A Kairos Moment at Culp’s Hill

by Josh Bottomly

Down through the centuries, theologians and mystics have spoken of divine experiences in human time as kairos moments.  By definition, a kairos moment is an event used by God to impact one’s life.  It involves an intersection of sorts between the horizontal and vertical, the humdrum and holy, where, for a fleeting moment, one experiences God’s nearness in his life and God’s hereness in his world.

Kairos moments have happened infrequently in my life.  But none was more pivotal and life changing than the karios moment on an obscure battlefield at Gettysburg.

The months leading up to this event had been colored by deep darkness.   It had been almost two years since my wife and I first visited the fertility clinic.  Now the “I” word was not some distant and remote diagnosis.  It was a sobering reality.  By this time, my prayer life had been reduced to a whimper of faith.  The silence of despair grew firm within my chest.  On the brink of a spiritual breakdown, I prayed as a desperate man for a break through.  Little did I know how God would answer my prayer.

Culp's Hill

While attending a leadership conference at Gettysburg, one night I was approached by Marty, a conference leader.  He asked me if I wanted a personal tour of Culp’s Hill, a famous battle during the Gettysburg campaign.  I grabbed my Mountain Gear fleece;  I was definitely up for it.

After snaking our way up through hills exploding with green April foliage, we stopped at a tiny knot of cedars surrounded by large boulders and scattered tree logs.  “This was the Union army’s extreme right position,” Marty exclaimed as he pointed to a breastwork of cobbled stone covered in moss and dirt.  “It was here that the fate of the Union army largely hung in the balance.”

As Marty began to lead me around the markers that jutted up around the hill, the whole scene suddenly transformed before my eyes into a dramatic amphitheatre of war.

The main battle commenced at dusk on July 2, 1864.

As darkness moved in amongst the thick trees at Culp’s Hill, the NY 137th disbanded in a thin line from the saddle down to the lower hill.  Below the hill, gathering in a swale, and quickly filling up many trenches was a Confederate brigade led by General Steuart.

About that time, General Meade of the Union Army sent orders to Colonel David Ireland, the twenty-five-year-old commander of the NY 137th.  General Meade’s orders were short and exacting.

“Colonel Ireland, hold the line at all costs.”

Soon Steuart’s men moved into position behind the low stonewall in rear of the 137th.
They quickly unleashed a staccato of gunfire.  Before they knew it, the 137th was taking heat from front, right flank, and rear.  Their position, as Marty described it, was “like a finger, surrounded on three sides.”

At about that time the 71st Pennsylvania regiment showed up.  They were backups sent by General Hancock to assist the 137th.  But seeing Ireland’s men taking heavy musket fire from all directions, the 71st fired off a volley or two at Steuart’s men and quickly withdrew from the line.  Their position was untenable.

Union fortifications built to ward off the Confederates.

With half his infantry dead, resources depleted, and reinforcements in retreat, Ireland decided to order one final defensive tactic:  commanding his regiment to stack up granite rocks to form a stone wall.  There, entrenched on the saddle back between the hills, Ireland waited with his men.

As Marty showed me where Ireland had burrowed in with his men, I tried to put myself in the young colonel’s shoes.  I got down on my knees behind the stonewall and peered out into the thick darkness with only the silhouette of the overhanging limbs visible.  I wondered how Ireland held his men together as trees splintered from canon fire, bullets pinged off granite rocks, and hot metal tore through sinewy flesh.  I suddenly felt like I could hear the shrieks of young men as they breathed their last breath and their souls slid out of their bodies.

Effects of Union shot and shell on Culp's Hill - photo by William H. Tipton.

Somehow through the long and unrelenting night, Ireland and his men found the strength and fortitude to stymie every Confederate charge up the hill.

At around three a.m., Steuart’s men suspended their attack due to complete lack of visibility and thus an inability to determine who was who.  They feared they were shooting and killing their own men.  As their attack subsided, the 137th found renewed strength and hope as the 14th Brooklyn and the 6th Wisconsin showed up with reinforcements.

Had the Confederates known the 137th was the end of the line, they could have advanced toward the Baltimore Pike and overrun the Union army, changing the outcome of the battle at Gettysburg, probably turning the tide of the whole Civil War.

But the line never broke.

After Marty finished telling the story, I stood in complete silence, as I suddenly felt like Culp’s Hill was becoming holy ground.  I didn’t see a burning bush or hear an audible voice.  But as the wind rustled through the Pennsylvania birch trees and I stood against the cobbled traverse, I sensed somehow that God was near.

A scripture came to mind, one that I had memorized early in my life.

Let him who walks in the dark,
who has no light,
trust in the name of the Lord
and rely on his God.

~Isaiah 50:10a

For two years I had endured what St. John of the Cross called the oscura noche, the dark night of the soul.  During that time, I felt like Job—confused, doubtful, and befuddled by God’s seeming absence and deafening silence.  My prayers were punctuated by sighs and groans.  I came closest to God in my questions.  I wondered not whether God existed but if God knew I existed.  Did he know my pain?  Did he see my suffering?  Would he respond to my cry?

As I walked the hallowed grounds at Culp’s Hill, I began to pray.  Specifically, I echoed Peter’s prayer: ‘I do believe, Jesus, help me overcome my unbelief!’ (Mark 9:24).  I confessed to him that I felt like I was living within a precarious space between two parenthetical opposites: one being faith, the other being doubt.  The bitterest pill I felt I had been forced to swallow involved watching Amy suffer and hurt and not knowing how to palliate her pain in any way.

In that moment, though, as the moon rose high into the starless sky and the leaves turned silver, I felt that God was near.  For so long, God had seemed distant and remote, like a satellite.  Sensing God’s closeness now, I cupped my ear and leaned into the silence.  What I heard filled me with a renewed trust that the night would give way to the day.  And somehow, in some way, against all odds, pressed in on all sides, he would hold the line.  Like Col. Ireland and the NY 137th, Amy and I would see the first gleam of dawn burst through the darkness.  We would feel the sun on our faces again.  We would hear a new word heralded through the clouds:  a new day had arrived!

~~Note:  Josh and his wife Amy documented their journey, struggles and resolution to travel to Africa and adopt a child in their book, “From Ashes to Africa.”  This post is a revised piece from that book.  For more information visit http://fromashestoafrica.com/

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Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch: What’s the Score?

For the past two weekends, it’s the question I’ve heard over and over again.  What’s the score? I gaze out over our “home field” pondering the answer.

"Today, I gave the dog a bath and my husband did just about everything else."

It’s fall and college football has begun.  Points are a big deal on the football field, but in a household,  score keeping can cause all kinds of interference.  The days are long gone of me listing all of the jobs I completed on any given day.  Today, I gave the dog a bath, and my husband did just about everything else.  Luckily for me, he is not keeping score.  I think I would be behind.

Joe Namath said, “Football is a team game.  So is life.”   Whether you are a husband and wife living in the country or four girls sharing a rental home, living together takes teamwork.   We have just got to remember that we are all playing for the same team.

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Silent Sundays: Photos of the Week, 9/12/10

A tiny snapshot of the good done in Oklahoma for Oklahomans every day. Flatlander Car Club members, Roger Koehns and John Pugh, present a couple in need, Tia Hegwood and Alex Holguin, with a check for $500. The couple struggles with medical expenses due to Tia's diabetes. (Courtesy photo - provided to the Guymon Daily Herald.) Click photo to visit the newspaper for the article and link to the Car Club website.
Muslim men and boys pack the mosque of the Islamic Society of Tulsa during services Friday marking the end of Ramadan. MICHAEL WYKE/Tulsa World Read more from this Tulsa World article by clicking photo.
Oklahoma photographer Carl Zoch's self-documentary compilation of a recent trip he and his friends took to the mountains. Great shots & music. Click picture for the "Carl Was Here" slideshow.

Mrs. Tulsa America, Sasha Townsend and her partner Ryan McDaniel won "A Time to Dance", a local Dancing-With-The-Stars-style competition, to benefit the Hospitality House of Tulsa. Inserts on the photo are a shot of them rehearsing, and of their trophy. Click photo to visit the Hospitality House's website. Reprinted w/permission from Mrs. Townsend. Congratulations, Sasha!
Young girl led by her father on a miniature horse in the Sept. 4, 2010 Wilson Fall Festival Parade. Click picture to visit "The Ardmoreite" festival photos.
Oliver and Ina Stonecipher will be celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary in Stratford, OK on Sept. 19th. They were married in 1940 on the Pontatoc County line by Reverend Vard Wood. Click the picture to read the news announcement and see a photo of them on the day they were married in 1940 - linking you to the Ada Evening News.

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Saturday Morning RDC News: 9/11/10

Good morning:

You might have noticed by now that I schedule our weekday posts to come out around 7 a.m.  I’ll usually try to deploy our Saturday posts by 9:30 a.m. Silent Sundays I create Saturday night, scheduling that post to release for Sunday morning around 7.  We sometimes have additional posts or short messages released during the day, but this is the schedule we’re going to try to stick to so you’ll know when new material or updates might be available.

This pattern allows our contributors to understand when content should be ready and our community to know when their new essays will be available for viewing.  Readership is also higher in the morning and in the evening, which follows a standard work-day pattern in our country.

We have some good developments in the planning and preparation stages.  I’ll let you in on a few of the secrets:

We may be guest-hosting a consistent weekly feed from Finding Manhood for our “Man Cave” section very soon.

We’re working on the development of a female answer to the “Man Cave.”  Potential names are:  The XX Factor, Woman2Woman, or Girl Talk.  Please comment and let us know if you feel strongly pro or against one of those titles.

A friend recently returned from a very special trip to Africa and we’re working on busting up his journal and his wife’s photos for a new series in our Travel section.  There are 2,000 photos and about 10 pages to the journal…so it will take a bit to turn it into readable, bite-sized pieces.  What special people they encountered!

We will be adding another contributor to our group soon.  He will be covering topics such as outdoor life, raising four children, hunting, home-schooling and the perspective of becoming a triathlete and/or runner again at middle age.

We also added our Faith Wednesdays author, Alfred Lamar Jackson, to our group and his first release was this week.  Welcome Lamar!

Josh Bottomly, author of the piece we released a couple of weeks ago (A White-Skinned Father and Black-Skinned Son), is preparing an excerpt from a book he and his wife authored to be released soon.  That may come out next week as well.

Finally, we’ll be providing you with a profile of more every-day Oklahoma people or businesses.  Potentially this week or next is a very unique gentleman who’s humility and intellectual acumen are simply amazing.  We’re also working on a piece about St. Francis of the Woods Eastern Orthadox retreat center and farm in Coyle, OK.

I am becoming endeared to Julie, Rob, Mark and Joey and am already remembering why I loved Lamar.  I hope you are beginning to get to know them through their work as well.

Next Friday we’re meeting with a website developer to help our project become more community friendly.  We would love to have your feedback more frequently and be able to feature our articles for a bit longer.  Our current format buries them rather quickly.

Well, that’s about it in Red Dirt Chronicle land.  Which is your land too.  I’ll end this note to you by mentioning a few things on my heart right now:  Our dear comrades who had their lives changed forever in NYC on this date nine years ago, our dear armed service men and women who have toiled and sacrificed in Afghanistan, and later Iraq, for too many years now, and our friends in Oklahoma who are reminded of our own experience with massive bombing tragedies by dates like today.  Peace, blessings and good hope to all of you.

Sincerely,

Red Dirt Kelly – and the RDC Team

P.S.  Please remember to “Like” our Facebook page.  We’re currently at 199 friends and our 200th “Like” recieves a hand-embroidered Tag Rag.  Check out that page for other silliness, and enjoy!

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Showcasing Red Dirt culture ~ authored and managed by contributors with connections to the great state of Oklahoma.