Marj Leegard: Writer
June 2009
This bold woman, a mentor to many, talks about her life's journey and the joy of writing.
In our May issue, Marj Leegard announced her retirement from regular column-writing for LWT. If you would like to send a note of appreciation to Marj, write to her in care of Lutheran Woman Today, 8765 W. Higgins Road, Chicago IL 60631. We will be delighted to forward your notes to Marj.
By Anne Edison-Albright
When Marj Leegard found out she’d been nominated to be a national board member for the American Lutheran Church (ALC), she felt conflicted. On one hand, it would be an amazing opportunity to live out her call to lay leadership and her commitment to ministry in daily life. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, such leadership positions were just beginning to open up to women in the ALC.
On the other hand, being a board member meant frequent travel and occasional week-long absences from her family and the farm in Detroit Lakes, Minn. Marj told her husband, Jerome, she was going to say no.
“You should do it,” said Jerome. “Someday you’ll be looking out of a nursing home window, and you’ll want good memories to think about. I can take care of things here.”
In Marj Leegard’s life and work, there are recurring themes: discipleship and ministry in daily life; stories of family and friends interwoven with a persistent message of grace; and stories of what it means to tell stories, to claim writer as part of one’s identity.
MINISTRY IN DAILY LIFE
Somehow we failed to sense that Nellie, too, had a ministry. How could we have forgotten that when we visited a home filled with sickness or great joy or sorrow and Nellie’s cookies were there? When our babies were small, Nellie never asked, “Girl or boy?” She knew. And she knew their names. “There is little Jimmy,” she would say, “and he is such a good boy.”
I asked Nellie once how she could remember all those names, and she looked at me with wonder. “How can you pray for them if you do not learn their names at their baptism?”
It is too late to thank Nellie in person or to speak to her about her special kind of ministry, since she is no longer around to hear. But there is still time to remind ourselves and others that recognition of all our faithful ministers is in itself a ministry. Today would be a good time to start. (“Nellie’s Cookies,” Give Us This Day by Marj Leegard, Augsburg, 1999)
Born in 1920, Marj grew up in the Methodist church during a time when there was a strong emphasis on social issues. Every fifth Sunday was Temperance Sunday. Marj says, “Dr. Wittenberg would bring a liver in a jar to show the Sunday school what cirrhosis looks like. I signed a pledge that I would never drink.”
From an early age, Marj was aware of a strong connection between faith and everyday life, “although then, it was all don’ts: don’t drink, don’t dance, don’t gamble . . .” Later, Marj found heroes of faith in everyday life in her circle at Richwood Lutheran Church. “When I first joined the congregation, Nellie would call every time circle met until finally I went. I was so glad I did. The women at circle loved our son—they always said, ‘such a beautiful baby,’ and they complimented anything I baked.”
DISCIPLESHIP AND LEADERSHIP
The centerpieces on the dining room tables at church are new and bright. Martha made them. The women of the Dorcas Circle prepared scraps and patched 100 lap robes. Martha was there cutting and stitching. Is there one who needs encouragement or company for a lonely task? Martha will be there. (“By Faith,” October 1994, LWT )
The Dorcas Circle’s ministry to Marj affirmed and encouraged her ministry and discipleship. Marj remembers, “In 1950, I started getting involved in the women’s organization beyond the congregation. I thought, ‘These women, they know everybody. I can’t do this.’” As Marj’s involvement grew, she felt empowered by what these women— she among them—could do.
“Our organization changed the position of women in the community. We knew Robert’s Rules of Order and could outshine the men at a meeting anytime.
“At two-to three-day circuit meetings we would meet with missionaries. We had a feeling of involvement—we were sending money to a missionary—David— who we’d met and we knew, and this gave us a sense of closeness to the mission field.”
In 1969, Marj was elected American Lutheran Church Women (ALCW) synod president and became a member of the ALCW Board of Regents. Marj says, “It was one of those moments when you know you were there for a reason. The church was on the edge of something.”
Marj said that in 1970 in San Antonio, Texas, the American Lutheran Church “decided women were people.” They changed the language in the constitution from man to person.
The ALCW executive board members attended as official visitors. They were there, but they couldn’t vote. “The caucus of women delegates could fit in a phone booth,” Marj joked.
The ALCW president did have five minutes to report to the assembly about its mission support, charitable giving, and quilt-making. Before the meeting, the board president had asked the synod presidents to bring district banners.
“She got up to speak and the man who ran the public address system, as pre-arranged, began to blast ‘Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore’ as we marched in, waving our banners.
“We are here and we are here to stay!” Marj said the president proclaimed. “They voted to change the language that afternoon.”
FAMILY MATTERS
When we are planting vines and flowers, I mumble, “Why are we doing this? She is not here. She is not here.” And then I know that God created her body and gave us the gift of a daughter for earth years and for eternity. There is thankfulness in the rush of color, the blooms of the flowering crab apple trees. We must have a place of remembrance, and in the old cemetery we find one place. (“Groundedness,” May 1998, LWT)
Marj remembers: “I met Jerome in 1941, and I met the Lutheran church at the same time. For Jerome, the center of his faith was his church and his congregation, Richwood Lutheran.
“You know, brides are married in their church. Well, we went around and around with that. In the end, we got married in the Lutheran church on a Sunday afternoon.”
When Marj and Jerome first married, Marj didn’t want attend the Lutheran church, and stayed home on Sunday mornings. “One Sunday morning in 1944 I was sewing clothes for our baby, and Jerome came home from church singing ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken?’ I laughed, but I made up my mind. It wouldn’t be broken.
“I didn’t want to join the Lutheran church. Now our grandson is the fifth generation at Richwood.”
Marj and Jerome’s daughter, Laurie, died of cancer at age 27. “I
would give up everything to have that child back,” she says. “Faith is not a pretty thing, not what you dreamed it was. It’s not what you wanted it to be, but it’s there.
“Nothing will bring that child back. Not prayers. Not the strength of faith. Nothing. We never have the sense to give thanks for God’s gift of eternal life. If that’s not enough, God must weep.”
MINISTRY OF WRITING
Now the dawn leads into day along eastern ocean beaches. The places where breakers roar and winds move sand, people gain strength from the elemental movement of water and land. The artist gathers her brushes and begins to form a palette of grays and blues. Lights and darks. The writer sits before a blank page and shapes the opening line. The musician listens for the inner melody that will be music only if she makes a mark upon the staff. The people of God are creating. God has new voice. (“The Sounds of the Church,” September 1997, LWT )
Marj took on an identity as writer at an early age: “In fifth grade I entered the Women’s Temperance League’s writing contest. I wrote a story about a man who was in jail for drinking. My story beat all the fifth- and sixth-graders, and I won the prize of $5 cash. I went to J.C. Penney’s and bought new shoes and a new dress and I still
had money left over. I was a writer from that day on.”
Later in her writing career, Marj began to encourage others to claim writer for themselves. “At workshops, I ask them, ‘Are you a writer?’ Many people say no, they don’t think of themselves as writers. I tell them: A writer is someone who writes. You write because you have to. You’ve got to get it out.”
THANKS MARJ
The man arrived early for the farm auction. His old friends were moving to town. The boxes were ready on the flatbed wagons. There was no extra room in the new, smaller house. No shop. An efficiency kitchen.
He hardly looked into the boxes, for they were always the same. Good covers for kettles. Why only the covers? Then he remembered that the kettles went on to another use. Some held geraniums on the porch steps. Some held oyster shells in the chicken coop. Some were nests for the banty hens the kids raised. Some were repaired and made welcome water sources in the yard. It was only the kettle covers that stayed unchipped. Only the covers that had no further function.
Our children are grown and capable of telling us what to do. We are now the grandmothers and great-grandmothers in the generation pictures. We are the covers. . . . We can let ourselves be covers unchipped, undented, and unused. Or we can be the kettles that are never assigned to the useless and unnecessary corner. It doesn’t matter that we no longer bubble on the stove from morning until night. We’ve done that! We still make nesting places and produce blooms and provide water for the thirsty.
God has plans for each of us, for all of our days. We listen as we pray. We listen as we read. We listen as we hear the gospel. While we listen, we hear our names called. There is today a place where you are needed. Where you can be the feet, the hands, the heart, the generosity, the love of Christ in God’s creation. “He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless” (Isaiah 40:29). God’s children are never discarded. Never useless. Never too old. (“Kettle Covers,” May 1995, LWT)
Marj keeps an updated list of favorite hymns she wants sung at her funeral. Jerome says Marj wants “a funeral in the afternoon, a concert in the evening.” Her list includes “Thy Holy Wings,” “Borning Cry,” and “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” which a nurse in Fargo sang as daughter Laurie went in for surgery.
Marj stopped traveling after her second heart attack, but continues to write and to host family and friends at her home with Jerome in Detroit Lakes, Minn.
Marj says, “I always think of my 50th birthday present from Jerome: a guitar. To think I could learn to play a guitar at 50 clearly said, ‘Life is not over.’”
After Laurie’s wedding, Marj found a note that Laurie left for her parents. It read: “Thank you for 20 beautiful years. I love you.” Marj writes, “We would have been as good parents as we could be without Laurie’s gratitude, just as God is good to us without our thanks. If our hearts help us remember the joy of that benediction for us, we will give it more often to God and our families.”
Marj Leegard’s first “Give Us This Day” column ran in the March 1994 issue of Lutheran Woman Today. Each column since then has offered readers faith-filled gifts wrapped in stories of everyday life.
Thank you, Marj, for your leadership, ministry, writing, and welcome. Thanks be to God for the blessing of your faithful witness.
Anne Edison-Albright is a Horizon International Intern, serving at Bratislava International Church and teaching religion at the Evangelical Lyceum in Bratislava, Slovakia. She is a candidate for ordained ministry in the ELCA.