The Season of Advent

             The tale teller tries to make his listeners acutely aware of what is just

            outside the circle of firelight, what lives at the shadows and edges o

            our  normal perception.  With the wonder tale, the teller makes us

            aware that another world exists in the place where light and darkness

            meet, and then takes us there.

                                                                                    Phantasmagoria, Jane Mobley

            This collection of thoughts and images about the Season of Advent, that “place where light and darkness meet”, is written specifically with the tale tellers in mind, those who tell and retell the saving story which we call Christianity.

                                                                                    The Rev. Dr. Richard B. Tudor

Advent: God’s Prelude to Re-Creation

            The symbolism of the Season of Advent is portrayed most meaningfully for us in the progression of the lighting of the candles on the Advent wreath: one, two three, four candles are lit and then - the Christ candle.  Darkness is defeated!

            In the 19^th century, explorers went into the dark continent, Africa, filled with a kind of missionary zeal where Western civilization was concerned.  In his story, The Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, writing of the adventurers who had gone out from England, called them “Messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire.”

            It would be tempting to let the analogy between Jesus and “a spark from the sacred fire” run away with us but the comparison is instructive. There is today an abundance of darkness afoot in our world in the form of war, fear, ignorance, prejudice, hatred, disease, and hunger.  During Advent we are led to see light in the form of the imperatives of the gospel as a powerful weapon, a sacred spark to be carried in the world by caring hands.

            The opposing images of light and darkness used so powerfully during Advent speak to every individual who has ever given some thought to the struggle between good and evil in our world.  Darkness is also an apt description of the plight of the person who, confused by the demands and contradictions of life, is unsure of the right way to choose.

            The opening canto of Dante’s Divine Comedy puts the human problem in these terms:

Midway this way of life we’re bound upon,

                                               I woke to find myself in a dark wood,

                                              where the right road was wholly lost and gone.

            Like Dante who needed guides (Virgil & Beatrice) to lead him through the labyrinthine confines of the Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise, we and those to whom we struggle to teach the Word, need leadership and direction.  The liturgical year of which Advent is the beginning, is a pathway for us to follow and Jesus is the guide.

Thomas said to him, “Lord . . . how can we know the way?” 

                                 Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life;

                                 no one comes to the Father , but by me.”

                                                                                                John 14:5,6

            The subject of the Divine Comedy is human life and action on earth and eventual destiny in the hereafter.  It is a story of the struggle with good and evil, with life and death, and with time and eternity.  Which of us in not involved in the same struggle?

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            If the liturgical cycle of days, weeks, and seasons through which we annually work our way were to be imagined as a yearlong symphony of re-creation, the Season of Advent would be the overture.  This season in length about four weeks introduces us through an emphasis of prophetic readings and symbols to what is coming.  In it we are given quick glimpses of the promised birth of the Messiah.  Advent is the prelude which contains all of the major themes of Christianity.                                                                                     

 

         The Season of Advent week by week builds in intensity as it calls each person to an awareness of the burning need for preparation: “Watch therefor: for you do not know when the Master of the house will come, . . . I say to all: Watch!  Advent is a prelude of preparation for the Messiah who is coming to recreate God’s world. During the Season of Advent, we find special solace in the following passage:

For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth.

                                                                                                            Isaiah 65:17

           This symbolism of undoing Adam’s error which threw the whole creation out of kilter and estranged humanity from God, is another powerful expression of the meaning of the Season of Advent.  Paradise will be restored.           

All life is in transition!  As Christians, we believe that this is a process of redemption, a movement toward salvation.  The point of the lections in the Season of Advent is that everything is in a process of transition from fallenness to re-creation and that God is in control of the movement.  This is the story which is told during Advent.

The problem of the human condition has its roots in the opposition of finitude and infinity. Human beings rail against the temporary condition of their lives.  They perceive this as a movement toward death (end) which they are powerless to stop.  They are willing to listen to any alternative.  The serpent’s suggestion to Eve echoes in every age and finds an attentive listener in each one of us.  “You will not die.  God knows that when you eat of it [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil], your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil.”

Only in Jesus are we able to break out of the grip of this dreadful journey.  “I am the Alpha and the Omega.”  In Jesus the finitude of human beings is subsumed into infinity.  The opposition is destroyed.

It is the anticipation of the accomplishment of this which evokes numerous mentions of joy and rejoicing in the Advent readings:

 

Sing aloud, O Daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel!

Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter

of Jerusalem.  The Lord has taken away the judgments

against you, he has cast out your enemies.  The King of

Israel is in your midst; you shall fear evil no more.

                                                            Zephaniah 3:14,15

                                                            3^rd Advent 

Why?  Because God is going to visit and redeem his people!  Saving history moves on.  The story unfolds.  Transition and change are unstoppable, but they are a part of God’s plan.   The movement is toward the restoration of the Kingdom (Paradise).

                        When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, *

                         then were we like those who dream.

                                                                                    Psalm 126:1

            We need to see our lives as prelude also, moving introductions to greater moments, greater and deeper understandings which lie ahead.  It is an understatement to say that people have difficulty with transition.  Like Adam, they rail against it fearfully because they sense where it is taking them.  They fail to see that all life is transition.

Living with Uncertainty

            Thus it must be, because one served a God whose nature was not repose

            or abiding comfort, but a God of designs for the future, in whose will,

            inscrutable, great far reaching things were in the process of becoming, . . .

 

                                                                                    Joseph and His Brothers

                                                                                    Thomas Mann

            There is no security in fixed states of being.  It takes courage to commit oneself to this transition.  The arresting aspect of the nature of the prelude is, of course, the uncertainty of what is to follow, even though there are hints of it in the prelude.  Like John the Baptist who obediently sets events and expectations in motion and then is violently removed when his part is played, we in life are often called to play the same sort of self-sacrificing roles.  Transition occurs, the flow goes on, change happens painfully and often we are unhappy with what has come into being.  This must have been in the mind of the English poet William Butler Yeats when he wrote the line: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

Secular Applications 

            Looking at our modern world, there is more which needs to be said about the major Advent theme of re-creation and the human struggle to do it ourselves.  In our world - American society - the scheme of things is decidedly materialistic.  This is a “made” world fashioned for us by manufacturers and offered for sale by advertisers, a “ready-made” world created for us, the consumers.  And we wallow in it!  Happiness is having the means to buy your dreams.

                        The existential writer Walker Percy talks about people living in spheres of nothingness, vacuums.  They are desperate to be thought of as someone, so they buy things of value hoping that the value will rub off on them.  However, once pulled into the vacuum, the purchased thing soon loses its value and becomes - nothing.  So the person goes out to buy something else of value of which s/he can be known as the owner.  And so on and so on until life becomes an endless succession of pulling things into one’s personal vacuum.

            Obviously the conclusion is that salvation or re-creation is not found in things.  It is found in the fullness of new life in Jesus. People want to be the judge of what is good and what is evil and thereby control creation (like God), but that is the wrong path.  Remember Dante lost in his dark wood, ignorant of the right road to take. 

We must be careful of which goal we choose.  Our goal should be a sense of security, meaning, and purpose.  Those who find it are re-created! This is the new humanity which has been born in Christ and we rejoice in it.

                                    Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;

                                     the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.”

                                                                                                2 Corinthians 5”17

 

           

Some Thoughts about Halloween

Now that another Halloween has come and gone, I have decided to collect some of my thoughts about the annual observance of this mysterious day.

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          Are people as surprised and mystified as I am by the phenomenal growth over the years of the celebration (I hesitate to call it a holiday) of Halloween? Last year, 2012, it was reported that 170 million people participated in this celebration and spent in the neighborhood of 7 billion dollars. That’s right! 7 billion! Retailers love it!  I heard a young woman observe on television that, “It (Halloween) is almost bigger than Christmas, except for the fact that there isn’t as much food.” If that’s true, we’re in trouble.

            During my lifetime, Halloween has gone from a primarily small children’s day to one on which many adults decorate their houses with lights and elaborate yard displays. Haunted Houses which charge for admission are common and popular. What is going on here?

            I suppose that there is any number of easy explanations for the popularity of the modern celebration of Halloween. People enjoy things out of the ordinary and they particularly like dressing up in costumes. For some reason, they like to be frightened. It is also a fun day for children. However, I would look a little deeper under the surface of this phenomenon and make the observation that what we are seeing in the perseverance of the popularity of the day is a rebellion, a breakout of the human spirit which refuses to be contained. There is a need for the supernatural. It has to do with the history of thought.

            The Enlightenment occurred in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. It changed the way Western Culture looked at the world. At that time, “Western Culture” meant Europe. The Enlightenment was the watershed between the Medieval thought world and the Modern thought world. It involved a shift in authority, the diminishing authority of the Church and the increasing authority of science (scientific method). In the Medieval World, the Church had hegemony; in the modern world, the locus of authority moved to the reasoned perceptions of individuals. The opening salvo in the battle between science and dogma (the Church) was spoken by Rene Descartes (1596-1650) who at the outset of his famous quest for certainty said, “I think therefore I am.” Notice the shift of the locus of knowledge to the reasoned perceptions of the individual.

            The bottom line of the Enlightenment was that all statements of fact or claims to truth must be based on observation and reasoned perception. What emerged was a rational, ordered world with definite limits. It was an objective world that didn’t seem to leave much space for the idea of another world, i.e. a supernatural realm above the world of observed reality. Rationalism had won the battles but it hadn’t won the war. The human spirit was unwilling to be contained within the orderly boundaries of this brave, new modern world.

The 18^th century saw the birth of what is called the Romantic Movement in which there was an emphasis on the anti-rational, the emotional, and the supernatural. This reactive outlook spread across the spectrum of art, literature, and religion. The paintings of the English artists J.R.R. Turner and John Constable are good examples of the romantic influence in art. Nature comes alive in their work. It is not just an inanimate object to be studied and recorded. Their paintings glow with a mysterious light.

I would quickly disavow the notion that a neat division exists between persons who see the world in the classical manner, i.e. objectively and rationally, and those who perceive reality from a romantic viewpoint. Those two tendencies exist in most of us and often contend for dominance. The great German artist of the 19^th century, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, is often quoted as having said: Zwei Seelen leben in meinem Brust. Two souls live in my breast. 

When I was young I developed a rather broad interest in literature. One of my favorite books was an anthology titled “Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural.” Included were a number of short stories by Edgar Allen Poe. He was a very creative writer who originated the modern mystery story and made significant contributions to Romantic poetry. A favorite story illustrative of the horror story genre, of which he was a master, is “The Fall of the House of Usher.” I savor the first line:

 

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been

passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country,
and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view
of the melancholy House of Usher.
 

Wonderful stuff! It sets the stage for the story of horror to follow. Romantic literature!

            In England, as rationalism and empiricism moved to dominate thinking, the Church of England became, as one observer has described it, “decidedly arid.” Sermons preached by the clergy were an appeal to the reason of the listener. Pretty dull stuff! Not much appeal to the needs of the human spirit! John Wesley filled the void. In 1738, while listening to a commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Wesley “received a strong assurance of salvation and felt an overpowering need to deliver this assurance to others.” He preached powerful, emotional sermons which touched people’s lives and drew them to conversion. He was an evangelist in the truest sense of the world. He preached the good news! Again, this illustration makes my point. The human spirit has deep needs beyond rationalism. The Romantic Movement called forth what is called “pietism” in religion. It was a word used to describe emotional acts of repentance and devotion. I think that the point is well made. The human spirit does have needs that go beyond reason. Halloween in some mysterious way feeds those needs. It is an irrational celebration focusing on the supernatural. People need depth and mystery in their world. They don’t want an inanimate (dead) purely objective world that is neutral. They sense a deeper spiritual level of reality which can feed their spiritual hungers, and so they participate wholeheartedly and perhaps rather unconsciously in the celebration of a day which partially meets the need to express these feelings.

Postscript 

            An interesting fact about October 31^st is that it was on this day in 1517 A.D. that Martin Luther, an obscure and frustrated German Augustinian monk posted his 95 theses on the door of the college church in Wittenberg, Germany. By doing so, he lit the spark which eventually ignited the Protestant Reformation, an event which significantly changed the face of Western Culture. It also, most importantly, was a response to the spiritual needs of the human spirit.

            In the broader Church, October 31 is observed as All Hallows Eve(preceding All Saints on November 1^st), and in the Lutheran Church it is celebrated as Reformation Day.

           

 

 

The Baptism of Thomas Richard Hosto

I will begin these remarks by sincerely thanking Pastor Arnold and the congregation at Living Christ for the opportunity to baptize my third grandchild here in these familiar and friendly confines.

Prologue: Some History

            Almost nine months into our country’s participation in WWII, my mother and father found themselves at an Army installation in Little Rock, Arkansas named Camp Robinson, a long ways from their families back in Minnesota. They were not alone! They also had a newborn child less than a month old – me. They had both been raised as Episcopalians and so it was that in late September, 1942, my parents took me to Trinity Cathedral in Little Rock and there a young clergyman named Fordyce Eastburn initiated me into the Anglican branch of the Christian Church. This was a great gift the significance of which only later in my life did I begin to appreciate. That gift of course was Holy Baptism into the Body of Christ, and by that baptism, entrance also into the Church, an institution which I grew to love.

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            Thomas Richard Hosto will reach the milestone of his first birthday in roughly three weeks time, on September 3^rd to be exact. Six days prior to his birthday, on August 29th, I will be seventy-one. During the course of my seventy- one years, society has changed a great deal. I don’t think that too many people are going to argue with me about that. There is one thing that hasn’t changed: the importance of Holy Baptism as an initiation into committed membership in the Church.

Holy Baptism 

There is one body and one Spirit . . .

                                One Lord, one faith, one baptism

                                One God and Father of all. . .

                                                                                    Ephesians 4:4

            Again I will make the statement that meaningful baptism is critical to the life of the Church and to the life of the individual. If we stopped baptizing, theoretically the church would cease to exist. It is the door through which one enters the life of the Church. Many churches place their baptismal fonts near their front door to forcefully make that point.

            The Church has high expectations of those it baptizes. That includes everyone sitting here. Baptism is not something we do because it is cute and seems like a nice idea.

           Almighty God through the agency of Jesus and the Holy Spirit placed the church in the world with very definite purposes in mind, one of which is the active confrontation of evil and falsehood. The Church needs committed people to attain its goals. That is why baptism involves promises. Hopefully, everyone was paying careful attention to the content of the baptismal promises which were made on Thomas’ behalf.

            We live in a society that has developed real skill in converting everything into something that serves the needs of the individual. It is relentless in its efforts to secularize the church. Why is this so? Modern society is obsessive in the promotion of individual autonomy and the rejection of all external objective authority. The existence of the Church as an objective authority in society sometimes seems to be an affront which society does not want to tolerate. Society therefore is always trying to bring the church down to its own level. In theology that’s called reductionism! One of the most difficult selling jobs in our society is convincing people to accept any authority for their lives other than their own needs and wants. That statement is a modern truism!

            Unfortunately, membership in the Church, i.e. becoming a Christian, cannot lend itself to self-serving purpose. The lives of the original followers of Jesus are instructive. Whatever preconceptions and illusions Peter and Andrew and John and James and the rest of the disciples might have had about the benefits which would follow their individual decisions to follow Jesus, were quickly dispelled when they watched their leader executed on a cross. Remember them arguing about who would be privileged to sit  at his right hand when He came into his kingdom? Jesus tried to warn them! That is what you heard about baptism in the Gospel reading from Luke. “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled.” The point is that Christian witness and commitment is probably not always going to be an easy road to follow. As a matter of fact, it sometimes leads to the cross.

            By executing Jesus as a common criminal, society tried to bring Jesus down to a common level. Or so it thought! Following the resurrection, the eyes of his followers were opened to the realization of the victory (not defeat) of the suffering servant Jesus whose life of compassion and sacrificial service was able to triumph over apparent defeat and death. Selflessness had defeated the sin of self-centeredness, the sacred presence in life had defeated the fear and despair of secularity.

            I say all this to dispel the idea that Holy Baptism that Holy Baptism is simply a “fun” occasion in the life of the Church and the child’s family, a sort of “coming out” celebration. That’s what we see on the surface, but there are much deeper issues at play here. Baptism is the foundational sacrament of the church, the entrance rite in which we return again and again to the issue of deep personal commitment, the decision to follow Jesus and all that follows or should follow that decision.

“Remember us? Marriage in ’58, Baptisms in ’61 and ’64 . . . ?” 

            I am painfully aware after thirty-six years of parish ministry of the difficulty inherent in most attempts to stress the seriousness of the meaning of the sacraments of the church, many of which today have today been converted to life transition moments and occasions when people make cameo appearances in the church. One of my favorite cartoons shows a couple exiting a church following worship and saying to the clergyman at the door: “Remember us? Wedding in ’58, baptisms in ’61 and ’64. . . ?” That attitude is both amusing and painful because in too many instances it is all too true.

            The baptism of any individual is seen by the church as merely the beginning of a lifetime of active, ever deepening relationship and involvement in the church, the Body of Christ. When I think back on my life, the lives of my brother and sister, and the lives of my children in the church, my mind is flooded with irreplaceable memories. All those years in Sunday School learning the basic stories of Christianity, all those children’s Christmas pageants, all those Sundays of being acolytes, and most importantly, all the memories of those committed church people who gave so much to us while we were all growing up. Can you put a value on that kind of nurture and support? I don’t think so! When you live your life within the congregational life of a parish church, at a certain point the time arrives when it will be your turn to pick up the responsibilities that had previously been shouldered by those who went before you. The church is intended to be a generation to generation experience. When it isn’t, we are in trouble!

 

The Parish Church 

            I read the statement years ago by Bishop Richard Emrich of the Diocese of Michigan (1948-1973), that the parish church is the most important unit in the organization of the church. Certainly, most of us because of our experience would attest to the truth of that observation. The parish church is where we were baptized, the place where we have worshiped Sunday after Sunday, the place where we obtained an ongoing Christian education including confirmation, and the place where we enjoy Christian fellowship. Most importantly, it is the place where we have been given the gift of faith. During my thirty-six year of active parish ministry, I reiterated over and over again my belief in the great importance of the parish church in the common life of American society. The strength of parish churches depends upon the process which begins today with this baptism. It is the process of Christian development. This morning is only the first step.

            In 2007, a year before I retired, St. Barnabas’ celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. As a part of that, the North County Journal – when there still was a North County Journal – sent a reporter out to talk with me and a few parishioners to obtain information for the story about this milestone. It was published on July 11^th of that year. One of the parishioners the writer talked with was Joe Reagan who at the time was 92 years old. Joe told the reporter that he had been a member of the congregation from the beginning, and that, “It’s been the best thing in my life to belong as a member.” What a testimony to the importance of the parish church!

Conclusion

            The future of the Church will depend on its ability to develop a membership who take seriously their commitment to follow the example of Jesus and who see their lives of discipleship as a life long struggle to reflect on the meaning of their lives in the light of this commitment.  As we heard in the Gospel, there is no guarantee that the Christian life is going to be easy. Each of us is caught between the attractive pursuits and assumptions of our modern, materialistic society, and the Spirit beckoning us to ignore most of that which is largely illusion anyway and choose lives of true discipleship. The choice is put daily to each one of us. Choose wisely because both your life and the common life of the Church is at stake!

 

Postscript 

 In 1968, I went to Berkeley, California for my first year of seminary at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. Shortly after I arrived, I happened to be looking at a list of faculty members and one name jumped out at me. Fordyce Eastburn, the individual who had baptized me back in 1942 in Little Rock. The first chance I got, I introduced myself and told him of our connection. I was crushed when he didn’t remember me. 

In July of 2008, Liz and I attended a family reunion in Little Rock. On Sunday, July 13, I officiated at a Service of Holy Communion in the chapel at Trinity Cathedral. Following the service, Liz took my picture standing at the font where I had been baptized almost 66 years previously.

 

 

           

 

George The Cat

          Monday, July 8^th, 2013, was a sad day! We were forced by painful circumstances to make the decision to put our cat George to sleep. We had taken him to the vet the previous Friday because he had been losing weight and was displaying a problem in his mouth. Dr. Klotz looked at him and asked us to bring him back on Monday morning. They would then anesthetize him in order to be able to thoroughly examine his mouth. She thought that it was either an abscessed tooth or a tumor. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the latter and there was no hope for him. He couldn’t eat and he was in pain. He had already lost about 30% of his body weight and was literally skin and bones, a shadow of his former self. George had been in our home for over sixteen years and it was a difficult decision to have to make. Liz and I both cried! People talk about pets being a part of the family; George was all that and more.  

            George arrived in our home in 1997 as an abandoned kitten picked up on the street by our son Robert. Some roofers had found this little cat and were talking about killing it. (What kind of people are we turning out in this society?) Robert told them that they certainly were not going to kill the kitten, and put him in his truck and brought him home at the end of the day. That began his life in cat paradise where his every need was looked after. As a kitten, he had been separated from his mother way too early and there was some question whether he would survive. At the time we had two dogs and one of them assumed the role of George’s mother. After that, we always told people that George thought of himself as a dog, not a cat. He didn’t purr and really didn’t meow. He made a growling sound in his throat when he wanted attention. Robert named him “George” after the country music singer George Strait.

            George grew up to be the toughest cat in the neighborhood. He was very territorial and wouldn’t tolerate any other cats who happened to wander into what he considered to be his space. George vigorously chased them away. I don’t think that he lost many fights. In his youth, he was a very large cat and he could handle himself. In his early years, he would often be outside all night. He would always appear at our front door in the morning and come in to eat and then take a nap. Cats are nocturnal creatures and George was true to form.

            Cats are also strange and unique. Until you have lived with one or two, it is almost impossible to understand what that statement means. No self respecting cat would ever go to obedience school. They all have an uncanny ability to manipulate their living situations to their preferences. More often than not, it is their human owners who end up being trained to do things their way. They seem to be so calculating and intelligent. Just look deeply into the seemingly bottomless pools of a cat’s eyes! George for most of his life was aloof and standoffish. He didn’t like to be petted. And yet, he could be affectionate when it suited him. It was almost as if he was doing a favor when he allowed someone to touch him.

            In my experience, no two cats are the same. Each one has its own unique personality. It’s amazing how different they can be. Just like people. That is another pitfall to living with cats. You start thinking of them almost as people, your children. We had taken to calling George “our little boy” who some days was good and some days was bad, and we talked to him on that level.

            George was old for a cat. The average feline life expectancy is twelve years. George was over sixteen. In human terms, that would translate to eighty plus years. In his later years, George had slowed down quite a bit. However, one thing didn’t change! He always liked to be outside. He would go out and sit in our garage, often in a chair, and  watch the neighborhood. In the summer, he enjoyed lying on the warm cement absorbing the heat. At night he used to lie under one of our vehicles. I would go out and call his name. He would slowly saunter up to me; I would pick him up and carry him inside. The next morning at 5:30 am, he would be waiting at my bedroom door for me to let him outside and his daily routine would begin all over again. And I guess mine would too.

            For the last several years, George would jump up and sit on my lap when ever I would sit down on the couch to watch television. He would look up at me imploringly as if to say, “Why don’t you scratch my ears?” George loved to have his head stroked! Another one of his favorite tricks was to jump up on the dining room table and lie down next to my laptop. Liz would ask from another room what I was doing and I would respond, “George and I are working on the computer.” George knew that he was my cat and he liked to be wherever I was. Not too long ago, my daughter Bethany brought her dog Molly over to our house and I took Molly for a walk. After we had started going down the sidewalk, I looked back and there was George following along. He went for the whole walk.

            Why do we invest so much of ourselves in our relationships with our pets when we know it’s probably going to end with a painful but necessary decision like the one we just had to make? I don’t know the answer. I'm sure it has something to do with mutual needs, theirs and ours. Goodbye George! We are sure going to miss you!

 

                                                                              Richard B. Tudor

 

Digging In The Past

 

 

. . . a queer craving to visit the past and give the modern world the slip.

Siegfried Sassoon

 

            I have been reading a memoir by William Manchester titled Goodbye Darkness.  He had struggling for some time with strange nightmares related to his World War II experiences. It had gotten so bad that it felt as if darkness had a stranglehold on his life. He wanted to dispel it. In 1978 he decided to revisit the islands in the Pacific Ocean (New Guinea, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Kwajalein, Saipan, Iwo Jima) on which he fought against the Japanese as a young marine in the 1940’s He called his trip “digging in the past.” It was intended to be therapeutic and cathartic. It became an exercise in facing personal demons. All of us bear wounds from the past. Perhaps we must retreat there to find healing, to lift the darkness from our lives.

            There are any number of other reasons to want to revisit one’s past. Memories are compelling! Nostalgia is a powerful emotion! Sometimes we search for meaning (completeness) in what Manchester calls, “the unconsummated past.” From my personal perspective, we return to our pasts seeking redemption and reconciliation. Whatever the reason, I am fascinated by the process of digging in the past. You never know what or who you might find. The ultimate goal is self!

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            On June 21, 2013, my wife Liz and I drove down to Hot Springs, Arkansas to get away and celebrate our 39^th wedding anniversary. We met up with two distant cousins of mine, Chuck and Clay Fitzhugh and their wives Becky and Debbie. The trip brought to mind my first visit to Hot Springs twenty years ago and my introduction to relatives I didn’t know existed.

In 1993, my uncle Thomas Tudor who was the family genealogist contacted me and said that now that I was living in St. Louis, I should acquaint myself with a branch of our family living in Arkansas. The existence of this “branch of our family” was news to me. Uncle Tom said that these people constituted the Bruce side of our family. That rang a bell! I knew that the Bruce name was important to us. My father’s full name was Robert Bruce Tudor. My brother Tom also has Bruce as his middle name. I was aware that somewhere in our past, we Tudors did claim a connection with Robert the Bruce and his descendents. When my father was in England during WWII, he visited Dunfermline Abbey in Scotland where Robert the Bruce is buried. My uncle Tom went on to say that these Arkansas relatives were in the habit of having family reunions every few years. Tom had contacted their family genealogist and had asked that I be invited to the next gathering. It didn’t take long for that to happen. In late May, I received a lengthy letter from Edward Bruce Fitzhugh which laid out the relationship between our families. I was extremely interested to discover in his letter that his family belonged to the Episcopal Church and that their lineage included a number of Episcopal priests. As a matter of fact, his brother William Fitzhugh was a retired priest in the Diocese of Arkansas. William had referenced me in the Episcopal Church Clerical Directory and had given his brother my particulars. Edward closed his letter by inviting me to their next family reunion to be held at the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas on July 23-24 that summer. I was intrigued. Instant family!

            I made reservations at the Arlington and, on July 23, my sons Robert and Thomas and I drove down to Hot Springs. For some reason, Liz and the girls didn’t go. Driving through Little Rock was interesting for me because I had been born there in the St. Vincent Infirmary on August 29, 1942 while my father was stationed at Camp Robinson during World War II. In 1943, the army transferred my father to an installation near Indio, California where my brother Tom was born on November 20. Little Rock was my birth place but that fact certainly carried no sense of home town. I had no memories of Little Rock or Arkansas because I had never been back. Still, I have always had a Little Rock connection in my mind. Now, I had come back.

            Walking into the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs was quite an experience. The lobby was large and looked like a ball room. Very elegant! The lobby bar was on your right as you entered and it had then (and still has today) a very art deco appearing backdrop. The hotel was built in 1924 and the building replaced an earlier structure from the 1890’s which had burned down. Needless to say, the Arlington is a grand tradition in Hot Springs. There is a suite on the fourth floor which is named for Al Capone who used to vacation there. The hotel is located across the street from Hot Springs National Park. A short distance from the hotel down the street are ten bath houses which are relics from the old days when “taking the waters” in Hot Springs was a very popular thing to do. The bath houses have all been restored by the park service. Going to Hot Springs is definitely a step back into the past. That is obviously intentional!

            Once the boys and I entered the hotel and checked in, we very quickly discovered that the Bruce-Carvill-Fitzhugh family reunion was headquartering in the Apollo Room on the seventh floor.  I went down there and discovered about twenty people sitting around renewing acquaintances and looking at pictures. Very soon, I found myself visiting with Herman Charles “Bo” Carvill who was the driving force behind these reunions. He was the organizer. I met William “Billy” Fitzhugh the retired Episcopal priest and we talked a bit about the Rev. Caleb Alexander Bruce who had started several parishes in Arkansas and had for a time been rector of St. Paul’s, Alton, Illinois. Later, I sat down with Edward Fitzhugh and we discussed the Bruce-Tudor family connections. Edward had put together a very informative if somewhat complicated two page family tree and gave me a copy.

 

A Brief Genealogy

 

            It seems that our common ancestor is an individual named Dr. Barwick Bruce who in the early 1800’s was living in Bridgetown, Barbados. He and his wife Amabel Walrond Bruce had seven children. In 1806, Dr. Bruce, his wife, and their two youngest children, Nathaniel French Bruce and Mary Dalrymple Bruce, immigrated to Hartford, Connecticut. These two children, Nathaniel and Mary, are the key to the connection between the Bruce-Carcill- Fitzhugh people living in Arkansas and my family, the Tudors. Nathaniel received a medical degree from Dartmouth in 1813 but apparently never practiced. After his graduation from Dartmouth, he married Sarah Benton in 1814. He then studied for the Episcopal ministry and was ordained to the Priesthood in 1817. He and Sarah had ten children; the two oldest being Sarah and Caleb. Caleb Alexander Bruce followed in the footsteps of his father and became an Episcopal Clergyman. He married Mary Sortore in 1838. They had three children among which were Sarah Elizabeth Bruce and Mary Amabel Bruce. These two women married brothers. Sarah married Edward Julian Carvill and Mary, Herman Carvill in 1883. The latter couple, Herman and Mary, had six daughters and one son, Herman Charles Carvill. It was these six sisters and their descendents who were the focus of the first family reunion in the 1970’s.  They married men with the surnames of Fitzhugh, Douglas, Howell, Trice, Wilson, and Cherry.

            By the time I came on the scene, all six sisters were deceased and the reunions were being carried forward by their children and grandchildren. “Bo” Carvill who organized many of the gatherings including the one in 1993 was the son of Herman Charles Carvill, the brother of the six sisters.

            The connection between the Tudor family and this Arkansas branch of the Bruce family took place when Mary Dalrymple Bruce, sister of Nathaniel French Bruce, married William Watson Tudor on September 1, 1824 in Christ Church, Hartford, Connecticut. William Watson Tudor was my great-great-grandfather. William represented the sixth generation of Tudors in America, the first being Owen Tudor who came to the colonies in c.1636. I am the 10^th generation., my children and grandchildren the 11^th and 12^th.

            I was not the first member of my family to spend time in Hot Springs. After I had been there for a day or so, I called my father and asked him what he knew about the very large and old hospital which sits up on a bluff across from the hotel and above the bath houses. He knew it very well. It had been called the Army-Navy Hospital in the 1940’s and my father had even spent some time working there during his time at Camp Robinson in Little Rock, thirty miles away.. That interested me. I decided to walk up there and see if I could take a look around. I discovered from a sign near the front door that the hospital was now owned by the State of Arkansas and was being used as a drug rehabilitation center. I walked in and went up to the front desk and made my request. I told them that my father had been a army doctor who had worked there briefly in the early years of WWII and that I would like to see the hospital. The young woman looked at me as if she had never heard of WWII and said that there was no one there to give me a tour. So much for that idea!

            The 1993 reunion concluded with a banquet which began with bagpipe music. Remember that these are people who are deeply conscious of their Scottish heritage. At one point in the evening the boys and I were introduced by Bo Carvill and he gave an explanation of our relationship to their side of the family. On Sunday morning, The Rev. William Fitzhugh celebrated the Eucharist in the Apollo Room. This was also part of the tradition.

            Since 1993, we have attended several of these family gatherings. Sadly but understandably, the numbers of attendees have been dwindling. Edward and William Fitzhugh are both deceased as is “Bo” Carvill who died in 2008. The last official reunion was held in Little Rock because “Bo” wouldn’t travel anymore but unfortunately, he had died earlier in the year. We met at the home of Eldridge and Sarra Douglas. We listened to a very informative presentation by Charles Witsell, an architect in Little Rock, who is a descendent of Alexandria Carvill Wilson. The 2008 gathering was put together by Francis Bruce Carvill Cox who lives in Texas.

One can quickly see the many difficulties involved in continuing the wonderful and meaningful practice of family reunions. People get older and they are no longer able to travel. People die. Families become spread out all over the country. The younger members of the family lose touch with the family history and no longer have an interest in perpetuating family tradition. People are busy! It goes on and on! In an effort to preserve some semblance of the tradition, on June 21-23, three couples met at the Arlington in Little Rock to remember the past and celebrate it. There were still plenty of family ghosts (“Bo”, Edward, William) in the Apollo Room along with the faint echo of bagpipes. And I could still glance at the old hospital up on the hill and see, in my mind’s eye, a young Army doctor named Robert Bruce Tudor confidently walking in the door in 1942. It’s all part of digging in the past.

           

Epilogue: Childhood Memories



 

Remember Who You Are

 

During the past few months, I have been involved in a project which is one that everyone should undertake.  It is the process of writing about one’s life and reflecting on it. The three essays which I have put together on this subject focus on a decade of my childhood. The general title is: “Growing up in Bismarck, North Dakota in the 1950’s.” What has emerged is understandably not an impersonal history.

During the writing process, I happened to read a quote by a French filmmaker named Jean Renoir: “The only things important in life are the things you remember.” When I read that statement, my first impulse was to agree with it. It seemed obvious and logical! Our memories selectively choose the events in our lives that are important and stand out. It discards those that are mundane, i.e. ordinary and meaningless. However, looking back at my impressions of life in the 1950’s and considering feedback received from others; I have had to reconsider the ability of memory to retain a clear image of many things that are important. I have instead been led to the conclusion that we – both individually and collectively – over the years,  as we have been swept along by the relentless development of popular culture, for some reason have forgotten and discarded much that is important. I would describe this as a cultural amnesia.

            A great deal of comment about my reflections has come from contemporaries who are apparently as nostalgic as I am about the foundational values of life in the 1950’s as compared with the superficial quality of life today.  Many of them frequent a Facebook page aptly titled: “I grew up in Bismarck.” They  wistfully talk as if they have lost something that was extremely valuable. At least when they look back on those years, they feel that way. A friend of mine, after he had read my first reflection on the early years (1949-1953), said to me, “I didn’t want it to end.” The real question that has emerged for me from my writing project is this: why have we forgotten so much that apparently was so important and why have we accepted so little in exchange? That’s a good question and one that is not so easily answered.
 

            The title of this epilogue is “Remember Who You Are.” Years ago I heard a sermon with the same title. Bishop Richard Grein who preached it began his remarks by telling a story from his childhood. He and a few of his friends including one named Bill used to go out on Friday and Saturday nights and drive around and do whatever happened to present itself. We all remember those kinds of nights. They would go over to Bill’s house to pick him up, stop in front, and honk the horn. Bill would come running out followed by his mother and, as he was climbing into the car, she would call out to him, “Now Bill, remember who you are.” What did she mean by that? She certainly wasn’t afraid that Bill would forget his name and where he lived. She was talking about his sense of self, the place where his integrity resided. She knew – as most mothers in the 1950’s also knew – that if he would remember who he was, the beliefs and values and manners that he had been taught, appropriate behavior would follow. He would not do something that would shame his family. Bishop Grein in his sermon went on to point out that, “the way we address the world in terms of values, relationships, and ethical behavior is in great measure a product of this awareness of self which we call identity.”

            I believe that all of us who grew up in Bismarck in the 1950’s share a certain identity given by that experience. We came to expect a non-violent community that didn’t have armed guards in schools and grocery stories. We couldn’t imagine such a world.  We expected a civil society where one rarely heard any profanity in public. It was also a society where we learned values and ethics in school and in church and in families. We didn’t look to television or movies or music videos to form our character and beliefs. It was a society in which most people only bought things they could afford because they were suspicious and even fearful of debt. Like It, Charge It! (JCPenney) It was not a particularly materialistic world. In stark contrast to today’s situation, the public schools we attended were places of discipline. That was the world in which we lived, a world created, formed, and maintained by our parents who seemed to clearly understand what it meant to be adults. That "understanding" has become blurred today. Importantly, it was a world in which people were taught that they were responsible for their actions, a responsibility that led to accountability. It was a world of security, certainty, and community.
 

            Today we find ourselves living in a much different world. Why did we and so many other people allow that other world to fade away? Of course, it is people through the choices they make which creates the world (culture) in which we live. The world of the 1950’s with its fixed ideas about morality met its demise in the mid-1960’s when new ideas about the relativity of personal choice began to gain popularity. The triumph of this viewpoint is called post-modernism. It means no absolutes. In the church, as this viewpoint gained a foothold, it was quickly discovered that the most difficult thing to do was to get people to accept any authority other than their own needs and wants. Simply stated, in the fifties there were accepted, and respected centers of authority (education, religion, government); in the sixties, the center of authority shifted to the individual. Personal autonomy became the focus. Have it your way! (Burger King) The message was that nobody should be able to tell anyone else how to behave. The writer Thomas Wolfe famously has characterized the people who came of age in the 1970’s as “The Me Generation.” He hit the nail right on the head.   

            The question then again needs to be asked. Why did so many people just stand around passively and allow so much that was decent and important in American society to fade away? That is difficult to answer! Human nature has much to do with it. People go along to get along. They choose the path of least resistance. They don’t want to make any waves. We have all heard the clichés.

 

It’s to preserve a way of life that one knew and loved!

 

               Mr. Fezziwig 

                                             1951 Screenplay of a "Christmas Carol” by

   Charles Dickens

 

            Perhaps the best way to illustrate what I am talking about would be to look at an example from 19^th century English literature. Most people are familiar with the short novel “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. In this wonderful story, Dickens is actually speaking out against recent changes in English society. The Industrial Revolution is in full swing, driving these changes. Business is flourishing, but the labor of people is being replaced by machines. Mr. Fezziwig is a businessman of the old school. He is content with things the way they are. He has a fatherly concern for his employees. He is old fashioned. The new “vested interests” want to buy him out and they make him a handsome offer. He turns them down by saying that money isn’t everything.. Their representative Mr. Jorkins is exasperated and presses him by saying, “Well, if it isn’t for money that one spends one’s life building up a business, then what is it for?” Mr. Fezziwig responds with the above mentioned quote. “It’s to preserve a way of life that one knew and loved.”  We need more people with the sensibilities of Mr. Fezziwig in society and fewer like Mr. Jorkins, although I know that the reverse is the reality.

The Loss of Innocence

            As I have reflected on the differences between the American society of the 1950’s and the “post modern” society of today, one of my favorite vantage points for doing that is through the topic of the loss of innocence in American society. By the phrase “the loss of innocence,” I mean the modern tendency to push young children into adult roles and situations which they have neither the experience or the emotional maturity to handle. Sexuality is the obvious one. Here are a couple of stories which illustrate my point.

        In the year 2000, at a local suburban high school, a girl went into labor in the parking lot. When the word got around the school, seven boys came into the office to inquire if it was their girl friend. A mother who happened to be in the office on some errand, overhearing what was going on, piped up and inquired if it was her daughter, who was apparently attending high school pregnant. My reaction to reading this was to think - what is going on here? Also in the year 2000, Time magazine sent a team of reporters to the St. Louis area to write a story which was going to focus on the subject: “A Week in the Life of a High School.” The school they chose to profile was Webster Groves High School. This article has to be read to be believed! Some of the students have their own apartments because their divorced parents are too busy playing boy friend/girl friend.  An incident is reported in the article in which a young female student goes home and tells her mother that she has had her first sexual experience. The mother’s reaction was “to be excited for her.” Here is the loss of innocence enthusiastically assented to by a person who should have known better. I can guarantee that that certainly would not have been my mother’s reaction if my sister had come home in the early 1960’s with that announcement.

            I don’t know how many girls became pregnant during the class of 1960’s four years at BHS. I can only remember hearing about one. The subject wasn’t talked about much. Our four years in high school were many things, but “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” they were not.
 

Conclusion

 

“Those who cannot remember the past

                              are condemned to repeat it.                                           

                     George Santayana

            1863 - 1952

 

            Both the world and American society have undergone enormous changes since the class of 1960 walked out of Bismarck High School for the last time fifty plus years ago. In many cases, the change has been so dramatic that it is difficult to clearly remember what it was like to live day to day in the 1950’s. Was it really possible to function without cel phones and e-mail and Ipads and Ipods? How did we ever do it?
 

            I suspect that there will be many people who will read my reflections about growing up in Bismarck in the 1950’s who will object to my negative characterization of post-modern society in contrast to the society of the 50’s. So be it! I still laugh when people talk about all the progress that has been made. Technologically, Yes! Socially, in many areas, a loud, emphatic No! In my mind much that has happened has been a movement from system and order to chaos.

If people are really interested in a deeper discussion of these issues, they should find and read a book by Allen Ehrenhalt with the title, The Lost City: Discovering the Forgotten Virtues of Community in the Chicago of the 1950’s. One can also read an article titled “Learning From The Fifties” by Mr. Ehrenhalt which appeared in the 1995 Summer edition of The Wilson Quarterly. For a good comprehensive study of the decade of the 1950’s, read David Halberstam’s The Fifties. From my experience and reading, I have concluded that the pivotal year in the dramatic change of America was 1968. For a discussion of that thesis, read The Year The Dream Died: Revisiting 1968 In America by Jules Witcover. Interestingly, 1968 is the year that statistics about church attendance began a steady downward spiral, a trend which continues to this day.