such special occasions we can gather our children and grandchildren around us and joyously celebrate the goodness of God for giving fifty-five years of life and love and well-being.
As we did at 25, and 40, and 50, and will do again at 55.

A wedding anniversary is, of course, especially a celebration of human love.
I have no special insight into that subject.
Even after 55 years, love is still largely a mystery to me.
Maybe it is better so.

Maybe the best celebrations always honor what is at its core a mystery, like God’s love for a sinner, or a soldier’s love for his country, or a woman’s love for a man.
But I think I have learned something of human love: it is not always passionate, nor is it ever perfect, though true love matures and becomes more precious as the years turn.
Still, when Shakespeare wrote Sonnet 116, it is highly doubtful that he had just been gazing at Anne Hathaway or reminiscing on his many years of married life.

But a wedding anniversary of any color or metal deserves something like a sonnet. I therefore offer, with obligatory apologies to Shakespeare, my Revised Version of Sonnet 116:

Sonnet 116—RV

Let me not on the marriage of two lives
Impose perfection. But love is love still,
Though shaken by the changes in the wife’s
Appearance, or the husband’s moody will.
It’s true that love is frail, a flick’ring light,
Trembling through tempests, swayed by many fears;
 It is no star which, in solitary height,
Remains unmoved by human pain and tears.
Love is not constant, like the love of God,
But through God’s love and grace it does mature;
In five-and-fifty years it’s been well taught
To give and to forgive, and thus endure.
If this be false, then I would say on oath
We never loved, nor pledged each other troth.

Other Worlds to Sing In

Sometimes one comes across a story that worms its way through the layers of flotsam and jetsam of daily life and fastens onto the part of self where treasures are kept.
This is one of that kind.
As is too often the case, its author is unknown.
But it deserves an audience just the same.

                                                                 ~~~

When I was quite young, my father had one of the first telephones in our neighborhood.  I remember well the polished old case fastened to the wall.  The shiny receiver hung on the side of the box.  I was too little to reach the telephone but used to listen with fascination when my mother talked to it.

Then I discovered that somewhere inside the wonderful device lived an amazing person – her name was Information Please, and there was nothing she did not know.  Information Please could supply anybody’s number as well as the correct time.

My first personal experience with this genie-in-the-bottle came one day while my mother was visiting a neighbor.  Amusing myself at the tool bench in the basement, I whacked my finger with a hammer.  The pain was terrible, but there didn’t seem to be any reason for crying because there was no one home to give sympathy.  I walked around the house sucking my throbbing finger, finally arriving at the stairway – and the telephone!  Quickly I ran for the footstool in the parlor and dragged it to the landing.  Climbing up I unhooked the receiver and held it to my year.  “Information Please” I said into the mouthpiece just above my head.

 A click or two and a small clear voice spoke into my ear:  “Information.”

 “I hurt my finger…”  I wailed into the phone.  The tears came readily enough now that I had an audience.
“Isn’t your mother home?” came the question.
“Nobody’s home but me,” I blubbered.
“Are you bleeding?”
“No,” I replied.  “I hit my finger with the hammer and it hurts.”
“Can you open your icebox?” she asked.  I said I could.  “Then chip off a little piece of ice and hold it to your finger.”

After that I called Information Please for everything.  I asked her for help with geography, and she told me where Philadelphia was.  She helped me with my math, and she told me my pet chipmunk I had caught in the park just the day before would eat fruits and nuts.

And there was the time that Petey, our pet canary died.  I called Information Please and told her the sad story. She listened, then said the usual things grown-ups say to soothe a child.  But I was unconsoled.   Why is it that birds should sing so beautifully and bring joy to all families, only to end up as a heap of feathers, feet up on the bottom of a cage?

She must have sensed my deep concern, for she said quietly, “Paul, always remember that there are other worlds to sing in.”  Somehow I felt better.

Another day I was on the telephone: “Information Please.”
“Information,” said the now familiar voice.
“How do you spell fix?” I asked.

All this took place in a small town in the Pacific Northwest.  Then when I was nine years old, we moved across the country to Boston.  I missed my friend very much.  Information Please belonged in that old wooden box back home, and I somehow never thought of trying the tall, shiny new phone that sat on the hall table.

As I grew into my teens, the memories of those childhood conversations never really left me.  Often in moments of doubt and perplexity I would recall the serene sense of security I had then. I appreciated now how patient, understanding, and kind she was to have spent her time on a little boy.

                                                                    */*

A few years later on my way to college, my plane put down in Seattle.  I had about half an hour or so between planes, and I spent 15 minutes or so on the phone with my sister, who lived there now.  Then without thinking what I was doing, I dialed my hometown operator and said, “Information Please.”

Miraculously, I heard again the small, clear voice I knew so well, “Information.”  I hadn’t planned this but I heard myself saying, “Could you tell me please how to spell fix?”

There was a long pause.  Then came the soft-spoken answer, “I guess that your finger must’ve healed by now.”
I laughed, “So it’s really still you,” I said.  “I wonder if you have any idea how much you meant to me during that time.”
I wonder,” she said, “if you know how much your calls meant to me.  I never had any children, and I used to look forward to your calls.”
I told her how often I had thought of her over the years, and I asked if I could call her again when I came back to visit my sister.
“Please do.  Just ask for Sally.”

                                                                      */*
Just three months later I was back in Seattle.  A different voice answered Information, and I asked for Sally.

“Are you a friend?”
“Yes, a very old friend.”
“Then I’m sorry to have to tell you.  Sally has been working part-time the last few years because she was sick.  She died five weeks ago.” 

But before she could hang up she said, “Wait a minute.  Did you say your name was Paul?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Sally left a message for you.  She wrote it down.  Here it is.  I’ll read it: ‘Tell him I still say there are other worlds to sing in.  He’ll know what I mean.’”

I thanked her and hung up. 
I did know what Sally meant.

At Home

The nice thing about leaving home and moving far away is to go back now and again.
We’ve done that often over the years, mostly because we left so many dear family people behind.
On Sundays we would usually attend the family’s church. But one year we chose to go back the church of my youth.

The occasion was an especially festive one.

No, not because a “son of the church” had returned; in fact, many didn’t know me anymore.
The festivity centered on the organist: the congregation was celebrating her 50 years of service to the Lord and the church through music.
For this special occasion, the congregation had invited the organist’s son as guest minister.
This son, along with two other sons, also provided the special music through stirring vocal harmony.
And the mother?
She was the organist, of course, accompanying the special music and the congregational singing as I remembered her doing nearly every Sunday when I was in my teens.

 But there were changes too.

The organ had been moved from the left to the right of the pulpit.
I pondered the symbolic significance of that for a while but became distracted by the ceiling fans.
They must’ve been newly installed for I noticed many eyes raised heavenward watching the blades lazily swinging against the warm summer air.
More conspicuous, though, was the absence of the consistorial parade, in which the minister would enter first, with the elders immediately behind.
Before ascending the pulpit, the minister would stop, turn to the nearest elder (the vice-president, no doubt), and shake hands, after which the throng of elders, followed by the deacons would parade to the best seats in the house – center section, four rows from the front.
It had always been a solemn ritual, no doubt symbolic too, and I think I missed it just a little.

 So many memories come back when you’ve been away.

And we’d been away for a long time.
That Sunday morning it was good to think back on many things:
on all those ushering Sundays long ago –
and good to note that some of my “old customers” were still ushered to the same seats;
on many a young people’s meeting in the church basement –
and good to recognize around me some friends from those early faith-forming years;
on that Sunday morning several decades ago when the Spirit compelled one young adult to profess his faith in God’s Son –
and good to express that faith in worship now among many of the same people who had witnessed that public profession then.

People change and therefore churches change.

That is as it should be.
In this church of my youth, once tagged as the most conservative in town, there were now family hymnals next to the Psalter in the pew racks.
And the guest minister for the evening was to be none other than the son of a local sister church who was now counted among the more liberal voices of the denomination.

But some things should not and did not change.

The benches were filled with young and old.
The singing was wholehearted and spirited.
The attention seemed sincere.
The atmosphere was friendly.
And the worship was genuine.
That’s how I remembered it, and it felt good to be back again.
After more than thirty years I could still feel at home.

 When years hence, my children revisit the church where they grew up, my hope and prayer is that they too will still be able to “feel at home.”

The Boogey Man of the Woods

 Some of my earliest memories go back to bedtimes.

My oldest sister, six years ahead of me, shared my bedroom.
When the day’s light retreated in the evening hours, darkness would fall on our bedroom too, the time when sister would sometimes raise the specter of the Boogey Man by scratching a nail on the metal surface of her bed.
“Listen!” she would exclaim in a frightened whisper, “You hear the Boogey Man scratch inside the corner cabinet?  Maybe he’s coming to get you!”
Part of me knew it wasn’t so, but the too easily quickened irrational part of the young (do we ever outgrow it entirely?) felt haunted by a demon.
Maybe it was my sister’s way of exercising (and, perhaps, thereby exorcising) her own demons, but the memory of that awful scratching sound in the dark has stuck with me.

Did it prepare me for the encounter with the Boogey Man in the woods?

And WWII, the most monstrous Boogey Man of all?
Perhaps it did – to intensify, not allay the fear.
                        
                                                         *-*

Once upon a time there was a little boy …

The little boy had a big sister and brother, but they were too old to play with him.
He also had a younger sister, but she was too little.
So he played with a cousin who lived next door and was only a year older.
She would come over, and they would play pretend games or walk to the woods together that lay way at the back of the farm.
They would walk through the fields, climb over the gates that divided the fields, and cross the little bridge over the stream that ran through the fields.
Sometimes the two would pick a bouquet of buttercups from the back field next to the woods and take it as a surprise present to Mama.
That made Mama so happy that she would treat the little playmates to a cookie or candy.

To the little boy and his cousin, the woods were scary and therefore exciting.
Rabbits and hares lived there and other creatures of the wild.
Inside the woods the sun did not shine.

The children would enter the woods down a narrow path.
The deeper the path would lead them into the woods, the more hesitantly they walked.
“Ssshh,” they would whisper, “don’t let the Boogey Man hear us!”
Then, scaring themselves, they would soon turn around and hurry back to the sunshine and the view of their home in the distance, just to feel safe again.

 But one day they didn’t feel safe at all.
They had gone farther into the woods than usual, holding each other by the hand, moving slowly and very quietly.
The path had become narrower now and overgrown in places with brushwood.
They had never gone this far; they felt surrounded by the darkness of danger.
Then, just off to the right of their path, they saw it: a wild hare, almost perfectly blending into the dry dust-colored underbrush.
They stopped dead in their tracks.
It looked like the hare did too, because it was not moving.
They stood and stared open-mouthed: why wasn’t the hare moving?

Then they heard the snapping sound of twigs: someone or something was coming their way!
“Let’s run,” gasped the little boy to his cousin, and he tugged her hand to rush back toward the sunlight.
Instead she pulled him off the path into the trees, then crouched down behind a thicket.
“Don’t move and don’t make a sound,” she hissed into his ear.
The little boy bit his lip; he was scared and he wanted to cry.  His heart hammered in his chest and his body shook.
But the two watched through the tangle of twisted scrub brush that hid them from view.

And then they saw the Boogey Man, a large man in a blue farm jacket.
He stopped where they had seen the hare.  They saw him bend down with his back toward them.  They heard him growl, “Gotcha!”  When he straightened up again, they saw that he held the dead hare and dropped it into the burlap sack he had been carrying.  He swung the sack over his shoulder and disappeared in the same direction he had come.

 On the way home, the little boy and girl did not stop to pluck flowers for their mama.
And for a long time they did not go back to the darkness of the woods.
They did not know about poachers then; but they had seen that the Boogey Man was real, and that was more than they had wanted.

Back at home, they would play church or school, until the girl cousin had to go to the real school, a year before the little boy did.
Now he had to play by himself.
He missed his cousin who had also been his best friend.
And he looked forward to his 6^th birthday, when he too could be in a real classroom.

But when the little boy had his 6^th birthday, something very frightening happened….
            [see “When War Came,” the blog entry for April 30, 2011]

 

Angels of Mercy

Some people go to work each morning to pursue the sullen craft of bullying others into submission.

Others, less able or interested in making the world revolve around self, simply re-enter their appointed niche each day for un-heroic but faithful service.
Perhaps most find themselves in this latter group.
There may be no trophies at the end of a day and not even a eulogy at the end of a life, but the value of life for some does not lie in fancy trophies or in fine testimonies.

Yet I would give both to those who in times of need have been angels of mercy to me and to so many others among us in this family of mortals for whom sometimes the routine of a hospital becomes more familiar than that of home and job.

As I think back now, I would give both to Mrs. Sobota, LPN, who often functioned as a mother substitute. 

A civilian nurse in an Army hospital, Mrs. Sobota would greet me cheerfully each morning, place a caring cool hand on my forehead, and begin to transfer her jovial mood to me. 
I still remember the tenderness and love with which she held me at those times when I was feverish and anxious and in pain as doctors probed and squeezed and performed their sometimes unwelcome medical services.
To most who knew her, Mrs. Sobota may have seemed a very ordinary human; to me she was an angel of mercy.

And I will always remember Lt. Pat Philips, RN, who would on those nights when sleep would not come take time for a personal chat.

I don’t remember what we talked about.
But I know that her human kindness proved invariably conducive to sleep; and even when it did not, the reassurance blessed me that to a young Army officer I was not merely Pvt. US 56227916 but cared for and cared about as a real person who felt a bit lonely and fearful now and again.

There have been others: in isolation wards, recovery wards, and ambulatory wards: in military, VA, and private hospitals – God’s angels of mercy are needed and found everywhere. 

I’m grateful still for their special touch and spirit, for they were surely as vital to me as all the medicine prescribed to make me well.

Of course, as anyone who’s been hospitalized knows all too well, there’s another kind:  one who makes the rounds, delivers the medicine, jabs in the needle, takes pulse and temperature with icy efficiency and indifference.

They chill the room and leave the patient feeling guilty for being so burdensome.
At best they’re the competent mechanics of medicine; at worst they’re the cruel compounders of human misery.
In either case, they chose the wrong profession.

That may not be fair.

A hospital isn’t exactly a country club.
The pressure is enormous, the human pain and grief everywhere, and the work emotionally and physically exhausting.
In that environment day after day, year after year, many may become rather grim if not calloused human beings who impose on self a degree of insensitivity in order to preserve some inner resources.
Outside of a hospital, one can understand that.
Inside, as a patient, one will never appreciate it.
And that makes the angels of mercy so special.

Most of us will need hospitalization sometime in life.

Nearly all of us will spend our dying hours inside a hospital or hospice room.
At such times, when we confront the fact of our frailty and mortality, when we feel utterly vulnerable and dependent, when we are frightened for ourselves and our dear ones – then the soft touch of a doctor’s or nurse’s hand and an encouraging word minister to us as a balm in Gilead.

Praise God for the gift of caring, of compassion and empathy.

Praise God for the angels of mercy among us.
And though there may be no trophies or eulogies, all of us remember the words of Christ himself:
“Blessed are the merciful.”

“Emergency”

All of us have memories.

Some are so smashingly good, they still have the power to induce goose bumps.

Some are so grindingly painful, they nearly stop the heart.
For very different reasons, it’s good to revisit both kinds now and then.
 

The memory of this “emergency” partakes of a bit of both dimensions.

 
Pain, like an alarm clock inside the stomach, early in the morning. 
Nauseating pain.  Can’t be up.  Call in sick.  Go to Med Center.
Back home again, sleepy from the pills, but the pain still stabbing the insides, somewhere.
Where?
Why?

 Late afternoon now.

        The pain is getting worse.
Back to the Med Center.  This time a referral to own doctor.  Meet him at Emergency in an hour.
We go, vexed more with the inconvenience of it all than worried about some pending doom. 
After all, what could go wrong so suddenly?  It must be some minor thing the doctor will soon be able to fix.

We reach the hospital’s Emergency Department.

By the time we get to the nurse’s desk, my wife needs it to lean on.
She’s “getting sick”; the nurse quickly escorts her away from the desk and into the waiting room, then goes for the barf tray.
It’s too late; Ruth empties her stomach on the waiting room floor.
Now I know why they don’t carpet those floors.

They take her somewhere now. 

I stay in the waiting room, waiting.
Not much happening.
One little boy, looking like a miniature doctor with glasses, tie, and sport jacket, walks around, holding a bandaged hand slightly away from his body.  He makes the rounds, stopping here and there and asking what’s wrong.
I tell him my wife is sick.

During the next few minutes the activity picks up a bit.

A couple walks in.  He’s a skinny guy in a leather jacket, a scrubby beard, and a look as if he hasn’t washed in a while.
He takes a 10-inch knife from a holster in his belt that was hidden by his jacket.
I watch him grab the woman’s hand and make a light cut in the band aid on her finger.
She cringes.
He says loudly: “Nobody said it wasn’t going to hurt.”
She turns away from him.
He’s put his surgeon’s knife back.  He sounds angry now: “You act like you’ve been hit by a grenade or sumpin’.”

A mother comes in with a howling girl of about 12, holding a bloody towel to her mouth.

The mother hops around the screaming girl, shouting that she has to control herself.
She tries to shake her into calmness and says: “You better cooperate or they’ll put you in a straightjacket again just like last time!”

They’re taking my wife’s pulse and blood pressure.

I fill out the usual forms.
Then they put her to bed in a room not far away.
They’ll be doing x-rays and a battery of tests.
It’s going to take a while.

I go back to the waiting room.

An Hispanic couple has come in with a baby, but it seems to be nothing urgent.
The little doctor boy with the sore hand comes back to me.
I find out his name.
Bobby asks me why I have a gray beard; he says his dad’s is dark.
I say, “That’s nice.”

The woman’s finger is examined now.

It looks like an ordinary cut to me.
The man with the knife hovers close, more threatening than concerned, it seems.
They take the woman’s pulse and blood pressure too.

The girl with the bloody mouth is calm now.  Maybe they gave her something – a sedative rather than a straightjacket.

Her mouth injury looks like nothing more serious than a cut lip.
Her mother walks to the payphone and in a hushed, emergency tone talks to someone.

The Hispanic couple is still walking their baby girl.

Everybody is waiting for something, for someone, but the emergency nature of many things tends to dissipate in an emergency waiting room.

I go to see if my wife’s been wheeled back down again.

         I find out they want her to stay.

They need to do more testing, maybe even exploratory surgery to find out the cause of the pain.

         The doctors are obviously concerned.
Now, for the first time, I am too.
Sometimes an emergency turns out to be real.

I walk back to the car.

Must go home to arrange for another baby sitter who can stay late into the night.
I call my college student daughter.
I call our pastor.
Then I drive back to the hospital.
         I feel scared.
I worry what God might have in mind for us.
I pray, but my thoughts won’t focus; not yet.
There’s too much uncertainty now.

Back in the hospital I discover the doctors have decided that exploratory surgery is necessary.  Apparently something is constricting the bowel, but they have no idea what they’ll find; it may or it may not be serious.

Ruth is calm, even serene.
She doesn’t feel the pain now; they’ve taken care of that.
She says she’s ready for whatever may happen.
Both sedation and faith enable her to say that.
But I’m not ready.
And I know that I won’t be until I have to.
Or even then.

I watch her as she’s wheeled to OR.

          Then I’m alone.

Almost time for surgery now.

Our daughter comes, and then our pastor too.
I’m glad to have both there.
Psalm 103 is read, and then we pray together, placing this emergency into God’s caring and healing hands.
But my heart keeps pleading.

The three of us sit in another waiting room now, close to surgery.

It’s past midnight.
I think of the line “take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.”
I try, and discover how hard that is.
I still feel part of the weight myself and can’t let go.
We try to talk a little, make the time pass.
But mostly we wait.
And wonder.
And worry.
And pray, deep inside ourselves.

Waiting for a possible life-or-death verdict is a fearful thing.

Shortly after one o’clock, the doctor comes.

            He has good news: the surgery went well.
Scar tissue had put its squeeze on the bowel; fairly simple to correct.
She should be fine.

Prayers of thanks flow freely on the ride back into the night.

But I remember keenly how frail is our life, how vulnerable to emergencies of every kind.
And remember, too, with profound gratitude, that the Lord is near to all those who call on him, and that he has us not only but the whole world in his hands.

Betrayed

I was ten when I discovered that grownups don’t necessarily mean what they say in church.

It was a Sunday morning.
I was staring through the window at the people passing by.  I knew those people.  Some were out neighbors. One was my best friend.  All were heading for our church, which now was not our church anymore.
Instead, our family and some others were gathered in the town’s tavern for worship.

As I watched the people through the window, I felt deep shame.  I heard some boys chant, “Har, har, har--they go from church to bar.”

I also felt a deep sense of loss.  Sundays would never be the same again.  I felt cut off from the people we belonged to.  Why couldn’t we be together anymore?  How could people who had worshiped together all their lives split apart like this!  All I knew was that something terrible had happened.

I remembered the visits of church members, some of them family friends, and the arguments about baptism and covenant and about big words like regeneration.

I cringed as I remembered the times voices became strident and the words became angry and friends would leave as enemies.
I remembered Dad’s elder meetings that lasted until midnight.
I remembered him writing letters late into the night to theologians like Klaas Schilder.
I had noticed the deepening lines on his forehead and the weary look in his eyes.
But I hadn’t understood his preoccupation and deep anxiety.

It was 1944.  The Nazis had our country, and life wasn’t safe.

I was scared that more planes would be shot down over our town, that more soldier bodies would have to be buried in our churchyard.
I was scared that someday the Germans would discover out hiding place, shoot the family we were hiding, and then shoot my dad as well.
I was scared that patrols would stop my mom on one of her courier excursions and find  the incriminating material.
I was scared of guns and bombs and enemies.
I was scared of fighting.
I wanted Holland to be free again; I needed a world where people got along, where no one needed to be afraid anymore.

That’s why I had liked my church.  It was a good place to be, especially in wartime.  

In a hostile world, we felt closer to each other there.
We were united, and we were protected by God against a common enemy.
With one voice we would sing Psalm 68: “God shall arise and by His might/put all his enemies to flight,” and that gave us hope.
We would pray for God’s care, and that gave us trust.

But then some of the people in the church started fighting each other.

They didn’t use guns.
They used the Bible for words to shout at each other, to prove right and wrong, to condemn, to call each other nasty names.
They used the Bible as a gun.
And now we couldn’t go to the same church anymore; we didn’t belong together anymore.

My dad said it happened because synod forced everybody to accept a belief about baptism that wasn’t biblical.  But I didn’t understand it.

And I didn’t understand why Christian people threatened by a terrible war were now threatening each other and taking each other to court.
I didn’t understand why as kids we couldn’t spend time with our friends anymore, why my dad’s business lost so many customers, why a lot of people didn’t talk to us anymore.
I didn’t understand how any of this was possible among people who believed in God, who listened to the Ten Commandments every Sunday, who sang the Psalms together, who prayed together for a new heart, who were supposed to love God and each other.

The world became more confusing, more frightening to a ten-year old in the tavern on that Sunday when the war and hate tha had entered the church tore it apart and splintered it to pieces.

He felt betrayed, and for a long time he found it hard to pray.
For a long time church was not God’s house anymore.