We Love You Pop

We all know that my Dad lived his life to the beat of a different drummer.  He grew up on the farm next to farm his father grew up which was next to the farm where his grandfather grew up.   He raised his family across the road on an adjoining farm where he grew up.  He went to school on the corner of the farm where his uncle farmed next to their farm.  He may have been person rooted to the soil but much more rooted to faith in God, loyalty to family and service for others in community.    

Farming for my father was primarily the way he knew how to raise a family and not a business.  I'm really not sure I was ever aware that farming was a business.  We never talked about money growing up.   We just milked the cows, gathered the eggs, and worked the garden.  Did the farm make any money?   I don't really know.   As children we never felt in lack of anything but we never spent very much either.   We never felt any anxiousness about the farm, it's just where we were planted I guess.  Maybe the farm did make some money after all?   Almost seems silly to think about that.  He always said "We farm as comes naturally".

We had a lot of fun on the farm growing up.  We all knew what we had to do.  Pop would wake me up by tickling the bottom of feet.   I washed the cows udders and Pop minded the milkers.   I talked a lot and Pop would listen.   If I asked too many questions he would say, He had book for me.   My favorite job on the farm was driving tractor.  We were really young when Pop first put us on the tractor working ground to seed corn.  Making hay, Pop drove the John Deere B with the sickle mower and I would follow driving the Massy Harris with the crimper.   

The alfalfa flowers were full bees and butterflies,  The red wing blackbirds were plentiful flying around as we mowed the alfalfa.   We were always watching out for pheasant nests.   We had so many pheasants back then.   It would be easy to run into a nest with the mower.    I remember when I was 12 or 13 I took Pop's single shot 12 gauge shotgun for a walk.  The season opened at 9:00 and I was walking up the back lane.   I saw some hunters walking in from the Donerville Rd. scare up some pheasants and they were flying my way.   I got one, put it by the fence row, than ran down to the crick where the other landed.   It flew up straight away from me across Elmer Sensenig's farm.   I remember it was not yet 9:30 when I brought my limit to mother who helped me clean them.  

We liked the Massy because it had an electric start but the problem was the PTO shaft was tied to the Clutch.   If the Sickle mower would back up to clear the blade it would pile up hay.   With the Massy you had no choice, you just needed to run right through it.   If you stopped with the clutch the crimper would stop.   If you ran right through it the hay could wrap around the rollers.   So Pop bought a Cockshot.   A Cockshot.....what kind of a tractor is that.  Actually it was a Cockshutt, everyone just called it a Cockshot.   Only Pop would buy a Cockshot.   But the Cockshot was good because it had a live PTO .....now I could go real slow and just nimble at the pile until it all got through without wrapping the roller.  

I never remember Pop as a teacher.   He never was much for words.   He just kinda asked us to do stuff assuming we had watched him long enough we probably know how to do it.   But he did believe in us.   I always think of him as person who enabled us.   I suspect my siblings feel the same way I do.   I feel like he encouraged us to do most everything we wanted to do.   I certainly don't think Pop ever discouraged us children from anything we wanted to do.  He just wasn't a heavy handed kind of guy.  He did encourage us all to go to school.  Probably the only thing he pushed was he thought I should go to Auction school.   He liked Auctions....that was understatement.   He lined up Leroy Zook for me to apprentice with and put me on the bus headed for DeMoines, Iowa.   I just needed to work it out.   Fairness wasn't in Pop's vocabulary.....He always said, "I don't know how to be fair", but we all felt equally cared for and loved.     

He loved to learn.  If he had free time he was reading.   Christ Charles had his Bible reading incentive.  Everyone who read the Bible in the past two years got their name in his book.   Pop got more fulfillment from that accomplishment than a bonus on the milk check every two years.  He particularly liked taking evening courses with Paul Zehr in his Adult Evening Education courses down at LMH.   I think he took every course he could.   In the past number of years when he discovered what a google search engine could do he discovered a whole new world.   It's like he was just gifted the world's biggest library.   Every conversation, every sermon, every newspaper article would generation some question or word he could google.  

We all knew Pop had his qwerks socially.   Many times in social gatherings it was hard for him to feel like he was one of the bunch.   He tended to be quiet and off by himself many times.  About 40 years ago he read Abe Schmidt's book,  "Brilliant Idiot".  It was Abe's story of his own journey with Dyslexia.  Reading that book was a real eye opener for my Dad.  His experience resonated with my Dad who also felt like a brilliant idiot in many ways.   He felt fully competent in many ways but unable to express it in others.   He soon became a disciple of Abe Schmidt's taking classes and doing counseling sessions with him.   I think it made him feel like he wasn't alone with his difficulties.   As adult children I'm not sure we took these studies too seriously.  We felt fine with Pop just as he was, although we did wish Pop would expand his one liner's into paragraphs.   He would ruminate in his thoughts for hours, deliver his one liner, leaving us trying to figure out the riddle of his thoughts.  Maybe he was just doing his  "Most for the least effort!"

 

What he lived for was the Church.  As long as I can remember he was involved in Sunday school teaching, song leading, trustee of church and the Manor Mennonite School.   As children I think we simply absorbed his involvements as normal things people do.  Today we see our parents sacrificial modeling of values prioritizing church as gifts from God.  Our father graduated from High School in the middle of our countries involvements in WW2.  He never saw much of a political divide between political parties other then a divide between capital and labor.   But he saw a large divide between the State and Church.   He felt his experience in high school was prep course for the ambitions of the state.   It was out of this experience he felt a strong desire to nurture Church school serving the mission of the Church.   Not that he talked much about this much, but he certainly led the way in practice sacrificing much toward that end.     

Living out one's mission of the church was a strong teaching of befriending and supporting the stranger and alien in your midst.   After WW2 Pop took an interest in hosting several families from Ukraine.  We had a summer house attached to the farm house where they lived for 6 months or a year before they moved on the steel mills or Coal mines.   In the 60's that house became a home for several people coming out of prison on parole.   After the Vietnam war our congregation supported several Vietnamese families.  In the past 6 years our congregation sponsored one Karen speaking family displaced from Burma.   This family invited other families and today our congregation is largely Karen speaking people.   This has been the greatest surprise and most wonderful gift to us as a people.   They have given us energy, life, and purpose as a people.   Our older people are respected above all people by our Karen speaking brothers and sisters.   It is a great gift.   Just as I described my Dad as not a teacher but an enabler.....I believe the gift of presence of all our new congregants has enabled and renewed life among us in indescribable ways.   Certainly my father nurtured these values of supporting those in need all his life.   We are so grateful these displaced people from Burma came to us in our hour of need and gave life to him.  I'm glad Pop has lived to see all those prayers for others return to be such a blessing for him.  

Love was not a sexy word for Pop.  For him I believe it was defined as being available to anyone who needed him for whatever reason.   I never heard him say no to anyone.   If he had something someone else needed it was available.  Granted it wasn't very fancy.   His fleet of public auction cars, (He always said, "he kept 5 to keep 3 running!") was his eager contribution to anyone who would call.  He took pride in the most humble service when he felt he could help someone.   Scheid's produce was the world's greatest gift to him these past 25 years.   They made him feel necessary and valuable in ways we can't thank them enough.  Every day, if he could, he would go down there and "maintain his box office", which means he would salvage old cardboard boxes making them usable for one more round of service.  

Love also was defined in that relationship are forever.   Mother had a motto on her kitchen sink that "Being kind is more important than being right".   Pushing "rightness" often breaks relationships but Love brings people together.   One classic modeling early on was his desire to stop raising tobacco when he started farming.   Grandpa did not know if that would work financially so he was not exactly in favor but he supported Pop....even loaned him the money to convert the big tobacco barn into a chicken house....but he did not want Pop to rub his convictions in the face of those in the church who still raised tobacco.  I'm sure Pop never did.  He even volunteered me as a helper for our good neighbor in the tobacco harvest when I was 13.   I believe this was Pop's way of embracing everyone.   He seemed totally secure in the path he walked, he felt no pressure to change to fit the mold anyone else took, yet he would not judge or criticize anyone else either.  He often said "the guy who argues the most is the most unsure."   Another quotable quote, "I'm probably in a rut,  but there's a lot of security in a rut".

    I love the little story that happened in church one Sunday.   Twelve years ago we had a lot of young people here at church.   We had what could be called a Contemporary worship band to lead worship.   Obviously this music was foreign to my Dad's experience but he never raised objection.    One Sunday as the band was playing I was sitting beside my Dad,  he leaned over to me and said,   "I hope they introduce me to heaven slowly!"   I understood his statement immediately.   He wasn't criticizing or condemning.   Actually he was embracing everyone expecting everyone to be in heaven with him, but he thought it might take a little time for him to get used to it.   I thought that was really funny.   For him New Wine skins are skins that stretch and never break.   When I think of the spiritual roller coaster that spanned my Dad's lifetime in the church, content with himself,  embracing all, he demonstrated a model to us all of what it means to be new wine skins.  

  Love, in his mind also means you walk with your brother/sister.   I remember him saying one time "Don't go where your brother cannot follow!"   This was primarily related to the way we celebrate our weddings and such like.   It's interesting now our Karen speaking people from Burma are now our brothers and sisters and are the largest part of our congregation at Church.   One Karen person told me one time.  "We know how to have a baby in America, we know how to get married in America, but we don't know how to die in America".   This is an enormously big question.   In the Buddhist tradition the body is burned.   In the Karen Christian tradition the body is buried.   Can we can give dignity to the body in a way our Karen brothers and sisters need not be fearful of dying?   We asked this question as a family?   In reading the plans of our parents wrote years ago, we realize once again their wishes are directly in line with a tradition our Karen brothers and sisters can easily follow.  

It was the flu/pneumonia four weeks ago which put Pop in the hospital.  He recovered from the flu but his digestive system never opened up again.   After two weeks the Doctor told him the sad news that their treatments were not working and they would need to take the next step of surgery to remove the blockage.   Without much hesitation Pop told the doctor,  "We've done enough for this body, It's time to focus on the next generation".   He was grateful for the 90 years he lived and now was the time to lay down his life.   He never complained, expressed disappointment, only gratefulness for all the support so many brought to his bedside at home.   He made it so easy for us, his children, even though it was difficult to see him growing weaker and weaker.    His two daughters gave constant nursing care 24/7.  Us guys took turns standing by as we could.   We met almost daily singing around his bedside.   His mind was conscious and even verbal except the last three days.   Today, Wednesday, April 1, 2015 Pop finished his earthly journey and is now in the presence of God.   As a family we gathered around to care for his earthen vessel.   As we laid him in the casket Mother took the lead and said she wanted to cover him.  Cover him she did, caressing his body one more time, she asked for the coconut oil to anoint his body for the resurrection, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.   We love you Pop.   We are so grateful to call you our father.