Why History Matters

My job at the barn was to clean out the office while Asherel went on her riding lesson. Jill was apologetic, assigning me this duty.
"I tried to keep it clean after you organized it the last time, but well..." she flung open the office door and we looked in, " I just can't."
"It's ok," I comforted her, "I love this kind of stuff. I am good at this."
(And frankly, it is a heck of alot easier than chipping away at the concrete goat poop sludge that was my last job.)
And I am very good at organizing, especially if it is not my stuff. Jill left me a large garbage bag and told me not to worry where I stashed stuff- she would find it eventually. This is the kind of carte blanche instructions that make an organizer's heart flutter with delight. I only had an hour but if it didn't matter where I put things, my job was definitely within my pay grade.

Jill and the crew saddled up while I started at a pile of junk on the right hand corner of the floor, a tangle of objects stuffed under a saddle. I pulled out an ancient, spider web gooey old rotary dial desk telephone. It had some frayed wires and the dialer popped in and out of place. I hurried out of the office to catch Jill before she left.
"Do you want me to toss this?"
"No..." she said, looking a little abashed, "I want to keep that and try to fix it. Do you know one of my students saw that when I found it in the hay loft and asked me what it was? Wouldn't it be cool to repair it? Kids today have no idea that is a phone!"
Jill is young- certainly not half way through thirty. She would never have used a phone like this either. What was it about the lost history that touched her, I wondered? I dusted off the phone and put it on a high shelf. I suspected it would never be repaired, but I thought it seemed grateful to have escaped the garbage bag.

We are studying the Revolutionary War  in our homeschool. History was my least favorite subject when I was a student in school, but my favorite now that I am an adult. I am fascinated by it, particularly by the motivations and descriptions of the main characters in the saga of our country's birth. I want to generate that same level of interest in Asherel, to convince her that history is filled with wonderful exciting stories, sobering moral lessons, valuable insights that can guide our future. It is perhaps the hardest job a teacher of young people has- how does one convince someone with so little history of their own that all this panorama of history matters?

We just finished a book on Benedict Arnold. While part of me despises Arnold, part of me feels very sorry for him. As we finished the book, and reached the end where he dies in poor health, despised by both Americans and Britain, never achieving the status of hero that he longed for, I said, "I feel so sorry for him, don't you?"
"No," said Asherel, "Why do you feel sorry for him?"
"Well, I know he was despicable, but he was so self deluded. He never recognized, or admitted that what he did was treason. He was always rationalizing his behavior. He never understood that he was the source of his problems. He always blamed others, or his circumstances."
She looked at me, as though that hardly was sufficient basis for my pity, given his crime.
"We are all self deluded to some degree," I said, "I mean, we may not go and commit treason, but we do other things and try to feel better about ourselves by blaming everything but ourselves."
And the other sad thing about Benedict Arnold was his motivation. He wasn't motivated by great and noble desires, like so many of the patriots. He was motivated by the lure of money and fame. One of the greatest lessons of Benedict Arnold, in my opinion, is: examine your motives.

When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness by Satan, He had been fasting for forty days. He was certainly starving, and there would be nothing sinful in eating at the end of his time of prayer and fasting. However, Satan tried to lure him by telling Him,  if you are the son of God, all you have to do is turn the stones into bread! Just do it!
This temptation of Christ is one of the most interesting parts of all History. First of all, why is eating when you are starving a sin? And why does Jesus resist Satan on this point? What are His motives in doing so?
Obviously, eating when we are hungry is a good and natural desire. However, for Jesus, this temptation reveals the perplexing dual nature of His mission. He is both completely Divine, and completely Man, a duality that I cannot understand, but still trust to be true. And assuming it is true is the only way I think this first temptation makes any sense. He is the son of God, and He is hungry and His period of fasting nearly over. Satan would never say to a mere man, "Turn these stones into bread!" because no man could do so. Satan knows that, so Satan is tempting Him as God. Jesus as man would want nothing more than to eat at that moment, but He was not sent to the desert to eat...He was sent to the desert to resist the temptations of Satan. If He turned the stones into bread, He would no longer be relying on His Father to supply His needs, and most importantly, He would be using His divine nature to escape the trials of His human nature. Should He succumb to this relatively simple test, how would He ever remain on the Cross? Satan's taunt in the first temptation is eerily reminiscent of the taunts of the crowd when He is crucified, "...save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the son of God!"
History teaches us so much that is worth knowing! Especially, His Story.

Jill returned and looked at the clean office.
"Wow," she said, "I promise I will try to keep it like this."
"I put your phone up there," I said, pointing to the shelf, "I dusted it off a little."
"I know it seems silly to keep it...." she said.
"Not at all," I said, smiling at her, "I totally understand."

Matthew 4
1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” 4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’

Matthew 27:39-41


39 Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads 40 and saying, “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” 41 In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him.

Repeating History

"Acawwwwlllllll!"  shrieked something from overhead. We peered into the tree. Two brownish spotted huge birds perched in the limbs. They looked like a cross between a turkey and a leopard- with a wattle and multitudinous white spots.
"What is it?" asked Arvo.
"I think it is a New Guinea Hen," I answered, from the dregs of some memory I had no idea from wence it sprang....(or is it sprung)?
Anyway, we looked it up on our incredibly useful smart phone, and discovered I was correct, sort of. It was indeed a Guinea Hen.

We took a trip back in time yesterday. First we went to Old Salem, the Moravian village from the 1700s, and then we saw "1964 The Beatles Tribute" band that evening. It didn't even occur to me til I wrote that  sentence that our activities of the day all involved stepping back in history. And as we settled into our concert, the opening act was a fantastic singer from Memphis who organized his songs with a running commentary that traced the history of rock in roll. I was grateful for all the instruction in history, because if the adage is true, we are now not doomed to repeat it.

The Guinea fowl are birds that were domesticated long ago as a useful food source and predator of ticks. They are native to Africa, but adapted so well to life in the US that many people believe they are indigenous, almost immediately upon discovering what that word means. They were very common on pre-1900 farms, thus their presence in this old Moravian settlement. They taste, not surprisingly, like chicken, or snakes, which also taste like chicken. The Guineafowl mate for life, though rarely do indulge in bigamy. Most prefer monogamy because they can't afford the prison time if caught with two hen spouses, and for sure the Moravians frowned upon it.

We sat and watched the Guineafowl for quite some time as our feet were tired from trodding across Old Salem. Then, in tribute to the Beatles Tribute we were about to see, we had fish and chips for dinner. Asherel would have fish and chips for every meal if we would allow it, and is investigating majoring in Beatles Studies at the university in Liverpool. This evening was a dream come true for her.

The colliseum was awash in people my age, and older. All the old hippies who survived were there. And all of them were singing along, twisting and shouting. The Beatles imitators themselves were remarkably Beatle like, with every nuance of the way the Beatles moved, held their guitars, danced, and even shook their hair.....until we got up close to the stage, which we did for the encore.

Up close, we saw that the Beatles had aged considerably....and the hair had to be wigs, or at best dyed. However, they were very talented, and we had a wonderful time reliving years that I hadn't fully lived the first time around. I really wish I had paid attention to the Beatles when they were alive. Now that they are dead, I want to be a groupie. Asherel, who is a natural musician, loves them and understands the genius of their music, something that eluded me when I was growing up and the world was gaga over them. I preferred to sit in willow trees , and eat apples and read books about guineafowl.

In front of the colliseum where the Beatles Tribute performed, were row after row of posts with the names of all the US wars on one side, and the fallen soldiers from the community on the other. I thought of Comer, my old friend and WW2 veteran who was 93 years old. The personal history of our country is slowly dying off. Recently the last WW1 soldier died. The oldest man on earth just died, and with him, the personal recollections of his grandfather who used to talk with him about his experiences as a soldier for the Union Army in the Civil war. Arvo and I shook our heads sadly thinking this powerful, shaping history of our nation was disappearing and no one seems to care much to remember it.
"We have new history now," comforted Asherel.
And yet, she stood there with the old folk with her fresh unwrinkled brow, twisting and shouting with the echoes of time marching past. I listened and sang too, with visions of soldiers from the past and of a lonely single pair of Guinea fowl nesting in a tree that had first budded on a new country.

And how fitting that we start this week remembering, this week that culminates in remembrance of a very ancient occurrence. It is the single most rocking occurrence of all time, and I don't mean the Beatles. It is the single most pivotal event of history- the death of a Man that claimed to be the savior of the world, and His resurrection. The tribute band playing His song will be strumming harps and lyres and they will not need to worry about wigs or makeup.  And as Asherel noted in a slightly different context, the old will be made new.

2 Corinthians 5: 7-8, 17-18

⁷ Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. ⁸ Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! ¹⁸ All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ

What the river could tell

Asherel finished her school work around three, and I finished cleaning the house under the glow of the new blue skytube. I also did a little research and discovered that the reason our tube was blue was the workmen had not removed the blue protective inner coating. We are hopeful Arvo can do that himself and by this weekend have the promised flooding of natural light in our great room. But while doing "Blue Tube" research, I also found that there are class 1-3 rapids on the Catawba River only a half hour from our house.! It is just a finger-few types away from sky tube, to tubing, to kayaking. And, I discovered, there are several kayak launch sites along the way.

Being only 96 degrees out, I roped Asherel and tied her to my side and told her we were going to go check out this river. She was not as enthused as she could have been, having just kayaked rapids for 3 hours two days before, but I told her we just wanted to walk along the river and see if it was something we would want to try. Since this is almost the exact verbage she had heard prior to our last 3 hour marathon kayak trip, she was dubious.

Nearby Fort Mill is busily constructing the one thing that I feel Charlotte really lacks- a beautiful public walkway along the gorgeous Catawba. The path we discovered is shaded, and meanders right by the river for two and a half glorious miles. The property adjacent to the path is being developed into a riverside community, restaurant, shopping area. At last, one of the most lovely natural resources in our region is being developed as a public boating, walking, and wildlife gazing accessible area. The trail is not yet officially open, so I dragged my reluctant partner onto an empty and peaceful walk we had nearly to ourselves.

The silence was broken only by the osprey screeching as it sailed over the river, and the cows on the opposite shore lowing.... and the large man who came up behind us and asked if I had a mint on me.

I did sort of wish I had a dog with me, or mace.... or some sort of protection, but I kept my hand on my cell phone.
"No, sorry," I said.
"I had a big lunch," he explained, like I wanted to hear about it, "And have a bit of an upset stomach. Mints help."
Fortunately, he lumbered past us without nefarious intent, and we reveled in the beauty of the magnificent field of rocks and rapids that stretched across the galloping Catawba. Several herons were fishing among the rocks, and the osprey was swooping.

A little golf cart motored up to us, with a park patrol logo, and a kindly old man driving.
"Oh good!" I called out, relieved to see the trail was patrolled with the mint man still in sight. I am not sure how much protection an old kindly man would be, but any port in a storm.....
I stopped to chat with the man and he was one of those gold mines of humanity, filled with the treasures of a lifetime of loving, studying, and living in the very area we stood.
"Those rapids there, where the rocks are and the water so shallow is Nation's Ford," he explained. I knew Nations Ford was a highway in Charlotte, but I hadn't known it had been an actual place where the Catawba was forded, crossed.
"That's where Sherman crossed the Catawba in his march to the sea," he continued,"And it was part of the Catawba Indian's trail. In the Revolutionary War, it is where the British crossed as well. See that stream to the left of the island? There was an old grist mill up the stream- that's part of how Fort Mill got its name. And on that hill there by the stream, a fort was built to attack the British if they came upriver- so the area became known as Fort Mill."

His face crinkled with a huge proud smile, "This river is full of history!"
We both looked out at the gurgling river, cascading over the rocks, speaking the language of the ages.
"Can we kayak against the current and then float back to here, do you think?" I asked,"Since it is just my daughter and myself I wouldn't be able to shuttle the car to a take out point downriver."
"Oh yes," he said, "I canoe it all the time. The current looks fast, but it is not hard to paddle upstream as long as you don't run into rapids. I don't think there are any for at least a mile that way." He pointed upstream.

So I know what I plan to do for my birthday this week, and even my somewhat reluctant cohort agreed I should get to do what I want on my birthday. Who knows how many more I have left, and what better way to spend it than gossiping with a river that met Sherman, and Cornwallis, and watched our nation be born?

Isaiah 66:12
For this is what the Lord says: "I will extend peace to her like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream