Thankful

As I go to bed on this Monday after Thanksgiving I am deeply grateful for one thing in particular: my son, John, who tested positive for COVID last Friday morning, and was feeling pretty sick Saturday evening, called this evening to report he was feeling better. Not totally out of the woods, but going in the right direction! That is good news! Thank God! May he continue to gain in health and strength!

John Crockett**************

Meanwhile, I have been preparing my Bible Study class, in particular readying visual items I will use in "screen share." I will be introducing the class to various tools of biblical study, e.g., Greek Lexicons and Concordances to the Bible, including this one:

The Nelson Concordance to the Revised Standard Version. Amazing that as early as 1954, it was assembled using a computer! A courageous thing to attempt in 1954!

A Full Thanksgiving Weekend.

These past five days have been full! I've reported on some of it already, but not all. I don't think I've mentioned : the birthday supper for Ellen on Wednesday at the Feinland's house, with both Max and Ben there - Max coming in from Boulder and Ben from Philadelphia. Jim and Mary were planning on coming, but Jim was having heart irregularities and decided not to come. We had a very nice supper prepared largely by Max, a birthday cake (I think made by Julie), and then we played Salad Bowl - a word game that Ellen had specifically requested, that we had learned originally from Max and Ben. Have I described it here before? Probably, but not recently. Initially, every person is asked to write down a word or phrase on a slip of paper - each person wrote five. Some examples from this game were "Princess Diana," "Barbershop Quartet," "Portland, Maine," "A Black Hole," "Lady Gaga." The slips were folded and put in a large bowl - hence the name of the game. We organized into two teams of four people each. with Julie acting as time-keeper. My team had Katie, Jerry and Tamar on it. The other team was Ellen, Max, Savanna and Brendon. Ben couldn't play because he had a tutoring session on Zoom - he is working as a tutor, preparing high school seniors for their SAT's. There were forty slips in all. The game has three rounds. The first round, the first person stands up, faces their team, takes out a slip, opens it, takes note of the word or phrase and without using any word from what is on the slip, describes it to his team. The team has to come up with the word or phrase and say it out loud. Ideally, everyone on both teams should hear the phrase spoken clearly (this doesn't always happen). When the word or phrase is identified, the slip is thrown on the floor, and the team-member takes a second slip from the bowl. Obviously, the team-member who describes the word or phrase has to know something about it. If they are ignorant of its meaning (and this happens a lot), he or she puts down the slip on the table (not the floor), and opens a second slip. This goes on for one minute and that person's time is done. If they are good, they might get through three-four slips or even more. The slips on the floor are collected and held by the team. The ones on the table (that were passed over) go back in the bowl. Then someone from the other team goes through the same process with their team. This continues until the bowl is empty - all the slips have been described and someone has spoken the word or phrase out loud so that it can be heard by everyone. Then round two begins. The same procedure is followed, but this time, no words are spoken. The word or phrase is"mimed" by the team-member, very much like one does in charades, and again, someone on his or her team has to say the word or phrase out loud. Brendon turned out to be particularly good at this - he went through a lot of slips during his turn. The third round, the team-member can utter only one word in order to elicit the word or phrase from his team (and obviously it cannot be any word that is on the slip of paper). So just to give an example, if the phrase was "Barbershop Quartet," the first round the person might say, "A group of men singing in harmony." As soon as someone on the team says, "Barbershop Quartet," the slip. gets thrown on the floor and a second one is opened. In the second round, the person might mime singing (but make no sound), and could even hold up four fingers. The third round they could say "harmony." After each round the slips on the floor are collected and at the end of a round, they are counted, and then all go back in the bowl for the next round. After three rounds, the numbers are totaled for each team. In our game, the score was a tie! It is a fun, fast-paced game. Thursday was Thanksgiving dinner at Katie and Savanna's house. See my "Happy Thanksgiving" blog. Friday was the Putney Craft Tour, and we were joined by Michael Schoeck and Amy. Michael is my son-in-law, Rob Shay's, nephew - his sister Nancy's son. They live in Queens, NY, but have a "second home," a cottage, over in New York, just south of Albany, which they come up to almost every week. They stayed in an AirBnB in Brattleboro - as it turns out we knew exactly where they were. An old church, a Swedish Church, in a section of Brattleboro that was called "Swedeville," has been turned into a home. For a number of years, a couple of artists lived there and also had a stained glass studio there where they created beautiful stained glass pieces. They have now retired, closed the studio, and made a couple of AirBnB rooms. It borders on the lot where our friends Andy and Robin Davis have their home. "Swedeville" was so-called because a large community of Swedish immigrants lived there who worked at the nearby Estey Organ Factory back in the 19th century. Here are some photos Michael took:

Michael took a hike on Saturday up into Haystack Mountain near Mt. Snow, and got this view from the top.

The Swedeville Church, with Amy.********************************** We met Michael and Amy at Robert Burch's glass-blowing studio north of Putney. We go there every year, it is so interesting. Bob is not only a talented glass-blower, he is also a talented raconteur. He keeps up a flow of patter while he works that is very entertaining as well as being educational about glass-blowing. He was making a vase. We saw how he holds the glass in the oven; how he adds colors, how he blows through the pipe to create the bubble of glass; how he elongates the bubble by spinning the blow-pipe that the molten glass is attached to - thus creating a vase-shape; and most spectacularly, how he scores and taps the glass to remove it from the pipe without cracking it. Ellen bought some of his work for gifts. After that we went to the Westminster - West Church for lunch (the same place where we rehearse each week at River Singers), and we met Katie, Savanna and Brendon there), and saw some other folks we know. They make a spectacular array of soups there. I had West African Peanut Soup. After that we said goodbye to our family and went to Eliza's house to watch the USA/England World Cup soccer game. It was exciting even though they played to a 0-0 draw. For the US to hold England scoreless was remarkable. Unfortunately, it doesn't help them move on to the next round. They have to get a win over Iran on Tuesday. If they don't, they are going home. We learned on Friday that John had come down with COVID. He had tried to stay apart from Cynthia, but he got it. He is pretty sick - more sick than either Ellen or I was. This is really unfortunate, because he is dealing with so much otherwise. Saturday, we originally were going to have John and Cynthia here for a vegetarian Thanksgiving meal, along with Michael and Amy. But COVID kept J&C at home. So we took the meal to them - Ellen prepared a lovely meal - very tasty and beautiful to look at. But we had M&A here at the house for the same meal, and we had a very good meal and a very good visit, cozy by our now-functioning propane fireplace. We learned a lot about improvements M&A are making at their New York cottage property. They are discovering the challenges of ownership! There is always something that needs to be done! Amy stepped up and did the dishes - sparing me that job, which keeps me on my feet quite a while. So we got to bed in fairly good season and watched Vermont This Week on the phone before going to sleep. Today we decided to go to Dummerston to church to sing in a pick-up choir Mary Westbrook organized. We'll split ourselves equally between Dummerston and Guilford during Advent. Next week, Guilford. The choir sounded good! We sang "Come, Thou Long-expected Jesus,"as an anthem. Pastor Shawn was away, so two deacons led the service. There was a very nice lunch during coffee-hour afterward. Now we are home, and Ellen can rest a bit. No more meals to prepare. We have lots of leftovers!

Top to bottom: Bob Burch doing his thing.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is Thanksgiving Day! Here in Vermont it is sunny and cool today - 41 degrees at the moment. A lovely day. Ellen has been busy in the kitchen much of the morning, preparing dishes and pies for our meal which will be held at Katie and Savanna's house later this afternoon. Meanwhie, I have been calling family and friends, wishing them a Happy Thanksgiving: John and Cynthia, Jerry and Maggie out in Bartlett, IL; my granddaughter, Katie, in St. Louis; Phil McKean in California and Mary Andersen in Bennington. Cynthia tested positive for COVID a few days ago, so they are staying close to home. John has not tested positive as yet, and feels ok. Jerry is staying home to avoid crowds, but Maggie is going with Daniel and Becky to his niece's house where there is a large family gathering. Katie and Christian have the day off and are planning a quiet meal at home. Phil is driving to Montecito, CA to be with Tom, Marq and Jon and returned my call from beside the road. Mary is joining with friends later, and will fly to South Africa to be with Erica's family on Dec. 19th. I am grateful today for Ellen, for my family and friends, my church family, especially the recent experience of leading Bible Study, and for Shirley. I have often read this prayer by Shirley at past Thanksgiving Day meals. I share it here: Shirley's Thanksgiving Prayer O God, I sometimes think I don't know what to thank you for. Sometimes I don't even think I have anything to thank you for. Should I thank you that I am overfed while others starve? Or I am safe while others are in trouble? Should I thank you because I have enough money to spend and others have so little? God, sometimes I'm embarrassed when I thank you. And what shall I ask you for? Yes, I can ask you for some things: peace on earth; the end to ignorance, poverty, hunger and disease; but it's hard to know sometimes what to ask you for that isn't an empty platitude, a mere set of words. And I ask you God: can I ask you for anything? God, help me to pray! Help me to ask for the capacity to be silent, so I can hear and see others; the capacity to empathize with the suffering of others, not to become dull to the feelings of others; help me to give thanks for the gift of saying, "we," for having friends and having family and people who care; help me to give thanks for the courage of people who sustain life in places and times that take our breath away; help us to give thanks for poetry, and beauty which make life more incredible than any definition we have of it. Help us to give thanks for the sense of wonder and infinite caring and love without which we would all die...God, help us to give thanks for the gift of being able to give thanks. Amen Shirley offered this prayer at the Guilford Community Church, U.C.C., on November 23, 1980

Shirley Harris Crockett (1932-1998) ***********
LATER: We had a feast, but not before dropping off eight pies at the homeless shelters in Brattleboro. We had turkey, four kinds of stuffing, squash, sweet potato, mashed potato, gravy, two kinds of cranberry relish, crudites, and four kinds of pie: apple, pumpkin, strawberry rhubarb and mince. I'm sure I'm leaving something out. Four households contributed. We sang Thanksgiving hymns after eating. Dusty and Dorothy joined us for dessert.

Gathered around while Ellen makes gravy; turkey hot out of the oven; mince pie before and after baking.

Windows are tight!

One of the winter jobs that needs to be done but we can no longer do it is that of hammering in the awning windows on the second floor of the house so that they are tight and not allowing cold air to leak in. The crank you use to open and close the window just doesn't have the leverage to seat the window really tightly. You have to climb up an extension ladder and use a hammer and a block of wood to do the job, and we just aren't doing that any more. No more ladder climbing for me, or Ellen. So we needed help, and yesterday, at church, we asked Tom Yahner and Perrin Scott if their son, David, might be able to help. They texted him and he said, yes, he could come Tuesday, and we arranged for him to come tomorrow afternoon. Today, Ellen wanted to watch the USA/Wales World Cup Soccer game. We got a message from ELiza that one of the girls had come down sick. Ellen decided that would not stop her from going over to the Bergh's to watch the game on their TV, but I decided to stay home and listen on the cell phone radio app. I'm glad I did, because just a few minutes after Ellen left, David texted saying that something had come up that would prevent his coming tomorrow, but could he come this afternoon? I said, "sure," and indeed, at about 4p.m., he showed up. The soccer game was tied 1-1 at that point and almost over, so I turned off the phone and gave my attention to David. I demonstrated how to hammer in the window on one of the accessible first-floor windows, showed him where the extension ladder was, gave him the tools, and let him go to it. Which he did, and very nicely. It was a pretty quick job, but it did involve five trips up and down the ladder. So the job is done, and done sooner than we expected. I did not think to get a photo of David, but here is one from his Facebook page:

David Scott, who said to call if we needed anything else done, and we might just do that!

A Dummerston Day

Saturday, we did things at home in the morning, and in the afternoon, we picked up Calvin, met Eliza at the Dummerston Church, picked up hymnals there and drove to the home of John and Cindy Wilcox to do a sing for John. John and Cindy are both pillars of the Dummerston Church. John served as Treasurer for many years, and Cindy has been a deacon and has arranged the altar flowers countless Sundays. John is in Hospice care, but he has been close to death many times in recent years, and has rallied. We sang 8-10 hymns for him, out of the Pilgrim Hymnal. The Dummerston Church uses two hymnals: the older Pilgrim Hymnal (PH), which was published by the Congregational- Christian denomination before 1957, when it merged with the Evangelical-Reformed denomination to become the United Church of Christ (UCC), and the New Century Hymnal (NCH), which was published just before 2000 by the UCC. Both are needed because the newer NCH hymnal either left out or altered the lyrics of some old favorites that are in the PH. At the sane time, the NCH vastly increased the diversity of hymns it included - bringing in wonderful hymns from the black church tradition, and many other ethnicities, as well as more recent hymns. We didn't want to juggle two hymnals so we brought the one with old favorites. But actually, the Episcopal Hymnal would have been the best for this occasion. That's because by sheer coincidence, both John Wilcox and Calvin Farwell attended St. Paul's School, an Episcopal school in Concord, NH, and were there at the same time, in the same house. John was two years ahead of Calvin, and was his Proctor. They both went to chspel every day and are thus steeped in Episcopal hymnody. I think Cindy Wilcox also has an Episcopal connection of some kind. We may go back another time with Episcopal hymnals!

Top: Calvin, Cindy, Eliza, Ellen and John; Bottom: with me instead of Ellen.******************
After our sing, we decided to all go to Eliza's house to see the new addition and renovations in progress. Calvin had never been there at all. The new addition is almost completed, and Eliza and Cliff's son, Charlie, was there putting new pine flooring into a room that will become a kitchen in Sarah's part of the old house. Quite a project!

Top: Eliza and Calvin in a bedroom in the new addition; Bottom: Inspecting the old underflooring and new pine flooring in what will be Sarah's kitchen.

Snow !

Tuesday evening as we were coming home from River Singers it started to snow, and by the time we got home there were pretty heavy flurries. And sure enough Wednesday morning there was an inch or two of snow on the ground or you might say, slush.

The view out the back door Wed. morning!**************** Wednesday was Dr. appointment, car inspection, and Bible Study. There were some glitches with the transfer to Pastor Elisa as tech person, but basically Bible Study went well as we got more deeply into the relation of John to the Synoptic Gospels. We'll take a break next week for Thanksgiving and meet again Nov. 30th. Today I'm taking Jerome to the Guilford Food Pantry and this evening we have Hallowell rehearsal.

A visit with the doctor

This morning I had an appointment with Dr. Gilbert Green, my neurologist. His office is in the Gannett Building at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. (I knew Bob Gannett). I see him every six months. He is monitoring the Parkinson's disease. There was not a lot of change to report, which I guess is good, but we did discuss my shortness of breath and I was able to call his attention to the report of the radiologist on my CT Scan which finally had come into my file. Once again, there was no urgent issue there, but there are things to discuss with my PCP, Dr. van Dyke. The main thing to come out of today is that I should resume the swallowing exercises I got from the speech therapist a year and a half ago or so. I had let them slip. Swallowing is important.

Dr. Gilbert Green

Senator Robert Gannett. Bob was a State Senator for 20 years. He also was very active in community affairs and had a lot to do with the establishment of the Long Trail. I knew him mainly as the head of a local foundation that I turned to both when I was raising money for Brattleboro Area Hospice back when I was on their Board of Trustees, and also when the Guilford Church was raising money to pay for the moving and enlarging of the church building back in the 1990's. As someone said, he was "the consummate gentleman."

The Gannett Medical Office Building. After that appointment, we got some bagels and came down to Richmond Auto in Guilford for a State inspection of the impreza. That all went well and now we are at the Guilford Church waiting for Bible Study.

Happy Birthday, Ellen!

Today is Ellen's 80th birthday! It is hard to believe! She carries her age very beautifully. We had a lovely lunch today at Burdick's restaurant in Walpole, NH - a very nice restaursant which we understand is owned partly by Ken Burns. (It's true - he's been a part-owner since 2001 and eats there several times a week). An item on the menu today was "Ken's Salad," which he "invented," ate "off-menu" for years, and now it is on-menu and very popular. Katie Tolles ordered it today. It features grilled salmon, Bibb letttuce and avacado. I had "Mussells Mariniere." They said they came from Prince Edward Island. Ellen had a platter of mixed vegetables, which she said were very tasty. Savanna had a "huge" burger. We all enjoyed what we ordered. It was just a very nice treat.

My most recent photo of Ellen - the Bible Study Group yesterday. Ellen is top row, second from left.

Ellen's vegetable platter

My mussells

Savanna and Katie - with burger and Ken's Salad

Burdick's restaurant- their photo.

Burdick's restaurant - my photo.

Catching up

I haven't been very disciplined about reporting on what we've done recently, or posting photos I've taken. The everyday sort of thing. So let's go back to last Thursday. I got an email from my friend, Phil McKean, which had a link to a memorial service that was held for Deborah McKean out in California, at Pilgrim Place, a retirement community in Claremont, CA that was created originally for United Church of Christ retired missionaries, clergy and academics. I don't think it is exclusively for such people but they may get preference for finding a place there. Phil and Deborah fit that profile - Phil is a retired UCC minister and they both were missionaries in Indonesia back in the 1960's; Phil is also a retired college professor - he taught for a few years at Hampshire College in Massachusetts. Phil and Deborah have had an apartment at Pilgrim Place for quite a few years, but during the pandemic, when they wanted to fly from their summer home in Maine back to Clarement, and there was an airline policy requiring masks, Deborah's Alheimer's condition made that impossible - she could not tolerate wearing a mask, and could not understand why she had to. So they stayed in Maine, she went into a nursing home in Camden, ME, and that is where she died last April. There was a memorial service for her in September - see the post for September 25th - but now Phil has gone back to Clarement, and since friends there had not had the opportunity to honor her life, they held a service there in a lovely Japanese garden which is on the grounds of Pilgrim Place. So I watched the video, and it was very moving to see and hear my godson, Tom, sing once again (he lives in California), to see and hear Phil again, and also get to "meet" their friends at Pilgrim.Place, which, by the way, Ellen and I Visited on one of our many trips a decade or so ago, soon after the McKeans moved there, so it not an entirely strange place for me. Their daughter, Susannah, was not able to be there, but some of Phil's extended family - relatives of his sister - were there and participated in the service. The big surprise for me was to see Rev. Ron Evans in the service. Ron served the church in Deerfield, MA - about 30 miles south of Brattleboro, Vermont on Route 5 - back in the 1970's, and he filled the pulpit at the Guilford Community Church just before Shirley became the minister there in 1976. So I knew Ron, and did not know (or did not remember!) that he was at Pilgrim Place or was a friend of the McKeans. But there he was, giving the sermon at Deborah's memorial service, and I caught him in a screen shot. He's looking good!

Rev. Ron Evans. ****************************** Later on Thursday, Ellen and I made our little trip to Grandma Miller's Bakery, where they have the Morninglory Muffins that I love, and on Thursday they make a special bakery treat - chocolate eclairs. So we try to go on Thursdays. I went in amd got a photo of the entry hall - sort of unusual - a big world map which allows visitors to put a push pin into their home town - people obviously come there from all over the world! The wall around the map is covered with vintage pie tins. It's a unique spot. And in the midst, a funny sign - see below. When we got home, I took a picture of our entryway at the house where Ellen had put the bouquet she had made for the altar at the Guilford Church a week ago - still looking very nice surrounded by colorful gourds.

House entryway.

Visitor home towns map at Grandma Miller's Bakery

Don Rickles is, of course, a comedian specializing in "insult" comedy.

That delicious eclair! And then Saturday night, we went to a birthday party for Robin Davis - and sort of for Ellen too, because she and Robin share a birthday - which was at the home of their son, Arthur, and his wife, Emma (they were just married a couple of weeks ago. That was fun because we had never been inside their home before. It is an older home in a nice neighborhood in Brattleboro which they were able to buy just before house prices went crazy. The meal was great - they had a baked ham from Rebop Farm where Arthur works occasionally, sweet potatoes, two salads, and Ellen brought a spinich pie. Emma had made an almond flour pie with blueberry filling which was delicious. Nice home, nice people, nice meal, nice time. And then today was the Windham-Union Association meeting after another very lovely service in Guilford, another life story, this time told by Carole Crompton. Every one of these stories is very special. But then, what would would one expect? We are all unique.

Robin and Ellen contemplating their cake.

Arthur and Emma Davis

Windham-Union Association Meeting

At the moment, I am sitting in the Dummerston Congregational Church, Waiting for the Association meeting to begin at 3p.m. Here is the sanctuary:

There will hopedfully be about a dozen churches represented here today, celebrating the 225th Anniversary of the formation of the Association back in 1797, an event which took place in this very church. I will be giving a talk about the history behind that event, something which I researched back in 1997 when I was writing the history of the Guilford Church and ran across a copy of the minutes of that first organizational meeting, tucked into an old Guilford Church record book - the only copy in existence, to my knowledge. If I hadn't found it, we wouldn't know the details about that first meeting. LATER It was a good meeting. We had the dozen churches, and 21 people - one more than needed for a quorum! Not a huge turnout, but a very appreciative one. Our quartet (Ellen, ELiza, Shawn and myself, did a stirring rendition of AFRICA, a shape-note hymn by Issac Watts (words) and William Billings (music), and I was able to tell the story of Elijah Wollage, the Guilford Church, and the formation of the Consociation of the Churches of Christ of Windham County, Oct. 3, 1797 - the first organization of churches in the state of Vermont. People were very engaged and I got a huge positive response.

Giving my talk at the Association Meeting.

The quartet singing AFRICA. I know, there are only three of us in this photo. Shawn Bracebridge is off-camera to the left.**************************** Here is the story of the formation of the Windham Consociation: ELIJAH WOLLAGE AND THE FORMATION OF THE WINDHAM CONSOCIATION We. are celebrating today the 225th anniversary of the formation of this Association which took place in the Dummerston Congregational Church on October 3, 1797. It was not called the Windham-Union Association at that time. It was called the Consociation of the Churches of Christ in Windham County. That organization later became the Windham-Union Association when churches in southern Windsor County were added - churches such as Springfield, Weathersfield, Perkinsville, Ludlow and Tyson were added to those in Windham County. Unfortunately, at this moment, I do not know exactly when that happened. We need to realize that in 1797 there were no County or State organizations of churches in Vermont as such. A Ministerial Association had been formed in Windham County as early as October, 1775 - the first such organization in the state, and then, 20 years later, on August 27, 1795, the General Convention of Ministers in the State of Vermont was formed in the study of the President of Dartmouth College, Ebenezer Wheelock. Membership in that ministerial Convention was opened to laymen in 1823. and the Vermont Domestic Missionary Society was formed in 1823 as well. In 1841, the General Convention of Ministers changed its name to become the Convention of Ministers and Churches. So a State Conference sort of evolved over time. But the Consociation of the Churches of Christ in Windham County.was the first organization of Churches in the state of Vermont. I think we can take some note of that, and we might ask, why was this Association (Or Consociation, as it was called) why was it formed at that time? We can begin to find an answer to that question, I think, in the minutes of the founding meeting and the By-laws of the newly formed consociation contained in them. We are very fortunate to actually have these minutes and by-laws. I believe I am right in saying that they were not preserved in the records of the Association, the State Conference Archives, or even in the Congregational Library in Boston. But someone had slipped a loose copy of these minutes - actually a transcript of the original which no longer exists - into the oldest record book of the Guilford Congregational Church (a.k.a. the Guilford Community Church) and that is where I found them back in 1997 when I was researching my history of the Guilford Church, titled Safe Thus Far, which was published in 1999. And when I studied them, and took note of the timing of the formation of the Consociation, and correlated that date with what was happening in the Guilford Church at that time, I fashioned a theory as to why the Consociation was formed - it was formed, I believe, in response to what was regarded as an unfortunate occurrence in the relationship between the Guilford Church and its pastor, the Rev. Elijah Wollage. Elijah Wollage came to the Guilford Church officially in 1793, but had been preaching there for some time before. He had been born in nearby Bernardston, MA, and thus undoubtedly knew of the Guilford Church and may have been known by the Guilford Church for some time. He had graduated from Dartmouth College in 1791 at age 22 - and might have started preaching soon after his graduation. He was probably also newly married, having married Sally Babcock of Westmoreland, N.H. The records state that on the same day, March 12th, 1793, the church met to call Wollage as a settled pastor, and an Ecclesiastical Council met immediately after that meeting to confirm that call. Then, the very next day, Wollage was ordained! That was what we today would call a rush job! It was also a bit cozy: Ministers from Bernardston, his home town, and Westmoreland, his wife's home town, sat on his Ecclesiastical Council, and the ordination sermon was given by his wife's home pastor, the Rev. Ethan Pratt. Wollage had a very active pastoral ministry in his first 2-3 years at the Guilford Church. The church records show that he baptized 79 infants and adults, admitted 35 new members, performed 35 marriages, and presided over 27 funerals, including 13 infants and children and seven young women! But that activity slacked off rapidly a year or so before he suddenly left the church. Something led to a hastily called and improper dismissal of Wollage on April 11, 1797, four years after his arrival.. David Stowell, deacon and clerk, wrote at that time in the record that a meeting was held in the home of Doctor Deeney Hyde with the Rev. Bunker Gay, pastor of the church in “Hinds Dale” (N.H.) serving as Moderator, at which it was agreed unanimously by both Wollage and the Church that he be dismissed and that “his Relation of Pastor of the Aforesaid Church and Society is from this time henceforth and forever to be Considered as Void and of none Effect.” Sort of an extreme way of putting a dismissal. What was going on? The church records are silent as to reasons, but we have another source! A prominent citizen of Guilford at that time was the honorable Royall Tyler, a jurist who would later become the Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, and a playwright, author of The Contrast, considered the first comedy written in the U.S. His wife, Mary, would write a memoir, Grandmother Tyler's Book, and that memoir is full of information, one might even say gossip, about none other than -- Elijah Wollage! One has to take Mary Tyler's account with a grain of salt, but the substance is undoubtedly accurate. Elijah Wollage's wife, according to Mary, was very unhappy because the church did not pay him enough. He was paid in both cash and produce, a notoriously problematic procedure. Mary Tyler quotes Sally Wollage as saying to her, “When (Royall) comes home he brings you pretty things and gets money; but we delve and delve, and find it hard work to get our four hundred dollars at last, although we have to take it in anything, at their own prices. Oh, you can’t tell how trying it is.” If Mary Tyler is to be believed, Sally pressured her husband to find a more remunerative career, and at some point he gave in and secretly went to Royall Tyler and began reading for the law. This probably explains the rapid drop in his pastoral ministry - he was busy studying to be a lawyer! And his wife couldn't keep her mouth shut, and word got out, the congregation was incensed, and he was summarily dismissed. - His departure rivals and perhaps exceeds the questions about a lack of proper procedure that his hurried call and ordination raised. With Wollage in mind, certain sections of the Consociation minutes jump off the page. Take section 7: "vii. As a means of preventing hasty and premature proceedings among ourselves; of obviating those suspicions & jealousies of misconduct, which might otherwise arise in the minds of sister churches; & to convince them them that we mean to walk orderly, as the disciples of Christ, that our mutual fellowship may not be broken; we will not consent to the dismission of any Minister who has been regularly settled among us, without calling an ecclesiastical council to advise & assist us in a matter so weighty, in which the edification of particular churches, & the interest of religion in general are so deeply interested. "- So, in other words, a church could not dismiss their minister without the Churches of the Association. coming together, looking into the situation, and giving their approval! Or this: vi. As it appears from the directions given to Timothy and Titus that they hath made his Ministers judges of the qualifications of those who are to be introduced into the work of the gospel ministry (2 Timothy 2.2 Titus 1, etc.) & as we wish not to encourage any who go not forth orderly to the work, therefore when destitute of settled Pastors we will not employ any candidate for the gospel Ministry but such as come recommended from some known body of Ministers. " Clearly, the ministers and laymen gathered on October 3, 1797, just six months after Wollage's dismissal, were concerned about church-minister relations, and believed that the churches, though the structure and procedures of a Consociation, had the right and duty to provide oversight in both the call and dismissal of a minister. I just can't help but think they when they wrote these by-laws, they had Elijah Wollage in mind. If we had the time, it would be interesting to have a discussion about how we feel about all this oversight. Maybe at some future time we can do that. I don't know whether, as time went on, the Association actually put these principles into practice. We actually need a history of the Association. But whoever attempted to write such a history would face a daunting task - finding records. Some early ones are in the Congregational Library. But many, perhaps most, are missing. The Association has seemed never to have had a central and safe archive for its records. It has never, to my knowledge, faithfully preserved its records. So let me end with a plea: I think we should make a concerted effort to find and preserve all Association records we can still lay our hands on. Start with what all known Moderators and Registrars/Scribes still living might still have in their homes or on their computers. Perhaps we should even ask the children of those who are no longer living what they might have.. Perhaps there are local Church records which have Association records tucked in with them - like the Guilford Church had the minutes of that first meeting tucked into an old record book. I think those records are worth saving, and someone, someday, may surface who will be inspired to write a history of the Windham-Union Association. the first organization of churches in the state of Vermont. Let me add a P.S., an epilog. Elijah Wollage came back to Guilford. Seven years later, Jan 4, 1804, “at the request of Mr. Elijah Wollage . . . now attorney at Law, the Church and Society met at the house of Dr. Dana Hyde in Guilford when the said Mr. Wollage appeared and verbally confessed many imprudences in his conduct towards said Chh. & Society in special his great precipitancy in asking a dismission and hastily quitting them to their Damage & asked their forgiveness when that of the Chh. present retired by themselves. Voted to forgive said Mr. Wollage as a Brother & member of said Church.” Then a year later, he showed up again and asked the church to request the Association to call an Ecclesiastical Council to redo his dismissal in a regular way, which it eventually did in 1805. But even that isn't the end. Wollage gave up his trial career as a lawyer, and came back to Guilford in 1811 after the ministry of Jason Chamberlain and resumed his role as pastor, though not as an officially settled minister. Two things happened during that second ministry which must have been discouraging for Wollage:- a church was built in East Guilford which eventually became the first Episcopal Church in Vermont, Christ Church, and drew ten members away from the Congregational Church in Guilford Center. And then in 1818, his twelve-year-old son George drowned after diving into Broad Brook. Wollage left Guilford later that year he went to Rockingham and was pastor for three years there, and then he went to Western New York, where he worked at various positions, and during which time his daughter, Cerintha, married Joel Pratt. He died in 1847, and is buried in Rock Stream, NY in Yates County, just a few miles from where I lived in the late 1960's, when I was on the faculty of Keuka College. And in 1998 I found two descendants of his, George C. Pratt in East Norwich, NY and, amazingly, Elijah Wollage Pratt in Salt Lake City, Such are the fascinations and rewards of being a church historian. Thank you.

Judge George C. Pratt, retired federal judge in the 2nd District; a descendant of the Rev. Elijah Wollage.

Showing up

One often hears that one of the best things you can do sometimes is just show up. I think I had that proved last Sunday. I was supposed to be at First Congregational Church for the final Sunday of the Reverend Audrey Walker. I was supposed to represent her fellow clergy's support for her and read a farewell liturgy. She was not leaving of her own volition. The church had asked her to leave. She was obviously not happy about that, although I think she also recognized that it was an opportunity for her to find fuller fulfillment of her skills somewhere else. I had sent her several emails telling her that I would be coming and what time I would be arriving, none of which she received. Meanwhile she had called me on my cell phone several times and never received an answer and had left a voicemail message which I never heard or saw. I guess you could call it a comedy of errors. The day before I was supposed to be there, we finally made contact, and she had to regretfully tell me that she had decided I wasn't coming and had made arrangements to have my role filled by someone else. We both felt very badly about this, but I certainly respected her decision and we ended the call with the expectation that I would not be there the next day. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt that I should be there. There was no reason why I couldn't just go and be a part of the congregation and indicate to anybody who asked that I was there to be supportive of Audrey and also of the church. So I went. And it was so good that I did. Audrey was very appreciative that I was there and I had a chance to speak with people about why I was there and got a lot of appreciation for my being there from members of the congregation. And when it came time for the liturgy of farewell that I was supposed to do originally, Audrey invited me up and I just sat with the group as a sort of presence. I showed up. It was a lovely service, and I think my being there had a healing effect both for Audrey and the church. And I felt good too.

Audrey and me after church at the coffee hour.

Figures from my Bible Study Class

We had the second session of the Bible Study Group last Wednesday afternoon. It went well, I think. I got some very gratifying feedback on it. E.g., one person wrote, "I can’t tell you how thrilling this class is (and I never thought I’d use that word in reference to Bible Study!). I am so grateful you are doing this." I did some things this week I didn't do the first session - as I get more used to Zoom. One was to do "screen share." That involved putting things up on the computer screen that everyone could see. Mostly what I put up was written material that I had people read aloud. But I have some pictures that I intended to put up too - I'll put them up here to give you an idea of some things we are talking about. Here is a photo of Brian McLaren:

Brian McLaren is a "Progressive" Christian who has recently published book titled Do I Stay Christian? We read this book for a book study group at the Guilford Church - several members of that group are also in Bible Study. I think you could say that it was their urging that I do Bible Study that got me "off the dime," so to speak and actually get a group going. One of his main points is that if one decides to continue to identify as a Christian today, one must rethink what that means in today's world. One cannot just coast along in the old habits and old language that characterized Christianity a few decades ago. That effort to rethink our faith in the light of urgent contemporary issues is at least part of my purpose in doing this class. So he is sort of "looking over my shoulder" as I move through this course. Another contemporary figure who many of us read on an almost daily basis is Fr. Richard Rohr, who is a Franciscan monk and head of the Center for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico. He sends out a daily meditation which is always very insightful. He has written some things about the Gospel of John, which is our current topic of study, which I will be using in the course. Here is his photo:

Fr. Richard Rohr.*************** One of the tools I use in my own preparation for this course is a Greek-English Lexicon, the Liddell-Scott Unabridged Lexicon, which is a hefty tome. It is an amazing product of nineteenth-century British scholarship on the Greek language - done long before the age of computers when everything was done on note cards. I presume that hundreds of scholars were involved in reading literally thousands of Greek texts from the ancient world, spanning centuries, and recording the use of Greek words and their meaning in a variety of contexts. So for example, the article on the Greek word "Logos," which occurs in the first verse of the Gospel of John ("In the Beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God"), fills over six columns in the Liddell-Scott Lexicon, with hundreds of examples of its use and the variety of meanings it might have. Here is the title page from Liddell-Scott:

And here is a page from the article on the word "Logos":

The first page of the article on "Logos" in Liddell-Scott.**************** The massive work was edited by Henry George Liddell, an Oxford don. I cannot imagine what it meant for him to edit this work. I think it is beyond imagining. I also don't really know how much of the work was done by Scott, and how they divided it. I don't think there can be much doubt that it took over their lives for years, and perhaps decades. Here is Liddell's portrait:

Henry George Liddell.********************* He looks as though he could be pretty demanding - but then you would have to be to get a work like that Lexicon finished. However, he had a daughter, Alice, for whom Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland. Maybe he had a gentler side. I also want to mention one last thing - it has personal significance. I have a Bible in my library called The Bible: An American Translation. It is not widely known. It belonged to my father.

An American Translation of the Bible. Sort of the worse for wear, but then, so am I! We are about the same age. ******************* It was created by J. M. Powis Smith, who edited the translation of the Old Testament and translated much of it himself, and by Edgar Goodspeed, who translated the entire New Testament himself. It was published by the University of Chicago Press, at about the time my father was a student at Chicago Theological Seminary (c. 1930). He had both Smith and Goodspeed as teachers, I think.

J. M. Powis Smith, Hebraist. ********************** There are many autographs inside both the front and back covers of this Bible - most of them I think are my father's fellow students. He must have collected them. Some are of faculty - at the top of one page is the autograph of J.M. Powis Smith.

J.M.Powis Smith's autograph at the top of the page.******************* I don't see Edgar Goodspeed's autograph anywhere, but his is a name very familiar to me, not least because he also wrote a book called The Junior Bible, a translation, or you might better say a paraphrase, of the Bible written especially for young people, and my father gave that Bible to me when I was about eight years old, and it was my introduction to the Bible. Here is a portrait of Edgar Goodspeed - a very attractive man, I would say:

Edgar J. Goodspeed, New Testament Scholar and Translator.