A Cup of Blessing

For twelve years I have played piano for the Gloria Dei Hispanic Mission congregation, which holds Spanish-language worship services at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Valparaiso, Indiana.

For several years during the traditional Via Crucis procession on Good Friday, my husband and children and I served as musicians while the Gloria Dei congregation and community followed the Way of the Cross through downtown Valparaiso.   We used to joke that we belonged to the finest Lutheran mariachi band in Indiana.

Over the years the Lutzes have provided worship music for Gloria Dei baptisms, first communions, weddings, and quinceañeras–and attended many a fiesta afterward.

This morning I was the only Anglo at the Gloria Dei service.  Most of the communicants take individual cups, but I know that when Pastor Tomás offers the chalice,  his wife and sister-in-law will drink from the common cup with me.

I cherish this gesture, and I remember another cup of blessing and another pastor’s wife.

In his memoir Awakening to Equality: A Young White Pastor at the Dawn of Civil Rights, my father-in-law, Karl E. Lutze, wrote of his experience serving a black congregation in Muskogee, Oklahoma, in 1946:

The book cover features author Karl E. Lutze as officiant and his wife Esther at the communion rail

Esther and I were both surprised and thrilled when, on the Sunday that followed her first Sunday with me, the attendance leaped from twenty-three to thirty-four.  Next day, while Mr. Hooper was working his garden patch, I went out to chat with him, still excited about the upswing in our attendance.  I thought surely he would agree with me that my preaching was “finally taking hold.”  Not wishing to hurt my feelings, he explained, “Your sermons have been fine, but people have been hearing about Mrs. Lutze.”

Then I learned that my predecessor’s wife–as was the custom of all families of white Lutheran pastors serving in African American communities in the South–would worship with the nearby white congregation on Sundays when the Lord’s Supper was celebrated.  ”Mrs. Lutze stayed with us and drank from the Holy Cup with us.”   (University of Missouri Press, 2006)

A Reformation Ghost Story

Many years ago I was standing outside my classroom door on a dreary afternoon.  My remedial students had just shuffled into the hall for a water break.  As I watched them, I wondered, not for the first time, whether the only real good I was doing these high school kids was keeping them off the streets for eight hours a day.

My mood was especially bleak because I was dead-tired.  I’d stayed up late again scribbling—adding yet another few paragraphs to my work in progress.  Two other unpublished novels and a stack of rejection slips were all I had to show for almost seven years of neglecting  my family and  shortchanging my students.

Why had I wasted so much time logging more library hours and conducting more grueling research than during my entire college career?  Who was I to presume to write a novel about Martin Luther?  And even if I did finish the long slog toward another completed manuscript, who would ever want to read my amateurish attempt at chronicling Reformation history?

And then a strangely familiar figure glided around the corner past the cluster of teens at the drinking fountain.  The students did not even seem to see the brown-robed monk with dark, close-cropped hair.  The monk smiled at me and said, “Good afternoon, Hilda.”

Bei alles Heiligen, as Captain von Berlepsch would say–by all that is holy I swear to you that Martin Luther appeared to me at Chesterton High School and greeted me by name.

Would it matter if I told you that one of my colleagues, a history teacher who is fond of dressing in period attire, had just begun his Reformation unit?

It matters not to me.  I know a sign when I see one.

With renewed vigor I returned to my scribbling.  Three published novels later, I’m glad that I did.

More Horses and Another Book

By the end of my writing career, perhaps not all of my book covers will feature horses. So far, however, I am three for three, as shown on the array of postcards below.

Plank Road Winter, a sequel to Plank Road Summer, will be released by Crickhollow Books on September 30. My sister/co-author Emily and I will celebrate with a launch party in a nineteenth-century schoolhouse in our home territory, Yorkville Township in Racine County, Wisconsin.

Set in 1871, Plank Road Winter introduces Sophie Caswell, who longs to escape the dullness of life in a small farming community. When the Chicago Fire brings city boy Hans Hoffman and his family to a nearby farm, Sophie stubbornly pursues her dreams while Hans struggles to adapt to a world very different from his bustling German neighborhood.

One of the significant sites in Plank Road Winter is the National Soldiers’ Home in Milwaukee, featured in the 1880s lithograph on which my postcards are displayed.  Not until I laid out the cards did I realize that the outline of Old Main is strikingly similar to the silhouette of the Wartburg Castle on the cover of Kingdom of the Birds.

An Unexpected Glimpse of the Wartburg

Over the past fourteen years I have written in classrooms and waiting rooms, in coffee shops and grocery stores, in car lines and ticket lines, in the bleachers and in almost every room in my house.

The Rathskeller at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

I do have some favorite places, of course.  One of the most satisfying venues for working on Kingdom of the Birds was the Memorial Union at the University of Wisconsin.

The Rathskeller is a tribute to Wisconsin’s German heritage, and under that vaulted ceiling I could almost believe myself in the Knights’ Hall of the Wartburg Castle.  Seated at a plank table in front of a wide fireplace, I could hear the voices of Sir Georg and Captain von Berlepsch–all I had to do was transcribe the words.

The Knights’ Hall in the Wartburg Castle

When I’m Not Writing . . .

When I’m not writing or teaching or grading or playing music or making a perfunctory attempt to keep house, I can often be found working with wool.  Felting has been a passion of mine ever since I decided I had to figure out something to do with all that wool, our little farm’s most abundant natural resource.

Besides selling felted soap at the local farmers’ market, I engage in various experiments with wool and water.  Once I attempted to make a pink beret.  Unfortunately, in my calculations I forgot the difference between radius and diameter. . .

Even artistic types ought to know the difference between radius and diameter

Fortunately, my daughter, a theatre major and costume designer, cleverly turned the botched beret into a dashing Renaissance cap that could have been donned by a character in Kingdom of the Birds.

Kat Lutze, costume designer extraordinaire

Blessed are the Ornery

Hilda Demuth-Lutze and Gottfried Krodel at the launch party for Kingdom of the Birds on March 6, 2010.

After reading the Beatitudes, the Gospel lesson for All Saints’ Sunday, my pastor held up the Book of the Names of the Dead and told the congregation that all of our blessed ones could be found in these pages: the peacemakers, the pure of heart, the meek—and also the ornery.

Yes, “ornery” certainly describes my mentor and friend Gottfried Krodel, whose name is written in that book.

Doc Krodel was so ornery that he frightened undergraduates. When I was a freshman at Valparaiso University, I watched a classmate scrub the metal letters of his typewriter with a toothbrush because Krodel would not accept a Reformation history assignment blotched with ink-filled a‘s and e‘s.

Doc Krodel was so ornery that even though he was an internationally acclaimed Luther scholar, he declined to learn to use the Internet. Instead, when he and I met to discuss early drafts of Kingdom of the Birds, he would marvel at the research that I had conducted online: “My dear, how do you know such things? Where did you find these sources?”

Doc Krodel was so ornery that even as he began putting his affairs in order, knowing that failing health would soon force him to give up his house, he decided to paint his living room a brilliant peacock blue. After all, he told me, his sainted wife had been quite fond of this particular shade.

Doc Krodel was so ornery that in spite of chronic pain, he continued to work at his desk for hours each day, even beginning a long-cherished project on Albrecht Dürer he knew he was unlikely to live to finish.

Doc Krodel was so ornery that during his final hospitalization when he was placed on a liquid diet, his daughter Christine watched him bow his head and give thanks to God for a bowl of Jello, which she knew he detested.

Blessed indeed are the ornery.

Martin Luther’s Galloping Pen

“I am in such haste that my pen has had to gallop, and I have no time for more. God willing, I shall soon be there.” That’s what the outlawed professor Martin Luther wrote to his noble protector, Duke Frederick of Saxony, near the end of February in 1522.

The Wartburg in winter

Since early December, Luther had been working on a German translation of the New Testament in his hiding-place in the Wartburg Castle. His plan was to return to his friends in Wittenberg with the completed manuscript. During the short days and long nights of winter Luther worked furiously as news of various disturbances in Wittenberg reached him.  When he had first begun the task, he hoped to finish the translation by Easter.

Like any writer with a massive project underway, Luther must have paused at times to calculate wearily how much he had written and how much he had yet to write.

At what point, I wonder, did Luther realize that at his current pace he would finish the translation well before Easter? At what point did he set himself a new deadline for completing the manuscript?

For Luther desperately wanted to get back to Wittenberg to address his wayward flock — and the ideal time for the words he had in mind was the penitential season of Lent.

On March 5, shortly after leaving the Wartburg, Luther sent another message to Duke Frederick: “I have written this letter in haste so that Your Grace may not be disturbed at hearing of my arrival . . .”  The letter is dated “Ash Wednesday, 1522.”

Within days the writer and his completed translation did indeed arrive in Wittenberg, where Luther’s pen began galloping across the pages of the sermon he intended to preach in the Town Church on the first Sunday of Lent.

Wittenberg in spring

 

A Tale of Two Martins

Five hundred twenty-seven years ago in the Saxon town of Eisleben, Hans and Margarethe Luther welcomed their firstborn son.  On the following day, November 11, the feast of Saint Martin, the infant was carried to church and christened.  In honor of both Martin Luther and St. Martin of Tours, I offer this account from Seppel, the narrator of Kingdom of the Birds:

Every November on St. Martin’s Day and six days later on the feast of St. Elisabeth, I remember my time at the Wartburg.  That year Martinstag dawned cold and damp, and Sir Georg did not leave his room.  After I had tended his fire, he wrote steadily all day, occasionally rising to pace and mutter to himself.  He might have spent the entire evening alone had I not been sent with the captain’s request that the knight leave off scribbling to attend the traditional soldiers’ feast.

Downstairs in the Ritterhaus the aroma of roasted goose filled the air.  The soldiers of the Wartburg sat at the long banqueting table.  Without the civilizing presence of women or royalty, the men drank deeply, spoke crudely, and laughed loudly.

Sir Georg did not participate in the banter about women and weapons.  He did appreciate the wine which Captain von Berlepsch had ordered in honor of the day.  However, when the captain signaled the servants to fill the cups a third time, Sir Georg turned his down on the table.

“Come now,” said one of the soldiers.  “Surely you have no objection to the best wine of the season?”

“Not at all,” said Sir Georg. “The Apostle Paul writes that whatever goes into a man does not defile him.  It is what comes out of a man that defiles him–drunkenness, gluttony, deceit–“

The other man laughed. ”Are you a priest to whom we should confess our sins?”

The knight shook his head.  “I am no more a priest than you.  Are we not all called to do God’s will?  No priest’s robe or bishop’s ring, no vow or discipline gives one man spiritual authority over another.  All of us in this room and in all of Christendom are a priesthood.”

“Enough, Georg,” said Captain von Berlepsch. “We know you have a poet’s tongue.  If you must speak, give us a few words in keeping with the day.”

“Very well, Captain.” Sir Georg rose from his seat.

“My friends, on this day we mark the feast of Saint Martin, who was a soldier like ourselves.  God gives us saints not as intercessors, but as examples.  What do we learn from the example of the soldier Martin?  All of us remember his most famous act.  Upon seeing a beggar shivering in the cold, Martin drew his sword, cut his cloak in half, and shared it with the one in need.”

The knight looked up and down the long table.  “How many other soldiers had already ridden past that beggar without seeing him?  How many of us stride along each day wrapped in our own cares?  Occupied with what appears to be our duty, we look neither to the right nor to the left.  How then will we ever know whether God has other plans for us?”

For a moment Sir Georg stood in silence.  “It sometimes happens that a man finds himself at a loss as to what God expects him to do.”  The knight glanced at the captain.  “After all, a sword is hardly a suitable tool for cutting fabric.  Why did not God provide our sainted Martin a tailor’s shears?”         He smiled.  “We must use what God has given us.  In every circumstance we must look around to see how we might best serve Our Lord.  Like Saint Martin himself, wherever God has placed us and with whatever tools we have been given, we must never tire of seeking to know His will.”  He closed his eyes and bowed his head. “Amen.”

The captain raised his cup. “To our brother Martin!”

“To Martin!” the soldiers chorused.

Sir Georg opened his eyes.  “To the glory of God!”

A Dose of Luther

“It’s October, time for your annual dose of Luther.”  That’s the way a friend once prefaced her monthly column in our church newsletter.  In that spirit, I offer an appropriately autumnal image of Martin Luther in his disguise as a knight.

On this postcard a single star shines above the parapets of the Wartburg Castle as the solitary scholar scribbles away by candlelight.   I especially like the artist’s depiction of the birds and other creatures of the Thuringian Forest as well as the demonic figures lurking outside that oak-leaf border.

In Kingdom of the Birds, the events of a chapter titled “Tricks of the Devil” occur in October.  Five months of exile have taken their toll on a man who thrives in the company of friends and colleagues.  As October of 1521 wanes, a significant date approaches: All Hallows’ Eve marks the anniversary of the Reformation begun four turbulent years earlier when Luther posted his 95 Theses in Wittenberg.

During the ongoing political and religious struggles in Germany and beyond, the outlawed professor can communicate only through letters written from his hiding-place in the mountaintop castle, which he calls “the Wilderness” or “the Kingdom of the Birds.”

The postcard shows Luther engaged in his most famous literary activity at the Wartburg, translating the New Testament into the German language.

But that momentous endeavor would not begin until after the dark nights of October.

A Nod to Narnia

Back when I was writing Kingdom of the Birds, I often glanced at a postcard taped alongside my computer.  Far above a mountainous landscape, a boy and girl are flying astride a winged horse.  The image is familiar to C. S. Lewis fans who have read The Magician’s Nephew or know the work of artist Pauline Baynes.

When I first saw the watercolor painting created for the cover of Kingdom of the Birds, I loved the Narnian feel of that scarlet-and-blue-clad figure on the galloping horse.  The artist, Shirley Flachman of Minneapolis, has visited the Wartburg, and her vision captured the power and mystery of that mountaintop castle.

While I do not pretend to have the powers of the chronicler of Narnia, I do hope that my readers enjoy a glorious ride as they follow the adventures of Seppel and Ilse in the Kingdom of the Birds.