Iowa--where the tall corn--and more grows

I get misty when I think of Iowa.
This was my rant today on Facebook, in the wake of the presidential caucuses:
  "I am really getting tired of all the high techy, big city snobmedia and pundits looking down on their noses and making fun of the Iowa caucuses. Excuse me--they don't fit in your pigeonhole so you can stereotype the people as hicks and the system as archaic? Hey, they use pencil and paper, they get together civilly, vote in a true democracy where every vote counts, and dare to do it differently than any place else in America. You gotta problem with that? If American politicians and the system make a bigger deal of it than perhaps it should be, it's your fault. Iowans are glad you're gone. And besides, you ougtta have to come up here and suffer the winters if you're gonna be so uppity. They can handle it, if you can't."
Pardon me, but it's personal.
Three of my four children were born in that state, and my fourth child, and his family now live in Dubuque, on the northeast side, and "caucused" yesterday. Proud I am.

"Iowa, where the tall corn grows."

My wonderful wife Neysa and I  moved from Oklahoma to Hawarden, in Northwest Iowa on the South Dakota border by the Big Sioux River to teach high school English many years ago, following friends, "establishing" a church, renting a Seventh Day Adventist church, driving to Sioux City and Sioux Falls every once in a while.

I never saw so much green, so much great rolling rich dark glacial farmland, America's Mesopotamia, nestled between two great rivers...full of life, corn, soybeans,  tempered by brutal winters, but with great solid people who valued education and hard work. In northwest Iowa our first son was born, Vance Conrad. Story below.

From there we went to Iowa City to get a graduate degree in journalism, and then to southwest Iowa to be an editor of a semi-weekly paper, the Herald-Journal, in Clarinda, Iowa, where our second son, Travis Austin, and our daughter, Dallas Page, was born.

Then we moved back to Oklahoma to be near family, worked at the Duncan Banner and bought into the Waurika News-Democrat, where our fourth child, Derrick Rogers was born.

Since then there has been happiness and sadness, successes and failures, but Iowa remains, deeply a part of all of us. I can go on and on about its influences in our lives. I understand why it is the original "American Heartland."

Misty-- from an earlier post:

"We headed east over the rolling hills of northwest Iowa  years ago.

"The rising sun turned the mist from the corn golden, as we sped up and down the hills in a light green Volkswagen to the hospital 30 miles away in LeMars. My wife's contractions had started before daybreak, and we left the house shortly after 5 a.m.
"'Come in here, you're responsible for this,' said the red headed doctor O'Toole, handing me a gown and mask, and about noon, a baby boy was born.
"Those memories are still real, and I know his mother remembers even more, because mothers remember more than fathers do, including  more about the births of our other three children. 

Iowan

"Years have passed and there have been lots of ups and downs since then for all of us. But we're blessed with our children and grandchildren. That boy is now M/Sgt. Vance C. Clark, USAF... ."

Our  other Iowans--

A chilly night 

Third time is a charm

My Iowans, Derrick and Naomi, ready to caucus!

 

 

I knew I'd been to church

St. John's Episcopal Church, Dubuque, Iowa

When I saw it from the outside, I knew I was going to church

 When I walked inside, I knew I was in church.
Four weeks ago today, I went to St. John's Episcopal Church in Dubuque, Iowa, with my youngest son Derrick, and my granddaughter Liberty, while Naomi stayed home with Barrett, who was sick.
The church is old--founded in late 1834, a little more than a year after the town was established, the oldest town in what is now Iowa. I'm not sure when the building was erected, but the sponsorships under the stained glass windows dated from the mid 1880s.
I'm not a"high-church" person, raised among fundamentalist Texans and Okies, but I felt immediately at home.
First, when you walk into that church, you feel peace, and are hushed by the architecture--a far cry from our  modern churches here that look more like movie theaters or strip mall stores.
I know, I know, the church is the people, not the building, but if that is so, why do we still talk about "going to church"?

I'm sure not familiar with all that liturgy stuff, but the worship service did get me to thinking. Our fundamentalist traditions  and habits are nothing more than liturgies. I'm not being critical, but observant, having been enriched by new experiences.
And in this hour more scripture was read than I've ever heard in one service, and more emphasis was placed on communion than I think I've ever seen. Instead of the focus being on somebody's sermon, the emphasis was on the Word, and communion. We participated in communion, not merely took it. Derrick, who studies such things, says this is typical, compared to our more recent populist cultures and religions.
Another practice that makes me nervous when visiting somewhere is when people all get up and come around to greet you. Here it was simple. "Peace be with you," was the greeting, with a smile. What do we need more than peace?
That, and having your granddaughter set beside you in an old oak pew, next to your son, under beautiful stained glass windows, and the magnificent sound of an ancient organ? 

No, it isn't perfect...the church membership has dwindled, though there were plenty of parents with young children scattered among the old timers. And it's struggling to pay its bills, like keeping it heated for $100 a day. It was cold outside--below freezing, and this was a warm winter day in a city on the Mississippi River across from Wisconsin and Illinois.  
But you hear church bells downtown on Sunday morning. Around the corner and down the street is the towering steeple of St. Mary's Catholic Church, seen behind the top photo on the right, one of 11 Catholic churches in this city of perhaps 70,000 people.
Like it, this building speaks and enhances the glory of faith, and inside the people and the liturgy did what I think worship is supposed to do--bring you into contact with eternity and give you peace. 
I knew I'd been to church.