An Easter Service for a Non-Believer

I spend a lot of time these days in Winston-Salem, North Carolina where my boyfriend lives. Historic Old Salem is the home of the The Moravian Church in America, which continues its strong religious and cultural traditions. As one of the pacifist religions to come out of Europe in the mid 1700’s, the egalitarian and open-minded thinking of the Moravians impacted the architectural design and urban planning of Old Salem, and continues to remind us of that rich heritage today. One of the traditions that can be traced back to 1732 in Herrnhut, Saxony is the Easter Sunrise service. It has been held outdoors in Winston-Salem continuously since 1772.

I was happy to jump up at 6 am on Sunday to experience this cultural phenomenon, despite my non-believer status! The fair weather further encouraged us. The lead-up to the service actually begins around 1am in the morning when the Church band splits into groups and walks throughout the city playing chorales, partly to remind all listeners of the Resurrection, and partly to awaken people for the Sunrise Service. I heard them in the background (and this is more like a marching band, with tubas and drums) around 2:15am but managed to sleep right through their playing in front of our house after 3am.

Not doing my research ahead of time, I didn’t know that it was an outdoor service that required walking, so had brought a pretty Easter spring outfit with high heels. I was glad to learn though the night before that I could throw on sneakers, jeans and a fleece jacket and wouldn’t be out of place. John told me that up to 30,000 often attended the service which began in the town green in front of the church and then moved to “God’s Acre”, the Moravian cemetery, a few short (but hilly) blocks away. Parking was one of the major issues, but since John’s house is in town a few blocks from the town green, we had one less thing to worry about. It felt like going to a rock concert – up while it’s still dark, trying to get a good viewing spot. John told me that the service, which started at 6:30 am would finish at noon so I had no idea how I would manage standing that long, even in my sneakers. I saw others with folding chairs and thermoses which made me even more anxious.

The pulpit is set up directly at the Church’s entrance and the town green filled up quickly. But nowhere near 30,000. Still it was a lovely way to start the morning, with singing and scriptures as the sun rose behind the church. I didn’t pay too much attention to the readings, but they were definitely much simpler and less bombastic than the Catholic ones I grew up with. The gatherers were quite mixed and diverse – families, hipsters, singles, couples, dressed up in Easter finery, or ready for a hike. The minister seemed young, probably in my age range. The first half of the service lasted only about 15 minutes, and then we all walked to God’s Acre for the completion of the service.

The Graveyard – God’s Acre (adapted from the Easter Service Sunrise program)

The site for the graveyard was selected in April of 1766. The avenue bordering the graveyard was laid out in the year 1770 and the first body, that of John Birkhead, one of the eight men who first came to the settlement, was interred June 7, 1771. The Moravians still call their graveyard by the name first used by their ancestors in Bohemia. It is a “field” in which the bodies of loved ones are sown in faith as “physical bodies”, in due time to be raised as “spiritual bodies.”

One feature of God’s Acre is the use of recumbent stones, symbolizing the Moravian belief in the democracy of death and making it impossible to distinguish between the graves of rich and poor. The burial of members according to “choirs”, or station in life (married men, married women, single men, single woman, infants, etc.) rather than by families, is another distinguishing feature. In addition, it’s a chronological record.

Holy Saturday’s Flowers

Traditionally, family members, ancestors or friends place flowers on the graves on Saturday. John has been placing flowers at the graves of the two couples he feels closest to, in remembrance of his grandparents – the original owners of the house he lives in and the original owners of the house that was the first one he restored in the town. He made 4 vases out of flowers he gathered from his yard and we took them Saturday night. I found the tradition he had created touching.

Sunrise

We all gathered along the walks in the graveyard, with the pulpit re-established in a hollow which everyone could view. The sound was particularly well-done. It restarted just after 7am with the pink, orange and yellow stripes of the sun framing the minister with the various groupings of the band spread around the graveyard. The minister would finish a reading, then the band groups would play the songs in tandem with one another. The program ended at 7:30 and I wondered what we would do for the next 4 hours (meditate maybe like the Quakers?) but instead discovered that John had teased me and that the service was indeed only one hour, not five! My already aching lower back was glad to hear that!

I appreciated the simplicity of the service, the acknowledgment and integration of their ancestors into the program, the continuity of tradition, the relationship of the outdoors and integrating the whole city and the full weekend into the activities of the holy day. No, I’m not becoming a Moravian, but I do like their sense of democracy, equality, culture and beauty.

Take It Out Back

As my week of writing in Old Salem came to an end, the snow melted away to reveal daffodils and I found myself very introspective about the level of productivity pure quiet can provide. My federal house retreat on Factory Row in Old Salem was warm and embracing (see above image). Every day I moved around the kitchen to capture the best light as I wrote and even found myself out on the porch only two days after the blizzard, refereeing our cats. I kept my iPod on shuffle all week and never even missed CNN or the Sci-Fi channel, which is something I did not anticipate, being as obsessed with TV as I am. I did have a few meltdowns - over one site calling me about a "green" carpet, about the loss of an email regarding a contract and about my perceived lack of progress earlier in the week. But now that I am back in Washington, busy at work and the usual non-productivity, it appears I actually managed to write quite a bit and feel mighty fine about it. And even had a full day of summer-like weather on Saturday hiking in the mountains and no guilt about not writing.

My Old Salem blog on True Green got a lot of coverage, including getting picked up by Kaid Benfield on his "Switchboard" blog. The evocative images of Old Salem with snow and the promise of a friendly "hello" seemed to find a wide audience. I took another walk around town later in the week when the snow melted, this time to observe and consider the phenomenon I call “urban sprawl”.

My last couple of days of writing were spent luxuriating on the back porch, admiring the expanse of green yard and trying to ignore the rows of condominiums that line the "gateway" to Old Salem, wondering why so many people with money have such bad taste and lack a sense of place. (See image above.) I thought about these really poor attempts at architectural synchronicity on Friday night when we went to a concert to hear a folk singer, Chuck Brodsky, weave his tales of irony.

One song called “Take it Out Back” resonated:

Take it out back and dump it in the river
Take it out back and throw it in the woods
Take it out back and chuck it down the hillside
Keep the front yard looking good

Let’s Look At These Poor Attempts at New Urbanism

So, I’m no fan of New Urbanism as I’ve reported in other blogs. But I would sing its praises if New Urbanism could have come to Old Salem rather than the relentlessly banal and poorly done attempts at sympathetic design found in the developments that back up to the historic town, specifically backing up to Factory Row where I was staying on my retreat. Look at the image above of individual Federal era houses on Main Street which date from the early 1800s. Now look at the image below of the attached “rowhouses” behind Factory Row. What’s wrong with this picture?

Cultural Irony

So, we have developments that are completely out of scale, show no understanding of why the original place they are mimicking so poorly works so well, and are located next to the original because it increases their property values and desirability. A developer takes some abstracted details from the original 5 unattached houses and places them all over a few pale copies, connects them all and multiplies them by a hundredfold. Now, an original street that has 5 individual houses is backed up to a street of the same length with 50 attached houses. It is both scary and sad. The development’s property values are high because they have views of our grand heritage, while the heritage is diminished in almost every way – their views, their context, their authenticity, the massive increase in traffic.

Banal Developments Push the Boundaries

Somewhere in the past fifty years we have gone astray and lost our way. Our rural wide-open spaces have been transformed into Levittown after Levittown. And our small historic urban cores are surrounded by urban sprawl.

And it’s not just in Old Salem; we see it everywhere. Petroglyph National Monument in New Mexico is ringed by suburban developments that have virtually destroyed the pristine views that inspired the early petroglyph painters – developments actually called “Petroglyph Park.” At Drayton Hall in Charleston, the National Trust has spent millions of dollars buying land to protect the viewshed and hire lawyers to battle zoning changes that would encourage suburban development along one of the great scenic highways in South Carolina. And the road to James Madison’s Montpelier is lined with suburban developments of builder homes with names like “Poplar Forest”.

One of the most important things the National Trust for Historic Preservation has done in its 60 years has been to promote smart growth and battle sprawl. Encouraging urban growth and adaptive use is one of the core reasons that preservation equals sustainable development. And at the heart of this are our historic sites – the places that matter to all of us, the reason we travel to New York City, Boston, San Francisco, Buffalo, Albuquerque and Old Salem. The unquantifiable “social metrics” that make us feel so good to be there. (See Old Salem College and the town green in the image above)

Sabbatical in Old Salem

I took a bit of a blog sabbatical over the holidays, which my close friends like to remind me is also the same time that I got rather involved with my new beau!! Which proves that new love and blogging seem to be mutually exclusive! But I have started blogging again on my usual work blog, Beyond Green Building (for esoteric, sustainability big-picture views) and now a new work blog I have started on the National Trust Historic Sites Weblog called "True Green", which focuses on greening historic sites.

I have the delight of being on a one week sabbatical in Old Salem, North Carolina to work on a Best Practices Manual for work. (Writing in an early Federal house pictured here, which was offered to me by a close friend who lives in Old Salem.) I wrote a blog on the joys of saying hello in snow-covered Old Salem. And will continue to write more this week in "Cities and Memory" about the beauty of taking a time-out in small cities where people you don't know offer you a ride home and locking your car door and home door is optional.