A Place Called Hope: A Novel Read online

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  To Joan, my hope

  Acknowledgments

  No man is an island, and certainly no writer. Thank you, Steve Hanselman and Stacey Denny, my agents, for keeping me gainfully employed. I am also grateful to the good people at Center Street, especially Christina Boys, who with tact and good humor fixed my many errors. Lee and Mary Lee Comer answered the occasional legal question. The people at Fairfield Friends Meeting tolerated my absence with good cheer, most likely because my co-pastor, Jennifer Silvers, is a better preacher than me. I appreciate them, and Jennifer. Nevertheless, if there are any errors in this book, it is the fault of those who gave me poor advice. A writer is only as good as his or her advisers.

  A Note to My Readers

  When my children were young, my family returned to the small Indiana town where I was raised, hoping to find an environment conducive to child-rearing and book-writing. Heeding the age-old counsel to write what you know, I wrote about Sam Gardner, a Quaker pastor serving his hometown church, Harmony Friends Meeting.

  Five novels and two novellas later, I moved on to theology, wanting to articulate a progressive spirituality I hoped would make a positive contribution to our society. It remains to be seen whether that has happened, but I enjoyed the opportunity, still remain committed to that goal, and continue to write and speak about that as opportunities arise.

  But I sure did miss Sam Gardner and so, it appears, did many of my readers, who wrote asking of his whereabouts. Sam and I, regrettably, had lost touch with one another. He was busy with his life and I with mine. Last year, however, we reconnected at a Quaker pastors’ retreat, our friendship was rekindled, and we have remained in touch ever since. I asked his permission to share his story and he agreed. (Though Sam would never say so, I think he enjoys seeing his name in print.) As it turns out, this year has been an eventful one for Sam and his family, which you will discover in the pages ahead.

  1

  Barbara Gardner had been weeping for thirty miles, staring out the car window into the distance, a pile of soggy tissues on her lap.

  “It’s just college,” her husband, Sam, said, patting her leg. “Purdue’s only ninety miles away and we’ll see him next month. He’ll be fine.”

  “Can I have Levi’s bedroom?” Addison, their younger son, asked from the backseat.

  “I was thinking I would use it for a home office,” Sam said. “Besides, you’re graduating this spring and then you’ll be off to college, too.”

  Barbara let out a fresh wail.

  She was still crying when they pulled into Harmony. It had been like this for several months—Barbara bursting into tears at the thought of their sons leaving home and Sam feeling guilty for looking forward to their departure. The thought of getting his garage back, knowing where his tools were, not finding empty milk cartons in the refrigerator, and enjoying the use of his own car was almost more than he could bear. He was, in fact, downright giddy at the prospect of launching his sons from the nest, taking a little time off work, maybe even buying a used RV and traveling a bit.

  Sam Gardner was in his fourteenth year of ministry at Harmony Friends Meeting, had become adept at handling Dale Hinshaw and Fern Hampton, and had weathered the retirement of his longtime secretary, Frank, who had moved to North Carolina to be nearer his grandchildren. Once a month, Frank sent Sam a letter with pictures of his grandchildren, urging Sam to spread his wings and move south. The Quaker meeting Frank was attending needed a new pastor. Sam would be a shoo-in if he applied. However, after a few months had passed, the Quakers in North Carolina had hired a woman pastor from Iowa, whom everyone loved. Attendance at Harmony Meeting was up, giving was up, and everyone was happy. Except for Sam, who had interviewed five candidates for Frank’s old job, turning down two who weren’t proficient on the computer, one who didn’t bathe, and Nora Nagle, the former Sausage Queen, who had retained her beauty and would cause people to speculate that she and Sam were romantically involved. He had been under intense pressure to hire Dale Hinshaw’s granddaughter, Lindsey Hinshaw, who had recently, and just barely, graduated from a community college with a two-year degree in communications.

  Once a month, Dale had stood in worship, during the prayer time, to update the congregation on her progress. He was of the opinion Satan had declared war against her, while Sam was of the opinion the nut didn’t fall far from the tree. Their first interview had ended in tears, with Lindsey accusing Sam of not being supportive. He had said she would be responsible for preparing the weekly bulletin and she had folded, collapsing in her chair, her head in her hands, snot running down her lip, sobbing.

  “I’ve never made a bulletin,” she said. “I’m not sure I can. I don’t think you understand what I’ve been through, the obstacles I’ve had to overcome.”

  Sam had ended the interview soon after, and was reconsidering Nora Nagle, no longer caring what a few busybodies might conjecture about their pastor and his shapely secretary working in the church basement with no one else around. But the next Sunday at church, Dale had stood during the prayer time and had asked everyone to keep Lindsey in their thoughts, that one more rejection might put her over the edge.

  “She went through a time there where she was worshipping trees. It would be nice if she could find a job working with Christians,” he said, looking directly at Sam.

  The elders of the meeting had approached Sam after worship, suggesting he give Lindsey another interview. Dale had offered to pay half her salary for the first year, an unheard-of proposition. Eight thousand dollars! One-tenth of the church’s annual budget! The Lord’s will was becoming evident to the elders.

  “Why don’t we run her up the flagpole,” Miriam Hodge suggested. “If she isn’t working out after a year, you say the word and we’ll cut her loose.”

  Miriam had recently read a book on church leadership, written by the pastor of a megachurch in Texas. She had been quoting him extensively—trite, meaningless phrases like think outside the box and let’s work smarter, not harder. Sam was looking forward to the book wearing off and Miriam returning to her usual sensible self.

  The next day, Nora Nagle accepted a job at the Legal Grounds Coffee Shop on the town square, and with his options narrowed, Sam phoned Lindsey Hinshaw to tell her that after interviewing many capable candidates, he had determined she was the best of the bunch.

  “I need time to think about it,” she said. “Now that I have a college degree, I can’t quite picture myself as a secretary. How about Director of Communications? As for the salary, I couldn’t possibly live on what you’re offering. I need to make at least twenty thousand dollars a year.”

  For someone who just the week before couldn’t imagine putting together a bulletin, Lindsey had recovered nicely and was exhibiting a fair amount of pluck.

  “It’s a part-time job,” Sam pointed out. “I’m not sure we can pay any more.”

  Lindsey had asked for a few days to think it over, then had gone to Dale, who upped his offer to ten thousand dollars if the church would match it, which is how Lindsey Hinshaw, who had never worked a day in her life, came to earn nearly the same amount of money
as Sam Gardner, who had pastored Harmony Friends Meeting for fourteen years.

  “It’s all about perceived value,” Miriam Hodge had told Sam. “There are lots of people who want to be ministers, but not many communication majors who want to work in the church. We have to raise your visibility, Sam. Help people see what you bring to the table.”

  “Well, if people don’t know what I bring to the table after all these years, then I don’t think raising my visibility is going to make a bit of difference,” Sam had said.

  “It is what it is,” Miriam had said.

  Sam had no idea what that meant, but Miriam had been saying it quite a bit lately. It is what it is.

  In moments like these, Sam would scan the latest issue of Quaker Life to see which Quaker meetings were looking for pastors. It was the usual ones—dysfunctional meetings in godforsaken towns who ran through pastors like a combine through corn, cutting them down after a season.

  Lindsey Hinshaw began work the next Monday, arriving at 8:30 a.m., a half hour late. “I’ll be leaving a little early today,” she said. “I’m meeting a friend for lunch.”

  She spent the first hour sending text messages, checking her e-mail, and updating her Facebook status on the church’s computer. At midmorning, Sam emerged from his office and suggested she update the church’s telephone directory; he handed her a short list of new attenders.

  “I’m not sure it’s wise to have our names, addresses, and phone numbers in an electronic directory,” Lindsey, who spent half her day on Facebook, said.

  “Mostly we just use the names for our chain of prayer,” Sam said. “We’ve done it for years with no problems.”

  “As the Director of Communications, I’ll need to give this some thought,” she said.

  That evening Dale Hinshaw phoned Sam’s house. “What’s this about you wanting to pass out our names and addresses to complete strangers? I read about this church up in the city where these burglars got hold of a church directory and went and robbed the members’ houses while they were at church. Doesn’t seem all that smart to me, and I know Lindsey agrees with me.”

  The elders’ meeting was held the next evening. Dale spent the first half hour harping about putting the church directory online.

  “When you stop and think about it, what we’re really doing is making it easier for someone to break the law. Now I don’t know how the rest of you feel about it, but I don’t think Christians ought to be doing that. And has a church directory ever brought anyone to the Lord? I don’t think so. If we’re gonna be putting anything online, it oughta be something that gets folks saved.”

  He turned to Sam. “And I’ll tell you right now, that computer makes me nervous. What happens if some wacko gets hold of it and takes us down? Shuts off our electricity and phone, takes down our grid, and here we are, sittin’ ducks, locked out of our own building.”

  “The only things we keep on the church computer are our membership list, our giving records, and our minutes from the meetings,” Sam said.

  It had been a struggle to get even that much on the computer. Fern Hampton had put forth a vigorous argument for not recording donations made to the church. “It says in the Bible that when you give, you should go into a closet and do it privately. Now here we are putting it on a computer for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to see.”

  “I think you’re confused,” Sam had said. “It says prayer should be done in a closet, not giving.”

  “Now that makes no sense,” Fern had said. “Why would you pray in a closet where no one can hear you? Dumbest thing I ever heard of.”

  Frank had gone ahead and recorded the donations on the computer, in a file labeled Furnace Maintenance Schedule.

  Dale dug in, and the elders agreed to hold off updating the directory until a committee could be appointed to examine the meeting’s security and what might be done to improve it.

  At one time, this would have bothered Sam, but the year before his doctor had doubled the dosage of his antidepressant. He went to the drugstore in Cartersburg, where no one knew him, to have it filled. Ministers were not supposed to be sad, depression indicating a lack of faith. Ministers were expected to have joy in the Lord and be optimistic and cheerful. The medicine had clouded his mind a bit, and caused him to nod off in the afternoon, but church meetings no longer annoyed him and his stomach had settled down. Plus, Barbara had forbid him from mentioning the words Dale Hinshaw and Fern Hampton in their home, which had calmed him somewhat, though he still had fantasies of conducting their funerals. Brief services where people stood and lied about the deceased, went downstairs to the basement and ate ham, green beans, and Jell-O, then went home inexplicably happy.

  2

  Lindsey Hinshaw was ending her first month as the Director of Communications for Harmony Friends Meeting and had made a thorough wreck of things, posting the wrong times for church meetings in the bulletin and neglecting to tell Sam of hospitalizations and near deaths phoned in to the office. Asa Peacock had almost died of a heart attack and had lain in the hospital in Cartersburg for three days before Lindsey had said, “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, Jessie Peacock called the day before yesterday to tell you Asa was in the hospital and they don’t think he’ll make it.”

  Sam had immediately left for the hospital, where he had found the Peacocks visiting with the hospital chaplain, a Methodist, who at that very moment was inviting them to participate in a heart attack support group at his church.

  “That sounds nice,” Asa was saying as Sam entered the room. “A fella needs spiritual support at a time like this and Lord knows my own church hasn’t stepped up to the plate.”

  Sam sat with Asa and Jessie most of the afternoon, listening to the details of Asa’s heart attack and angioplasty, wincing at all the right places, warming them up.

  “I just hate that you were going through this by yourselves,” Sam said. “I wish I had known. From now on, call me direct on my cell phone.”

  “We couldn’t figure out why no one from the meeting was coming to see us,” Jessie said, her chin quivering.

  “Just a failure to communicate on our part,” said Sam. He was using the words failure and communicate and communication as often as possible, not wanting to mention Lindsey’s name outright, but hoping they figured it out just the same.

  “It appears we have some work to do on managing our communication,” he said.

  After a few hours of hand-holding, Asa and Jessie had forgotten all about the Methodists and were safely returned to the welcoming bosom of Harmony Friends Meeting. Miriam and Ellis Hodge had dropped by with a casserole, the Friendly Women had sent flowers, and Dale Hinshaw had stopped by to remind them of his heart difficulties and how it had been a wake-up call, causing him to grow closer to the Lord.

  Asa hadn’t been thinking of the Lord. He had been thinking of his hay needing cutting. Ellis told him not to worry, that he’d round up some folks and get right on it, at which point Asa broke down and cried.

  Dale, under the mistaken impression Asa was repenting, was ecstatic. “Yes, yes, just cry that sin out and let the Lord make you a new man,” he said, patting Asa’s hand.

  Sam excused himself, and drove home in a cheerful frame of mind. Asa and Jessie were back in the fold, their hay would be mowed, and for the next hour or two Dale Hinshaw would be in another town, twenty miles away.

  Ellis was as good as his word. That very afternoon he gathered a handful of farmers and began working over the Peacocks’ hay field. Five tractors following one another in a staggered line, cutting hay, the dust rising about them in a swirl of grace.

  3

  After several years of modest growth, the attendance at Harmony Friends Meeting had leveled off. The Presbyterian church had closed its door, and ten Presbyterians had wandered in the wilderness before arriving at Harmony Friends. Sam was not all that eager to take in ten people who didn’t have the gumption to keep their own church going. It was like getting ten players from a last-place team. But it looked good at
the Quaker headquarters, ten new members welcomed into the meeting on one Sunday, and the superintendent had phoned Sam and asked him to give a talk on church growth at the next pastors’ conference, which Sam had agreed to do.

  He had been working on the speech for several months. He called it Growth by Adoption: A New Model for Church Development. His theory, in a nutshell, was that with mainline Christianity in decline, more churches would go broke and close. If the Quakers could hang on long enough, the displaced saints would eventually make their way to a Quaker meeting. Quakers, Sam theorized, were accustomed to living close to the bone. Economic deprivation was a weekly event. But the Methodists and Episcopalians, accustomed to large numbers and wealth, had gotten soft and folded at the first sign of trouble. You cut a Quaker meeting’s budget in half, and it won’t bat an eye. The Friendly Women will throw together some chicken and noodles, hold a fund-raiser, and be back in the black within a week.

  The Presbyterian church sat empty for several years, until a group from Cartersburg came, looked it over, haggled a bit, then paid nineteen thousand dollars to the Presbyterians. No one knew them, so there was much speculation among the men at the Coffee Cup over what would be done with the building. Dale Hinshaw feared they were Satan worshippers and he wanted them arrested. Harvey Muldock had read, in Reader’s Digest or TIME, he couldn’t remember where, about old church buildings in the Midwest being bought up and used as sex clubs. It was like an exercise club, Harvey recalled. People paid fifty dollars a month for a basic membership, and thirty dollars an hour for a personal trainer.

  “From what I understand,” Harvey explained, “they’re claiming to be a religion and the government can’t touch ’em.”

  The men contemplated that for a moment, then Myron Farlow mentioned he’d heard a liquor store was going in there. Myron owned the Buckhorn Bar, the only tavern in town, and was clearly worried about the competition.