Every year around our anniversary—in belilaced mid-May—my wife and I remember our Lanesville wedding. This year marked our 29th—and memories during this season become incredibly palpable as we walk and drive hither thither around Lanesville, Annisquam, Rockport: a young couple standing there exchanging vows in the church—then (and now) not at all sure what the future held—the window glass clattering in the long windows, the lilacs cut and stuffed in altar vases—my brother and I picking lilies-of-the-valley that morning, winding them into boutonnières with masking tape. I remember Gordon Hugenberger reading how "love keeps no record of wrongs" before the magnificent Vera Cheves played the recessional and we all tumbled downstairs to the tiny vestry for wedding cake and goodies.
We have loved this church from the moment we first worshipped there—it has always had a parish community feel to it. As a young couple new to this Gloucester community Allison and I experienced enormous kindness year after year from families with names like Ahola, Erkilla, Larsen, Macdonald, Gertsner, Aspesi, Haselgard, Craaybeek, Jacobsen, and others. Such marvelous people—the older we get the more these names and memories now become touchstones to us, witnesses to charming lives full of beauty, persistence through hard times, trusting at every turn the God they loved.
As it still does, the place absolutely amazed us then—there was the Lanesville Barnacle Bazaar and Ladies Aid, quarries and pit parties, pig roasts and parades. We remember Sylvester Ahola standing with Saima in their lovely home playing a private fanfare to our wedding. Or the troubled Mildred Muncie praying in church a rambling, inchoate prayer that somehow managed to burst into expansive praise and enormous beauty as it considered everything from starlings to starfields. As a young man I did odd jobs for older folks like Viola Ray, Mardie or Clifton Macdonald, Fannie Jacobsen and others who so appreciated every occasional task I could help with—Lanesvillean graciousness inevitably incorporating tea, coffee, cookies, nisu! A carpentry job might involve keeping an eye on the small fry in the home— Gordon and Jane Hugenberger would then walk hand-in-hand to the old Firehouse for a quick coffee together—but I ramble: these vignettes simply inform this sketch of church and community largely knit together, year after year.
This church—the place and the people—has been in so many ways the heart of our family: many of the most treasured heartfelt aspects of our lives are rooted there—joyous weddings and christenings, the grievous deaths of loved ones—some so very tragic—the play of children, the deep, arresting, practical wisdom of elderfolk—all this wrapped in deep compassion and worship, the beauty of music and song, the heartening, honest, human talk of men and women, young and old, over tea and coffee, in a quiet corner at church or chatting outside while the kids laughed and played.
This throng comes from Lanesville, Annisquam, West Gloucester, Rockport and other towns nearby. Our families and our deepest friendships have ranged across the entire community spectrum: public school teachers, university professors, fishermen, engineers, mechanics, carpenters and electricians and plumbers, cabinetmakers, attorneys, economists, anthropologists, booksellers, antique dealers, writers and musicians of all stripes—the list goes on. We share together our common griefs, joys and worries as we go (sometimes muddling) day by day, yearning somehow to live more and more like Jesus lived.
From my vantage the neighborhoods and community that have historically enfolded Lanesville and the Lanesville Congregational church have always championed a tolerance in community far removed from all things narrow and disquietingly insular. The village of Lanesville is a beautifully unique, spirited place—it’s somewhat fitting that this church reflect that eclectic spirit.
My wife Allison's Oklahoman father used to drawl that "an apple don't fall too far from the tree". And so it is that Lanesville, generation after generation, has nurtured some vibrant, thriving churches—and this particular church has for centuries now been no exception. This church's own eclecticism is testimony to this vital village community as well as to God's spirit reaching across all boundaries, drawing us as a community together, with hearts fully engaged in mercy, forgiveness, love.
John and Allison Lovell
Rockport, Ma.
