Meek and Mild (16 page)

“Shall I take you up to the house?” Andrew said.

She shook her head. “I’ll walk.”

He squeezed her hands as he helped her out of the buggy, wishing he didn’t have to let go.

Josiah was the most studious child Clara knew. Morning and evening, he leaned forward over his knees, back flat and straight, as if he feared if he sat with his shoulders against the chair he would miss the key word that unfurled the meaning of the Bible passages their father read in somber tones. Though he was a well-trained Amish child, Clara sometimes wondered if her brother—
half brother
, Rhoda would point out—couldn’t wiggle at least a little and still be within the confines of worshipful manners. On more than one occasion, Josiah voiced his intention to learn to read the German Bible, and Clara had no doubt Josiah would become fluent in High German. Already he was a good reader in the English he learned at school, and Rhoda made sure her son was also learning to read Pennsylvania Dutch.

Clara’s little sisters were another matter. Mari was too young to judge yet what kind of student she would be, but Hannah’s lithe form embodied enough wiggles for all of Rhoda’s children. It had from the day she mastered rolling onto her back and giggling in triumph at her success. Now, at six, Hannah had mastered sitting still during family devotions, but Clara suspected the intense focus required to accomplish this feat precluded absorbing any spiritual meaning from the words Hiram read.

The Bible should be more interesting to children.

Clara realized she was not listening any more than Hannah was. Hiram had never been one to consider what his children would be interested in. Even when Clara was the only other family member to hear his twice-daily readings, Hiram chose passages of interest to his personal Bible study. Clara, and then Rhoda, and the other children, were only listening in. Generally Hiram offered little in the way of explanation, preferring instead to observe a few minutes of quiet reflection.

Clara knew what went through her mind during these silences when she was a little girl, so imagining what Hannah and Mari were thinking did not require serious effort.

Like all boys, Josiah might someday be called upon to serve as a minister, or even a bishop, in the congregation. Perhaps this motivated his serious nature. The girls, on the other hand, could be sure they would never stand before a congregation and look into expectant faces awaiting God’s message to come through their words.

That shouldn’t matter
, Clara thought as her father closed the Bible and announced the time of reflection. Were not the girls called to a life of faithfulness just as the boys were? Was it not reasonable that they should learn to love the Bible even as little children? To look forward to its stories and themes and exhortations?

Sadie loved Bible stories. She treasured them. Resentment burned through Clara in that moment of watching her sisters labor to control their wandering eyes and maintain appropriately dour angles in their faces.

Maybe Sadie was right. Maybe Clara should visit a Sunday school class in the Maryland congregation.

B
ishop Yoder’s words on Sunday stunned Clara. She moistened her lips and tucked her tongue into one corner of her mouth as she concentrated, forcing herself to listen carefully. Her mind fell back on the tricks she had employed as a schoolgirl and mentally repeated each phrase.

Streng meidung
. Strong shunning.

“It is my thinking,” Bishop Yoder said, “that the ban and shunning were instituted by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and His holy apostles. I recognize them as a teaching that shall not be changed by man. Already many have done much to reduce shunning far below the status given it by Jesus and His apostles.”

The bishop paused and looked intently into the congregation. Clara couldn’t resist looking across the aisle to the men, wishing she could know what Andrew was thinking—or her own father.

“Jesus’ teaching is more enduring than heaven and earth.” Reinvigorated, Bishop Yoder resumed. “In Matthew chapter eighteen and verse seventeen, we read that Jesus said, ‘Let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.’ How long shall the transgressor be so regarded? Till he comes to the place of which the Son of God spoke to his disciples in Matthew eighteen and three: ‘Verily, I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ ”

Although the room was not overly warm, perspiration seeped out of the pores along Clara’s hairline. Tension thickened the rows of women around her. A couple of small children whimpered, but their mothers made no move to soothe them, instead keeping their eyes fixed on the bishop. This was not a sermon the Lord had laid on the bishop’s heart that morning when he was selected—again—to preach. This was a sermon he had aimed at for months—or years.

“I believe also,” he said, “that those who have in regular order been placed into the ban should be shunned, even if they join another church, so that they may indeed repent, regret, and sorrow with humble hearts and become reconciled with the church from which he or she left or was separated from. Paul wrote in 2 Thessalonians in the third chapter and the sixth verse, ‘Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us.’ ”

A rustle rose from the congregation, and Clara realized her own movements contributed. Bishop Yoder spoke over the disturbance.

“If we speak loosely about the ban and shunning, as we have done, we give a testimony that our principles can be violated in this part of Paul’s teaching. But when it is received in the right way before God, so that the transgressor can be brought from death to life, the one who brings the transgressor out of darkness into light is worthy of honor.”

Worthy of honor?
Martha and Atlee. Fannie and her brothers. Elam and Sadie. Could Bishop Yoder truly be convinced that Clara would find honor in turning her back on her family simply because they had joined another branch of the Amish almost thirty years ago? Could he be serious in his expectation that shunning in this manner would woo any of the Marylanders back to the Old Order?

Clara’s spirit rebelled. Because the vote in 1895 had been unanimous, even when the truth emerged ten years later that Bishop Yoder had pressed his own feelings upon the congregation, the vote could not easily be reversed.

And if anyone was inclined to suggest a new vote, Bishop Yoder seemed intent to prevent open discussion.

Clara swallowed hard.

Andrew cringed. Bishop Yoder’s sermon sucked the air out of the room. He was asking for trouble in the congregation, and Andrew suspected that this time he was going to get it.

The bishop held his heavy Bible in front of him at the plain, unvarnished preaching table made of poplar wood. “We must heed the words of Paul in Romans, chapter sixteen, verse seventeen: ‘Mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them.’ This is now our insight on how the ban and shunning should be kept by all true disciples of Christ.”

The congregation was not likely to tolerate this strict stance set out in such nonnegotiable terms.
Who was causing the division now?
Andrew mused. Mose Beachy would preach a doctrine of peace. Was that not the doctrine the church had learned forty years earlier when the Maryland and Pennsylvania churches amicably chose slightly different paths to express their shared faith?

And the differences
were
slight.

In the ten years after the peaceable division, families and ministers had realigned gradually with the groups that most closely shared their convictions. Andrew had heard the stories from his own grandparents. The groups had enough in common to build meetinghouses together and continue to share them. When consciences settled, each congregation had ministers and members sufficient to flourish and live harmoniously along the roads that crisscrossed the state border.

Andrew felt his head shaking ever so slightly in dread of the dissension this sermon was sure to stir up.

Bishop Yoder ministered in the Maryland district in those days. No one thought less of him when he decided he belonged among the Old Order. He had done the right thing to follow his conscience. But for two decades, since being ordained bishop, he had preached sermons meant to convict his new congregation of their participation in the sin of their Maryland families.

He knows what he’s doing
, Andrew thought.
Only a fool would not see that he lacks support for this hard line
. Andrew chastised himself for characterizing his spiritual leader as a fool, though he did not temper his opinion that the congregation would resist Yoder’s indictment of their own consciences on this matter.

The sermon wound down. Stern faced, Bishop Yoder nodded toward his two sons, and one of them began a final grave hymn. Andrew drew in his breath and joined the singing, though he was certain that a hymn with twelve stanzas sung at a ponderous tempo would do nothing to quell the brewing disagreement.

At the final intonation of the benediction, Andrew turned to catch Clara’s eye. Her head tilted nearly imperceptibly toward the door, and when Andrew freed himself from the entrapment he felt on the bench where he sat, he followed her outside. By the time he reached her, huddles of conversation had formed across the grass in the clearing.

“Surely he is not serious,” Clara said. “Is he?”

“I’m afraid he is,” Andrew said, “but he has closed his eyes to the fallout.”

“But no one wants the sort of
meidung
he is preaching about.”

Andrew wished he could take her hand. “Everything will sort itself out.
Gottes wille
.”

Yonnie sidled toward Clara and Andrew. Clara’s face alternately paled and reddened, but her eyes never left Andrew’s face, and his were fixed on her.

They were standing too close together. It was improper.

With their gazes interlocked and strained, they wouldn’t notice Yonnie creeping closer one slow step at a time. He circled slightly so he would come up behind Clara. Andrew was less likely to object to Yonnie’s presence. If Clara saw him, her face would tighten as she clamped her mouth closed and stepped back. Yonnie could hear them now.