Home to Harmony (9 page)

I
was in first grade when I learned that religious faith would not be easy to sustain. I bowed my head to pray at lunch, just as my parents had taught me.

Thank You, God, for our food,

for homes and health and all things good.

For the wind and the rain and the sun above,

And most of all for those we love.

Then I said “Amen” and raised my head just as Jerry Porter hit me on the arm and called me a twinkie. This wasn't like home, where I was patted on the head and given an extra helping of macaroni and cheese. This was The World. This was what Pastor Taylor cautioned us about every Sunday morning at Harmony Friends Meeting.

“The World will persecute you for your faith. Jesus didn't have it easy. Neither will you. Don't you forget it. There's hard times ahead. Be strong.”

The next Sunday at church, I told my Sunday school teacher, Bea Majors, about Jerry Porter hitting me for praying. She told me it was the price of faith. If I had been a student of the Scriptures, I would have pointed out the biblical injunction against public prayer. Matthew 6:6. Printed in red ink, straight from the Lord's own mouth. “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray…” It would have saved me a lot of bruises.

Even though it was a dangerous half hour, I enjoyed school lunch most of all. I liked the order of it. Lining up in the classroom in front of the fish tank, marching down the hallway to the cafeteria, reaching down in the milk cooler and pulling out a chocolate milk. Sitting at a long table and talking until Mr. Michaels, the principal, put a classical music album on the record player, which was the signal to stop talking and start eating. To this day, whenever I hear Beethoven, I think of Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, and diced peaches.

I especially liked the food trays. At our house, all the food ran together on our plates. The green bean juice got mixed in with the applesauce, which spilled over on the corn. I didn't care for that and wouldn't eat it. My mother told me to clean my plate, that kids in Africa didn't have any food. I offered to send them my supper.

What I liked about the school food was that it knew its place. There was the meat section of the tray. It was the biggest section of all, in the lower right-hand corner. Next to it was the vegetable section, which was a circle in the lower left corner. On the left edge of the
tray was where you laid the silverware, along with your napkin and drinking straw. The fruit went in the upper left corner, and next to it, in the top center section, was the dessert. In the upper right corner was where you set your cardboard container of milk. Chocolate milk if you were a boy, white milk if you were a girl.

The trays were a disservice, leading us to believe the rest of life would be orderly, though it never was. They'd have been better off stirring our food together and telling us that was how the world was—mixed up and out of kilter. Instead, they had us walk in lines and didn't let our food run together. They taught us harmony and sent us forth into chaos.

 

I
had forgotten all about the trays until I went to eat lunch with my son Levi the second week of school. I signed in at the office and walked down the hallway toward his classroom. I passed the sixth-grade hallway and heard Miss Fishbeck calling out words for a spelling bee. I listened as Amanda Hodge spelled the word
methodical. M-e-t-h-o-d-i-c-a-l.
The talk at the Coffee Cup was that she might win the county spelling bee.

My son's class was lined up in the hallway. Mrs. Hester marched us to the cafeteria, where the ladies spooned out our food in sections. We sat at a long table. It reminded me of a prison table, where the convicts ate and planned their escapes. I was sandwiched between Levi and a little boy named Adam Fleming.

My son had told me about Adam—how Adam's name was written on the chalkboard at least once a day, how he'd been sent to the principal's office two times already, how none of the kids liked him.

“He's a liar,” my son reported. “And once at recess he kicked Billy Grant right in the stomach. On purpose. If he messes with me, I'll karate-chop him.”

The Flemings lived east of town in a trailer. Adam and his two little sisters and his parents had moved to town the year before. Adam's daddy, Wayne, worked nights at the Kroger waxing the floors, and his mother labored at the McDonald's down near the interstate.

Then early one morning Wayne Fleming came home from work to find the kids asleep and his wife gone. There was a note on the table that read,
Don't try to find me. I've gone away.

The rumor was that she'd met a trucker and had gone west with him. Our thoughts toward her were not charitable. The women from the meeting had been taking food out to the trailer and the lady who worked at the Kroger deli let Wayne take home the day-old bread and the chicken wings that didn't sell. The nights were hardest, when Wayne would tuck the children into bed and they would cry for their mommy. People said they were better off, but it didn't feel that way to Adam and his sisters.

Their daddy never knew what to tell them, so he never said anything. He would just hold them until they fell asleep. Then he'd tidy up the trailer and start the laundry and wash the dishes. Then the retired
neighbor lady would come sleep on the couch, and Wayne would leave for the Kroger.

 

I
knew about all this as I was kind of their pastor, since they'd come to our meeting the Easter before. I'd gone to visit them a time or two and had seen Wayne at Kroger when I'd go there late at night for ice cream. We took to visiting in the aisles and struck up a kind of friendship. When his wife ran off with the trucker, Wayne called to tell me.

I mentioned their need to the Friendly Women's Circle, who were casting about for a new project. They decided to take on the Flemings. But as magnificent as those women were, they were no replacement for a mother. Adam and his sisters still cried themselves to sleep.

I had told my son that Adam didn't have the blessings he had and to treat him nice.

Now Adam was sitting next to Levi and me in the school cafeteria. He said, “My daddy sleeps in the daytime. He doesn't eat lunch.”

I said, “Hey, Adam, why don't I come next week and have lunch with you. Would you like that?”

He said he would. Then he said, “My mommy came to eat lunch with me yesterday. Have you met my mommy? She's a good mommy. She's real nice.”

Hoping if he said it enough times, it'd make it true.

I said, “I don't know your mother well, but I bet she's nice.”

He said, “She's real nice. When I get home from school she has cookies for me. And she buys me lots of toys. Anything I want.”

A little girl across the table shrieked, “He's lying. He's a liar. His mommy's gone. She ran off.”

“Shut your face,” Adam screamed and lunged at her. I grabbed hold of him and pulled him back. He was shaking with rage. Then he leaned into me and began to cry.

The lunchroom monitor marched over, frowning, and told Adam if he didn't settle down, he'd have to sit off by himself at the quiet table.

This is The World's response to suffering. We want it out of sight, off by itself over at the quiet table.

Raw pain alarms us. It reminds us that life isn't as orderly as we'd hoped. We demand that pain settle down before we shuffle it off to the quiet table. We want pain to stay in its own little section, want to keep it from spilling over into the other parts of life. Just like those lunch trays. Keep pain in its own little compartment.

 

I
held Adam to me, thinking of his mother. Wondering if her joy in running off was worth all this. I thought of Wayne having to teach his children they were still worth loving and worth having. What a large task, when all the evidence seems otherwise.

This was The World Pastor Taylor had warned against. A world where some parents cared more about their happiness than they did about their children. I thought of the cold evil committed by folks looking to be happy.

The World.

I held that little boy to me and thought hopeful
thoughts of a New World. Yearning for it as never before. A New World.

A world where God has set up housekeeping, where God will live right with us, and we with Him. He'll wipe the tears from our eyes, and death will die. No more crying, no more sorrow, no more pain, no more.

I held that crying boy to me and thought my hopeful thoughts.

T
he Quaker religion began in 1647 and was based on the premise that God could be known directly by all persons. Quakers believed you didn't need a priest to approach God on your behalf, that you could approach God yourself. A kind of do-it-yourself religion. It was a radical concept at the time and was strongly opposed, mostly by priests who had made a handsome living approaching God on other people's behalf.

The Quaker fondness for self-sufficiency continues to this day—we would never think of hiring a plumber or electrician to work in the meetinghouse. Consequently, our meetinghouse toilet gets stopped up a lot, and when the furnace kicks on, the freezer in the basement blows a fuse. Any suggestion to hire a professional to fix these problems is met with derision by staunch Quakers accustomed to standing on their own two feet.

Not hiring professionals has become a test of one's faith. Three hundred years ago, the Quaker proverbs included “There is that of God in every person” and
“Thou shalt not kill.” Today, it is “We can fix that toilet ourselves” and “If we all pitched in, we could paint the meetinghouse together.”

Except we never get around to fixing anything, because when it gets mentioned during our church's monthly business meeting that we need to paint the meetinghouse, Dale Hinshaw scoffs and says, “Well, I'll tell you one thing right now. Ever since they took lead out of paint, it hasn't been worth a darn. Used to be a paint job would last twenty, maybe thirty years, but not anymore. Why don't we have Sam drive up to Canada and buy some paint with lead in it, so it'll last.”

I sit quietly, thinking to myself: This is why I went to seminary—so I could drive to Canada and buy lead paint.

The young mothers sit there, horrified, envisioning their children licking lead paint and suffering brain damage.

One of them raises her hand, timidly. “Isn't lead kind of dangerous?” she asks.

“Naw,” Dale scoffs, “that's a government lie. The paint companies bribed Congress to take lead out so we'd have to paint our houses more often and buy more paint. It's a big racket. Lead never hurt nobody.”

This is Dale Hinshaw at his finest, dismissing a whole body of scientific research in one fell swoop.

The mothers sit there, blinking and dazed. This is not what they'd heard about Quakers. They'd read about the Quakers' opposition to war and slavery, about our beliefs in simplicity, reconciliation, and integrity. They come to church expecting enlightenment and meet Dale Hinshaw instead.

This is why our church never grows. Just when we've gotten someone committed enough to come to
our monthly business meeting, Dale Hinshaw is honing his latest conspiracy theory. It makes the new people leery about sticking around; they worry they're joining some kind of weird cult.

 

I
t happened again in October, when the toilet in the women's bathroom broke and needed replacing. Uly Grant offered to donate a brand-new toilet from the Grant Hardware Emporium. In a fit of new-convert enthusiasm, he even offered to install it.

Dale Hinshaw rose to his feet. “Well, Uly, you do what you want, but I think there's a higher principle involved here, something many of you probably haven't thought about, and that is the topic of these new low-flow toilets. They don't work. You got to flush 'em two or three times. Why don't I drive up to the city to a secondhand store and see if I can get us a used one.”

The women began to murmur, ruminating about used toilets. Dale would buy the cheapest one, probably one from the men's room of an old gas station. It would be dark brown with rust. It would have cigarette burns on the toilet seat. The women grimaced.

Dale continued, “I tell you, the government's gone too far this time, telling us what kind of toilets we can put in our own homes. That ain't right.”

Miriam Hodge spoke up, the picture of Quaker reasonableness. “Aren't the new toilets supposed to use less water, so we can better preserve our limited natural resources?”

Dale said, “Miriam, this ain't about water. This is about liberty. This is about freedom. They're starting
with our toilets, then it'll be our guns, then it'll be the vote. You watch and see. No, I can't agree with this at all. It's time we took a stand.”

Suddenly the installation of a toilet had become a political issue, a test of our patriotism, a challenge to the Bill of Rights.

The trouble with belonging to a religion founded on rebellion is that the spirit of rebellion is never exhausted. It just finds different things to rebel against. First we rebelled against empty religious practices, then against war and slavery. Now we had toilets squarely in our sights.

After the meeting was over, the women gathered in a corner, talking, their voices raised. I was standing with Uly. The women headed toward us. Fern Hampton emerged from their ranks.

“If we don't get a new toilet by next Sunday, the women of this meeting are going on strike,” Fern declared. “No more pitch-in dinners. No more teaching Sunday school classes. No more serving on committees. No more noodles. You think about that.”

Then, having fired their shot across our bow, they turned and marched away.

Mutiny. This was getting ugly. No more noodles.

I turned to Uly. “What are we gonna do?” I asked him.

He said, “Meet me at the back door of the meetinghouse tonight at ten o'clock. Don't tell a soul. Come alone. Bring your flashlight. Wear dark clothes.”

 

I
wondered all day what Uly had in store. Barbara and I went to bed at nine-thirty. She fell asleep. At
nine-fifty I slipped out of bed, pulled on my dark clothes, and grabbed my flashlight. I walked the four blocks to the meetinghouse and stood at the back door, in the shadows.

A pickup truck, its headlights off, coasted into the meetinghouse parking lot and pulled up next to the back door. The driver's door eased open, and Uly slid out of the truck, noiselessly.

He motioned me to the back of the truck. There was a brand-new, low-flow toilet perched in the truck bed.

“Uly, it's beautiful,” I told him.

“Shh!” Uly whispered. “Help me lift it out.” We snuck the toilet into the meetinghouse and down the stairs to the women's bathroom.

Uly said, “Turn on your flashlight.”

I flipped it on. It looked odd in there, with the subtle mingling of shadow and light. It felt wrong to be there, a violation of everything I'd been taught. Spurning the bright light of truth and hiding in the shadows. I felt guilty. I recalled Pastor Taylor admonishing us “to present ourselves to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed…” Now here I was, slinking around in the shadows of the women's rest room.

Uly said, “You hold the flashlight; I'll put in the new toilet.”

It was just about that time that Mr. and Mrs. Dale Hinshaw were driving past on their way home from her sister's house in the city. Dale and his wife had bought a cellular phone the week before and Dale wanted to drive to the city so he could phone someone from the car to tell them he was calling from the car. Halfway to the city, they phoned her sister to say they were on their way.

“Where you calling from?” she asked Dale.

“We're about forty miles out and heading your way,” Dale replied. “We just passed the Little Point exit.”

She said, “You sound funny.”

He said, “I'm calling from the car.” He said it casually, like it was no big deal.

“Dale's calling from the car,” she yelled to her husband, amazed.

Dale showed them the cell phone when they arrived. They passed the phone around and marveled at it. Then Dale told them about the toilet controversy and how he'd had to stand firm against low-flow toilets.

“You have to flush 'em two or three times,” he complained.

They nodded their heads in firm agreement.

Now Dale and the missus were on their way home. They were driving past the meetinghouse when Dale noticed a flash of light coming from the window of the women's bathroom.

He pulled to a stop. There it was again. Yes, a light. Someone was in there. Dale eased around the corner and into the church parking lot. A pickup truck was pulled up to the back door.

“Burglars!” he cried out. “Probably from the city.”

Every bad thing that happened in our town was blamed on people from the city. Now Dale had caught them in the act. What a glorious day this had been! First, getting to stand firm for truth, then using his cellular phone. Now he had caught some burglars. He pulled out his cellular phone and dialed 911, the first time he'd ever done that. His hand was shaking; he could barely punch in the numbers.

A lady answered the phone.

“This is Dale Hinshaw. I'm calling from my cellular phone. I'm outside the Harmony Friends meetinghouse. There's a pack of burglars from the city in there, right now, robbing us blind.”

Ten minutes later the Harmony police car pulled alongside Dale. It was Bernie Rogers.

Dale climbed out of his car. He said, “Bernie, I'm the one who called. Right here from my cell phone.”

He showed Bernie his cell phone.

Dale continued, “It looks like we got some burglars in the meetinghouse. Why don't you go in and chase them out?”

Dale paused and looked at Bernie's considerable paunch.

“Anyway, chase 'em out as best you can. I'll wait for them in the bushes. When they run out, I'll knock 'em on the head with that stick of yours. Why don't you give that to me?”

Bernie handed Dale his nightstick.

Bernie and Dale crept to the back door. It was unlocked. Dale hid in the bushes. Bernie opened the door, lumbered down the stairs, and paused outside the women's rest room. He heard voices.

Bernie thought one of the voices sounded like mine. What would the pastor be doing in the women's bathroom in the middle of the night? It couldn't be good.

He called out, “Sam, is that you in there?”

Uly and I froze. We were treed.

I turned on the light and opened the door. There was Bernie, his hand resting on his pistol.

Bernie looked in at me and Uly. He said, “What you doing in here, boys?” He seemed almost afraid to ask.

Putting in a new toilet, we told him.

“In the middle of the night?” he asked. “Using a flashlight and wearing dark clothes?”

I told him about Dale Hinshaw not wanting a new toilet and the women not making any more noodles.

“No more noodles,” Bernie said, alarmed at the prospect.

“Not a one,” I told him. Then I asked Bernie why he was there.

He said, “Dale Hinshaw called us on his cell phone. He thinks you're burglars from the city. He's waiting outside to knock you on the head with a stick. Don't go out the back door.”

I pleaded with Bernie, “Don't tell Dale we're in here. Go tell him there was no one here, and send him home.” I promised him a free noodle dinner at our annual Chicken Noodle Dinner.

“It's a deal,” Bernie said. We shook on it. Then he left and so did Dale. We heard them driving away. Uly and I finished putting in the new toilet, then went home and went to bed.

 

I
saw Dale Hinshaw the next morning at the Coffee Cup. He said, “Well, you missed all the excitement last night. There were burglars at the meetinghouse. Me and Bernie, we tried to catch them, but they had guns so we let 'em go. They ran out the front door and got away. We got a look at them though. They were from the city.”

“Oh, my,” I said. “It's a good thing you were there to help Bernie.”

“I called him on my cell phone,” Dale said. He pulled the phone from his pocket and laid it on the counter. “Aren't these something?” he marveled.

“Yeah, but I read somewhere they give you cancer,” I told him.

He said, “No. Really?”

I said, “Yeah, it turns out the phone companies bribed Congress not to say anything about it, so they could sell more phones and make more money. It's all a racket.”

Dale said, “Well, I'll be.”

“Yep, that's what I heard,” I told him.

He began to rub his ear and look anxious.

That was on a Monday. The next Sunday, Fern Hampton rose up from the sixth row during our prayer time and announced what a joy it was to have a new low-flow toilet in the women's rest room. She invited the ladies to come see it after worship, then invited them to make noodles on Tuesday morning. All the men smiled, except for Dale.

I expected him to be angry. Instead, he raised his hand and asked for prayer.

“I think I might have cancer of the ear,” he said. “Think I got it from my cell phone. I'm going to the doctor this week. Can you pray for me?”

Dale's wife sat beside him, twisting her hands and looking anguished.

I felt terrible.

In 1647, we Quakers, with high and holy hopes, launched an experiment in holy living, dedicated to the ideals of simplicity, reconciliation, and integrity. But after a while we forsook integrity and became mired in
deceit. It is all the sadder because of our heritage. We come from a people whose word was their bond, and we profaned their memory with our indifference to truth. I was the worst of all.

I went to Dale after worship and confessed to lying about cell phones causing cancer. He sagged with relief.

“Well,” Dale said, “as long as we're confessing, I think maybe I stretched it a little bit about low-flow toilets. Most of the time it only takes one flush.”

We shook hands, reconciled with truth and one another.

No more trickery, I told myself. No more slinking around in the shadows. I'm going to present myself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed. I have a heritage, after all, a legacy to live up to. A straightforward past, with high and holy hopes of a forthright future.