Books were always part of my life. I was read to as a child, by my parents and then by my teachers, all the way through sixth grade. I began to read on my own—first, Little Golden books and picture books, then on to Laura Ingalls Wilder. Every month I used part of my allowance to buy Scholastic Books, the beginnings of my personal library. I started working in libraries in seventh grade, further opening an entire world—not just a small classroom library, but endless shelves. School libraries and the bookmobile (we had no branch of the public library near my home) became my candy store. Sometimes I’d take a book out to the clearing in the woods behind our house, which I thought existed exclusively to shelter me. I had my share of teen angst, which I generally escaped by reading fiction. When Simon and Garfunkel released “I Am a Rock,” I played it endlessly on my portable phonograph. “I am a rock…I have my books and my poetry to defend me,” they sang, and I agreed. I went to college as a Bible major before I added English and secondary education in my sophomore year. I wanted, someday, an office like my professors had—book-lined, books spilling off the desk, books piled in chairs, books to read, books to teach. I can’t remember what prompted my sudden insight. One day as I walked across campus the light went on and I said to myself, “Oh, people are more important than books.” Given my church background, and even my school friends, I wonder why it took me so long to figure it out. I continued to buy books after college even though, given my salary as a teacher in a Christian school, doing so was fiscally reckless. Still trying to impress myself and others, I bought books that imitated leather-bound classics as well as the Time-Life World of Culture series. But I did not forget my unexpected, perhaps inconvenient, insight. People were more important than books.
0 Comments
I lived in Faith Hall, a square building on the village’s main road, across from most of the college campus, with a central courtyard, useful for sunbathing. The dorm was divided into Old Faith and New Faith, based on the age of the buildings. One entered the front door and, ignoring the front lounge, which boasted a television, had a choice of left or right; rooms first encountered were part of New Faith, which was not terribly new by the time I arrived, but newer than the back half, which was composed of retrofitted Army barracks. (There was a two-story men’s dorm constructed entirely of Army barracks; I have no idea how that happened.) Young men were allowed to visit in the front lounge, but could go no further. The back lounge also had a television and snack machines, which I visited regularly when working on papers, mostly for Mountain Dew, which fueled late nights. The washers and dryers were back there, too. Embarrassed, I had to ask a sophomore how to do laundry, because my mother always did mine, and it never occurred to either of us that I needed to learn. Each hall had a phone, coin-operated for long distance, mounted on the wall, shared by all sixteen girls. Calling a guy in a dorm across campus might mean that whoever answered would go find him, or, as I was told, might just stand there with his hand over the receiver and wait awhile, then say, “He’s not in his room.” We were supervised by a married couple who lived in the resident advisor’s apartment near the front of the dorm. The apartment had a Dutch door, which was sometimes left open so the RA could hear the action in the lounge. Occasionally we had all-dorm meetings, but usually our halls met separately under the supervision of the personnel assistant, or P.A. The P.A. was there to give counsel, dispense decrees, check our rooms for cleanliness, and do the never-announced-in-advance bed checks during chapel or on Sunday mornings. (Some student claimed to be attending Bedside Baptist with Pastor Sheets.) Most of the other dorms were newer, with larger rooms, but as a word-lover and budding mystic (also a believer in osmosis), I wanted to be in Faith Hall. I never wavered in my Faith, despite its thin carpeting and too-small-for-two closets. Every year I moved closer to the front; bunk beds gave way to pull-out sofa beds, but the closets remained too small. All rooms had a window that could be opened or closed. When I lived in the rooms faced the courtyard, the windowsill doubled as a refrigerator. We put milk or cider out there to stay cool. Cooking was done exclusively by popcorn popper; microwaves weren’t yet common. I heard some of the guys were adept at grilled cheese sandwiches made on an iron, but my wildest culinary adventures were heating soup or La Choy in the popper. As one visiting musician put it, our campus was located “fifty miles away from any known sin.” The town was dry; the movie theater was closed. Drinking alcohol and attending movies were both forbidden, in any case. We were in the midst of cornfields. This remote, agrarian location does not mean that no one sinned; we were 18-22 and creative. But with a mere 1,000 students, we often made our own, acceptable fun. The administration offered us some ideas. We were required to attend some (four?) of the Artist-Lecture Series that brought musicians and speakers to campus. Every quarter also brought a new theatrical offering, and there were nights of one-act plays, as well as New Student Talent Night each fall. Almost as soon as we arrived on campus, plans were begun for each class to decorate a float for the Homecoming Parade, using the Scripture verse chosen for the parade's theme. We worked in a secret location, generally at a farm with a barn a few miles from campus, festooning a wagon with paper flowers. Sporting events were well-attended: soccer in the fall, basketball in winter, baseball in spring, with sprinklings of women’s field hockey and tennis. Basketball, both men’s and women’s, was the star sport in terms of attendance and enthusiasm. We filled the gym, and our band, our stomping, and our cheers intimidated some of the other teams. The campus included a small, man-made lake for our pleasure—not used for swimming or boating, but creating a lovely backdrop on balmy Wednesday nights when we gathered on the shore for prayer meeting with cider and doughnuts. Some guitars and singing, a speaker, time to pair off and pray together, watching the sunset on the water were all included. About eight miles away was another small town with another small student body—Ohio was full of these academic wonders. This town, however, had a doughnut shop that offered freshly baked, still-warm doughnuts—but they came out of the oven at 11:00 at night. To get one of those glazed miracles, we had to take a “late per,” a permission that gave us an extra hour after we were supposed to be tucked into our dorms. We were allowed only five each quarter, so we had to be judicious. Only students with jobs that kept them out late or with rehearsals for the play could bypass the rule about the 11:00 curfew. We were also near a state park and a nature preserve with hiking trails along a river. In the town itself were quiet, tree-lined streets, also good for walking or biking. Fifty years later, the student body is five times the size it was. More students have cars to visit cities nearby. The trains, with their haunting whistles, no longer run in town. Additional land has been purchased; campus buildings have blossomed, and it’s hard to see the cornfields now. My lost Eden. The Bible was sometimes described as the Sword of the Lord; there was, in fact, a newspaper of that name. An organization at my college was known as Swordbearers. We did not, I am thankful to say, brandish our Bibles threateningly. We were small groups of Sunday School teachers and musicians, available to churches local and not. We were ambassadors and advertisements, not only for Jesus, but also for our college. We were bright and shiny with matching outfits and, above all, happy. Swords, as we called ourselves, had team leaders who wrangled us to music rehearsals. We sang some of our pieces to recorded music, but we had to be careful about that—and other things. In the early 1970s, some churches were so conservative that we were not allowed to hold microphones. We could use them on mike stands, but we couldn’t pick them up or walk around the stage with them, as some singers did. I cannot explain this, but you surely can see the sexual innuendo in holding a microphone. We did not want to offend. This was a Scriptural command. Don’t offend your brother. Abstain from every appearance of evil. We erred on the side of being too kind; it was not our job to enlighten the churches we served. Sword teams also went on tour during spring break. I spent one March break in Michigan, where we got snowed in, spending several days in Battle Creek. We had to cancel some of the churches on our itinerary. I have never been very good with young children, but I love teaching teens and adults. Our team was divided into areas of ministry; I was paired with our leader, Nathan, to teach adults. I have no memory of the content—perhaps ncouragement?—but I mentioned the way we put Scripture verses in intracampus mail, or tucked them into a friend’s pocket or purse. After that session, a man came up to me and handed me a folded piece of paper. I smiled, thinking he was handing me some encouragement, and he moved on. “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority,” the note read. The verse was from I Timothy, Paul’s repudiation of the gifts of half the human race. (Years later I learned that the book’s authorship was in dispute, and also learned something about historical context.) We held a team meeting. Clearly, I was to be the sacrificial lamb; we could not risk offending other men in other churches. These men had the potential power to dissuade young people from attending our college; they might have sat on the church’s deacon board and cut off funding. No group might ever be invited back. We couldn’t take the risk. For the rest of the tour, I was consigned to the children, a foretaste of what my life in ministry would become. |
Baptist GirlI was a conservative Baptist girl who grew up to become a career Christian, working first in a Baptist school and then in a Baptist college. For about three decades, it was very good until it wasn’t, and I had to leave. But the Baptists formed me. This is my homage to the good times and good people of the world I left, finally, at forty-three, when I became an Episcopalian. These are my memories; others might disagree with my recollections. So be it. Archives
January 2024
Categories |