Moonrise

Thirty-five thousand people were waiting at the Jordan Creek Town Center mall in West Des Moines when its doors opened at 12:01 a.m. Friday --- Black Friday --- according to the morning news. “Black” because the Friday after Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the season in which merchants hope to sell us so much stuff that black ink can be substituted for red in their account books, but you already knew that.

I awoke somewhat later thinking of minute steak (called cube steak now for what I assume are aesthetic reasons) cooked my favorite way (dredge four minute steaks in flour and brown; place in baking dish, sprinkle an envelope of Lipton dry onion soup mix over, cover with tomato juice and bake for an hour at 350 degrees, thank you Kristin for the recipe). So acquiring steak was the sole purpose of my only Black Friday shopping spree --- at HyVee. Now I’m feeling guilt for not doing my bit to boost the economy. Should have bought bananas, too.

That evening, I took a walk at moonrise. Now, when nature has stripped itself to winter basics, is a good time to listen to the wind and hear the trees talk, see the shape of things, appreciate the infinite shades of black, brown, tan and gold that have replaced brighter colors and hear the silence that remains after the departure for warmer places of the birds that chatter and sing in other seasons.

With the exception of three ducks, paddling madly across the marsh pond and leaving a substantial wake on its mirror surface, I had the place to myself. The ducks, probably spooked after a few weeks now literally under the gun, spotted me as I walked out on a gravel spit toward them, rose in perfect formation, passed through the tree line and turned upriver toward other resting places.

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Saturday afternoon, I washed the front windows --- a job postponed as long as possible in the hope of ensuring a clear view out throughout winter.

There’s something to be said for washing windows, clearing away the crusted dust that has accumulated. But less to be said for disassembling and reassembling combination windows --- eight surfaces of glass per window to clean punctuated by considerable acrobatics.

I guess the process is preferable to the old way --- replacing wood-framed screen windows with heavy and clumsy glassed storms often from somewhere up a ladder --- but there are days like Saturday when I wonder.

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Squeezed between Black Friday and Cyber Monday (today, which I understand to be the official start of the online shopping season) was the beginning of the first of my new years, the first Sunday in Advent, unnoted by the substantial majority I suspect, including most of those who had engaged in that midnight vigil at Jordan Creek.

John the Baptist preparing the way of the Lord in front of the still-empty stable on the side altar flanked by pine branches filled with birds, lighting the first candle in the wreath of the season, the candle we call “Hope.”

We live in interesting times and I’m still thinking about an odd occurrence at St. Andrew’s several weeks ago. We came out of the church as services concluded and into the parish hall for coffee to see several young women milling around in the parking lot looking somewhat confused, several speaking into cell phones.

Someone went out to invite them in and discovered that they were Girl Scout leaders (the parish hall is used during the week for scout meetings and also for gatherings of leaders). As it turns out, none had remembered when scheduling a leader meeting that services usually are held in churches on Sunday mornings. I thought that memory lapse peculiar, but perhaps it wasn’t.

Come ye thankful people, come ...

November has gotten away from me, and suddenly Thanksgiving is upon us. Wow. The major discovery made during several months of what might be called non-gainful employment is that there are not enough hours in the day, or so it seems. And then how about that weather? I still have a big pot of geraniums blooming enthusiastically beside the front steps, unheard of for late November in Iowa, not conducive to turkey-day thoughts.

But this is the week I’ll bring in those two lawn chairs leaning against a tree in the back yard --- and still in use on sunny, warm days; and empty the birdbath and bring it in since while very pretty it’s not especially durable. Our good fortune can’t last much longer.

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Thanksgiving coincides with the season in which three new years begin, so there’s a lot to think about right now, given the gift of time --- something I’m especially thankful for this year.

The first new year, a new year for the church among those of us at the liturgical end of the spectrum, begins Sunday, the first in Advent --- a penitential season moving forward toward the great celebration of Christ’s birth. So we’re changing the paraments from serviceable green to purple this week and replacing burned down candles --- eight on the altar, two on the side altar, one on the scripture stand and a twelfth on the credence stand at the rear of the church where bread and wine rest before being brought forward. And assembling the Advent wreath --- more candles to be lighted against the darkness that humanity to a greater extent and nature to a lesser impose on this old world.

The winter solstice arrives, not coincidentally since the church has never been shy about co-opting observances that predate it, on the 21st of December. The shortest day of the year, but also the day when seasons turn and the days begin to lengthen --- the return of light, a day to dance around a fire to celebrate if you’re so inclined.

And finally on Jan. 1, the turn of the calendar year to 2010, the newest of our celebrations of rebirth since until quite recently in human terms (that process involving a shift from the Julian to Gregorian calendars began in 1582 with a papal bull and careened onward for a couple of centuries until nearly everyone jumped aboard) the new calendar year began several weeks later.

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So like I said, I’ve been thinking about exactly what it is I’m especially thankful for this year and the greatest of these has been time.

I was able to attend the ecumenical Thanksgiving service last night at First Christian Church, for example, and hear the Rev. Christopher Pisut, new priest in the Sacred Heart parish, deliver his first sermon to a congregation not composed primarily of Roman Catholics. Had circumstances of faith been slightly different, that boy would have done a Baptist congregation proud, too.

But it’s been years since I’ve had the luxury of doing something like this, involved for longer than I care to remember in interesting work but a numbing work schedule that swallowed evenings and holidays, too.

I’ve been able to follow the seasons at my leasure this year for the first time in years --- in the garden, at Pin Oak Marsh, down the Cinder Path and elsewhere while traveling widely in Lucas and nearby counties. What a gift that’s been.

And then there’s interesting and engaging work. I spend an hour or two a day at the museum sifting through and organizing papers, photos and the occasional stray artifact that incorporate the history of this small place. Another gift, to have the time to to do this and a museum staff appreciatively willing enough to give me access and a fairly free rein.

Profound spiritual exercise would be a gratifying thing to report upon, too, but for better or worse most of my profoundly spiritual experiences occur while walking down a trail or on my knees with a scrub brush, rather than a Bible, in hand. It just works that way for some of us.

So I made a commitment several months ago to spend an hour a day working at the church, clearing, scrubbing, polishing, sweeping. I’ve taken to calling it “forward in faith with a broom.” That does not mean St. Andrew’s has not been maintained, by the way. We’re fortunate enough to be able to employ someone who cleans once a week, someone to mow the grass and someone else to clear away the snow come winter. And when something began to fall apart, it has been repaired or replaced.

But it’s amazing how many small tasks fall through the cracks. The ongoing project has been clearing a very nice room, once the parish office, that had been turned into a storage area as circumstances changed and circuit-riding priests involved in two or more parishes replaced resident clergy.

The situation in that room had gotten so grim than when new carpet was installed in the church and parish hall a couple of years ago, it was impossible to recarpet this room because so much stuff had accumulated in it --- so the carpet remnants were stacked in there, too. And no thought could be given to repainting this room when the parish hall was repainted --- for the same reasons. Half-empty paint cans joined the accumulation.

But while several of us were participating in the ecumenical service last night, Fred was busy repainting the walls and before Christmas we’ll install new carpet, refurnish the room and bring it back into the active life of the church. Another thing to be grateful for. (We’ve also led the many groups --- artists, Girl Scouts, practitioners of Yoga and those recovering from addictions --- who use the church when we’re not there a merry chase while moving their stashes of supplies and equipment from place to place.)

These are a few of the ways I’ve been investing my gift of time. And there are many other things to be thankful for, too --- plenty of food and friends, a warm place to sleep and a promising invitation to Thanksgiving dinner.

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Underneath all of this joy and gratitute, however, is the sobering fact that far too many of our neighbors have less to be grateful for and that we all need to work on that. My thinking here has not been as clear-cut as that involved in reclaiming an abandoned room.

Prayer is useful, I truly believe, but isn’t it necessary to remember that we all have the potential to be used to answer prayers; that angels are not critters that float down from heaven with feathered wings and magic wands, but are always among us --- and that we might encounter one or arise one morning unexpectedly incarnating one, too; and that the Christ whose birth we are preparing to celebrate, however we experience Him, is not an abstraction, but very well might be standing out in the cold in need of a meal the next time the doorbell rings?

It’s one thing to have faith and be grateful for the gift. It’s quite another to live it. That has been, is and will remain the big one to work on.

The Tao of a transcendent hour ...

... is to shut up, still the voices in your head, begin walking, look, then listen to trees and the prairie talk. I'm serious.

At Red Haw, pull off the road just as the old stone shelter comes into view, then hike down the road that says "do not enter." Watch for it or you'll miss it.

Meander a ways west and watch for the grassy path the leads off to the left into the woods, then shoots you down a steep hill and across the end of the lake's southwest inlet. Watch the path on the way down and not the view or you'll slip on a walnut and break your neck. I nearly did late this afternoon.


Once you've crossed the inlet, lake to the left, marsh to the right, instead of following the trail that wanders along the lakeshore, take the path less traveled off to the south and curve out of the woods and up onto the prairie, following a clipped trail with the timber on your left, murmuring to itself in the wind, and ripe prairie grass whispering and bending to your right for as far as you can see.

You'll have perhaps half a mile of these harmonizing voices and visual contrasts before the path curves down into the woods again and deposits you by the lake. Here, following the path you didn't take at the inlet crossing, return to it and instead of climbing that steep hill, turn right along the north shore.

When you reach the end of the trail, climb up on a picnic table, look out over the water, think about it for a while, then climb the hill to your car and drive away.

Alyce Underbakke's Refrigerator Bran Muffin Mix

Although not a connoisseur of televised advertising, I have noticed a shift in emphasis as years pass that may or may not have deep societal implications --- from irregularity to erectile dysfunction.

I’m not prepared to analyze the shift, only to say I’m slightly ashamed to mention it in the same sentence as “Alyce Underbakke’s refrigerator bran muffin mix.” The only excuse for doing so is the fact that the muffins that result from the mix are good for the former, although I can’t speak to the latter.

Alyce won’t mind, I expect, because she is a lady, a breed that along with gentleman is vanishing. By lady I mean a mixture of good humor, profound common sense, grace and very good manners. The term gentleman is defined that way, too; nothing here has anything to do with my views concerning appropriate roles for women and men.

During the years of our working relationship, Alyce (a banker’s spouse) and her sidekick Bonnie (a farmer), a lady, too, were the office staff at Thompson Community School. Superintendents and principals often mistakenly thought they ruled the roost, but all seemed to lack one or more of traits necessary for gentlemanship. Alyce and Bonnie ruled with good humor, common sense, grace and good manners. Generations call their names blessed.

So I think of Alyce every time I whip up a batch of her muffin mix and I do that often --- not because of the regularity factor, but because they taste good, are good for you and convenient besides. Since the mix stores well for up to two weeks, you can makes as many at a time as you like. A muffin or two along with a piece of fruit and glass of juice make an excellent quick breakfast.

One word of warning: These are not glamour muffins like those cakey things served at Perkins and elsewhere. They are tidy and dense and in order to produce a satisfying mushroom muffin shape you must fill baking cups to the brim, even heaping. That is not a problem because the batter becomes very stiff when refrigerated, but don’t worry about that because its components remain mixed and suspended. Just spoon into muffin cups and bake.

The recipe consists of three steps, as follows:

Step 1: Pour a cup of boiling water over a cup of dry Kellogg’s All-Bran cereal (or its generic equivalent) in a small bowl and allow to cool.

Step 2: Mix the following ingredients very well in any manner you like in a big bowl. One and a half cups of sugar, a half cup of softened butter, two and a half teaspoons of baking soda, a half teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of vanilla, two eggs, two and a half cups of flour, two cups of dry all-bran cereal and a pint of buttermilk.

Step 3: Mix the Step 1 mixture into the Step 2 mixture.

You’ll get better results if you allow this mixture to work overnight in the refrigerator before baking. When you want muffins, fill muffin cups to the brim and bake for 25 minutes in a pre-heated 400-degree oven. Store the balance of the batter in the refrigerator for up to two weeks and use at will.

Ancient Faces: Edward Ebenezer Sargent

I've been neglecting my own stash of vintage photos and dusty documents lately while preoccupied with the much larger Lucas County Historical Society collection, beginning work this week with hundreds of photos and other paper memorabilia related to county schools both town and rural.

But the most exciting find was a substantial chunk of the Chariton Public Library's Lucas County collection, deaccessioned and shuffled off to obscurity long ago when that fine institution decided local history no longer was part of its mission. That can't be helped now, but was a shame then because it scattered and destroyed the context of a once-coherent collection that I remember using as a kid when it was housed neatly in library file cabinets.

Parts of it went to the Lucas County Genealogical Society, which pulled its part of the collection apart and filed information by family. But files related to the first Lucas County Historical Society, which also was Iowa's first, went to the current Lucas County Historical Society, reincarnated in the 1960s, and has been safely stored since. So it was a thrill to find it, slightly mislabeled and therefore made very obscure.

Although the collection fills only a small file box, there are some fairly amazing things in it --- hand-written letters from a daughter and son-in-law of Lucas County's first settler, John Ballard; hand-written accounts by such pioneers as Thomas Braden, the first to settle at Chariton Point as the Mormon pioneers who had over-wintered here in 1846-47 were preparing to continue west; and so on. So I'm looking forward to inventorying the collection, perhaps even transcribing parts of it --- we'll see about that end of things.

But on the home front, Edward Ebenezer Sargent, who was the third husband of my great-great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth (Rhea) Rhea/Etheredge/Sargent, has been perched beside me here, waiting to be scanned and filed. So here he is:

EDWARD EBENEZER SARGENT

Edward Ebenezer Sargent, born Sept. 14, 1831, in Berkshire, England, was the third husband of Cedar Township pioneer Elizabeth Rhea, born June 13, 1811, in Barren County, Kentucky, and therefore 20 years his senior. Her first husband was Richard Rhea (my great-great-great-grandfather), a farmer and Baptist preacher who died too young on Nov. 17, 1839, in Sangamon County, Illinois; her second, Thomas Etheredge, who with Elizabeth brought their blended and expanding family to Iowa in 1849 or 1850.

Also in 1850, when he was 19, Edward came to the United States, sailing from Liverpool to New Orleans, then traveling up the Mississippi to Davenport, Scott County, Iowa, where he settled. On Aug. 6, 1853, he married Sarah Ann Wright of Rockingham Township, Scott County. They had two children, Rowena, born Oct. 2, 1854, and John Joy, who died in infancy.

Sarah Ann, the only child of Joy and Laura Ann (Story) Wright, was born ca. 1834 in Ohio and died Oct. 15, 1861, in Rockingham Township. Rowena, then 7, was taken to raise by her grandparents, Joy and Laura Ann, although she remained close to her father.

In the fall of 1862, the Wrights moved to Cedar Township, Lucas County, Iowa, where Laura Ann's son, David S. Wright, had settled during 1857, taking Rowena with them. Two years later, in the winter of 1864, Edward followed.

Edward, who came to be known as "Squire" by his friends and neighbors in Lucas County, seems never to have had enough money to purchase land and worked both as teamster and farm hand. It is possible that he met the recently widowed Elizabeth, whose second husband, Thomas Etheredge, had died Dec. 24, 1862, by going to work for her. She had lost her two elder sons, James M. Rhea and Robert Etheredge, to death during the Civil War and would have needed hired help to cope with the farm labor.

Whatever the case, Elizabeth, then 59, and Edward, then 39, were married on Sept. 12, 1870, at her home by Joseph G. Wilson.

Despite the difference in their ages, it seems to have been an amicable marriage. Squire Sargent began a long career as justice of the peace and farmed Elizabeth's acres, inheriting her home and a third of her land and other property upon her death 18 years later, on 7 August 1888 at the age of 77.

Edward apparently lived contentedly alone in his wife's home for 20 more years, until his own death 20 years later, on Feb. 25, 1908, at the age of 77.

He was fondly remembered as "Grandpa Sargent" by my grandfather, William Ambrose Miller, 32 at the time. Granddad recalled that the funeral was on a day so cold and icy that the coffin was transported from the house to Bethel Church and Cemetery, just down the road west, on a sled.

Edward was a Methodist, holding official membership in the Russell Methodist Episcopal Church, and a member of the Chariton Masonic lodge, widely valued for his good humor and stock of stories. He was directly survived by his daughter, Rowena, who had married Frank Haywood, and their children, all of whom lived in Russell.

Edward is buried between Elizabeth and her mother, Mary (Rhea) Rhea/Hickman, in the Bethel Cemetery, where a substantial tombstone marks all three graves.

A cloak of gold

Miranda, one of the great characters in Clint Eastwood's film version of John Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," refers at one point to Savannah's Bonaventure Cemetery as "the office," something I identify with --- although Miranda was into voodoo and I'm not. Miranda never goes into the office on Sunday, she tells the film's narrator.

So I waited until early Tuesday for the run out to my "office," the Chariton cemetery --- filled with data writ in stone --- to clarify the spelling of a surname, Cortelyou, belonging to a family long since died out and misspelled in a dizzying variety of ways. Tombstones lie, too, now and then --- but infrequently.

The bonus was a view of the Bates Lady clothed in gold, and she looked especially fetching I thought --- although the colors in the photo are not what I'd hoped for --- the light was a little too watery and the sun had not yet angled sufficiently out from behind a pine grove to light the lady herself. But I was in too big a hurry to stalk the light, which is what must be done to ensure perfect color unless you care to cheat and manipulate it in a photo editing program.

The lady marks the graves of Benjamin Franklin Bates, who built the Bates House hotel; his wife, Emma (Lounsbery) Bates, and their adopted daughter, Augusta (Bates) Buchanan.

She's not my favorite tombstone in the Chariton Cemetery, but close. That honor goes to the wonderful confection erected by Edward Ames Temple, founder of the Principal Financial Group, and despite somewhat smaller size so rich in symbolism I've stalked the light around it for years. One of these days I'll pull all of that together.

Later Tuesday, the sun vanished entirely and we were treated to a gray afternoon, but the sun's due back today forecasters say and the eastern horizon is pink right now, at 6:13 a.m., so I'm hopeful.

Everybody wants to go to heaven ...

...but nobody wants to die, or so the saying, the song (I like Alison Krauss's version) and the occasional sermon title go. And I guess it's true, up to a point, but it's never exactly been my theme song. Although by no means anxious to die, for the longest time I didn't especially want to go to heaven either.

This is something of a problem in the Christian scheme of things and I blame careless Sunday school teachers and preachers for allowing it to develop. Kids are literalists sometimes, you know, and I came away from encounters with those well-meaning folks with the imprint in my poor little head of city streets paved with gold lined with Hollywood-style mansions, sort of like in those overbuilt suburbs west of the Interstate in Des Moines, with palm trees, camels, sandals and white robes thrown in for good measure. Heck, folks, I'm an Iowa country boy. That ain't no heaven I'm interested in.

And what were we going to do there? Praise God --- day after day after day in a hard old pew singing hymns and listening to preachers drone on. That's it? Well, that could get old real quick, I thought, especially for God.

The alternative was eternal rest. Sorry, but I'm in solidarity here with the old gal who when asked if she feared death replied, "not at all, but the thought of eternal rest horrifies me." She planned to take her knitting needles along, as well as a few packets of seed and a hoe.

Now you're are going to laugh at this, but as the years passed I developed an alternate and I figured forbidden vision of heaven that conformed roughly to southern Iowa on a really good day.

Imprinted as firmly in my head as that Sunday school vision of heaven is the memory of a golden October evening many years ago, walking down the valley toward home with the dogs after rounding up sheep in the upper pasture, bringing them home for the night --- poor dumb and defenseless critters in a world filled with coyotes.

On the right, a line of cottonwoods had turned to gold and sentinel pin oaks, mahogany; and in the distance, hickory hill flamed a slightly different hue against a sky supremely blue. Just around the corner and up the hill in a warm house full of love it was almost supper time.

It doesn't get any better than this, I thought then --- and still do; and at the end of the trail I hope to walk that path toward home again.

Sunday afternoon, hiking down the cinder path just beyond the mile marker I took a right turn through the open gate alongside a bend in the river and up into a field planted as winter forage for wildlife.

One thing I love about fall is the ability to see the shape of things, especially burr oaks, and there they were. Another is the intense deep blue sky that appears at no other time of year. It was there, too.

Standing under an oak arch with others in the distance, a flock of blackbirds descended into the trees above me and began to chatter. The sun disappeared, reappeared and suddenly the south wind picked up and swept fallen leaves around my ankles, their rustle and the chatter of the birds the only sounds. Heaven again.


Getting older it finally dawned on me that it was OK to think of heaven in these terms. Preachers and Sunday school teachers can tell us little more than a few generally accepted things --- no more sorrow, no more parting, pain or fear, no more war. Beyond that, they're as much in the dark about the precise shape of things to come as the rest of us are.

So it's OK to find yourself in heaven now and then, to define it for yourself. And it's always useful to keep your eyes open --- it might just be around the next bend in the trail.

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I got to thinking about heaven Sunday I think because it was All Saints Day, a major feast day for many Christians, including Episcopalians, but in disrepute among or ignored by most protestants who consider a day set aside to celebrate saints just too Catholic. Get over it.

Our vicar, descended from Welsh coal miners, insists the that All Saints Day originated in Ireland, then traveled from there to Rome, so if you're more comfortable calling All Saints "Celtic" rather than "Catholic" feel free.

And I've got to say the Roman church did complicate the situation after us pesky protestants popped up by turning sainthood into a control issue, developing an elaborate protocol for investigating and "proving" the unprovable.

But the secret here is that sainthood is not reserved for the big guns or those more recently canonized by the Roman church. We all have our "canon" of saints, people who by act or deed or just by being changed our lives for the better. I thought about my saints of blessed memory, too, walking down the Cinder Path on Sunday.

One of the hymns for All Saints Day at St. Andrew's follows. Listening to Buddy Green and friend perform it, to my mind at least, can be considered heaven, too.