I chose to read from Job, because that was where God has been leading me these last weeks. We read in English, because again it would not be right to have a guest with us and not to let her join us.
I do not know how Bishop Schrock would feel about this, but I know that it was what we needed to do.
Hannah read from the twenty-third Psalm, where she so often goes for comfort, and then shared her trust in God in a short reflection. Sadie chose to read a passage from Luke, one that talks about the coming of the Kingdom and the end of things, and how it is already among us. It was that passage I’d been reflecting on the other day, about the vultures gathering over a corpse.
“I think we all know what that means,” Sadie said, as she closed the Bible and passed it to her brother. And that was all she had to say about that.
Jacob read from 1 Samuel, as he often does, the story of David and Goliath. He reads it because he likes it. Because it makes him feel brave, even though he’s not grown up. That was what he said.
“I’m very scared when I look out at the English now. I still dream about those planes falling down, about the fires, and I feel small and like I am nothing. But then I remember how David was strong, even though he was just a kid. Especially because he was a kid. He was smart and fast, and he knew what to do. So I like this story right now.”
When the Bible was passed to Shauna, she read from the Psalms again, a little passage from Psalm 51, about creating in her a clean heart.
And then she talked, and she cried, and she talked some more. About how afraid and alone she felt. About how she had already been so lonely and isolated, because of how things had been. She had always been anxious, and afraid, and she had turned to alcohol and men who were not her husband. She had lost her job as a nurse’s assistant at the hospital because she had let her life slide, and had done things she should not have done. She had not known how to talk to her boys when they became teenagers, and they had hated her because she had done terrible things and been a terrible mom.
Then she cried for a while, and Hannah and Sadie held her, and she said she was sorry for crying, and then she cried some more.
Then we prayed from the prayer book to end our family time, as we always do.
I think it was good that she could be with us. The lives of the English are so very hard.
THAT AFTERNOON, WE DID not work, for it was Sabbath. Sadie and Hannah went with Shauna, Tad, and Derek to visit at the Fishers’. I would go later, but for now, I stayed with Mike, and he and I talked and walked the property along the fence line. There were things we needed to discuss.
There were things he needed to hear from me.
“From what you have told me, and what I have seen, you are not going to be weekend guests, Mike. This is going to last a while, maybe a very long while.”
He nodded, grimly. “Yeah. I don’t know how this turns out. I can’t see it being good.”
I told him about what we would be able to do for the winter, which would be on us soon. There was harvesting that needed to happen yet. Soon it would be the wheat that had survived the storm, the root vegetables that still grew deep in the earth, the fall crop.
And with four more mouths, our preparations were barely adequate. I’d need to slaughter that calf, soon, tomorrow, and he and the boys could help me butcher it and prepare it. That meat would help.
But it would mean less for us to give when others came hungry to us. It would mean that we would need to keep a positive spirit toward one another, and the work would be hard.
I asked him if he was willing to commit to doing what needed to be done.
“We’ve worked together so long, Jacob,” he said. “You know I’m good for doing whatever we gotta do to make this happen. And do I have a choice? I mean seriously, do I?”
I told him that I knew I could trust him, but that sometimes what we mean to do and what we do become very different things.
“Yeah,” he said. “I hear that. Story of my life.”
Then I told him that we needed to talk about Shauna. Would they be able to be together and not be angry? “It is going to be a very hard time, no matter what happens,” I said. “If we work together, and are careful, and make sure that we spend ourselves not on anger and tearing each other down but on building up, then God will reward us as God sees fit.
“If we do not, then . . .”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Too much drama. Too much drama. Can’t do the drama if we want to survive.”
“Can you stay away from it?” I asked him. “There has been so much bitterness the two of you have shared. And she still hurts from it, as do you.”
“I’ll try,” he said. I could tell that he meant it.
Then we talked about how to slaughter a steer, because it helps to be prepared to do something like that.
THE AFTERNOON AT THE Fishers’ was good. Mike chose to stay at our place, said he needed to think about some things. After the meal, we shared a dessert of Rachel’s bread pudding. It was graham crackers and whipped cream and sugar, mixed together with a pudding mix, so it was not really and actually bread pudding as I remembered it from my childhood.
But it was very delicious. “How do you eat this and stay so thin?” I heard Shauna say.
Joseph and I talked together for a while about what we were hearing these last few days.
News was worsening from everywhere. More and more hungry people, and people without enough. More angry people, more stories of violence and death.
Even the soldiers seemed to be struggling with it. He had heard from Bill, who had talked with someone in Lititz, that some Guardsmen were beginning to return to their homes, because they were afraid for their families and children. Bill said he didn’t see the difference himself, but that others had told him that there were fewer police and soldiers.
Maybe it was just a rumor.
What could be seen was that more men were on the streets with guns, and there were not one but three militias and neighborhood protection groups just in the area. Bill himself was part of one, one made up of farmers and local businessmen who wanted to be sure that no one took advantage of their crops, or raided their homes at night.
“Is there any good news?” I asked. “Surely there must be something good.”
He thought for a minute or two. “One of the bigger English farms on the other side of the county had gotten a couple of their combines running now,” said Joseph. “They fixed them up with parts from other things. Finding gas isn’t easy, but it has helped. The wheat they’ve harvested has gone to a couple of bakeries in Lancaster, where they’ve figured out a way to get the ovens going again. That means bread, which is something that everyone is happy about. Even if it isn’t quite enough.”
I agreed that was good, and hoped we’d see more of it soon.
Joseph nodded, and there was a pause as we watched those around us, the children running and playing, the women sitting, talking. It was like it had been last month, six months ago, a year ago. As if nothing had happened. Nothing for a hundred years.
It was a moment of forgetting. Sometimes, forgetting is God’s most gracious blessing.
October 19