Occasionally the Oak Bay United Church blog will post interviews with members of the congregation. This first interview is with Yawn Baess, a long-time member of the Oak Bay congregation. LB
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Yawn asked, before we began, why I wanted to interview members of Oak Bay United Church for the blog. I thought about this for a while. I'm certain it's a good thing to do, but I had trouble putting into words why. Eventually I said, because one of the great strengths of the United Church is that we each have a voice, and we all have different voices. We all have different perceptions of God, and of faith, and of being members of the United Church. I thought it was a good thing to blog about that, so that more people could hear about our individual experiences of our faith.
"You want me to witness," Yawn said, enlightened. "I can do that." So we began.
Yawn Baess is 92. He was raised in a Lutheran family, in Denmark. He and his family went to church "regularly", he said with a smile - "twice a year, Easter and Christmas". His parents were however strong believers. In Denmark religion is a required subject in school, so he also had the elements of a formal religious education, but the foundation of his faith were laid at home.
Yawn came to Canada in 1950. After three years in Montreal, he moved to Victoria, where he became the chief naval architect at the VMD (shipyard). He married Margaret, of Scottish descent, and raised his family in Victoria. His son and grandchildren still come to Oak Bay United Church.
When Yawn lived in Montreal, he said, he didn't go to church, except at Christmas and Easter - for no particular reason, he just didn't. But when he was on his way to the West Coast, God spoke to him for the first time.
Yawn was driving across Canada in his own car, with all his worldly possessions, mostly textbooks and instruments for his work as a naval architect. In the middle of the trip, partway across the Prairies, God spoke to him. Yawn was sitting in his car - an old Chevy - and feeling very much alone. As an immigrant in a new, vast country, again on his way to the unknown. It was a weekday, and he had stopped at the church in some village. The door was open and he went in and for some reason got down on his knees, shaking and started crying bitterly.
The local Minister happened to come by to see who was in the church, and sat with him while he cried, and comforted him. It was somehow clear to Yawn that God cared about him and was with him. He isn't sure what God said to him, but it's not necessary to understand what God says in words. God did speak, and it changed Yawn's life.
When he settled in Victoria, he visited several denominations, and joined 1st United. As for how Yawn chose a church: He was regularly driving his landlady - the mother of a friend in Montreal - to church, where she attended First United. One day she asked if he would like to come in too, so he went in. From that time forward he attended First United.
Yawn eventually came to Oak Bay United after he was married and had children, because the children asked why they were going to church downtown every week, instead of to “their church”, where their friends were. So they came to Oak Bay. "In this as in everything, I believe God is involved," Yawn said. "God leads me all the time, every day."
"You have always seemed to me to be a person of strong faith", I said. "How does this work? How do you live a faithful life?"
Yawn answered by telling me about the next time God spoke to him. Yawn was taking his boat out on weekends, so he came upon an abandoned settlement on one of the small islands North of Sidney. The island had been inhabited at one point but it had been taken over by the government and turned into a park.
At that time he was building a cabin himself in the Saanich inlet. He noticed that the cabins had been ransacked and stripped of windows and doors, but there were electrical fittings left in some of them. So he went back to his boat to get some tools and came back to take some of the electrical fittings. But halfway there, God said: "Yawn, turn around. That's stealing." And Yawn stopped, and turned around. "This is an example", Yawn said, "of living a faithful life: listen to God speaking. "
Over the years Yawn has made the choice that his closest friends are Christians (it's much easier to be a Christian when all your friends are). He also spent every summer up at Cortes Island, where he attends a small church. When he was 80, one of his friends on Cortes encouraged Yawn to invite Christ into his life and become born again. He prayed a lot and asked Christ to enter his life, and he eventually did. That sealed Yawn's faith.
I was puzzled and wondered what the difference was between how he had been before that event, and after. Was he not a Christian before?
Yes, I was", Yawn answered, "but I believe there are two kinds of Christians: by tradition or definition, and by faith." He was a Christian 'by definition' until then. Christ had been in his life since his birth, but after he became born again he lived his faith.
“This doesn’t mean I am not still a sinner, by the way”, Yawn said. "I ask God every day to forgive my trespasses."
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