occupation of the space. That so many children could live in three rooms always amazed me.
In late afternoons when the shadows would lengthen and the sunlight would enter the darkening room at an oblique angle and the muted sound of an Italian opera could be heard in the distance, there was a feeling that we were living in another time and another place, both mysterious and secure.
Angelina was very religious. Only her daughter, Sue, seemed to inherit her piety; the rest of this second generation family had been secularized by the American culture. There was a picture of Jesus on her wall that frightened me as a young boy. The Jesus with the exposed, flaming heart was too graphic; I just didn’t understand the symbolism at that age. Now in a time of open-heart surgery and antacids for heart-burn, the picture might be appropriate for some graphic advertisement. Angelina was always laughing, especially when Luigi would get angry. They fed off each other—the more she laughed, the angrier he became, until he left in disgust.
Seldom could I understand my grandmother. She never mastered the English language, and I never became fluent in Italian, but her love transcended speech. Every encounter was an opportunity for her to give you something, whether it was a coin, a piece of fruit, or some token that represented her generous spirit. Most often she wanted you to eat.
Angelina was a terrible cook. If she didn’t like the taste of her pasta sauce, she would grab the nearest bottle of wine, or pour schnapps into the vegetables, or add some other ingredient that would drastically alter the taste from what one would expect. Whatever there was in the refrigerator that she wanted to get rid of ended up in the sauce. Her daughters took to preparing dinner as an act of self-defense.
But it was never the food; it was how it was prepared and served—with love. Her table was always a welcoming place. Her table would forever be a place of memory.
The Lord’s table is a table of memory and of love and acceptance. We are drawn to that spiritual table because it is prepared for us and we are welcome there. All our hurts and sorrows are healed and we become whole.
In Robert Benton’s story, Places in the Heart, the cinematic version concludes with a communion service in a small Baptist church in rural Texas. Gathered before Christ’s table are friends and enemies, murderer and victim, black and white—life’s protagonists and antagonists all sharing the bread and cup and offering the possibility for spiritual unity in a time to come.
When the Spirit of Christ is present, every table is holy.
THE FARMER FROM SARATOV
Though he was born in Russia, my mother’s father, Lucas Wertz, was thoroughly German, a descendant of Catherine the Great’s peasant migration of 1763. His ancestors had come from southern Germany, brought by the empress from Anhalt who had hoped the industrious Germans would serve as an example to the indolent Russians that she ruled. Later tsars would relegate these so-called Volga-Germans to serf-like status, binding them to the Russian heartland to grow wheat on the great plains. The communists would nearly exterminate them.
Lucas possessed those Germanic qualities that have distinguished that noble race since the time when they had fought with Caesar in the forests of Gaul. He had a fierce pride in who he was. A tall, handsome man whose face and clear-framed glasses reminded people of Harry Truman, he enjoyed the acknowledged resemblance and took pride in this small link to American greatness. He had pursued the American dream and was content with its fulfillment.
I never heard the story of how he came to America. Perhaps he felt the early rumblings of revolution in Imperial Russia or saw liberty’s faint glow on another shore. I wish I could have asked him why he left, what stars he saw, what voices he heard; what consuming passion drives a man to leave one world for another? Perhaps the myth is better than the reality, and a fragment of memory more comforting than truth.
This farmer from Saratov came to Newark, New Jersey, not far from the gates of the new world at Ellis Island. He was content with a small framed house on a tree-shaded street in a German-speaking neighborhood, a family of three daughters, a son who served his country in the Navy and then struck gold in the postwar California real-estate market, and a good wife, also from Russia, who always had his dinner served at the required hour. His social life centered around his church where he served in the honored position as Elder and as president of the church’s Board of Trustees. He also had other gifts that were seldom spoken of.
The Pennsylvania Germans, who are of the same ethnic stock, believed that their braucherei, also known as “pow-wow doctors,” had, in addition to their gifts of healing, certain psychic abilities, especially precognition. The lore of the braucher, with its many spells and incantations, could be passed from one generation to the next, only by alternating gender. Thus, a father could teach a daughter, but not a son, to practice the braucher’s art. There also seems to be a transmission of certain arcane gifts that were acquired not through any verbal or observable methods, but simply by being in the presence of the person.
Perhaps one day it might be discovered that all our knowledge, personality, behavioral patterns—all that makes each of us truly unique—is not merely a formation of the brain, but resides in the spirit of the person. There is a mind beyond the brain. There is a way of knowing that goes beyond the empirical method, a “tertium organum” as Peter Ouspensky, the Russian esotericist, described it.
When you have established a strong relationship with someone, you begin to pick up clues that let you know what he is thinking or feeling. Some of this may be attributed to the art of discerning nearly imperceptible signs in body language, tone, or feelings, based on previous experience. Much might be explained by conventional behavioral science.
However, there are events in our lives when we seem to “know” something without the benefit of our senses—the extrasensory perception. Human history is replete with accounts of precognition, from Caesar’s dreams to the many psychic accounts surrounding the sinking of the Titanic to the tragedy of September 11, 2001, although in many cases the predictions were made after the fact.
Lucas Wertz never admitted to having psychic abilities. I doubt if he even knew the meaning of the word. However, there were several incidents that now cause me to believe that he had this sixth sense, and that some of his abilities were transmitted to his daughter, my mother.
We were living in a third-floor apartment on Monroe Street. Lucas loved to walk—a few miles was nothing to him compared to the great distances he must have walked in the region around Saratov. He often walked the mile or so to our place on a Saturday afternoon.
On this particular Saturday he arrived late. He was baby-sitting while my mother went out for the evening. My brother and I had already been put to bed, but we were not yet asleep. I had a double bed to myself and my two-year-old brother, George, was in his crib in the corner. Mom was in the kitchen putting on her finishing touches. Lucas was having a cup of coffee.
In the middle of their conversation, with no explanation whatsoever, Lucas stood up and calmly walked into the bedroom, picked up George from the crib and carried him into the kitchen. No sooner had they left the room there was a crack and a loud crashing thud. The bedroom was suddenly filled with plaster dust. I was covered in gypsum flakes and white powder and emerged from the covers coughing through the dust.
Mom and Lucas rushed into the room and brought me out before any more damage ensued. They saw that the plaster in the ceiling had come loose and fell in the corner of the room over George’s crib. Had not Lucas picked him up, he would have been crushed. Covered in dust by the side of the bed was my Little Golden Book and its story of Chicken Little.
Lucas seemed to know things that struck me as unusual, though he never talked about his own personal faith. There was always a
