Madeline Fuentez
edited by Bob Terwilliger, summer 2022
We flew from our home in Arizona to Maine to attend the funeral of my aunt on what would have been her 100th birthday, May 23rd. She was the last of her generation of ten: five siblings and their spouses. With her passing I became the matriarch of our clan.
Before leaving Maine to return home, I bought a dozen red roses and made trips to three different cemeteries, placing one rose on each of the graves of my ancestors: one each for my great-great-great grandparents, (Reuben had been born in 1803); one each for my great-great grandparents; one each for my great grandparents and grandparents, and finally one for each of my own parents whose niche with their ashes can be found at the VA Cemetery in Augusta.
As you can see, my roots in Maine go very, very deep… before the Revolutionary War; back, back to the ever-so-great grandfather and his brothers who founded the city of Southport in Maine when it was still part of Massachusetts; further back to Plymouth Colony and the Mayflower. Yet Maine isn’t quite Maine for me anymore. Not much remains of the Maine of my childhood. The family homestead which had been in our family for six generations, built by Reuben and his sons in 1851, was sold recently and, although I never lived there, it was the place I associated with “home.” The shoe factories in Gardiner, once world famous, have all disappeared. The married students housing on the Orono campus, where my parents had lived and my first home, has been demolished and replaced with a lecture hall. Even the Old Town canoe factory’s ancient red brick and wooden structure has been torn down, having been moved to a low, uninteresting, aluminum building with no character and no history. Sadly, our family is dying and those of the next generation don’t remember.
Remembrance…
I doubt the twelve whose graves received roses that day had any idea of what I did or why. As I began to place the roses on the ground beneath each headstone it came to me that I was engaged in a sacrament, the roses being an outward, visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace: the act of remembering. Of the twelve, I had only ever known or been known by four. It was an affirmation of being-ness, acknowledging a life once lived and connected to mine through history and values and DNA and place. It occurred to me that there is something profoundly holy about remembering, that as Christians the highest, most spiritual act we do is to gather together to celebrate a feast of remembrance.
Then I wonder, who remembers me? Who remembers Iglesia Trinidad? Does anyone know or care that I was the first solo woman to have successfully planted a church? Does anyone remember the wild diversity of Iglesia Trinidad, where Hispanics, Native Americans, African Americans, and Anglos all worshipped together? Where the poor and the comfortably well-off shared a meal together every week, and where those without benefit of education partook of the same sermon as a college professor and business professionals? It was, I suspect, a glimpse of heaven and I have never experienced anything like it before or since.
People always asked me, “Is your church growing?” The question they should have asked but never did was “Is ministry happening?” Although throughout its 20 years Iglesia Trinidad rarely saw more than fifty in worship, yet over those years, literally hundreds were ministered to and had their lives transformed, mostly through being touched by and receiving the acceptance and love of Christ. In some cases, it was the ONLY place where they received love and acceptance. But now the church has been scattered to the winds and the record of its life – membership, baptisms, marriages, and burials – obliterated as though it never ever existed at all. Most of its people have been thrown back into the abyss from whence they came. Those who had a part in making the ministry happen are dying off with few left to remember.
Beth Marcus, the first woman president of the RCA, reportedly said that the problem with getting old is that no one remembers any longer who you are or what you did. The comfort and the hope we have is that God remembers. Even a mother might forget her child but God never forgets even one of his dearly loved children. He even keeps track of the hair on our head and he bottles our tears. The “alleluias” and “amens” and acclamations of “well done” are reserved for us and can never be taken away or diminished.
When I remember Iglesia Trinidad I often find myself humming the last few stanzas from the musical Camelot. It is based on the novel by T.H. White, The Once and Future King, in turn based on Mallory’s book, Le Morte d’Arthur. In all three works, King Arthur is presented as a tragic figure, in the Greek sense of a hero who precipitates his own death. Arthur sows the seeds of his own destruction when he ideally tries to establish rule, not by might, but by justice and equality. In the musical, as Arthur prepares for his final battle, he entrusts the story of Camelot to a young boy. These are the words to that final musical scene:
Ask every person if he’s heard the story
And tell it strong and clear if he has not
That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory
Called Camelot…
Don’t let it be forgot that once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment
That was known as
Camelot.
Remember…
Madeline received her B.S. and M.S. from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and her M.Div. from Trinity Theological Seminary. She was ordained in 1993 by the Classis of Wisconsin. She served as the church planter and pastor at Iglesia Trinidad in Milwaukee from 1991 until her retirement in 2011. She and her husband Robert will celebrate their 50th Wedding Anniversary in December of this year. They live in Payson, Arizona. mafuentez@outlook.com
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