Why listen when you have all the answers?

In case you missed it, read Part 1 in the Stories from Grace Manor series “We’ve all been Groningers”.

My friends said that we should have a name for our coffee club, so we decided to call ourselves the Young People of Yesteryear (YPOY). Douwe, smiling, said, “The Y P bothers me a little. It’s more like how to P today.” We all laughed at that. “In the past, it was a stream . . .” he paused for a few seconds, until Broekie shouted, “of iniquities!” and without missing a beat, Douwe said, “Yes, now it’s more drops of blessing.” That was a good one. Remember, it was only men at the table today. I looked at Bill, who had spit out his last gulp of coffee, laughing.

Now Broekie shouts, “Hey, Douwe, when are you going to get hearing aids? You only hear half of what’s said.”

“I hear half of what?” Douwe replies. We laugh.

“But you’re right,” Douwe says to Broekie. “Last week, I was at the doctor’s, and I said, ‘Doctor, I’m half deaf.’

‘What do you mean, half deaf?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I hear half of what people say.’

‘I’ve never heard of that,’ he said. ‘Let’s try this. You go and stand in the corner, with your back to me. Then I’ll stand in the other corner, and you repeat everything I say.’ So I stand in the corner, with my back to the doctor. The doctor says, ‘Eighty-eight.’

I say, ‘Forty-four.”’

“That’s a good one,” Jan says, and we agree.

Anyway, now we have a name for our coffee club: the YPOY.

Now Pete reminds us of what the Men’s Society in our church in the past was called, the ones our fathers had established. In Pete’s church, it was Onderzoek De Schriften, which means ‘Search the Scriptures.’ I add that my mother’s Women’s Society was Onze Roeping Getrouw, or ‘Faithful to Our Calling.’ Our Young People’s was Ora et Labora, which means ‘Pray and Work.’ Pete says that he knows of one church today where the whole youth activities program is called ‘Jump.’

It is silent for a while. Then Bill, rubbing his right knee, says, “I haven’t jumped for years.” And Broekie adds, “Oh, I can still jump. It’s the landing that’s the problem.” Really, we don’t quite know what to make of it all. I look around and try to read the faces of my friends. Broekie says, “Let’s not jump to conclusions here, the times have changed so much.” Jan Piersma runs his tongue over his dentures and says, “Well, let them jump. At least they are in the church.”

“They could have considered Salire,” Bill the pastor says.

Broekie asks why.

“It’s Latin for jump,” Bill says. And we all laugh.

Then Broekie comes back with Ora et Salire. And now we roar with laughter. We have to get serious again. Douwe picks up his coffee cup and bangs it on the table. “Brothers,” he says. And again, “Brothers!” He taps his coffee cup once more on the table. “Jump,” he mutters, shaking his head, “Back then we didn’t need a catchy name. Ora et Labora – it wasn’t just a name, it was a way of life.”

I look at Pete. He has lifted his eyebrows so that his forehead wrinkles deepen. He’s thinking.

“Yes,” he says, “but let’s for a few minutes think about what we called our associations in the past. How did we get from Ora et Labora to ‘Jump’?” That’s a good question. We are silent again for a while. In the meantime, we reflect on how that could happen.

Broekie leans forward, getting uncomfortably close. Before he can say anything, Jan says, “Hey Broekie, you should cut your nose hairs.”

“Or at least comb them,” Douwe adds.

Now there is more coffee on the table than in our cups. I slam my fist on the table. That’s a good one. I knock over my coffee cup and it spills on my notes.

Midnight questions

But Broekie doesn’t mind. He wants to say something and waits till we have settled down. “What I think we should ask ourselves,” he says, “is, ‘Why do many of our children, let alone grandchildren, no longer attend church?’”

Now we are silent. We have all wrestled, like Jacob, with that question in the middle of the night. And then Broekie continues, “Corrie and I have talked a lot about that. For one thing –” and he pauses, but no one interrupts, “for one thing, we have not listened to our young people or even older people. We Calvinists,” he says, “Calvinists are bad listeners.” He waits.

And then Jan Piersma, with ‘Old-Timers’ but still very smart, says, “Why listen when you have all the answers?”

“Our generation has kind of held on to the answers we already had, and for the most part, we lived in a bubble with our Dutch friends, our schools and our churches,” Broekie says.

We agree that our generation did not really engage with Canadian culture. Yes, we had CLAC and AACS (Christian Labour Association of Canada and the Association for the Advancement of Christian Scholarship, which founded the ICS), but that was our own group of people, really. And also, as Jan Piersma said, we had answers for our Canadian culture. But we didn’t listen too well.

“For a large part, our children did not have the safety of the Dutch immigrant isolation,” Broekie continues. “They were born here. Some thought that in the Netherlands, everyone was Christian Reformed. And our grandchildren are completely Canadian.”

“It’s challenging to live in an invasive secular culture, a culture which we cannot exclude from our lives,” Bill says. He sets his coffee cup on the table and pauses a few seconds. No one speaks. We wait for Bill to help us further. “Do you know,” he says, “do you know that in 1920, the Synod of the Reformed Churches met in Leeuwarden . . .”

“Leeuwarden?” Douwe leans back and clasps his hands behind his head. “Leeuwarden,” he repeats. “In 1920? My Pake could have been there.”

Bill nods and continues, “and after long debates about ‘conformity to the world,’ the Synod wrote a letter to all the churches. This letter was to be read from the pulpits of all the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. In this letter, Synod warned against Theatre, Dancing and Card Playing: the three pillars of immorality.”

Pete shouts, “Hey Douwe, your grandpa was there for sure.”

We all laugh. So does Douwe, who says, “That explains why I’m such a lousy dancer.”

We look at Bill again.

“Theatre, dancing and card playing: three activities that characterized a culture estranged from Scripture.” He looks at each of us. “Brothers,” he says, “brothers, pray for our children and grandchildren, whose world is so much more on top, below, around and inside them that we can’t imagine what to warn them against. I appreciate one of our churches calling its youth program ‘Jump.’ From not dancing to jumping took a hundred years. Thank God, our children and grandchildren have a better understanding of what they are called to do, rather than of what three things to avoid.”

“There’s a culture war today,” Douwe says.

For a few moments no one says anything

Then Broekie leans forward, his elbows on the table, and says, “We should help them strive to be their best: guide them in their faith, their judgement and their work. It’s not just a war against culture. It’s also a war for culture – for what’s good, true and beautiful.”

“We need a name for this culture war,” Pete says.

“Ora et Labora,” Bill quips.

The story continues. . . here is part 3 (of 6) of Allan Romkema’s Stories from Grace Manor: “Having coffee with your father“