My God and I: A Spiritual Memoir

\ \ MY GOD AND I\ \ \ \ A Spiritual Memoir\ \ \ \ By Lewis B. Smedes\ \ \ William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company\ \ \ \ Copyright © 2003\ \ Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.\ All right reserved.\ \ \ ISBN: 0-8028-2213-4\ \ \ \ \ \ Chapter One\ \ \ Beppe Tjitske \ \ My grandfather, my Pake, on my mother's side, was\ Wytse Benedictus, a peat farmer and a Mennonite.\ He lived near a small village called Rottevalle, which lies in\ the center of Friesland, the northernmost province of the\ Netherlands. While Friesland is indeed a province and not a\ country, its people know that they are a race and culture\ apart, with their own language and their own history, the\ fiercest warriors of all the Gauls, according to Julius Caesar,\ who knew what he was talking about. But since then, according\ to Baedecker, the travel guide man, they have produced\ nothing more interesting than an uncommon lot of\ schoolteachers; he said it in mild derision, but most\ Frisians would have taken it as a fine tribute. It was here\ that the forebears of the Frisian Mennonites had settled after\ their flight from persecution by the Swiss Reformers.\ The Benedictus family had been Mennonites from before\ the time the Mennonites named their movement after\ the converted priest Menno Simons, the greatest of their\ leaders. They were a peaceable people, these Mennonites,\ radical children of the Protestant Reformation whom the\ Calvinists and Lutherans contemptuously called Anabaptists\ (ana being the equivalent of "again") because they baptized\ adult converts by immersion even though they had already,\ as newborn babies, been baptized by sprinkling in\ the Reformed Church.\ The Swiss Calvinists, in the words of a contemporary\ wag, figured that if these Anabaptists wanted so badly to be\ immersed, the Reformers would accommodate them by\ drowning them.\ By the seventeenth century, the Mennonites in Friesland\ had begun to prosper, mostly because the land was ripe\ with peat, which was used as fuel and sold mainly to Germany.\ By the early sixteen hundreds, the Benedictus family\ had become wealthy owners of a considerable peat estate\ and by 1620 had built a modest manor on it. Pake Wytse is\ in his early forties - the year being uncertain, but sometime\ in the early 1880's - when we come upon him in the\ Benedictus manor, unmarried and apparently destined to\ remain so, a man highly regarded among the faithful for\ both his Christian character and his worldly goods.\ Not far from the Benedictus estate, in a hovel near\ Rottevalle, lived a dirt-poor Frisian by the name of Reinder\ van der Bij, not blessed with any land but well cursed with\ many daughters - seven of them. Reinder could see no future\ in daughters, certainly not in seven of them, so, as\ most serfs in his circumstance did, he shipped all but the\ oldest out to work as virtual slaves on richer people's farms.\ One of the sisters was my grandmother Tjitske, who was\ sent off at age twelve or thirteen.\ For Tjitske's fourteen hours of daily labor she earned\ two and half guilders (roughly four dollars) per year as a\ supplement to the food she consumed and the space in the\ barn that she occupied. She served one farmer until she was\ nineteen, when she was seduced and made pregnant by a\ roving carpenter. As soon as her belly betrayed her condition,\ she was pointed to her master's door and told to carry\ her baby along with her shame back to her father and\ home.\ Reinder van der Bij, however, was not a man to be publicly\ shamed by a harlot daughter, and so, with a proper Old\ Testament curse, he sent her packing. No other Frisian\ man was likely to open his door to a fallen woman, and she\ took to begging in the streets. Her weeks or months on the\ streets are blacked out; we know nothing of her until she is\ rescued by Wytse and installed as a servant in the\ Benedictus manor. However she came to the manor, Wytse\ provided her a place to care for her newborn daughter and\ then left her on her own to keep house in a manner proper\ for a pure-of-heart Mennonite bachelor.\ Sometime after he took her in from the streets, Wytse\ discovered that she could be of even more help to him in\ business than she was as a housekeeper. The trade in peat\ was carried on by spoken words, a handshake, and an exchange\ of cash. It was the spoken-words part that gave\ Wytse trouble. He stuttered. He stuttered even more than\ usual when he had a deal to make. So he was not offended\ when the servant girl he had taken in off the street offered\ to help him.\ "Why don't you write your words down and let me speak\ them for you?" she asked.\ Good idea, he said, and so it was that the two of them became\ working partners. Wytse swiftly became dependent\ on Tjitske, who gradually took over the peat negotiations as\ well as the management of the manor. Their working partnership\ flowered into personal attachment, and on the 26th\ of July in the year 1884, Wytse and Tjitske - destined now\ to be my grandmother, my Beppe Tjitske - were married.\ Both the Calvinists and the Mennonites assumed that the\ obedient bride would convert to the religion of her benefactor\ husband. But it was Wytse who pulled up his Mennonite\ roots and replanted them in his bride's Reformed faith.\ Wytse knew the Mennonites well. A single Mennonite\ would never raise his hand against anyone, but a community\ of Mennonites could make a person's life miserable\ simply by ignoring her. So Pake Wytse and Beppe Tjitske\ left the Benedictus manor in the hands of a caretaker and\ moved into a smaller and rougher farm house that Wytse\ owned at the edge of a Protestant village called Ureterp,\ where their graves are still marked. Here the couple created\ a family of six children. Renske, the third born, would one\ day, in another world, give birth to me.\ When we pick up the story again, Pake Wytse was sixty-four\ and, on this particular day, was ice skating, probably on\ a canal that edged the farm. He fell and broke his hip. He\ did not mend; he got rapidly worse, and he died, in agony it\ is said, within a few weeks of his fall. The widow Tjitske,\ braving Mennonite rejection, moved her seven children\ back to the great house in Rottevalle. She inherited all of\ Wytse's assets, land and cash, and managed them as well as\ she was able.\ Being lady of the manor and manager of the peat farm\ was, however, a tough task for a novice widow with seven\ children. But an offer of help came soon in the guise of a\ charming widower named Wiebe Geksma. Wiebe, who\ posed as a man with the most honorable intentions and\ with money enough to care for both their families, offered\ himself to Tjitske, and Tjitske took him in. Wiebe promised\ to take care of her and seek her happiness, so they were\ soon married.\ Wiebe waited no more than a few months after the wedding\ to show his hand. He told Tjitske that, since he was\ now the head of both the house and the wife, it was her duty\ to transfer the entire estate to him. Tjitske balked; the\ money was meant for Wytse's children, she said, and only\ his children were going to get it. Wiebe then tore the cover\ of charm off his pathology and his demons flew free. The\ children were his first victims, especially the girls; the boys\ he terrorized, the girls he assaulted. My future mother, the\ teenage Renske, was, I learned many years later, his favorite\ victim.\ Wiebe tyrannized Beppe's family until, one Frisian winter\ night, he went one step too far: he threw Beppe Tjitske\ and her children out in the cold. When morning came, she\ went to the village police and begged them to come and rescue\ her brood. They went, evicted Wiebe and his children,\ and provided the Benedictus family with police protection.\ Tjitske obtained a legal separation and, soon afterward,\ spurning the shame of both the Mennonite and the Reformed\ camps, arranged for a divorce.\ The Benedictus manor was, like all things Frisian, plain\ and rough. Barn and house were under one thatched roof,\ separated by a kitchen door that hung in two sections so\ that the woman of the house could open the upper half,\ speak to laborers and yell at the animals, while the lower\ half stayed locked against invasion by livestock. One\ Sunday morning at Beppe Tjitske's Reformed church, with\ the dominie well into his sermon and the congregation already\ smelling their Lord's Day coffee, the custodian\ rushed into the sanctuary yelling: Vuur bij Benedictus!! Fire\ at Benedictus - words dreaded by every farmer more than\ a prognosis of his own imminent death. And words that\ emptied any packed church in two minutes flat.\ By the time the men of the congregation could get to the\ farm, the entire building, house and barn and every living\ thing in it, was aflame. The next day the villagers came with\ butchers' knives to slice off prodigious chunks of barbequed\ pork and beef, enough to provide them with a month\ of feasting. The ancient manor was gone.\ Meanwhile, Beppe Tjitske's single source of income\ dwindled as coal began to replace peat for use as fuel in Europe.\ To make matters sadder, her first daughter, the carpenter's\ child, had married, and her husband had swindled\ Beppe out of a large amount of cash. So by the time the\ manor burned, the Benedictus estate had already been\ drained.\ My mother Renske had by this time sailed off to America\ with her new husband, Melle Smedes, a village blacksmith,\ the son of generations of blacksmiths before him. In\ 1932, Beppe Tjitske died a few minutes after whispering her\ favorite verses from her favorite psalm:\ The Lord preserveth the simple:\ I was brought low, and he helped me.\ Thou hast delivered my soul from death,\ Mine eyes from tears,\ My feet from falling. (Psalm 116:6, 8)\ \ Later, a money-order for two hundred dollars signed to\ my mother came in the mail from Rottevalle, and the last of\ Beppe Tjitske's modest fortune was spent to pay for a new\ roof over a new set of Frisian heads at 774 Amity Street in\ Muskegon, Michigan.\ I think of Beppe Tjitske's and Pake Wytse's mixed marriage,\ a rare and suspect thing in their time and place, as a\ parable of the religious mix in my own spirit. I like both ingredients\ in the mix. I like the tough intellectual side of the\ Reformed faith. And I like the gentle affections of the Mennonite\ faith. I share the Reformed wariness of radical piety.\ I share the Mennonite suspicion of rigid dogmatism.\ \ \ \ Chapter Two\ \ \ Melle Smedes \ \ My father's Frisian name was Melle and the name-changers\ at Ellis Island let it stay that way. He built\ our house on Amity Street in Muskegon during the fading\ hours of daylight after he came home from his nine- or ten-hour\ shift at the foundry. He had never built anything before;\ the only use he had ever put a hammer to was nailing\ shoes to horses' hooves.\ The front porch of the house he built for us was studded\ with pink and white Kelly stones, which, I always felt, gave\ it a touch of distinction in our plain neighborhood. The\ porch was almost as wide as the house and deep enough to\ hold the army surplus cot that my brother Peter had found\ at the junkyard where he scavenged regularly for stray\ items that might come in handy around our house. At the\ other end of the porch was our one conspicuous luxury, a\ two-person swing hanging uncertainly from hooks in the\ ceiling.\ If we walked straight from the bottom porch step, we\ would run smack into the finest maple tree on our maple-lined\ Amity Street. Its trunk was almost four feet through\ the middle, and its full-spread branches shaded our entire\ porch, making it bearable for us to sit on the swing and\ dream through the hottest of summer afternoons. The few\ moments that I would spend alone with my mother during\ the week were on late Sunday afternoons swinging cool in\ the shadow of our maple and greeting the neighbors finishing\ up their Sabbath walks; they were the happiest moments\ of my childhood.\ The rest of the house, to be honest about it, was not the\ work of a craftsman. Window sills and door frames were\ not plumb, and, except for a flushing toilet, it lacked all the\ amenities normal for the time. But we did have one luxury\ in our living room that only a few houses could boast of - a\ pump organ, the kind that depended on a robust pair of legs\ to fill the bellows. I do not know how we came to have such\ an instrument in our house. None of us ever had an urge to\ learn to play it, and it came to a bad end. My mother decided\ that it was doing none of us any good and was made of good\ wood, so, short as we were on kindling for starting our fires,\ she had us lug the organ down to the basement, where Peter\ hacked its panels apart and chopped them into slender\ sticks that got the fire going in the coal stove in whose oven\ we warmed our feet before putting them into our socks and\ shoes.\ Being but two months old when he died, I have no memories\ of my father, but he stands handsome on the one or\ two snapshots my mother saved, a strong angular face,\ thick black hair, and a Ronald Coleman mustache. My\ mother did not speak much about him, but more than once\ I heard him called a rolling stone; he evidently had a penchant\ for taking on more than he could handle, dropping it,\ and moving on to his next dream.\ My mother used to deplore his initial decision, before\ Amity Street in Muskegon, to settle the family in a "one-horse\ town" called Reeman, which had almost enough\ horses to provide him with one day's work every week. How\ could he feed his growing family on that? The only other occupation\ available around Reeman was farming, so he\ rented a piece of ground, bought two pigs and a few chickens\ from a land-rich neighbor, and tried farming for a season,\ keeping the smithy as a sideline. But he was no farmer,\ and he gave it up. He gave up Reeman, too, and moved his\ family to Muskegon, a bustling foundry town a morning's\ wagon ride away. There he worked himself to an early death\ in a foundry designed to crush the dreams of all who labored\ there.\ My father was not what you would call a practical man.\ He and my mother had what was supposed to be an untouchable\ three hundred dollars salted in the bank for a\ rainy day, a good-by gift from Beppe Tjitske. But, while they\ still lived in Reeman, he took a shine to an electric automobile\ - an original O'Henry - owned by an itinerant physician,\ and when he was given a chance to buy it for three\ hundred dollars, he hustled off to the bank, took out the\ family funds, and bought the car.\ He loaded his family in for a trip to Grand Rapids, a\ good forty miles from Reeman, to show their Henry off to\ another immigrant Frisian family. A few miles out, the engine\ stalled. So Melle sent Renske to the rear of the car to\ push until she got tired enough to risk setting her behind\ the wheel while he got in back to push. With his head\ pointed downward between his shoulders, his frontward vision\ was blocked by the car, and he could not see the valley\ directly ahead of them, nor the downhill track of the dirt\ road. Renske and the car started coasting down the hill before\ Melle had a chance to stop it. He yelled at Renske to\ step on the brakes, but she had no idea of what a brake was\ or where it was or how she was supposed to step on it.\ Continues...\ \ \ \ \ \ \ Excerpted from MY GOD AND I\ by Lewis B. Smedes\ Copyright © 2003 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co..\ Excerpted by permission.\ All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.\ Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.\ \ \

A Publisher's TributexiAcknowledgmentsxvPrefacexvii1.Beppe Tjitske12.Melle Smedes93.Renske164.Sour Hour of Prayer245.Reprobate316.God and I at Muskegon High357.God and I at Smedes Steel428.God and I at Moody Bible499.God and I at Calvin College5510.Becoming Christian Reformed6011.Looking for God at Theological Seminary6712.My Doris and I7313.God and I in Amsterdam8114.God and I at Oxford8615.Attracted to Rome9216.God and I in Basel9717.God and I in Paterson10318.Back Again at Calvin College11019.Common Grace11520.In the Shadow of Death12021.God and I at Fuller Seminary12622.The Battle for the Bible13423.The Unintentional Ethicist14324.God and I at the Writing Desk15325.God and I, Almost Friends16026.God and a Grateful Old Man16627.God and an Impatient Old Man171

\ Publishers WeeklyShortly after completing the manuscript for this book last fall, Smedes fell from a ladder and died; he was 81. Professor emeritus of theology and ethics at Fuller Seminary and author of more than a dozen books, he is perhaps best known for his 1984 title Forgive and Forget, still in print with nearly a million copies sold. Here he turns from ethics to intensely personal reflection. Sparing neither himself nor those whose theology he finds inadequate, he connects the highlights of his life to his developing theological understanding and quest for personal faith. Smedes describes what turned out to be his last book as "neither a collection of essays about God nor a story of my life, but an account of my doubts and my pains, my faith and my hope as I walked with my elusive God down the winding trail from there to here." That trail, beginning on his grandfather's peat farm in the Netherlands, included poverty, bereavement and shame; but as he walked it, it was increasingly marked by love, self-acceptance and gratitude: "Personally I liked the last miles of the journey better than the first. But, since I could not have the ending without first having the beginning, I thank God for getting me going and bringing me home." Humbly recounted and gracefully written, this slim volume is a pleasure to read and a poignant valediction from a man who lived long and loved wisdom. (May) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalA popular speaker and religious writer, Smedes (theology & ethics, retired, Fuller Theological Seminary) died at age 81 before this brief memoir could be published. The author of such books as Forgive and Forget and How Can It Be All Right When Everything Is All Wrong?, Smedes presents a series of brief chapters centering on life-changing events instead of an exhaustive autobiography. Examples include his studies at Calvin College and the death of his one-day-old son. Contradicting dour stereotypes of his Dutch Reformed tradition, he recalls his life with droll, self-deprecating humor. At his post-Pearl Harbor enlistment physical, for instance, "the sergeant took a quick look at my naked body, winced, suppressed giggles," and told him to go home to get "a little meat on my body." He also observes that while "I embrace fundamentalists as my brothers and sisters I would not invite any of them to join me on a six-day fishing trip." Recommended for public and church libraries where his many books are popular.-Richard S. Watts, San Bernardino Cty. Lib., CA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.\ \