Bluebonnets for Easter

I've posted some pictures on Facebook from Good Friday and Holy Saturday, and I've made a series of comments about them which I am collecting here.  In the past, I have written about wildflowers and bluebonnets and their significance for Everly, our years together, and for our family (here and here, for instance).  We have been blessed with an abundance flowers at Everly's grave this year, and I wanted to share these pictures and reflections with those of you who have followed our story.

In winter 2013, we planted bluebonnets and paintbrush wildflowers on Everly Estes Broadway's gravesite in Salado. With pretty good rainfall, the plants emerged in the spring, but there were only a few scattered, small blooms. So we hoped for another year of root growth to bring us a better bouquet this year. Today Lydia made her way to Salado at the end of Holy Week, and we got a big surprise.

As the day waned on Good Friday, she found and sent us pictures of abundant bluebonnets all over the Broadway grave plot, and only on that part of the cemetery. A little foreshadowing of Easter on Good Friday for us who love Everly. 

Bluebonnets all over, with a few scattered paintbrush and behind the bench, several red Drummond's phlox visible in the corner of one photo. Everly will be loving these flowers. I always loved to bring her flowers.

 STEM moment: Everly will be loving to see a few atoms (possibly) of her carbon remains revitalized in this palate of color. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Dust to soil, soil to bluebonnets.

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W.D. (my dad) and Lydia have gone back to sit with Everly and place an Easter lily by her gravestone today on Holy Saturday. Last year on Easter the four of us took lilies to Everly's grave before sunrise. Later in the day we took pictures with bluebonnets as we had on our last Easter with Everly. This year we are scattered around in three states. Thank you sweet Lydia for these pictures.

Beyond my comprehension, in the complex relation of time and eternity, the mystery of Holy Saturday is a day of communion of our Lord with the dead. WD and Lydia stay there by this grave at the borderlands of this mystery, and we remember that this tomb and the Lord's tomb and so many more tombs cannot hold prisoner those who have been laid to rest.  

But on this day, Christ and those united to him (the church against whom even the gates of Hades may not prevail) participate in the liberation of "All of these [who] died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, God has prepared a city for them."

"There is a communion of the saints," as Rev Turner declared in Everly's eulogy, and like so many flowers clustered around WD's and Lydia's feet, there is a great cloud of witnesses, sitting vigil on this day, with all creation groaning in labor pains, awaiting redemption of our bodies. We hope for what we do not see and wait with patience. The Spirit helps us in our weakness and intercedes with sighs too deep for words. The Spirit intercedes for the saints according to God's good will and purpose for us. In this blessed, sweet communion, we await the mystery of resurrection, in hope.

Faith and Faithfulness, Having Faith and Being Faithful

Listening to conversation about Hebrews 11 drove home the need for better training in Bible reading.  The verse under discussion was 11:7:

By faith Noah, warned by God about events as yet unseen, respected the warning and built an ark to save his household; by this he condemned the world and became an heir to the righteousness that is in accordance with faith (NRSV).

It could have been most any verse in this chapter my Dad often referred to as "the roll call of faith."  Here, looking back at the story of Noah, forms of the Greek pistis occur twice, and some translators add a third implied "faith."  The noun is here translated "faith."  The verb form, pisteuo, is usually translated "believe." 

In the contemporary church, perhaps especially in the traditions born of the Enlightenment and the United States "nation with the soul of a church," these terms faith and believe take on a highly intellectual aspect.  That is, we tend to think of faith as believing in something, or in other words, accepting certain statements to be true.  Sometimes this aspect of faith is called "assent" to propositions or confessional statements.  Faith or belief, in this way, is a mental act, a matching of mind to concepts embedded in sentences.  "Jesus is the Son of God" is such a statement.  Popular notions of faith might tend toward, "Yes, I buy that.  I accept that.  That is what I think.  Thus, I have faith in that."

Greek (and Hebrew for that matter, if I were to go into another ancient language of scripture) do not make such an easy distinction.  I'm not going to cite numbers of New Testament and extrabiblical texts to provide statistical support, but let it suffice to say that very few, if any, uses of these words in Greek literature indicate this kind of mental act of assent.  Faith as assent is an emptying out of scriptural reasoning and replacing it with something alien.  For scriptural reasoning, faith or belief takes on richer meaning that may require more than one English word to adequately express.

For those who think I am being excessively picky or misrepresenting the churches' conversations about faith, let me first acknowledge that I would be lying to say that many preachers, teachers, and other church folks have regularly pointed out to me that faith means "trust," and believing means "trusting in."  The Hebrews text above makes this very clear through contextual analysis, without even having to look beyond the single verse.  Warned by God, Noah respected the warning.  That respect was trust in what God had revealed to Noah.  Faith in God means trust in God.  Trust in God means putting one's life in God's hands.  Trust in God means accepting as reliable what God has said.

This is more than simple assent.  It is relying on God.  It is resting and moving within the embrace of God, walking on the ground laid out for us by God. 

And this relying, resting, walking, and moving presses our understanding toward the additional aspect of scriptural reasoning with the words faith and believe.  Trust is nothing without acting on it.  Faith is nothing without faithfulness.  Noah's trust included a confidence to act on God's guidance, even against the conventional wisdom of his day.  As the Hebrews text says, Noah respected what God had said and built an ark on dry land when there had been no rain since who knows when.  The righteousness (or justice, an other word for another post) that comes by faith is not based on a person's knowledge, or intellectual assent.  It is not a mental righteousness.  The righteousness that comes by faith is demonstrated in faithfulness.  It is the confident action that comes from trusting God.  It is the life lived as God has called.

This complexity is why I encourage my seminary students, and my Sunday school classes, to exercise discipline as Bible readers.  When they come to the words "faith" or "have faith" or "believe," they should practice substituting that additional aspect of pistis and pisteuo which does not come through in contemporary English:  faithfulness or be faithful.  Thus, after reading Hebrews 11:7 in the NRSV, I want to go back and reread

By faithfulness Noah, warned by God about events as yet unseen, respected the warning and built an ark to save his household; by this he condemned the world and became an heir to the righteousness that is in accordance with faithfulness (NRSV, adapted).

It emphasizes the acting in confidence based on trust that is crucial for a biblical understanding of faith.  Moreover, the discipline reminds me that Bible reading is more than first impressions.  It is more than making a scriptural text conform to my cultural biases and mean whatever pops into my head.  It is disciplined work, and there are great mysteries to be unfolded as I continue to search this deep sea of divine wisdom passing through and into earthen vessels.

Just for the sake of expanding this point, let me give a few other examples.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who is faithful to him may not perish but may have eternal life (John 3:16, NRSV, adapted).

For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who is faithful, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.  For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faithfulness for faithfulness; as it is written, The one who is righteous will live by faithfulness (Romans 1:16-17, NRSV, adapted).

Just as Abraham was faithful to God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness, so, you see, those who are faithful are the descendants of Abraham.  And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faithfulness, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.  For this reason, those who are faithful are blessed with Abraham who was faithful (Galatians 3:6-9, NRSV, adapted).

How else would Abraham's belief appear than in his faithful obedience to God's call to go to another land?  Those who by faithfulness are righteous shall live.  To do what God commands demonstrates the trust that encompasses the life of faith/faithfulness.

Follow-up on a Day with Dad

After Dad and I made our tour of central Texas, where we saw not only hoards of goats and a few buffalo, but also a trio of elk behind a very tall fence, I traveled to NC for a few days.  Upon my return, I had about a week in Texas to get a few things done and prepare for a long stay in Durham to teach summer school at Shaw.  Yes, we did manage to get the university reopened for summer school, and I have two full classes.  We anticipate having the dormitories and dining hall reopened by the end of July in order to welcome back undergraduate students for the Fall 2011-12 semester.

Dad asked around and found a friend from church who was willing for us to get our rolling cart/shelf units using his pickup.  Moreover, having known my dad for some time through Sunday School class and other church activities, he decided to drive us himself.  He told me he couldn't think of much better than getting to spend a few hours with W. D. and hear him tell stories.

The drive was uneventful, and our friend was not disappointed.  All along the way, Dad would tell about a pastor whom he had known who served a church in the small town we were passing through, or about the time he preached a revival at a church on the side of the highway, or a funny story about a preacher or church in this or that town.  In fact, we worked Dad so hard that he started getting hoarse by the time we reached Huckabay, our destination for the furniture acquisition.  We took a slightly different route, and along the way we saw winter wheat and hay ready for harvest.

As I had judged earlier, the people at the Huckabay I. S. D. were very nice people.  If they got a laugh out of our last visit, no one let on.  Instead, the business manager apologized to me, as if her description of the units had not told me enough to save me from that first unsuccessful trip.  I reminded her that the auction listing did include the exact measurements, which I had failed to think through adequately.  It took only a couple of minutes to load both items into the truck and tie them down.  Then we were back on our way. 

We stopped again in Hico for lunch.  Dad and I had the blue plate special--meat loaf--which was excellent.  The dessert for the lunch special was "coconut pudding," basically a coconut merengue pie without any crust.  That's two pies I've tasted there--about fifteen or more to go. 

We got the furniture back home, letting Dad nap a bit while we told some of our own stories in the front seat.  I rolled them into the garage and piled them high with boxes, making a way to more easily move stuff around in the crowded garage.  That night, I moved another pile of boxes to get them out of my mom's way so that she would not have to deal with them while I was gone for a half the summer.  We also spent a couple of days getting her pantry and cabinets cleaned out and reorganized.  It was a busy and rewarding week.

The shelf units cost me a total of $16 at auction.  I suspect that equivalent units would cost $500 each, give or take a hundred dollars.  Even building them from scratch would take a long time and cost $100 or more in supplies.  They should be sturdy enough to do what we need.  Dad bought our friend lunch, and Mom cooked him dinner.  I bought him a tank of gas for about $80, making the total price of each unit $48 for me (I'm not counting the Day with Dad trip since we went to see Aunt Joyce.)  Considering the good times had by all, I would say we all came out very well.

A Day with Dad

For the last couple of weeks, I have been preoccupied with grading papers or with things that suddenly become crucial to do rather than grading papers.  I've been retreating to the back room, to a coffee shop, or wherever I can to try to keep my focus.  That means that the people I live with have also tried to stay out of my way and not expect much of me.

Going back a few more weeks, I have also been trying to help Dad get set up better with his gardening.  First, I found a utility sink on Craigslist to put on the back patio.  With a couple of fittings, I rigged a damaged water hose to run from an outdoor spigot to the sink.  The drain, for now, can drain into a bucket or into one of the dozens of potted plants he has in the back of the house.  That was a big success:  good quality sink, low Craigslist price.

My next project was to find some kind of cart to set up as a potting table and workspace next to the sink.  One place I looked is an auction site for government surplus sales, Public Surplus.  This site has lots of school equipment for sale, as well as police departments, county governments, etc., and you can sort by state.  I found a big printer table not far away in Georgetown.  It is the kind you used to see in Human Resources offices, out in the hallway, running constantly, printing checks with all kinds of attached documentation on fancy paper with perforations.  Those printers were noisy, so the tables for them often had a plastic cover to mute the noise while letting a person see the machine at work.  I thought this was a great idea for a mini-greenhouse work table, with wheels to boot.  But I did not win the auction.

I tried Craigslist again, and found a heavy-duty steel cart, tall enough to do potting work standing, and with big wheels.  The guy selling it said it was cluttering his garage and he wasn't using it any more.  A bit of negotiation, and I had a deal.  That makes two successful back porch improvements for Dad's gardening work.  And I have not spent even close to $100 for both items.

In all my heady success, I decided to bid on a couple of rolling shelf units, or more accurately classroom media carts that were surplus at a small school district "not too far" from where we live.  Remember that I have been living in NC for 24 years, so my memory of the map of Texas and distances is a bit rusty.  I did not expect to win the auctions because my bids were pretty low.

But lo, and behold, when the auctions closed I had won both items.  A couple of half-hearted bids had challenged my offer, but the price was way lower than I could have expected to pay.  I scheduled a day to go pick them up, and I did a little measuring of the doors to Dad's Chrysler minivan.  All looked fine to me.  Famous last words . . .

I reached a good point in my grading, came out of hiding, and Dad and I agreed to go together and retrieve the shelving carts, which I plan to use in the garage to make compact storage of boxes more easy to manage with these rolling units.  We checked the map, and to my surprise the location was 2.5 hours away.  Now that is small potatoes in Texas, but it is a bigger part of the day than I had anticipated.  To make double duty, we planned to visit Dad's oldest living sister, Joyce Harbour, in Hico, about thirty miles from the school of our destination in Huckabay.

The route was nice.  Before long we had passed out of the dried up region and into green meadows where there has been some consistent rain during the past month of storms.  The times, they are a-changing, and we passed from cattle ranches into goat ranches and eventually buffalo ranches on the road to Hico.  I don't remember many goats in Texas when I lived here before, and I don't remember ever seeing a buffalo ranch south of Wyoming or Montana.

Dad and I talked about all sorts of things on the trip.  I had brought some work to do, but the conversation was good and the scenery was interesting.  When we finally got to Hico, we took note of a little cafe called the Koffee Kup, which has received some recognition from travel magazines for its food and its pies.  I knew where I wanted to be in a couple of hours.

We headed on up to Huckabay, and I think you may know where this story is going.  It is a small school district with 192 students from K-12.  One of the business administrators met me, and she went to get the bus driver to show us where the carts are.  Immediately, he began to express reservations about where we planned to put the carts for transport.  I assured them I had measured the doors of the minivan and all should fit.  They called out the principal of the school to help me load things up.  These were generous, hospitable people.

What I had not taken into consideration was the depth of the carts.  While I had accurately found that the length of the cart would fit through the side door (45"), I had not taken into account that the door would not open wide enough to accommodate the 28.5" depth of the cart.  Nor would the cart fit through the back gate on its side.

I reckon some small-town folk got a few laughs about the city folk who drove all the way from Salado to pick something up without planning how to fit it in their vehicle.  I was chagrined and a little embarrassed.  The business manager tried to comfort me by pointing out that even if I had gotten one cart through the door, I would have had to make a second trip to get the second one because they were too thick to get both in the van.  Yes, Mike, there are three dimensions in space, even if you are looking at a two-dimensional picture.

One thing I have learned from Dad, and over the years have gotten a little better at doing, is rolling with the punches and not letting things upset me too bad.  This was one of those days that I was able to roll.  We thanked the people, scheduled a later visit with a borrowed truck, and headed back to Hico.  Dad picked up some chocolate candy for Joyce, and we went to see her at the nursing home.  I was happy that she recognized me before we even said anything.  We talked about this and that, caught up
on the relatives, gave our hugs, and prayed together.

Then it was off to the Koffee Kup for CFS (that's Texas shorthand for Chicken Fried Steak), onion rings, and pie.  Filled to satisfaction, we retraced our route back to Salado, having visited Aunt Joyce, scouted the two big shelving carts I bought for a total of $16 (and as Everly will never let me forget, spent way, way, way more on gasoline), eaten pie (a notable achievement in itself), and covered thoroughly the full range of the world's and the family's topics.  If there were any problems, we solved them several times over.  Even with the silliness of poor planning, that was a good day with Dad.

Sins of Economics: Ash Wednesday Liturgy

Today my dad, W. D., and I went to the Episcopalian Ash Wednesday Service at noon in St. Joseph's Chapel in Salado.  Each of us had found our way into such unheard-of settings in the years since I left home, but this is the first time we ever shared an Ash Wednesday service.  It was obvious to me that we were in Texas when the celebrant reached a point in the liturgy when he repeated three times, "LammaGod, who takes away the sins of the world."  Of course, that is what the shift to vernacular languages is all about.

The Litany of Penitence pressed our hearing ears toward the personal and corporate sinfulness that brought down the economy.

Our self-indulgent appetites and ways and our exploitation of other people, we confess to you, Lord.
Our anger at our own frustration, and our envy of those more fortunate than ourselves, we confess to you, Lord.
Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and our dishonesty in daily life and work, we confess to you, Lord.

I was forced to remember that an entire culture and milieu fed the speculative, overreaching consumption of the past few decades.  I have been guilty of spending what I did not have, willing to buy underpriced goods and commodities while turning a blind eye toward the exploitative global systems of low wages, workplace dangers, and child labor.  I have to admit the temptation to muse about how much better I would do with millions of dollars than the greedy Wall Street bandits have been--no doubt a dangerous self-deception.  There is plenty of blame to go around.

For the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty, accept our repentance, Lord.
For all false judgments, for uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors, and for our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us, accept our repentance, Lord.
For our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us, accept our repentance Lord.

Even so, with plenty of blame to go around, this week's interactions in Washington, DC, between the Showdown in America movement, the state attorneys general, federal regulators, and bankers, bring our attention to the abuse of structures by robber barons.  One of the most troubling absences of moral conscience is the attitude of brokers and financiers who operated on the assumption that they would "get theirs" before the house of cards began to collapse.  Too many were willing to stretch the system to its breaking point with little concern that children and families would lose their homes, that elderly people would lose their pensions, that workers would be laid off, and that many banks would fail. 

One of the most haunting interviews I heard was on This American Life, in a program called "Crybabies." The relevant part of the show is Act One, "Wall Street:  Money Never Weeps."  It took place in a bar filled with financial executives who a year after the economy crashed were angry with government for proposing regulations on their freedom to do whatever the hell they want to do to make a dollar.  None of the Wall Street executives and managers interviewed would accept any of the fault for the economic collapse and its effects on millions of people.  None of them felt that there might be an injustice in the fact that their bonuses got bailed out while millions more who had nothing to do with killing the economy lost homes and jobs.  Instead, one man had the gall to claim that it was right to bail out his job because he is smarter than everyone else and deserves to continue to be in charge of the economic fortunes of the rest of us.

We have been deaf to your call to serve, as Christ served us.
We have not been true to the mind of Christ.
We have grieved your Holy Spirit.
Have mercy on us, Lord.

Ecclesia Houston--What Would Dad Think?

I worshiped at Ecclesia on Taft St. in Houston today.  It has some of the expected features of emergent-type congregations: 

• a repurposed building, 
• a coffee shop and coffee drinking in the service, 
• people worshiping in casual clothes, 
• a worship band and large-screens for lyrics and video, 
• a slight techie feel combined with functional furnishings, 
• a sense that the setting is an impermanent stop on a longer journey, 
• an ambivalent relationship with popular culture, 
• one foot in the ancient Christian tradition, 
• a fair share of small beards and goatees, and 
• conversational worship leadership and preaching.

My dad (Rev. Dr. W. D. Broadway), aged 80 and a Texas Baptist preacher for over 60 years, would call this type of church a "Rock Church."  I'm sure that is language harking back to my teen years when a youth movement of evangelical Jesus Freaks and Catholic folk masses were challenging the fixed norms of worship practice across many denominations.  Dad still uses the term to refer to most "praise and worship" style worship services with a worship band, especially those that sing unfamiliar songs with indeterminate melodies, led by CCM wannabe soloists that seem to be imagining they are performing to ticket-purchasing fans rather than leading congregational singing (I agree that he is right to be disgusted by that kind of deformed church service).  But the latter does not describe the worship at Ecclesia.  Dad would probably have found this kind of Rock Church worshipful.

The first thing I noticed was that the worship band and read-along screens were leading the congregation in singing traditional hymns.  It was not just one hymn thrown in as a token for the old fogeys.  Both of the first two songs were hymns folks would recognize from baptist or other protestant hymnals, if not beyond.  Later, they introduced more contemporary songs, of a different type of lyrical and musical style.  What I noticed, however, was that plenty of people were singing along.  It was not a soloist blasting us out.  I suspect the songs were familiar to regular attenders.  Moreover, there was some theological depth to these songs rather than merely repeating statements of personal feeling ad infinitum.  So I suspect Dad would think that part of the service was acceptable.

The conversational preaching probably would have gotten Dad's blessing as well.  Chris Seay, the pastor, indicated that he was continuing a series of reflections on heaven in this sermon.  His opening discussion revealed that people in the congregation are perhaps wary of what heaven might be.  One of the great comments he made pertained to his 8-year-old son's reticence about growing up, since he loves playing with Lego's so much, but his dad is so busy with so many other things.  By comparison, adults who love what they are doing and people they share their lives with may not be so eager to change it for the unknown joys of heaven.

He focused a good deal around Jesus' words from Matthew 25, "Well done, good and faithful servant."  However, the text analyzed more carefully came from Hebrews 11:32-12:2.  His concern was to emphasize that heaven as a state of existence and a state of affairs is not some kind of narrowly religious place and activity, as much contemporary Christianity might portray it to be, but a place and activity of joyously sharing in the justice and mercy of God that Jesus proclaimed as the Reign of God.

To illustrate his argument, he showed a video clip relating to The Advent Conspiracy and their work to fund clean water for the people of Mt. Barclay, Liberia.  Many of the people, especially children, had been dying of water-borne diseases, gathering their water from a stream.  Clean water from wells turned around the health conditions of the community.  The ministers and others from Mt. Barclay who reflected on the work of God in their community included one who said that the clean water had brought heaven down to earth for them.  You would not be surprised, considering the name of this blog, that I agreed with Bro. Seay that those words will preach.

Finally, I should remark that although it is clearly a young adult dominated congregation, they are not merely detached and carefree.  I could go into a number of ways in which they show signs of taking their place in the struggles of human existence, but I will focus on only one thing here.  This sermon followed a day in which one of the young women of the congregation had been buried.  Without telling us a lot of details, it was clear that she had been facing a life-threatening disease and that her expected time to continue fighting the condition had been cut dramatically short. 

Under these conditions, Bro. Seay offered a hopeful reflection on heaven, in which those who have gone before us are watching and pulling for us in the struggles we face.  Heaven is not the same as our lives here, nor is it a locus of complete wish fulfillment.  It will take some adjusting to the differences, he said, but it will be better than we can imagine.  That is a pretty good riff on the biblical language, as I see it.  Dad knows good preaching when he hears it, and I think he would be passing on some things he heard if he had been there today.  Thanks to Curtis Freeman for telling me about these folks.

Thanks for Will McIntosh

A week ago my friend Will McIntosh passed away.

I met Will in 1996, soon after joining Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church. He had recently moved from New York City, where he had served as Assistant Commissioner of Juvenile Justice, to Durham. He was married to Miriam, who completed her doctoral studies and became a dentist. He had a young son from their marriage, Brian, who is a year older than my youngest, Lydia, and attended the same high school.

Will and I met on a Habitat for Humanity project. We were both trying to keep busy on a crowded work site. The chapter was preparing for a house dedication across town, and they had one more detail they needed someone to take care of. So they sent Will and me to the other location to remove the temporary utility pole.

Will and I got a pick-axe and shovel to take with us, and we took off in a pick-up truck. As we drove, we introduced ourselves and got acquainted. When we arrived, I started trying to dislodge the 4 x 4 utility pole from the clay fill dirt. I was hacking away, but not making much progress. I was huffing and puffing, and probably turning red, realizing that as a man of about 40 years I had lost some of the vigor of my youth. Will was the same age as my parents, which meant that at that time he was in his late 60s. He suggested that he take a turn at it. He hacked away at the soil, then began to push and pull the pole until he had loosened it enough to pull it up by his bare hands. We loaded it all in the truck and headed back. He had made a serious impression on me that day.

Over the years, Will and I regularly got together to talk about what was going on in our lives. With children in the same age range, we usually had stories to compare. We spoke with pride about our kids, and we shared our concerns and fears for them. We both recognized the harsh world that our children were facing, and we wondered about the steps they would take on the way to maturity. Will put all of himself into Brian's upbringing and growth. Like my children, Brian probably wished that Dad would ease off on the parenting at times.

When Will and Miriam needed a pastor, sometimes they turned to me. Will was dealing with a heart condition in the last decades of his life, and his extended family dealt with setbacks, losses, and the kinds of things all of us face. Sometimes he came to me to talk through these matters, ask for prayer, and let me reflect back to him what I could see from our conversations. Frankly, this seemed to me quite an honor. Will had much more life experience and a wide range of knowledge and skills that I will never achieve. So I gave him my best, and always felt appreciated and loved for it.

Although we often conversed as peers, at the same time Will was a fatherly friend to me. I am blessed to have my father, W. D. Broadway, still living, and I depend on him for guidance in many ways. We have lived far apart during half of my life, and there have been a couple of occasions when an older friend has been, not a substitute, but a supplemental father to me. One was Weston Ware, my beloved friend from Dallas and the Christian Life Commission, and the other was Will. It's not so much that I went to Will for advice, but I looked up to him and learned about how to live from being around him.

Will believed in working hard and getting things done. Almost every time I visited his home, I was amazed to find that he had just begun or completed another construction project--an addition, an outbuilding, a fence, or who knows what. When I needed to do some cleaning and painting of the outside of my house, Will brought over some power equipment, showed me how to use it, and did a good bit of the work with me. If I had mustered the energy, I'm certain that he would have come over to do all kinds of home improvement projects with me.

Everly and I enjoyed our conversations after I had a visit with Will. "Guess what I learned about Will this time," I would say. Will knew about all kinds of things. He had been lots of places. And above all, he knew all sorts of people. He was widowed and remarried, and there were many stories of his family stretching across his 78 years. His family had to deal with the racist practice of a white neighbor fencing off part of their land and claiming it for himself. Will took charge of resolving that matter down in the family home place in Alabama. He had lots of stories of working with youth from his long years in the juvenile justice system in New York. He had managed his financial affairs well, and he had property in several states, which he traveled to maintain. He would tell me about conversations he had with Rudy Giuliani or George W. Bush.

But Will was very unassuming. He always seemed interested in what I thought about things, even if he knew plenty enough about them not to need my opinion. He was interested in politics, and he had a good sense about people and power. He enjoyed talking with me about Barack Obama, and although he was a Republican, he took great satisfaction in what the 2008 presidential election meant in U. S. history.

He called me "Rev," and I received it as a title of affection. I'm going to miss him. Knowing him has been one of God's blessings.