Home away from home

 

I find myself in Southern Indiana on a regular enough occasion that a few years ago, I started to line up site visits over the course of a few days and then use a cabin rental agency in little Nashville for lodging. Nashville is about perfect for this. Its midway between I-65 and I-69 and US 37 which act like giant spokes to get me to most of the south half of the state. And it’s far enough away that I can make stops on the way down and get there before dark, or, when pressed, leave at the end of the work day and get there before it’s too late. I’ve stayed in about 10 different legitimate log cabins, most pretty secluded, some very old and others fairly new. I have my favorite, which I’ve stayed in about a dozen times, at the foot of a few hills and perched between two creeks. It has a massive Civil War-era fireplace, and any time I walk in the door, it feels like I’m coming back to my second home.

“lil’ Nashville” as it’s called, has held a special place in my heart for a long time, stretching way back into my junior high days of the 1980s. My grandparents had season tickets to IU basketball games and we’d often land for supper or lunch in Nashville. My folks also enjoyed going to this little burg in Brown County, and took us often to stay, eat, and shop. It stretches back in my mind more than any other location in Indiana apart from my string of hometowns in Marshall County, so with an increase in work in the region, I try to land in my second home as much as possible. It’s frequent enough that the wait staff at one restaurant know my drink order, which is made special for me.

It was an honor to work on the town’s National Register district. This followed a state byway project that ran through town and down Highway 135 to US 50. It was great to learn about the history of the town, its arts and cultural connections, and its folky architecture that’s pretty unique in Indiana. This brings me back to log cabins. I’ve always wanted to live in one, or at least have one as a second home. Maybe it’s the feeling of nostalgia, false or real, or the smell of timbers, or the feeling of being surrounded by solid wood-I don’t know. But I have a real connection to cabins as a building type. This is probably why I spied a log church on the north edge of Nashville a few years ago while working on their scenic byway. My intern convinced me to pull over one weekday during a visit one summer. As we looked around the outside, another gentleman pulled up and asked if we were a contractor that was supposed to meet him there. We explained to, I think the pastor, that we were not and that we were just curious. So he gave us a tour of the building.

The building was constructed as St. Anne’s Catholic Church in 1945. It’s a simple building with a few details that identify it as a church, like the apse in the north end, and a niche for statuary in the stone chimney on the front of the building. Inside, it has a low-pitched but open heavy timber frame and simple stained glass windows that cast pastel light in the dark sanctuary. A few years ago, the building sold to a Presbyterian congregation who renamed it Brown County Presbyterian Fellowship.

If log construction seems like an odd choice for a church in the 1940s, you’re right. Except in Nashville. The town, terribly rural into the early 1900s, is surrounded by hills dotted with old log structures from the 1800s. Then the first wave of artisans came, and with them, the first wave of rustic rebirth. Then when the state park was created, a second wave of rustic style cabins began to populate the hills and vales of Brown County. Then by the early 1940s, the architectural language of Nashville shifted to rustic revival embrace in a big way which included live-edge scabbed siding, brownstone rubble walls, log and heavy timbers, all with an eye to the rural romantic.

So, the Catholic congregation that conceived the log church were in keeping with newfound appreciation for the folk craft of building cabins. These 75 plus years later affirm that it was a solid idea. I’m in Nashville enough on weekends that last year, while on a work trip with my nephew who was providing me with drone footage of a few of my bridge projects, I suggested that we visit the now-Presbyterian Church. He grew up in an evangelical church, like me, and wasn’t sure why we wouldn’t be sleeping in on a Sunday if it wasn’t “our” church. But he humored me, and we made plans to leave our cabin to get to the church cabin in time for services.

We pulled in, walked up the sloped drive to the front entry, and within 10 seconds were recognized as guests. Presbyterian churches, like many outside of evangelical circles, require diligence in following the service, so we picked up programs to guide us through and sat down, after a number of handshakes, near the front. A classically-trained pianist was quietly playing in the raised platform located in the apse. The wood pews matched the rest of the log cabin surroundings, and everything creaked in a way to make one feel welcome. A family of people who appeared to have some handle on Presbyterian ways came in and sat in front of us, and introduced themselves. This was important because with all the sitting and standing, and congregational response, I told my nephew to follow what the guy in front did. During introductions, the speaker recognized us as guests and then asked if we wanted to share our names, or remain anonymous. I spoke up and suggested anonymous sounded ominous, so I introduced my nephew and myself, and said we were in Nashville for work.

That Sunday happened to be Christ the King Sunday and the pastor, a stand-in who grew up in the church, mentioned that she had a problem with the idea of the observance, because Christ wouldn’t want to be thought of as King. But then she shared the history, which was the result of an edict by the pope during the 1930s as fascism began to break out throughout Europe. Christ the King was to remind us all that our hope was not in politics, that our allegiance was not to a man, or country. And all of a sudden, this observance was as timely today as it was in Hitler’s Europe.

We missed our cue to sit down when the pianist started his postlude of Bach, I believe. We quickly caught up with the rest of the church. The small congregation was welcoming, and we both received coffee mugs as gifts with an encouragement to come back. I assured them I would when visiting again on weekends. It felt like home. But then, shouldn’t most churches?

But, it was during the singing of the doxology that emotions swept over me. I grew up in a large charismatic church, of a few thousand, with a venerable, commanding pastor more gifted in the gospel than anyone I’ve known. But, for all the non-liturgical leanings of this megachurch, there was one piece of liturgy Pastor Sumrall insisted on, and it was singing the doxology as the close of every Sunday service. Imagine the old, leathery voice of a tv preacher belt out Praise God from whom all blessings flow….with a sustained “flow” in full vibrato. Imagine a few thousand people singing it. And now imagine a small congregation gathered in a cabin with wood pews where Praise God bounced off all the walls punctuated with soft stained glass. And my voice began to crack under the lump in my throat. And my eyes teared up just a little. I don’t think it was the emotionally-charged memories of every Sunday for 25-plus years of my formative young life. It was something deeper, and it was something I experienced before in other churches.

I think churches can stir emotions, particularly for those of us rooted in a faith, with an appreciation for those roots. My old family church in Bremen was contemplating demolition in favor of, essentially, a pole barn church and I was asked to walk through the grand brick building with a structural engineer and develop a report. A distant cousin walked me through the building, in which I attended nursery school and had been in a few times in my life. He pointed to the pew in which my great grandparents sat and then to the brick ledge on which my great grandad would place his cigar outside of the building to wait for him during service. He was a little less religious than my great grandmother who was a short determined German woman whose personality, and grit, towered over men twice her size. I soaked in those moments in the sanctuary, and in the end, the building was saved.

A few years ago I prepared a presentation in observance of the 75^th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. My great uncle, my grandma’s brother, died on Christmas Eve in the battle, having just turned 19 years old the month before. It was a moving presentation that I was able to give at the Culver church that the family had attended and at which his memorial service was held when his body was finally returned to the States. I had never been in the brown-brick church, so walking in, I half-anticipated some level of reflection. But I must admit, it nearly overwhelmed me. I sat in one old pew near the front and ran my hand over the wood end panel over which hundreds of hands had worn the finish down over the century. The light, diffused in colors of gold and green from stained glass that punctured the walls did the same to my soul that day as I thought about my family that wept in those same pews.

In the last year, our family began attending a high-gothic Brethren church in which my wife and I were married nearly 25 years ago. I remember the first Sunday or two, as we sang, a lump in my throat as the tall internally-lit white cross bejeweled by diamonds of stained glass would catch the corner of my gaze. I couldn’t help but to follow it up to the heights of the rafters. We’ve had a lot of hurt in our faith journey, yet the cross seemed to be holding it at bay-immovable, impenetrable.

Last year, I sat in a tiny Quaker meeting house outside of Salem that was built in 1814. A gentleman with us, a historian of the faith, had taken a seat near the front of the building and had grown quiet while the rest of us talked about the building. Then he said, I remember most vividly, “I can feel the Friends here.” Savor that for a moment. Over 200 years of living, loving, and dying. Of hoping through all life throws at us and in those moments of national upheaval. In this tiny building, in a valley of cornfields and forests. I can feel the Friends here.

We all live divided lives. Both politics, maybe mostly politics these days, and churches have divided us into smaller and smaller camps often locked into four walls and that was never the intent of a life of faith. No, we weren’t meant to be part of something larger, in communion with each other and in the spirit that should bind us together. Do we not feel better when we connect with those around us? Do we not feel whole when we join with others in sharing moments of joy or sadness? God intended for us to be whole, with Him and each other. We are the ones who deviated from the plan. I listened, and still listen to Garrison Keillor from time to time. He was addressing a small congregation and discussed how, even in tumultuous times, he could unify people in singing a few stanzas of America the Beautiful, or in joining everyone in singing Christmas hymns. People felt whole, with each other, as we were supposed to be.

For all the warmness of the Brown County Presbyterian congregation assembled that day, for all the beauty of the service, prelude and postlude, and the message about Christ the King Sunday, the most valuable lesson I learned that Sunday was one of a longing for wholeness with other people. I walked away thankful for a family of faith that knows no walls, despite their dovetail-notched beauty.

One day I hope to have a log cabin of my own. Nothing big, frankly, the smaller, the better. Whether that’s my day-in-day-out home, or a place I escape to in the hills of southern Indiana, or a small retreat or office workspace, it’s a goal of mine. I wonder sometimes if that’s not one of the first steps toward being a hermit. There are probably worse things to be.