Two Basses and a Contralto Went Singing Past a Churchyard...

Photo by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, November 24, 2023

It is said that the most dangerous question in the universe is "Why?"

I get it now -- you can get snatched up and sent back 200 years to find answers, provided the producer is a particular bass-voiced favorite musician in the spirit who has gone and gotten another favorite bass in the spirit -- still in the top 5 -- to help him out!

Brahms's "In Der Kirchhofe" kept haunting me from last week, not least because we are deep into autumn now in San Francisco and cannot buy a rainstorm as evocative as the one in the song. Not that I am complaining, because a lack of heavy storms means we get to continue to have trees in their golden glory...

Photo by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, November 27, 2023

... but anyway, the chords in the opening kept playing in my head at night, filling in for the storms that are not singing over me, but also, the deep, tender sadness of the voice of Kurt Möll (1938-2017) as he describes what his character sees in the churchyard ... many hours by many graves, with their wreaths faded, their crosses worn, and the words so worn by the weather one could not even make out the names ... kept haunting me.

Just about here, I realized I had made some perhaps ill-considered remarks in November about a certain ghost not being particular good at haunting folks, Dickens-style ... ill-considered because I had forgotten how music can get stuck in one's head ... he did not need to be a Dickens-style ghost, given those powers ... just out there biding his time arriving here and enjoying every minute of this triumph with that comic laugh he showed off as Osmin, many decades ago ...

No one ever expects a basso profundo earworm, Frau Mathews. Mwahahahahaha!

As you saw last week, the way I worked out what is happening in "In Der Kirchhofe" was that it had to be the new rector of the local Lutheran church out there in the yard, with perhaps a touch of Moravian in his thinking, given German history ... Moravian graves are made with no distinguishing mark of rank or importance or class, and in the end of the song, the man who had worked on the graves realizes there is no mark of any importance because those things are not important: what mattered with the blessedness of the faithful, for they were far beyond all storms, recovered, healthy, in the everlasting light and love above. Brahms's music leaves no doubt that this is also the correct conclusion.

But then I had to stop and think some more -- Brahms passed away in 1897, and there were no antibiotics then if you went out and caught pneumonia for the sake of the living in this earth. Life was hard in the 19th century to get things done for the living ... and in order for the graves in question to have come to the condition they had, they had been neglected for a very long time.

So, why, on some stormy day in spring or autumn (not winter in Germany, because it would likely have been snowing), did somebody decide to risk catching their death for the sake of the dearly departed no longer dear to anyone else on earth? Even a historical researcher might have stopped after a few graves -- messy day, clearly no possibility of getting any more information, so why not wait? Why see all the graves in that storm?

Why?

Every night, that music kept playing in my head of the first half of that song, and Herr Möll kept singing to me in my head that someone had done it ... someone had obviously cared that much and someone else had imagined caring that much... some poet had cared that much, Brahms had cared that much, and Herr Möll had cared enough to sing it with deep feeling, his opening capturing the energy of a man who had contended with that storm head on, and his later lines in the first half conveying the sorrow of what he found ... it begins at 19:57, and is one of the shortest but also the most stunning performances in the collection of ten...

Fiction does require one to suspend disbelief -- but if one suspends disbelief that someone would brave a storm to clean up graves, then one is left with "But WHY?" The obvious answer is that the situation has to occur in order to get to the moral of the song: the dead in Christ -- it is a churchyard, after all -- are safe and at peace in His presence, which is a specific corollary to Brahms's tendency to consider death as the passage to everlasting peace and love in this way across a lot of his repertoire.

But why this situation? Why does the man in the song have to look at all the graves? What possesses him to spend that kind of time, and why? Why?

I had a feeling there was a connection in all this ... the thought I had last week about first natural principles making the testimony that there was indeed a God Who cared about His Creation extended all the way down to the creation of music. The German lieder and the Negro Spiritual testify to the same thing, and I have spent enough time studying Lutheranism to know the importance of vocation as another testimony -- of working with life's many gifts in common grace in light of special grace. From Beethoven while still a child, I learned about working with Creation in all its moods ... the opening arpeggios of Brahms's song echo the opening of the first movement of Beethoven's equally evocative "Tempest" piano sonata, in which one can hear the storm working its way through the streets of Vienna.

So, all these thoughts kept sweeping through, in Brahms's chords, in that voice repeatedly proclaiming that someone had included in their vocation the care of graves, even in a storm, and the question kept coming ... until I remembered I had been told: if there were a question from Germany's side of the line in art, there was a good possibility that I had been given the question to answer it from my side in art ...

"The thing needs a prequel, and some Negro Spirituals in there," I thought one night before going to sleep, only to be answered the instant I crossed over to dreamland...

"Your wish, my command, Frau Mathews -- sleep well while I handle costumes, the set, and get the cast together, and get this Q-Inspired time machine running again -- you figure that a man who could get Wagner and personal computing together in his imagination in 1988 enjoys this kind of technological challenge!"

It's a good thing I'm single. Probably would have scared a husband, guffawing in my sleep like I did just then.

I woke up in the autumn of 1823, somewhere in Germany, under the light of a spectacular dawn with reddish hues on the horizon --

Photo by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, December 1, 2023

It was stunningly lovely, and I would have been much slowed down in getting into my costume (stunningly made to look like period attire for the peasant woman I was playing), but I was warned by the intoning of a rhyme I had learned in childhood, intoned by a voice that at its double-deep gravity quite resembled distant thunder.

"Red sky at night, sailor's delight.
Red sky at morning, sailor take warning."

The light from the east was shining fantastically on a squall line -- a whole line of thunderstorms on approach!

"Go to the kitchen, then take all that you find and go to the rectory. Go quickly, Fräulein Matthaus. The rest you will find out as you are going."

In my back yard, I still had my apple tree in golden leaf, and with it a great walnut tree. Both had been picked that morning, and two sacks each of apples and walnuts put into a wheelbarrow for me to carry out. I caught my reflection also -- and was stunned -- I was half my age, again 21!

A woolen cloak fell onto my shoulders as I considered these things, and big boots appeared for me to put on.

"Schnell, Fräulein Matthaus! Schnell!"

A gust of wind scattered half the leaves from my tree in a shower of gold -- the storm was nearly at my position. So, I did as I was told and headed out for the rectory, a mile in the distance, as the sky grew bright and then dark as the leading clouds reached the rising sun and blotted it out. There were no street lamps in this place in 1823; if one had not known the road, or started in time, and then got caught in a blinding rain, a mere mile -- a distance I would laugh about walking in modern San Francisco on an average day -- could prove deadly.

"Schnell, Fräulein Matthaus! Schnell!"

So I went, singing as I went to encourage myself, changing keys as I went to brighten things up in my mind as the sky turned black above me and that wheelbarrow seemed to get heavier and heavier ...

"Climbin' a high mountain, tryna get home!
Climbin' a high mountain, tryna get home!
Climbin' a high mountain, climbin' a high mountain,
Climbin' a high mountain, tryna get home!

I made it to the back of the rectory as the first big raindrops started! The rector's wife opened the door and pulled me into the house and embraced me before we together turned around and pulled the wheelbarrow in.

"Ach, Fraulein Matthaus! Du hast dein Versprechen gehalten – bei diesem Wetter!"

Apparently, I had kept my promise despite the weather, having been dropped into the middle of the story -- apparently in the prequel to the prequel, I had promised the rectory the abundance from my trees, and there was a reason for it -- auf Englisch, though, owing to the wonder of Q-Inspired immediate translation services!

Frau Kantor was the name of the rector's wife, and she looked very like the middle-aged version of a young lady in a particular photograph being kissed in front of a particular house in Munich purchased by a particular cantor -- er, singer -- in an interview I once saw. I suppose to his mind, she was the leading lady everywhere ...

"Today is the day we finish preparing our distribution of medicine and food to the sick tomorrow. I pray God He still this storm before dark, because there are still people who have pledged -- but that is in God's hands. Come -- it is too drafty here in the pantry."

From the kitchen, I could see the rectory was quite old and had been just recently been made fit to live in again -- if it was 1823, the rectory had been built much earlier, because the mark that someone -- someone very tall by the standards of the day -- had done their best to remove the dullness of age but had missed a spot here and there was obvious. Not for lack of trying, but there was so much that had needed to be done ... the roof had new portions, the floor had no carpet and so showed where water had worn it for many years.

Through the window and still visible through the growing gloom, I could see a very old church ... a Gothic church on a small model.

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

It had received its Lutheran makeover, as denoted by the simple Biblical scenes with common people depicted in its stained glass windows, but even those were around 200 years old, and not much else had happened since ... except for a set of lamps that illumined the way to the entrance through the gloom ... AGAIN, the suggestion of a very large someone doing all he could was at hand, because the fixtures for those lamps were new, and took great strength to place in the old stone.

Not that Frau Kantor and I were small by the standards of that day either -- both of us for 1823 were plump, strong, Rubenesque giantesses. Despite the work she had all around her, Frau Cantor was healthy and happy, and apparently, so was I.

"I love you, young Fräulein Matthaus!" she said suddenly. "You are here every day helping us as the winter comes near, helping us help the people of this village recover from the latest war -- and given what you had to escape, I just weep when I think of the slavery your people are enduring -- but the fact that you freely offer so much love and work and music -- your songs are so wonderful -- they are near our own lieder for beauty and spirit and meaning -- I am learning English to know better, and the reverend is happy that I am paying attention now where I wasn't before because I thought English was boring, but I can't let him enjoy your singing in full all by himself, so I let him teach me now!"

She started laughing, and I joined her ... she was learning English for the same reason I in awake time studied German ... that connection of beauty and spirit between the music...

"Well, I am free now, and this is my new home and church," I said, "so, since I am free to serve the Lord, I don't mind the work!"

"I know that you love the Lord greatly," Frau Kantor said, "because it is hard to be a African woman in a foreign land and be stared at and poked fun of, and still keep singing and being a blessing. But you do it, and God has made you a home as He made for Ruth. I pray every other blessing you stand in need of find you, as it found Ruth."

She took my hand gently.

"You have a friend in me, young lady," she said.

"And you have a friend in me, Frau Kantor," I said, and we embraced each other.

"The reverend and I have had breakfast, but he told me that if you said you were coming, you would be here, and we thank you and have made you apple pancakes! He sliced the apples himself while I made the batter!"

Those pancakes were dreamy -- doubtless among the very best dream food I have ever eaten, and the coffee? European-strong without the headache I get from coffee at that strength in real life!

Meanwhile, that storm broke in all its fury -- lightning and thunder, with several strikes on the steeple of the church.

"We will have trouble with that," Frau Cantor said. "First of all, the minds of the people are not clear that God is greater than any bad omen, and second, we just got that thing to stop leaking."

"Has it been hard, with the reverend having just been appointed here?" I said.

"Oh, yes, in so many ways," he said. "You see, Fräulein Matthaus, there has been near-continuous war here -- we are on the border of two principalities and they had been warring until last year when, God be praised, two enlightened princes at last took power. But the 'new church' -- the newer building -- was a accidental casualty of the last battle."

She sighed heavily.

"The former rector was my father, and I am so glad he passed away and did not see that. He faithfully helped so many in his region to learn to trust God through the storms of life, and went to his reward happy that God had found a man to take up the charge ... a man whom I gladly married! Yet putting the old church and rectory back together again was what no one expected to have to do. But, without complaint, we do what we are called to do, all the way!"

And on cue, the new reverend's voice boomed throughout the rectory -- not so loud, but so richly sonorous and deep that it cut sweetly through a moment without thunder.

"Amen," he said.

"Storms never bother me, because I have his voice in my ears all the time," Frau Cantor said. "That voice is half the reason that so many people come to help us, although not at this time of day in general. Everybody knows about his voice in this region like everyone knows about yours! But this is not the hour of him singing while he works: he will now work on his sermon for some hours, and then all the rest that must be done will get done."

"In the meantime," I said, "what are we going to be doing today?"

"It is not so much ... the fresh food goes into the sacks today of dried herbs and food for the people we serve ... you did such good in bringing all those apples and walnuts before they got wet, so we do not have to dry them. I already have a great stew pot going for us and those who pass by, and the villagers who come by day by day to work, and also a pot of bone broth going for those in pain. I have already swept and dusted, and the reverend has mopped and laid in the wood we will need after lighting the lamps at the church. Together we can make short work of all the rest."

And we did ... the morning seemed to go by swiftly as we worked as friend with friend in good work ... I could see that many, many families would make it through another week because of the work, and that the villagers had great trust in the rector and his wife to do right by the stores of food that they had. In essence, the rectory pantry was the community food bank, and Frau Kantor was an efficient and effective administrator.

She also was a loving wife, and also greatly beloved, as evidenced by her immediate reaction to a tender word, so sweet and deep it cut through the noise of the storm as easily as through the walls of the rectory.

"Liebste."

"Enjoy some rest, Fräulein Matthaus -- I'll be back," she remembered to say as she turned around from being all the way out the door to answer her husband's call.

I sat down in the kitchen and listened to the rain and the distant voices of the Kantors ... I could not make out the words for the moment, but the tone suggested Frau Kantor had been surprised and was very gently remonstrating with her husband, whose double-deep voice remained even and gentle, but firm ... and the discussion ended with enough firmness for me to hear it and translate it back: "Es muss sein.

It must be. Whatever the rector had to do was a necessity, and at that point, Frau Kantor ceased to urge against it. Her tone was accepting, and supportive, but I saw her sigh as she returned to the kitchen. She filled a great stein with her bone broth for her husband, and I realized then that some errand called him out into the weather. She went and took him the broth, and returned and stuffed two huge rolls with sausage, sauerkraut, and pickled red onions before wrapping them and taking them to him. After she returned, I saw him for the first time -- a truly massive man by the standards of the day, at least six feet two, broad-shouldered and robust -- through the window, heading toward the rectory. He was wearing a heavy cloak and rain boots, but in that kind of storm, though the lightning and thunder had passed, one was going to get wet sooner or later.

Frau Kantor's face almost touched the windowpane, and it reflected a face of deep concern and love as she looked after her husband.

"It is the only day you have to do it," she said, "and you do not shrink from what the Spirit dictates for anything -- then may He keep you from injury and illness, my love, as you obey Him!"

Then she turned around and jumped, and then laughed.

"I'm sorry, Fräulein Matthaus -- I forgot you were here! I forgot to tell him you were here!"

"There will be time for that," I said gently. "I'd be worried too."

"He is always telling me that we are all immortal even to this earth until our work is done," she said. "I wish he would not test the theory so hard, but, he must be who has been called to be. This village lives better because I have learned every herb necessary to keep him healthy."

And she took a set of dried herbs left to the side from the ones we were putting into the sacks for the people and put one in the simmering bone broth before we resumed our work. We then had a wonderful lunch of stew with more red onions chopped freshly on top.

Kaffee und Kuchen -- what we in the United States consider the coffee break, but lovelier and more friendly in the afternoon -- came, and Frau Cantor made more coffee and took down spices to go in it for a change, and also produced some lovely cinnamon rolls. She also made a cup of coffee at double-strength in that same huge stein, and set it down by a slightly larger plate that she had set a whole little cake on ... and, as if on cue, the immense figure of the rector emerged from the gloom, walking against the wind. He soon appeared in the kitchen where I was, and I think you can guess who was in the role for the day!

"Guten Tag, Fräulein Matthaus," he boomed, and his goodwill bounced off the walls as his smile beamed it warmly. "Herzlich Willkommen in unserem Zuhause!"

"Vielen Dank, Herr Pfarrer Kantor," I said as I curtsied.

He had welcomed me to his and his wife's home; I had dug up all the appropriate honorifics, and his eyes twinkled.

"Ihr Deutsch wird immer besser -- your German continues to improve, young Fräulein Matthaus," he said.

I wanted to ask how in the world I was 21 again, but suspending disbelief is necessary for these things, and dream states are flexible on space and time...

Frau Kantor pressed the hot coffee into his hand, and he smiled.

"I am hardly cold -- I hardly feel it," he said, "and I will tell you both of why, while we eat -- and I must say, my wife, although sandwiches are so English in their make, those were both delightful."

"You have me learning the language, so you may as well get ready for the best of the food, too," she said, and he laughed, his huge bass voice merrily bouncing off the stone of the home.

He was indeed full of joy -- now he was so large that the room was warmer with him in it, what with those low 19th century roofs that his head almost touched, but it was not that ... his joy was perennial, and as he told the story behind "In Der Kirchhofe," that joy neared awe.

"It is truly a stormy day, and it is raining very hard -- I worked very hard among the graves today and cleared the overgrowth around them. It is actually easier to get weeds up when it is like this, so I was glad to do it -- but what saddened me at first is that I am too late coming here to have done much even with that. The wreaths and crosses are so old they can hardly be repaired, and the weather has so beat upon the stones that one can hardly read them at all.

"But then it occurred to me as I finished -- because as you both know, I don't ever start a thing without finishing it the best I can -- that all those in those graves are dead to this storm and all others. They are alive and well in the everlasting love and light above, healthy and recovered from all the trouble of the world ... and suddenly it was as though I could see that light, feel that warmth, and hear even the holy chords from there ... I felt such gladness and joy and such peace, even in the midst of that storm ... to have received such insight from above was worth all that labor."

His face shone with all that he described, and then he added, with a twinkle in his eyes, "I must find a poet to tell that story to, and maybe some young composer ... it won't make a good hymn, but someday, somebody who can really sing should sing it."

Frau Kantor and I both looked at him in shock, and fell out laughing at his huge grin afterward ... the soul of the man whose Osmin always stole the show still had that comic touch!

But I did not forget my question in my merriment!

"May I ask," I said, "why you did all that?"

"In the first place, my schedule for the week only allows today. Tomorrow we must get food to our families whose heads are ill past the point of being able to work, and then the next day we have mid-week service, and then after that I have the rest of my visits to the sick, and after that I must do all the things that are necessary for this house for the next week and in continued preparation for winter, and then Saturday I must complete my sermon preparation, meet with the deacons, and attend to prayer so that on Sunday I am as ready as I can be to do the most important thing to which I am called to: rightly divide and deliver the Word of truth."

"Herr Pfarrer Kantor," I said, "I did not mean why today, but why at all?"

He considered this with a bit of a start.

"Ah," he said after a moment. "It is a more complex matter, but in a way it is very simple. You see --."

There came a knock at the door.

"Sit down, Geliebte," he purred to his wife. "I'll get it -- and, remember your question, Fräulein Matthaus. I will answer it."

The rain had slowed down just enough -- villagers had come to help all at once with what we needed for their neighbors, and to bring things for specifically Herr Kantor and his wife. Frau Kantor and I kept serving stew and cake and coffee all around until it was quiet again before supper and she and I were finishing the sack work since all the supplies were in while one visitor remained, talking with the reverend -- a young man, and angry, a veteran of the wars who did not feel that God or the princes on either side had done right toward him and his.

"These young veterans come here," Frau Kantor said as she cut even more cake and poured even more coffee, "because the reverend was their chaplain. They know he will hear them out and understand them, and he knows that if they have come here, God is also calling them, by His many means to get them here."

It was quite a spicy conversation, as the young veteran was quite voluble, but also looking for answers every which way. What was also remarkable was that the younger man had a similar voice to the elder bass ... and it was also familiar to me ... I knew that voice very well ... one imagined Mozart's Commendatore discussing life and faith with Verdi's Grand Inquisitor ... both basso profundo roles ...

[The one and only Jerome Hines, favorite operatic bass of my thirties and also still my favorite author in the worlds of music and faith overlapping -- at last also here in Q-Inspired, as the Grand Inquisitor!]

If you understand the depth of those two roles, and the depth of the theology they manage in their actual roles, imagine them contending over life and faith! Alas, that the history of 20th century opera does not give us Kurt Moll [1938-2017] and Jerome Hines [1921-2003] on stage in such a way because they were 17 years different in age, and would have been cast in many of the same roles ... but we will imagine it here!

"I actually have read Emerson's 'Individualism' in English, the original language," Herr Kantor said, his huge bass voice restrained but still huge. "That part about a man having no loyalty to anyone that does not go along with him doing 'what rejoices him inly'-- that appeals to you?"

The younger bass was not as restrained ... and the voice was just as big ... the floor trembled because that home was too small to hold all that!

"Of course it does -- to what full-blooded man would it not! We are loyal to God and all these princes and people for what? For what?"

Herr Kantor lowered his voice ... he still had the depth advantage, though not a massive one ... he backed the younger bass down to that stunning B flat 1, and the windows rattled on his last word.

"I suppose Adam, back in the Garden of Eden, had the same thought when the idea was proposed to him that he might live only for his own idea of good."

I heard the young man's chair move as he was badly startled.

"So, of course the same poison appeals to all of us sons of Adam. For who do you suppose Emerson's 'Over-Soul' is who supports all these ideas you have taken in -- who proposes there can be a unity of souls while each man is only going to do what most pleases him -- God is not the author of such utter confusion!"

The reverend's voice thundered then -- not even yet at full strength, but if he wanted someone to wake up, that would do it!

The younger bass was not to be blown from the room -- he thundered back at full strength, enraged, and one could see: he was by no means the elder bass's inferior in vocal strength!

"But when do we get to have the things that we want from life, Herr Pfarrer? When do I get justice for the friends I lost in the wars? When do I get my reward -- and don't tell me a thing about Heaven because you'll also say I don't have a right to take myself off from here to get there, but why should I live where I can't have anything I want? Why should I not be allowed to go looking in this world for what suits me? It is too much to be a slave to all these others!"

"Herr Heinz," the elder bass said, undercutting his guest's high-lifted thunder with his greater depth, "you and I know nothing of slavery yet. There is a guest in this home who can thunder us both from here for suggesting it."

That was quite a break in the conversation, and Frau Kantor had to muffle her laughter as I nearly broke my neck looking around in shock toward the room that conversation was taking place in!

"I'd like to see the man who could do that," Herr Heinz said.

"You have not experienced the voice of the American Negro woman, in contralto -- but you will, before the day is out. You have heard of Fräulein Matthaus."

"Fräulein Matthaus is here? We hear of her singing everywhere in the northern principalities!"

"She has settled here in this region at my invitation, Herr Heinz, and is working in the pantry at this moment with my wife -- so, no more ill-considered remarks about that which we as Germans know absolutely nothing in my home."

"Yes, sir."

"Now, to return to your matters: I do not say that you cannot go looking for whatever you wish, young man. But let me tell you the story of a man with whom I had this same conversation the other day."

"Der Wanderer" ... a man who had traveled the world, and for whom even nature no longer sufficed his restlessness ... onward he wandered, looking for the place again where his roses bloomed, and his loved ones were in the earth ... where he could connect again to beauty and life and love again ... only to hear a ghostly voice mock him in the end to say, "Happiness is found ... where you are not!"

"The saddest thing about that song, young man, in the context of this conversation," he said, "is that the old wanderer has not yet realizes: your roses bloom where you choose to plant and water them."

Photos by Deeann D. Mathews, November 14, 2023

That chair moved again, as the young man was startled.

"So too all your relationships, young man. You can spend time looking backward while walking forward in rebellion, sure to fall, or you can settle in and plant on the ground God gives you, but you cannot do both."

"A fine way that has worked out for you, Reverend! You were supposed to have that big, beautiful cathedral less than one hundred years old, and look at this place they have you in!"

"Indeed, young man. Let's take a walk, shall we?"

They did so just as the sun came out and dismissed all the clouds ..

Photo by Deeann D. Mathews, November 13, 2023

... and that young man came back much quieter in his spirit ... the conversation became like more of a basso duet ... their voices, in the low-roofed rectory, made chords because of the acoustics..

"It's actually recovering -- I mean, the village is coming back to life -- I really didn't see it before, but I see it now. It's just -- it's just not the way I remember it."

"You can look backwards, or you can move forward," the reverend said. "God is there either way, but it is true that He is always in front of us, and has made it so that we cannot go backwards, try as we might."

"But it's just not fair!" the young man said. "I'm the last of all my friends and cousins, and my parents died while I was away -- it's just not fair, Reverend!"

"Life is not fair," Herr Kantor said. "In fact, that was promised -- 'These things have I spoken unto you, that in Me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer: I have overcome the world.' That is John 16:33, so why would we expect it to be otherwise? You will never guess what I was led to do today, after it was not done for about 200 years."

"Reverend, you know I'm in no state to be guessing anything right now."

"Did you notice the old churchyard?"

"Yes -- I was trying to work out what fool even went and bothered after this much time to go clean all that up."

"Oh, wonder no more -- that was fool me, today."

Again, the young man jumped.

"Reverend -- I apologize -- but, why?"

"Because the Spirit shared with me that my message for Sunday speaks of Him as the One Who has promised us a beautiful everlasting life ... but if His representative here did not care to even see to it that the earthly tokens of belief in Him on that matter looked better than what was in that yard last week, I would be counteracting my own message, subtly ... because there are already so many people here who saw their relatives die in horrific ways, and the question is already being asked ... if God loves us, how could He let that happen?"

"I'm one of those," the young man said. "I'm definitely one of those."

"I know," Herr Kantor said. "I didn't know you were coming by, but the Spirit did -- and if had not been you, it would have been everyone passing the churchyard.

"The story of redemption does not pass over a particular place, young man. I mean this: everywhere men in their effort to please themselves are abandoning good and causing war among themselves, and everywhere God sends His representatives to redeem mankind to Him and to each other in Christ. Everyone will not come and talk with me. Nor is there any need that they should. It is my job to make the testimony of what I have charge of consistent, as it is in the heavens above, and in the beauty of nature -- I cannot do as well as a mere man, but because I represent an orderly, caring God, that means where I find rank disorder, I testify of His presence through 'reconciling it' to the best state I can."

"It is easier to pull weeds when it is wet," the young man said.

"It is," Herr Kantor said, his deep-voiced chuckle as merry as the sunshine now streaming through the windows. "Your great-uncle and my father had the same village wisdom!"

"I miss them all so much!" the young man cried, and then burst into sobs that almost rent the stones, they were so deep, and loud, and real.

"Let it out -- grief was given to us for a good reason, to note where sin has done its worst," Herr Kantor said gently, and then quietly waited with his guest until that storm had also passed.

"I don't really want to leave the village," Herr Heinz said afterward. "I want to leave all the reminders of this pain and loss behind -- everywhere I turn in this part of the world, I see it!"

"I understand," Herr Kantor said. "I am 20 years older than your 25 years, and I have seen all of Europe trampled back and forth by Napoleon's madness. My first wife and all of my children are casualties to that -- in the wrong place, at the wrong time."

"Herr Pfarrer Kantor ... my condolences ... we never guessed ... you seem so joyful all the time!"

"I learned how to live in joy again, young man. Now it does not hurt that God blessed me with the present Frau Kantor, but before all that could happen, I told you that I had read Emerson in English. I was considering going to America, and starting over again there, so that I would never have to be reminded again of all that I had lost. I am a man just as you are; I also thought that happiness would be found away from every reminder that God had not done what I wanted -- and I have served Him faithfully, all my life."

"Well, I can't say that," the young veteran said. "That must have truly angered you, to have been so loyal, and then to have that happen."

"It did," Herr Kantor said. "I do not think I have ever been so angry as I was, and so hurt, and so cast down ... but the advantage that I had was to have been well-trained. I know God is God, and I am not. I know my wife and babes are forever safe from all that has happened since -- and there is much I am glad they did not see, while I have had to see it. I had to come to terms with the fact that I envied them that as the madness of Napoleon wore on, and on, and on -- I sang for Lord Wellington after Waterloo because we were all so happy that it was finally done, and I received an offer to go sing in England, so I did for several years, and also made it to the United States in that time."

"Your name is Kantor -- how did you become a minister, with that voice? I mean, you kept up with me bellowing and that takes some doing, but you weren't angry -- I think you still have voice left you have been holding back on us!"

Herr Kantor laughed -- across three octaves!

"See! I knew it!" Herr Heinz cried.

"Well, as you might imagine, many members of my family in ancient days were, in fact, cantors, but there later came a great number of us who could not sing, and so we spread ourselves out in the guilds and in the armies and elsewhere in the church, and so forth. It so happened that I am from a ministerial branch of the family, but it was recognized while I was very young that I was a Kantor who could sing -- the old rector here said I had the voice to make up for three or four members who could not sing! But also I loved the Scriptures, and the old rector could see that I was gifted as he was. So, the villagers put their little money together with my family, and I was able to go to college and study both theology and music.

"Ministers were more needed than singers in the times I became a man in, and of course, with my size, it was not going to be possible for me to stay out of the wars, so I knew I had better study medicine as well to be ready when the call came -- and so it did, and that has not stopped since then in different ways.

"But for some years I sang after Napoleon went to St. Helena, and at any time I could return to that ... I still get many letters and offers even now."

"Why did you come back, though? You've done what I want to do! You escaped all this!"

"Indeed," Herr Kantor said, "but I neither escaped God, nor His call upon my life, nor myself. What had to be done was between me, and God, alone. Nowhere in the world that I could have gone, and nothing I could have done, would have substituted for that."

"But how do you stand it here?"

"How can I not enjoy my life, knowing that everything I am doing, no matter how small, can be done knowing the joy of His approval and presence while setting forth His love? Even clearing out the graveyard will remind everyone who was born here that God loves them, as He loved their ancestors now at rest -- and how could I not be happy about that? In the spring Frau Kantor and I will plant new trees and flowers...

Photo by Deeann D. Mathews, November 20, 2023

"... so that people may come and think of what I will teach them over the long winter: that those gone from here in Christ are blessed in everlasting, beautiful peace, asleep here, alive in everlasting peace there, and so shall we also be when our work here is done."

"So ... so you're saying that was a labor of love for the living, too?"

"My dear young friend, those in Heaven need nothing from me, and there is no merit I need to add for myself to Christ's salvation. We are Protestants, not Catholics. A life is a testimony to the living, and everywhere we are, as the first chapter of Ephesians sets it forth, life in Christ 'to the praise of the glory of His grace.' When tomorrow we deliver the food to the sick, that is the same thing, as will be the midweek service, my visits to the sick and shut-in on the next day, and my winter preparations on the next day for my own household, and the next day that I spend in the presence of the Lord, getting ready to share His Word again on Sunday. Every day we live in common grace, in the light of special grace."

"So ... there is so much good that you enjoy doing ... you don't even have time to feel grief?"

"I feel it every day, young man. No man ever loved his wife and children as I did ... but they too are asleep to the troubles of the world, and I am glad. Yet I thought of them as I was among the graves here, and how I would be so angry if someone had allowed their last testimony to fall into such disrepair, and how much it hurt the villagers to have our ancestors so dishonored -- so I took that grief, and that anger, and made good of it."

"Wait -- we can do that?"

"In Christ, all things are possible, young man."

There was a long silence.

"I need to pray with you," the young veteran said. "I know you are right, although there is a part of me that wants to curse God and run until death finds me. We all see every day that things are getting better in the village -- we all see it. We see God working, but it just isn't the way we want it -- but He's working, even in having you clean up those old graves, because for the old villagers who know those are their great-grandparents, that is going to mean God has not forgotten them either."

"And will not forget them, even as they must face laying their bodies down in the new churchyard, soon enough," Herr Kantor said. "You know, you think so well I would be willing to wager, if I were a betting man, that you could be of great service in village affairs."

"Your voice is echoing just about the only Voice in the universe bigger than our own," the young veteran said. "Everywhere we turned while out walking, I heard this said to my soul, that I was to stay, and serve, until told otherwise, and ... and that I would be blessed through my obedience."

Herr Kantor smiled.

"I was told the same thing," he said. "It began roughly, however ... my first duty was to witness the passing of our old rector, and then the destruction of the 'new cathedral' ... but then I met the rector's youngest daughter ... and late in the spring, if the Lord be gracious to us, we shall welcome another grandchild of that great man to the world!"

"Frau Kantor is with child?"

"She is indeed, still very early along, but that is why I will not have time through the winter and spring to do all that I can now. Kantors are big babies, and although my beloved is a grand, strong woman, I still must relieve her of other burdens so that she and baby will be healthy in the fullness of time."

"So you have married yourself to all of this!"

"The Lord requires a total commitment, young man. Since I was called to be a steward here of His flock, there was nothing better for me to do. Again, I say to you: you will have your roses where you plant and tend to them. If you will have love, and friends, and beauty, then you tend to the ground God gives you, and if it includes a church house and yard, then you take all of that, and make it work."

The young man sighed.

"But what do you do about the pain, Reverend? What does God give us for the pain?"

"I know someone who can help you, since you are learning English, and since the Lord has sent a contralto to give a tired bass some rest. I introduce you to Fräulein Diane Matthaus, to tell you that there is a balm in Gilead that will suit your case."

That was my cue, and I came in on time ... we shall say that Herr Kantor, like all my teachers before him, had taught me well!

There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole,
There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.

Sometimes I feel discouraged, and think my work's in vain
But then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again!

There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole,
There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.

If you can't preach like Peter, and you can't pray like Paul,
Then tell the world of Jesus, Who died to save us all.

There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole,
There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.

Apparently, some people think contralto can also produce a Knockout Zone, because Herr Heinz was dazed.

"What is this song ... what is this heavenly music so near our own lieder for meaning and beauty?" the young veteran said.

"That's called a Spiritual, where I am from," I said.

"I met her in the United States, after she had escaped slavery, but they have a terrible law there that would have allowed her to be dragged back into bondage," Herr Kantor said. "It is another story about her so-called master meeting me in his attempt to have her dragged off, not knowing that a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars would not be intimidated by some tired little petty tyrant and his coward friends! She is contraband and I am an outlaw there now -- but here, we are free, as God intended!"

"And my old tyrant would never think to find me here," I said, with a smile. "He might have to do work to survive here, and you know that type can't stand all that!"

The two Germans laughed heartily.

"Indeed!" Herr Kantor said.

"So, you're staying?" the young veteran said.

"Until the Lord says otherwise," I said, with a smile.

"Well, I have decided I'm staying too, Fräulein Matthaus -- my name is Herr Jerome Heinz."

Indeed, it was -- in the original spelling!

"Es war nett Sie zu treffen," I said, and he grinned from surprise at being told it was nice to meet him.

"Sprechen Sie Deutsch auch?" he cried.

Herr Kantor had already been trying not to chuckle at the success of his schemes, but started laughing outright ... I would have knocked him down, but he was just too big ...

"Ein bisschen," I said, saying that I spoke a bit of German. "Mein Deutsch verbessert sich!"

"Indeed your German is getting better!" Herr Kantor said.

"Oh, we'll get all that fixed up by the time I convince you to mar -- I mean, I'm going to go get to work because my other skill is architect and there is plenty to shore up and rebuild in this region, but I'll make time to come by here and tutor you in German ... I mean, if you would like."

I could see that someone else was now planning to get married to his work in the village, and why I was 21 cast with Herr Hines -- er, Heinz -- at about 25... so I did what made sense in my role as a foreign woman in the 19th century, looking to make a home in a new land.

"I would, Herr Heinz. I hope that you will not fail to attend to learning from Herr Kantor, however, what your duties are."

"You Americans are forward -- but I won't miss that either, Fräulein Matthaus, believe me that I won't!"

"Have no fear, Fräulein Matthaus -- as I am perennially saying to you, keine angst, nur ruhe!" the reverend said with a great smile. "You will have your lessons and so will he, and we shall see what the Lord has for us all."

Then he put his huge hand on the young veteran's shoulders.

"Speaking of which, Herr Heinz: you heard on our walk how Deacon Ackermann has secured us another fifty pounds of sausages for tomorrow's distribution?"

"Yes, sir -- let's go get those so we are ready for tomorrow! I'm committed now -- you won't outwork me!"

Off they went into the sunshine, and came back with the sausages in time for supper, so the Kantors, Herr Heinz, and I had a very merry meal after adding sausages to the food distribution sacks for the next day. We were not alone that whole time, because the poorer villagers knew Frau Kantor's pot of dream stew was bottomless, but she still had more of that endless dream cake for us four to enjoy when all of them had gone.

After that, it was late, and Herr Kantor rose to hitch up the carriage to take me home, but by that time, he had been sitting long enough to have gotten very sore and stiff. 45 years old was much older in 1823 than it is today! He groaned from pain even as Frau Kantor went running for the rest of that healing broth.

"Go on and rest -- I'll make sure Fräulein Matthaus gets home," Herr Heinz said, and Herr Kantor sat back down with a grateful expression ... and a smile ... his gentle scheming continued!

"Thank you, young man," he said. "It will likely be exceptionally cold tomorrow morning ... I was surprised that it rained instead of snowing today, but winter is near, and this clear night will bring fog and frost."

"Oh, I'll get by there and make sure she gets here in style!"

I curtsied.

"I thank you both -- Vielen Dank, meine Herren."

The Kantors stood waving in the doorway as Herr Heinz and I went down the road, him holding a big lamp and with his arm around me in the already deepening cold, the stars clear and bright in a night that did not yet know anything of the electric light of modern cities. I was not cold; though he was not as broad as Herr Kantor, he too was an immense man, six feet six inches tall -- basketball had not been invented in 1823, but it was waiting on him ... or, perhaps instead, a 41-year career in opera, with that massive size and resonance capacity!

Silhouetted against that brightness of the stars, as we went a little distance, was the sight of the old churchyard. At night, how faded and worn the crosses and wreaths were was not obvious.

I stopped a moment, and Herr Heinz tracked my gaze.

"To think even the care of old graves can be a testimony to the goodness and love of God to the living," I said.

"I don't yet see all of what you and Herr Kantor see," Herr Heinz said, "but I am beginning to, and I will hold on until I see it all, God help me, I will! God help me ... ."

And he began to sing his prayer, his glorious bass in its finest form as he began again from where many of us began in prayer as children, understanding that we had a loving Father in Heaven...

... and then added, "I've come home, Father, and I'll be at home everywhere, with You."

I stood quietly with him, he and I embracing against the cold of the night, and I knew that he would make good. I could feel his resolve as we stepped onward ... and since he would get it right with the Lord, the Lord would make sure that he would get it right with me ... at least to the end of the present story ... and indeed, Herr Heinz wrote down the time that he should come in his carriage in the morning, held the lamp inside my home until I had a candle lit, and then stepped out and bade me good night with a deep bow.

I made myself ready for bed and went to sleep, satisfied ... I had my answer about what had happened in the churchyard, and why. It had been done as a testimony, along the lines of first natural principles, of the love of God to the living ... of course ... and, taking that all the way down to how that song found me in the autumn of 2023, the answer still held.

The voice of our Reverend Cantor for the day came sweetly down ...

"Indeed, Frau Mathews, I thought I might cast Mr. Jerome Hines as one of his German ancestors, since he also was a citizen of your homeland, and you know his singing and his works and love him also! He and I had a good laugh about me being the elder bass for this production, too -- but you know, Q-inspired stage magic!

"As for the rest, of course that is the answer, Frau Mathews. Otherwise you would never have heard it on your mission, in your time. Now then!"

He sang the last lines of "In Der Kirchhofe" and left me sleeping in that warm, heavenly peace, my questions answered.