A Natural Grace

by Dee H. Wade

There are two Red Rivers in Kentucky, one East and one South-Central. The first carves out its gorge; the second, before returning to Tennessee, flows by the Red River Meeting House in Logan County, not too far from Adairville. It is to this wooded ground that we, a contingent of Synod folk, have come, taking a tour back into time.

The log church house was restored in 1994 according to the design of the structure that originally stood here, and bears the date 1779 over its entrance. It expresses a sturdy simplicity matching the period commemorated, though its peaceful setting belies the energy generated around 201 years ago. The fiery Scotch-Irish preacher, James McGready, began here a series of camp meetings that grew into the "Great Revival" of the early 1800's.

An interpretive flyer left for visitors asserts that "families came from great distances, in covered wagons, and camped for five days to hear McGready and other ministers preaching day and night. Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists worked in unison against the frontier's increasing wickedness, and for men's souls and for the retention of our Christian heritage."

The largest and most famous of these camp meetings occurred the next summer, up in Bourbon County, at the Cane Ridge Presbyterian Church. I could tell you more about the Great Revival and the "unusual agitations" -- both positive and negative -- that they produced. But you could do better by reading any number of sources on this significant event in American church history, including Louis Weeks' Kentucky Presbyterians (1983). And I can do better by telling you about the graveyard. Make that two graveyards, starting with the one our group is presently exploring on the south side of the Red River Meeting House.

Parts of it are quite old. Stones mark the graves of people born in other places, some quite far away, in the mid-eighteenth century, and who settled at last along the Red River. These were the first European pioneers, before Logan was a county and Kentucky was a state. Their descendants are huddled around them, some under the tiny stones of infants, one generation, then another, until the surnames change or you get the feeling the line died off or the next set of children moved away.

There's one stone with the 23rd Psalm carved in Gaelic (we know it's the Gaelic version of the Shepherd Psalm because a little plastic wrapped card says so). There's poetry less eloquent on many other stones, scripture fragments, and epitaphs about the dearly departed. Words predominate on these stones over other symbolic expressions, such as crosses, which one takes as a Protestant impulse. Several stones, however, share similar carvings of a single hand with the index finger pointing upward, apparently to indicate the soul's final direction.

A host of soldiers and officers are buried here, one who was present at the Battle of Waterloo. Most seem to be from the Revolutionary War; at least one is from the Spanish American War; and there is a sprinkling of veterans of the War Between the States. The newer sections of the graveyard, less grizzled with moss on the stones, contain those who fought in both world wars, as well as men who saw action in Korea and Vietnam. Of the latter, there is a USAF Master Sergeant, who died young at 51. On his double, husband and wife marker, the name of an oriental woman is pre-carved, representing another movement of pioneers, these too from far away places. More than the sweep of church history is displayed on this ground.

What makes graveyards so beautiful, especially country church graveyards? Is is the maturity of the trees, the scattering of light underneath on a sunny spring day like this? Is it the endurance of limestone, marble, and granite? Is it grounds well kept, but not tortured with over preening? Is it the meaning of such places, the silent acceptance of death, and the care given the dead?

One week later, I am in another graveyard, this one not rural but urban, and not built around a church. It is also much larger but no less beautiful. I come to Cave Hill Cemetery, in Louisville, not as a tourist, but to do what I do: to accompany a family, to say some words, to exhale prayer and inhale mystery.

Twice today I come to this graveyard, first to commend to almighty God a twenty-year-old who died in a tragic and freak accident. Even though I do so in "sure and certain hope," David's parents, sisters, grandmothers, aunts, uncles, cousins and scores of friends are devastated. There is no understanding this loss, no phrasing that I can offer to touch the pain. As useless, as inadequate as I feel in this moment, I am aware all the more of the presence of One who makes all things new, the Alpha and the Omega. In the background, an unseen Carolina Wren is heard: teakettle! teakettle! teakettle! tea! If she does not have the wings of eagles, her song is enough to lift us up and bear our grief away, a little bit at a time.

Two hours later, and I am back, with a smaller crowd, again to commend to God, but this time to commit the 95-year-old body of Christine to the earth, beneath the spreading limbs of a magnificent oak tree. It's not that we won't miss her; she was the light of our congregation, and in her bright eyes we saw a reflection of the Light of the World. But it is easier to recite the 23rd Psalm around her grave than it was this morning around David's. We celebrated her life back at the church; she helped us in our worship of God. Out here, along with her sons and other relations and friends, we rejoice to see the final marker of her life to be set amidst such pleasantness and beauty. Hers was the way life is supposed to go, in quality of being as well as in quantity of years.

As it happens, Christine grew up in Simpson County, which is in the deep south of Kentucky, right next to Logan County. She knew where Adairville is; she might have been kin to some of the people who are buried around the Red River Meeting House. Whether in that graveyard or in this one, death is accepted, through both heavy grief and tender comfort, as an inevitable part of life. And the dead: oh, how they are honored. But both here and there, we laugh at death because of our faith in the very Lord who assures its defeat. Death, too shall pass away, we believe, into the glory of resurrection. A revival like that is the greatest one of all.

Dee Wade

Left to right: Phil Leftwich, Ken Dick, Will Berger, Ken Morgan.