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Sunday, October 27, 2013

Hx of St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Westgate

In 1882, a formal call was sent to Rev. Haenschke of Spring Fountain to lead services at a school house northwest of Westgate. On December 19, 1885 the church was incorporated with seven charter members: Joseph Beecher, Christian Decker, George Knief, G. A. Koelling, Martin Lang, Phillip Knief, and Wm Klammer.
By 1886, arrangements were made to purchase three acres of land northwest of Westgate, on which a modest chapel (16x24x10 feet) was built. The south side was set aside for a cemetery, which remains there to this day.
On July 1, 1888, the congregation joined the Missouri Synod and called their own pastor, Rev. H.E. Jacobs. A house was purchased from Mr. John Rueber for $300 and moved onto the church property as a parsonage.
Since the new village of Westgate had come into existence with the arrival of the Great Western railroad (1886 ) it appeared more logical to move the congregation there. A three acre plot adjoining Main St. was purchased from S. F. Cass for $250, with members purchasing the southern portion. By January 1, 1893 it was voted to build a church (30x48x18 feet high), for $1,000. It was dedicated August 7, 1893.
During Pastor Webbeking’s pastorate (1924-1930) the church was renovated, the constitution was revised and regular English services were introduced for the 2nd and 4th Sundays of the month. In January of 1927, it was voted to replace the old parsonage at a cost of $4,000. Henry Treptow, C.T. Heller, Anton Reinking, Herman Potratz, Carl Gemmels, Wm. Gumm, Henry Lange and Carl Meyer were elected to gather pledges to finance the project. It was noted if al members pledged in the same spirit in which they voted for the new house there would be no problem in financing the project. By March, the committed reported $3,315 had been pledge so work was begun by the Fratzke Brothers.
During Pastor Schultz’ pastorate, the congregation experienced many changes over the 31 years. By 1951, the present structure was enlarged by the addition of a north and south wing and full basement. Also a new altar, pulpit, lectern, baptismal font was added with the rebuilding of the pipe organ and installation of windows above the altar. On Palm Sunday, 1962, two 7 branch candelabras were dedicated.
In the spring of 1963, a general renovation of the parsonage took place. The kitchen was remodeled, floors refinished and the hitching post out front was removed.
In 1975, the congregation decided to add on an enlarged lobby with the main entrance to the south.
In 1994, a sacristy area was added and a portion of the parking lot was paved.
In 2003, an elevator was installed along with new carpet in the sanctuary.
In October 2004, St. Peter entered a dual parish relationship with Grace Lutheran in Fayette.

In November 2010, St. Peter began to celebrate 125 years of God’s blessings bestowed on us.

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Our Cuban Excursion; a journey back in time


On 10/11/2013 Sandra and I departed Miami on a chartered flight to Havana Cuba, embarking on a seven day guided tour.  The tour was organized and led by Earthbound Expeditions, with a partial focus on Cuba’s efforts surrounding sustainable agriculture.  We embraced a ‘guided adventure’ with relaxed anticipation, as all of the details were handled by others, requiring only for us to show up and be led.  We had a tour host, a tour leader and a Cuban guide, a triad of parental oversight if you will, providing far more information than my hearing impaired ears could possibly assimilate, while tending to our every personal need, including ministering to Montezuma!  

Landing at the Havana airport, which serves a city of more than four million, its size and activity levels were striking, marked by limitations on both ends.  More Cuban people seem to be coming to Cuba than we later found to be departing, or so it appeared.  A significant number of friends and family were awaiting the arrived passengers.

Having been raised in rural Iowa during the nineteen forties and fifties, a time and place holding modest means and a goodly amount of scarcity, along with a profusion of self-reliance, our foray into Cuban life, in many ways, felt like a return to those years of yore.  Many, if not most, of the highway vehicles were vintage 1940 to 1950 model american cars.  Rural life held early 20th century qualities, marked by a dependence on manual labor, augmented by old bicycles, frail horses and oxen.  Walking was a primary means of movement, as well.  Where electricity was unavailable, solar panels could be found to provision television viewing and charging of cell phones, holding a slight touch of modernity.  My favorite memory of the week long excursion was a three hour walk in a fertile valley near Vinales, west of Havana.  It was there I felt a groundedness in the soul of Cuba and its people, where a mindful focus on survival was most evident, where dependence on mother earth is linked to survival, where pretense and vanity have no place, where authenticity of the human spirit is made manifest.

Another aspect of Cuba I found comforting involved the fusion of a very pluralistic racial makeup (Spanish, French, African, Asian seeming most identifiable) into a spirit of oneness, ‘we are all Cuban.’  A true melting pot of humanity evidencing an acceptance of common human qualities rather than being separated by external differences. Music, particularly Salsa, aids the uniting of the spirit and people, as its rhythms express so much. 

In some ways, I felt a tinge of guilt for having so much and for living a life of once unimaginable comfort and freedom, in the face of so many perceived to having so little.  I also became aware of the value of keeping my own life simple and grounded in nature and the merits of fostering authenticity in my interpersonal relationships.   

In learning about Cuba’s revolutionary history, I garnered a deeper understanding of the seeds from which social and cultural revolutions emanate, creating a foreboding sense of one being fomented in our country.  Bottom line, revolutions appear to offer a re-balancing of societies’ distribution of power and resources.  When few hold the bulk of money and power, the majority can only take so much.

In a cursory look, there exist good reason to lift the governmental barriers between Cuba and the US, a commonly reported desire of the Cuban people we encountered.  Expanded use of highly under-utilized land could be applied, as self-sustaining agriculture would certainly be an aid in limiting Cuba’s dependence on imports.  And, capitalism with its accompanying industrialization efforts could bring modernity into the fabric of everyday life.  However, I have concern for the downside of modernity and its potential to dehumanize a society people.  What would happen to the existing socialist programs, which provide free education and health care, when profits are injected?

In summary, our Cuban excursion was memorable and educational, leaving a warm feeling of appreciation for the merits of simple living, and increased gratitude for all we have in the Autumn years of our lives in good ol’ Mississippi!


Sunday, October 20, 2013

Impassioned Clay

Deep in ourselves resides the religious impulse.
Out of the passions of our clay it rises.
We have religion when we stop deluding ourselves
that we are self-sufficient, self-sustaining, or self-derived.
We have religion when we hold some hope beyond the present,
some self-respect beyond our failures.
when our nerves are edged by some dream in the heart.
We have religion when we have an abiding gratitude
for all that we have received.
We have religion when we look upon people with all their failings
and still find in them good; when we look beyond people to the grandeur
in nature and to the purpose in our own heart.
We have religion when we have done all that we can, and then in confidence
entrust ourselves to the life that is larger than ourselves.

Ralph N. Helverson

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

South Toward Home: A Poet’s Journey Back to Literary Mississippi


Brandi Herrera wrote this essay as part of a project with Visit Mississippi. Visit her blog chronicling the trip at poetinmississippi.tumblr.com. Read the full essay at jfp.ms/poetsjourney.
Brandi Herrera wrote this essay as part of a project with Visit Mississippi. Visit her blog chronicling the trip at poetinmississippi.tumblr.com. Read the full essay at jfp.ms/poetsjourney. Photo by Courtesy Brandi Katherine Herrera
I was all but dragged to Mississippi kicking and screaming.
"You're taking me where?" I asked my husband.
"Jackson," he said.
Pause.
"Mississippi," he clarified. (Just in case I had thought Wyoming.)
"But I’ve never even been to the South," I tried to reason.
"You’re going to love it," he said enthusiastically. But neither one of us knew anything about Jackson, or that we could possibly come to care for it.
Aside from Florida and Texas (which don’t count, I know), and a handful of short layovers in the Atlanta airport, I’d never really set foot anywhere near the southeastern region of the U.S. And though life had already taken me away from my Oregon home to England, Germany, Austria, and the American Midwest, Mississippi seemed oddly more foreign than all of those places, or any others I could possibly imagine.
"I didn’t sign up for this," I said.
And then I went back to doing the laundry and hoped Mississippi might go away like a bad rash, or headache.
That was 2006. And in the summer of 2007, on what was to be the hottest week of the year, we navigated our little silver Civic south toward our new home via I-55 from Memphis.
It was 109 degrees when we arrived at the house, and it felt like we’d driven the car into an enormous steam room.
We got out to survey the neighborhood. "Belhaven," I said to the dogs, who were confused, and took turns yipping intermittently between bouts of panting. "Linden Place," I said a few times to myself.
Mississippi magnolia fanned across yards like elegant outstretched hands, as far as I could see down the street from where we stood in the sizzling driveway. A lizard scaled the fence, then quickly became the pattern and color of the cedar planks the moment I detected him.
"What have I gotten myself into?" I said to the fence, to nobody.
And then we unpacked and settled in. And the rest became a chapter in my personal history.
WRITE ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW
How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.
―William Faulkner
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard “write what you know” uttered by a college writing instructor, workshop leader, MFA faculty member, or fellow wordsmith, I might actually be able to make a decent living as a poet.
And while the impulse to write about topics true to one’s own life experiences is one I can respect and understand—for a writer to mine her personal past and present for rich subject matter to give context to a story or poem—it’s not advice I would recommend that any writer live (and die) by.
Writing about the other is probably one of the most difficult things one can attempt. But it’s not nearly as difficult as writing successfully about the familiar, about what we already know.
To this end, I crafted an entire graduate thesis of poems that took their shape from the landscape I was born into, the place I call home. And their language and imagery is the language and imagery of that place and my people: my father’s mother and father; my mother’s mother and father; aunts and uncles and cousins; my sister; our childhood playmates and pets, and a cast of local characters who colored our days and gave life to our existence.
But more than a year after completing that collection, there are few I can honestly stomach. Even fewer yet that I would feel good about sending out into the world in hopes of finding homes for them in journals or a book. Because I did that—wrote about what I knew. And though it felt safe and honest at the time, I had failed to see what was right in front of my face all along. To view what I thought I knew through a different lens. To engage in an act of discovery and experience my surroundings with a sense of wonder—even though I’d spent the greater part of my life in their presence.
What I came to realize was this: we think we know something, someone, until we stop to look a little closer, long and hard enough to see them in a different light, and challenge ourselves to approach them from a different angle.
And that is the beauty of mystery. Where things we think we know and love have another side, yet to be discovered. And this is what we shall do, and what I have learned: to move beyond what’s comfortable, in search of a story.
WRITE ABOUT WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW
I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown . . . I was taking a part of the South to transplant in alien soil, to see if it could grow differently, if it could drink of new and cool rains, bend in strange winds, respond to the warmth of other suns and, perhaps, to bloom.
―Richard Wright
In Jackson, my husband and I lived right up the street and around the corner from Eudora Welty’s former home on Pinehurst Street. I used to walk the dogs every morning up and down the wide lane, past her Tudor home with its sprawling lawn on the way to the pond at Belhaven College.
I’m ashamed to admit that before moving to the South, I’d never cracked open a single book of hers. Since then, of course, I have had the extreme pleasure of experiencing her unmistakable voice and skillful narratives.
Some time near the end of my MFA studies, a fellow student said to me: Write about what you don’t know about what you know. And I thought that was brilliant. And I wondered why no one had ever given me such sound advice. And it wasn’t until I sat down to write this article, that I discovered those sage words had been written by Miss Eudora Welty.
A STORYTELLING CULTURE
Southerners love a good tale. They are born reciters, great memory retainers, diary keepers, letter exchangers . . . great talkers.
― Eudora Welty
I moved from Mississippi to Ithaca, New York, two summers after we arrived in Jackson. And then I moved back home to Portland, Oregon, two winters later. A lot has happened during that small clutch of years that doesn’t matter a great deal for the sake of this story. But what I will tell you is that the richness I experienced in the short time I lived in the Magnolia State, and in successive visits to Jackson, has yet been unmatched.
In time, that foreign place with its sudden, effusive seasons, its wide porches and lazy afternoons, its black-eyed peas and crawfish boils, became my home. Its distinct rhythms and stories became second nature. And I began to learn what it was to be Southern.
I grew to know and love the community as if it had been my own, all my life. To embrace my neighbors who possessed the kind of warmth and generosity I had always wanted to find, but had never actually experienced as an adult. A place where positive change seemed to be everyone’s first initiative, and where making change wasn’t just possible, but encouraged.
I wrote for the Jackson Free Press, which allowed me to come into contact with a diversity of local individuals and to have the privilege of telling their remarkable stories. I quickly made friends with a variety of artists, writers, musicians, academics, doctors, yoga instructors, coffee slingers, restaurant owners, editors and advocates.
And everywhere I went—whether Ace Hardware for a can of spray paint and some nails, the grocery store for a gallon of milk, the post office, or dry cleaners—I encountered someone new and had the pleasure of hearing their stories. It’s true what they say about Southerners being natural storytellers. And as a writer, I couldn’t have been more delighted to just sit, and take in their words, and listen for hours.
WHAT I DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT WHAT I KNEW ABOUT MISSISSIPPI
On a quiet day after a spring rain this stretch of earth seems prehistoric … you may feel you are in one of those sudden magic places of America. Known mainly to the local people and merely taken for granted, never written about, not even on any of the tourist maps. To my knowledge this area of the abrupt hills and deep descents does not have a name, but if you drive up and down them once on a fine day and never see them again, you will find them hard to forget.
―Willie Morris, from “North Toward Home”
This spring when I was asked by Visit Mississippi to be the first writer for a special social media project, I jumped at the chance to return to the South. I had been back to visit friends several times since moving away, but that was almost three years ago. I was eager not only to connect with them again, but also to return to the state with a fresh set of eyes and to challenge myself to see it through a different lens. And so it was that I found myself on a clear and sunny Wednesday morning, navigating my little Honda CRV south toward home via I-55 from Memphis.
As I wove my way throughout Literary Mississippi—Oxford, Clarksdale, Columbus, Jackson and Yazoo City—in search of its beloved writers and the landscapes they inhabited, I became aware of something I hadn’t expected. That this place, these people, were all at once nothing and everything that I thought I knew. The virtual strangers I encountered during my solo travels were simultaneously (and strangely) familiar. And though I arrived as a foreigner and former transplant, the hills and the great delta opened up willingly and took me in as one of their own.
All I could do was sit and listen, and open up to the landscape and people in return. And like the French photographer Alain Desvergnes, who came to Mississippi from 1961 to1964 in hopes of capturing Faulkner’s mythical Yoknapatawpha County during a time of social and political upheaval, I chose to record both new and familiar surroundings and experiences, “As would a novelist, who writes as he sees, without interruption, without order or apparent coherence, without reassuring logic or enticing benefits.”
In so doing, I found that I knew very little about what I thought I knew about the place I call a second home. And I have returned from that magical region of the world with a better understanding of the land and people that have informed some of American literature’s greatest stories. And I am all the better for having done so.
Brandi Herrera wrote this essay as part of a project with Visit Mississippi. Visit her blog chronicling the trip at poetinmississippi.tumblr.com.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Sandra's 69th

10/12/2013

Cooling, soothing Autumn breezes are here!
A period that lifts spirits and evokes joyful noises!
Could it be Sandra’s birthday is nearing?

Holy cow, Sandra will be 69!
Prepping to leave her 7th decade,
She’ll soon join her hubby in his 8th.

On the eve of this honored day,
She is consumed by heavenly surroundings,
Fostering gratitude and validation.

She’s firmly anchored in the realization
‘This is it!’
This is where she is suppose to be!

She embeds herself in the wonders of nature,
Complete with three egg-laying girls,
In a garden flourishing with organic produce.

Sandra has come a long way in her 69 years:
She’s experienced the depths of despair
And the wonders of joyful transcendence.

The power and value of her existence
Leaves an indelible imprint on all she touches,
Family and friends alike.

And, Sandra’s greatest contribution 
Just might be to her spousal relationship,
Injecting a challenging and supportive force!

Topping off the celebration,
We find her in Havana, Cuba, no less!
Joined by a cast of newly formed sojourners, already!


From your adoring and loving Hubby, Nate

Friday, October 4, 2013

Landmark Forum

Landmark Forum – Nate Bender – 10/4/2013

The year was 1986.  Five years into my post-military active duty status, and three years into my first foray into being self-employed.  I was four years post-divorce, with sole custody of my then ten year old son, Jonathan.  Also, I was into a year and half relationship with Sandra, who later became my wife.  She had a twelve-year old daughter, Ariana, and a 20 year-old step-son, Dylan, making for all sorts of complicated inter-play.  I did not hold a vision of ever being married again, as a failed marriage left unsavory residue.  However, Sandra had other visions. 

After a series of coincidental events occurred over a three month period in the Summer of 1986, I enrolled in an intensive personal development course, once called est training, and then softened into a Landmark Forum version.  After registering for the next locally held course in October, Sandra also decided to share the experience with me and registered for the same event.

It’s difficult to fully describe the Landmark Forum experience.  Structurally, it consisted of two consecutive weekends, and a following Tuesday evening session, encompassing more than a hundred people.  The days lasted from 9:00 am to mid-night and even later.  There were no breaks, save for a half-hour dinner break.  Restroom calls were had on an as-needed basis, and with ‘permission.’  Unlimited access to water was also factored in.  The methodical, well-honed process sought to uncover patterns of ineffective behavior while providing support in becoming more effective in living our lives.  Authenticity and personal integrity were held in high value.  Lots of participant sharing and direct processing with the Forum Leader ensued, offering a forum for transference and transcendence for all participants.  I sat mesmerized, and totally quiet throughout the four days, save for my interactions with Sandra.

After the first weekend, I became aware of feeling more calm, quiet and at peace in my tenuous, transitioning life.  No real big thunderbolts or revelations were evident.  Sandra was able to experience a shift in my manner, and I in hers.  During the interlude between the two weekends, I noticed a gentle surge in my work as a self-employed Organization Development Consultant, where new business was being generated, naturally and out of existing client relationships.  Something new was taking form.  After the second weekend, Sandra and I revisited the old issue of whether or not I wanted to marry again.  This time, when she asked me if I would marry her, without hesitation, I said yes. No more reservations, no more fears, no more doubts!  This level of resolve has remained constant for 27 years, so as to anchor the effect!

One additional note I’d like to make:  The past 27 years have been the best years of my entire 70 years of life.  Over these years, I have been witness to increased effectiveness in my handling a myriad of offerings in my personal and professional life.  The results have carried me with a level of skill and confidence never before realized, into new and challenging forums.  No longer am I the center of the universe and subject to being the owner of the issues and concerns others may have.  When my efforts produce ineffective results, the inherent learnings become catalysts for change and growth, rather than demoralizing setbacks.  I’m much more able to remain connected and at the same time detached!

Finally, on January 1, 1987, Sandra and I were married in Fairmount Presbyterian Church, in Cleveland Heights, OH.  The rest of this story will continue in another forum!