The Unusual and the Unique

Trinity Christian Church is one of a myriad of churches in the small town of New Bloomfield, Perry County, PA.  The Lutheran church is right next door. The United Methodist church is two blocks over.  The River of Life Church is just beyond that.  The Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists and the Catholic Church sit to west each a bit further than the last.  A Baptist church is just out of town to the east.  Trinity Christian began as a German Reformed Church in the middle 1845’s becoming United Church of Christ in 1952.  In 2016, being a very conservative congregation, they pulled out of the UCC largely over the issues gay marriage and abortion.  From then until mid 2017 an interim pastor of the orthodox Presbyterian persuasion filled the pulpit

In July 2017, the congregation voted to call Ed Boyle as their pastor.  His path to the ministry was atypical to say the least.  He was born in the coal regions of Pennsylvania to a staunch Irish-Catholic family.  During his early childhood, his father came to faith in Christ alone as his Savior and withdrawing his family from the Catholic Church began attending a local evangelical church.  Ed also professed faith in Christ during his growing up years.  In his 20’s, he joined the Army and began to progress up through the ranks.  Ed retired from the military as a lieutenant-colonel after 25 years of service.  But a non-working retirement was not in his plans.  He felt that God was calling him to the ministry and he entered Covenant Seminary in Illinois for 3 years of pastoral studies.  Trinity Christian is his first church.  He brings not only a testimony of saving faith and the years of study to his first pastorate, but also knowledge and maturity gained through living many years as a member rather than pastor of a local congregation.

But though Ed is quite unusual among pastors, I find his wife Dawn to be truly unique among pastor’s wives.  She began life and grew up in a small town in Tennessee, but headed to University of Alabama for her college years and ROTC training (she didn’t like the orange and white school colors of University of Tennessee).  A avid football fan, Bear Bryant as head coach of the Crimson Tide was also a huge draw.  After graduation, she enlisted in the Army and met Ed whom she outranked at the time, she being all of 5’ 1” and he being over 6’ tall.  Dawn left the Army when they got married to be a full time wife and eventually the home schooling mother of one daughter and three sons. 

As a pastor’s wife, appearances would be that she is fairly typical.  She is very grounded in the Word, spends much time on her knees in prayer, is generous with her attention and affection for those in the congregation.  She dresses modestly and appropriately for services in a dress or skirt.  Her duties included some secretarial work, visitation with her husband on numerous occasions, help in planning for activities.  So what makes her so unique?  Well, the outfit she wears to church Sunday morning may have an Alabama Crimson Tide logo under her sweater or vest during football season, hidden, but there nonetheless.  Her preferred not-at-church attire is jeans and a t-shirt or sweatshirt.  She is quite outspoken, but quick to apologize if she fears she has offended.  And I think one would look long and hard to find another pastor’s wife with a military career spent being the pilot of a Huey transport helicopter.

A Keepsake for the Decades

WENTWORTH--KNERR WEDDING

After the rehearsal at the church this morning, a picnic at the groom's parents' house in Middletown, Pennsylvania and a photo session for the entire bridal party late this afternoon, the ceremony uniting Candace Lee Wentworth and Barry Lee Knerr in holy matrimony was held at the Grace Baptist Church, Carlisle, Pennsylvania at 7 pm on this day, August 30, 1974.  The bride wore a white, floor length organza gown with a sheer overlay embroidered with scattered flowers.  A wide lace collar finished the high neckline and a deep lace ruffle encircled the bottom of the dress.  The veil was cathedral length and double tier, made of tulle trimmed in wide lace.  The bridesmaids wore white floor length gowns paneled with flower sprigged eyelet.  Each carried a white basket filled with colored carnations, blue for the maid of honor and pink for the bridesmaids.  The groom and groomsmen were dressed in brown tuxedos and ruffled shirts with brown bow ties and white carnation boutonnieres.  The bride's bouquet was red roses surrounding white and pink carnations bordered with more white carnations.  The groom wore a white rose boutonniere.  Members of the wedding party included the bride's sister as maid of honor and the groom's brother as best man.

Two organ solos and several hymns sung by the church choir comprised the prelude, after which the presiding minister gave a short sermon to the gathered guests on the true meaning of love both horizontally and vertically.  The bridal party then processed into the sanctuary to the melody from the hymn "O Perfect Love". The words to the hymn were read after the wedding party had entered. The bride was escorted by her father. The ceremony was traditional with the couple reciting individually written vows.  Rings were exchanged and the couple pronounced man and wife.

Following the ceremony, a reception was held in the church social hall with food bought at the Army War College commissary by the bride's parents, supplemented with side dishes contributed by church members.  The guest sat in chairs arranged in a circular fashion while the wedding party sat at a head table.  A two tiered, square white cake trimmed in blue icing flowers was topped with a silver cross with 2 interlocking rings.  A smaller bouquet was used for the bouquet toss as the bride wished to keep her bridal bouquet as a keepsake.

The couple took a short honeymoon to Thousand Islands in New York State before returning to reside in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Note:  The bride still has her wedding bouquet as well as every rose that her husband has given her throughout their 44 years of marriage.  The flowers reside in a tall glass cylinder in her bedroom.

Babies

Babies are inscrutable little beings.  As they gaze up into your eyes, there is little hint of what is truly going on inside their small, yet oh so rapidly growing brains.  While not yet capable of writing dissertations or calculating intricate equations, there is tremendous learning and thinking taking place.

The sensory explosion experienced by a baby at the moment of birth is breathtaking.   In the womb surrounded by liquid that maintains its temperature and its density, feeling little of the effects of gravity, hearing only filtered sounds, seeing only filtered light, life is quite predictable.  But all of that changes at the moment of birth.  A newborn's world is rocked by contractions, their idyllic existence ends and life as a separate, unique individual begins.  What must the first sensations of air breathed into lungs, of skin touching skin, of warm milk touching taste buds, of the noises assaulting ear drums, what must those be like?  With synapses firing, the brain must be overwhelmed, processing, cataloguing, learning.  And though we each experienced those things, we are not able to remember them, nor is our newborn son of Adam or daughter of Eve able to tell us. 

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.  Psalm 139:14

Memories

My brother, Bill, has a mind (and memory) like a steel trap.  Me:  Do you remember Mother and Daddy taking us to XYZ?  Bill:  Yeah, I was 9 years, 6 months and 3 days old.  We left home at 2:33 pm and took Valencia to I St. to Main St., waited 15 minutes, 22 seconds at the railroad crossing for the eastbound train with 146 cars plus caboose to pass, went over the tracks and turned right onto Whatchamacallit Road, went past the brown house where to elderly man always sat on his front porch with his bulldog, etc., etc.  Obviously a slight exaggeration, but I am continually amazed at the detail he remembers.  His memory is a panorama with the ability to zoom in on specific moments.  Amazing!

Now my memory is the complete opposite.  In most cases the following scenario plays out.  Bill:  Remember when the Whosits came for a visit and Mother made such-and-such and we had fun playing (insert name of game here)?  Me:  No. Well, maybe. Vaguely.  Perhaps?

However, there are specific memories which are catalogued in my brain in much more detail.  Perhaps I have a special location in my brain’s memory center in which a few above average cells reside, taking naps until called upon to provide their data, their limited number decreasing the accessible stock of childhood memories to several handfuls.  Whereas Bill’s memory is a panorama, mine more closely resembles a mosaic, bits and pieces which combine to give a historical overview, but only hold detail within each small piece.

The first house I remember would be the one in which I spent my pre-school years in Lynwood, California, for all intents and purposes a “suburb” of Los Angeles.  The house was one story, small and square and I remember it being quite dark inside, probably with drawn drapes to keep out the California sun and heat. There was a small, but nice side yard and the requisite cat and dog--though why my cat-disliking parents ever bought a Siamese cat (which I loved), I’ll never figure out.  And for many, many years, I thought we had a Collie, only to discover as an adult from old family pictures that it was a Cocker Spaniel.  Evidently, my pre-school self thought the dog was much larger than the reality.  My most vivid memory is of a gigantic yellow and black spider (scary) on an even more gigantic web (fascinating) on the fence in the yard.  My second most vivid memory is of my friend and I trying out her stilts in the living room (forbidden) and one of them falling and breaking a lamp (terrifying to a 5 year old).

Sometime around age 5 or 6, we moved to Long Beach to a nice, one story, larger square house, with a detached garage covered in Bougainvillea .  This one had a much bigger yard with flower beds around the edges and a lemon tree.  Also, my friend across the street had a pomegranate tree in her backyard that we would climb and eat pomegranates to our heart’s content.  The house was in the flight path of LAX and the sound of jets flying low over our house as they came in for a landing was heard often and very loudly.  I’ve wondered if that was the inspiration for my dad’s hobby of flying model airplanes.  I remember walking to church, school, and piano lessons.  I remember my out-of-state grandparents taking me, my sister (who was born while we lived in Lynwood) and my mother who was very much in labor to the hospital in our car, a Mercury with push buttons instead of a gear shift.  It was a jerky ride, but we made it safely there and back home again.  My dad brought my mother and new baby brother home several days later, much more smoothly, I’m sure.  I remember Mother painting the kitchen green and that she hated it.  No particularly vivid memories there—nothing scary enough I imagine.

Truth be told, what I remember is miniscule compared to what I’ve forgotten.  I don’t remember any school teachers before the 4^th grade.  I vaguely remember my Kindergarten classroom, but no others until 5^th grade.  I remember having a crush on a boy named Teddy in the 4^th grade, have no idea who my friends were or their names, (well, except the one with the pomegranate tree and I don’t remember her name) before 7th grade.  Sounds like a definite deficiency.  A psychiatrist would probably have a field day figuring out what I was suppressing.  And yet, because I’ve always preferred to focus on the present and future, the past is just history with enough memories to give a back story and enough framework into which my brother’s more vivid memories can fit and fill in some gaps and enough recollection of the truly important people, especially family, to make me feel very loved and cared for in my growing up years.

Blue

Synesthesia is a condition in which input from one sense triggers an automatic response from another sense.  Very commonly it manifests as music being sensed as colors as well as sounds.  To me that sounds totally amazing, though I’m sure there are potential downsides.  I am not a synesthete, but colors can bring songs or types of songs to mind.

Red is fairly obvious and definitely pedestrian--Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the McDonald’s theme song and many offerings of the military type.

Yellow would bring to mind The Flight of the Bumblebee, songs from The Wizard of Oz and The Yellow Rose of Texas.  .

Green evokes thoughts of Enya and Debussy and other musical impressionists. 

With thoughts of purple come royal marches and majestic hymns.                            .

Blue brings the most specific of memorable songs, two to be exact.  The first is Love is Blue which I first learned in French class, known to us as L’amore est bleu, a gentler, kinder, more hopeful song than the “translation” into English would prove to be.  I still remember most of the words and the memory of them always takes me back to classes with one of my favorite high school teachers who brought a foreign language into our lives with caring and creativity and joie de vivre.

The second is Blue Moon, my father’s love song to my mother.  He, a young Marine, a native Californian, sent back to a hospital in Long Beach with cancer while his comrades-in-arms sailed on to Indochina just before the Korean conflict began.  She, a school teacher from Michigan by way of Washington State and a volunteer at that same hospital in her off hours.  A romance worthy of pen or screen which became a real life union, a marriage lasting 55 years.  And woven through it all were mentions of Blue Moon.  When my dad died in 2015, we found among his things an inexpensive frame holding a very old piece of paper with the faded, typed words of Blue Moon. 

Blue moon
You saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own.

Blue moon
You knew just what I was there for
You heard me saying a prayer for
Someone I really could care for

And care for her he did, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health and as she also cared for him.

Perspective

History has never been my subject.  Yes, I learned all the important dates and the kings and queens of England in their proper order, but only for the test after which all was promptly forgotten.  I did enjoy the aspects that dealt with individuals and their cultures and their reasonings, and also perhaps, the grand overview, the broad sweep, but the drudgery of this fact and that fact, and oh, don’t forget this fact, bored me to tears.  What I really wanted was a chance to look at all sides of events and issues.  I remember checking a historical fiction book out of my high school library which dealt with the American Revolution from the British point of view. Thoroughly enjoyable, and as I learned about the events of that time from a different perspective, I was motivated to learn and retain more about what had happened.

As human beings, shaped by the fall into sin of Adam, we are fallible.  We are limited in our perceptions.  Our perspective can be very narrow.  However, there are the other sides, other perspectives, which do not change the truth, but give insight into the thoughts, emotions and reactions of other people ranging from the differences of male and female thought processes, of the rural/city divide, the range of politics from liberal to conservative, the vast differences between the nations and cultures of the world.  It can be outside our comfort zone to try to step into another’s shoes in any of these situations and we can never fully understand all the factors that may have shaped another’s point of view, but it can be invaluable to gain even a small insight into them.

The overarching comfort is that God’s perspective is infallible, omniscient, eternal.  And because he is omniscient and omnipotent, we can rest fully on him for wisdom and strength.

The end of one of my eras

When today’s younger generations think of the 1960’s, the youth of their parents or grandparents, the images of “sex, drugs and rock’n’ roll” are pretty pervasive.  For some, those were the reality, but for a large portion of the young people growing up during that era, their lives were fairly prosaic.  Yes, the times they were a changin’, but the greater impact had not been felt.

I graduated from Apple Valley High School in Southern California in 1970.  But while San Francisco (and surrounding areas) was a hotbed of hippies coming of age, our small corner of the high desert was quite behind the times.  Drugs were mostly consumed at rich kids parties, the ones left unsupervised for weekends at a time.  Rock music was played on the school buses, but bands often still wore suit coats and ties.  Girls still wore skirts and dresses to school, though hemlines were shorter, to be sure.  Jeans were still working gear and not fashion statements.  Rioting was occurring elsewhere, but respect for teachers and authority still pervaded our school atmosphere.

Our high school was new my tenth grade year.  It had been built as a grouping of separate buildings around an open quadrangle.  The overhangs were deep to accommodate outdoor lockers – not much rain in the desert.  Ninth grade was included with seventh and eighth grades at the local junior high and the twelfth graders chose to stay at with their classmates at the previous high school for their senior year, so for that first year, there were only tenth and eleventh grades.  Our class was just over 200 students, not too large, not too small.  We had the usual assortment of teachers, ranging from the history teacher who had pretty much already checked out to the English teacher who expected and got great things from his students.  The students were also predictably varied--the jocks, the nerds, the in crowd, the outsiders, the average ones.  I played the bassoon in concert, marching and jazz bands (great fun), took part in speech tournaments (results meh), played on the tennis team (I was terrible), got good grades, had friends of all sorts, and generally made it through unscathed.

But all good things must come to an end.  Graduation was held on the football field with a podium facing rows of chairs and the chairs facing the bleachers where family and friends would sit on  a very sunny June afternoon.  Speeches were made, diplomas were handed out and congratulations given.  Our days at public school were over.

However, that wasn’t quite the end.  The highlight for most of us came that evening when we boarded big yellow school buses with our dates, or our friends, and headed 2 hours over the Cajon Pass on Route 66 to Disneyland.  After closing, the whole park became a playground for the graduating seniors from several schools for the entire night, chaperoned of course – and with a dress code.  The Matterhorn, the Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted House, all the rides were open without the usual long lines.  Different artists and bands were playing the various venues, Jackie DeShannon being the only one I can remember.  Restaurants were open; we ate at the one inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.  The hundreds of lights illuminated the park throughout the night and  made it magical.  Good memories.

Heading east the next morning as the sky was brightening, we were indeed leaving our years of public education behind and looking ahead to the dawn of our future.