Farwell
“We go to church in order to sing,
and theology is secondary.”
—Kathleen Norris, from
Dakota: A Spiritual Geography
If you want to see the center of my congregation’s collective faith, come to WUTS.
WUTS—Worship Under the Stars—emerged from a group of students who, in conversation with one of their mentors, dreamed of an outdoor worship service with acoustic instruments, campfire style. It was a sweet, if idealized, concept.
But the weather in the Midwest does not suffer idealists. With all the wind and cold, the humidity and bugs, the elements defeated our plans more than they enabled them. So when WUTS became a regular part of our worship rhythm, we met mostly indoors, reminding people that the stars shine above us, even if the ceiling blocks our view.
We also tried once to paste glow-in-the-dark stars to the ceiling of Wagner Chapel, but abandoned the practice at the strenuous urging of the maintenance staff.
Over the years, WUTS has been the setting for some of the most creative ideas to come out of our campus ministry. We’ve done backyard WUTS and socially distanced WUTS, ukulele WUTS and Rock ‘n’ Roll WUTS. What began with an acoustic guitar and a dozen voices now regularly involves seven musicians and north of fifty congregants—an enormous crowd for a campus the size of DWU—all singing at the top of their lungs
I cannot stress this point enough. When these students sing, they do so with a kind of abandon that would be cause for embarrassment in their Sunday morning churches. Amazingly, they are usually in tune with one another, and many of them reach up for lines of harmony. They sing with their whole beings, body and spirit, paying out their self-consciousness in exchange for deep participation in a holy moment.
WUTS is beautiful. Never more so than in Farwell.
Technically, Farwell Chapel is part of the Dakota Discovery Museum’s Historical Village, a collection of old prairie buildings that bear witness to human transience. The modest wooden structure holds about 70 people, packed in tight, although surely those full-house days were rare, even in Farwell’s heyday prior to the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. For just over a century, the congregation survived despite the harsh midwestern climate, marked by drought and dust and insects and wind. In 1986, however, the church closed its doors, and the building was relocated to the eastern side of DWU’s campus.
Although precious little narrative remains from Farwell’s history, it’s likely that the walls once shook with the voices of its choir. These were the “Singing Methodists,” after all—adherents of a denomination that owed its widespread appeal as much to Charles Wesley’s hymns as to his more famous brother John’s organization and social engagement. It’s not hard to imagine the echoes of “O! For a Thousand Tongues” or “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” reverberating off the wooden floor and high ceiling. That little church would have felt like the ark of salvation, trembling as it bore the songs of the church to the throne of God.
At least, that’s how it sounds when WUTS comes to Farwell. Sometimes when we finish, my ears still ring in the most pleasant way possible. That little church becomes a vessel for the Holy. Who could help but shout praise?
I think about these things a lot this time of year, the way you do when a thing you love is ending.
Our final campus ministry event of the spring semester is usually a Farwell WUTS, one that brings in all the bittersweet emotions that come with graduation. Last Monday, this group of students gathered together for the last time before many of them step away from campus ministry and into the next phase of their lives. We came to sing. And we came to say goodbye, most of us with tears.
It’s a wonderful thing, to send those you love away with a blessing. And so very hard.
Loss, i think, is more palpable than hope, because the loss can be defined. Those leaving campus ministry know that, whatever their faith has in store for them in the years ahead, it will never be quite like this again. Those of us who remain know that, no matter how many new and wonderful people join in next fall, these unique friends will never again be ours in the same way.
We know in our heads that loss isn’t the whole story, of course. We know that we were born in order to mature, and that time pushes us along that path, like it or not. We know that laying down old things gives us capacity for receiving new ones. We know that we are not leaving each other behind, not really—that goodbye is not the end of the world.
We know it, but it’s harder to feel it. The loss has a name. The hope, even if it is in view, cannot be grasped. We have no guarantees what it will be.
Both these feelings—hope and loss— line the walls of Farwell Chapel, placed there by the congregations that have adorned the space through holy moments. Baptisms. Communion. Funerals. Weddings. Prayers for soldiers. Prayers for rain. Prayers for graduates. The tears of friends.
Loss must have its place in our lives. Grief must have its day. Like a blister on a finger, the hurt from loss heals not from our efforts to fix it, but from our patient willingness to make room for the healing.
Hope, on the other hand, requires a more active role. Hope is not natural to the human condition. It is a discipline that must be nurtured. Hope needs space, but it also needs people to remind us we are not alone. Hope needs a song, and we have to sing with it. Otherwise, how will we ever be ready when good things come in ways we didn’t expect?
After graduation this week, I went back to Farwell. It’s silent once more, clear of guitars and sound equipment and Edison lights, and also of voices. The dust is settling over the pews. The box elder bugs have taken over part of the floor. I’l have work to do before we can use the space in the fall. When the first chord of the first fall WUTS rings out, I will look around and note the friends who have left for the next chapter of their lives. I will also note the faces of people I don’t yet know.
I will grieve, and I will hope. Everything worthwhile in life requires the capacity for both.
