Cellar Houses
Luke 14:25-33
I talked to my brothers a couple of weeks ago. The conversations
started in pretty much the same way with each of them. “How about all
that rain in Texas and Indiana?” “Well how about the long hot dry
spell in Arkansas?” “How are you feeling?” “How are your
grandchildren?” And then my statement that always stops the
conversation for a moment: “I’m working on a sermon.” “What do you
remember about…?” It’s amazing how our memories of the same thing
can vary so much. It’s amazing how something that seemed so
important to me, they don’t even remember. It’s amazing how our
collective memory fleshes out the bits and pieces we each remember.
“Do you remember the cellar houses ?” I asked each of them. In
Northern Indiana you don’t call a cellar a basement. Their
answers varied quite a bit. I called Steve first. He’s lived most
of his seventy years in Northern Indiana except for college and a stint
in the army. He was a high school teacher at the regional high
school so he knows most of the people and the places like the back of
his hand. He also has a reliable memory.
Here’s what he told me:
A family would somehow scrape together enough
money to buy a little piece of land and have a cellar dug. (It isn’t
like excavating in Arkansas; it’s sandy soil not solid rock so it isn’t
such a big job.) They would pour a cement floor and add cement blocks
for the foundation. They would install some tiny windows. About
that time they would run out of money so they would put on a sub-floor
over the foundation and cover it with roofing paper. It was
sort of waterproof. They would install a door on top of the foundation
with a wooden box-like structure around it so they would have a place
to go down the stairs. Then the family would move in. Now
it was their dream to finish the house when they got some more money
together. But the pick-up would need new tires or they had to buy
seed corn or another baby came along. They never finished the
house. They lived in the cellar—a place with little light and too much
moisture.
“Didn’t any of them ever finish?” I asked him.
“Not a single one,” he said with a finality that I wasn’t about to question.
Next I called my youngest brother, Bob. He remembered the basics
pretty much like Steve did, but when I asked if anyone ever finished
one of the cellar houses, he had a different memory. “Remember
John and Myrtle Manning?” he asked me. “They finished theirs and
bought the first TV in the area and put it upstairs along with a bunch
of old lawn chairs. They invited us Streeter kids over every Friday
evening to watch television with them.” “Remember how Myrtle
would make us hot fudge sundaes?” he asked me. I did
remember! Bob continued. “But by the time they finished the
house, they were so used to the cellar, they never really moved
upstairs! They went up there to watch television but they
continued to live in the cellar.
Last of all, I talked to my oldest brother, David. He is the
memory keeper of our family and holds details in his mind that the rest
of us never even knew. He told me the cellar houses were built
right after WWII. Men came home from the war with a little
money. Land was cheap and there were no building codes.
These families started their homes with great dreams and little
money. When the money ran out and their dreams faded, they lived
in the cellar houses — sometimes the rest of their lives. The
family of David’s best friend, Wayne White, lived in a cellar house for
two generations.
What was your dream? Did you think you would write the great American novel? Or travel the world like George Bailey in It’s a Good Life? Or live in a home so beautiful it could have been featured in Southern Living Magazine?
Or marry the perfect person and raise the perfect family? Or make such
a difference in the world that your name would never be forgotten? Or
maybe your dreams weren’t that grand—maybe they were more universal—the
dreams of every culture and every generation.
That day when the large crowds were traveling with Jesus, they must
have been full of hopes and dreams. There was such promise in the words
of Jesus. Perhaps some of the people in that crowd dreamed of a life
free from poverty. Perhaps they dreamed their sickly child would
grow to be a sturdy adult. Perhaps they dreamed of a world free of
injustice and oppression. Perhaps they dreamed of a much better life
for their children. This new kingdom sounded so promising. As the word
spread, the crowds grew.
But if those crowds were like us, perhaps they heard only what they
wanted to hear. They probably heard, “Do not be afraid little
flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the
kingdom.” They may have closed their ears and hearts to the rest
of that message: “Sell your possessions and give alms.” They probably
heard, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a
hen gathers her brood under her wings.” They may not have
listened to the final part or that sentence, “and you were not
willing!”
And so on this particular day when the large crowds were traveling with
Jesus, his message was stark and crystal clear—no softening of his
message. “ If you want to follow me, you must put nothing else
first—not even your family, not even your life. If you want to
follow me, you must put nothing else first—certainly not your worldly
possessions. If you want to follow me, there is a cost.
Discipleship is not free. If you want to follow me, there will be
a cross to carry. Building the cellar is not enough
if you want a life in the Kingdom where the light is.”
This past Tuesday, September 4, 2007, Mother Teresa’s book, Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of ‘The Saint of Calcutta’
was released. We were in Minneapolis. When I went to purchase the
book at Barnes and Noble, I discovered it had sold out the first
day. I was able to find it at a smaller bookstore and began
reading it in between babysitting our grandchildren.
In 2003 Mother Teresa was proposed for sainthood by the Roman Catholic
Church. Most of us think of saints as people who are constantly
in close touch with God, clearly guided every step of their lives. As I
read the first section of her letters to her spiritual directors in
those early years, I was struck by her clear vision and her deep
calling, as well as her perseverance. She wished to leave her
work with the Sisters of the Loreto community in Calcutta to work with
the very poorest people in India. Her later private writings paint a
very different picture of her spiritual journey from the inner life we
suppose she lived. She struggled with doubt, despair, emotional
pain and spiritual isolation most of her life after she founded The
Missionaries of Charity who served the poorest of the poor.
Yet, she continued to do the work she was called to do. She stepped out
in faith even when she felt her faith had deserted her. When God was
silent, she continued to listen. She picked up her cross every
day and followed Him even when the path was anything but clear.
Some say that such a woman is hardly a saint. How can a saint be
full of doubt? How can a saint feel such isolation from
God? How can someone publicly call herself “a pencil in God’s
hand” when privately the pencil has lost its lead?
Perhaps those are precisely the reasons that she was saintly. In
spite of her doubts and struggles, she left her cellar house and built
above a foundation that seemed to shift under her feet. Even when
her dream seemed distant and futile, she continued to carry her cross.
Such a person gives me hope. For if such a woman struggled with doubt
and human failure, and yet still continued to live out her amazing
ministry each day, I believe she was guided by God’s grace even when
she wasn’t aware of it, even in her darkest times. I believe that
amazing grace is there for each one of us. After we get the
cellar built and don’t have the resources to finish the job, God is
there to provide every thing we need to continue. When our human
shortcomings are painfully apparent and our dreams seem to crumble, we
are called to carry our cross and to follow by faith.
In closing, I would like to quote Mother Teresa:
“The fruit of silence is prayer,
The fruit of prayer is faith,
The fruit of faith is love,
The fruit of love is service,
The fruit of service is peace.”
“It is only when we realize our nothingness,
our emptiness, that God can fill us with Himself. When we become
full of God then we can give God to others, for from the fullness of
the heart the mouth speaks.”
Amen.
Betsy
Porter
09 September 2007
Return to St. James' Home
Page 09.07