Piet's Page August 6, 2006

The Singing of Songs
Psalm 137

[Note: My mother, Maria Galina van Blitterswijk Knetsch, age 91, has been on my mind a great deal of late. She has dementia, perhaps Alzheimers, and we have just moved her into a special care home in Wichita. Gradually, she is slipping away from us, and perhaps this is just one way in which I am trying to hold on to her and also to honor her. I wrote this meditation two years ago. Forgive me for using it again, with some slight editorial changes. Please – read Psalm 137 before continuing.]

When I read Psalm 137, it is impossible for me to not take it out of context, especially when I come to verse 4: How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? That verse is very personal. It relates in a profound way to my own family’s history, in particular our immigration to a foreign land, the USA, the land which to you is home. Leaving The Netherlands was my father’s idea, much to my mother’s dismay. At age 41, she was asked to leave behind nearly everything she loved, in particular her parents, four sisters and two brothers. She also had to leave (forever!) her friends, her culture, her language. It was a sacrifice my mother made for only one reason: she viewed it as her obligation to her husband. That obligation necessitated giving up so much of herself, knowing that she would never be able to fully reclaim that part of who she is. Just think about that for a moment. Can you even grasp what that means? My mother lived with incredible pain for years, as she sought to make the transition to this new and very foreign land, with foreign ways and a foreign language. [To us Dutch, there is only one real language, you know!] To this day, my mother is homesick. To this day, she pines for her four sisters who are all still alive and well in The Netherlands. She aches for people, places and a culture which are an inseparable part of her. For now 51 years she has had such longings – can you even grasp what that means? Can you put yourself in her place, and feel empathy for her, for that which she feels? Her husband of 66 years died in 2003. Mama is here with her children and grandchildren, but a part of her heart and all of her roots are and always will be at ‘home’, in The Netherlands, a place which in her romanticized and idealized view has become paradise.

Psalm 137. The people of Israel, captives in Babylon, are asked by their captors to sing their native songs, and they really cannot do so. It’s hard to sing your beloved songs when your heart aches, when you’re homesick, when you’re away from people and places which offer comfort. Though not a ‘captive’, my mother knows about that and can share her feelings in her thick Dutch-accented English. Perhaps we can reflect upon that when we hear about or speak about immigrants, official and unofficial languages, native and foreign cultures. Perhaps we can reflect upon God’s love and grace extended to ‘foreigners’ among us – reflect upon it, and pray about it. Oh yes - please include Maria Knetsch in those prayers. She’s still a ‘foreigner’ in a sometimes strange land.

- Pastor Piet -
August 20, 2006