The Wings of Morning

by Murray Pura

  The bishop came and stood in front of them all. “You know, twice a year we meet for communion, in the spring and in the fall. And each time we meet we examine our hearts and our lives as we prepare to renew our commitment to Jesus Christ and to our Amish faith. Always before we take communion we talk about matters that have arisen in our church. We want to make sure everything has been laid to rest at the feet of Jesus before we take his cup and his bread together. So today, we have asked Jude Whetstone to join us, even though he is under the Meidung, because many of you have said he was not treated fairly by the leadership and you desire to hear him speak for himself. You are free to converse with him this Sunday, to listen to his words, shake his hand, to pray with him if you wish. Who knows? Perhaps our Lord will bring about reconciliation between young Jude and our church as he did between Paul and Barnabas and Paul and John Mark.”

  He cleared his throat and paused to look out over the congregation. “You know also that two families have said they feel God is telling them to leave our colony if justice is not done for Jude Whetstone this day. I, as your bishop, grieve that matters have come to this. We would rather Adam Whetstone, Jude’s father, remain among us, but we must respect his decision before God, even if it means he is severed from our fellowship forever.

  “In the same way, I grieve that the Kurtz family has also indicated their desire to part ways with our church. I would rather they made peace today and that Amos and his good wife Rebecca and their beautiful children would remain among us to farm and to worship and to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. But again, we can only respect the decisions they make and place their family in the hands of God, as they must also respect the decisions we make before the Lord. So, here is this day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it. Let me pray and then the talking can begin, hm?”

  Bishop Zook prayed for almost ten minutes. Then he sat down. Lyyndaya’s father was the first one on his feet though she had noticed Pastor Miller beginning to rise. It was a warm day and her father held a straw hat in his hands as he spoke.

  “I was never one for the flying,” he began. “I did not want my daughter to spend too much time with young Jude. I thought, suppose he wants to court her in an aeroplane? Then, if he takes off into the air and flies away like a duck, how will I ever catch up to them in my horse and buggy?”

  Everyone laughed. Everyone, Lyyndaya thought, but Pastor Miller.

  “The flying is something the Amish people are going to figure out. Maybe this year, maybe next year. There is no rush. The aeroplane is not going anywhere but up and the same is true of the Amish.”

  Again there was laughter.

  “But I saw how Jude brought honor to God with his flying, ja, even in the middle of an awful war. We all know how he acted, we all know how the English and German people have praised his mercy, we all know how he deliberately avoided killing and sought to help end the conflict at the same time as he sought to hold human life sacred. And for all of this we do what? We ban him? We shun him? Just because one of our pastors bears a grudge against him and leads you all about by the nose to do his will instead of God’s? No, this is not right. This too we all know.”

  Her father sat down, his face dark, knowing Pastor Miller would be on his feet immediately to refute him.

  “I bear no grudge against any man,” protested Pastor Miller before he was even standing straight. “I only hold to the teachings of the Amish people, the ancient teachings based on the Word of God, for which our forefathers were persecuted and martyred. I do not wish to see these teachings set aside for any man, no matter how honorable some may think that man’s actions to be. Never mind that Jude Whetstone did not take human life. Others in his squadron did. He had no business being there in the first place, he had no business assisting them in their killing of other men.”

  “For shame, Jacob Miller.” Benjamin Kauffman was on his feet. “Jude Whetstone saved your child’s life and you treat him like Schmutz.” Like dung.

  “It was God who saved my child’s life!” retorted Jacob Miller.

  Benjamin remained standing. “Yes, and he used Jude and Miss Kurtz and a doctor of the English to do it. You could not fly the plane, Jacob. You could not save your son. God worked through others and now you spit in his eye.”

  “I honor God!”

  “You honor your opinion. I would hate now to do you a favor, Jacob, if how you have treated Jude Whetstone is how you thank those who help you. It is better I pass you by like the Levite or you might have me shunned for lifting a hand to give you some sort of assistance.” Benjamin sat down, his lips still forming words, but silently.

  The bishop was in front of them again. “Calmly, brothers and sisters, calmly and gently, as Jesus was before the cross. Let us remember whose children we are. Yes, I know you wish to speak what you believe is the truth, but truth must be spoken in love, as the Word says.”

  Jude’s father was up. His voice was quiet and Lyyndaya had to strain to make out what he was saying.

  “I do not wish to leave. I have no desire to leave. Is my wife not buried here in holy ground? Have my son and I not made your tools and wheel rims and plowshares? Has our work not helped you till the soil and travel about by horse and buggy? When you enacted the first Meidung against my son I bore it. I could not send him letters and I could not read the letters he sent to me. Every day he was in grave danger, but you would not even let me speak to him with the pen. I respected the Ordnung above my own flesh and blood, believing I did the will of God.

  “Then we find he has gone into the war to cleanse it, to bring Christ’s presence into it, to save human life from it, as a man goes into a filthy well to clear it of rubbish so that the water may be sweet again and nourish both the body and the soul. But how do we treat him for cleansing the well of blood and corruption? Hours after he risks his life flying low to the ground so that a sick boy has air and warmth, hours after he and Miss Kurtz get this boy safely to a hospital none of us could reach in time by horse or by train—we shun him again. This is the Amish faith? This is the Lord Jesus Christ? Then I must take my forge and my anvil and I must find, I think, another Amish people, another Jesus Christ—yes, a Jesus who we find in the holy Scriptures, not in our imaginations and traditions of men.”

  “But Adam,” pleaded Bartholomew Fisher, “you know what Jacob is saying is true. We are the people of peace. We do not put on the uniform, we do not wave the flag, we do not go to the wars. This others do, it is not for the Amish. We are to be salt and light in our nation, not more of the guns and bombs and killings. It is good your son saved Jacob’s son. But we must not reject our faith and the teachings of Jesus Christ because of that. I say let Jude repent of going to war. Let him ask forgiveness for taking a plane into combat. We will welcome him back with open arms, yes, Jacob will as well, and we shall break bread together this day and be one people under God again.”

  Lyyndaya prayed as the speaking continued. Now and then she glanced out a small window on one side of the barn. There had been no more letters from Washington but she still hoped officials from the U.S. Army might arrive and stand up for Jude. Yet the situation was beginning to look hopeless. She hung her head. Suddenly a woman’s voice made her look up in surprise. It was Rachel Miller and she stood with young Joshua asleep in her arms.

  “Perhaps I should not speak among the men, Bishop Zook,” said Rachel. “Perhaps it is not my place. Perhaps I should remain silent and let God speak among those he has ordained. But it was my child Jude Whetstone flew to the hospital that terrible day in February, that day when we lost our precious Samuel—that day, Bartholomew Fisher, when you could have lost members of your own family as well, but for the grace of God.”

  She stopped, but did not sit down. Bishop Zook said nothing. Then voices rose from all corners of the barn—sprechen, sprechen—speak, speak. Her husband sat with his head down and his arms folded across his chest.

  Rachel looked directly at Jude. “I do not understand what
made you think you must go to war to end a war. None of us do. But you saved my Joshua’s life. Have I thanked you enough for it? No, I can never thank you enough. I never stop thanking God and I can never stop thanking you. For suppose you did not know how to fly? Suppose you had never learned how to fly a plane that fast and that low without crashing into a tree or a house or an electricity pole? Suppose there was no one at hand for God to use—for we know our Lord works through the creatures He has made? Would my Joshua be in my arms today?”

  Jacob Miller was back on his feet. “I, like my wife, am not ungrateful to Jude Whetstone. I know God had his hand in this. But how do we know Jude did not bring the calamity down upon us in the first place? How do I know if my child ever would have been sick if Jude had not sinned by breaking the Ordnung?” He turned and pointed at Jude. “You wished to hear him speak for himself? All right, you tell them, young man, so that everyone can hear, you tell them what you think of war.”

  “I hate war,” Jude said quietly.

  “Yet you went to war,” pressed Pastor Miller.

  “I did.”

  “So—do you repent? Do you repent that you went and fought in the war you say you hate?”

  “No, I do not. I had to go to war. It was the only way I could save the lives of those I love.”

  People began to murmur. Jacob Miller flung his arms wide. “There. You see? That is how he talks. That is how he always talks. He had to go to war to save people’s lives. He had to sin to do the will of God. Now you hear for yourselves what his heart is like. Now you hear for yourselves that he will not repent. That is why the leadership have called for Streng Meidung and, if that does not bring this young man to the cross, excommunication from the church.”

  “No, that is too harsh,” Lyyndaya heard one man call out.

  “Our leadership are right to do this,” said a woman. “Listen to them. God speaks through them.”

  “Too far, the Streng Meidung takes things too far. We act as if he killed someone. There was no killing. He did the exact opposite. So we punish him for having mercy on others?”

  “The Amish are a peaceful people. That is our gift from God and our gift to America. We cannot go back on that because of one headstrong boy with his head in the clouds.”

  “You are not listening to him.”

  “He is not listening to God.”

  My goodness, thought Lyyndaya as more voices sounded from all parts of the barn, the church sounds as if it has split in two over this.

  Bishop Zook was waving his hands and asking people to wait their turn, not to shout, to let others speak, but the meeting was getting out of his control. Lyyndaya imagined the church breaking apart, with some leaving to support Jude while the others remained faithful to the leadership. It had happened to other Amish colonies. Could it not happen here also?

  “Genug!” David Hostetler was on his feet, his voice booming. “Genug!” Enough!

  The talking and shouting died out quickly. David still stood, even when silence was restored. He looked around the barn. Lyyndaya saw him lock eyes with Jacob Beiler and give a short, sharp nod of his head. Jacob stood up, but kept looking at the ground. David found Jonathan Harshberger as well, his eyes, she thought, like blue flame, and Jonathan got up, staring straight ahead. David continued to look over the congregation.

  “Scham,” he whispered, but everyone could hear him. “Scham, Scham.” Shame, shame.

  He walked to the front and faced the people on the benches. “How quick we are to condemn. How quick to find fault. To point the finger. To blame. To cast the stone. Eh? Each of us eager to become an accuser of the brethren. But it is we who must confess, not Jude Whetstone. Oh yes, Mother, Father, I, your son David. Mr. and Mrs. Beiler, your son Jacob. And Mr. and Mrs. Harshberger, your son, yes, your only son, Jonathan. We have fallen short of the righteousness of God. We have fallen far.” He looked at Pastor Miller. “Even Sam.” Then he went to his knees as tears began to come.

  “Forgive us our sins. Forgive us our trespasses.”

  Jacob and Jonathan came to the front and slowly went to their knees alongside David, their faces deeply flushed as they did so. Their voices joined his, weakly at first, then gradually growing stronger as they repeated the phrases four times—“Forgive us our sins. Forgive us our trespasses.”

  “Bishop Zook,” David said, his cheeks glistening, “we should have come to you long ago, months ago, but we were afraid. We should have given our fear to the One who casts out fear, but instead we held onto it and it poisoned us. Now we will tell you. We must tell you. We must save our souls. We must confess publicly before the whole church while there still is a church to confess to.” He hesitated, as if he wanted to change his mind, then shook his head. “Nein,” he said aloud to himself. “I will speak.”

  He looked at the faces before him. “All of us visited Hosea before he died. The first day he took sick—you will remember, Bishop Zook—all of us came to see him and pray for him—Jonathan, Jacob, myself, Samuel too. And Hosea told us—told us—that Jude had been ordered to enlist. At the camp where we were all imprisoned. Jude had been told if he did not join up, if he did not fly for the army, they would keep us in the camp until the war ended or until we were all dead.

  “The rest of us were too far away to hear this conversation. But Hosea approached Jude after he had spoken with a general and that is when Jude said he had decided to join up. Hosea suspected he had been coerced because he could not believe he would ever do this thing willingly. He confronted Jude about joining the army and tried to get the truth out of him, but he kept evading Hosea’s questions. Then this general came over and said Jude was doing this of his own free will and that if it ever got out that he had been forced to enlist it could go hard on us, and not only us, our parents, our families, the whole colony. We might be arrested and beaten again. Hosea was warned that Hutterites had been killed and Mennonite meeting houses burned to the ground. English neighbors would do nothing to protect those who spoke German, they would not stand up for those who did not fight or salute the flag. Did we not pray about just such things when we met for worship during the first summer of the war?

  “So Hosea took the threats seriously. Then and there, he chose to believe Jude had wanted to go to war, had wanted to fly in France, had wanted to fight. He told us it was what he made himself believe because he was afraid the Amish in Paradise would be persecuted if he didn’t. But in his heart, all along, he knew the truth. Jude enlisted not only to save the three of us here, and Hosea and Sam, but to save all of you, to save the whole community. He went to war so that war would not be made upon us.”

  Lyyndaya could scarcely breathe. Oh, Jude, my poor man, I knew there was something—my father knew, Bishop Zook knew, but still, this is too much, it is far beyond what we thought. The silence in the barn had weight and it was pressing down upon her, upon them all, taking away their air. But David wasn’t finished. He found Jude with his eyes.

  “I’m sorry, my brother. Hosea made us promise we would tell the church what you had been forced to do. But after his death, when we talked among ourselves, we grew worried that what Hosea had feared could still come upon us. After all, the war showed no signs of stopping. What if the truck and the corporal came for us again? What if they came for our fathers? What if they made sure no one would buy our milk or our barley or wheat? Sam—God have mercy—Sam led the way in this and talked us into going along. Better Jude than the rest of the colony, he argued. So we said nothing. God forgive us, we said nothing. My brother, we left you to this…disgrace.”

  Jude stood up. Lyyndaya saw Pastor Miller briefly before others blocked her view with their heads and backs. He was so pale she thought he was going to collapse.

  “No, David,” said Jude. “I should be asking your forgiveness. You mustn’t torment yourself like this. I could have told the truth. I could have told the whole story at any time. But, like you, I was afraid that certain people in certain places would take matters into their own han
ds if I spoke out and that there would be repercussions. I, like you, was afraid our people would be persecuted, that more persons would be hurt just as we had been hurt in that camp. So I said nothing. I decided to make the best of it. I thought, If Jesus had been forced to do what I am forced to do, how would he have handled it, how would he have flown, how would he have tried to alter a war from the inside out? I suspect he would have done a much better job. I’m sorry I have made such a hash of things.”

  Then he walked toward Pastor Miller, and stopped in front of the man. “Pastor, I am sorry for the heartache I’ve caused. I didn’t know what else to do. I, like David, wish I had given my fear to the One who casts out all fear. But, as much as I hated war, I could never repent of enlisting, I could not in good conscience say I should never have joined up, because that would have meant I repented of trying to save my brothers in that camp, that I repented of trying to save the people of this colony, that I repented of trying to save your son Joshua—and I couldn’t say that. Before God I could not say that. Nevertheless, I ask you to forgive me. I ask you all to forgive me.”

  Pastor Miller stood. “You ask for forgiveness. It is swiftly and freely given. But it is all of us you must forgive, my son. It is I, this foolish man, you must forgive.” Then he took Jude into his arms and broke down.

  There were few people who were not groaning or shedding tears. Half of the church was on its feet, moving toward Jude to hug him and speak with him and ask his forgiveness, while at the same time he was asking forgiveness of all who came to him. Lyyndaya had never seen anything like it. A few minutes before she had been certain the church was splitting in two. Now she realized how strong it really was. How the confession of the young men had turned the weakness of the colony into a strength.