St. Andrew's - Rural Zeeland, ND

“If Music is the Food of Love, Play On.” – William Shakespeare.

Music feeds our soul. From our earliest experience, lullabies nurture, sacred hymns comfort, ballads tell a story.

In my Germans from Russia experience, music - much of it carried from Germany to Russia to Dakota – connects us to our heritage and to the migration experience. Hymns or folk songs specific to life events or the church calendar have been sung in German to celebrate, commemorate or bid farewell for centuries. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, among the Lutheran Germans from Russia, the culture of music has been sustained via the little black hymnal given to young confirmands (often with their names embossed on the cover) on their Confirmation Day.

Shortly after my great-grandparents arrived in Dakota Territory (1884) from the Glückstal Colonies in South Russia, they began to meet in one another’s homes to worship and to sing. By 1893 they had their own worship space erected on donated land near Beaver Creek from stones taken from a bluff some 12 miles northwest. They named it “Andreas Gemeinde.” There they could sing together the songs they learned from their parents and grandparents. It was a way to bridge the global divide and cut the edge of loneliness that life on their homestead parcels in the middle of the Dakota prairie created.

By 1906 a new church building was erected next to the old stone church. That tall, white, Carpenter Gothic building with a bell tower became the “Mother Church” for four satellite churches in the community. Seen for miles in every direction it was literally a “Beacon on the Prairie.”

As a child, I frequently visited Andreas Gemeinde – by then called St. Andrew’s Lutheran – with my parents, when they would journey 90 miles west to visit their large extended family along Beaver Creek in McIntosh County.

For me, crossing the county line was akin to visiting a foreign country. I seemed to be related to everyone. Most still communicated in the German dialect brought by their ancestors from Germany to Russia to McIntosh County. They were very comfortable with the language, the camaraderie, the humor, the inflection - all foreign to me but so easy for them.

Worship at St. Andrew’s was still in the German Language in the 1950’s. I didn’t understand a word, so the sermons in “high German” from that high pulpit were an endurance test for my wiggly self.

But the music – it was unlike anything I heard in my home church in LaMoure County. These congregants sang with their heart. They sang because they loved to sing. They sang because the music fed their soul. When they sang, the connection to their heritage was intact and strong. The pulse, the rhythm, the cadence, the oneness of their voices was striking to a young child who didn’t understand a word, but knew she was witnessing the food of love.

I never forgot those visits to St. Andrews. Years later, in 1993, when I wrote the pageant, “Unser Leute,” honoring St. Andrew’s 100th Anniversary, I asked the congregants to form a choir and sing songs appropriate for each scene. The anniversary celebration was an amazing three-day party celebrating the “Beacon on the Prairie,” drawing hundreds of sons and daughters of St. Andrew’s and the satellite congregations – long ago closed and merged into St. Andrew’s – to that sacred spot designated by 15 families from South Russia in 1893.

For centuries, caring members of my culture, the Germans from Russia, have bid farewell to their loved ones with songs that carry deep meaning. My 90-year-old mother, Helen (Dockter) Just, died on August 11, 2010. Members of St. Andrew’s choir traveled the miles to sing the traditional committal hymns at my mother’s graveside at the family plot near our farm at Berlin, ND. Once again, “So nimm denn meine Hände,” “Lasst mich gehn,” and “Wo findet die Seele die Hiemat, die Ruh?” gave comfort to a grieving family and bid “safe journey” to another German from Russia soul – just as it happened for her parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. You get the picture.

Eighteen years after it organized to celebrate its prairie church, St. Andrew’s Choir STILL loves to sing. The choir continues to rehearse and perform regularly even though St. Andrew’s closed its doors some years ago. It has been featured in Prairie Public Broadcasting/North Dakota State University Libraries documentaries and has been featured as a guest performing group at many venues. Their voices echo the same joy and enthusiasm their parents and grandparents exhibited long ago in the beautiful sanctuary of the lovely white prairie church standing next to the old stone church in rural McIntosh County. The choir is a rare example of contemporary German-Russian musicians singing in a centuries-old style.

Call me a worrier, but this music culture that was carried across continents and has been nurtured in a small prairie church is at risk. Age and health issues have taken their toll. The St. Andrew’s Choir membership is dwindling. The reality is that once these voices have been silenced, that sound will never be available to us again. The only hope of sustaining that voice will require a commitment by the next generation to choose to be mentored by the now 80-year-old children of the prairie. It is certainly a possibility. I just pray it happens.

10/2010