My Wendish Heritage

(In the interest of full disclosure: If this posting were on Wikipedia it would be headed with the usual warning: “this article needs additional citations for verification”. It is not intended as a scholarly piece: just a bit of personal reflection.)

I seldom speak of my ethnic heritage. When I do, I usually get a blank stare. That is because I claim to be of Wendish heritage. “What in the world is that?” is the most common response. The Wends are an ethnic group primarily identified with living in the Lusatia region of Germany with principal emigrations to Texas and to Australia in the mid-nineteenth century. They are sometimes called Sorbs (not Serbs) and belong to the Slavic people, especially those living along the Germany-Czech border. Always a rather small minority their total population at any one time certainly never reached the half -million mark.

Most sources trace their origin back to 6^th Century. But my personal experience points back to the first century and behind that lies a story. I had finished doing some training for Teacher Effectiveness Training in Switzerland. One of the workshop participants was a brilliant PhD who invited me to spend some time with him at his home in Brugg. While there, he invited me to take a long walk to a very small neighboring village named Windish. Of course that piqued my interest. As we neared the small village we passed some ancient ruins. He told me that this was site of a first century Roman arena. He explained that a very small ethnic tribe there called the Wends had become Christian. The Roman Emperor ordered then to stop worshipping any god other than the emperor. They disobeyed. The emperor sent wild animals to the arena where the Christians were killed. “In fact,” my guide told me, “just recently they discovered some more human remains right next to where we are standing. All of this seems to confirm the   ancient story”

I stood in awe of my earliest ancestors who died for their Christian faith.

Several years after this event I was again in Europe. This time I was a guest of the US Army, leading workshops for Chaplains and religious leaders at the beautiful American forces-controlled site at Bergstesgarten. My co-leader was a wonderful charismatic Father from the Roman Catholic Church.

In my Sunday sermon I told the congregation of how generation after generation of Wends and others preserved that certain heritage down to our generation thus applauding the work of Christian educators

Immediately after my service my Catholic brother who had concurrently been conducting the Catholic services came running. “I just heard the story of the first century Wends,” he told me. “Would you believe!” he exclaimed, “that in the 12th Century, the order of which I am a member was established and was set up “to convert the Wends who by that time had become a sun worshipping non Christian self-identified ethnic group!”

And to complete the story: years later I was again leading a workshop for clergy, this time in Melbourne Australia. After the first session one of the participants came you to me, “Hey, Mel”, he said, “I just learned that you are a Wend. The congregation I serve in Adelaide was started by immigrant Wends in 1845!”

I have drawn several conclusions about my ethnic heritage: My ancestors were often at war and whenever they fought they lost. They were always considered an underclass minority. They took their religion very seriously. They valued family ties. They learned to work hard. They loved to drink beer. Not bad. I am proud to be among their number.

Language

 This little blog is in response to a surprising request from my Granddaughter Christina. She had decided to study the Czech language which took her to St. Charles University in Prague - which took her to studying a small ethic group which is some places are called “the Sorbs”, but which I had always called the Wends. I was among their tribe. Christina wondered how the transitioning was made in the USA from speaking Wendish to German to English.

I made only that last transition. In my early years we spoke German almost exclusively in my home. Most importantly we went to German language church services. We prayed in German. I remember the old gentleman who insisted that God spoke German and he quoted the Genesis passage where God is specifically quoted as speaking in German as God said, “Adam vo bist du?”

I recall that at one point my sisters and I made a conscious, much talked about decision to begin to speak more English. We decided to begin by calling our father by the title of “daddy” having decided that the traditional “papa” was too German and old fashioned.

By that time (in the early 30”s) the Wends who had moved to Texas in the 1850”s had already pretty well made the transition from Wendish to German. That was very understandable. The Wends were already a minority in their native Germany. When they emigrated to America they settled among Germans who were a minority among English speaking settlers. So the transition was made early, although I recall my Father telling me that a Wendish newspaper was still being published while I was a young boy.

World realties also made a difference. In World War I days it was considered by some to be unpatriotic to speak German so English was introduced. However, it wasn’t until World War II that the real push for “English only” became pronounced. I recall a couple incidents from around that time. The first is my father listening on short wave radio to Adolph Hitler with his rants about ethic cleansing and the superiority of the German race. Even though Dad was proud of his ethic background he was alarmed at the prejudice, hatred and arrogance of Adolph Hitler. As a demonstration of where our loyalties deeply lay we spoke more English.

But the transition was also met with resistance, especially in the church. I recall that the Lutheran church had suggested a hymn to be sung each Sunday asking for God’s blessing on our country and guidance for our service people. The song was in English and it was decided to sing it at the close of each Sunday services (which were still conducted in German). The proposal met with strong opposition from a small minority who demonstrated their position by very obviously walking out of the church each Sunday just as that English language hymn began to be sung.

The loyalty of the sons of that congregation to the USA was never doubted. I recall my father  (who was principal of the Lutheran parochial school) writing letter after letter to military officers who asked for his verification of both the loyalty and the proficiency in German of the GIs and sailors. Dad always vouched for that and many of them played significant roles as translators from German to English for our military forces.

In my early elementary school years 1933 to 1941 religion was taught in German. We all learned to read German alongside English. When my grandparents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary I was selected to recite an eloquent dedicatory poem in German.

Meanwhile I never heard anyone speak Wendish unless we went to Serbin Texas where the Wends first settled and which maintained worship services in Wendish until very recently.

Now I have lost most of my German. I found that when I studied to speak Cantonese I would occasionally mix German with Cantonese. Now when I return to Germany it takes a few days to get reacquainted enough to converse in German. And I do not speak a single word of Wendish.

9/11 New Memories

I recently visited New York. It was important to me that I return to the site of the Twin Towers tragedy. My colleague Marlene Lund got us the passes. We went though the long and very  thorough inspections of multiple security checks. Then I entered the site looking directly at the two Reflecting Memorial Pools which are exactly in the same footprints of the original two towers.

In that solemn moment I first allowed myself to recall pleasant memories of the scene. I used to love to go to the top floor and dine at the Windows of the World Restaurant, or  sip a glass of red wine in the lounge, preferably with  family members from Texas on their first trip to the Big Apple. I recalled a very special luncheon arranged for New York principals of Lutheran schools, many of whom had never been able to afford a formal luncheon at the exclusive club on the 102 floor.  I loved going to the Twin Towers.

Things got more solemn for I also remembered that I had conducted a workshop for a famous bank on one of the top floors. I recalled my great fear that many who had taken my workshop would undoubtedly have perished on that fateful- day. I learned later that they a had all survived.

I became increasingly meditative and reflective as I looked at the names: nearly 3000 of them, all killed on that dark day. One of the first names to recall was that of Chaplain Mychal F. Judge, the fire chaplain killed by fallen debris even as he was ministering to the wounded. (The firefighters who carried his corpse to St. Paul’s Church that day were doing that when the tower collapsed and their lives were spared.

It got more personal. I had served as the Executive Director of The Lutheran Schools Association of New York and had been succeeded by Marlene Lund. Now she was finding the names of very specific persons. She told me the stories that flowed, together with her tears, as she recalled. We were identifying the names of some 60 victims who were either the parents or grandparents of children enrolled in Lutheran schools at the time of their untimely deaths. Marlene could recall the children and their parents, like the mother who was just back to work for less than a week before the tragedy, feeling she could go back to work knowing her child was safe ion the Lutheran preschool. There was another: he had graduated from the eighth grade of one of our schools. The names and the list went on and on. We walked in silence. We were left alone in our memories, our grief, our anger.

After marveling at the beautiful new structures now rising, feeling the energy as I looked at The Survivor Tree (a small tree that is surviving it all) I continued  my walk among the names of people of every ethnicity, economic level and faith of the world. I confronted my sadness, my anger and my resolve that I would do all I possibly could so that never  again would such a horrible tragedy and damnably evil act committed in the name of God be repeated.

My Favorite Teacher

 My favorite teacher was Hung Chiu Sing. “Hung” is an important name because it traces him back to his ancestor, the famous Master Confucius. Mr. Hung was to teach me Cantonese for I was working in Hong Kong establishing a Lutheran school system for thousands of Chinese students and teachers.

Mr. Hung was determined that I do that in the best possible tradition, characterized by great respect between teacher and student, using appropriate respectful terms of address, greetings, idioms, proverbs and sayings, all accompanied by appropriate body postures.

And teach he did! He came prepared with flash cards, anecdotes, history lessons and a marvelous mix of patience and determination. He drilled me, laughed with me, encouraged me. He stood beside me when I welcomed people into my home, making sure that I greeted them with just the right words.

He taught me much more than language. He conveyed his respect for tradition, stirred me with his love of his motherland, advised me especially how to speak with my staff for I was a very young American principal with a staff of older, highly educated and respected Chinese scholars.

How well he succeeded I leave for others to judge. When my Chinese friends are honest with me they shyly inform me that my wife, also a student of Mr. Hung, spoke Cantonese much more clearly than I.  Yet I revel in recalling my years in Hong Kong made so meaningful by Mr. Hung, the honorable descendent of Master Kung himself.










 

Holy Week Reflections II

I have just returned from Good Friday evening service. Our pastor made the interesting point that in a way we are recalling the burial of Christ, but there was really no funeral. Easter morning the grave was empty. No funeral. I must admit that my mind wandered when he referenced “funerals”. As I have noted in a previous blog, funerals have always been a part of my life.

My father was a teaching minister in a rural Texas community. We lived on the extended church property, which included the church, the parochial school, the parsonage and the “teacherage” for the principal of the school. This extended property also had space to raise cows, chickens and vegetables. 100 yards from my house was the site of the cemetery with its many graves. Whenever there was a death in the church community I could accompany my father to the church where he tolled the bell to announce the death to the community. The next day I would watch the gravediggers work hard to get through the hard soil to prepare the grave. Of course, we went to the home of the deceased and viewed the body displayed there in the parlor. After the church service my father again tolled the bell as the hearse carried the coffin to its near-by final resting place. The ritual there always included the “ashes to ashes” and then I would watch as the gravediggers refilled the grave and the funeral director rolled up and carried away the artificial grass he had brought to surround the grave during the graveside rituals.  I must have observed this ritual well over a hundred times before I was a teen.

Later I served in Glendale CA near the massive Forest Lawn Cemetery. Everything there related to death has been sanitized. The grounds are meticulously manicured. The area around the graves is made to “look natural”: There are only discrete grave markers, not distinctive headstones. The organists and solo singers and even the presiding ministers are all professionals who preside at countless funerals. Any covering of the grave is done when the bereaved are nowhere around and they  “come back later” when all is neatly in place.

From there I went to Hong Kong. I learned to go to the street side shops and negotiate hard for the price of a made-to-order wooden casket. Then I negotiated with the coffin bearers to take the deceased to the gravesite. Once we stopped in the middle of the burial area when the bearers just set the coffin down in protest because the gravesite was farther up the hill than they had anticipated. They proceeded only after I had renegotiated the price and paid them their extra fee. I can assure you there was no artificial grass around.

And now I live in Southern California and among those with whom I interact there is almost never a funeral and certainly no open-casket viewing”. The accepted ritual is that there is a Memorial Service at which there is often present the urn containing the ashes of the deceased.  Or, as has been my recent experience, we board a boat and proceed to an appropriate site in the Pacific for an appropriate scattering of ashes into the sea.

 In due time during the service this evening my mind came back to the point, which the pastor made. We affirm that the death of Jesus was very real and the resurrection equally true, so that in the final reckoning it won’t really be that important what the details of our funerals looked like.

Holy Week Reflections I

This week I join millions of Christians in observing what is known as Holy Week, the week before Easter. It is the week Christians pause to recall especially the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus. It focuses on the events in the life of Christ from his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Sunday, through the agony of scourging and finally crucifixion on Friday. As I write this, I reflect specifically on Maundy Thursday. That strange and uncommon word “Maundy” is based on the Latin verb for  ‘mandate ‘ and recalls Jesus’ new  “mandate” the commandment that we love others as He loved us.  

In the Lutheran tradition in which I was raised Maundy Thursday was the time we young people received our First Communion. It was a big event. In addition to all its spiritual meaning it was for us a rite of passage. It marked our moving from childhood into adolescence. It meant that we were now officially allowed to become members of the church youth group called Junior Walther League. It also meant that for the first time we could participate in the youth sponsored Easter egg hunt, an interesting event enjoyed at that time by all of us who were 13 years of age up into the 20’s. On top of that confirmation meant gifts from our godparents whom we always called baptismal sponsors. Seventy years later I still have that now well-worn King James version of the Bible with its leather cover being twice replaced by craftsmen in Hong Kong!

Since that first time the dozen or so of us nervous teenagers first knelt around that altar in rural Texas I have received Communion (or celebrated the Eucharist or the Mass or The Lord’s Supper) in many places around the world, in magnificent cathedrals, around a cross on a hill overlooking China, in the Garden of Gethsemane, at a memorable New Year’s Eve in Karachi, with US Air Force chaplains and with people in their hospital deathbeds. All of these brought me great blessings at that time and memories which sustain me to this day.

However, as I reflect I also do so with a tinge of regret. When I was first taught about this holy ritual I was taught that very few were eligible to receive it. Only those who possessed the Word in ALL its truth and purity, only those who shared adherence to rather narrowly defined doctrinal principals were deemed appropriate to share this table. This Maundy Thursday I am grateful for the many people and all the meaningful events which have helped me to come ro what I believe to be closer to Christ’s original vision, a vision encompassing a vast array of many tongues, backgrounds, insights and religious labels whom Jesus must have envisioned when He said, “ Eat this bread, drink this wine, all of you. Do this to remember me.”

Attention

The noted French mystic Simone Weil wrote, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Recently that struck me dramatically. In the first instance it was actually I who acted generously even though it didn’t seem like much at the time. It was casual enough. I spoke with a person who had been sitting alone at the complimentary breakfast counter of the chain motel at which we both stayed while we attended a conference. All I really did was listen as she responded to my “How are things going?”. It turned out that she was anxiously awaiting word as to whether or not her application for a PhD scholarship at Harvard had been accepted. It was easy to empathize with her. She was honest about her emotions. I too have spent time waiting for responses to proposals. Basically I just attended because I did care.

A couple weeks later she sent me an email. She didn’t get the scholarship. Yet she focused on how important it was to her to have had those minutes together with me. She felt someone had paid attention, had listened, and it was appreciated.

What happened in that little exchange and what doesn’t happen in a million situations similar to that every day is simply the matter of attention. It is difficult to be in a room or situation where absolutely no one pays attention to you. It is disconcerting (to say the least) to be at a dinner with a couple, to ask them about their lives etc., to listen empathically to that and to then never hear in response anything close to “And how about you?”

I admire Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and their incredibly wonderful generosity. It touches millions. And I contemplate on how millions of others could be blessed if every day every person just decided to perform their own single act of that rarest and purest form of charity, to just pay attention to another person.