THE DESCENDANT OF THE MAN WHO BUILT A CHAIR FOR JESUS

Gregory Hartzler Miller

The DreamSeeker Magazine discussion (Spring 2002) about whether or not we can hear God’s voice has provided an occasion for reexamining my own sense of call. I don’t have St. Paul’s strength of character, but like Paul in his weakness, I know a man in Christ—seven years ago this man heard inexpressible things and was caught up into paradise.

The ascent of the soul to heaven is a perennial story, and one which sometimes comes across as prideful. So I’ll begin by emphasizing my grief and disorientation seven years ago. In marriage, church, and career, the main spheres of my social life, I was feeling powerless.

Though my wife and I wanted children, we were infertile. High-tech medical treatments soon became oppressive. Though chances to adopt came our way, and I had visions of the joys of adoptive parenting, we decided that adoption was not for us. I felt anxious about a childless future.

Several times during sermons at our Mennonite church I’d walked out. The congregation was laboring over whether to bless partners in same-sex covenants. Is it sinful flesh that drives the desire for gay and lesbian sexual union? Can we judge another person’s fleshly sin or spiritual longing without, in so doing, judging ourselves? Such questions became the subtext for every sermon, or so it seemed to me. During these public monologues, my own struggles of flesh and spirit sometimes became overwhelming. Sitting passively, I felt crippled. Walking out seemed, for me, more joyful. But, for others, my behavior was disruptive.

I’d left my last social work job after only a few months. I had been accompanying a person with mental retardation and autism during such daily activities as working on a shop assembly line, aerobic walking in the park, and playing educational computer games. My title was "community integration specialist." One day my boss reassigned me within the agency. I left her office in tears. I had not seen it coming. When I gained my composure, I returned to ask why. She said that I didn’t seem happy. I agreed, but I thought I’d hidden it.

Years earlier, while working toward credentials in social work and theology, I had been reasonably successful at mastering concepts and imitating mentors. But my disorderliness at church, my unhappiness on the job, and the evaporation of my parenting dreams became an occasion for serious self-doubt.

The maxim "Follow your bliss" was popular those days. And during a solo drive from Elkhart, Indiana, to Harrisonburg, Virginia, I caught a hint of mine. I made a side trip to Holmes County, Ohio, because I’d been reading about my ancestor who had lived there six generations ago.

As a young man in 1809, Jonas "White" Stutzman was the first of European stock to build a cabin and settle in Holmes County. He married, helped raise a family, and served his community as a schoolteacher. But in his later years, he became, as some Amish observers say, "a little unusual."

At the Mennonite information center in Berlin, I was stunned when I saw on display a somewhat oversized wooden chair that Jonas had built. It had acquired a surreal quality because, according to local lore, he declared it a "chair for Jesus." The tour guide explained that Jonas, a Millennial enthusiast, mistakenly set an 1853 date for the Second Coming. And in his later years, he wore all white, including, some say, hat and shoes. Thus his nickname, Der Weiss.

Being in his bloodline, and knowing some of my own tendencies toward eccentricity, his story drew me in. I wondered what experiences might have moved him to act as he did. And I had a hunch that understanding him might somehow help me avoid unwitting imitation.

According to Jonas’s own writings, he was influenced by personal raptures, or more specifically, imaginative visions received during rapture. Beyond the mundane world he saw a cosmic battle between God and the devil. He became convinced that, by outward signs, he could clearly distinguish between the sinful ways of the flesh and the path of the spirit: Checkers and stripes and bright color wearing, tobacco using, dancing, and frolicking were outward signs of carnality; those sincerely preparing for the great banquet of Christ should, as he saw it, wear white and earth tones, gray and fallow, the colors of sheep and eagles.

As through rapture he judged outward signs of flesh and spirit, so also he discerned the before and after of Christ’s return. For Jonas, the 50 in 1850 came to represent a pivotal jubilee year. During the next three-and-a-half years, like a modern Noah, he would call all people to prepare for the day of judgment. Then, on the sixth month of the fifty-third year, 1853, the change would take place.

Of course, nobody knows the day or the hour, so he left a little wiggle room. Sometime at the end of May or the beginning of June, the sun, he said, would set at noon and not come up for 30 days. Then a new sun was to rise and shine seven times brighter than the old sun. Thus the symbolic flourish of his apocalyptic hope was pinned down on the hard empirical measure of the calendar.

Although his literal interpretations of those visions led him on a path that might seem, in retrospect, comical, his writings suggest that something transformative was actually happening in his soul. In his words, he was becoming a tabernacle for the love-essence of God. While I find his use of male dominant language jarring when I quote it, I understand it in the context of his time. And I find some of his other old time language endearing. He wrote,

"It [regeneration] is a consummate change of the entire man, for though it has its beginning in the most spiritual part of man, to wit: his will or volition, it nevertheless penetrates gradually all the faculties of man, as well of the soul as of the body, until the whole man becomes thoroughly permeated, purified, sanctified, healed by the love-essence of God, and is thus gained and conquered by and for God totally. The man becomes a tabernacle of God, and his heart a temple in which the Eternal & Unspeakable One reveals himself with inexpressible love and gives him to taste such divine joys and enjoyments of nature and existence as the natural man has not even a glimpse, much less any knowledge thereof. For Christ tells us: ‘The Kingdom of God is within you!’"

Here instead of dress code, he speaks of indwelling Spirit, and rather than grasping for protection from the devil, he uses the language of mystical awe—"the unspeakable one" revealed through "inexpressible love. . . ." His enthusiasm is perhaps manic and he overplays the experiential side of regeneration; nevertheless, I liked meditating on his words. If he’d been preaching to my face, I might have felt very uncomfortable, but with 150 years between us, it seemed safe to suspend skepticism and listen to his testimony. I spent hours outlining what he said about regeneration and the kingdom of God. Of course, I also reflected on his scriptural sources.

It was around that time, seven years ago, that I came to "know a man in Christ." One night in a dream, this man heard a heavenly voice mirroring a very earthly life question: "Why am I in this place, at this time?" After an expectant pause he heard inexpressible words, words a human being cannot repeat with anywhere near the same effect. He was bowled over with a heartfelt sense of utter separation from God and, at the same time, compassion for people in misery.

Awakening abruptly from sleep, unable to catch his breath, he suddenly heard a rushing sound like wind and his whole body seemed to burst into invisible flame. He assumed he was dying, and that terrified him. But as his soul ascended with a pure release of pleasure more intense than anything he could have imagined, he accepted death. The pleasure quickly faded and all that remained was mental awareness rising as if lifted by a gentle breeze. Then, like a candle that goes out, all thought ceased.

During what he remembers as a distinct gap in consciousness, a perceptual void, a luminous darkness, the merciful goodness of God was secretly at work, that is, judging by the transformation that came next—he was reborn in paradise, thoroughly permeated, purified, sanctified, and healed by the love-essence of God (No, he wasn’t under the influence of drugs, a seizure disorder, or any known health problem).

To say that man in Christ is me sounds foolish. Those who know me will attest that I’m weak. In an extended family gathering recently, when the other men were obviously enjoying fatherhood, I became oddly sleepy, then irrepressibly weepy. Recently, among Mennonites, I walked out on yet another sermon, then awkwardly attempted to explain and apologize. And it still appears I’m not well suited for a mainstream career.

Yet in the past seven years I’ve begun to discover a path that suits me. I’ve come to appreciate one of John of the Cross’s basic admonitions: relinquish the voices and visions received in rapture; cling to no experience, however pleasurable, nor to any voice however sublime, nor any vision however heavenly. Though flights of the spirit sometimes mark a "spiritual betrothal," they are not the termination of life’s journey. John counsels a walk of simple faith, a habitual trust that the light of God is at work secretly in our ordinary lives. Jonas might have benefited from such guidance.

My emerging way of life resembles that of a contemplative monk or a hermit. My main household chore is meal preparation and cleanup. During the better part of my days I turn to solitary spiritual disciplines. But unlike the monks in the rural wilderness, my wilderness is in the city. Instead of open landscape, when I open our front door I see a deserted house, vacant since before we moved here three years ago.

Contemplative attentiveness enables a particular quality of neighboring, a responsiveness to those who come near. It might include taking glasses of water to the garbage collectors on a hot day, or walking to the mini-park with neighbor children and picking up trash while they climb and swing, or watching cats for the woman across the street who comes back from a blissful vacation and introduces a woman friend as her partner. Contemplative neighboring is listening, welcoming, and often, at the end of the day, having an interesting story to share.

As I accepted childlessness, I more often noticed the spiritual friendship dimension of my marriage, my life partnership. My focus shifted from procreation to those intangible qualities of intimacy that make living together joyful: respect for the other, attentive listening, self-control, finding words to share what is important, integrity, attentive silence, affirmation of our separate spheres. In such shared events as sipping tea by our vegetable garden or meditative Scripture reading in the living room, we create space for seeing beauty.

To sum up, unlike my ancestor Jonas, I interpret rapture as a "via negativa," a path to soulful transformation through mystical unknowing. But like him, I offer in writing my testimony of God’s extraordinary grace. Relinquishing life visions that weren’t working, I’m married less anxiously now, aiming to become skillful at contemplative solitude, urban neighboring, and spiritual friendship.

Thanks for listening. May the peace of Christ dwell in your hearts.

—Gregory Hartzler-Miller, Baltimore, studied Christian spirituality at Washington Theological Union in D.C. His article, "Jonas Stutzmann: The Amish Man Who Wore All White and Built a Chair for Jesus," is a chapter in Apocalypticism and Millennialism: Shaping a Believers Church Eschatology for the Twenty-First Century, edited by Loren L. Johns (Kitchener, Ont.: Pandora Press, 2000).