A Pie Plate Pilgrimage by William Loewen
Chapter 6 - Benjamin Worsley
Lydia was a little worried that perhaps she had been a touch hasty in inviting Oscar along for the interview. After all, it was going to be a long car ride, which could get awkward. During the interview he and the candidate could get talking in religious jargon, which she wouldn’t understand. Nonetheless, she had a sense that she could trust Oscar, and she still was old-fashioned enough that she felt a little safer with a man in the car.
When they started out on Tuesday, Oscar insisted that Lydia choose the music they listened to and the restaurant they stopped at. He was so insistent that Lydia began to wonder if he was maybe a little too comfortable taking orders from the woman in the driver’s seat. She decided she wouldn’t ask if he had gotten permission from his fiancée to make this trip with her.
They stopped for a few slices of pizza at a place beside the highway. When they were driving again, Lydia handed Oscar a copy of the news story that featured Benjamin Worsley, the man they were going to interview. The city newspaper only made a brief mention of his story, but Lydia was able to get a copy of a longer article from the small town newspaper near Mr. Worsley’s farm.
“This guy is pretty bold,” Oscar said when he had finished reading.
“There’s one thing I don’t get, though,” Lydia said.
“What’s that?”
“Normally when I think of religious people, at least when I think of Christians, I think of old white guys with conservative politics who talk about bringing the country back to its Christian origins. But every now and then, especially since I’ve been researching for this book, I come across people who are big on social justice and come off sounding pretty liberal. So, are they just from different streams of Christianity, or what’s going on there?”
“The short answer is that, yes, those are just different streams,” Oscar conceded, “but that isn’t at all what Jesus had in mind.”
“So then which side do you think is closer to what he intended?” Lydia asked pointedly.
“That’s a tricky one,” Oscar said, pausing to think for a moment. “It’s a little bit like this. I’m going to tell you a few quotes and ask you what you think of them. ‘Good things are coming to people who are mourning, because they will be comforted. Good things are coming to those who are gentle, because they will inherit the earth. Good things are coming to people who are merciful, because they will receive mercy. Good things are coming to peacemakers, because they will be called God’s children.’ Now if you saw that quote written somewhere or you heard someone say it, where would you align that person, politically and socially?”
“I guess on the left,” was Lydia’s answer.
“Yeah, it sounds that way to me too. Now, how about this one?” Oscar asked as he struggled to remember how it exactly came together. “‘You know the law, don’t murder, but I have some new laws. Don’t hate anyone. If you call anyone a fool, you will have to answer for that. You know the law, don’t cheat on your spouse, but you shouldn’t even look at another person with lust in your eyes, because then you’ve already cheated in your heart. And you know you shouldn’t lie when you swear on the Bible, but you shouldn’t even swear on the Bible at all. You should just live a good enough life that when you say something, people will know that you are telling the truth.’ What direction would you say this quote leans?”
“That sounds like it comes more from the right,” Lydia answered hesitantly.
“There’s just one more,” Oscar said. “‘It’s common sense, to love your neighbours and hate your enemies, but check this out: Love your enemies, and pray for the people that give you a hard time.’”
“Wait, are all these quotes from the Bible?” Lydia asked, recognizing that last quote from Mr. Worsley’s story.
“Yes,” answered Oscar. “Now, bear in mind I was pretty loose with the paraphrase, but not only are those all from the Bible, but they are all quotes from Jesus, and they all come back-to-back as part of the same sermon. All his life Jesus was surrounded by conservative religious leaders and he challenged them to a higher sense of legal observance. Then, when he met liberals, his call to generosity and others-centered living trumped all of their experiences. Jesus was more conservative than the conservatives and more liberal than the liberals.”
“So what you’re saying, then, is that when Christians lean one way or the other, they’re only getting half the message?” Lydia asked.
“Yes,” Oscar agreed, “but they’re even falling short with the half that they’ve picked. Unfortunately, it’s much easier to pick one way or the other than to try to live out both parts of this teaching.”
“So then for conservative Christians,” she asked, “would it be easier for them to get along with liberal Christians or conservative non-Christians?”
Oscar was quiet for a while, then shook his head, “That should be an easy question to answer, shouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know. Should it?”
“Yes,” insisted Oscar, “a Christian’s primary allegiance, by definition, should be to the Kingdom of God, not to any country, any political affiliation or any single social cause. Any other division is unbiblical.”
Lydia didn’t understand what he had just said but she was sure that she wouldn’t understand his explanation if she asked him to clarify, so she just made a mental note of what he had said and kept driving.
The next hour in the car passed pretty quickly, and soon they were relying on Lydia’s GPS to navigate them through the last few turns. When the machine told them they had arrived, there was no house, no driveway, and nothing to indicate that they had arrived anywhere. Lydia had jotted down the directions Mr. Worsley had given her over the phone, but they didn’t make sense based on where they ended up either. Neither Lydia nor Oscar was at all familiar with this area, so they back-tracked until they found a local gas station.
“I guess we don’t need a fill-up,” Oscar said, looking over at the gauge on the dashboard.
“No, we’ll just go in and ask for directions.”
Oscar followed her into the building and proceeded to collect a newspaper, a bottle of apple juice and a chocolate bar. While he paid, Lydia asked about how to find the farm.
The attendant chuckled at the mention of Benjamin Worsley’s name, but gave very clear directions on how to find the farm.
“You’re hungry again already?” Lydia asked, getting back in the car.
“No,” Oscar said, throwing everything he had purchased into the back seat. “I’ll have these later. I just think it’s better to buy stuff from people when you’re asking them for directions.”
“Why does it matter?”
“Maybe it doesn’t,” he answered quickly. “Maybe he would happily give directions for free, maybe he’s just happy for the company, but maybe he gets a lot of city-slickers like us coming in and asking for directions without buying anything, and maybe each time it reminds him that his small independent shop is being threatened by the larger chains. Besides, by giving us directions, he is performing an act of grace for us, so I’m happy to do this little act of grace for him.”
Lydia didn’t respond. She was confused as to how the same person that could make complex biblical ideas sound simple could also make an otherwise simple transaction much more complicated.
As they turned onto the driveway, she saw “E.H. Worsley & Son” written on the side of an old barn and beside it was an even older-looking house. A dog with matted fur and muddied paws came around the corner of the house, took a few steps toward Lydia’s car and started barking. Soon after that, a man in dusty overalls and a full greying beard emerged from the barn. As Lydia parked her car beside a rusty green farm truck, the farmer caught the dog by its collar and led it safely into the garage.
“She’s a little too friendly for her own good,” he said, as he pulled the door shut behind him. “If I let her, she’d jump right up on ya, so I figured it’d be best to keep her behind closed doors for a little while.”
“Still,” insisted Lydia “that’s very nice of you, Mr. Worsley.”
“No problem at all, and please just call me Ben,” he said. “Don’t give me any points for being considerate though, I was just worried about my own hide. What kind of impression would I have made if I let that old hound get your nice clothes dirty before you even got in the door?”
Lydia had already been exposed to his folksy brand of humour through their phone conversations and she was used to him laughing at his own jokes, but she still didn’t know if she thought it was corny or endearing. Seeing him laugh in person also revealed that he had neither the whitest nor the straightest teeth she had ever seen.
“Oh, Mr. Worsley, I mean, Ben” Lydia said, suddenly remembering that he was expecting her to come alone, “this is Oscar, my associate.”
“Don’t worry,” Oscar said, “I’m just eavesdropping. No need to feel intimidated.”
Ben laughed again as he shook Oscar’s hand. “If she wanted to intimidate me, she would’ve had to bring along someone a lot older than you!”
Lydia quickly looked over to see if Oscar was uncomfortable, but he just laughed. “I take that as a compliment,” he said.
Inside the house Mr. Worsley took off his dirty rubber boots and placed his hat on a rack with a dozen other similar hats. When he made no indication that he was going to change his clothes, Lydia was surprised. She wasn’t expecting him to do the interview in a shirt and tie, but she was surprised that he thought his dirty work clothes would be good enough. She also noticed a very earthy smell hanging over the whole house. All around the room there were newspapers spread out with piles of vegetables drying; there were carrots by the coat rack, potatoes on the table, and some leaves on the windowsill.
“If I put some water on for tea, will you have a cup?” Ben asked, already pouring water into a kettle.
“Sure,” Lydia said as she searched for the cleanest part of the living room sofa to sit on, “a cup of tea would be great.” Oscar just nodded as he looked around the room at the pictures on the wall.
Ben put the kettle down on a woodstove and grabbed a tin container from the counter. “I grow my own tea. I hope you don’t mind trying some home brew.” Lydia found herself chuckling to ease the awkwardness of Ben laughing again at his own play on words. “I found something like camomile growing in my bush so I mixed that with a variant of jasmine that I also grow. I think it works out pretty well.”
Lydia couldn’t remember the last time she had been in a house solely heated by wood, and had probably never had anything to eat or drink that was prepared with that kind of heat. “I love the aura your woodstove gives off,” she said.
“I notice you’ve got electric baseboard heaters around the room too,” commented Oscar. “When do you use wood and when do you use electric heat?”
“A while ago, the electric company shut off power to the house, so I had to make do without for a while. Turns out it wasn’t all that hard, so I never turned it back on. The wires are still there, but this house is officially off the grid.”
Lydia hoped that he would explain why the power was cut in the first place, but as he walked toward them, handing them their cups of tea, it was clear that the answer was not forthcoming. Since it wasn’t really relevant to the book, she let the issue drop.
“This probably isn’t a politically correct thing to ask, Lydia,” Ben began, pretending to care about protocol, “but I’ve been wanting to know, is this book a strictly professional thing for you, or is it a sort of religious project too?”
“Oh,” she began, “this isn’t a, I mean, I don’t really, um …”
“She’s not into organized religion,” Oscar said simply.
“Is that so,” Ben said, laughing at Lydia’s discomfort. “Well, I have lots of experience with disorganized religion, and I’m not sure it’s any better, but I like where you’re coming from.”
As much as she would like to have pursued Ben’s line of thinking, Lydia was determined to keep this interview about him, and not her.
“I’ve read the story in the Gazette about the incident,” she began, changing the subject entirely, “but is there any part of the story you’d like to tell that didn’t make it into the article?”
“Something you might be interested to know is that it wasn’t even my tractor,” he began, getting comfortable in his recliner. “One day I’m out minding my own business when I see at least a dozen cattle standing in my field. Ordinarily, that would be fine, except I don’t own any cattle. Neighbour next door has a big herd of Holsteins and a son that’s too lazy to fix the fence, so this was actually the third time this year this had happened. I go over and let them know and we corral the buggers back onto their property.”
“Did they do any damage to your crops?” Oscar asked.
“Lucky for me, I had the crop off already, but had that happened a few weeks earlier, I could have been in trouble. Anyways, I guess he appreciated that I didn’t make a stink about it and to square things up, he sends his boy over the next day to see if I need help with anything. I had lots of manure for him to shovel, but he comes over in his nice clothes driving their big twelve wheel tractor, ready to plough my field.”
“But don’t you run a no till operation here?” Oscar asked, remembering the newspaper headline.
“That’s exactly what I told him when I climbed up into his air-conditioned cab. He just smiled and nodded, probably figuring I was some crazy old codger. He goes on to show me all sorts of gizmos and gadgets they had in there and how it was all hooked up to satellites. The kid said I could use the satellites to track moisture pockets or soil erosion or I could plough any kind of pattern into the field. He was probably thinking about a corn maze, but these jets had been flying over my farm all week and I wondered if I could send them a message. That’s when this ‘love your enemies’ idea came to my mind. So that’s the job I gave him to do. He got to play with his toy and I got him out of my hair. Then a few weeks later I had these guys in army greens come to my door.”
“What were they like?” Lydia asked. “Friendly? Confrontational?”
“Old Cooper was nice enough at first, but he had brought the recruits along and wanted to look tough in front of them. Now, maybe the patriotic thing to do would have been to salute him and call him sir, but when he challenged my theology, I challenged his. When he challenged my understanding of international conflicts, I challenged his. It was a decent conversation for a while, I gave them tea and cookies like I’m giving you, but they didn’t seem to want to dirty their clean suits by sitting on my furniture. Anyways, when Cooper started telling me about how brave these boys were, and then I asked him if he had told them about post traumatic stress disorder or about the high rates of suicide and domestic violence among returning soldiers. He wasn’t so friendly after that.”
“Do you have any hostility toward them?” Lydia asked.
“No,” he answered quickly. “They all think they’re doing the right thing. The two young fellas he brought with him were good, upstanding young men. But those boys are gonna be taken to hell and back, and I’m worried their souls won’t come out clean on the other side.”
“Was there any response from your neighbours about what you did and all the press you got?” she continued.
Ben laughed, again revealing to Lydia his less than perfect teeth. “The locals have all written me off as a crazy old coot a long time ago.”
Lydia asked more questions about his interactions with other people from the community and local church groups. She wanted to get a sense in which circles he had a good reputation and if that could be broadened to create a market for a book he might write. After half an hour Lydia was no closer to knowing if he was a good author candidate, but with all the talk of organic farming she had started to think about what kind of produce she might be going home with.
“So is this what you always wanted?” she a
“Hell, no,” he said. “Sure, as a boy I loved the farm, but I became a teenager in the sixties. I just wanted to damn the man, and all that. As soon as I was old enough, I was outta here.”
“So you were part of the early hippie movement?” she asked. “What made you choose that kind of lifestyle?”
“I could give you a long answer,” he began. “I could tell you about a few cousins of mine from down south that were drafted to fight in Vietnam. I could also tell you about conversations I had with blacks about the inequality they suffered. But mostly I was a teenager full of piss and vinegar, and that was what folk like me were doing.”
“So what did that lifestyle involve for you?”
“My friends and I, we did all the hippie stuff, you know. We held hands and sang songs about peace. Meanwhile, we were living out of vans, indulging in all of the free love and mind-altering drugs we could get our hands on.”
“I’ve always been fascinated by that part of history,” Lydia said with a smile.
“You may have read about these things in the history books, honey, but it sure didn’t feel like history at the time,” he said with a chuckle. “Let me see. In ’67 we drove to New York to march with Reverend King protesting the war. The year after that I was in Chicago at the Democratic Convention. That was when the cops cracked down pretty hard. Somehow I escaped without any bruises but some of my buddies weren’t so lucky. After that I reckoned I’d had enough. That’s about when I came back home, and then my old man put me to work.”
In her studies, Lydia had read quite a bit about Martin Luther King Jr., but she had always seen him solely as a human rights campaigner, so hearing him called Reverend was a reminder to her that he was in fact a spiritual figure. “So was your hippie experience a spiritual time for you?”
“I thought so at the time, but these days spirituality means more to me than rebellion and cheap drugs.”
“So what changed? Why did you go home?” Lydia asked.
“For a while, I had been running out of money, and around that time my father had a heart attack. He always joked that it was from worrying about my wayward lifestyle.” He shook his head as he looked up at an old family picture on the wall. “But I was needed at home, and things were falling apart everywhere else. So I worked the fields while my dad recovered, and I thought things over.”
“What did you think about?”
“I thought about how our revolution was failing. Reverend King preached peace, but when he died, the nation erupted in violence. We wanted to end the war in Vietnam, but we were fighting here. My own lifestyle didn’t reflect the freedom, love and peace we chanted. So while all my old friends were partying in Woodstock, I was driving a tractor, asking myself, ‘Was King right about non-violence?’ and ‘What had all of our protests accomplished?’”
“Did you come up with any answers?” Oscar asked.
“The only answer I could come up with for a while was that I should have gone to Woodstock. That looked like a lot of fun,” he said with a laugh. “But I told my folks the only way I would come back to the farm was if they got rid of their chemical fertilizers and pesticides. We didn’t call it organic farming in those days, and they didn’t call it organic farming a hundred years ago either when my grandfather was too poor to buy the chemicals in the first place. Maybe my dad was just really sick or maybe they reckoned there was no other way I’d do it, but they agreed. I had lost hope in a lot of things in those days, mostly in myself. Secretly I thought I would probably go back to regular farming after a year or so, but when I started getting my hands dirty again, something changed. I watched as the soil healed and reclaimed itself from the damage done by years of chemical abuse. When I looked at the plants and animals around me, I saw death every day, but I also saw birth and new life and every day it struck me as miraculous. Do what you will with the creation story, but the order of life I saw on my farm, that was no accident. Workin’ this land is where I met God and I reckoned that if the soil, the plants and the animals could be reborn, maybe there was hope for me.”
Even though the tape recorder was rolling, Lydia scribbled quickly to get everything down on paper. “So what does this have to do with Martin Luther King and ploughing peace messages in your field?” she asked when she had caught up.
“I believed in peace then, just like I do now,” he began. “I was too thick-headed to get it at the time, but Reverend King always said that racism didn’t just oppress African Americans. He said that white folk were also victims of the unjust and hate-filled world they were creating. So if I was going to find peace in the world, I had to make peace with myself. God only knows why, but I started my quest for peace by reading the Bible, and when I did, I found the Jesus that Reverend King had talked about; a man proclaiming peace in a violent world.”
Ben’s words seemed to remind Lydia that this was going to be a religious book. She loved reading about the 60’s counterculture movement, but the peace discussion would have been a lot more convincing to her without bringing up the Bible. Mr. Worsley continued on, giving examples of parts of the Bible that advocate peace, but she could only think about the church’s violent legacy. Part of her wanted to challenge him on that point, but she thought it best to stick to the script. She hadn’t gotten any background information at all yet.
“I hope I’m not getting too personal by asking this,” she said apologetically, “but have you always lived here alone?”
“Yup,” he said without hesitation, “ever since my folks kicked the bucket I’ve been the only one living here.”
“You never wanted to get married?” she asked cautiously.
“Sure I wanted to, but the right girl never came along. The hippie chicks I knew didn’t want to settle down, at least not on a farm, and the farm chicks I knew didn’t want to marry a hippie, so here I am.”
Lydia understood the logic, but she still caught herself feeling a little sorry for him. “I’ve got to draw things to a close,” she said as she completed jotting down a few notes from his answers, “but I’d like to ask a few final summary questions that I’m asking all of the candidates.”
“That’s fine with me.”
“Simply, and in your own words,” she began, “what is the most important part of being a Christian.”
“People asked Jesus a question like that, so I’ll borrow his words, and add a few of my own. He said there were two things that summed up all of God’s law – we need to ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind’ and ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ So, we need to make peace with our creator and we need to live in harmony with the world around us. If you can do that, I think you’ve got this Christianity thing licked.”
“Blessed are the peacemakers, right?” asked Oscar.
“Maybe I should plough that one into my field next year,” Ben joked.
The hardest part of doing this interview for Lydia was having to hold back her own opinions. The whole idea of peace being motivated by Christian values went completely against her understanding of history. Her mind was full of what-abouts and what-ifs. She had a feeling that Oscar and Mr. Worsley were the kind of guys that might have answers ready for her questions, but this wasn’t the time or place for that conversation.
“And one more question,” Lydia added. “If you were to write a book with us, what kind of people do you think need to hear your story?”
“I ain’t no saint,” he said simply. “I know my flaws and a lot of people probably don’t want to hear what I have to say. But in my line of work, I meet a lot of people that have it all figured out. It’s human nature to be complacent and comfortable. Rich folks drive hundreds of kilometres from the city in their hybrid cars to buy my organic crops. They pay my bills and all, but sometimes I wish they’d stay a little longer for a chat. I’d love to be able to talk some sense into people like that.”
Ben seemed genuinely surprised that she would go so soon. “Before you go I’d love to show you around the farm,” he insisted. “I don’t get a lot of company, and someone who digs my line of work sure makes for great conversation.”
“Yeah,” she said cautiously, “I really don’t think we have the time, and I’m not dressed for it at all.”
“Well,” he said, heading for the kitchen, “did you like the tea enough to take some home? I’d try selling it, but it’s not quite up to snuff, and I always make too much for myself.”
“Sure, yeah,” she said, “the tea was great.” It wasn’t really something she’d actually pay for, but she didn’t want to refuse his generosity.
“Camomile isn’t normally my thing,” Oscar said, “but I think you could sell this stuff as it is.”
“That’s good to hear,” he said, returning with two small tin canisters. “These two are on the house, and if you ever want more, just come on back.”
“Thanks,” they said.
Lydia put the tea in her briefcase and then took out some official documents. She explained the non-disclosure agreement as she put it in front of Ben to sign.
“You have my word,” he said after hearing what he was signing for, “but I’ll sign if it makes your bookkeeping easier.”
“And the next thing we need from you is an example of your writing. It could be a piece you’ve already written for something else or maybe a sample of the kind of inspirational material you’d like to write with us.”
“Okay. And when do you need that by?”
“I need it on the twenty-fifth,” she said, “which is in ten days. I don’t suppose you have email?”
“Oh, I have email,” he laughed. “I just have to go into town to the library to use it.”
“Okay,” she said, getting her contact info from her purse, “either way, send it by snail mail to me at one of these addresses? That way I’ll get it at the office. And if you have any questions, feel free to call too.” She still hadn’t gotten over the thrill of giving people business cards with her name on them.
“Well, thanks for the chat,” he said as she and Oscar gathered their things to leave. “Hope to see you again.”
“We’ll be in touch,” she said as they walked out the door.
They both waved to Ben who was standing at the window as they drove off.
“What did you think?” Lydia asked when they were safely down the road.
“I thought he was really interesting,” Oscar said right away. “His life story, his peace theology, his eco-theology…all that was great. He’s probably right about not having a broad appeal, but I liked him.”
“We don’t need to talk about the interview all the way back home, but is it okay if I email you with some questions about it later on?” she asked.
“Absolutely!”
For the rest of the drive they mostly talked about high school memories and their various old friends that they were still in touch with. As far as the interview went, Lydia almost wanted to pat herself on the back; this one felt much better than the first one. She still wasn’t sure if Mr. Worsley was what she was looking for, but now she had a better idea of what she was doing and felt like she was a step closer than before.