Wendell Berry, Another Day: Sabbath Poems, 2013-2023
Wendell Berry, Another Day: Sabbath Poems, 2013-2023
After we left Springville church, we started attending Peerless Trinity Pentecostal Church.
A digression: you’ll notice both of the churches so far include a reference to the Trinity in their name. The reason for this is to distinguish ourselves from the “Oneness” or “Apostolic” Pentecostals. I think we were close to the same numerically in our local area, but on any larger scale the Oneness Pentecostals outnumbered us significantly. Oneness Pentecostals are so named because they deny the Trinity. They also believe water baptism and speaking in tongues are required for salvation. We did not. As for Holiness standards of dress and behavior, we were pretty much the same. Another interesting difference between us (at least locally) was the we were working class and the Oneness folks were middle class. You could always tell which group a stranger belonged to by how nicely they dressed. I don’t know if that remains true today. End of digression.
As I was saying, we started attending Peerless. Honestly, I don’t remember a whole lot about our time there because it was relatively brief. It was nevertheless crucial in that I became friends with Andy while we were there. We have remained friends ever since and our conversations over the years have had a strong influence on my development. He’ll enter this story a few times.
I don’t think we stayed at Peerless more than a year or two before moving on to Hilltop Pentecostal Church, which had a larger and more active youth group. We arrived just in time for a major split. I don’t remember the details and they’re probably too boring to narrate even if I did. Basically, Brother David was voted out as pastor and a large chunk (maybe even half?) the congregants left in protest. Brother David went on to pastor a church in another state and most of the congregants that left started going to one of the other Holiness churches in the local fellowship. This happened a lot in our churches. Not necessarily the dramatic splits (though those happened plenty often!) but the ebb and flow of the churches in the fellowship. One would get hot and draw in members of the other churches, then decline when another church got hot. It’s very common for local Holiness people to have been members of several of the churches over their lifetimes.
In Holiness churches, truly new converts are very rare. Whenever a church gets a new member it’s almost always because 1. they came from a different church or 2. they were a “backslider” who had come back. Backsliding is when a believer lost their salvation and returned to a life of sin. Most often that person also stopped attending church, but it was possible to backslide while still sitting in the pews. There’s a remarkable stickiness with Holiness churches. It seems that very few people leave and never look back, like Rachel and I and a few others would eventually do. Most backsliders still believed what the churches taught; they just didn’t feel like they could live it for whatever reason.
Soon enough we got a new pastor, Brother J. My pre-teen and teenage years at Hilltop were eventful and fun. At some point Andy and his family also started attending. A lot of good memories of going on trips to campmeetings and churches all over the Midwest and South. For the purposes of this story, however, I’ll try to confine myself to those things that I think contributed to my development.
I’ll end this post with that inaugural experience of Pentecostals: the baptism of the Holy Ghost. (Yes, always Holy Ghost, never Holy Spirit. We were KJV-only folks.)
For classical Pentecostals like the Holiness people, the baptism of the Holy Ghost was an experience subsequent to salvation that empowered the believer to live a more victorious life (i.e., less sinning) and be a better witness to unbelievers. The evidence that a person had attained this experience was that the Holy Ghost would speak through them in a language unknown by them, i.e., “speak in tongues.” For us, this was only genuine when it was an ecstatic, untaught experience.
Strangely enough, I don’t remember that much about my experience. I know it was at our church camp and it was the summer before I entered high school in 1991. I’m fairly sure the preacher that year was Brother Gary E, who was known to be something like a specialist in preaching young people into the experience.
What I remember of my experience was pretty typical of the way young men received the baptism of the Holy Ghost in those days: praying for an extended time at the altar after the preaching, surrounded by other people praying with and encouraging you, head and arms up, praising God vocally. This last thing was important because the Holy Ghost always seemed to take possession of a voice vocally praising God. At some point I was “slain in the Spirit” (fell backwards onto the floor) and began speaking in tongues.
The inevitable question when people hear that I spoke in tongues as a teenager is whether I think the experience was “real.” Let’s set that aside, though, until I get to an experience later in my teenage years that I remember more vividly.
The private property on the northeast side of Murray Forest is being logged. I’ve spent most of my time on the other side. However, my special spot is, I think, just over the line into private land and now I’m worried about its destruction.
Today at the historical society’s research library, we discovered that our house was built in 1908—two years earlier than we had been told.
Audit is officially over as of today. I’m started to feel normal after a weeklong cold. I’m off work next week. Things are looking up!
Will there still be old men sitting in restaurants at 6am drinking coffee and talking about nothing in particular by the time I’m old enough to join them?
Rachel has more or less finished the floor refinishing project. I think it looks wonderful! She also made herself a great reading corner.
I’ll be so glad when this election is over. I always resist writing about electoral politics because 1. what the hell do I know and 2. I hate the dread I feel after I do say something. Still, I wrote something yesterday and then woke up at 12:19am and deleted it. (Way too late, obviously.) Not that I said anything wrong. Basically, it’s bad practice to presume to peer into the inner workings of people you don’t actually know, despite the fact that everybody with internet access does it every damn day. Also, we have got to learn not to trust any opinion that gives us the pleasure of feeling superior. Those two sentences, removed from the context of our miserable godcursed politics, are the heart of what I wanted to say.
My earliest religious memories took place at Trinity Pentecost Mission. (Yes, Pentecost. Like Episcopal and Episcopalian, the folks weren’t always sure whether they were Pentecost or Pentecostal.) My grandpa helped build the church when the congregation outgrew its old building around 1970.
My grandpa was also Sunday School superintendent at that church for thirty years. I have the bell he used to ring to round up the children.
Springville church (as it was more commonly known) was truly a country church. For me, that’s as much a feeling as anything, but I’ll try to put it into words. Springville was not a “destination” church. Both its members and pastors were people within the rural community itself. There were no preachers from states away dreaming of becoming its pastor. It was not known as a church with particularly fiery worship or lofty goals. The music was old-fashioned, even for a Holiness church. (Sierra Ferrell’s harmony on this song takes me straight back there, laying under the pews looking at the old chewing gum or dozing while the people sang.) They lived by Holiness standards, certainly, but they weren’t aggressive about it. The church was part of the local fellowship of Holiness churches but the big name preachers never showed up there. Guest preachers were mostly just local men.
One of these local guest preachers made quite an impression on me once. Like most children I didn’t pay much attention to the preaching. I’d usually be stacking hymnals into roads and buildings for my toy cars. But this man was preaching about the end times and it caught my attention. He went on to describe the end in great detail and I was amazed at the detailed knowledge this man had about the future. At one point I recall saying to him, with some amazement, “Really?” A few people chuckled but he looked at me with serious eyes and replied, “Really.”
But the most impressive preacher in those days was the pastor himself. Not for the content of his sermons (I don’t remember a scrap of them and he was long winded by reputation) but for the bizarre way he would catch his breath. First, you should understand that no Holiness preacher ever preached in a normal voice. Never. They would read their text normally, maybe make a few introductory remarks, and then whoop and holler for the next 45-90 minutes. The wonders Holiness preaching must do for your lung capacity!
Brother Chet, the pastor, had a barrel chest and would yell like any other Holiness preacher but when he came to the end of his breath, he would go through this three part inhalation/exhalation that distressed everyone who heard him for the first time. It was like he was having a heart attack. To this day, I can hear it in my mind and, to this day, I can’t make any sense of how he did it.
Mostly I associate Springville church with my maternal grandparents, Bud and Alta. I was only ten when they died but they live on with something like reverence among everyone who knew them. I’ve never heard a single word spoken against them. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Grandpa was a strong and gentle man, who worked first in the limestone quarries and later on bombs at the local naval base. Somewhere along the line half his ring finger was “mashed right off.” He would always carry me on his back down the hill after we picked blackberries, despite me always promising that I’d walk on my own this time. When he got older and needed an oxygen tank and a wheelchair, some men from the church built him a porch with a ramp on the front of his trailer.
Grandma was a legendary cook. She cooked at a local campground and at the school. The she cooked for her family of nine children. Then she’d cook for all the church events. Her chicken and dumplings were one of the favorites at the all day meetings. But she was also known for having prophetic dreams. If she ever told you she’d had a dream about you, you listened. When she dreamed of snakes, there was always trouble ahead.
Grandpa died first and very shortly thereafter all the widowers in the community started talking up Grandma the legendary cook, but she would have none of it. She lived about six months after Grandpa died.
We were devastated. We left Springville church shortly after their deaths. The official reason was that the church was shrinking, there were no kids other than me, and I was losing interest. But the real reason, I think, is that once Grandpa and Grandma were gone, the church would never be the same for us again.
I need to clarify some terminology. I mentioned in the first post in this series that the Holiness churches were “fundamentalist.” Now, I know many people use that as a term of abuse for basically any conservative religious organization that they don’t like but I do have a specific meaning for it.
I believe I got this from James Ault’s book Spirit and Flesh: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church, which I read shortly after leaving the Holiness churches. It was very influential on me, as it put words to so much of my experience.
Fundamentalism was a term first coined for early 20th century American Protestants who resisted what they perceived as modernism or liberalism, e.g., evolution, critical study of the Bible. The movement was thus named because of the publication of an influential series of pamphlets called The Fundamentals. These pamphlets advocated for an inerrant Bible, the virgin birth and bodily resurrection of Jesus, and many other doctrines that would come to characterize fundamentalism and then evangelicalism.
Many ministers and churches left their denominations in order to form their own independent churches, seminaries, and parachurch organizations uncorrupted by modernism. Their vehement rejection of modernism formed a habit in them of fiercely policing their borders. In the postwar years, some of these fundamentalists would temper their separatism in order to work together on common goals. These people would become the first evangelicals: fundamentalism minus the separatism.
So, for my purposes, fundamentalism is:
Evangelicalism fits point one and mostly fits point two (though that’s less certain than it used to be) but does not fit point three. Evangelicals get together with other evangelicals of various stripes (Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist, and so on) to work on joint projects; fundamentalists don’t.
So separatism is the key characteristic of fundamentalism for me. Evangelicalism is conservative, yes, but it is meant to be a big tent. Fundamentalism is an intentionally closed system.
Good list of eight ways of connecting from Ted Goia. Some of these I was already doing okay with and some still need a lot of work. The two I’ve been working on the most recently are:
This morning I heard a bit from The Wayfinders by Wade Davis, a book about the Polynesian open ocean navigators. Astonishing. Not only the volume of knowledge required to do such navigation, but the types of information used–observations in minute detail gathered over centuries–is amazing.
To all the folks complaining about how popular Halloween is among adults today, I offered this as my considered reply:
This is a good list of ideas for cleaning up your garden at the end of the growing season while also keeping the well-being of your local critters in mind.
Thinking about the research I did yesterday, what will future researchers do, given the demise of local newspapers? Even the silly society pages gave me valuable information. Now such things are on social media sites, behind subscriptions, with terrible search capabilities.
Rachel and I are continuing to research the lives of our ancestors of place. Today we looked into the Schroer family, who were the second family to live here (1939-1971). Dr. William Schroer was a chiropractor who moved to Bedford from Poland, Indiana, in 1927 to open a practice. He and his wife Delzena had one daughter Florine.
Dr. Schroer was a deacon of First Presbyterian here in Bedford. The family seem to have been socialites: very active in various clubs and committees. Dr. Schroer was a Mason and his daughter was a member of the Order of the Eastern Star.
We also visited their graves in Poland, Indiana, a little over an hour from here. They seem to have had deep roots in that little community, which was heavily populated with German immigrants.
This is just a sketch for the moment. I plan to write a more complete history of the house after I gather more information. Rachel and I were saying today that we have thought so much about our house and its history and people that it’s beginning to feel like a person in itself.
Young Schroers:
Older Schroers:
Rachel continues to do great work on the floors. The living room is now done; we can start moving furniture back in by Monday. The floor is pine, which is notorious for rough grain and not taking stain evenly. Some people say it’s a mistake to stain pine but I think it looks great. Another thing about pine: it turns orange as it ages. In our case that means our stain—Minwax “early American” which is brown—actually ended up looking more red. Two coats of polyurethane as a finish.
Had breakfast with the distinguished author today.
Gave blood today at a drive across the street. Thanks to @JohnBrady for posting that one article that one time that encouraged me to set up the appointment. I’d link it but I can’t find it now because of his sand mandala blogging model. 😂
I hope you’ve had the experience of listening to someone recall people and places as you pass through the countryside. I also hope you were not bored or impatient with the experience–because you were experiencing the conjuring of a living landscape through the magic of memory.
For all of our society’s embrace of a mobile workforce, its stereotyping of those who never move away from their hometown, and its elevation of travel to the sacramental, there are certain experiences only available to those who have settled into a place long-term. One such is the perception of a landscape spread across space and time. Beautiful places become such through the infusion of a place with the awe and gratitude of a thousand generations. Houses become projects undertaken by hands that never shook in greeting but meet in the intimacy of shared work. Maybe we have ceased to believe in an enspirited universe because we so rarely remain in a place long enough to meet the neighbors.
When we first began our garden in 2020, we intended it not only as a collection of pretty flowers and vegetables but as a flourishing habitat. One of the keystones of that habitat is our tiny wildlife pond. We were amazed at how quickly life starting showing up in it; even larger critters started drinking from it regularly.
This is Morty. He’s a raggedy neighborhood cat who first showed up last winter to drink from our pond. He disappeared by the spring and then returned a few weeks ago, again to drink from the pond during the late summer drought. This time, though, he seems to have decided to stay.
Rachel was the first to notice that he is blind in one eye and hard of hearing. That combined with his shagginess makes us think he’s pretty old. After he started showing up every day and laying by the pond, Rachel named him Morty and started feeding him. While he never lets us get near him, he has stopped running every time we go outside.
He’s almost always by the pond, either napping or watching whatever is going on in it. At first we were concerned he would kill a bird, but he doesn’t seem to have enough energy for that.
Our garden is only peaceful if you’re an apex predator—but that cycle of life and death is part of the deal when you’re trying to build a flourishing habitat. I’m glad Morty is spending some part of that cycle in our backyard.
We’re finished with the floors for today. Now I’m sitting here in this upset of furniture waiting on Rachel and Darcy. There’s the most delicious breeze, stirring the wind chimes into a sound like singing bowls. All originating in a ferocious, deadly hurricane 750 miles south of here.
Two rooms ready for sanding. Both have a rectangular section in the middle with an older finish. Like something semi-permanent was there at one time and someone finished the floor around it. A mystery. Also, we’ll replace that plywood patch by the window with some good flooring cut from a closet.
You never know what you’ll find when you pull up the carpet on a 114 year old house. Someone covered a hole with a peanut lid. We plan to leave it; the bookshelves will cover it anyway.
We’re pulling out the carpet in the front half of the house today. In every project Rachel and I have worked on she has three essential tools: needle nosed pliers, a crowbar, and a butter knife. If it can’t be done with one of those three, she says, it doesn’t need to be done.
