Pennsylvania Trip–Part 3 Rust and Pods

Well may you ask the connection between rust and pods, and further may you question the significance of a post about either of them. And I confess, I have no answer, except that something about each class intrigues me. What is it? The passage of time with its connection with our own lives? Durability? The charm of the flawed?

Near one of the stores where we shopped yesterday was an ancient gasoline pump. Broken. Rusted.  Beautiful. Its sides were pitted with decay.

In a clump beside the old pump was a stand of yellow flowers (black-eyed susans?) that with a flourish had shot up the side of the flawed metal.        .

   Its brand was legible.     Nearby in the things of rust was a fence.Chains and iron of decay.

Pods abound here on my brother’s property. I’m enchanted..

Trip to Pennsylvania–Part 2

Among some Amish people–perhaps all–is a sensitivity to being photographed, so despite my proclivity for wanting to snap pictures of everything, I’m careful to be inoffensive to those about me. Yesterday we trekked to Smitsburg, a small town an hour or so from my brother’s with an extensive Amish population. Not many of them were out and about, but when Junior drove the car in front of a tall white farmhouse to pitch in $2.00 and take up a fat pumpkin, a school bus pulled up and off stepped an Amish youngster.

“May I take your picture?” I asked, and when he nodded I snapped a couple of shots. He ran up the hill to his house, but I called him back to give him a dollar. His father was watching from the barn. I waved and spoke to him.Earlier we had eaten a meal in this restaurant, and Junior asked, “Have you eaten perogies” and when we said we had not, he placed a small order. They were delicious. Turns out they are dumplings made from unleavened dough, boiled, then covered with butter and grilled onions. Often stuffed with potatoes, sometimes cheese, probably lots of things. They were delicious. I could have eaten a plate full all by myself! 

We browsed antiques store, tramped down gravel driveways, shopped in chocolate shops and drank water and root beer and handled packages of specialty flour and nuts and popcorn and looked at cases of cheese and followed Amish buggies down the road way, then . . .our last stop.

“I’m cooking steaks for you tonight,” Junior said. My eyes widened at the meat he chose, and the total that rang up. Seven steaks. One rib roast!

Jerry found an old tape once we arrived home. What a day! What a trip! What a brother I have!

Anguish and Forgiveness

To plumb the depths of a person and there find pristine virtue and untarnished valor is rare, seldom sighted among us, notable because of its infrequent reality. To detect its presence in a lighted eye neath the furrow of sincere brow, to catch a drift of telling word and its corroborating moves–moves that signal not only the philosophy, but the exhibition of this thing called forgiveness, is an almost unknown factor in our jaded society. I mean real forgiveness, gut-wrenching forgiveness, ghastly forgiveness. Forgiveness that stops the world, that snaps to attention the heads of men and women across the globe. It matters not our divergence, our cut, our color or our class…for when we see it and hear it and know it, we understand that we are seeing, hearing and knowing God. It’s that rare.

The Nickel Mines Amish did it. They showed us Forgiveness. Awful forgiveness, anguished forgiveness, bloody forgiveness.

Recall that just over a year ago these Amish people–a religious group who lived in Nickel Mines, Pa. on farms without electricity and other modern conveniences had their lives splintered into untold agony when a person who lived in the area, their milkman, Charles Roberts, burst into a one-room schoolhouse, and shot ten young girls. Five of them died. Unbelievably, during these atrocious actions, one of the girls, 13-year-old Marian Fisher, offered to be killed first, thinking perhaps the others would be saved. The most telling of all is that within hours of the murders, these beautiful Amish people–the families of the slain children–not only spoke of forgiving Charles Roberts, but visited his wife and children and gave them food and money.

Picture and the following from the Pittsburg Post Gazette

Horrified strangers worldwide sent $4.3 million to the Nickel Mines Amish settlement in Bart, Lancaster County. But the Amish, who have no insurance, used the gifts for more than medical bills.

They gave shares to local emergency services that came to their aid and, in a move that caught the world’s imagination, to the widow and children of the man who murdered their daughters.

“It certainly means a lot for us to spend some time with the families,” Miller said after their meeting together on the anniversary of the shooting. “There’s no other place we would have rather been this morning.”

Also attending were community members, state troopers and officials from Virginia Tech, where a gunman killed 32 students and faculty members in April, Miller said.

Though grateful for all the help and sympathy it has received, the Amish community is hoping to be left alone as much as possible Tuesday during the actual anniversary of the shootings.

The New Hope Amish School, which replaced the one torn down after the attack, was closed Monday and will remain shut Tuesday.

Read more here.

Now consider this–also from the Pittsburg Post Gazette

Not everyone affirms the Amish response.

Rabbi Alvin Berkun, rabbi emeritus of Tree of Life Congregation, Squirrel Hill, and president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the international organization of Conservative Rabbis, applauds the Amish care for Amy Roberts, but not their forgiveness of Charles Roberts.

“In Judaism, there are some strings attached. I have to say I’m sorry for what I did, I have to resolve not to repeat that pattern of behavior again and I have to ask those I harmed to forgive me,” he said.

“Letting somebody off the hook even though they are dead doesn’t sit well with me. Society can’t function when you just wipe the slate clean constantly. He did a horrendous, horrendous thing and he did absolutely nothing to repent.”

This post was difficult for me to put together, and I truly can say as I finish here, that from the skin of my body to my inward parts, I am shaken, and at this moment physically tremble. I knew when I broached the subject it would be difficult. For in trying to be honest with myself, I wonder…I truly wonder…could I forgive such an assault on my family as did the Amish in Nickel Springs? Am I that Godly? If I’m not, why not? Is such forgiveness indeed Godliness?

What about you? Do you have it within you to exhibit such a sterling quality? Have you been challenged in your resolve to forgive those who wrong you? Ever had to extend forgiveness when it really hurt, when it caused anguish? Do you perhaps agree with Rabbi Berkun that forgiveness in this instance is misplaced?

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My devotional blog is here.