Mary Lathbury and Chautaugua

Mary Artemesia Lathbury used her gifts of writing and art for the Lord. She was known as the “po­et laur­e­ate of Chau­tau­qua.”

Lathbury was born in 1841 in Manchester, New York and died in East Orange, New Jersey, in 1913. A Meth­od­ist min­is­ter’s daughter, she stu­died art in Wor­ces­ter, Mass­a­chu­setts, and taught art and French at the New­bu­ry Acad­e­my, Ve­rmont, and in N.Y. She co-au­thored “Wo­man and Tem­per­ance; or, the Work and Work­ers of the Wo­man’s Christ­ian Tem­per­ance Union” in 1883, and con­trib­ut­ed articles to magazines. She was associated with the Chau­tau­qua Move­ment near Chau­tau­qua, N.Y.

The word “chautauqua” is Iroquois and means “two moccasins tied together” or “jumping fish.” The word described a lake in western New York which was known by 1860 as Chautauqua Lake.

The first Chautauqua group, the New York Chautauqua Assembly, was organized in 1874 by Methodist minister John Heyl Vincent and Lewis Miller, a businessman. It met at a campsite on the shores of Chautauqua Lake. Vincent, editor of the Sunday School Journal, had begun to train Sunday school teachers in an outdoor summer school format. The gatherings grew popular. The organization later became know as the Chautauqua Institution. Vincent invited young people for study, bonfires, good meals and lodging. Christian instruction, preaching and worship were a strong part of the Chautauqua experience.

Mary Lathbury, known for her gifts for art and verse, noted that one day she heard a voice she be­lieved was God, say­ing, “Remem­ber, my child, that you have a gift of weav­ing fan­cies in­to verse and a gift with the pen­cil (art) of pro­duc­ing vi­sions that come to your heart; con­se­crate these to Me as tho­rough­ly as you do your in­most spir­it.”

Lathbury was asked to write a song for guests to sing before each morning Bible study at the original Chautauqua Lake meeting place. She responded by writing two verses for her hymn “Break Thou the Bread of Life.” Here are her lyrics for those verses:

“Break Thou the bread of life / dear Lord, to me / As Thou didst break the loaves beside the sea / Beyond the sacred page, I seek Thee, Lord / My spirit pants for Thee, O Living Word.

“Bless Thou the truth, dear Lord, to me, to me / As Thou didst bless the bread by Galilee / Then shall all bondage cease, all fetters fall / And I shall find my peace, my all in all.”

Lathbury wrote other hymns, including “Day is Dying in the West,” a hymn often sung at the end of day at the Chautauqua, N.Y. campsite.

The Chautauqua Movement was a huge success and expanded to include not only religious and Biblical study but a range of literacy, historical, sociological, and scientific subjects. The “teachers” included personalities of the late 1800s such as Booker T. Washington and Carrie Nation. The movement brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, entertainers, preachers and specialists of the day.

The Movement became an adult education endeavor in the U.S. and was popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Chautauqua assemblies spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. The movement’s popularity is attributed in part to the social and geographic isolation of American farming and ranching communities. People in such areas were hungry for education, culture and entertainment.

One author wrote, “The sort of mild Protestantism that has informed much of American culture was an underpinning of the Chautauqua Movement. The movement pretty much died out by the mid-1930s. Most historians cite the rise of the car culture, radio and movies as the causes. There were several other important, yet subtle, reasons for the decline. One was the sharp increase in (Christian) fundamentalism and evangelical Christianity in the 1920s; the bland non-denominationalism exhibited at most Chautauquas couldn’t accommodate these impulses. Many small independent Chautauquas became essentially camp meetings or church camps.”

America has changed much since 1874, when the first Chautauqua group began, but Mary Lathbury’s hymn “Break Thou the Bread of Life” still rings true. The Bread of Life is the spiritual food we need.

“And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John 6:35).

The Fullness of Time

“Spring has sprung,” as someone said, and there seems to be no holding back trees, vines, bushes and flowers as they surge with life during these early days of April 2010.

Not long ago, dogwoods, pines and sweet gums that grow in our yard in Southern Pines, N.C., stood tall and dark as powdery snow rested on their cold, gray limbs. At that time, those trees appeared deaf to any awakening call from nature. But deep inside those sedated powerful pines and hardwoods lay the potential I now see bursting forth.

As I recently drove home from work, I noticed pale-purple Wisteria blooms hanging from pines and thought of my late parents. They years ago planted a Wisteria vine at the edge of their yard in Greer, S.C. Wisteria climbs and entwines and spreads almost like kudzu, I think, and my folk’s Wisteria was hard to control. My father kept the vine from finding a tree to twine around, but that stubborn plant tried to branch out horizontally. Dad had to prune his Wisteria pretty often. I read that the world’s largest known Wisteria vine is located in Sierra Madre, California, and measures more than one acre in size and weighs 250 tons.

Wisteria is largely native to the eastern U.S. and to China, Korea and Japan. I think Wisteria appears “oriental” in the way it droops from trees, and I also associate it with old Southern plantations and white-haired, elderly, lilacs-and-lace kinds of ladies wearing dresses made of fabric dyed to match the color of Wisteria blooms.

I opened our front door the other morning at 6:30 a.m. and heard what sounded like hundreds of birds chirping and chattering. I envisioned them as feathered singers warming up for a concert that would begin at sunrise. Life seemed to pulsate from the woods surrounding our home.

I recently walked to our mailbox and saw that Carol or I had unknowingly squashed an 8-inch corn snake with one of our cars’ tires as Mr. Snake tried crossing our driveway. “Corn snakes” are non-venomous, have maize-like patterns on their bellies and are often found in cornfields.

I hope to soon see a whitetail doe with a spotted fawn grazing in our yard. I often see deer out back of our home. Whitetails tend to breed in the fall when fewer hours of daylight cause hormonal changes responsible for their breeding behavior. Therefore, the majority of fawns are born in the spring “when weather and vegetative conditions are most favorable for their survival,” according to “Whitetail Institute.”

A friend told me that if all people were taken from the world, in 50 years you wouldn’t know man had been on earth. He said nature would reclaim all land cultivated and altered by men. I don’t know about that, but nature is a powerful force, and no one can hold it back. Springtime reminds us of that.

God created the earth’s seasons:

“And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years’” (Genesis 1:14).

“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22).

The Apostle Paul said we sense God through his handiwork. Paul wrote, “For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Romans 1:20, NIV).

Observing the arrival of spring this year, I feel overwhelmed by God’s creation. How pitiful I would appear, if I commanded a huge oak to cease growing. I can’t hold back its leaves or the sap rising within it. If man can’t hold back the plant and animal life that bursts forth in springtime, neither will man hold back God’s plan as it unfolds in “due season” and in “the fullness of time.”

God created times and seasons, and he understands “the fullness of time.”

“But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Galatians 4:4-5).

“Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: That in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him” (Ephesians 1:9-10).

The Meaning of 'Easter'

The meaning of Easter is Jesus Christ’s victory over death, according to the Bible. The Internet site “allaboutJesusChrist.org” offers the following information about the word “Easter”:

The term “Easter” did not always symbolize Christ’s resurrection. The feast day of Easter was once a pagan celebration of renewal and rebirth. Held in early spring, it honored pagan Saxon goddess Eastre. When Christian missionaries converted the Saxons, the holiday, which fell around the same time as the memorial of Christ’s resurrection, was merged with the pagan celebration and became known as Easter.

I don’t how much of the following is reliable, but here is more Internet-available legendary detail about “Easter”:

Not long after the global flood (Genesis 6-9), Nimrod, a grandson of Noah, turned from following God and became a tyrannical ruler. According to the Bible, Nimrod created Babel, Nineveh, Asshur, Calla and other cities known for lifestyles promoting evil. Nimrod died, and his wife, Queen Semiramis, deified him as the Sun-god, or Life Giver. He became known as Baal, and those who followed the religion which Semiramis created in his name were called Baal worshippers. They were associated with idolatry, demon worship, human sacrifice and such.

The origin of “Easter” involves the birth of Semiramis’ illegitimate son, Tammuz. Semiramis convinced people that Tammuz was Nimrod reborn. People had looked for the promised savior (Genesis 3:15) and were persuaded by Semiramis to believe Tammuz was that savior, even that he had been supernaturally conceived. Before long, in addition to worshipping Tammuz (or Nimrod reborn), the people also worshipped Semiramis herself as the goddess of fertility. In other cultures, she has been called Ishtar, Ashtur and, yes, Easter.

The origin of Easter goes back to the springtime ritual instituted by Semiramis following the death of Tammuz, who, according to tradition, was killed by a wild boar. Legend has it that through the power of his mother’s tears, Tammuz was “resurrected” in the form of new vegetation that appeared on the earth.

In the city of Babel, people created a tower to defy God. Until that time, people on earth spoke one language. God confused their language (Genesis 11:7) to keep them from further unifying in false beliefs. As people moved to other lands, many took pagan practices with them.

The Easter Bunny and Easter eggs can be traced to practices established by Semiramis. Rabbits are prolific and have long been associated with fertility and its goddess, Ishtar. Many ancient Babylonians believed a fable about an egg that fell from heaven into the Euphrates River. Queen Astarte (another name for Ishtar or Semiramis) was “hatched” from that egg, according to fable.

For Christians, the origin of Easter is simply the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. According to Gospel accounts, Jesus Christ, the true Messiah promised in the Old Testament, was crucified and resurrected at the time of the Jewish Passover. Since that event took place, those who believe Christ is their Messiah have honored that day and often celebrated it with the traditional Passover.

As Christianity spread throughout non-Jewish nations, where Passover had not been celebrated, pagan rites of Easter (“rites of spring” traditions) assimilated into what the Christian church called “Resurrection Day.”

Easter was generally dismissed as a pagan holiday by America’s founding Puritans and was not widely observed in the U.S. until just after the Civil War.

My mother bought small dye packets and dumped their contents into coffee cups in the 1950s. My younger sister and I stained some hardboiled eggs. I held each egg in a little looped wire device and dipped each into a cup of yellow, red, blue or green colored water. The longer I held an egg underneath tinted liquid, the more pastel-colored its shell became.

I doubt that dyeing eggs and eating chocolate Easter bunnies and yellow “sugar chickens” damaged my faith in Jesus Christ. In Sunday school in the 1950s, I learned I needed Jesus as my Savior and learned to worship him and not to worship Baal, Ishtar or seasons the Lord created. At home and in church, I learned the real meaning of Easter and learned to love Jesus’ words found in Revelation 1:18: “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.”