The Story of our Church's Motto
Note: In the post below, I'm using the term "motto" exactly as I would "wall hanging" in cases when the wall hanging has important or memorable words on it. It's how I heard the word used as I was growing up, but I'm aware that it might not be quite a standard use of the word. Let me know if you can tell me whether others besides Pennsylvania German language speakers use the term in this way.
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About a week ago I embarked on a quest to learn the history of the well-crafted wall hanging at the front of our church. It's an engraved wooden motto about four feet wide and a foot high. Vines, berries, and flowers twine colorfully around the upper "shoulders," and the first line of text curves up and over a short horizontal chain of larger blue flowers and leaves. It's framed by darker wood stain outside a darker-still etched line around the perimeter. The motto contains the words of Psalm 91:1 & 2 which reads like this: "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in Him will I trust."
The letters are actually formed against a natural-wood varnished background in the decorative Fraktur script using the following letters:
91:1 Wer unter dem Schirm des Höchsten sitzt und unter dem Schatten des Allmächtigen bleibt,
91:2 der spricht zu dem HERRN: Meine Zuversicht und meine Burg, mein Gott, auf den ich hoffe.
It's German, of course.
Last week at our Wednesday evening service, Judson S. from South Carolina spoke about the work at Fair Play Wilderness Boys' Camp, and it occurred to me before the service that he has a connection to our wall hanging that I wonder if he knows about. I couldn't quite put it together, but the connection was through his grandmother, whose name is Anna. I thought maybe Anna herself had talked to me about this wall hanging. That was all fairly nebulous in my mind and no one I talked to here could tell me what the connection was. What I knew was that Anna and her young son Marvin had spent an extended period of time in Kansas. She was from Ohio, but had first cousins here--the children of Noah Mast. When her husband became mentally ill and had to be hospitalized, she apparently relied for a short time on relatives who could provide some normal family experiences for her son. She spoke to me very warmly of the time she spent in Kansas.
Judson looked at the motto in the front of our church and said he remembers one much like it hanging in his grandmother's home. He didn't know where it had come from.
As I recalled it, she gave the motto in our church to the Kansas people as a token of friendship and appreciation. My father, however, who usually remembers things like this, said he thinks Raymond Wagler--not Anna--gave the motto to the church. He also remembered that Anna and Marvin had worked for and lived at Raymond Waglers during part of the time they stayed in Kansas.
The more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Raymond Wagler had purchased at least two mottoes. One had been given to the church and the other had been given to Anna while she was here. Raymond's daughter Ruth did not know about Anna's connection with our church's motto, but she thought too that her dad had given the motto to the church. She very faintly remembered Marvin and Anna having lived in Kansas. She thought they had gone back and forth by the week between Raymond's place and Fannie's parents' place, Noah Masts.
Yesterday I received an email from Marvin in which he cleared up the mystery of Anna's connection to our motto. Raymond Wagler and his wife Fannie, who was Anna's cousin, had given a motto to Anna for Christmas when they were in Kansas in 1954. Marvin says her motto has Psalm 37:4. "Delight thyself also in the Lord and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart." It, too has the German Farktur script, and the way Marvin describes it is very similar to how I would describe the one in our church.
The memory took a while to float to the surface, but I believe I saw Anna's motto hanging in her home in the 1970s when I lived in Ohio while teaching school there. I don't remember why I was in her home or whether she or I first started talking about the motto, but my information could only have come from her, given the fact that no one around here seems to know anything about her having had it. I have a mental picture of her sitting in a chair in the corner of a small room (in a trailer perhaps?) with the motto on a section of wall to her right. The motto took up most of the width of the wall--perhaps adjacent to an opening from the living room to other parts of the house.
Marvin says further that on the Christmas when His mother received the motto, he got an air rifle from Fred and Katie Mast. He also says "1954 was one of the richest years of my childhood memories." Another vivid memory is the first time he saw fireworks--from the roof of Fred Mast's chicken house.
To my knowledge, Anna's husband never recovered enough from his illness to be restored to his family. I'm glad that in that hard time Anna and Marvin found a refuge here briefly among relatives and friends.
When Judson was here, he talked about another kind of refuge in a wilderness setting for troubled young men. He is the director of the "refuge" at Fair Play. With his coming here to speak, the strong cords of friendship, generosity, and service which threaded their way from Kansas to Ohio to South Carolina looped back to Kansas again--taking over 58 years to make the circle. Two similar lovely German wall hangings remind us and the Schrocks of how we're all linked together in this work of extending a helping hand to those who need it.
Raymond Wagler and his wife Fannie and Fred Mast and his wife Katie are all gone now, but today I celebrate who they were and what they did in 1954. Yesterday was Anna's 91st birthday, and her mind has begun to fail, but I celebrate her too for living with courage in difficult circumstances and passing on to her son and his family a legacy of faith.
**********************
About a week ago I embarked on a quest to learn the history of the well-crafted wall hanging at the front of our church. It's an engraved wooden motto about four feet wide and a foot high. Vines, berries, and flowers twine colorfully around the upper "shoulders," and the first line of text curves up and over a short horizontal chain of larger blue flowers and leaves. It's framed by darker wood stain outside a darker-still etched line around the perimeter. The motto contains the words of Psalm 91:1 & 2 which reads like this: "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in Him will I trust."
The letters are actually formed against a natural-wood varnished background in the decorative Fraktur script using the following letters:
91:1 Wer unter dem Schirm des Höchsten sitzt und unter dem Schatten des Allmächtigen bleibt,
91:2 der spricht zu dem HERRN: Meine Zuversicht und meine Burg, mein Gott, auf den ich hoffe.
It's German, of course.
Last week at our Wednesday evening service, Judson S. from South Carolina spoke about the work at Fair Play Wilderness Boys' Camp, and it occurred to me before the service that he has a connection to our wall hanging that I wonder if he knows about. I couldn't quite put it together, but the connection was through his grandmother, whose name is Anna. I thought maybe Anna herself had talked to me about this wall hanging. That was all fairly nebulous in my mind and no one I talked to here could tell me what the connection was. What I knew was that Anna and her young son Marvin had spent an extended period of time in Kansas. She was from Ohio, but had first cousins here--the children of Noah Mast. When her husband became mentally ill and had to be hospitalized, she apparently relied for a short time on relatives who could provide some normal family experiences for her son. She spoke to me very warmly of the time she spent in Kansas.
Judson looked at the motto in the front of our church and said he remembers one much like it hanging in his grandmother's home. He didn't know where it had come from.
As I recalled it, she gave the motto in our church to the Kansas people as a token of friendship and appreciation. My father, however, who usually remembers things like this, said he thinks Raymond Wagler--not Anna--gave the motto to the church. He also remembered that Anna and Marvin had worked for and lived at Raymond Waglers during part of the time they stayed in Kansas.
The more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Raymond Wagler had purchased at least two mottoes. One had been given to the church and the other had been given to Anna while she was here. Raymond's daughter Ruth did not know about Anna's connection with our church's motto, but she thought too that her dad had given the motto to the church. She very faintly remembered Marvin and Anna having lived in Kansas. She thought they had gone back and forth by the week between Raymond's place and Fannie's parents' place, Noah Masts.
Yesterday I received an email from Marvin in which he cleared up the mystery of Anna's connection to our motto. Raymond Wagler and his wife Fannie, who was Anna's cousin, had given a motto to Anna for Christmas when they were in Kansas in 1954. Marvin says her motto has Psalm 37:4. "Delight thyself also in the Lord and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart." It, too has the German Farktur script, and the way Marvin describes it is very similar to how I would describe the one in our church.
The memory took a while to float to the surface, but I believe I saw Anna's motto hanging in her home in the 1970s when I lived in Ohio while teaching school there. I don't remember why I was in her home or whether she or I first started talking about the motto, but my information could only have come from her, given the fact that no one around here seems to know anything about her having had it. I have a mental picture of her sitting in a chair in the corner of a small room (in a trailer perhaps?) with the motto on a section of wall to her right. The motto took up most of the width of the wall--perhaps adjacent to an opening from the living room to other parts of the house.
Marvin says further that on the Christmas when His mother received the motto, he got an air rifle from Fred and Katie Mast. He also says "1954 was one of the richest years of my childhood memories." Another vivid memory is the first time he saw fireworks--from the roof of Fred Mast's chicken house.
To my knowledge, Anna's husband never recovered enough from his illness to be restored to his family. I'm glad that in that hard time Anna and Marvin found a refuge here briefly among relatives and friends.
When Judson was here, he talked about another kind of refuge in a wilderness setting for troubled young men. He is the director of the "refuge" at Fair Play. With his coming here to speak, the strong cords of friendship, generosity, and service which threaded their way from Kansas to Ohio to South Carolina looped back to Kansas again--taking over 58 years to make the circle. Two similar lovely German wall hangings remind us and the Schrocks of how we're all linked together in this work of extending a helping hand to those who need it.
Raymond Wagler and his wife Fannie and Fred Mast and his wife Katie are all gone now, but today I celebrate who they were and what they did in 1954. Yesterday was Anna's 91st birthday, and her mind has begun to fail, but I celebrate her too for living with courage in difficult circumstances and passing on to her son and his family a legacy of faith.
posted by Mrs. I (Miriam Iwashige) at
8:38 PM
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