Into the Long Dark Night

by Michael Phillips

  She smiled and shrugged. “The bishop looks upon us with a skeptical eye, and yet even he cannot deny the reality of the spiritual life that is among us. For some reason that is still very strange to me, it seems that those whose hearts yearn for unity among the wider spheres of God’s people always find themselves dissatisfied with the existing traditions that so many are comfortable with. And it seems inevitable that when they attempt to express the yearnings of their hearts, they are looked upon as rebellious instead of full of love for the whole and complete Church of Christ. I will no doubt spend the remainder of my life trying to understand that perplexity. But that is why I say we are misfits. Yet we love one another, and we love the small community God has made of us. And we love what we do.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Back to the question you asked in the first place! I’m sorry, I never answered you, did I?”

  “I’m very interested in everything you were saying, though.”

  “Well, Corrie, what we really do is simply seek to be involved in our community, and especially with other religious groups within the vicinity of the convent.”

  “Involved. . . how?”

  “Oh, many different things. We might help the Amish with one of their barn raisings, or—”

  “The Amish?”

  Again Sister Janette laughed. “I forget that you are from California!” she said. “The Amish are a Protestant sect that live in great numbers in southeastern Pennsylvania. They mostly keep to themselves, and to be frank with you, they don’t like Catholics much. The beginnings of their church had to do with resistance to Catholic ways several hundred years ago. But we love them in spite of it, and wherever we find an open door to help them, we walk through it. No one, even the most stubborn Protestant, can resist a smile and a helping hand.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help thinking of how Pa and Avery Rutledge first got on together! I wondered if what she had called a “barn raising” was anything like when the Miracle Springs church had been built.

  “So you go about helping people in your community?”

  “Whenever we find opportunity. But it’s more than helping with a specific job or project. We try to mix in a spiritual way with other communities and sects and groups of God’s people. Our desire is not merely to do things, although that certainly is part of it, but to share life, to break down walls of division that exist between different groups of Christians, to let people inside our hearts and get inside theirs so that we no longer look at one another as Catholic or Amish or Presbyterian or Brethren, but simply as brothers and sisters.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “In whatever ways we can. We invite families of other church affiliations to visit us. We welcome visitors to our convent and treat them as part of our body of life, whether they are Catholic or not. Gradually word has spread that we are there to help anyone with any need he might have, and one by one people have stopped being afraid of the fact that we are Catholics and are looking upon us as friends. Some even come occasionally to our times of Bible reading and prayer.”

  “Do you go to other churches’ meetings too?”

  “Oh yes. If you want to see unity happening between Christians, you have got to do that. You can’t wait and expect people to come to you. Unity is an active, outflowing thing. It will never happen if you expect to see it manifested in others before you do anything about it yourself. So yes, we are constantly moving out and among other Christian groups, wherever we can do so without causing offense. You should have seen it the first time four of us appeared on Sunday morning at the Amish church meeting!”

  “What happened?”

  Sister Janette laughed.

  “I didn’t know whether they were going to throw us out, or whether they might cancel the service right there on the spot! The eyes of every man, woman, and child in that little church house turned around and stared as if they were going to pop right out of their sockets!”

  “Did they say anything?”

  “No. There was just a long silence as they tried to figure out what four nuns dressed in Catholic habit were doing in their Amish gathering. But eventually the minister went on with the service.”

  “And afterward?” I asked.

  “Not a word. They ignored us completely, as if we weren’t even there, and we quietly left. But I wasn’t offended by their silence. It takes time for people to get used to something new. We went back the next Sunday, and the next. Finally some of the children began to come up to us and ask questions. The prejudices of children don’t run so deep, and their universal humanity is usually more ready to show itself. Once the children broke the ice, some of the women began to smile timidly at us. Then conversations started, until after a couple months those stiff, proud, bearded Amish men were laughing and talking with us about their crops and the weather, surprised, I think, to find out how much we knew about such things from our own experiences in our own fields. Since then there’s been wonderful fellowship between the sisters of our convent and the dear people of that Amish community.”

  “And you’ve done the same thing with others?”

  “Similar things, yes. We’ve attended many meetings and services all around the area—going in groups of two, three, and four. In some we’ve been welcomed. In others, shunned, sometimes coming into fellowship and relationship after a time, as was the case with the Amish. Sometimes the ice never thawed, and eventually we left to try elsewhere. Unity is just not something all Christians are open to.”

  “And when they’re not?”

  “You can’t be obnoxious, Corrie. You can’t force yourself upon those who don’t want relationship with you. So eventually we have had to give up with some and move elsewhere, remaining open but not pushing. But over the years we’ve established contact and harmony to varying degrees with not only the Amish but also the Brethren, some Mennonites, Methodists, even a few Baptists. And yet even with those, some people are more open than others. In every church and congregation, you find those with hearts hungry and open for wider relationship with God’s body, and those who are only content if they are surrounded by people just as narrow as they themselves. God’s body is indeed huge and diverse!”

  “And what do your own church leaders think?”

  “The bishop and the others? Oh, they’re still skeptical and rather aloof about the whole thing. They can’t deny that we’ve grown, that there’s enthusiasm among the sisters and the community for what we’re doing, and so they tolerate our little ‘order.’ But to be honest, Corrie, they don’t care about unity with Protestant churches and people any more than most Amish and Baptists do with Catholics. There’s so much mistrust and suspicion on both sides, it’s enough to make my heart break. What must the Savior think of us? I’m sure it breaks his heart even more to see his people so divided and selfish and narrow.”

  I didn’t say anything, and a long silence followed. The conversation seemed to have reached one of those natural breaking points where both of us needed to be quiet for a while and think about everything we’d heard and said. I’d almost forgotten we were in a train. Now suddenly the bouncing and jostling came back to my senses, and we rode along for a while looking out the window, meditating to the clacking along underneath us.

  Chapter 10

  Community of Peoples

  Why did you get interested in unity?” I said after a while, turning again toward Sister Janette.

  She continued staring outside, but I could tell from the look on her face that she was thinking deeply about how to answer my question. Finally she turned back toward me.

  “Two reasons, I suppose, Corrie,” she said. “I grew up with two childhood friends I loved very much. The three of us were inseparable. My parents were staunch Catholics, but neither of my friends was. One was from a family of unbelievers, as far as I know, and the parents of the other were Plymouth Brethren. Of course the three of us neither knew nor cared about such distinctions. We didn’t even know what they meant. The two of us who ca
me from ‘church’ families attended church with our own parents every Sunday and never thought much about it the rest of the time. But when we began to get older, there began to be things said about the ‘unsuitability’ of our continued friendship, especially on the part of the parents of my Brethren friend. According to the things my friend repeated to me, Catholics were worse than atheists. In the end my friend was eventually forbidden to see me again.”

  “What did you do?” I asked, amazed at such a thing.

  “I was devastated. I was only eleven at the time, and couldn’t begin to understand. It was the most horrible thing I could imagine, not to see her anymore, and I must admit I came very near hating her parents for a time, God forgive me. But in the years since, that experience actually proved very maturing, for it deepened within me the determination to make my life count in bringing people together. My friend’s parents were instrumental in my life, even if in a negative way. The memory of their confining and restrictive view of Catholics has always kept before me what I don’t want to become myself. Unfortunately, their perspective is not so unusual. Both Catholics and Protestants suffer from the disease of self-absorption. Anyway, that is the first reason I am so committed to breaking down the walls between God’s people.”

  “And the second?” I asked.

  “Just the fact of where I grew up . . . Pennsylvania.”

  “How do you mean—I don’t understand?”

  “Do you know anything about the history of Pennsylvania, Corrie?”

  “Not much, I suppose. Just what we learned about the Pilgrims in school.”

  “The Pilgrims were actually farther north, in the New England states. Pennsylvania was settled later. And in the very beginning people came here for unity. So I guess you could say I am just following in the footsteps of Pennsylvania’s founders and first inhabitants by wanting to carry on that vision today.”

  “Was Pennsylvania that much different from the other states? I thought all the colonies were settled for religious freedom.”

  Sister Janette smiled. “In one way, of course, you’re exactly right. But it was a very selective kind of religious freedom the Pilgrims wanted. They were selective in just the same way as most churches and religious groups and institutions are today, selective like my childhood friend’s Brethren parents, selective like my own bishop.”

  “Selective . . .” I repeated. “I don’t think I quite know what you mean.”

  “They wanted religious freedom,” Sister Janette said, “but more for themselves than anybody else. The Pilgrims first came to America in the seventeenth century to escape the persecution and intolerance they had faced in Holland and England. They sought freedom to view spirituality in their own way and to worship as they wanted—neither of which they had been able to do in the old countries of Europe. Yet as soon as they were settled in New England, they established an equally intolerant religious climate of their own. The very thing they had left in Europe, they brought with them and planted in the new soil of America. It wasn’t long before these Puritans were persecuting those who didn’t believe as they did, running dissenters out of their settlements, burning witches at the stake, rooting out those they viewed as heretics for so much as one word misspoken about one of their own narrow doctrines.”

  “It sounds as if they became just as bad as those they left behind in Europe,” I said.

  “I’m not so much talking about rightness or wrongness of what they actually believed,” Sister Janette went on. “For all I know, many of the early colonists held to many true doctrines, and I have no doubt they were sincerely trying to adhere to the Scriptures. To be honest with you, I haven’t studied their actual beliefs that carefully. Beliefs and doctrines and viewpoints have never really interested me as much as the relationships between God’s people. So whatever they believed about this or that doctrinal issue, and however much truth they may have discovered, I have never been able to get beyond the fact of their extreme intolerance of others who believed differently. It seems to me they simply extended and spread still further the very sins of persecution and intolerance and disunity they had left behind in Europe.”

  “The history I was taught about the founding of our country never said much about that,” I said.

  “Of course not. Because the people writing history books try to pretend that everything about their spiritual predecessors was wonderful and perfect. But the fact is, the Puritans were at times a pretty ruthless lot, all in the name of Christ. It’s been the way of many, many Christian movements. My own Catholic church was the worst of all. So many horrible atrocities have been done throughout history by Catholic leaders who, in my opinion, were no more Christians than Attila the Hun.

  “But then the reformers came along, men like John Knox and John Calvin, and before you knew it, they were beheading and burning people at the stake and treating those who differed with them with no less cruelty than the Vatican had two centuries before. No matter what a movement’s roots, it seems eventually intolerance and narrowness and persecution creep in. Jesus Christ himself began what eventually became the Roman Catholic Church. Yet look what a mockery of his teachings we made of it. Martin Luther’s motivations to break with the church were pure and scripturally based. Yet look what narrow zealots like Knox and Calvin did to Luther’s inspired message. The Puritans sought freedom, and yet within a hundred years they were putting people to death whom they saw as a threat to the purity of their beliefs.”

  She paused and looked directly into my eyes. “Wherever you look, it seems that narrowness is the eventual result of spiritual movements, churches, and organizations. I tell you, Corrie, when I look at the sorry state of what has been the history of God’s people, I am mortified and dismayed. It is hardly any wonder the world pays us so little attention. We have not been faithful stewards of the message Christ gave us to proclaim—a message which has unity among his people at its very foundation.”

  “Why, then, are you still so committed to unity? How can you maintain your enthusiasm? Everything you said seems so discouraging.”

  “Because it does not have to be so! It is not supposed to be so! And I believe we can make a difference. If God’s people at some time and in some place don’t make unity and tolerance a priority, nothing about this dismal pattern will change. But it has to change! And I believe I, and the sisters of my convent, and you, and others like us—I believe we can be the kind of people Jesus wants us to be.”

  “What does all this have to do with Pennsylvania?” I asked.

  “Now you see why my bishop has been skeptical!” laughed Sister Janette. “When I get talking like this, I’m afraid I become rather too zealous myself for my own good! He once said I sounded like a Methodist street preacher instead of a Catholic nun!”

  I didn’t know what a street preacher might sound like, because I’d never heard one. But I had an idea, and laughed along with her.

  “To answer your question, William Penn was a man whose vision was unity, too. He saw many of these very problems I’ve been telling you about. The intolerance and cruelty between Christians and their sects grieved his heart just as it does mine. That’s why he devoted his land—Pennsylvania, Penn’s Woods—to all segments of Christendom in the new world. He invited anyone to come and make a home there, no matter what his beliefs. He offered his land to be what the Pilgrims had come to New England to find but then had not extended toward anyone else—a land where spiritual freedom and unity would exist.”

  “What happened?”

  “People did come. Intolerance in New England, and the continued narrowness of the followers of Calvin in Europe, led many to Pennsylvania, where they found homes and established churches, free from persecution—Baptists, Shakers, Methodists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Anabaptists, Brethren, yes, and even Pilgrims and Catholics and Calvinists and Lutherans too!”

  “But what does all this have to do with you?”

  “Just growing up in Pennsylvania, I suppose, infected me with some of William Pe
nn’s own vision. I heard about him from a young age, then later read about him. I knew what had been on his heart to accomplish with the vast woodland that was known by his name. And then there were such visible and constant reminders all around me of the reality of his vision of unity. Within thirty miles of my childhood home of Lancaster, besides the strong Amish and Mennonite influence, every one of those other Christian groups I mentioned had a church or a community. Even though my young Brethren friend was taken from me, as I grew older and began to widen my viewpoint, I saw close by such an enormous variety of expression of the Christian faith. And I could not think it to be anything but wonderful! I found welling up within my heart such a desire to know people in all these other sects and churches, to be part of their lives and to share my life with them.

  “I happened to be a Catholic, and I wanted to remain a Catholic, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to mix and interact with others who weren’t Catholics—not to try to make them like me or to see all matters of belief as I did, but to share life with them. Oh, Corrie, don’t you see how wonderful is the very idea of God’s people living together in harmony?”

  “Yes . . . yes, I do,” I said. “But I must confess I hadn’t ever thought as much about such things as you have. Back home, we have just one community church and nobody talks about all the differences. I’ve never even heard half the names of the groups you’ve told me about.”

  “California is young. But here in the East there are so many, many different groups. In time they will spread across this huge land, and California too will become a hodgepodge of ten or fifteen separate sects of the Christian faith.”