Ethnography 3: Grave Stone Stories

Then Joshua said to the Israelites, “In the future your children will ask, ‘What do these stones mean?’ Then you can tell them....(Josh. 4:21)

In Sparks, Sorens, and Freisen’s new book, The New Parish, they use the phrase “above place”.  “’Living above place,’ names the tendency to develop structures that keep cause-and-effect relationships far apart in space and time where you cannot have firsthand experience of them” (Sparks, 2014).  Each place and every place has a story.  The stories of place create subcultures, understandings of the world, and rules with expectations. 

In two of the congregations I served, I was privileged to have some significant mentors.  In my first congregation, I had Louis.  In my second congregation I had John.  Louis and John were storytellers.  They let me know what and who had been in those places long before me and how those stories affected the people who now lived there. 

Nearly every Thursday, I could look forward to his truck driving up to the church office.  He’d enter, wander around the building, as if he were looking for something to fix. I remember once looking at the cemetery log with Louis.  As we looked, he told me stories about the families listed there, he filled in some of the blanks.  The “blanks” were the unnamed in the cemetery log.  A wife and mother had died and was listed as “Mrs. Abraham Schmidt” (not the real names).  Or young children listed as “child of Mr. Abraham Schmidt”.  These individuals were nameless.  As if they had no story of their own.  Louis would tell me as much as he could about these stories and about those days. 

In my second congregation there was John. John was an historian.  We would take walks through the Salford church cemetery, with stones dating back to the mid-18th century.  John spoke of these people as if he had known them personally.  He could see umbilicals connecting his story and the stories of others to larger and larger connected stories.  When I asked him about being a historian he corrected me and said he was a storyteller. 

Discovering the stories beneath surface can give direction, trajectory even.  Once when working with a congregation experiencing rapid ethnic change in its neighborhood, rediscovering their history opened them to the possibility of new mission.  Recognizing the increasing numbers of immigrant families seeking work in the orchards and fields nearby, the church felt detached, too middle-class, too mono-cultural to connect.  However, as they re-told the stories of how their previous generations had left the Dust Bowl of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, they began to understand a deeper story.  Their families, generations before, had come to the region as farm laborers, too.  As these immigrants are now, they as a community once were.  The faith community had stories leading toward connection, empathy, and understanding.    

I recall standing near John’s farm, at the Branch Creek (likely his favorite place on earth) as he told vast stories covering centuries. 

                                                                           The Branch Creek

He pointed out wildlife trials that became hunting trials for the original inhabitants.  Pointing to hills and roads he would explain which battle had come that far, or what war among which parties had come how far.  The battles between different nations, Iroquois, the Delaware, the French, the British, and the Civil War.  Once with reverence and gratitude while standing on the banks of the creek, he said, “and this place has never known war”.  That was the story of that place.  A story he has given his life to undergird in that community.  A story of peace.

What are the stories told by the stones, the roads, the street names, or the buildings in your community?  How does the community of faith begin to grapple with stories to undergird, to overturn, to reclaim, or add new chapters to? 

References:

Sparks, P. S. (2014). The New Parish: How neighborhood churches and transforming mission, discipleship, and community. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Ethnography 2: Unringing a Bell

“If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus (Phil 2:1-5).”

Listening and asking questions

It all begins with talking and listening and asking questions.  Trust increases, and vulnerability is no longer hidden behind defenses, then a picture emerges.

As I sat with two respected elders in the church, I began a series of frank questions.  The setting seemed almost inappropriate, as I was speaking to these two men who were twice my age as if they were being sent to the principal’s office for misbehavior.  

Together they worshiped, they were in the same Sunday School class, they saw each other throughout the week at the café, the grain elevator, at the implement dealer. I had met with them in some of those settings, often with both present.  These two men were in each others lives.   

Sitting with these two elders who were at odds, my task to was to move a congregation toward reconciliation and transformation.  Something had happened.  An angry word spoken.  A hurtful comment, a demeaning response, and without attempting to, the repercussions extended outward in ever larger circles, networks, and relationships which were now tearing a congregation into two adversarial camps. My job was to un-ring that bell.

“Unringing the bell” is a phrase from the courtroom.  When a witness, or lawyer, or some other participant makes a comment that is not admissible, the jury may be asked to ignore that testimony and the clerk is asked to strike the comment from the court record.  If the comment is too damaging, the judge can declare a mistrial on the basis of the comment since it would prejudice the jury.  That bell, so to speak, cannot be unrung. 

The best thing I could do was listen for the ringing, still reverberating in the controversies in the congregation.  Investigating from where and what direction the ringing was coming, I had to trace it back to its source.  But like sound waves, or ripples in the water after dropping a stone in a pond, it was already calm at the point of the origin.  But this conflict had been public and witnessed. 

When I met the congregation, it was on the verge of a split.  Through listening to their stories, I discovered splitting off was part of their one-hundred-year history.  Having arrived in the country from over fifteen separate villages in Europe, over their life together in the United States, whenever a conflict emerged, it was along old village lines and identities that the fault line was seen.  In Ron Susek’s book, Firestorm, church conflicts are less described as large cataclysmic events with immediate shock and surprise, and more as event of slow burning embers (Susek, 1999).  A tree’s root system can smolder underground, long after visible signs of fire had vanished, only to get a gasp of oxygen and erupt again.  There was excess, generations old, baggage carried into every conflict.  Even the smallest infractions could tear at their patchwork quilt of community. 

Listening for source stories

Following the present conflict back to its source, these two men who now sat in my office, was not difficult.  It was basic ecclesial detective work, or what might be called ecclesio-pathology.  As I recounted my conversations, my awareness of the situation, and my understanding the state of the congregation, I asked them to tell me what had happened.  With some embarrassment they explained that that was old news and that they had gotten beyond that.  They had already discussed it, shared forgiveness, and tried to move on.  The ringing sound of their conflict had gone out and drawn others into its sound.  But their reconciliation was silent.  We could not unring the bell of conflict, and it was not going to likely be advertised that these two had made amends.  So we had to consider other ways of ringing a new bell.

Listening for the emerging shared story

Listening to stories is time consuming.  Listening to multiple and sometimes conflicting stories is a puzzle.  But as each story modifies the one before it and creates context for the next story to come.  Reflecting back to the congregation and the storytellers the larger story is challenging, but necessary.  Not everyone will agree on all parts of the larger narrative.  But if told with care for the dignity of all the stories and storytellers, many will be able to see themselves and their part in the larger story.  Engaging in ethnography takes time, but also creates space for reflection.

For the remainder of my time with that congregation, the focus was two-fold.  For one, we emphasized multiple layers of forgiveness and restoration, and God’s call to mission in the community.  Following Jesus’ way of offering forgiveness to even the unrepentant (“Forgive them, for they know not what they do”) created the awareness of the old baggage carried too long.  Then, consequently, the reviving the mission of the kingdom of God and their role in the community.  We did not seek to do these one subsequent to the other, as if, God’s mission would be something to be entered after “we get ourselves put together”.  Healing was something that took place in mission, not something separate from it.

Some bells cannot be unrung, even the memory of the sound may still bring grief.  But new bells, new ringing can be sounded and bring healing.