The Dwelling Place of Wonder. Harry L. Serio
in the refrigerator that she wanted to get rid of ended up in the sauce. Her daughters took to preparing dinner as an act of self-defense.
But it was never the food; it was how it was prepared and served—with love. Her table was always a welcoming place. Her table would forever be a place of memory.
The Lord’s table is a table of memory and of love and acceptance. We are drawn to that spiritual table because it is prepared for us and we are welcome there. All our hurts and sorrows are healed and we become whole.
In Robert Benton’s story, Places in the Heart, the cinematic version concludes with a communion service in a small Baptist church in rural Texas. Gathered before Christ’s table are friends and enemies, murderer and victim, black and white—life’s protagonists and antagonists all sharing the bread and cup and offering the possibility for spiritual unity in a time to come.
When the Spirit of Christ is present, every table is holy.
THE FARMER FROM SARATOV
Though he was born in Russia, my mother’s father, Lucas Wertz, was thoroughly German, a descendant of Catherine the Great’s peasant migration of 1763. His ancestors had come from southern Germany, brought by the empress from Anhalt who had hoped the industrious Germans would serve as an example to the indolent Russians that she ruled. Later tsars would relegate these so-called Volga-Germans to serf-like status, binding them to the Russian heartland to grow wheat on the great plains. The communists would nearly exterminate them.
Lucas possessed those Germanic qualities that have distinguished that noble race since the time when they had fought with Caesar in the forests of Gaul. He had a fierce pride in who he was. A tall, handsome man whose face and clear-framed glasses reminded people of Harry Truman, he enjoyed the acknowledged resemblance and took pride in this small link to American greatness. He had pursued the American dream and was content with its fulfillment.
I never heard the story of how he came to America. Perhaps he felt the early rumblings of revolution in Imperial Russia or saw liberty’s faint glow on another shore. I wish I could have asked him why he left, what stars he saw, what voices he heard; what consuming passion drives a man to leave one world for another? Perhaps the myth is better than the reality, and a fragment of memory more comforting than truth.
This farmer from Saratov came to Newark, New Jersey, not far from the gates of the new world at Ellis Island. He was content with a small framed house on a tree-shaded street in a German-speaking neighborhood, a family of three daughters, a son who served his country in the Navy and then struck gold in the postwar California real-estate market, and a good wife, also from Russia, who always had his dinner served at the required hour. His social life centered around his church where he served in the honored position as Elder and as president of the church’s Board of Trustees. He also had other gifts that were seldom spoken of.
The Pennsylvania Germans, who are of the same ethnic stock, believed that their braucherei, also known as “pow-wow doctors,” had, in addition to their gifts of healing, certain psychic abilities, especially precognition. The lore of the braucher, with its many spells and incantations, could be passed from one generation to the next, only by alternating gender. Thus, a father could teach a daughter, but not a son, to practice the braucher’s art. There also seems to be a transmission of certain arcane gifts that were acquired not through any verbal or observable methods, but simply by being in the presence of the person.
Perhaps one day it might be discovered that all our knowledge, personality, behavioral patterns—all that makes each of us truly unique—is not merely a formation of the brain, but resides in the spirit of the person. There is a mind beyond the brain. There is a way of knowing that goes beyond the empirical method, a “tertium organum” as Peter Ouspensky, the Russian esotericist, described it.
When you have established a strong relationship with someone, you begin to pick up clues that let you know what he is thinking or feeling. Some of this may be attributed to the art of discerning nearly imperceptible signs in body language, tone, or feelings, based on previous experience. Much might be explained by conventional behavioral science.
However, there are events in our lives when we seem to “know” something without the benefit of our senses—the extrasensory perception. Human history is replete with accounts of precognition, from Caesar’s dreams to the many psychic accounts surrounding the sinking of the Titanic to the tragedy of September 11, 2001, although in many cases the predictions were made after the fact.
Lucas Wertz never admitted to having psychic abilities. I doubt if he even knew the meaning of the word. However, there were several incidents that now cause me to believe that he had this sixth sense, and that some of his abilities were transmitted to his daughter, my mother.
We were living in a third-floor apartment on Monroe Street. Lucas loved to walk—a few miles was nothing to him compared to the great distances he must have walked in the region around Saratov. He often walked the mile or so to our place on a Saturday afternoon.
On this particular Saturday he arrived late. He was baby-sitting while my mother went out for the evening. My brother and I had already been put to bed, but we were not yet asleep. I had a double bed to myself and my two-year-old brother, George, was in his crib in the corner. Mom was in the kitchen putting on her finishing touches. Lucas was having a cup of coffee.
In the middle of their conversation, with no explanation whatsoever, Lucas stood up and calmly walked into the bedroom, picked up George from the crib and carried him into the kitchen. No sooner had they left the room there was a crack and a loud crashing thud. The bedroom was suddenly filled with plaster dust. I was covered in gypsum flakes and white powder and emerged from the covers coughing through the dust.
Mom and Lucas rushed into the room and brought me out before any more damage ensued. They saw that the plaster in the ceiling had come loose and fell in the corner of the room over George’s crib. Had not Lucas picked him up, he would have been crushed. Covered in dust by the side of the bed was my Little Golden Book and its story of Chicken Little.
Lucas seemed to know things that struck me as unusual, though he never talked about his own personal faith. There was always a special connection between us. During his last illness as he lay dying of stomach cancer, he was appreciative of my visits, but embarrassed by his loss of dignity. Our conversations were superficial, but behind the words was a strong bond. The night Lucas died, I had been working on a project at the Boy’s Club. I was using a band saw to cut a piece of wood, being extremely careful with this tool. In the midst of my concentration I felt as if someone was standing alongside of me, and a chill came over me. It was enough of a distraction to cause me to nick my finger with the blade of the saw. The sight of the sudden loss of blood was enough to bring on an ebbing of consciousness through which Lucas’ presence became very strong. After my wound was bound, I walked the long mile home anxious for my mother’s healing words and some rest.
The apartment was empty. Rose came up from her first floor apartment and told me that Lucas had died and that Mom had gone to Marne Street. I sat at the kitchen table and waited, staring in silence at the spot where Lucas often had his cup of coffee. A few hours later, Mom came home and told me that her father had died. It was precisely the time I had felt his presence at the Boy’s Club. To this day, whenever I look at the scar on my ring finger, I remember Lucas and wish that he had chosen a better time to make his final appearance.
Lucas’ wisdom was more mechanical than it was intellectual. When Uncle Richie returned from the Navy, he and Lucas decided to go into the tool and die business. They constructed a small three-room factory in the backyard. It seemed that everything in the city was done in miniature. There just wasn’t enough room. But the tool and die shop appeared big at the time, and I helped build it, though I was only seven years old.
In those days, with memories of the Great Depression less than a decade old, one made do with what one had or could obtain for free. Richie kept his eye open for used building materials. When an old factory was torn down in another part of the city, he and Lucas and I got into his old Ford pickup and went for the bricks. The shop went up in one summer.
Dreams do not die; they evolve into something