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Our lady

Thursday, December 12, 2019

From Luke 1
Mary said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord."

The Brummers named their children Angelina and Mary. They lived on a small farm during the Great Depression. Both the Brummer girls went to college and became teachers. Aunt Mary never married. Even though living in Arkansas and then Danville, Illinois, she made lots of time for her niece and nephews in Lincoln. She was my hero.

When I was twelve, Aunt Mary took me to Chicago. We rode the train from Lincoln and at Union Station found a cab. On this trip, my aunt was pulling out all the stops!

The taxi took us to the YMCA Hotel south of the Loop on Wabash Ave. She asked for a room on the fifteenth floor. In those days when air conditioning was rare the windows opened, and I opened ours, high above the sprawled-out city. Honking, tires squealing, all that traffic sound rose and filled the room. I saw birds flying below us.

Aunt Mary had a very specific goal in mind for our time together. Around the corner in the middle of Skid Row on South State Street, we had dinner that night at the Pacific Garden Mission, where evangelist Billy Sunday had become a Christian. Their service was nothing like I'd experienced in Lincoln. Mostly-homeless men sang strong. Their songs did not come from the Lutheran hymnal.

We sang with them, and it was easy to catch on to Fanny Crosby's simple melodies. "All the Way My Savior Leads Me. Blessed Assurance. Jesus is Tenderly Calling You Home. Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior." And finally, "Rescue the Perishing."

It was getting dark there on Skid Row in Chicago, a place where perishing was common. I said nothing, tried to sing, listened to the sermon, wondered what it's like to live outside, trying to sleep with half-open eyes, worried all the time.

We ate together afterward. The food felt fine going down. Aunt Mary whispered, "For most of them, this is their only meal today." I could not imagine. The food tasted even better then.

It rained while we were at the Mission, and the rain soaked my paperback on the window ledge. Back at the hotel I asked Aunt Mary if I could drop my book and watch it fall fifteen floors. That surprised her, my male violent streak. Horrified, she said, "No! What if you hit someone?" Well, that was kind of the idea. I felt disappointed.

The sun came up bright and the sky was blue. The Loop could not have been nearer or more promising, and it was time for the second part of Aunt Mary's plan for me. We walked clear through the Loop and up Michigan Avenue to the Allerton Hotel, new home of Don McNeill's radio show, "The Breakfast Club." Aunt Mary, born in 1926, grew up listening to that show, which aired first in 1933.

Skid Row was nowhere to be seen. The lobby rustled with rich men and fancy women, and we stepped up through the ferns and flowers to their Restaurant for lunch. Aunt Mary had made reservations. We sat, ordered, and the food was brought to us on plates kept hot under glass. We had breakfast, and now this extravagant lunch, and later dinner.

Aunt Mary wanted me, I think, to feel the difference between a single simple meal on State Street on one day, then several fancy meals around the city on the next. After we finished our plates of food, the waiter brought towels and bowls of water. I was thirsty and drank it up. Aunt Mary laughed. "That is called a finger bowl," she said. "For you to clean your hands." "Oh," I gulped. "Sorry." She laughed again.

We sat in the lobby and I imagined being rich. We walked back through the Loop to the YMCA, to the awesome view from our room. The next day we rode the Illinois Central railroad, the City of New Orleans, back to Lincoln.

Aunt Mary taught without spelling things out. She didn't say much about our trip, just left it up to me draw conclusions, learn, let the shady and the showy sides of life take their places in my mind. I won't forget that trip, and her companionship. I loved her very much.

Lord, this song is for me, and my Aunt Mary too. Thank you. "Rescue the perishing, care for the dying, snatch them in pity from sin and the grave. Weep o'er the erring one, lift up the fallen, tell them of Jesus the mighty to save."



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