{This is a chapter in a Memoir, “Give Light…” of the six decades the author has spent writing about faith communities in daily, weekly and monthly news publications covering the western third of Virginia.}
It’s Lent. In churches where the 40-day period of reflection prior to Easter is observed, it is customary to engage in some practices to help one grow closer to God. As I read of special emphasis on Prayer being undertaken at First United Methodist Church in Salem, my thoughts spun back to 1962.
At the small relatively new church in North Roanoke, which my family was then attending, our young minister thought the women’s group should attend to something besides raising money through the annual bazaar. Hearing of a prayer group at another church of our denomination, he invited three of its members to tell our “ Ladies Auxiliary” about it.
A new family had recently joined our parish; the wife and mother of four and I had become close friends. We were strongly affected by the testimony of the visiting women who recommended a devotional book by Helen Smith Shoemaker. My friend and I, reflecting in our weekly telephone chats after our total of seven children were in school or napping, felt moved to try to start such a prayer and study group.
There were six of us to start with. Two were older women, charter members of the church who lived in Northwest Roanoke with their blue-collar husbands. They imparted faith and wisdom to the other four of us young mothers.
For several weeks before our first meeting, we read the Shoemaker’s book, “Power Through Prayer Groups.” We’d meet in each other’s homes at night when our husbands could be with the children or to accommodate one woman employed full-time. My friend, who had the luxury of a pre-WW II car, borrowed study books from a church library; she and I previewed them, and we augmented the prayer period of about 30-minutes with discussions about the book to round out the hour.
Our young minister was pleased; he soon moved on in his vocation, but our group continued for the next eight years. Its membership never exceeded eight as newcomers came and others went. As the “baby boomer” children grew to college age, several of our members, including my friend, took paid jobs. For a time, we met with a homebound member. We changed meeting places and found a morning gathering which made more sense.
Meanwhile, my interest in devotional reading had been kindled. Our group sampled a variety of books. One, “Prayer Can Change Your Life” recounted an experiment taken in a California college community in which 45 ordinary adults entered into a program led by a psychology professor, Dr. William R. Parker.
Our little group learned, from a 1957 book Parker published about the experiment, some exciting ways of thinking about relationship to God.
Midway through the 1960s, when I was struggling through what I later identified as my “Mid-Life Crisis,” I had a spiritual conversion experience which came about as I was reflecting on some of the material we had discussed. It made my family life, my work and my involvement in my congregation vastly more meaningful.
This column was inspired in part by another book, “I Stand By the Door.” Written by the same Helen Smith Shoemaker who had introduced my friend and me to the value of small lay-led prayer and study groups, it is autographed for me by its author.
Mrs. Shoemaker, in 1969, visited a Roanoke church for a Lenten weekend. Delighted to have the chance to count her among the many well-known religion figures I have met over the years, I told her of our group which by then was slowly diminishing as we mothers’ lives were changing.
Helen Shoemaker, well-known throughout the denomination at this time, was as gracious as I expected. She explained that her book, published two years earlier, was a life of her late husband, the Rev. Sam Shoemaker. He had died six years before our meeting after an extended illness, which she never identifies, as formerly was often done when cancer was the cause.
Still later, I learned that Sam Shoemaker, was a tremendously influential preacher and writer in religious America just after World War II. Coming of a prosperous family in Maryland typical of privileged Episcopalians, he led an evangelical ministry to inner city residents in Pittsburgh during which time his wife, the daughter of a United States Senator, was developing the prayer group ministry.
It appealed especially to women who were still second-class members of most churches in that time. Their ordination and lay leadership were a decade away.
Sam Shoemaker became famous for a kind of poem he called “I Stand By the Door.” In common language, he imagines himself as one who does not push but encourages a seeker in finding a closer relationship to God. His wife in her story took her title from his “credo.”
A good thing to recall as Lent begins.