Wilhelm’s eyes

For your steadfast love is before my eyes, and I walk in faithfulness to you. (Psalm 26:3)

Rest well, old man. Rest in the Love I saw in your eyes.

Wilhelm Linss passed into the eternal love I knew in him on a sunny Saturday morning. That’s when I heard the news that I knew would soon come, regretting only that I was not there to bless him one more time as he had blessed me.

He always sat at the aisle-end of the second row of pews at the front of the sanctuary to shorten the distance between him and the Holy Eucharist at the time of distribution. His balance was failing. The last time I was to place the host in his hand he slipped and began to fall as I and one other soul privileged to love him interrupted his descent.

He righted himself and held out his wrinkled old hands to receive, one more time, as I fought back the tears of loving him and loving the Lord who held us both, the Lord and Love who holds him even now.

He was old in the truest sense, having lived fully the years he was granted, dwelling not in the shallows but in the depth of the beauty and ugliness, pain, absurdity and joyous glory of being human on this planet, his life caught up in the juggernaut of history that might have crushed him, but mercifully it did not. And many are better for it.

I came to know him best as he sat at my left elbow during the adult class and discussion that followed worship before the pandemic shuttered that joy. He couldn’t hear well so I often leaned left, speaking in his direction, knowing he wanted to hear, often asking for his thoughts, calling forth his years as a New Testament professor.

He spoke slowly and soft, as was his temperament, his accent thick, at times impenetrable, his words always welcome as we leaned-in to receive whatever came out of his one precious life.

Most precious of all was the day he shared what it was to be a POW in the waning days of WWII. He was drafted into the German army, a teenager, in the final months when the Nazis forced virtually all able-bodied males to serve, trying to stave off the inevitable destruction of the Third Reich.

Wilhelm, quickly captured, became a POW in a French camp where German professors, POWs like himself, began their own university to teach the next generation and stave off the aimless boredom of camp existence.

It was there he studied theology and continued to learn biblical languages, and it was there that he produced one of the most precious things I have ever held in my hands. Wilhelm brought it to our Sunday discussion to show us.

He had learned piano as a boy, and in the camp composed a little music. That is what he showed us, a short piano piece, written on strips of toilet paper. He fashioned the cover from thicker paper that had been cut from a sack that had contained flour or some other commodity. Wilhelm stitched the little booklet together with thread on the left margin.

We passed it among ourselves, gently turning the pages to see the staves and notes traced by Wilhelm’s much younger hands, several of us brushing away tears, feeling the suffering hope in which he had created this masterpiece—and the long years and miles it had traveled with him to arrive at this moment to grace our lives and awaken our love for him, for God, for each other and for the glory of being a human soul in God’s own image.

We knew we sat in the presence of holiness and grace; we saw it in his eyes and felt it stinging our own.

Near Veteran’s Day, the congregation honors those who served with a red rose and special prayers at the start of the liturgy. The following Veteran’s Day I invited all our veterans to come forward for this observance, then looked over to Wilhelm in the second row.

He shook his head, no, but I insisted he come up, too, this one who served in an enemy army. How could we not honor his life, seasoned by war, deepened through suffering, graced by the Love shining in his old eyes?

Rest well, old man, and shine in the Love that illumined your life ... and mine. Thank you.

David L. Miller