Religion: Down-East Mission

When a friend told her that she was cut out for the ministry, Methodist Margaret Henrichsen, 42 and newly widowed, laughed at the idea. But the thought took root. In a matter of weeks, Mrs. Henrichsen was submitting sample sermons to the district superintendent near her home in Melrose, Mass., and she was plugging away on a correspondence course for ordination. Then, eight years ago, she was offered a rural parish covering four townships around North Sullivan, Me., ten miles from Bar Harbor. Within a few days, she sold her home, sank the money in a '38 Oldsmobile and headed north. She has been there ever since. Last week, in the spring issue of the interdenominational quarterly, Religion in Life, she gave a warm, engaging account of what her Down-East mission has been like.

Preacher Henrichsen found her Maine parsonage saggy and rundown. The roof was a sieve, every door was warped, and the front hall had to be shoveled when it snowed. Huddled in her winter coat, Mrs. Henrichsen studied with her feet in the oven, and kept a wary eye peeled for field mice scurrying up the open drain of the old iron sink.

Applied Christianity. At first, her parishioners were highly skeptical of a woman preacher. Snorted one woman: "I'll go just once to see what she is like—but that's all." But she and others kept coming back for more. Preacher Henrichsen spread her work from two pastorless churches to seven. Applied Christianity on weekdays turned the trick more than Sunday sermons.

When a town was low on schoolteachers, Mrs. Henrichsen pitched in as a substitute. She not only comforted the dying, but once gave the undertaker a hand when a coffin had to be upended through a narrow doorway and a body hoisted through a window on a stretcher. She has driven a patient to the hospital, been mired in back-country roads, listened while unmarried mothers sobbed out their problems on her shoulder, and heard a girl say, "I'm glad we have a woman pastor—I couldn't have done that if you had been a man."

Oblique Compliment.On a typical Sunday, she drives 88 miles to meet her timetable: "Sorrento, 10 a.m.; Ashville, 11:15 a.m.; overhill to Franklin, arriving at home of 'Aunt Minnie and Uncle John' Hardison for dinner at 12:35; leave at 12:55 for 1 p.m. service at Franklin church; 2:30 p.m., Gouldsboro; leave for home at 3 :30 p.m., put wood on fire, play with pup, have nap, supper, make North Sullivan service at 5:45 p.m.; finish up with Prospect Harbor service, 7:15 p.m." At each church, she preaches the same sermon "but with variations."

The variations depend a little on the "feel" of the individual communities. One is a summer colony where most civic decisions depend on "what the summer people think"; another is a fishing village where life is only as good as the last herring catch; still another, a thriving granite center 25 years ago, is now an apathetic ghost town. Mrs. Henrichsen's chief satisfaction is that a clannish, clammish people have opened their hearts to her. She prizes most one oblique Maine compliment: "I don't care for you," said a woman on whom she was calling—and Preacher Henrichsen's heart sank. "No," the woman said, "I don't care for you no more than's if you was my sister."