Mennonite Weekly Review

You could ask Henry Goos­sen almost anything about God and church, and he would not be surprised. In fact, he would often raise an eyebrow and look delighted that you had thought of something interesting that was new to him.

Ardie S. Goering lives in Albuquerque, N.M.

Henry Goossen’s open mind and positive spirit were wonderful gifts to me as a young person about 35 years ago when he pastored Goessel (Kan.) Mennonite Church. As a teenager, I took a formal catechism class from Goossen but waited until I was 24 to ask to be baptized and accepted for church membership.

The “permission” to take such a deliberate space for my own spiritual exploration was made possible by Goossen who, in the mid-1970s, dared to suggest that baptism and church membership were not automatic for the high school students who had completed catechism classes.

When I heard that Goossen had passed away at age 93 in the last days of December, I thought about his influence on my life. I remembered too how in recent years the light in his eyes was still bright despite failing physical strength.

My dad’s cousin, Nada Voth, recently compiled a wonderful book, called “Project Grandmother.” She asked me and all the granddaughters of 11 sisters and sisters-in-law born between 1882 and 1904 to write down memories of our grandmothers. In it, my cousin Pam Schroeder Keller recalls visiting my grandparents on their farm, some time before I was born.

“I remember the time she saved lunch for us (my sister and me) until after Grampa had finishing eating the chicken feet Gramma had prepared at his request,” Keller writes. “She said it was disgusting and wouldn’t sit at the same table with him while he ate them!”

When I mentioned this to my husband, he burst out laughing, as I had when I first read it. I, who only knew my grandmother as a small child and never knew my grandfather at all, have this exact same squeamish attitude about certain foods. I once walked out of a restaurant and circled the parking lot in order to avoid watching my husband eat a rare steak that had turned out particularly bloody.

I’m at the age now where many of the important people in my life are gone from this Earth. Like a see-saw, some invisible line seems to have moved in a direction where the past seems heavier with memories than the future looks with possibilities.

But when my mind runs through those memories, the past is not as far gone as you might think.

The people and experiences from the past still shape us. Everything we have been is always a part of our present self, which is always evolving. Some things are consciously known to us, and others flutter beneath the surface. The past, present and future are inexorably intertwined in ways that can only be called mysterious.

The peace of God passes all understanding. We see it in the tiny slice of a crescent moon that appears on a chilly January evening where before there was darkness. We feel it in the hope that somehow always lives in our disappointed hearts. And we know it in the love that is here before life begins and still goes on when human life ends.

My, what a mystery it is. What a miracle we have been given, this creation of God.

Ardie S. Goering lives in Albuquerque, N.M.