"Twixt That Darkness And That Light"

I’ve gone to church nearly all my life. As a child, it seemed everyone went to church - except for my mother's father. All my friends went to church, mostly to my church, the Presbyterian (a hard word to spell) Church or to the Methodist Church just up the street. My family - grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins - went to the Presbyterian Church too.

We dressed up to go to church - the whole family. The boys wearing dress slacks and sport coats and ties, the church togs growing a bit tired by the time they passed along through the three older boys. Paul escaped the hand-me-downs for styles had changed and he could get away with a nice shirt and slacks.

My dad had two suits - a winter suit of wool and a summer suit, likely of some kind of synthetic fabric like Dacron. And we girls - my mother and I - wore dresses and hats and gloves. In winter, I wore tights under my full skirts and in summer those nylon ankle socks with ruffles at the top and patent leather shoes.

I first remember Dr. Todd standing behind that oak pulpit, tall and gruff.  His wife, with her rouged cheeks, substituted the word Hades for Hell in the Apostles’ Creed week after week. 

Rev. Loughborough was the one whose singsong voice almost of lulled me to nap, sitting in the Heimel pew between my grandparents, Aunt Betty slipping me  lifesaver from time to time. Grandma didn’t nag at me for squirming like my mother did, who cautioned me with a little pat on my thigh or even a little pinch.

Rev. Baker, with his perky wife and pesky children, came next. He didn’t stay very long, but long enough to put his signature on the Holy Bible I received after completing third grade Sunday School.

And then came The Reverend Robert B. Merten, bringing liberal thought as he delivered his sermon each week and, after hours, opening the staid manse to a whole generation of Coudersport youth.

His ministry was unorthodox and reached far beyond the four walls of the Presbyterian Church. He was a controversial and outspoken figure - both within the church and the community. He questioned the place of the traditional baccalaureate observance in the local high school and even the branding of Potter County as God’s Country. His letters to the editor, addressing one or another of the social ills, appeared frequently in the local paper.

I’ve been thinking often of The Reverend these days, these days when I feel my faith in God shaken. These days just before Christmas when that man, that wretch of a human being who is President of The United States, stands up front of a jungle of greenery and faux gold ornaments, the lies tumbling from his crooked lips. These days when it seems as if saying God Bless gives permission to do profoundly ungodly things.

It was at another time of deep unrest in our country - the Vietnam War era and Nixon's disgrace - that The Reverend one Sunday sat down at the organ and played a tune known as Ebenezer to begin his weekly sermon, carefully and deliberately charging us to hear and absorb, line by line, the words of this hymn "Once To Every Man and Nation."

I've never forgotten that sermon and I believe James Russell Lowell's words have much to say to us today:

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,

in the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;

Some great cause, some great decision, off’ring each the bloom or blight,

and the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light.

I think I'll request this hymn for the next Hymn Sing and ask Chris to pull out all the stops!

Here is the full text to Lowell's poem.