Arthur and Alanna Menu’s 1993 Christmas Letter
For years now we have been resisting sending a form letter to you at Christmas. It has always struck us that form letters do not capture the drama and spontaneity of life as well as handwritten letters. On the other hand, in the work we do the weeks leading up to Christmas are the busiest of the year, and we never are able to write everyone we should. What a quandary! Then, as if out of the pages of a Charles Dickens novel, a Christmas miracle! One morning we found a manuscript in our mailbox with the following note: “Dear Arthur and Alanna, for some time it has been my intention to write a biography in the form of a novel. From sources unknown to you I have learnt of your adventures in coming to Fort Frances and how things have gone for you since, and I have allowed myself to be inspired by them. Herewith I send you this creation of mine. I beg your indulgence for any inaccuracies it may contain, and hope that you will esteem it, if not for its excellence, then for the sincerity of its author. I must remain anonymous, but pray that you will count me a friend at heart. You will want a name for me, and so I sign myself under the nom de plume, Charles.”
Needless to say, this struck us like a thunderbolt. When we read what Charles had written, we realized that we had been delivered from our quandary. We pass on to you this fragment of a biography of ourselves, which we have found to be amazingly accurate, apart from the occasional exaggeration. May you enjoy it as much as we have.
FRAGMENT FROM A BIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL
by Anonymous
It was the summer of the rains. Moving across the American Midwest and into the Canadian prairies, the weather systems followed hard upon one another, flooding the plains, destroying crops and futures with equal indifference. In the final hours of packing the last items into the big yellow Ryder moving truck, Alanna and Arthur listened to weather forecasts with a touch of foreboding. The rains were moving east into northwestern Ontario, and they would be driving into them. Finally on the morning of 28 June 1993 they set out. Arthur took the first leg in the Ryder and Alanna followed in the little red Toyota pick-up. Beside her she placed the cat carrier, from which issued loud, miserable meows. Happy, the cat, was not happy. “Fort Frances, here we come!”
There was some sadness in the leaving. Marathon had been good to them. As they waved goodbye to David Giuliano and his family, the United Church minister for whom they had filled in at St. John’'s United Church for the past year, they thought of all the good people they had come to know both at St. John’s and at. Holy Saviour Catholic Church and Trinity Anglican. David and the congregation of St. John’s had risked hiring this Roman Catholic couple on the basis of an interview and a recommendation from David’s father, Bob. By the grace of God it had been a blessed year. “One small step for ecumenism,” thought Arthur, as he turned the lumbering diesel on to Highway 17 and headed west. It started raining hard. The windshield wipers quit working. Earnest prayer failed to get them working again. “'So it goes,” thought Arthur.
When they reached Terrace Bay two hours later they got the bad news. Highway 17 bad been washed out ahead and would not be drivable for another three days. It was late afternoon but they had no choice: they would have to turn around and drive first east and then north till they connected with Highway 11 and take the only other route west. It would mean a detour of 555 kilometers and an extra day of travelling.
The only benefit to the delay, they agreed, was that it would give them a little more time to prepare for Fort Frances. Up till the end of May they had no job to go to after their time at Marathon ended. “Whole lot of praying going on!” as Jerry Lee Lewis might, have put it.
Then, at the beginning of June Knox United Church in Fort Frances asked them to work for them for the coming year. Both of Knox’s ministers had resigned and they needed a team to fill in for a year while they looked for permanent replacements. Alanna and Arthur gave thanks to God and prepared to head west. Back in the saddle again!
But what an ordeal the drive from Marathon turned out to be! Wrestling with the big noisy Ryder was bad enough, but then the broken wipers, and the detour, and....pulling into Hornepayne the first night....no room at the inn except for a “bachelorette”....Arthur and Alanna and Happy sharing a twin-size bed...."Meow, meow, meow!" at 5:30 A.M. and hit the road....the next afternoon just outside of Atikokan a power-steering hose on the Ryder bursts....repairs...
In the early evening of 29 July the big yellow truck and the little red truck finally neared Fort Frances. They threaded their way by road and causeway over and between the arms of Rainy Lake. Evergreen trees hugged the shore and clothed the islands. The road carried them into a Group of Seven painting, and wound and dallied, and led them out again, facing the distant chimneys of the Boise-Cascade pulp and paper mill, the industrial heart of Fort Frances. Fort Frances: a town of about 10,000 people (twice the population of Marathon) separated from its American twin, International Falls, by Rainy River.
This would be their home for a year. They had grown accustomed to thinking of themselves as Abraham and Sarah. “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8).
Both had been hired as full-time ministers, and there was plenty of work to do. The church was looking to them not only for Sunday worship and pastoral care, but also for administrative leadership. The congregation numbered about six hundred (of whom a quarter to a third would attend on any given Sunday) and the Sunday School had around ninety students enrolled. The first four months found them doing many funerals -- fourteen to be exact. This was emotionally draining work, for to give good pastoral care to a grieving family one must feel and respond to the family’s grief.
By maintaining a strong personal spiritual life of prayer and meditation they kept things in perspective and avoided burn-out. They could not imagine a more rewarding or enriching job than Christian ministry. On weekday mornings they attended Mass at St.. Mary’s Catholic Church before going into the office at Knox to begin their work for the United Church. They were not licensed to celebrate Holy Communion (celebrated once a month) or baptisms in the United Church, but carried out all the other tasks of pastors.
As had happened in Marathon they and the congregation took to each other quickly. As December approached it became clear that the congregation wanted to keep them beyond the one year of their contract. And they wanted to stay. This would have to be approved by the higher levels of United Church government called Presbytery and Conference. But Alanna and Arthur are Roman Catholic.
On 9 December two representatives of Presbytery came to Fort Frances to meet with Arthur and Alanna and representatives of the congregation. The executive of Presbytery had decided that Alanna and Arthur could become members of the United Church without renouncing their membership in the Roman Catholic Church, hut they could not be reappointed ministers at Knox. If they wished to become ministers in the United Church would have to cease doing ministry for at least a year and possibly longer. The congregation’s representatives were very unhappy. Knox can petition the United Church to change the rule or make an exception, but Knox cannot afford to wait for such a petition to be decided upon (it might have to go all the way to General Council in the summer).
And so the matter rests. What will happen? God alone knows. Without making any assumptions about the outcome of Knox’s efforts to keep them, Alanna and Arthur are preparing themselves for the possibility of another move come the end of June. They do not know where they would go, but whether they stay or go, they have adopted as their motto what the Letter to the Hebrews (11:13-16) says about Abraham and Sarah:
“These all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had the opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire abetter country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”