The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.—from “Haunted Houses” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A few weeks ago, as part of an incredibly exciting rejuvenation of the main floor here at Gutenberg College, I got to paint the classroom. A flurry of planning and activity had been ramping up for weeks—months, really. I’d been occupied with scheduling and color choices and orchestrating the removal of carpet, the moving of furniture, and the preparation for floor refinishing. Lots of people were pitching in, and there were a lot of moving pieces.
But when it came time to paint the classroom, a strange still came over the project. Most of the other work and preparation was done; most of the people who had been helping me were otherwise occupied; and I found myself mostly alone. Alone with the room, the paint, the brushes and rollers, and a few days in which to complete the project.
As I traced the contours of the room—now up and down a ladder, now shuffling along the floor, all to carefully cut in around the baseboards and window frames and mantelpiece—I marveled at details of the room I had somehow not noticed in the many (many) hours of my life I’d spent within it. Had the plaster walls always been this textured? Did the glass doors always have that peaked window above them? Had the crown molding always been that beautifully curved?
But admiration for this stately old room was not the only thing stirring within me as I worked. I could not help but remember, could not help but feel, my roots in this building—how many times I had sat in this very room and listened, as a child, as a student, to the voices of patient men and women teaching the Bible, philosophy, history, art; how often one of those voices had belonged to my father—a voice now lost to me except by recording.
And not only my own mother and father but so many other “mothers and fathers” had walked these halls and taught around these tables and organized these rooms. (I remembered, through the eyes of a child, this very classroom being painted the color I was now painting over!) We are blessed to still have many of these women and men with us, but they won’t be here forever. And neither will I. My turn with the brush began to feel weighty.
I turned six years old the fall that McKenzie Study Center welcomed its strange new child, “Gutenberg College,” into the world. Her first freshman class was gathering around those tables in the classroom, but I’m sure I didn’t know that anything had changed. Dad was still going to work at that same big brick building. He and Mom were still towing me along (when my big brother was unavailable to babysit) to slink around said building while they had their mysterious “staff meeting” in one of those intriguing rooms. The same kind grownups were there meeting with them.
No, I don’t believe I recognized that first fall that a newborn college now lived in that familiar building. But it wasn’t too many years before the idea of Gutenberg College was firmly in my mind, primarily because of the thing I loved best about her—her students.
In that first class, one of the students was a huge movie buff, and when I fell into Star Wars fandom at age eight, he generously talked “lore” with me and showed me his collection of paraphernalia related to the movies. (This is my first memory of Room 1—that room with the fireplace that’s in the corner between the men’s hall and the women’s hall.)
In a class that followed soon after, another student befriended me. I always asked if I could see her room and talk to her, and she was so kind to that inquisitive child. Over one summer, she wrote me back when I sent her letters. I adored her handwriting. (Visiting with her is my first memory of Room 6—the one at the end of the women’s hall with the tall loft bed. I lived in that room later myself.)
Gutenberg students brought other riches to the whole community, too. When one of the students in those early classes found a band that she loved, a husband-and-wife duo out of Ohio who were just beginning to be heard of, she decided to write them a letter. She audaciously asked them if they would please come perform at her little college in Eugene, Oregon—and they did.
Yes, Over the Rhine came because of her request, and they performed in the living room (more than once, actually). I will never forget sitting there on one of those evenings, the room’s deep red walls perfectly illuminated, while the hauntingly beautiful voice of Karin Bergquist singing Linford Detweiler’s words reverberated through my soul: “There is a me you would not recognize, dear. Call it the shadow of myself.” Whoa. (This is not my first memory of the living room, but it is one of my favorites.)
After years of learning and loving the Gutenberg students, I had the opportunity to become one myself. Those four years of my college education were so implausibly packed with life, in all its joy and suffering, that this building is filled with its echoes for me to this day. In nearly every room, I can feel and see those layers of the past, if I remember to.
The classroom, library, and loft are full of late nights “studying” and then having to face the consequences in those same rooms the next morning. The living room is full of years of performances and parties. The rooms upstairs begin to get personal. Room 6 is where I first felt the weight of depression, and the kind house manager who could tell I wasn’t okay came to talk to me. Room 5 is where I accidentally deployed my friend’s pepper spray because I thought it was a flashlight. (Sorry, Chelsea and Sinah!) The living room of the managers’ apartment, of all places (I was painting the trim there to make up for a missed house work day), is where I listened with curiosity to a slightly odd freshman named Gil who explained his social woes to me and asked me for advice. And Room 4 is where, about a year later, I said yes when he asked me to marry him.
To hear me recount it now, it may sound like I always held this place, these people, this school in unmitigated high esteem. But that’s not really true. Just as it is natural to go through periods of disillusionment with one’s parents, I think it is natural to go through periods of dissatisfaction with one’s alma mater—and for me, of course, the two were closely related. Like a fish who can’t see water, I could not always see the tapestry of love, support, thoughtfulness, and faithfulness that our fathers and mothers at Gutenberg had woven around us. I could not always see the value of what I had been raised in. It was easy to find flaws to focus on if I wanted to, and I was also eager to go elsewhere and forge my own path.
So when, after we had lived far away (in Kansas City, Missouri) for five years, Gil told me that he wanted us to answer the call Gutenberg had put out for new house managers, I was not immediately on board. “I’ve always thought that we would do that someday,” he told me. This was a surprise to me, but I came around to the idea. We moved our young family back to Oregon and began to add new layers of life in this building to our memories.
The first staff meeting we attended was in the library. I’d been watching my parents disappear behind those closed doors for decades, and now suddenly I was sitting in there with them. My dear father looked across the table at me with a big, skeptically friendly squint and said, “You know, it’s pretty surreal to have you here, Erin.” We both laughed.
Just two years later, a string of memories that we would not have chosen were added to our family’s story—but they are still worth recounting, remembering.
We were in the library again, just Dad and I. He was installing a bracket above the fireplace to hold a TV. It was almost time for fall term of the new school year to start. He told me that he had some slightly weird medical stuff going on; probably nothing to worry about, but all the same he was going to see the doctor.
Only a week later, the medical issues worsened. There were more doctors’ appointments. The school year was beginning, but Dad only taught a day or two of classes before being unable to continue. I was upstairs in our apartment when I got the message that it was cancer.
Things progressed so quickly; just three and a half months after his diagnosis, we knew Dad was very close to the end. Late one night in January, I dragged myself home from sitting vigil with my family, weary to the bone and somehow numb and aching at the same time. As I passed by the living room, expecting it to be empty, I instead found a group of students and residents, heads bowed, gathered there to pray for all of us. Their presence was a balm to me. My father passed away late the next morning.
I said I was “mostly” alone while I painted the classroom. Trisha, our administrative secretary and a fellow Gutenberg alum (one of those who was praying for Dad in the living room) was working nearby in the office for much of the time, and she patiently listened to me barely hold back tears while making grandiose statements about the past and the present and the privilege it is to be taking our turn caring for this house and how deeply this place is knit into the fabric of my being.
At one point, without really thinking, I said to her “I wonder if my kids will be doing this someday.”
She did not miss a beat. Holding an imaginary phone up to her ear, she called out, “Hey, Linford! Yeah, you’re not going to believe what I’m doing today. Yep, the classroom. Man, it needed it. How long do you think it’s been since Mom painted this, like thirty years?” We both laughed uproariously—and my eyes were suddenly very leaky.
In reality, who knows if my children will be involved with this building or with Gutenberg College in the future—those are decisions that they will have to make in their own way in their own time. But I hope that when it’s their “turn,” whether here or elsewhere, they will see the gift that roots are. I hope they will see the beauty of faithful investment in community; I hope they will see the wisdom in careful listening and consideration; I hope they will feel the love of God through the people around them, bearing them up through both sorrows and joys.
I know there are places besides Gutenberg to learn and experience these things—other oases dotting this world—but Gutenberg (and McKenzie Study Center) is the one God placed me in and the one in which he has been growing me up. I am incredibly grateful to have been able to call Gutenberg “home” in so many ways over so many years, and I thank God for all the men and women who have tended to this place and the people in it since it began. May He continue to help those of us here now be as faithful as we can while we take our turn.
This article first appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of Colloquy, Gutenberg College’s free quarterly newsletter. Subscribe here.
