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I Can Almost See Heaven From Here
- Appalachian Heritage
- The University of North Carolina Press
- Volume 13, Numbers 1 & 2, Winter/Spring 1985
- pp. 82-96
- 10.1353/aph.1985.0011
- Article
- Additional Information
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I CAN ALMOST SEE HEAVEN FROM HERE John Wallhausser Religious man is not an abstract idea. He is a man planted in space and time—modeled by his river and his mounts, moulded by his "pampa" or his city. A concrete being, with his rhythm and his culture, his geography and his roots. The surroundings become his music, his dance, his melody: it lends its image and its poetry. Adam, the earthy, takes not onlyfrom the earth his breath but his form of speaking, of communicating, of exteriorizing his troubles, his joys, his sorrows, and his loves, his hopes and his anxiety. And that concrete man, upon entering the temple to speak with God and to communicate with his brothers, must he necessarily enter a strange world?...Must he redress himself in a strange liturgical personality in order to refer to God and to unite himselfin communion with his brothers of faith? The Liturgy must find the point of union between the Church and the land. To produce the marvel of the spirit that would permit man to feel inside the temple as he does in his own house, as he does in his own country... [Liturgy] is a synthesis and an invitation. It opens its arms to man to be able to tell him: "Come to Church with all that is in your flesh and blood: with your cultures and your rhythms, with your forms of expression and your landscape. " The Church does not want a strange language to be spoken in the temple. Her language is that of Pentecost: the maternal language that man learned in his harsh vital contact with his own land. "Let the dance and the music come. " "Let the land itself come. " (Carolyn and Carl Fjellman first called my attention to this statement on the meaning of liturgy. It is found in the program notes, "Liturgy and Folklore," to Ariel Ramirez's composition of a Latin American folk mass, Misa Coriolla, Phillips Records.) Nineteen eighty-two was the worst time in years for those working in the coal mines of Eastern Kentucky. Television went into the mountains to cover the funerals. That winter and spring I heard from the tube that distinctive sound I had become so accustomed to the previous summer. I would go into the room with the set and listen to the tearing lament, a holy wail, a cry to God. The cry is haunting. It joins heaven and earth with a sound I had never heard before coming to Kentucky. Reprinted from KATALLAGETE Spring - 1983 The Outset I am not easily given to thrusting myself into other people's homes and churches. Yet I had been awarded a Mellon grant to study "the continuing Calvinist tradition within Appalachian ' By "Calvinist" I understood a tradition in the mountains that differed from perfectionist churches with their tests of personal purity and worthiness. The tradition I wanted to look at—the Primitive Baptists and 82 Old Regular Baptists—was utterly foreign to my own high church background. I was initially drawn by the solid, strong articles of faith and doctrine (published in their annual Association Minutes) which I associated with a robust Reformed tradition. I knew I was yet one more academic voyeur (since the '60s they move in and out of the mountains regularly) and I hated it. These intrusions could be awkward for everyone. Yet the people of the Indian Bottom Association of Old Regular Baptists made it easy for me. They were kind, generous and hospitable. They treated me not as an academic intruder but as a brother in Christ. My response was simply to show at all the meetings and services . Within a month or two my wife and I were invited into homes for Sunday dinner. We became acquainted with both older members of the congregations and younger families. Most important was our reception, shortly after a baptism in the river on a deliciously warm summer Sunday, by the family of Manus and Mary Ison. Manus Ison is the past Moderator of the Indian Bottom Association. After two years I now dare to call that acquaintance a deepening friendship. I will not dwell on the personal reversals of...