Penn’s Spring

Since his appointment as Penn Spring’s Building and Grounds Committee clerk, Terry and the Quaker meetinghouse were adrift in a sea of troubles. In addition to a mysterious damp patch on the wall inside the worship room, there was the book crisis. Without warning, the library committee had stripped the shelves bare. Terry stepped into the building early the following Sunday to discover 20 tables wall-to-wall in the multi-purpose room, each covered with piles of books. Signs with “Do Not Touch,” “Keep,” “Sell,” “Give,” and “Not Sure” sat on various piles. 

Members and attenders stood in shock at the sea of books. “Terry, what is all this?” Margo, the meeting clerk, asked as her eyes darted around the room. “When will this be cleared up”?

As often happened with Terry when he experienced social anxiety mixed with shame, he stood silent, blinking. Margo softened her tone and put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “It’s okay, dear. You will figure it out.” The touch, more than the words, steadied him. Terry’s mother died ten years ago when he was 17 years old, and Margo, like many in the meeting, had since endeavored to be a loving presence in his life. 

That same Sunday, Terry sat silently, as is the custom of Quakers, puzzled by a dirty patch on the wall opposite him. After the worship, he and Margo investigated and felt the spot was cool and damp. “Terry, you need to call Stoltzfus.”

When Terry let the old handyman into the meetinghouse the following day, Stoltzfus could smell no mildew or mold. The oblong wet patch, about the size of a pizza, stood out as a gray stain on the white plaster walls. “It makes no good sense. You sure the old Quakers aren’t being naughty over here when you got your eyes closed”? Stoltzfus made an obscene hand gesture, “Or maybe you’re scared of the outhouse and took a leak in here.”

The image of urinating on the smooth white plaster walls inside the 200-plus-year-old Quaker meetinghouse tapped into a lingering pool of shame that long before had settled as a permanent feature inside the quiet, 27-year-old man. Terry closed his eyes and scrunched up his face to erase the image. 

As Stoltzfus gently rubbed the palm of his right hand on the cool, wet surface, he saw the pained expression on Terry’s pale face. “You’re too young of a buck to be spending all your free time cooped up in some old building, holding this place together for a bunch of half-dead Quakers.” Terry wiped the sweat on his brow and rubbed the back of his neck. He volunteered for the Building and Grounds Committee to give back to the meeting after all the ways the members helped him through the years and because he hoped it was a job he could do successfully without bothering other people for help. The shame always bubbled under the surface, and the mounting troubles in the meetinghouse stirred up feelings of inadequacy that Terry had felt since his troubles in elementary school. 

Terry struggled to process what people were saying, and as a result, he failed first grade. His mother and the small rural public school did not know how to respond to the dyslexia diagnosis that a psychologist from Harrisburg suggested during one of her quarterly visits to the region. After reading about the disorder online, Terry’s mother had her doubts. However, with a diagnosis, she felt relieved that her son would receive extra help. Second grade was even worse, though, and with Terry looking lost and confused in the classroom, the other students bullied him whenever adults were out of sight. 

“You need to enroll him in the Quaker school,” the mother of one of the bullies told Terry’s mom. “They’re good with special needs kids.”

To pay the tuition for Penn’s Spring School, Terry’s mom picked up extra shifts at the Dollar General where she worked. After a year at Penn’s Spring, Terry was relaxed and curious, happy as a duck in a pond.

“You do not have a learning deficiency,” Miss Elizabeth, his third- and fourth-grade teacher, told Terry after the first month of school. “You have a different way of learning. Together, we are going to figure it out.”

On the first day of fourth grade, Miss Elizabeth sailed into the classroom, umbrella and raincoat dripping on the floor. After a summer researching various learning differences and techniques, she overflowed with ideas. Miss Elizabeth pulled Terry aside, “I believe you have an excellent brain, but you have a blockage. We store much more information than we can easily remember,” she said. “You study hard and still struggle to remember what you know. You get nervous and can’t find the place in your brain where you keep the information. It is in a mental file cabinet; you need a key to pull the information out. Another way to think of it is like a stream blocked by logs, branches, and leaves. Get a long stick with a big hook, and you can break up the blockage; the stream will flow freely.”

Terry knew this blockage well, even if he didn’t have a name for it. It was like the garden hose with the tap on, but the nozzle was closed. Someone would ask a question and he froze, but inside, Terry scrambled to understand what was said and to form words in response. “Some people use images, sounds, or wordplay,” Miss Elizabeth explained. “We are going to figure out what works for you.” 

After trial and error, they identified two tools that helped Terry get unstuck. First, wordplay unlocked the mental door to the information and to an image. Terry then used the image to hook the words he wanted. 

They tested it with Bible memorization. “Rejoice in the LORD” became “Joyce again is large.” Joyce was the school receptionist. Tall with broad shoulders and large hands, she resembled a wrestler to Terry. When he thought, “Joyce again is large,” he saw Joyce standing tall, hands on her hips like a warrior guarding the school entrance. 

Terry concentrated, mouthing, “Joyce again is large.” He closed his eyes and sat still for three minutes. Miss Elizabeth was about to interrupt, but the words spilled out before she did. “It was just like the fountain that burst out of the rock when Moses hit it with his staff,” she later told the headmaster, who didn’t understand the Bible reference but got the point.

“Rejoice in the LORD, O you righteous! For praise from the upright is beautiful. . . .” Word for word, Terry recited the Bible passage he had labored to memorize for the past weeks: “. . . By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap; He lays up the deep in storehouses.”

Nearly 20 years later, Terry could recite quotes he had memorized in school, including a William Butler Yeats poem. The words “Pondering Me” unlocked an image of a boy with a fishbowl pond enclosing his head, stirring up feelings of calm. Then, as if by magic, the words materialized. 

We can make our minds
so like still water
that beings gather about us
that they may see,
it may be, their own images,
and live for a moment with a clearer,
perhaps even with a fiercer life
because of our quiet,
our silence.

The learning technique helped Terry with his schoolwork, memory, and communication skills, giving him confidence and much-needed peace of mind. Over the years, he had hoped breakthroughs like this would make him less dependent on others to help him in school, work, and life. 

Stoltzfus smacked the plaster wall with a slap that echoed around the room, pulling Terry up from his sinking feelings. “The Devil’s playing tricks on you, or you people pissed off some Quaker ghost.” 

Hezekiah Stoltzfus grew up an Old Order Amish-Mennonite. Rumor had it that when he was in his late teens, the elders excommunicated him, and his people shunned him ever since. 

For nearly 40 years, Stoltzfus embraced the life of an unrepentant sinner with his heavy drinking, obscene language, and hyperactive sex life. One day, his long-suffering neighbor Nora scooped Stoltzfus up when he had passed out on her front lawn as an early spring rain began to fall. He was 62 years old, thin, with a constant hacking cough and a liver that was about to give out. Nora nursed Stoltzfus back to health and put him to work fixing up her house; it needed about as much of a resurrection as the former Amish. He moved in, and they have been a couple ever since. After drying out, the handyman’s most potent drink became iced tea. The only remnant of his wild past was his coarse humor. 

Terry first met the old handyman on a Saturday workday a few years back. Stoltfuz smelled like dried grass and sour milk; his work clothes had gaping holes revealing shaggy underarm hairs. Stoltfuz grabbed Terry’s hand, shook it vigorously, and would not let go. He looked Terry up and down, appraising the younger man like the boy was a plank of cherry wood that would make a fine table top. He said, “What’s a buck like you doing in this corral of Quakers? It’s rutting season for young bucks. You gotta get yourself some tail.”

Unlike the older Quakers who tut-tutted, rolled their eyes, or glared at Stoltzfus for his inappropriate remarks, once Terry got over the initial shock, he sensed something behind the crude jesting. Whenever he thought of the old handyman, Terry saw a turtle’s shell covered in porcupine needles: defense mechanisms protecting something soft and wounded.

Three months after Terry began overseeing the meeting’s building and grounds, the multi-purpose room looked unchanged except for more signs on the piles of books. “We’re working on it,” Shirley, the Library Committee clerk, assured Terry. “We’re old like this building and don’t function like we used to.” 

Terry and Stoltzfus saw each other weekly, and the mystery of the damp patch on the wall only grew along with the size of the stain. “It makes no good sense,” Stoltzfus said. “Your building has got no plumbing. You got no well. You’re nowhere near a stream or creek. And it is the hottest, driest, damn summer I’ve seen.”

Terry jimmied a window open and slid in a foot-long piece of wood to keep the window from slamming shut. He worried about Stoltzfus and the heat. “I’m well hydrated,” the old man said, taking a slug of iced tea. 

At one time, the Penn’s Spring School and the Penn’s Spring Meetinghouse stood near each other, with the meetinghouse on the banks of the usually quiet stream and the school on a ridge closer to the road. After the1936 flood filled the meetinghouse with a foot of water, the members decided to relocate the building three miles away to the property left by a devout Quaker spinster. With a team of horses on a makeshift flatbed, they spent two days transporting the meetinghouse in one piece to the clearing on a hill. When the trees were bare in winter, Terry looked down and saw Penn’s Spring in the valley. 

“Do buildings have memories?,” Terry thought as he swept the floor around and under the tables in the multi-purpose room while Stoltzfus fussed and cussed in the meetingroom. “Does the wood beneath the plaster hold onto memories of floods?” Terry envisioned the planks with water flowing through the grain, swelling the dry wood with moisture. 

Nearly 100 years after the relocation, the number of active participants in Penns Spring Friends Meeting had dwindled, and the savings were drying up, too. During the hour-long worship, Terry, the youngest person by at least 40 years, heard more snoring than the members’ messages. The meetinghouse felt like an outdated museum with few visitors.

In a rare spirited business meeting a year prior, the members had agreed to make the meetinghouse available to lease out for “family-friendly events” and groups “aligned with Quaker values.” It took eight months before a potential customer requested to use the meetinghouse. A nearby farm collective sought a space to hold weekly ecstatic dance parties on Saturday nights. Initially, the majority of the meeting members, who feared the meetinghouse would turn into a dance club “with drinking, drugs, and sex on the benches!” resisted. However, attitudes shifted once the applicants appealed directly to the members. Armed with baskets of vegetables, fruits, and flowers from their organic farm, eight farm collective members—all in their twenties, strong, healthy, and dressed in their Sunday best—charmed the Quakers. Their vision of peace, harmony, community, and healthy eating brought many old Friends back to memories of their hippy roots. 

Nayla, one of three Black members of the farm collective, had attended a Friends School in Philadelphia and loved the weekly quiet worship. Her personal meditation practice led her to ecstatic dance gatherings in West Philly. As she spoke, Nayla’s athletic, graceful body flowed like water. She explained how ecstatic dance felt to her, much like Quaker worship. “I float in an ocean of love; the music rises, swells, and carries me along.”

Their DJ, Ethan, a ginger-haired White man, tall and lean with a beard that made him look like he was in his early thirties when in reality he had just turned 25, took out a phone with a cracked screen and placed a small speaker about the size of a soda can on one of the benches. Strings hovering above a gentle beat filled the meetinghouse. The beat gradually grew in intensity and speed. “You can start seated,” Ethan said. “If you like, close your eyes.” The group settled into their seats. “Focus on that place inside of you where you find wisdom, that oasis of peace and sanity.” Then, like waves carrying driftwood out to sea, one by one, Quakers in their seventies and eighties rose to their feet and swayed along with the music. As the beat increased and the strings gave way to woodwinds, the dam broke, and people, who only ever occupied what they felt was their corner of the meetinghouse, moved freely and spilled over into the multi-purpose room. 

They wound around the book tables and back into the meetingroom. In her silky light clothing, Margo lifted her arms and bent her wrists, palms facing the ceiling. Her face was upturned as if she were under a waterfall. 

The impromptu dance party ended in a group hug, with Terry sandwiched between Nayla and Ethan. He felt paralyzed by the physical intimacy and the mixture of smells—body odor, crushed lavender, and coconut.

“You should definitely join us!” Ethan said to Terry as they untangled themselves. Ethan put a hand on Terry’s upper arm, squeezing it. Nayla leaned in, “Absolutely. You’re very welcome.” Terry, confused, thought they were inviting him to join the collective. “To our dance sessions,” Ethan said after seeing the perplexed look on Terry’s face. Terry blinked, swallowed, took a deep breath, and said, “Yeah, thanks.” 

Terry had no choice but to show up each Saturday for the Ecstatic Dance Party. Since the all-purpose room, flooded with books, could not be used for the dancing, Terry needed to oversee the moving of the benches and make sure that the worship space was returned to order once the dance ended. 

Terry’s increasing responsibilities at the meetinghouse were turning into a full-time job. This was in addition to his regular employment as a home health aide, where he worked 12-hour shifts, mostly with nonverbal clients.

Terry excelled at the job. Freed from most verbal communication, Terry anticipated his clients’ needs by interpreting multiple visual clues. Cara, an aide who was often on shift after Terry, watched him engage with their client and marveled at his agility and confidence. “You’re like an otter!” she said. “I wish I had half your speed and flow.” But as soon as Terry had to speak, Cara saw the flow stop as he concentrated on finding words.

The hardest part of the job for Terry was the paperwork; with each passing year, the many forms and reports he had to complete only increased. Fortunately, the office manager, Nancy, had helped him since he first turned up in front of her desk nine years before, almost in tears, with a dozen half-completed forms in his hands. She wasn’t one to bail out the staff when they didn’t get their paperwork done, but Nancy knew Terry had lost his mom the year before. He was 18 and seemed young and vulnerable, so she offered to double-check his paperwork and broke down office tasks into smaller chunks.

“Terry, I want you to be the first to know. I will retire later this summer,” Nancy said as he handed in his weekly reports and forms. Terry stood expressionless; Nancy waited. By now, she was used to his pauses before responding. When he continued to stare at her with a blank, distant look, she thought perhaps he didn’t understand her. “You know Bill retired last year, and we want to use that RV we bought and see a little of the country.”

Still nothing from Terry. Then she saw his eyes fill with tears. He sat down in front of her with his head on her desk and sobbed. Terry was perplexed by his response. It felt too deep, too raw, but he couldn’t stop. He often struggled to know exactly what he felt; he imagined a deep well inside of him, so deep he couldn’t see the bottom.

The Ecstatic Dance Party’s third weekend saw its highest participation yet, with over 30 attendees ranging from teens to 20-somethings, plus a few of the elderly Quakers. While some left early, most danced for three hours straight. The sunset brought no relief from the heat, but with almost zero humidity in the air and box fans in the doorways, the heat caressed them. Terry watched the dancers as he picked up people’s cups and refilled the water pitcher from gallon jars he kept in a cooler. Ethan, the DJ, fully caught up in the music, was in a trance. Terry liked watching Ethan move his body to the music while standing in place and how, now and then, Ethan would suddenly jump straight up in the air as if he had experienced an electric shock from the ground. After each jump, Ethan broke into a big smile and shook his sweaty, reddish hair. Terry saw Nayla standing near him, watching Ethan, too. She sensed Terry looking at her, turned, and grinned, “Hey, wanna dance with me?”

The following day, Terry was surprised to see Ethan across the worship room, near the damp patch that had grown as big as a tabletop. At the dance parties, Ethan wore cut-off jeans with well-worn T-shirts that said things like, “You are the life of my party.” Most of the time, Ethan DJed barefoot. That morning, Ethan wore tan suede shoes with leather laces. His pants were bright yellow, like French’s Classic Yellow Mustard. Despite the heat, Ethan wore a soft, long-sleeved T-shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. The shirt was green. Terry knew it had a name: sage? teal? moss? Yes, it was the color of moss. Ethan looked fresh and cool. 

The nine other people in the room settled into silence. Terry sat with his head down, feeling drowsy from the heat. Twenty minutes into the hour-long worship meeting, Terry was startled when Ethan spoke. “Good morning, everyone. Can I read something?” Margo said, “Yes, of course, dear.” Ethan read a passage from an old book he had picked up from the next room. His voice was strong, warm, and controlled. As Ethan read, Terry felt something churn inside, a deep stirring. The words cleared Terry’s head and filled him with longing and hope. Ethan finished, and silence filled the meetinghouse again, except for the ticking of the old wind-up clock. 

But what did Ethan say? Terry remembered nothing, just the feelings he had. He couldn’t recall the passage, not even the author’s name. 

Immediately after the meeting, he resolved to ask Ethan about the passage, but Margo, Shirley, and Frances mobbed the visitor, thrilled to see a new young face in the meeting. Giles, one of the members of Building and Grounds, questioned Terry about an invoice Stoltzfus had submitted. Terry looked up, and Ethan was gone. “I’ll ask him at next Saturday’s dance party,” Terry thought. But Ethan didn’t show up. Nayla said he was visiting his family in Ohio and would be gone for a few weeks. “Wish me luck, Terry. I’m excited and terrified to DJ!” 

Over the next month, Terry scoured hundreds of the books piled in the all-purpose room. He flipped through delicate, dry pages, soaking up Quaker classics, obscure journals, and dusty theology books. This is stupid, Terry thought. Ethan probably took the book with him and may never return. 

One Saturday afternoon, when the temperature topped one hundred degrees, and the brown grass was so dry it crumbled and turned to dust when anyone walked on it, Stozfus showed up at the meetinghouse and found Terry sitting and reading next to the ever-widening damp patch on the plaster wall. The patch filled the entire bottom half of the wall, and condensation formed, wetting the top of the molding. 

“I’m afraid I’m gonna have to tear her open,” Stoltzfus said. “It’ll make one helluva mess.” Terry nodded, imagining the wall split open, a monster’s mouth vomiting dust and broken plaster. “We need to get to it soon after one of your Sunday meetings.” Terry needed special approval from the meeting for this job. “Just keep an eye on her,” the handyman said, “and if she gets soggy, let me know. And for God’s sake, tell me as soon as you see mold.” However, with the heat and dry weather, Stoltzfus couldn’t imagine that happening. Terry nodded and returned to his reading. 

The demolition of the meetinghouse wall would begin in two weeks, and it took that time for the library committee to finally finish sorting, distributing, and restocking the books. The Saturday night before the work commenced, the Ecstatic Dance Party finally got to use the multi-purpose room. For once, Terry didn’t have to spend his evening moving the meetingroom benches up against the walls and back again. Instead, he stayed home, lying under a fan with the lights off. Nancy’s retirement party had been the day before, and the well inside him felt deeper. “It’s stupid,” Terry said out loud. But he knew it wasn’t. Something was hurting him, and it was more than just Nancy retiring. He felt hollow, so hollow he almost imagined he was caving in. “It’s just stupid,” he whispered and rolled over to try to sleep. 

He woke up refreshed, and the air felt different. It was still warm, but something had shifted compared to the relentless heat wave of the past two months. He walked into the meetinghouse and saw an uncluttered multi-purpose room, spacious and clean. Someone had brought fresh cherries in a big white porcelain bowl. A clear glass urn was filled with iced water and lemon slices. Margo swept past Terry, holding a bouquet of hydrangeas. “They’re from my garden. I can’t believe I kept them alive in this heat,” she said as she entered the meetingroom and placed the vase of flowers on the mantel. 

Terry looked out the window and saw Stolzfus’s rusty pickup truck. Terry assumed the handyman would stay in the truck until the meeting ended, but Stoltzfus got out and walked into the multi-purpose room. “Buck, we’re gonna get to the bottom of this one,” he said with his toolbox in one hand and a bottle of iced tea in the other. Terry asked, “Are you coming to meeting”? “Nah, I’ll just sit out here and wait until you people finish your business in there.” 

About 15 regular members and attenders gathered in the meetingroom. Terry sat in his usual place, across from the gray, moist patch that filled most of the wall. He settled in, bowed his head, and closed his eyes. 

Moments later, someone sat beside him, so close that their legs almost touched. Terry opened his eyes and saw a man’s sandaled feet. The toes were long and tanned with little tufts of reddish-gold hair on the big toes. The man wore mustard-colored pants. “Ethan!” Terry thought and stifled a gasp. Ethan leaned in towards Terry, “Hey,” he whispered, and Terry looked up to see Ethan’s smile with reddish stubble on his chin. “Hey,” Terry whispered back. 

The meeting settled into a deep silence. It may have been the break in the heat, but the air seemed extra fresh to Terry, and his mind was crystal clear. Ethan shifted slightly and pulled up his long, green sleeves. Terry smelled Ethan’s smell, crushed lavender and an earthiness. They sat in silence. After 20 minutes, Terry smelled something else: a sweetness in the room. The air felt thick and cool, like in a forest. Everyone sat extra still, waiting. Terry had heard stories about “gathered meetings” when something suddenly shifts among the worshipers, and there is a spiritual unity and holy presence. Ethan leaned into Terry and whispered, “This is amazing.” Terry turned towards Ethan’s ear and could only sigh. He felt like he was expanding from the inside, filling with a sweet nectar. 

Terry looked within himself to consider the deep feelings welling-up, feelings that had eluded him. He breathed deeply, relaxing into the quiet of the room, and as he did, a feeling erupted within him. 

“Is this anger?,” he wondered, and like the fizzing explosion in his clients’ sink drains whenever Terry cleaned them with baking soda and vinegar, feelings of rage and fury surged from within him. He felt searing anger about always needing someone to help him, always working twice as hard to understand, and always feeling ashamed. This rage had long simmered under the fear and the shame, and now it was boiling over. 

The Quakers taught him to acknowledge and be curious about feelings, so he sat silently as the emotions spewed.

“I’ve worked so hard to be independent, to look after myself, but I still always need someone to rescue me.” Feelings of self-loathing overwhelmed him, welled-up in him, and diluted the anger. He took a deep breath and let the feelings flow without questioning or countering them. He broke into a sweat and felt shaky. He continued to sit silently, waiting for the feelings to subside. He focused on breathing and being in the room with his friends. He imagined the many Quakers who came before him who sat quietly in this room as they rode out a storm within. Gradually, the intense feelings dissipated, and he felt a cool blankness inside him, a comforting quiet where he felt suspended inside himself.

Words formed in his mind, “Independence does not require isolation. Self-reliance doesn’t mean going it alone. I need others, and others need me.” 

He held his breath and waited. 

In a flash, a phrase came to him. 

“Canned Altoona.” He saw a Pennsylvania-shaped piece of tuna in a giant sardine can. He sat with this image, and more words emerged. 

“Pen in a tin.” Pen in a tin?

Penington! The old Quaker writer Isaac Penington. Like the locks of a canal slowly opening, letting in a fresh flow of water, words poured up into his mind. The quote Ethan read aloud over two months ago forcefully came to him: 

As the life of God grows and revives in the heart, and the life of the creature is brought down and subdued, oh! How sweetly doth the life flow in! How doth the peace, the joy, the righteousness, the pure power of the endless life spring up in the vessel!

Terry closed his eyes tight as the tears gathered. He took Ethan’s hand, turned toward him, and smiled, his face moist with crying. 

No one else in the meeting noticed Terry’s tears or how Ethan tilted his head and put it on Terry’s shoulder. No one heard the rain as it gently fell outside. They didn’t see the mist spreading in the room. They didn’t notice the water as it surged out of the wall and spread across the floor. Or how the water rose high enough to lift Shirley’s purse off the ground. They didn’t see the well-worn copy of Philadelphias Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice float past Margo. They were oblivious as the water covered their feet and ankles. They were caught up in a liquid silence that lifted them, carried away piles of fears and doubts, and soothed their sorrows. They didn’t even hear the sound of Stoltzfus, the old handyman, sobbing in the next room.