Author: Our Man in Redmond

In 1874, inventor Lewis Bishop and Methodist minister John Heyl Vincent created the Chautauqua Institution as sort of a summer retreat for Sunday school teachers. The Institution put together a program of cultural events open to the community at large, and soon the word “chautauqua” spread across the United States as the name of a form of entertainment featuring plays, music, and oratory.

One summer day in 1899 Reverend Alvin Brown rode into a small town in upstate New York. At the town’s livery stable he got off his horse, and then tipped the young man who would be taking care of his mount.

“See that he’s well taken care of,” he said.

The young man, about 12 years of age, looked at the silver coin in his hand and gushed his thanks.

“So,” the preacher continued. “Will you be coming to my performance tonight?”

“Performance?” the young man asked.

“Yes, my boy, I’ll be speaking at the chautauqua tonight.” Reverend Brown indicated a large tent that had been set up in the town square, easily visible from the front door of the stable.

The young man thought about this for a moment. “Will there be something in your speech for me?”

“I try to include something for everyone,” said Reverend Brown.

The young man said yes indeed, he would be going, and the preacher left to find his hotel room and get ready for that night’s performance.

Now, in this world where TV networks do their best to outdo each other by presenting competing blockbusters in the same time slot, somehow it’s nice to know that that sort of activity is as old as entertainment itself. For instance, on the night in question, a rival chautauqua organizer in a slightly larger town down the road had secured the services of none other than William Jennings Bryan, who had run for President in 1896 and would do so again in 1900. Bryan was a legendary orator, and naturally people flocked to see him. (It didn’t hurt that Bryan was a Democrat, and this part of the state was heavily Democratic and had voted overwhelmingly for him three years before.)

So when Reverend Brown got to the tent that night and took the stand, he saw only one person there with him. It was the boy from the stable.

“Hello there,” said Reverend Brown, “where is everybody?”

The boy looked over his shoulder to his left, then to his right, and finally up at Reverend Brown and shrugged.

“I see,” said the speaker. “Shall I go on with my remarks?”

The young man looked at him. “Well sir, I don’t know much about speechin’. In fact I don’t know much about anything except takin’ care of horses. But I do know that if I’m at the stable, I’ve got to feed the horses. Even if there’s only one horse to be fed.”

Reverend Jones thought about this for just a moment, and then responded, “Very well.” And he went into his speech. And oh, what a thing of beauty that speech was! He ranged from Genesis to Revelation. He strode from Homer to Shakespeare. He talked about world events and his family. He strode up and down the podium like a pacing bear, delivering his message.

Finally after about two hours he stopped and looked out at his one-man audience. “Shall I go on?” he asked the young man.

Once again the young man looked at him. “Well sir, I don’t know much about speechin’. In fact I don’t know much about anything except takin’ care of horses. But I do know that if I’m at the stable I’ve got to feed the horses. Even if there’s only one horse to be fed.

“But I wouldn’t feed him everything in the bin.”

All my life I was surrounded by violence.

When my father wasn’t fighting with my mother, he fought with me.

The kids in our neighborhood sharpened their claws on each other, the better to defend ourselves from outsiders.

When I was old enough I joined the Army of Rome. I fought hard, and I fought well, but in the end I was brought down by the one enemy I couldn’t see or swing a sword at. The arthritic knees that crippled my mother and grandmother eventually caught up with me and made it impossible for me to run and march with my cohort.

Just before he cut me loose, my centurion gave me a tip. He gave me the name of a man in the town near where we were camped who was looking for a bodyguard. He said that even if I couldn’t march, he figured I could still swing a sword.

I imagined myself in the retinue of a nobleman, or a rich merchant. So imagine my surprise when I found myself face to face with an innkeeper. I laughed out loud until he told me that the last three owners of the inn had been murdered in their sleep by the terrorists the locals called “zealots” who aimed to drive the Romans and their sympathizers out of Judaea.

I demanded triple what he was offering for my services. He accepted! And so I became an innkeeper’s bodyguard.

I soon found myself earning my extravagant pay. Three times I thwarted attempts on my employer’s life. I was told I had a price on my head, although I never asked what it was, just in case I was being valued too cheaply.

Then came the Census. Caesar Augustus decreed that everyone was to return to their ancestral home to be counted and taxed. It seemed that every single peasant in the land that Jupiter forgot claimed descent from the royalty that once claimed my adopted town of Bethlehem as its home. The inn was full, the streets were full — I couldn’t turn around without stepping on a couple of natives. Being the innkeeper’s bodyguard was difficult enough, and this made it even more so.

Then one night, I heard a commotion in the street outside the inn. The innkeeper and I went out to find a man, leading a donkey, and on the donkey was a very pregnant woman who was obviously ready to deliver. I knew only a little of the local language, but from the man’s gestures and the woman’s cries I could tell that he was saying that if they didn’t get the woman into the inn right then she was going to deliver her baby on top of that donkey.

This should be interesting, I thought. I’ve never seen a woman give birth on donkey-back before.

My employer told the man to follow him. He took the donkey’s reins and led the couple around to the stable at the back of the inn. I thought he was just going to stable the donkey, but instead he had me help him shoo the cows to the back of the stable and clean the hay out of the manger. We then brought in fresh hay and he placed a clean cloth over the hay.

Two women came along and shooed me out. I wasn’t happy about that, but I stayed close to the door and kept my ears open in case of trouble.  Soon enough, I heard the cry of a newborn baby, and then all was quiet again.

A few minutes later the innkeeper appeared at the door of the stable. “Come and see,” he said, so I went in. The midwives had cleaned up after the birth, and the woman was laying asleep on the improvised bed with her child next to her.

I told you early on that my life had been a life of violence, but when I looked down into the face of that sleeping child, a peace came over me. Not like the peace of the battlefield when the enemy is finally defeated, but a peace from deep down within my soul. I don’t know how long I stood there, at peace for the first time in my life.

I remember hearing voices behind me. “There he is!” they said. And in that instant the soldier in me realized: I wasn’t carrying my sword. I must have laid it down when I felt the peace come over me. An hour ago I would have cursed and wondered how many of them I could take barehanded, but now another part of me was saying: Even dying will not be so bad if it is accompanied by this feeling of peace.

Luck was with me that night, though. The men weren’t zealots. They were shepherds, by the look and smell of them, and they were pointing to the child in the manger. They joined me, and got down on their knees and began to pray to the child. I couldn’t understand all of their prayer, but I did hear one word over and over.

Melech.

King.

When the woman was well enough to travel again they moved on and I never saw them again. My employer died soon after — of old age, I’ll have you know — and he had no one to leave the inn to, so I went from being an innkeeper’s bodyguard to being an innkeeper. I even hired a bodyguard of my own. Over thirty years have passed since that night in the stable, since I had that feeling of peace, and whenever someone who looks like they might know passes through my inn, I always ask them the same question: What do you know of a king who can bring a peace that surpasses understanding?

I’m an old man now, and before I die I hope to find someone who knows the answer to my question.

Let me tell you a couple of things about Billings, Montana. I used to live there, and still have family in the area, so I know a little about the place. For one thing, it wouldn’t even make a decent-sized suburb of Los Angeles. It doesn’t show up in the Census Bureau’s list of cities with more than 100,000 people. And yet, to people from eastern Montana and northern Wyoming, it’s the “big city.” It has two hospitals, three high schools, a daily newspaper and a Wal-Mart.

And in 1993, it had a problem.

Or rather, the problem came to a head in 1993, but it had been simmering long before that. One day racist literature began to appear in town where none had been before. When a local woman placed an item about a Jewish educational event in the Billings Gazette, she received a death threat. Not long after, someone put a bullet through the window of her minivan as she pulled out of her driveway.

Then in 1993 Ku Klux Klan literature was left with cars at a parking lot where a Martin Luther King Day event was being held. The local Jewish cemetery was desecrated. An Indian woman’s home was painted with swastikas. The local Jewish congregation began to receive bomb threats. “Skinheads” appeared at a service in the city’s African Methodist Episcopal chapel and took up positions in the back. They made no overt actions to disrupt the service, but it was obvious they intended to intimidate those in attendance.

Then, one day in early December, Isaac Schnitzer got a brick through his bedroom window. His only crime was posting a picture of a menorah in his window that a friend in his elementary school class had given him.

Isaac’s mother Tammie decided enough was enough. She was used to being a stranger in her own home town; she had converted to Judaism to marry her husband Brian, a local doctor. In doing so she became one of only about a thousand Jews in Montana, and suddenly she had to look at the world in a different way. You see, it was her minivan that had had its window shot out. Isaac was with her at the time.

Tammie got in touch with Gary Svee, an editor at the Gazette, who agreed to run a front page story about the incident in the paper under the headline, “But how do you explain that to a child?” The story also recalled how, when the Nazis occupied Denmark during World War II and forced Danish Jews to wear yellow stars on their coats, the King of Denmark wore one as well and many of his Christian subjects followed suit.

That day’s edition of the Gazette carried a full-page picture of a menorah along with an editorial urging readers to stand up against the violence. That day paper menorahs began to appear in windows in houses all over Billings. and when more bricks came, more menorahs went up. Reader boards around town urged peace. Ministers denounced the violence from their pulpits. Glaziers and painters volunteered their services to repair damage. The Gazette later estimated that as many as 10,000 homes had paper menorahs in their windows at the height of the campaign. When you remember that Billings is a city of less than 100,000 people, it starts to sound like almost half of the families in town had menorahs in their windows.

And it worked. Whether the perpetrators of the hate crimes left the city, or went underground, or felt ashamed of their deeds and forsook them, it’s impossible to say, but the crimes stopped, all because the people of Billings united to say they weren’t going to put up with them any more.

Once upon a time there was a horse who roamed free over a wide pasture. He claimed as his own a particular watering hole, and was able to kill or drive away any animal who tried to use it, with one exception. There was a stag who used to drink from the watering hole with impunity. The horse would chase the stag off, but it would never be long before the stag returned, always staying just out of reach of the horse.

“Did you see that?” the horse remarked one morning to a man who occasionally came to the area to hunt.

“Yeah, I see that,” the man said.

“That stag has been a thorn in my hoof long enough,” the horse said. “I’d like to get rid of him so I can have my watering hole all to myself.”

“I know what you mean,” the man said. “I can never get close enough to the stag to put an arrow through it so I can have me a venison dinner.”

The horse whinnied a sigh. “I wish there was a way we could get rid of that stag once and for all.”

The man thought for a second, and then a smile spread across his face. “Maybe there is,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

The man rummaged around in his pack for a moment and brought out a piece of leather attached to a bar. “Let me put this in your mouth, then I’ll get up on your back. You can chase the stag and get me close enough to shoot it.”

The stallion eyed the bit suspiciously. “I don’t know . . . “

“Well, do you want to get rid of the stag or don’t you?”

The horse thought for a minute more, and then said, “Let’s do it.” So the man put the bit into the horse’s mouth, grabbed his gear, and got up onto the horse’s back. Then he slung his gear across his own back, making sure to keep a quiver of arrows where he could reach it easily.

Soon enough the stag appeared at the edge of the watering hole and lowered its head to drink. As soon as it did so the man spurred the horse on and got his bow ready. The stag of course bolted from the water’s edge, but the horse got just close enough for the man to be able to take aim and fire. The arrow hit its mark and the stag fell to the ground.

“Well done!” the horse cried. “Now let’s get this bit out of my mouth and I’ll be on my way.”

“Hm?” said the man. “No, I don’t think so. I rather like this arrangement.” And so saying, he spurred the horse, whipped the reins and drove the horse toward his village to get some friends to help him dress the stag.

If you allow men to use you for your own purposes, don’t be surprised if they use you for theirs as well.

Aldo was a young man in trouble.

His troubles were very personal, and he was reluctant to talk about them. Luckily for him, he had a friend named Nicholas who could tell that something was wrong, and urged him to talk about it.

Finally, after some persuasion, Aldo sat down with his friend to unburden himself. “It’s Anna,” he said. “We are in love and we want to get married.”

“That’s wonderful,” Nicholas said. “What’s the trouble in that?”

Aldo sighed. “The trouble is with Lucian.”

Aldo swore his friend to secrecy, and then told his story.

Now before we get into Aldo’s story, let me tell you a bit about Nicholas. He was born in the latter half of the third century and lived in the town of Myra, which was in the Roman province of Lycia in what is today the country of Turkey. Nicholas was the son of rich parents who had set him on the path of studying the best books — and to them, that included the scriptures of a religion banned throughout the Roman Empire. His parents died when he was young, and let him a legacy that included not only a small fortune, but a duty to use it wisely.

And now that we know something about Nicholas and the times he lived in, let’s continue with Aldo’s story. He told Nicholas of Lucian, Anna’s father. Lucian was a merchant, and had recently lost everything due to a bad turn of events. Such men often regain their wealth, and indeed Lucian fully expected to do so, but such things take time, and in the here and now, Lucian had three daughters to support. All three were of marriageable age, and indeed all three had suitors who would marry them at the first opportunity; but in those days a woman was expected to have a dowry before she could marry. Faced with lean times and three mouths to feed, Lucian faced a situation where his daughters might end up having to take up one of the few jobs available to women who needed money and had limited means to get it.

“I see,” Nicholas said when Aldo had finished his tale. “Don’t worry. God will provide.”

Two days later Lucian awoke after yet another night of sleeping fitfully. His troubles had conspired with the hot weather to make it difficult to sleep. He stretched, and then through the haze of sleepiness something caught his eye. It was a bag, sitting underneath a window left open to let the cool night breezes blow through. Lucian went to the bag, and it clinked as he lifted it. The weight and sound of it left no doubt as to what was in the bag — gold! He open the bag and inside was a note:

FOR MARIA
TELL NO ONE

Excitedly, Lucian called his oldest daughter over to him and showed him their good fortune. She and her beau were married within the week.

Now of course Lucian told no one what had happened, but it’s impossible to keep such things secret, especially when a few days after Maria was married, Lucian heard a loud thump and rattle in the middle of the night. He ran to the window, and there again was a bag. He took the time to look to see whether he could find his mysterious benefactor, but the streets were as dark as they could be during a new moon. Inside Lucian lit a lamp and looked into the bag, and there again was a note:

FOR FELICIA
TELL NO ONE

Of course he called his middle daughter over to him right away. They danced for joy at their good fortune, and again Felicia and her suitor wasted no time in tying the knot.

That left Lucian and Anna, his youngest, but it also left a problem. Word was getting around that sums of money were appearing in the middle of the night in Lucian’s home. People started hanging out near his house, watching for signs of unusual activity. Lucian’s creditors were beginning to wonder out loud why it was that his daughters suddenly had enough money to be wed when he was unable to pay them. Most did not accept the idea of a stranger in the middle of the night who handed out money unasked and unseen. Roving bands of street youth began searching men wearing voluminous cloaks — anything big enough, say, to conceal a bag of money.

Every night a group gathered near the merchant’s house to watch the windows. After several nights with nothing happening some of the crowd thinned out, but there were always still a dozen or so onlookers.

One night, about two weeks after Felicia had wed, the usual crowd was gathering. There was a full moon out, and the streets were brightly lit. It seemed as though no one would be foolish enough to show up that night, but the watchers had developed into a sort of social club by then and were exchanging the latest theories and ideas on who the donor might be.

Suddenly the air was punctuated by the cry of a boy. “Look! Down there by the river! Someone has just thrown a bag!”

“There he goes!” cried a second voice.

The crowd turned as one and headed toward the sound of the second voice. A half a minute or so later, after he made sure everyone had gone, a cloaked figure walked up to the house, took a bag of coins out from under the cloak, and lobbed the coins into an open window several feet abo2ve the ground.

The figure then turned — and came face to face with the one person who had not followed the crowd: Lucian.

They stood for a moment, looking at each other, and then Lucian wrapped Nicholas in a grateful embrace.

“You have saved my family,” he said through his tears.

“No,” corrected Nicholas. “God has saved your family. I’m just the instrument by which He did so.”

“Come, let’s go before you’re discovered,” Lucian said. “That was a very clever ruse you arranged.”

“Beat pair of silver coins I ever invested,” Nicholas laughed. It was a deep, happy laugh, and sounded just a bit like ho, ho, ho.

Back in the time of legends there was a princess named Deianira, and she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Now because she was so beautiful, she had many suitors, and they all fought among themselves for her hand. Eventually the list of suitors came down to two, and the two suitors stood before Aeneus, the king of Aetolia and Deianira’s father, to claim her hand.

“Great Aeneus,” the first declared, “I am Achelous, god of the River Caledon. I cause the waters to flow and the floods to deposit silt on the fields so the flowers and grasses can grow. I rule a vast and beautiful kingdom, and the only way that kingdom could be more beautiful would be if your daughter were to rule over it with me, by my side.”

“Not so fast, bub,” was the rejoinder from the other suitor.

The two could not have been more different. Achelous was tall and slender and graceful, clad in a flowing green robe. He carried a scepter of water lilies, and his voice was soft and melodious, like the ripple of water in a brook.

The other suitor was shorter but still taller than most of the people in Aeneus’ court. His hair was matted and tangled, he wore an animal skin, and he carried a knotted club. And his muscles! I would say he had muscles in places many of us don’t even have places.

“I fought hard and long to get here and I’m not going to lose the princess just because some pretty-boy talks her daddy into letting her marry him.”

“Impudent stranger!” Achelous still had a voice like flowing water, but there was an edge to it now. “How dare you challenge a god in the court of a king for the hand of a princess! Who are you that you even dare stand in our presence?”

The second suitor rose to his full height and bellowed in a voice of thunder. “I am Hercules, son of Jupiter, and I challenge you, here and now, for the right to marry the princess!”

The two squared off at the foot of Aeneus’ throne, and laid into one another. It was a fair fight, but a rough one, strength against strength, with neither Achelous nor Hercules giving in for what seemed like hours, but was in reality only about fifteen minutes. Then Hercules gained the upper hand, and slowly but surely began to pin Achelous to the mat.

The river-god, seeing that he was about to be beaten, resorted to magic. Hercules felt his opponent’s body twist and writhe and finally slip out of his grasp, and he sprang to his feet to face the river-god in the shape of a great, green serpent. The serpent darted this way, and that, and attempted to encircle Hercules to suffocate him, but Hercules grabbed the serpent around the neck and started to squeeze off its air supply. “What a poor choice on your part!” Hercules mocked to the laughter of the assembled crowd. “My father’s wife sent two serpents to try to strangle me when I was still in my crib. This is child’s play!” And he roared in approval of his own joke.

Then Hercules felt the river-god squirm out of his grasp again, and he fell to the floor as the serpent vanished out from under him. Again he sprang to his feet to see that Achelous had once again changed shape, this time into a great, green bull with two massive, curved horns. The bull charged Hercules, and he barely rolled out of the way. It turned and charged again, this time managing to nick Hercules with one of its horns on the way past. Hercules was in pain from the wound but managed to get to his feet just as the bull readied itself for another charge. This time Hercules was ready, and as the bull approached he grabbed it by the horns, twisting its head and throwing it to the ground. As it fell one of the horns broke off of its massive head, and the bull changed back into the green-clad form of Achelous, clutching his head and running for the waters of the Caledon to cool the pain.

Hercules raised the horn high above his head. “Great Aeneus, I claim your daughter’s hand in marriage!” The wedding was a dandy, Hercules cleaned up very nicely for the occasion (which is a story in itself). As a wedding gift to Hercules and his bride Deianira, the goddess of Plenty took the horn that had ripped from the head of the bull, blessed it, and it began to gush a stream of fruits and flowers that never ran out.

And from that day to this, we use that horn — which became known as the cornu copiae, or horn of plenty — as a symbol of the bounty of the harvest.

Many years ago, there lived a young boy named Wenze. He was a good boy, mindful of his duties and respectful of his parents. Wenze’s family was poor, but his father made do the best he could.

The children he played with would often ask the boys of the tribe, “When you are old enough you will go into the woods to fast and ask the Great Spirit for a vision to guide you for the rest of your life. What will you ask for?”

His friends knew what they wanted. “I will ask to be a great warrior, to bring honor to my family!” said one.

“I will ask for strength and courage,” said another.

But Wenze said, “I don’t know.” And truthfully, he didn’t know, but he had an idea. Wenze would watch his father, and his friends’ fathers, go out and hunt for food. Sometimes they had to hunt when it was cold, or raining, and sometimes game was scarce and they would get hungry. They supplemented their diet with berries, fruits and nuts, but they still had to hunt. Wenze was sad to think that the people of his village had to work so hard for their food, and he wanted to do something to help them.

One spring day Wenze was finally old enough to go on his fast. He went out into the woods with his father, and together they built a shelter so Wenze would not be disturbed while he fasted. Then, that day, he began his fast. That night, he sang a song to the Great Spirit:

Oh Great Spirit,
He who gives life and light to us,
Please help me to find a way
To feed my family
So our people will not have to work so hard.

The Great Spirit heard heard Wenze’s song, and he was pleased. Most young men would ask for things for themselves — courage, or strength, or sometimes just a bow and arrow. Wenze had asked for something that would benefit all of his people! Surely the Great Spirit would grant his request.

Wenze fasted and sang for four nights. On the fourth night, as Wenze slept, he had a vision. In his vision he saw a tall being, clad in greens and yellows, who swayed as he walked. The man had a great tuft of yellow silk on the top of his head. The tall man approached him and said, “Greetings, my friend. The Great Spirit has heard your song, and he has sent me to help you. Before I can help you, though, you must defeat me in a wrestling contest. I shall return tomorrow. Be prepared!” And with that the man disappeared.

Wenze was overjoyed! His request was going to be answered! He prepared for the contest all day, and sang a new song asking for strength and help in defeating his new friend.

The night came, and Wenze was ready. He wrestled well, but was unable to overcome the tall man. “You have fought well for one who has fasted for five days, I shall return tomorrow. Be ready for me.” And again the man vanished.

Wenze was disappointed, but ready. He fasted and sang again all that day, asking the Great Spirit for help in his battle. That night the man returned, and Wenze wrestled better than he had the night before, but he was still unable to overcome his mysterious visitor.

“You have done even better than yesterday,” the man said. “Tomorrow you shall prevail, and here is what you must do. When I am defeated, you must remove the clothes from my body, Then you must clear the ground where I fall of grass and weeds, and bury me there. Make sure that my grave is well-respected and kept clear of weeds. Soon enough you shall have the answer to your request.”

That day Wenze’s father appeared with some food. “The Great Sprit does not require that you die in search of your vision,” his father said.

In response Wenze told his father of his vision. “Tomorrow I shall eat,” he said, “but I still must fast today to carry out my vision.” The father returned to the village, concerned but respecting his son’s wishes.

All that day Wenze sang, and fasted, and prepared for the appearance of his friend. He summoned all of his strength, and when the tall man appeared, Wenze fought hard, and soon enough he got hold of the man and threw him to the ground. Then Wenze stripped the clothes from the man’s body and, making sure the life had gone out of him, buried him where he had fallen, after first clearing the grasses and weeds from the spot. Then, having accomplished his task, he fell to the ground, weak from hunger and exhaustion.

Wenze awoke to the aroma of food. He could only eat a little at first, but then ate a little more, and then eventually was able to eat a full meal. He rested for several days, then as soon as he was able he went to tend to the grave of his friend.

In a few weeks plants started coming out of the ground where his friend had been buried. Wenze let them grow, and the plants grew tall and strong through the summer.

That fall, Wenze gathered the people of his village and brought them out to the plot to show them the gift his friend had given him. There, where he had buried his friend, were tall plants that swayed in the wind. From the sides of the plants grew great ears of grain, clad in green and gold and topped with silky yellow hair, just like his friend. The grain sported milk-filled kernels, sweet to the taste.

“This is the gift I was shown in my vision,” Wenze announced. “If we plant these in the spring and take care of them during the summer, we will have enough food to feed us all. We will no longer have to rely solely on hunting for our food.” They picked and stored some of the grain for planting the next year, and the rest they ate, and they gave thanks to the Great Spirit for the gift he had given them.

And this is how corn came into the world.