AN IDIOSYNCRATIC INTRODUCTION TO THE LEE'S AND LUTHERANISM FROM ONE FATHER-IN LAW TO THE BRIDE OF HIS SON.

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.[1]

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.[2]

 

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.[3]

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[4] 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[5].  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.[6]

 

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[7].  (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[8] 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[9].  (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[10].  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.

 

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[1] A female married to a Lee is Uí Dhubhlaoich. A daughter of a Lee is Ní Dhubhlaoich

[2] By the way, while you did not ask for this mark of distinction, you are now officially Irish.  This follows the time honored tradition of the Irish to come to a new land, heave-hoing the boyfriends away, and taking the young women.

[3] To be fair, when I related the conversation to a few of my professors, they said that such willful forgetting and non-interest in the family past was common among my father’s generation.

[4] Something my brother Jon and I had no idea about until our father's funeral.  Given our father's aversion to drink, this revelation was very amusing.

[5] At one point in his life, my father had been a professional boxer.

[6] The purpose of the following is for informational purposes only.  No attempt at "conversion" is intended.

[7] In contrast, there is only one Lutheran parish in all of Ireland.  It is located in Dublin and mostly ministers to the diplomatic community.

[8] By the by, the Irish have a keen love for stories.  Both in the listening and the telling.

[9] Lutherans, like all liturgical churches, believe the most appropriate way to worship God is with His own Word.

[10] By the way, if anyone happens to ask, your father and mother-in-law are what are called "orthodox" (i.e. conservative) Lutherans" within our denominational circles--meaning we subscribe to the historic confessions of the church without the more modern "enlightenments" popular with those determined to take the church into the new fanglements of liberal Christianity.  And, yes, this puts us at odds with many of the enthusiasms of our own particular Lutheran denomination (The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America).  But that is a subject for another day.