Sisterchicks in Wooden Shoes! (20 page)

O
ur conversation concluded just as we arrived at the front of the New Church at the far end of the town square.

“I wanted you to see inside,” Noelle said.

After the feast for my eyes and an awakening of my thoughts toward all things majestic that I had experienced at Saint Bavo, I couldn’t wait to see the inside of the large church in Delft.

An entrance fee was requested. Noelle paid for both of us in the sectioned-off entrance, where a modest selection of books was offered in several languages.

We walked through a wooden door and entered the huge, open sanctuary. I was prepared to be awed.

Instead, I was stunned. Shocked. The cavernous church was void of any art, color, or decorations.

My jaw had dropped. “What happened?”

“What happened to what?”

“This church. It’s vacant. Where’s all the amazing art? Those used to be stained-glass windows, right? The sun should be
coming through the colored glass and giving this huge space some joy. Everything in here is the color of stone gray.”

“This is what happened in the Reformation. Do you remember what I said about the iconoclasts? The riots during the Reformation rid churches like this of anything that could be misunderstood as an object of idol worship.”

“Wow.”

“I know. It’s a stark difference to what we saw in Haarlem. That’s why I wanted you to see this.”

I felt angry. “Who were these iconoclasts? Were we looking at their faces yesterday at the Rijksmuseum?”

Noelle said that she wasn’t up on her Dutch history, that we could buy a book on our way out, and it would help explain that era. “Although, each author will add his opinion of history, so it depends on which author you read and how he spins the details.”

“Why would anyone strip away all that is uplifting and beautiful?”

“I’m not sure we can understand how out of control religion was during that era. The poor were trying to buy their way to heaven. The crafters of all that was ornate were trying to outdo each other in creating religious imagery. I’m sure it was complicated.”

At times like this I realized how limited my knowledge and view of the world and of history were.

“You know,” Noelle added, “to put in a good word for the reformists, they could be viewed as well-meaning purists. They were trying to direct worshipers away from the material trappings
and help them focus only on God, who is invisible and cannot and should not be represented in man’s likeness.”

“True, but what about everything I was just saying in the cheese shop? Art and beauty are what give us those glimpses of the eternal.”

“And what happens when the art becomes the object of the worship instead of the One the art is supposed to represent?”

“Then the art was overdone, or at least the meaning attached to the art was allowed to be overemphasized. Obviously, it got out of control.”

Noelle quickly countered. “So the art was too good? Is that what you’re saying? The beauty was too convincing?”

“No, the art and beauty were what became tangible. Visible. We hold on to what we know and what we can see. Not what is out there in the eternal realm.”

“And that should be an acceptable excuse for the corruption?”

“No, of course not. The focus of the worshipers got off center. Obviously.”

“And what a good thing that never happens today.” It was easy to detect the subtle bite of sarcasm in Noelle’s voice.

I didn’t have a retort for her. I had listened to Noelle and Jelle talk like this a few nights ago with a volley of questions and no sense that a final answer was needed. With Wayne, closure on a topic was important. Rarely did he and I leave an issue “out there on the table,” as Noelle called it, to keep pushing it back and forth. Wayne and I liked conclusions.

In a small way I was beginning to understand the cultural
mind-set that had startled me on the canal tour yesterday. “Officially tolerated” was the term the canal guide had used for the government’s position on the questionably moral activities available in Amsterdam.

The moral and religious pendulum had swung so far to the right and left in generations past. Did this generation, still recovering from the horrors of World War II, prefer any option that favored peace?

I took a seat in one of the plain wooden pews and looked around. Noelle sat beside me.

“It’s complicated, isn’t it?” I stated.

“More than you or I know. If you really want to bend your mind with some history, think about where the Puritans came from before they landed on Plymouth Rock.”

“Do you mean the pilgrims?”

“Yes. The pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock and became the forerunners of the rights of religious freedom in the U.S. Do you know where they came from?”

“England.”

“Originally, yes. But many of them fled England due to religious restrictions. They came here. Literally. To Delft. That first group of pilgrims sought religious freedom here in Delft for twenty years or so. When they weren’t able to worship the way they wanted, they sailed from Delft back to England, and in England they boarded the
Mayflower
and sailed to America.”

“I never knew that.”

“If you can believe this, I did a report on the pilgrims when I
was in high school, and that’s where I learned some of this. It was long before I ever imagined I would come to the Netherlands.”

“Why did you write the report? I mean, what prompted your interest?”

“My dad’s side of the family can trace back to an ancestor who came over on the
Mayflower
?

“Really? So you may have an ancestor who actually came to this church while living in Delft.”

Noelle’s eyes widened. “I never thought of that.”

“You could be related to someone who sat right here in this pew hundreds of years ago.”

Now her facial expression definitely was sober.

With a sweeping gesture at our surroundings, I said, “What have we learned in all these centuries? I mean, where is the balance in all this?” My voice echoed in the cavernous sanctuary.

Noelle didn’t respond.

“There has to be some way to balance the opulent misuse of money, power, and materialism in Christianity and yet not go all the way to this stark, depressing vacantness.”

“Well, when you find that balance, be sure to enlighten the rest of the world. It’s a problem that never has gone away.”

“I know. I just never saw it as clearly as I have since I’ve been here. They threw the daddy out with the bathwater.”

“Did you say ‘daddy’?”

“No, I said ‘baby’ At least that’s what I thought I said. Isn’t that what I said? That’s what I meant. They threw the baby out with the bathwater.”

Noelle looked up at the solemn, gray, arched ceiling. She drew in a deep breath.

“You okay?”

She nodded. “Give me a minute, okay?”

I got up from the pew and left Noelle to her thoughts. I assumed she was pondering her puritanical roots. Or perhaps she still was mentally tossing back and forth the thoughts on materialism and art.

Content to wander a bit by myself, I wound my way back to the English-language books for sale in the narthex. Against my earlier mandate not to fill my shoulder bag with souvenirs, I bought a book on the Reformation.

I didn’t have to wait long for Noelle. She joined me, and we stepped outside into a sprinkling of airy raindrops. We moved to the side of the church and stood under a narrow overhang where we buttoned up our coats.

Noelle looked up at the thin clouds sailing high above us. “This will pass.” Without looking at me she said in a firm voice, “I finally did it, Summer.”

“Did what?”

“I…”

I placed my hand on her arm and moved around so my open expression was readily in view.

Noelle lowered her gaze from the sky and looked at me with tears in her eyes. “I asked God to enable me to forgive my dad.”

I looked at her with a steady gaze, encouraging her to keep talking.

“I’ve been thinking about this ever since the tour guide’s talk
at the Ten Boom house. I have no relationship with my father because I have not forgiven him. I’ve never felt I was able to forgive him. Not on my own power. Not by my own emotions.”

She drew in a wobbly breath and flicked a runaway tear from her cheek. “And then you went and said what you did, and I felt like a javelin pierced my heart.”

“What did I say?” I tried to recall how our back-and-forth conversation had gone inside the church. Had I offended her? Wasn’t the ebb-and-flow style of opinion sharing exactly what Noelle said the Dutch favored?

“You said they threw the daddy out with the bathwater.”

“I still think I said ‘baby’”

“No, you said ‘daddy’ and that’s what went through me, because that’s exactly what I did. I started my own rebellion at eighteen, and I threw my daddy out of my life. That whole part of my life has been as stark, gray, and vacant as the inside of the church where we were just sitting. In my own puritanical sort of zeal, I threw out everything.”

I gave her arm a comforting squeeze. I still had no idea what had caused the rift between Noelle and her father. Perhaps I never would know. That was fine. I didn’t need to have the specifics on the cause of her longstanding pain.

But I did love being here, at this moment, under the eaves of this ancient church, protected from the rain and acutely connected to what was happening in Noelle’s heart. She was opening her hands to the Lord and offering back to Him all her pain, just as my mother had admonished me to do so many years ago.

“And?” I softly nudged her to go on. I wanted to hear her say
that God had met her in that moment as she sat in the pew. I wanted to know that in a moment of everyday sacredness she had extended forgiveness to her father and all was well in her heart.

“And what?” Noelle asked.

“What happened after you asked God to enable you to forgive your father?”

Noelle looked at me as if I had missed the point of her comments. “That was it. I asked Him to enable me. That was my prayer.”

“And did He?”

“I don’t know.”

Her answer surprised me. I was accustomed to conclusions and happy endings, especially whenever God was involved in the story. Who doesn’t love a testimony with a victorious ending?

Noelle, however, was perhaps more authentic and closer to the truth of the situation because of her willingness to wait on God. Her patience could be weighed on a different scale than the scale of immediacy that dominated my life.

“So, we wait and see,” she said. “This would be a good time for your surprise.”

I tried to switch gears. “The pan-a-kook surprise?”

“Yes.” Noelle held her hand out and checked the raindrops. “It’s all right. Follow me.”

She took off across the square with her quick, long legs. I found it less difficult to keep up with her than on previous hikes. Amazing. In a few short days, Noelle had turned me into a walkin’ woman. I couldn’t help but wonder how different my life would be if I kept up this sort of walking once I returned home.

Then I remembered what else might give me a different life once I returned home. How could I learn to adopt Noelle’s calm sense of patience of waiting on God without needing an immediate answer?

The rain stopped just as Noelle led me to the front of a restaurant that faced the large market square in the center of Delft.

“The pannenkoekenhuis.”

I stared at the photos of the featured plates on the menu. “Pancakes?”

“Yes, pancakes. Pannenkoeken. I’ve been saving this experience for you. It’s a very Dutch thing to have pancakes for lunch or dinner. Try saying it. Pannenkoeken. I thought it was one of the most fun words to pronounce when I first got here. As a matter of fact, my first job in Rotterdam was working at a pannenkoekenhuis.”

“This was my big surprise?”

“Oh, I’m wounded! This is very Dutch. This is what we do. When we can’t explain something or can’t settle an argument, we go eat pancakes. It helps.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll like them. Come.”

Once we were seated at an outside table under the canvas canopy, Noelle added, “These aren’t exactly like pancakes you eat at home. They’re fancy.”

Our table was in a great location because we were both facing the square, and it didn’t feel as if anyone seated around us could hear our conversation. At so many of the other places we had eaten, it seemed we were sharing the meal with all the diners
nearby. In a country with sixteen million people, I could see why privacy was rare and how learning to live and let live was useful.

The rain had cleared, and the returning sun caused the many spit-and-polish spots on the town square to glisten. The New Church was within our view at the far end of the square, and the town hall was at the opposite end of the square. Directly in front of us, at the other side of the large open area, was the line of shops we had first explored, including the stinky-cheese shop.

“These pancakes,” Noelle went on to explain, “are more like crepes in thickness, although some of the varieties are nice and dense.” She pointed at a picture on one of the laminated menus the waitress had handed us when we were seated. “They come with almost any kind of topping you can think of. Fruit, meat, cheese, sugar. Whatever you like.”