Something Elegaic on the Country Churchyard

During my summers I drive many rural roads in Wisconsin, sometimes in Minnesota. But, I like Wisconsin. I like the 1930s farming practices, the diversifying of cropland, the hay ground, the contour tillage. I like the old "balloon" style houses. Houses that began as a box, cold as hell in the winter and then as the family grew, because the winters were cold and extra hands are good for farming, the house "ballooned" into extra sections. They are typically white or a pale yellow and have a porch and sometimes some modest woodworking in the corners under the eves, but not too much. Most of these houses were but by Swedish, Norwegian and German Lutherans. Some were built by German, Irish, and Bohemian Catholics too. Their houses tend to be a little bigger and a little more extravagant. Some of these houses are in good use and repair, some are not. Some stand utterly abandoned next to a prefabricated house or a double-wide. There are others that stand far from the road, wading in corn, without windows, monuments to what no one can remember.

Churches abound in the rural landscape. They are all over the city too, and the suburbs. But, the latter is a new sort of church. They more closely resemble stadiums or massive cineplexes and I get the feeling that one goes to these places for a show. Many of these churches, and I have been to a few, measure your faith in dollars donated. When I was younger, I attended a tiny Catholic church in Rosemount, Minnesota. I recall the music, the ostentation of the surroundings, and the priest asking only for a prayerful heart and offering only solace in Christ. I didn't really believe in it, but I understood it. I should state now that I don't believe in the Resurrection, but it does make more sense to me than today's Republican Party. As with the now demolished St. Joseph's Catholic Church of my youth, the rural church is generally the main-line church--Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran. I suspect that most are poorly attended since populations in these areas are more often than not dwindling. But, on Sunday mornings when people are heading to church and I am heading to the trout stream (we all have our church and the Apostles were fisherman weren't they?) I see the old people mostly and some younger folks and very young folks walking through the churchyard (graveyard to us city people) to access the entrance to the church. I find this very interesting.

I've been thinking about this for sometime. My grandmother died back in June. When we buried her it was not immediately outside the gorgeously aging Catholic church in Saint Paul, it was in some sprawling suburban "cemetery" (we don't like to say "graveyard" anymore because that implies death) that seemed to have more in common with a high fee, early tee-time golf course. It was immaculate. It was almost too pretty to mar by digging a hole and plopping a body into it. I don't think anyone visits here aside from a handful of the tragically lonely. As Frost says, "What is it men are shrinking from?" Yes, this is a massive misinterpretation but it works in this context. And, I think Frost's sharp farmer's mind would get my meaning. Anyway, we seem to be minimizing things: just as we put the old people in the old folk's home we put the dead people in the "cemetery" away from everything else, including the church. I think we have gotten to the point that when it comes to faith we don't want to be reminded of our mortality. Well, we are reaching for Heaven, aren't we?

I admit, I have a thing for Rick Steves' Europe Through The Backdoor. All the episodes are loaded up on Hulu and I sometimes watch the versions set in England and Ireland, and the Mediterranean episodes for obvious reasons in the winter. Last December, just before Christmas I watched the "Christmas Special" and was quite taken by the English children bouncing through the really, really ancient churchyard and all it's mossifying gravestones as though it were perfectly natural. Well, it should be. American children would likely be freaked out by the macabre scene, the church would be sued by "concerned" parents, so that years of therapy could be financed to help these poor deathless youths get the very visions of death and decay out of their drooling little brains. Did I mention that I am a teacher? Regardless, we have taken to heart, whether we know it or not, the materialistic city poet Frank O'Hara's line to it's most extreme, "No more dying." Such thinking, after all, has given us Joan Rivers.

I think this is one more thing that is dying (I'm using this word in all seriousness). The churchyard. That connection to our past, loved ones, and for those that believe, our faith. It's a trinity of sorts and the connection is that we will all be united again (hopefully) when we do rise from the grave on Judgement Day (that's the way it supposedly happens, check Revelations, we don't die and go immediately up or down like some like to believe. We Rest In Peace first.) and meet our maker, to use a horribly cliched phrase. Forgive me.

Alas, to bed. There is fishing in the morning. I know no matter how big the brookies I catch are it is as Thomas Gray writes, "The paths of glory lead but to the grave."