My son, Sean (my first son--a "middle child") was
married in the July of 2012 to a wonderful girl. She as it happens is Eastern Orthodox and thoroughly
unfamiliar with Lutheranism. I treated
her to a small book which I wrote exclusively for her to introduce her to new
family. Entitled Stories From Your New Family,
I related some folklore which surrounds our family which I assumed she was
uninformed. Stories From Your New Family included
a small disclaimer on the second page which read: True Stores Tall Tales And Outright Lies. Along with
various stories about the Lee's, I included a short introduction to
Lutheranism. The following is a part of
the little book which was intended to be more entertaining than factual. So read the related section with a huge grain
of salt.
Dear New Daughter:
Christa.
Now that you are now a part of our family, I feel it is now time for you
to find out what you've gotten yourself into!
Customarily, these weighty matters would
be something you would have been informed of before your wedding; but, if we
had spilled the beans, you might have had second, third, fourth, or fifth
thoughts!
Now that you are now a part of our family, I feel it is now time for you
to find out what you've gotten yourself into!
Customarily, these weighty matters would be something you would have been informed of before your wedding; but, if we had spilled the beans, you might have had second, third, fourth, or fifth thoughts!
THE
"LEE" NAME
The name "Lee "is a fairly common name in
Ireland. As you might suppose, it is not
old Irish. "Lee" is reduced
Anglicized form for the antediluvian Gaelic name "O Dubhlaoich".
It means "descendant of a dark warrior". We have no idea exactly how the name "O Dubhlaoich" came about; but we like
to think its origins lie deep in ancient Irish history where some neat guy
wielded an axe or sword and visited the English with excellent effect. (Not to English's' approval to be sure.) He might even have been a king! Perhaps not; but that's what we like to tell
people.
Anyway, we are told The Lees were also known
as the Lords of Fertullagh in County Westmeath, in medieval times. Arguments
with other families (perish the thought!) lead to migrations to the lower
slopes of the Slieve Mountains, where some Lees remain today. In the Census of
Ireland in 1659 they were shown to be numerous in Counties Leix and
Offaly. Over the centuries County Offaly
has become the Lee's main stomping grounds.
THE IRISH
The Irish are a great and noble people! We are descended from the ancient Celts who
somehow originated in what is now present day Germany and wound up in Ireland,
Scotland and Wales among other places.
We are certain the best of them came to you know where. The Celts were a rather mysterious folk and
there is a lot that is not known about them. But we assume they were a lot like
us and had the excellent foresight to leave Europe.
Is minic a gheibhean beal oscailt diog dunta!
We are known to be prone to friendly fighting. Watch John Wayne in The Quiet Man movie and you'll see what I mean. We are fierce in war; but, in the struggle to
throw the English out of Holy Ireland, we have a bad habit of picking the wrong
side among England's enemies (Napoleon, the Germans in WWI, etc.). Our speech is known for being amusing--if for
being a little odd and a little too much.
As you must have found out by now, even the shy ones can talk up a storm
once they are comfortable with whatever innocent bystander is fortunate (or
unfortunate, depending on your point of view) to be around. But we think it is
grand and lucky for everyone else to be gifted with our much considered
outlooks! 
By the way, Sean comes by his shyness honestly. His father and mother aren't exactly the life
of the party either. We prefer to hang back and size up the situation. Shy or not shy, all Irish are fairly
opinionated--which is the grounds of much annoyance and irritation to everyone
else--and said friendly fist fights.
You will also notice The Irish tend to go on and on
about "The Hunger" and something we like to call "The
Troubles". When those two subjects
come up, just smile and let it go. The
Irish tend to hold on to their grudges especially where the English are
concerned. (The effrontery of English
monarchs to name themselves as king or queen of Ireland after their bloody
invasion and conquest and their many adventures at our expense is a rather sore
point among us. The present queen of
England may be a rather swell gal....but really now.)
Irish culture has had a significant influence on
other cultures, particularly in the fields of literature, song, and, to a
lesser degree, science and education. A
strong indigenous culture exists, as expressed for example through Gaelic
games, Irish music and the Irish language, alongside mainstream Western
culture, such as contemporary music and drama.
In addition, our influence has been expressed through sports such as
soccer, rugby, horse racing, tidily winks, Monopoly, golf, and the English
language. As we never tire of reminding
people, we had great institutions of learning and the arts while the English
were still living in caves and painted themselves blue. Irish institutions are widely credited with
saving and preserving the treasures and memories of Western Civilization during
the Dark Ages. We are also credited with
the invention of Halloween. So when it
comes to soaping up windows, small children terrorizing your front door, and
tipping over outhouses, you'll know who to thank.
So grand as the Irish are that it is
said that the Lord created whiskey to prevent us from taking over the whole
world!
Since the great Irish Diaspora of the middle 1800's,
whether in Dublin, America, Australia, or Papa New Guinea, the Irish have this
mortifying inclination to wax poetic and get the vapors with even the most
ephemeral of contemplations of the Emerald Isle. Even those Irish who know no more of Ireland
than green beer on St. Patricks Day get a small tear in their eye when they
behold photographs of small Irish towns, the rolling meadows set apart by neat
stone walls and narrow roads, or the rocky cliffs of Sliabh
Liag overlooking the sea.
Oh, and one more thing. It is appreciably observed that the further
one of us gets from Irish soil the crazier we are. Keep that in mind. You'll find that explains a lot.
THE
LEES IN AMERICA
Astonishingly, to this day we have been unable to
determine when exactly our particular ancestors came to America. We don’t even know who they were. It could be that particular story is just
lost into the mists of history. Or (my
favorite!) it also could be that we got here during the commission of some
secreted illegal mischief. In all
likelihood, we came here during the Great Irish Potato Famine of 1848—more
popularly remembered among the Irish as “The Hunger”. Anything more than this would be purely
speculative—not that that would stop us from telling fanciful stories of Lee
daring do, mind you!
Years ago when Linda and I were in Graduate School,
I asked my father about our family tree.
He could only provide a few bits of information and displayed more than
a little mystification as to why I would want to know these things. When I finally asked him when our family came
to America, he replied: “I don’t
know….we got here didn’t we?” Well, as
you can see, that was a wasted phone call.
Census maps show Lees are concentrated in New York,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, California, Texas,
and (for some odd reason) Alabama. We
have proliferated to such a degree that when one meets another Lee it is
difficult to know if the two of you are actually related. It is not a common practice for one Lee to
marry another Lee; but, when it happens, as long as it is resolved the two are
not blood brothers or sisters we just say “what the hell” and tip the glass to
the happy couple.
Census records also show that at least one Lee or
two has fought for America beginning with The Revolution itself. Participation picked up, as you would expect,
after 1848. Records show Lees fought on
both sides in the Civil War—all be it that it was at a three to one ratio in
favor of the North.
As for our direct ancestors, being that the bottom
half of Indiana was strongly well-disposed to the Southern cause, I dare not venture
into where their sympathies laid. If
they fought, which was most likely, they would have gone with Indiana’s course
of action. Being that the Americans of
the time weren’t particularly welcoming the Irish into the land of the free,
they would have been in Indiana’s famed Irish “Iron” brigade—a unit known for
holding the line like an “iron wall”—displaying courage, ferocity and toughness
in battle. With their propensity to
shirk from retreat, they were also known for being at the receiving end of an
immensely lopsided number of causalities among the Union forces—often getting
themselves in a bad way for no particular discernible reason. Some chalk it up to the stubborn inborn Irish
character; but equally likely is that the individual Irish soldier did not turn
and run because he did not want to go through the rest of his life with the
rest of his neighbors and kin knowing he got his Purple Heart by getting
himself shot in the butt.
Our own particular line of Lees were spread along
the lands up and down the Wabash from Vincennes to Terre Haute along both sides
of the river. One wishes that he could
regale you with prestigious accomplishments and awards of a Lee captain of
industry, a widely-read author, or great American statesman. The truth is until my own generation came
along our family members were largely farmers or common laborers. I am the first in my family to go to
college—as Linda was in hers. My father
only completed the eighth grade before he went to work—not uncommon among farm
folk at the time. Before she herself
went to work, my mother did finish High School—for a farm girl to complete High
School was something a little ahead of the curve at the time. Both my grandmothers and grandfathers could
read, write and do arithmetic well; but I doubt any had more than a few years
of school to their education. By all accounts, all were a fairly
intelligent lot and did better for themselves than most would have
expected. My father, who started out
driving a truck for a distillery and
eventually became an master electrician for the Navy at Crane NSA. My mother
began working as a telephone operator in the 1950's and retired thirty years
later as an administrative comptroller for Indiana A.T & T.
DARK
STUFF OF THE LEE PAST
It is with some hesitation that I relate these
things. But it should be said that we
come from a long line of alcoholics--particularly the male folk. It is said that as they aged, our forefathers
were prone to acquiring various aches and pains in their bones especially when
it rained. The Lee women (a much
heartier lot) explain it that the men were engaging in a form of
self-medication to relieve their agonies.
Sure enough, if the men saw so much as a dark cloud on the distant horizon
so much as the size of a thimble, they would begin to drink in earnest to get
ahead of the deluge to come. That it
often was a false alarm didn't seem to give them any pause.
After the regrettable example of my own grandfather,
my father abstained from brews and spirits of any kind. Not that helped him any. The women tell us he came back from WWII a
completely different man and more than a little odd and "peculiar"--but
that's a story for another time.
As it stood, my brother Jon and I grew up with our
father constantly sermonizing us with lectures on the evils of the
drink--especially beer and whiskey.
Naturally, that meant that we decided to conduct our own independent studies
involving the partaking of a whole variety of evil liquids once in college. Boy, was that fun! Dad didn't know what he was missing!
In reality, my own experiences were rather
tame. Beer, naturally, was first. It took me a fair amount of time for me to
get to like beer--and even longer time to drink it with food. Fairly early in this introduction, I went to
a dorm party with friends and imbibed some very nice punch. It was only latter when I returned to our own
dorm that discovered I had a hard time reaching out and grabbing the door
handle. It then I was informed--to the
amusement of my fellows--that the punch had some extra flavoring added in the
way of something nefarious called Everclear--almost pure alcohol. Sneaky stuff.
That was my lesson to not take delightful punch at face value.
As it was, the very worst drunk I ever had followed
a comical--and long-- night being introduced to the mind numbing qualities of
tequila with some of my friends in the dorm. We took turns partaking of salted
shot glasses of the stuff over and over.
Then at midnight it came to mind to seek some adventure--"Yeah!!!". After setting ourselves loose on the entire
campus and putting on some amusing displays, telling each other how much we
loved them, and falling down for no apparent explanation, I retired to my bed
and spent the rest of the night bidding fond farewells the contents of my
stomach. That was a Friday night. I had a grievous hangover the rest of the
weekend. Not conducive to studying for
exams or writing papers. What's more, I
found it necessary to hide out so as not to be confronted with tales of my
exploits. So much for that stuff. In my Senior year, I found that having my own
TV in my dorm room kept me out of a lot of grief.
My brother and I compared notes years later. In spite of much evidence and experience to
the contrary, we have nothing against brews and spirits--in fact, we take
pleasure in them in small doses to this day.
We can drink a beer or a glass of bourbon and enjoy it; but a second and
especially a third turns out to be work.
And we are adverse to real work.
It is said that beer of one sort or another has been
found in every human civilization as far back as to prehistoric times. It has probably been around since the time we
switched from hunter/gatherer clans to agricultural societies. Beer being what it is and because it is
brewed at high temperatures in the process of making, it is generally safer to
drink than the local waters. This is
particularly handy to know if one goes from place to place where drinking the
water can result in effusions from one's bottom reminiscent of root beer
faucet. As useful as a tonic for what
ails you it is, the Lees have never shown any ambition for making the stuff
ourselves. Just as easy to go to the
store and plunk down some hard cold cash.
We did, however, have an uncle who once took up some amateur wine
making. He was always quite proud of the
final product of his industry; but later in life my mother confided in me that
whenever my uncle gifted her with some of his wine she went home and promptly
dumped each jug down the drain. It was
that awful.
THE
LEES AS A NOTORIOUS CRIME FAMILY.
The Irish are commonly regarded as an emotional sort
prone to wearing their hearts on their sleeves.
Nevertheless, they also have a magnificent capacity to be lying con men
and admire one another's ability to put one over others. We have a particular taste to take liberties
with the laws of what passes for civil society.
The Irish also have a affectionate affinity for mischief. And the Irish also
have an odd delight in finding the random rebel or horse thief in their family
tree.
My father was known for having some "accounting
mistakes" with the Internal Revenue Service and getting in some not so
friendly fist fights. My grandfather had disappeared for some years
well before I was born. In fact, it came
to be his obituary was published in one of the Kansas City
newspapers in the
1950's.
That turned out to be a bit
premature.
He resurfaced in the early
sixties when I was a little boy.
He was
ill and dying of cancer at that point--yet he had no interest in seeing the
family.
I only saw him once and only
remember he was a somewhat unpleasant man--OK, a very unpleasant man.
After he passed away, rumors filtered back of
all sorts of nefarious deeds on his part including possibly a bank robbery or
two.
But that was small potatoes
compared to one of our other illustrious ancestors.
My great grandfather Clint was a prolific "horse
trader". They called him a horse
trader but he also bought and sold all sorts of other things as well. Just because he sold you some livestock and
some other treasured item didn't mean you got quite you paid for. The horse or cow might be older than stated. Farmers liked to buy breeding cattle with
their calves for various purposes. With
Great Grandpa, however, he might well have arranged a hitherto undisclosed
"adoption" between said cow and a calf that weren't members of the
same family that very morning. It also
didn't necessarily mean he paid for them beforehand either--creative
procurement you might say. The hogs he
was transporting might also have looked a lot like kegs of
"unofficial" homemade whiskey for which the federal tax was bypassed. Needless to say, Great Grandpa Clint kept the
courts and jails in business when he didn't manage to skip the county for a
decent interval.
Sean's own life of crime was short-lived. He once told me years after the fact
("Dad, please don't get mad at me when I tell you this") that he and
his friends had rode around in a car and took a baseball bat to some
mailboxes. Aside from stealing the car
keys from Linda's purse so he could go out driving after we went to bed, I
noted from time to time that a number of my CD's and DVD's turned up missing. Sean sorta half confessed this theft to me once;
but that's as far as it got. (Sean's
pattern when he did something wrong was to deny, deny, deny--even when we
caught him red handed.) To be fair,
Erin, Sean and Kevin all seemed to hold to the philosophy that what was Linda's
and mine was also theirs. Theirs was not
ours, however--"just the nature of the world, Mom and Dad--we're the kids
after all". Thus they felt the
freedom to acquire desired items from our stuff. We told them well before they all became
adults they didn't own anything--it was all Mom and Dad's. This seemed unconvincing to them and unworthy
as an argument.
My own life of crime was rather brief. When I was five, Mom and I went to the
grocery store. Once at the cash
register, I asked Mom to buy me some gum.
Figuring to teach me some discipline, she refused. Not one to exercise self-restraint, I backed
up to the candy rack and tucked a large pack of gum into my back pocket. What could be easier? Riding back in the car, I felt a sudden dread
that Mom would find me with the pack of gum--so I carefully unwrapped each
stick of gum stuffed them in my mouth.
It turned into one humongous chew.
Mom spied me gnawing away at this glob which was too big for my mouth
and quickly figured out what I had done.
I lied as best I could ("Really, it's something called double
double bubble gum!"). Mom was not
fooled. After getting the business end
of the paddle once home, we turned around the next day and returned to grocery
store where I had to confess to the store manager what I had done. He reached over to the phone and said he was
calling the police. I did what any hardened
criminal would do: I bawled my eyes out.
Mom paid for the gum and we left.
For extra impact , she drove by the police station and stopped by the
front door. My life of crime came to an
abrupt end. In spite of my family
heritage, I was not ready for the big house.
LUTHERANISM
You
might well wonder why I am devoting a rather lengthy (and windy) part of this
manuscript to the faith of your Lees. An
excellent and fair question. The reason
is that Lutheranism is ingrained into your mind and soul--often
unconsciously. It sets your worldview
and your basic assumptions about Christianity which are markedly different from
most Christians--even the overwhelming lion's share of Protestants. If your Lee is at times cool to Orthodoxy and
sometimes confused, it is because Lutheranism and Orthodoxy are not a neat fit
together. In my experience and the
experiences of other Lutherans, you don't know how much a Lutheran you are
until you meet up with others from other denominations. Lutherans are too Catholic to Protestants and
too Protestant to Catholics. Lutheranism
is best understood as a kind of Christian mysticism. So this section is presented for your
thoughtful discernment of your Lee family.
Pre-Lutheran Lees
Lutherans tend to come from solid German or
Scandinavian stock. There German,
Danish, Polish, Russian, Austrian, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Latvian,
Lithuanian, Estonian, Finnish and even Swiss Lutherans--each with their own
distinct flavor and rivalries. (For some reason, The Swedes and Norwegians
in particular trade insulting jokes at one another's expense.) Each ethnic group tended to settle in America
in their own separate communities and churches--at least at first. So how did a genuine Irish family become
Lutherans? Easy. We were married into it. It every likelihood, the Lees were Roman
Catholics somewhere in the distant pass; but that had ceased to be a memory by
the time I came along. When my mother
left my Dad and married my stepfather, we were suddenly converted to this
strange faith overnight.
Beforehand, my brother, mother, brother and I
followed the fundamentalist Christianity of my Stevens grandfolk. You will find other folk our age rending out
their hair and going to psychologists over the horrors of the repressive, guilt
ridden qualities of being raised in such a rotten egg religion. That was not how I remember it. Being a little boy, it was FUNdamentalism. Going to church and Sunday School were
occasions of play and mirth! Sunday
School had a lot of storytelling
from the Bible, singing, games and crafts.
Worship was a more boring affair with no liturgy to speak of. The services consisted of lots of hymns
(which was just fine with me) but then the minister would get up and hold forth
in sermons which could last a good hour.
Try as I might to listen for my own edification, I got lost after the
first minute or two so I generally reverted to making a nuisance of myself
which was almost as fun as Sunday School.
One thing should be noted that in the world of
Fundamentalists the Bible was ever present--practically as if it were in the
very air we breathed and one kind of absorbed a lot of it whether you wanted to
or not even if you weren't paying any particular attention. Thus, as I would later found out, compared to
my fellow young Lutherans, my own knowledge was rather "advanced"--if
only in a peculiar sense. This was
nothing to brag about. Compared to other
Fundamentalist boys and girls my age, my Biblical "literacy" was
pretty middling to below average. Of
course, my fond memories of FUNdamentalism are only those of a little
boy. We left that church when I was
ten--so things might have gotten uglier and a lot less fun for fundamentalist
kids once they became teenagers.
My
Introduction Into The Devil's Worship
Boy,
was my first experience of Lutheran worship weird. Wasn't this like the Catholics? As it turns out, yes indeedy it was. Except for the lack of "smells and
bells" (and even some Lutheran parishes have those) Lutherans pretty much
keep the ancient order of the mass and divine service. With the exception of his intended Augustinian
restoration of the Church, Luther didn't have any interest in departing from
the received faith or Catholic worship.
Lutheran rituals are rather tame compared to those in the Orthodox
Church; but other Protestants tend to run away in horror when they behold
them. "Just too stuffy and no
spontaneity" they would say--completely missing the point. (Lutherans are often suspected of being
closet papists.)
An Irish Lutheran Lee
I quickly developed a taste for Lutheran
high-falooten worship. As the years went
by, getting older and intellectually curious, I read all I could--now and then. Our Pastor tells me I am one of the most
theologically literate laymen he has met.
I very much doubt it--besides that wouldn't be saying much to begin
with. For my part, I've met some real
lay Lutheran scholars--and I'm not one of them. Still, I can hold my own and thoroughly
mystify and horrify our non-Lutheran Protestant brethren. It's so much fun! With Catholics it is a different story. They tend to look down kindly on me,
exercising a great deal of forbearance--as if I were some long lost
poverty-stricken cousin from the sticks.
Last week, the ELCA elected for the time first a
woman to be the Presiding Bishop. Many
exclaimed "It's about time!"
Indeed, the surprising results of the involved process in choosing the
head of the ELCA put Pastor Mark Hanson into early retirement. Hanson was expected to be easily re-elected
to a third term as Presiding Bishop. On
the first ballot, Hanson had the most votes but not a majority. As the process went forth, competing
candidates dropped out which concentrated votes toward alternative contenders. In the end, Bishop Elizabeth Eaton from the
Northeastern Ohio Synod became the clear leader. 
Soon,
however, things later changed for him: 
Pastor
Hanson's tenure was rocked with a continuing series of controversies and loss
of membership. One could hope that the
ELCA will settle into a period of stability and quiescence; but the "peace
and justice" crowd are unlikely to refrain from their project for
continuing reforms. Whatever enthusiasms
the secular Left takes up usually become "Gospel" imperatives for the
religious Left--secular political/social causes dressed up in religious garb.
Contrary to what
some say. Lutherans do not worship Martin Luther or regard him as a
"saint". Contrary to odd
supposings of others, we also don't have much to do with Martin Luther King
either. The continuing debate since 1517
is over whether Luther was a hero or a disaster. Roman Catholics relate to him as something
between Benedict Arnold and a nice plumb hamburger patty waiting to be grilled
that unfortunately got left out on a hot August day and went bad. Others who would never think to kiss the
Pope's ring but dwell in the courts of academia and the art houses blame Luther
for the general decline in the quality of art and music in Western Civilization
since the Diet of Worms[1]. 
You
might well wonder why I am devoting a rather lengthy (and windy) part of this
manuscript to the faith of your Lees. An
excellent and fair question. The reason
is that Lutheranism is ingrained into your mind and soul--often
unconsciously. It sets your worldview
and your basic assumptions about Christianity which are markedly different from
most Christians--even the overwhelming lion's share of Protestants. If your Lee is at times cool to Orthodoxy and
sometimes confused, it is because Lutheranism and Orthodoxy are not a neat fit
together. In my experience and the
experiences of other Lutherans, you don't know how much a Lutheran you are
until you meet up with others from other denominations. Lutherans are too Catholic to Protestants and
too Protestant to Catholics. Lutheranism
is best understood as a kind of Christian mysticism. So this section is presented for your
thoughtful discernment of your Lee family.[6]
