Free The Face of Heaven by Murray Pura Page A

hope, there is peace for the turmoil of the human heart and the tumult of nations.”
    Briefly he picked up a newspaper and let it fall down upon the clean straw.
    “News comes of a terrible battle near Shiloh in Tennessee. Tens of thousands dead and wounded. Mothers in tears. Fathers’ spirits broken. Some of you ask me why I bother to read the papers when the burden they put on a man is so pernicious. My brothers in Christ, my sisters in Christ, I read them so I know how to pray for our country—not North or South but for our whole country. And to weep with those who weep, as our Lord commanded.”
    He nodded at the pastors, who sat near him at a front bench, and they stood up and gathered on both sides of him—Abraham Yoder, Samuel Eby, and Solomon Miller. They knelt as one and folded their hands before them in prayer.
    “Corinth King left us to bear arms but he had not yet been baptized, not yet taken his vows.” Her father’s eyes rested on Lyndel. “Nathaniel King, on the other hand, was baptized two years ago. He is one of us. He is Amish.” Her father moved his head to seek out Nathaniel’s parents. “Last year we waited months for confirmation that he had joineda regiment in Indiana. He himself confirmed he had enlisted by writing to me and confessing it was so.
    “Many of you know that he and I wrote back and forth all winter as I endeavored to get him to change his mind, to repent, to return to us a man of prayer and of peace. But he has insisted he feels called to make a whip as Jesus made a whip and is clearing the temple of our nation. When I told him it was not his place to take on the role of our Lord he replied that we had to imitate Christ in all things. I responded that just as Nathaniel could not take on the sins of the world on the Cross so he could not take on the sins of the nation and bear a whip to cleanse the temple that is America. But he has proceeded on his own way. He has forgotten the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ ”
    Lyndel saw that her father’s tears were flowing freely now. She heard others begin to cry and a tightness came to her throat. She had sworn there would be no tears on her part but she found she couldn’t stop them and so she bowed her head, raising a small white handkerchief to her face.
    “So now the papers from Philadelphia and New York tell us of his Indiana regiment and how Nathaniel performed bravely under fire at Lewinsville in Virginia last fall and how he has been promoted to corporal. I have failed to persuade him to return to the ways we as a people have been called upon by the Lord to follow. So, in grief and with our eyes toward the righteous Judge who weighs the hearts and the motives of all men, I and the leadership…” he paused as if he hoped that somehow it had all been a bad dream and that by wishing it so, he might open his eyes and find a repentant Nathaniel King kneeling in front of him, “must with great regret declare Nathaniel King excommunicated, exkommuniziert, from our church. He may not be spoken with. Letters may no longer be written to him or letters received from him. It must be as if he were not alive, so that one day, repentant, he may return to us as one who is alive—a young man joined again to his Amish people and joined to the Lord and Savior of our souls. Amen.”
    Amen, the people responded but Lyndel did not open her mouth.
     
    There were baptisms that day—Sunday, April 13th, 1862—andCommunion and then a huge meal but, as she had done the day of Charlie Preston’s funeral, Lyndel wandered off alone to the hay fields near her farm, fields where the grass was short and green and wet from spring rains. And, as Nathaniel had followed her into those fields the year before, she was followed again, this time by her brother Levi, who caught up with her and stood just behind her, calling her name and waiting for her to turn.
    When he saw her white face and swollen eyes he removed his broad-brimmed hat. “I’m