LIVING, BREATHING HISTORY
It's not very often that you find yourself in the presence of living, breathing history, but I've had that privilege! This past week Mildred Hoyt, Mid to her friends, left this world and reached the arms of Jesus at ninety-seven years of age. She was born December 24, 1899 — imagine! Imagine what her eyes have seen, the changes that have transformed this world of ours — It's staggering if you think about it.
If I were beamed to an alien world — to a galaxy far, far away, I wouldn't experience any greater change than Mid did during her lifetime. Two World Wars, not to mention a bunch of smaller ones, the advent of cars, planes, electricity, radio, television, and yes, even computers and the Net! The list could go on for more pages than a New York City phone book!
Every time I visited Mid, I couldn't wait until she started talking about her childhood. She was part of a large family that made its living from the sea, farming, this and that, whatever it took to get by. Mid must have been a tom boy and in my minds eye, I can see her as she used a hooped barrel to keep her balance while learning to skate. I imagine her wandering the pristine woods picking berries. And I would loved to have been there the day she and her twin sister and two of her brothers were playing with matches and started a fire in the barn. They worked hard and thought they got the fire out, but then they were distracted by the garden, and the fresh peas that were Summer sweet and entirely magical to a young girl's palate.
I laughed as she told me about the smoke that could be seen for miles and the pig that was kept underneath the ground level of the barn. It seems that Mr. pig got out somehow, even though his bacon was slightly cooked! As a young girl Mid worked as a cook in a lumber camp. Every day she had to set and bake nine loaves of bread. A little later, Mid worked in a chocolate factory as a hand dipper. Each chocolate had to be hand dipped. Each swirl had to be perfect. Every few minutes she had to immerse her hands in ice cold water because the heat from her hands made a mess of the chocolates. A few years later, Mid met Mason. They fell in love and eloped. She went with Mason to St. Stephen, gave him her last $5.00 and put him on a train to the US while she went back to St. Andrews to work the summer. That fall, she moved to Springfield Mass. to start a new life with her husband. Years later she would return to her beloved New Brunswick home and enjoyed many years of happiness with Mason, Evie her precious daughter, and Jack, her beloved son-in-law.
Whenever I was with Mid, I was always left with a longing, a longing to return to a time that only Mid really knew. A time of simplicity, a time for family and community. A time when doors were left unlocked and neighbors would drop everything and help you rebuild a barn. A time when hard work and honesty were honored, not avoided. A time when faith and family reigned supreme.
I don't think such times will return to our cities and towns, but they should be what we're striving for in our church communities, at least! Churches should be places where family and faith continue to flourish. They must be places of simplicity, places where each person simply asks, "What does Jesus want me to do?" Our churches should be communities of care where each one leaves the doors of their hearts unlocked, a community where neighbors with "burned barns", whether their barns are financial, relational, or spiritual, find help to rebuild. The church should be a place where people share their weaknesses and struggles, their needs, their hopes, their fears and doubts. The church should be a place where every family member understands that they have work to do, chores that the Father has called them to accomplish so the family can function properly. Let's do all we can to build communities where everyone has a place, where everyone has a voice, where a sense of belonging is strong and true. I long for such a community don't you?
