Crazy for God (16 page)

We always knew what to give Dad for birthdays and Christmas. The trick was to sneak into his bedroom to try to find what pieces he didn’t already have or, sometimes, to check on what records were so scratched that he might like a replacement. (Dad’s method of putting a record on a turntable was to slap it down like a pancake being flipped in a skillet, then drop the needle wherever it happened to land.)

The music would shelter Dad from students’ voices, but it didn’t lift his depressions. However, I don’t recall Dad canceling any appearances in his daily routine or on a speaking trip. But I do recall many a day when he became so grim and silent that he seemed to be dead.

Dad did contemplate suicide. He sometimes spoke in detail about hanging himself. I went through my childhood knowing that there were two things we children were never to tell anyone. The first was that Dad got insanely angry with my mother; the second was that from time to time he threatened suicide.

Mom was naturally gregarious. But Dad’s idea of what he had to do with his life was horribly at odds with his introverted
personality. And the fact he carried on doing what he believed to be right—opening his home—was a brave and wholly admirable thing.

Dad’s dedication took a toll. His basic demeanor was one of being chronically annoyed, as if his world was filled with buzzing flies he wanted to swat. He “swatted” them by being a habitual complainer. He would never go anywhere, from a vacation to a speaking trip, without a litany of moaning and groaning about how tired he was, how he would never make it, how “I just
can’t
do this, Edith!”

But later, when it counted most, Dad proved that he was made of brave material. In his midsixties, after my father was diagnosed with lymphoma, he suddenly quit all his petty complaining. For the six years he was fighting for his life, Dad never said a word about the discomfort and pain caused by the interminable chemotherapy sessions, bone-biopsy punctures, lung-fluid draining, weight loss, collapses, emergency procedures, nausea, and diarrhea. His stoic silence surprised us. And Dad never once talked about suicide during his illness.

My father met his death fearlessly, clear-eyed and with no self-pity. Dad didn’t become any more or less spiritual than he had always been. He had never laced his speech with the-Lord-this or the-Lord-that jargon. (My father always dismissed such typical evangelical pietisms as “all that superspiritual stuff I hate.”) And Dad never expressed any fear of death. He apologized for the wrongs he remembered doing, put his affairs in order, and was less demanding than he had ever been.

W
hen I was about nine, Dad and I started taking hikes together. He reserved one Monday a month as “my day with Frank.” (Everyone called me Frankie but Dad.) I loved those times.

At home, it was as if Dad was an actor on stage, always performing for the students, always “on,” always certain, always bold. I had almost never been alone with my father before. Who he really was—when not around the students—came as something of a shock.

Out of the limelight, Dad was quiet. He was sweet. Above all, he was humble and considerate. And what moved him wasn’t theology, but beauty.

“Look at the light!” he would exclaim, as a ray of sun broke through the clouds above some high valley. Or “Stop! Listen!” as we stepped over a stream, and Dad would pause to enjoy the sound of the water splashing into a rocky pool.

Dad is clearest in my mind plodding steadily ahead on a trail, his sturdy pistonlike legs passing over the steep path effortlessly. He would turn, stop, wait for me to catch up, and sometimes hug me or tousle my hair before we walked on.

We would set out on misty mornings when the mountains were shrouded in fog. Dew clung to the twigs; the mud on the
trail would be slick. Water dripped from the pine branches, and Dad always led. I followed mile after mile as he kept up a steady pace, the same uphill as down. Years later, when Dad had cancer and told me he was getting out of breath just walking up stairs, I knew the cancer was going to kill him. Dad never broke a sweat, never gasped for breath, no matter how far we walked.

We’d hike from about seven in the morning until five in the afternoon, then take one of the many narrow-gauge trains that crisscross the Swiss Alps, or one of the many postal buses, back to some town, then the train to Aigle, then the small train to Ollon, and finally “our” bus up to Huémoz. Or sometimes we’d use the same network to take us twenty or so miles from home, then walk back. Once in a while, we’d stay out overnight in some clean little room over a café.

Dad always carried maps and laboriously marked where we had walked by tracing over the trails on the hiking maps with ink. One of my most treasured possessions is my collection of Dad’s tattered and heavily marked-up hiking maps. When I look at them, I sense my father much more clearly than when I open one of his books and read a few lines.

On our hikes, we would talk about Dad’s childhood in Philadelphia, or his bitter mother and how difficult it was having her live with us, or his weaknesses and how sorry he was for them, perhaps after he’d been fighting with Mom the day before and knew I knew he had been. Left to himself, Dad never talked about theology or God, let alone turned some conversation into a pious lesson the way Mom did. Left to himself, reality seemed enough for Dad. Besides, this was a day off, and God and the Bible were work.

We talked about the Second World War and how the Swiss mined all the tunnels and bridges so that the Germans didn’t
invade. We talked about Dad when he was a Boy Scout troop leader. Dad told me about shooting rats with his .22 rifle at his college, Hampden-Sydney, about getting in a fight there with a huge drunk student and banging his head on the ground to knock him out, about the deal he cut with the “unsaved” students in his dorm: Dad agreed to put them to bed on Friday nights, after they passed out on the way back from bars, if they would go to church with him on Sunday mornings.

Dad taught me the Hampden-Sydney football fight song, which we would sometimes sing together so loudly—“I’m a tiger born and a tiger bred, and when I die I’ll be a tiger dead! Rah-Rah Hampden-Sydney, Rah-Rah Hampden-Sydney, Rah-Rah Hampden-Sydney,
Rah, Rah, Rah!”
—that our voices echoed from the cliffs in many a high valley. Sometimes we’d stop for a rest and Dad would show me wrestling holds, like the half-nelson, chokeholds, or where to hit someone so they would go down, or how to get in close, grab, twist, break bones, and incapacitate someone bigger than you (a lesson in fighting dirty and for keeps that came in handy several times later in life).

We talked about the Depression and how, as a teen, Dad had worked in an RCA factory and was part of a strike when the foreman kept speeding up the conveyor belt and forcing them to work faster and faster, and how he was paid twenty cents an hour and felt lucky to get that. We talked about the Soviets, and if America was strong enough to stop them taking over the world. But most of the time we hiked for many miles without speaking a word.

When I was fifteen and on a hike with Dad, I confronted him over how he treated Mom. Years later, Mom said that after that he began to behave better. Maybe this was true, or maybe she was just being kind to him and to me.

Sometimes I meet former L’Abri guests who tell me they went on a hike with my father. (He would occasionally take a student.) They tell me about the deep, long philosophical or theological discussion they had with Dad on this or that memorable hike. They say how privileged they feel at having gotten “so close to him.” I want to tell them that if Dad was talking about his usual subjects, they never did get close to him. They only saw him when he was “on.”

Once in a while, I could tell that Dad was waiting for the right moment to instruct me. Then he would act serious and reserved until he got it off his chest.

“Mom says you aren’t trying very hard in your schoolwork.”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Are you trying at all?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Well, try harder, or I’ll have to spank you.”

“Yes, Dad.”

And that was it. His duty done, Dad seemed relieved. He had of course been put up to this by Mom, who sometimes would say “You have to speak to Frankie, Fran.” And Dad would wait until we were on a hike to do his duty.

After that, he’d relax. And the mountains would seem to slowly roll past, subtly changing shape, narrowing or fattening depending on the perspective from wherever we were on the trail.

Sometimes we had adventures.

“Dad, that looks like a bull.”

“I don’t think so. They wouldn’t put him here in an open field.”

“Okay.”

Moments later: “Frank! It
is
a bull! Get behind me!”

Dad waving his walking stick, back to a tree. Me, hiding behind him.

“We’ll need to work our way to the fence, then dive under the barbed wire!”

“Okay, Dad!”

Running, slipping in the wet grass, noticing a cloud of flies rising from the cow shit I’ve just landed in, the young bull running around us in circles bellowing, Dad turning to yell at it, holding his cane out like a saber, me picking up a stick and also waving it, Dad and I laughing hysterically after we get under the fence and, moments later, both getting the shakes.

I’d count the hours until we’d stop to eat the wonderful sandwiches Mom had made with crusty fresh bread. In the summer, she always put in big slices of peeled cucumbers from our garden, or peeled carrot slivers. They had just been picked by her, and the bread had still been warm when she sent a student to the village bakery that morning to get it.

It was a big moment when Dad opened his little leather backpack and pulled out the sandwiches, along with the salt and pepper he always carried in two old aluminum film cans with twist-off tops, and his small sheath knife with the antler handle. If we were near a village, we’d stop at the café and order apple juice for me and a coffee for Dad, and eat our picnic while some old farmer eyed us suspiciously and sipped his white wine.

L
ynnette accepted Jesus. She became one of those great salvation stories, a “true testimonial to the power of God,” because later that night, the same night her name was written in The Book of Life—presuming that she was not going to backslide and thereby prove she wasn’t of the Elect after all—Lynnette, who was a ballet dancer, danced before the Lord.

Actually, she danced before the Lord and us on the terrace in front of the chalet, the place we had hot-dog roasts every Saturday night in the summer and outdoor discussions. Lynnette danced in the moonlight while we stood on the second-floor balcony above and watched. She danced for joy at her new-found faith in Christ. My sisters, several guests, and Mom wept.

Usually when someone got saved, Susan just played the “Hallelujah Chorus” part of Handel’s
Messiah
on the record player. But in this case, Lynnette danced to the strange and disturbing music from Stravinsky’s
Firebird
. (Dad had the record in his collection, though it was not one of his favorites.) This piece was chosen by Lynnette because she had danced in the
Firebird
ballet in London. Her interpretation was particularly moving (at least to Mom and my sisters), because Lynnette announced that now that she had accepted Jesus, she was feeling led to leave the ballet and to go into “full-time Christian
work,” maybe at L’Abri, or perhaps back in London where she might use her flat (an apartment with a rather swanky address at Sloane Square) as a “L’Abri base” for my dad to hold discussions in.

“I’ll never dance again,” said Lynnette.

“But oh, Lynnette,” answered my Mom with tears streaming down her face, “the Lord says that what we give up for Him will be returned to us tenfold! Someday you will dance again in Heaven before the Throne of God! And you will dance
forever
with your new incorruptible body, and you will fulfill all that talent He gave you!”

Lynnette and my sisters wept some more. It was one of those many beautiful moments my mother shared with the Praying Family in her next “Family Letter.”

Lynnette’s use of her London flat was the beginning of another chapter in the Lord’s work. Lynnette was a wounded and desperate young woman when she came to L’Abri. Her mother had committed suicide. And that was how Lynnette got her lovely flat at the good address: She had inherited it. And so that was also another example, as Mom explained of how everything, even tragedy, seemed to help our work in God’s great plan.

Mom and Dad’s English trips became more and more frequent, and I collected a whole album of postcards from all over the British Isles. And Lynnette teamed up with Cynthia—my sometime tutor—and Hillary Schlesinger (the pretty younger sister of the famous English movie director John Schlesinger) to organize discussions Dad would preside over. And a few years later, Susan and Ranald moved to London and opened a branch of L’Abri at 52 Cleveland Road. Then, a few years after that, they moved to a country manor house in Greatham, an
hour south of London, and started a full-blown English L’Abri and soon had almost as many students staying with them as there were in the original Swiss L’Abri.

In the early days of the “English work,” Mom and Dad always used the same method. They would go to the home of a L’Abri convert like Lynnette. The convert would then “open their home” and invite their friends to talk with this remarkable American Christian. The result was that Mom and Dad were setting up what amounted to cells of followers all over England. And because there was always someone opposing the Lord’s will in these matters, an anti-Christian parent, a scoffing academic community, a Church of England liberal priest, who tried to undermine someone’s faith after Mom and Dad left, these forays into England had a somewhat clandestine air about them. Mom and Dad would come home and report as if bringing news from behind enemy lines.

Englishmen and Englishwomen began to “become Christians.” And looking back at that time, I am amazed at how little I knew about the fact that maybe, just maybe, there were
already
Christians in the British Isles,
before
my parents got there. As a child, the way I took what was being said about my parents’ English trips was that before my parents went to England, there were no Real Christians there. In the misty past, there had been Puritans and some notable martyrs, when the evil Roman Catholics killed people for believing right; but today, in the present, we and we alone were taking the Truth to lost England.