Another Pile of Stones

Today on Stille Zaterdag (Silent Saturday), I am remembering a Tuesday morning about 10 years ago. I know it was a Tuesday because that's the day of the weekly market in Duiven, the next village. I planned to go after I'd taken the girls to school. Maybe that's why I drove that morning. Usually they biked to school. I had dropped them off and was waiting at the traffic light on the edge of town with my right blinker on, all set to go to Duiven, when I got the distinct feeling I should turn around and go home instead.
At home there was a telephone message waiting for me--the one we had been expecting ever since my father went into hospice. He had left his worn-out 86-year-old body and gone on to the next life.
Have you ever had anything like that happen to you? Remember it on those silent Saturdays, when Hope seems dead and buried.
And if you haven't, if every day seems silent, remember this:  if death truly were the end, who or what told me to turn around and go back home?

*Photo of my dad, Ralph Van Rheenen, taken for his graduation from Western Theological Seminary, 1951.

Voting . . . Dutch Style

Keith and I did our civic duty today. Because we have been legal residents of the town of Westervoort for at least five years, we are eligible to vote in local elections, such as for members of the city council. A couple of weeks ago, the city mailed us each our stempas or voting pass. (Interestingly, stem also means "voice.")

The town thoughtfully included a list of candidates. Americans might look at this and think, "Wow! What a lot of candidates for city council! This must be a big town!!" Westervoort has a population of around 15,000. Seventeen people sit on the town council. 

The six columns are the six political parties involved in this election. The lists under the party names are the candidates each party is offering. We could choose one candidate (marked our choice with a red pencil, then folded our ballot up and dropped it into something that looked like a padlocked trash can with a big slit on top). 

Now here comes the difference between a parliamentarian democracy and whatever it is we do at home. Those 17 seats on the city council will be divided proportionally among the 5 parties according to the proportion of votes each party receives.  Last time the party on the right (Groen Links) won one seat. Suppose they win 2 seats this time. The two top-ranking Groen Links candidates will become part of the new town council. 

What effect does this have? Candidates rarely campaign. Parties campaign, largely based on their platforms. Personalities, especially in a local election, play very little part in the proceedings.

Smaller parties have a voice in the government. In order to increase their voice, parties sometimes form coalitions so that they will have a majority in the government. This is necessary on the national level and can lead to some really strange bedfellows. In Westervoort, three parties formed a coalition on the last town council (6 seats, 4 seats, 2 seats). 

We'll see what happens this time.

Stacking Stones

Little piles of rocks—have you seen these around, maybe on a hike or on a trip? I’ve seen them in the States, in the mountains of Switzerland, and now in the desert in Egypt. (We needed some sunshine, and the price for the package get-away to Egypt was very right.) Who, I wondered, would stop to make a decorative stack of rocks in the middle of absolutely nowhere?

If God is for us
who can be against us.
Banner in Sinti Church

 The Israelites used to pile up big stacks of rocks after God had done something like part the Jordan River so they could cross on dry land.  when their children asked about that stack, they would remember to retell the story. Our Sinti Romany friends do something similar. They don’t pile up stones here and there—but they do regularly share their own sacred stories. Here is one of them.

A Sinti woman whom we'll call "Anna" already had a number of children. She and her husband were expecting yet another one. The doctors told her that this baby endangered her health; the birth would be problematic. She and her husband prayed. As they prayed, God revealed to her that the baby would not die but be born healthy. The baby would be a boy and grow up to be an evangelist.

Keith and I know that "baby." He did grow up and is a preacher who does freely share the Good News with other Sinti, both in the Netherlands and in neighboring countries.

What sacred stories do you have to share?