July 28, 2023
A Postcard from Brookville, Pennsylvania
Greetings from Brookville, Pennsylvania, population 3,795. It is a picturesque small town nestled in the Allegheny forest in western Pennsylvania. It is right off Interstate 80 which divides Pennsylvania north and south and serves as a financial artery for small towns like Brookville near its exits. Brookville has the added advantage of being the home of Brookville Equipment Corporation, one of the foremost builders of trolley cars, trains, and buses, having built the light rail cars for the Sound Transit system in Tacoma. When it comes to street cars, new or refurbished, Brookville is kind of a big deal for a small town.
Regardless of being a small town or big deal, time in Brookville has a different quality than it does in Seattle, Los Angeles, or even downstream in Pittsburgh. Things move at a friendlier pace here. People wave to you as you walk by even if they don’t know you, assuming that they soon will. People stop and talk and don’t look at their watch—or even phone—in the process. The scale of life is different. We went to church on Sunday in a church which sat about 100, but only had about 18 present, everyone included. A licensed lay pastor presided and preached in worship and while music was provided by CDs played on a boom box. It felt strangely familiar to me.
I grew up in a Covenant church whose attendance was about the same, though a much smaller building made it feel bigger. We had piano and organ to accompany us, and was more formal in approach than this service. Of course, that was half a century ago. And that was in Bradford, Pennsylvania, a “city” over four times this size. We were not far from St. Bonaventure University, Buffalo, New York, and had Kendall Motor Oil, Zippo Lighters, Corning Manufacturing, and Case Knives for manufacturing, to name a few. Cities like Brookville, Bradford, Mount Jewett (a Swedish stronghold), or even Sugar Grove (former home of our own Steve and Marilyn Elde) are not what they used to be. I will learn how much Bradford has changed when I am back for a class reunion this weekend. I am certain there will be two very different groups reuniting in our hometown: those who have moved away from Bradford and the majority who moved very little—if they moved at all.
For those of us who moved away, our understandings of the world expanded in ways that don’t happen when you do not extend your life through travel, education, and otherwise exploring a world different from the one you know. In my travels back to places in my past I have learned that my view of the world—political, social, economic, religious—is often very different from the people I speak with there. Sometimes I am the first person they have ever met that held my opinions, having only heard them presented in a negative light, making me one of “those people.” I have learned to be cautiously diplomatic as a result.
I recently learned of a very helpful definition of empathy. Empathy, at a deep level, is understanding that another person’s world is just as real as mine is. To discount their understanding of reality is to discount them. Empathy is a muscle we can all exercise and strengthen. As Christians in particular, we must be cautious of promoting ourselves as being in any way superior to others. God does not love some people more than others because of their social location and its attending worldview. In a world being separated by echo chambers of rigidified opinions, we are called to be empathetic. In a divided world, Christians are called to be peacemakers (Matthew 5:9), entering into a dialogue knowing that our worldview is just as subjective and no more real than any other. This requires humility, and in my case remembering where you came from.
While we are enjoying our time in Illinois and now Pennsylvania visiting family, Susan and I look forward to being home with our church family soon.
Enjoy the rest of July.
~ Pastor Todd