Letter to My Father About the Meaning of His Sermons

My Dad lost his ability to speak after a surgery. He was to me "the great communicator," and losing his voice and his ability to put words together even on the computer had to have been very devastating. But he managed: he had little cards on which he carried information about himself so he could "communicate" with people he met when he was out walking, had gone swimming, or was at church.

This is a letter that I wrote to him after keyboarding several of his sermons and writings to my computer. It is incredible to do this because you become a part of the writer's world.


September 21,1993

Dear Dad,

I have been meaning to write this letter for several months, but in the rush of daily duties and responsibilities, one always thinks there is plenty of time.

I haven't told you how proud I am of you, and I have meant to tell you this for a long time. I am very proud of how you have continued to reach out to the world over the past four years. I can't tell you in words how deep this goes, but it came home to me the day that I picked you up at church. You were the center of a group of people; and these were people that you made friends with after your stroke. I didn't want to interrupt that moment; I remember thinking that I would want to be able to be like you in similar circumstances.

When I visited in May, I asked Mom for your sermons because I didn't want them going to a stranger without my having a chance to read them and learn from them. So I have your sermons: the ones you wrote out in 1956, and the note cards that you were doing by 1957.1 don't have any later ones. I sorted them, and then, instead of trying to copy them on a copier, I decided to keyboard them into my computer. I wasn't sure why—perhaps to have them for Dorothy so she could know you better; perhaps to share them with Nancy if she wanted a set. I just knew that I had to do this. Now I know that I have to do this for myself.

I haven't gotten very far, but it is an incredible experience—an experience which is teaching me so much about you, and so much about me and where my attitudes, my reactions, and my basic (not my religious), core beliefs come from. And even if the manifestation of those beliefs in me often put me at odds with you politically, the underpinnings had the same sources.

So far, I have completed seven of your sermons: I have not edited or proofed them, and I have used your titles: On God's Battlefront Teach Us to Pray. The Bible Speaks, The Mote in Thy Brother's Eye. The Prayer Life, and What Is Christmas?. These cover some of your first sermons and reflect your excitement with entering the ministry as well as your reaction to the Suez Crisis. In the latter, I discovered a pacifism that I had not consciously associated with you:

You wrote: "Due to our inability to see beyond the length of our collective noses, the world is attempting to plunge itself into a chaotic situation. Due to their inability to see beyond their noses, the Arab states are plunging themselves into a Quixotic situation where they have about as much chance as the old Don did against the windmills. And if we keep on looking through the bottom part of our bifocals exclusively, we stand a good chance of leaving our bones for posterity to dig up amidst the ancients in that area around the Sinai Peninsula. Not that we will not have good company, joining with Moses, Saul, David, Solomon, Amos, and Isaiah, but I do not relish the idea. Jeremiah was quite a guy and I enjoy reading his writings and about him, but mingling bones with him holds little allure."

Later, your anger with politics reminded me of an essay I wrote — you gave me the first line: "Healthy people are happy people, and happy people do not wage war."

You wrote: "How was the word kept? In May 1948, the state of Israel was carved out of the Arab states. Did we look beyond the end of our nose and put up some show of argument to show good faith? No, we sanctioned the partition and gave it our blessing. Now we wonder why the Arabs will not trust us. At that time, we even agreed to resist any aggression in that area. Little did we dream that Israel, Great Britain and France would turn out to be the aggressors."

And there is your interesting way of stirring up the pot to gain a greater good
in the local community:

You wrote: "If I were to say that we are in the midst of a very unsettled
international situation, I would be guilty of a very gross understatement. There would, however, be no disagreement. If I were to say the trouble all started here in Cape Porpoise, there would be some flashing eyes and some disagreement, and I would certainly be guilty of an overstatement."

The absolutely remarkable part of this experience is that in keyboarding your words, I am also communicating with the 39-year-old man who sat at that typewriter writing in a stream-of-consciousness manner, driven by his deeper feelings and passions, cramming all those thoughts on four single-spaced pages that have yellowed with the years.

My fingers feel your hope for the future, your gratitude for Rev. Hopkinton:
"An elderly preacher once told another man no longer too young that if the call was in his heart to preach the gospel, that regardless how impossible the attainment appeared to be, he too could become a Christian minister. Friends, that is Christmas too."

And later in the closing the same sermon, there are goosebumps:
"And finally what happened to that man who believed that the spirit of the Lord was upon him, who was encouraged by that elderly preacher, was licensed by a bishop of the Methodist Church to preach the Gospel. I think he believes that the hand of God led him late one evening to the vestry of a small church where he was met by a compassionate group of Christians who were looking for a minister. They talked and chatted of various things and then the preacher left while they deliberated his and their future. I understand that after a comparatively short discussion they said, 'We want this man.' And brethren, that was Christmas too."

Even your strength, your refusal to give up and be a victim of circumstances, your determination to be a winner/survivor is foreshadowed in one of these sermons:
" 'For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save the lost.' Christ comes to seek and to save lost ideals. Have you met any of these people who have lost ideals? Let me nudge your memory, just a little bit. These are the might-have-beens which strew the highways of life. You can hear them say they might-have-been important and successful if this had been done or that had been done, if they had had the breaks, if they had not lost their ideals, if they had not lost their perspective."

I think I have a little bit of this in me. I think it's what kept me from becoming a victim of an alcoholic marriage. Instead of should-have-beens, I found a job to support me and Dorothy, give me the benefits I needed to raise a child alone, and then give me the initiative to turn that job into a well managed career so I could always take care of myself.

I found a lot in your sermons that I will cherish and pass on to my daughter.
I will continue keyboarding until they are done, learning more and more
about you, more and more about myself.

I am seeing your sarcasm and your sense of humor:
"Ah, sounds like the preacher has had a rough week; he's talking in circles again. First he tells us mote picking is bad, and then he tells us it is good, and then has the nerve to prove it with the Bible in both instances."

I am also seeing your faith in God, your faith in people, your dreams, and your ideals.

"I remember reading once about a distinguished scholar telling about how his little boy once pushed open his study door and slipped very quietly into a chair. The father turned to him and said: 'What do you want, my son?' and the boy replied: 'I don't want anything. I just want to be with you.' As a creed, we are saying: I believe that the God who by His power and wisdom created and controls the universe is my Father, and as a prayer, it says, Father, I want to be with you."

And, here is the grammarian wedded to an empathy for people: "The average person who takes the Lord's name in vain is usually just too lazy to increase his vocabulary to the point where he can find words to express himself. I don't think that he is actually trying to antagonize god, but by the same token, if someone was to take this man's name and bandy it about, he would be very quick about getting his back up and objecting to such usage."

This collection is missing some wonderful sermons. Sermons like Christ cleansing the Temple, the word portraits that you drew of the disciples and apostles in the Sunday evening sermonettes, and the advice about how to sleep on a windy night. How I would like to see those. And don't I wish I had the sermons from the firehouse for the church divided and the church healing in Cape Porpoise.

But the ones that I have bring back the others— including that time when you looked down sternly at the giggling teenagers crammed butt-to-butt into a small pew, unable to stop giggling because no sooner did one stop then we felt another one giggling, and scowling at us, you said "Funny as it may seem, you children do not understand..." I haven't the foggiest idea what we were giggling about or what you were preaching about, but I will never forget how chagrined I felt looking up at you and trying not to giggle!

But I want to do more than tell you that I am proud you; I want to thank you.

Thank you for keeping these sermons and the notes. They are enriching my life in ways that no one could have imagined, in ways that they could not have done earlier before I was ready for them. Yes, I will keep on keyboarding them—not quickly for they have a lot more to tell me about myself. This is a very important trip for me to make; it's also important that I share it with you from time to time. Thank you for giving me this wonderful opportunity.

Thank you, Dad, for just being you.