The walking tour of Boston stopped at the house
of Paul Revere, American Revolution hero. We
saw his silversmith tools and artifacts of colonial
life. Parents bent toward children, explaining,
Revere helped in the revolution that gave us our
freedom. Here you can see how our ancestors lived.
Another tour, of Reformation sites, reached
Wittenberg, home of Martin Luther, one of my
heroes. We visited the castle church where
Luther posted his 95 Theses, and toured his
house. For those of us not Catholic, I explained,
Protestant faith has roots in these buildings.
The tour of Anabaptist historic sites approached
Conrad Grebel’s house in Zurich. An inscription
says Grebel founded Anabaptism with Felix Manz.
His mother hosted the first rebaptisms in her house
near the Limmat River where Manz was martyred.
Our faith began here, I told the tour members.
Three houses. Three times hearing we, us, our.
Three houses pose opportunity to profess identity.
I live in the stories of all three houses, but only
the Anabaptist story, now five centuries old, spread
round the world, many faces different from
the first rebaptizers in Zurich, do I fully inhabit.
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