Church in the Wildwood

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/120219.cfm
Isaiah 4:2-6
Matthew 8:5-11

You are sitting in the pew, listening to the reading du jour. What are you REALLY thinking? I find it depends on the verses that have been selected for today. Sometimes I find that everything comes together in a cohesive message, perhaps one I’ve heard many times before, but reassuring none the less. The tone can be instructive, enlightening, or constructively damning, all selected to guide us to seek the better path in life.

There are times, however, when only a short part of the one or two readings, the responsorial, or the gospel grabs my attention. A bit of a “squirrel!” moment, that instant when your pet dog has seen something interesting move and now is COMPLETELY focused on said distraction.

Today’s readings had one of those squirrel moments for me. It happened on my first read-through of the material. I resisted the temptation to just go with my initial feelings and re-read everything. Once, twice, maybe 5 more times. The reading from Isaiah didn’t do anything for me. I did some further reading, verses before and after Isaiah 4, and still, didn’t find a spark there.

The healing of the centurion’s servant, today’s gospel reading, is certainly worthy of reflection. It’s a familiar reading – only this time it seemed TOO familiar – like something we just read. It took a little research to find the right resources. First, find parallel gospels to today’s gospel. The story of the centurion’s slave is also in Luke 7:1-10. Another list showed me that the Luke version was the gospel for September 16 of this year, less than three months earlier. I was right! Rather than be repetitive or try to be inspiring from a different perspective, I decided to go with what distracted me the first time through – and in the process learned a lot.

My distraction began at the first line of today’s responsorial:

I rejoiced because they said to me,
"We will go up to the house of the LORD." [Psalm 122:1]

I immediately thought of the more familiar (to me) version of the same verse from the King James Bible:

I was glad when they said unto me,
let us go into the house of the Lord. [Psalm 122:1]

My brain offered up a convoluted tangle of memories, including the church I went to as a boy, my grandmother, and an old gospel song.

As a boy in South Bend, Indiana, I went to a Methodist church. I enjoyed the singing and joined in with all the old-time favorites. The church was a nice church, rather small, and green in color. They even had their own song:

Come to the church on the highway,
O come to the church on the hill.
No place was so dear to my childhood
as the little green church on hill.
I was glad when they said unto me
Let us go to the house of the lord.
No place was so dear to my childhood
As the little green church on the hill.

There it is!! Psalm 122:1 was part of the song! The tune is so very familiar to me, both from singing it myself and from hearing my grandmother humming it as she puttered in the kitchen. She always kept a good gospel tune going to brighten up her day. It always brightened up mine, too!

One day, while passing though my grandmother’s kitchen, a puzzling thought occurred to me. How does Grandma know the song about the church I go to? She had never been there as far as I knew. “I like that song, too” she said. “It’s called The Church in the Wildwood”. She sang it to me. Hmm . . . it sure was the same tune, just different words. Our men’s group used that song today as our gathering song.

On the internet, one is never more than a few clicks away from the lyrics to about ANY song. Here’s what I found:

Church in the Wildwood
There's a church in the valley by the wildwood
No lovelier spot in the dale
No place is so dear to my childhood
As the little brown church in the vale
(Oh, come, come, come, come)
Come to the church by the wildwood
Oh, come to the church in the vale
No spot is so dear to my childhood
As the little brown church in the vale

Guess what? No Psalm 122:1! I’m a little disappointed and amused at the same time. By luck of the draw (there are five of us that work on the reflections) I had a fragment of today’s responsorial psalm that triggered memories of my youth and my grandmother and a song from the past.

I’ve still got the search results from Google open in my browser. I’d like to at least give the songwriter credit for such a nice short song. And maybe hear someone sing it. The first thing on the search result page is a local location reference with photos, map, and links to Church in the Wildwood in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado. This is not THE church in the wildwood. I am familiar with this particular church because one of the Cub Scout Packs in the area used to meet there. The church just borrowed the name from the song. I scroll on down the page.

Google often lists videos for music-related searches first before more general search results. The first music video is “Church in the Wildwood” on YouTube, sung by Dolly Parton! The song was more popular than I thought. Searching again on the YouTube site, I found that “Church in the Wildwood” has been performed by the Statler Brothers, country rock group Alabama, and Loretta Lynn, among many others. Perhaps the most interesting video is a clip from the Andy Griffith Show, where Andy is playing guitar and he and Don Knotts are singing the song on the porch.

I should dig more! The sheet music for Church in the Wildwood shows that the song was written in 1857 by Dr. William S. Pitts. It doesn’t take a whole lot of searching to get a good summary on the story behind the song.

A young music teacher named William Pitts was traveling by stagecoach from Wisconsin to Fredericksburg, Iowa to visit his future wife. While waiting for the stagecoach horses to be changed in the small pioneering town of Bradford, he went for a walk and saw the empty lot where the church now stands. Being a romantic young man, the thought came to him of what a charming setting the spot would make for a church. Returning home, he wrote the poem “Church in the Wildwood,” and later set it to music. He put it away in a drawer and forgot it.

Mr. Pitts married, and the couple lived in Wisconsin. In 1862 he and his wife moved to Fredericksburg to be near her elderly parents. He was surprised upon his return to the area to find a church being erected exactly where he had imagined it five years before. The building was even being painted brown, the color mentioned in the song, because Ohio Mineral Paint’s brown paint was the least expensive paint that could be found.

In 1865, Pitts moved to Chicago, Illinois, to enroll in Rush Medical College. To pay his enrollment fees, he sold the rights to the song to a music publisher for $25. He completed medical school, graduating in 1868, but the song was again forgotten.

The church fell into decline following the move of the train tracks and flour mill to a nearby city with access to a larger river. It wasn’t until the early 1900’s that the Society for the Preservation of The Little Brown Church was founded, and by 1914, services were again held in the building. Shortly afterward, the small congregation experienced a revival that attracted new attention to it and to its song.

Among those who found and loved the song at this time was the Weatherwax Quartet. This group of traveling singers traveled throughout Canada and the United States in the 1920s and '30s and used as their trademark song "The Church in the Wildwood." They would quite easily talk about the little church during their travels.

Today, The Little Brown Church in the Vale is an active church in its original location. Are proud of their history and end every service with “Church in the Wildwood”. The church offers tours and is a destination for weddings and wedding vow renewals.

Wow, that turned out to be a bit more of a side trip than I was planning! I believe it is part of God’s plan that you make connections between seemingly random experiences. A single line from today’s Psalm made me think of a song which was a favorite of my grandmother as well. That made me smile. Finding the original song, “Church in the Wildwood”, led me to find that this song is widely performed by many country and gospel singers and groups. Listening to the different renditions made me smile again. To find that there is an interesting story behind the song was enlightening and fun. And to find out that the little brown church in Nashua, Iowa is an active church today, bringing joy to the congregation and visitors alike gave me a warm feeling.

I could rejoice in my early church experience, revel in the memory of a loved one, and expand my knowledge about how a rural church in Iowa has touched so many people. That all sounds like something God would want me to do.

I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord. Indeed!!