Comfort from the storm

Second Sunday of Advent, December 10, 2023

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Comfort from the storm

Comfort, comfort ye my people, says the Lord. Speak tenderly and proclaim that her service is at an end. Indeed, she has goodness from the hand of the Lord double for all her sins.

A couple years ago I walked the streets of Comfort, Texas in mid-March, on the first day of my Big Bend National Park/Hill Country/West Texas adventure. The weather was balmy. A winery, a brewery, a restaurant, a bike-rental facility, an antique shop … just another tourist trap. I’d been looking forward to stopping here? Why?

But across the street several original buildings beckoned, including a beautiful old hotel. A plaque honored the “free-thinkers” from Germany who established the town in 1854, seeking shelter from the wars and religious persecution in their home country.

After a short time, some of the settlers began to refer to the area as “Gemultlichkeit, ” a German word that signifies feelings like social acceptance, a notion of belonging, friendliness, coziness, and comfort. Perhaps realizing that the word might be awkward and unmanageable for future generations, the name was simplified to Comfort; a name that still accurately reflects the peaceable and easy-going demeanor of the community today.

The town founder’s spirit of acceptance failed to protect the Germans from persecution and attacks during the Civil War. These freethinkers were also abolitionists, as was Governor Sam Houston, who led Texas (off and on) until 1861. Secessionists won a majority in a statewide vote, and every adult male was required to sign a loyalty oath to the Confederacy. Following the example of Sam Houston, the men of Comfort, Texas refused.

A company of those men felt forced to leave their families in 1862 and head for Mexico. They were intercepted and most of them were killed. The story deserves than a sentence or two, but at least a second plaque was erected.

Fear not to cry out! Here comes with power the Lord God, who rules by his strong arm. Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosoms.

Germans like the rest of us (actually, my ancestors all came from Germany themselves), struggle with the “now and not yet” of Christian hope. The sixty-eight families who were left without a father or a husband, without a farmer to till the fields, must often have asked God where he was, calling God out on the promises of the “not yet.”

Would things have been different if the men on both sides had listened to each other?

I rest the Bible in my lap.

Pick it up again, read again,

set the Bible down.

A moment. Then

I stumble through the parable

one more time.

Nothing comes.

This is not bad,

maybe even as it should be.

 

I go out into the woods.

I sit on an old stump and say,

“But what does this mean?”

and laugh at myself.

I sit longer, listening,

and then listening,

till at least I hear the air,

and something inside something

speaks silently to something

inside me.

 

Is it any different when I listen

to a neighbor?

 

I am learning to repent of my certainty,

to simply be mindful

that I don’t know,

to keep listening for what I haven’t heard.

To receive what is offered

without compulsion to master it,

to grasp, to understand.

Just listen and wonder.

Let the silences speak to each other.

                      Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Would it be different, would it be better if we listen to each other, especially when we disagree? Of course! And I guess that’s why I visited Comfort, Texas, to give quiet homage to that promise, that hope, that certainty of the “not yet,” if not quite right now.

(Isaiah 40, Psalm 85, 2 Peter 3, Luke 3, Mark 1)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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