Garrison Keillor

[pastor's wife]

As a fan of Garrison Keillor's "News from Lake Wobegone" - as a child, I listened to the Prairie Home Companion on PBS Radio on Saturday nights - so I thoroughly enjoyed "Lake Wobegone Days" and "Leaving Home".

What I didn't remember from my childhood were his stories about his experiences in the Brethren church. Reading those parts of the books really resonated with me, because I understood the mindset of the people he was describing in his stories, people who covered their car in religious bumper stickers or went to the fair dressed in white shirt and tie because they were holding a tent revival on the grounds.

I posted a quote from "Leaving Home" on another thread and thought I'd start a new thread just for quotes from Garrison Keillor that made you say, "Yes!!! My church/parents did that too!!!"

Has anyone else read Keillor and do you have some pertinent fundy quotes from his books?

[pastor's wife]

"In the Sanctified Brethren church, a tiny fundamentalist bunch who we were in, there was a spirit of self-righteous pissery and B.S.ification among certain elders that defied peacemaking. They were given to disputing small points of doctrine that to them seemed the very fulcrum of the faith. We were cursed with a surplus of scholars and a deficit of peacemakers, and so we tended to be divisive and split into factions. One dispute when I was a boy had to do with the question of hospitality toward those in error, whether kindness shown to one who holds false doctrine implicates you in his wrongdoing." from the chapter "Brethren" in the book "Leaving Home"

[pastor's wife]

"I loved the Fair, the good and the bad. . . The bad part was that I had to wear fundamentalist clothes to the Fair, white rayon shirt, black pants, black shoes, narrow tie, because we had to sing in the evening at the Harbor Light gospel tent near the Midway gate. We sang 'Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me," and fifty feet away a man said, 'Yes, she is absolutely naked as the day she was born, and she's inside, twenty-five cents, two bits, the fourth part of a dollar." I held the hymnbook high so nobody would see me. I wanted to be cool and wear a T-shirt. In the pion days before polyester, a rayon shirt was like wearing waxed paper." from "State Fair" in "Leaving Home"

[pastor's wife]

"[My Aunt Myrna] made the greatest chocolate angel-food cake on the face of the earth. (To call it devil's food would give Satan encouragement so we didn't.)" - from "State Fair" in "Leaving Home"

[Clint]

Wow. I'm so glad to find another Keillor admirer! I'm going to see PHC live in May. So excited.

[pastor's wife]

@Clint, have fun! Is it near Detroit? (I see your Red Wings icon.)

[Darrell]

I listen to PHC every chance I get.

I especially love their yearly Christmas show.

[Phatchick]

From Lake Woebegon Days-
"I felt that the gospel should be treated with respect and not just plastered over every flat surface you could find. At least that was the excuse I used not not carrying a "Wisdom of God" bookbag to school. In truth, I was sure I would be laughed of the face of the earth."
From We Are Still Married-
"I walk into a room and people say,'I didn't know you were a baptist?' We considered the baptists loose."

[pastor's wife]

@Phatchick, good quote! And even though he grew up Brethren in the 50s (I think) and I grew up IFB in the 70s, I can totally understand that feeling of disgrace and embarrassment for standing out so strangely from everyone else.

The chapter "Protestantism" is "Lake Wobegone Days" is awesome. I was rereading it again tonight, and started laughing so hard my sides started hurting. It's really a "must-read." The book ends with a chapter called "Revival". This chapter describes an evangelistic service to a T!!!

[pastor's wife]

I love the way Keillor describes council members using Scripture - and a line from a hymn - as proof texts in a town meeting. So funny. I know people who would be like this! (This passage is from "Fall" in "Lake Wobegone Days":

A memorable council meeting was that of 5/16/62 to discuss a motion to hold a special election to vote on a bond issue to repair sidewalks and install new streetlights. it was the late Leo Mueller who suggested that with a little more inner light ("Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet"), fewer people would need assistance walking home. He hinted that it was Lutherans who were walking into trees. it was the late Mr. Osterberg who said, "Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. John 3:19" and "Let the lower lights be burning, cast a gleam across the wave," and, in defense of sidewalk repair, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his path straight." "Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction," said Leo's friend, Mr. Luger, pointing out that our earthly pathway is not meant to be easy. Hjalmar Ingqvist, then the mayor, asked the speakers to please limit themsleves to pertinent arguments and be brief, and they all turned on him. Louie reminded him of Christ's adminition in the Sermon on the Mount, "When they bring you unto magistrates and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say. For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say." What seemed "pertinent" to Hjalmar was not necessarily pertinetnt to the Holy Ghost who was leading them, and should one be brief where truth was at stake? The discussion began to range widely in the field of personal morals. At ten o'clock, Hjalmar banged his gavel, said he was tired, and moved for adjournment, but all he got was an uproar. How could he think of sleep at a time like this? Now was the time for wakefulness. People cited the watchman who slept, the sleeping apostles, the parable of the wheat and the tares, until Hjalmar said, "I'm going home to bed. Turn out the lights before you leave."