Series: No Longer At Ease Here

My two years of Business Administration courses at Northeastern University were not the best preparation for ministry, so I was able to transfer to Amherst College, seeking a Liberal Arts degree. The GI Bill made that financially possible, and my Minister, an Amherst grad, was helpful in securing my admission. One of those influential officers of the Masonic Order also gave an assist at the Amherst admissions office. I was indeed profiting from the privilege of friends in what I would later name as “the white male club”!

With numerous war veterans descending on Amherst, the college student body experienced some shaking of its traditions. I entered as a second-semester Freshman, but along with other veterans, was older than most of the upperclassmen. Those upperclassmen soon learned that we were not going to submit to the traditional hazing imposed on first year students. We made that clear mostly by just ignoring the demands, and adjustments to the new life was quick. So I settled into the college life, but was soon to know that at Amherst I was a square peg in a round hole!

A strong fraternity atmosphere pervaded the campus, underlined by a class structure about which I knew nothing, and could not even name at the time. In a course on Educational Philosophy, I was convinced that fraternities were both anti-intellectual and anti-democratic. That led to my rejection of fraternity recruitment efforts, and to a labeled existence, as a “peg” in that traditional Amherst “hole”. Coming to the conclusion that secret organizations were fundamentally unhealthy, led also to my resigning my membership in the Masonic Lodge, which I had joined during the war. I was fearful that my insisting on what was called a “demit” from the Order might have hurt my Father, so I did that quietly. I did finally tell him of that; there was little discussion, but a quiet acceptance.

Close friendships at Amherst were difficult. David Cross and Harry Barnes, both active fraternity men, were also active in the Christian Association, and each of us was active in local and regional “C.A.” efforts. David and I went on to become classmates in seminary, and he was best-man at our wedding. Dave went into the parish ministry, then finally moved to California, where he is active in numerous community efforts, especially focused on the needs of the elderly and persons with disabilities. Harry joined the State Department, and served the nation as Ambassador in two or three European capitals, then India, and Chile. Both men have remained friends whom I cherish. My roommate at Amherst was Doug Heath, psychologist, now a Professor Emeritus at Haverford, and noted for his extraordinary study of human maturity. All have made contributions to my life which are of immeasurable importance.

Amherst provided an excellent education. Today I know that I also learned from outside the courses, as well as in the classroom. As a “pre-ministerial” student, I was active in the College Christian Association, and also in the College club of the local Congregational Church in Amherst. In the latter case I was in contact with a few students from the University of Massachusetts. It was then a much smaller place than now, and known among my Amherst friends as an “aggie” school. I felt more at home with the “aggies”, and tried to establish friendships there, but the distance between the two schools made it difficult. Today I am convinced that the psychological “distance” may have been more a deterrent for me than the actual physical distance. I was trying to find my place at Amherst, where there was a different psychological block for me. The “distance” I felt there is acutely remembered as I recall discussions after vacations away from college. I listened to classmates tell about vacation experiences in Europe. Those discussions included disagreements about which European Air Line was best (!), or perhaps the description of family celebrations, obviously expensive beyond my imagination. Experience was teaching me something about what I would later name as “class”.

My major study at Amherst was in English literature. There I was introduced to the poetry of T. S. Eliot. His work left me then and now, puzzled, confused, wondering, inspired. I have returned often to his poems, and have found one to have particular meaning and relevance for my life. Yearly at the time of Christmas, and often during other seasons I remember and recite for my personal spiritual uplift, his Journey of the Magi.

At the end of Journey of the Magi, one of the wise men contemplates the meaning of the recent visit to Bethlehem:

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth
and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Wherever my life takes me I must return to my “places”, to my “Kingdoms”, to the places of dispensations where I have known life. But I am “no longer at ease here”. What I have seen, heard, otherwise experienced …. Birth/Death, Death/Birth .. returns me to those places where I can no longer be “at ease”. I am forever in a “place” where “alien people” clutch gods I can no longer worship. Always I ask myself if it is other people who are “alien”, or is it I who am “alien” among them? In either case I am “no longer at ease here”, and can never be so. Reflecting now, I see that the disillusion I was experiencing then also included a slowly eroding “Christian” view of divinity.

My participation in the Christian Association at Amherst, introduced me to Bill Wimer, and his wife, Alice. Bill, when I entered Amherst, was a staff member of the New England Student Christian Movement, and came to Amherst to speak at a student meeting at the Congregational Church., where I served as President of the college group. That first meeting with Bill brings a memory of the amazing mixture of humor and grace which is characteristic for him.

The meeting at which Bill was to speak was held in the church, in a hall appropriately set for a dinner gathering. The head table included a place for the Minister, myself, and other Officers of the group. On that evening I had a student obligation on campus which meant that I would have to leave the session before Bill spoke, so I had “begged off” doing the introduction. The group insisted that as President I must introduce Bill; I then explained to him that after the introduced I would quietly slip out of the room and exit; we agreed that it could be done with little notice. When the dinner was over I then did the introduction, and proceeded to leave with as “little notice” as possible. As I was leaving the room, at a point visible to all, Bill, in the midst of his first sentences of his talk, then called out to me, “Horace, it gets better!” Later in the evening, and many times since, we have enjoyed rehearsing that “introduction”.

Subsequently I became active in the SCM, and became the student co-chair of a planning committee on which Bill served as staff advisor. That committee planned and implemented a Churchmanship Conference, involving eleven denominations, bringing several hundred students from New England to Boston for a full week-end conference. It must have been 1948, not sure. Since my co-chair, a woman from Wellesley College, was in academic trouble, she was not able to provide much help, so a large part of student responsibility fell to me. What a wonderful experience it was! It was the beginning of many years of working with Bill Wimer, still a rich relationship.

Amherst was also the time when I began to feel the influence of two men, whose lives/spirits/wisdom still modestly echo in my own. John Coburn, was Rector of Grace Church, and the College Chaplain; the Assistant Chaplain was Robert McAfee Brown, also a pastor at the local Congregational Church. Both were Advisors to the Christian Association; work in that group really was my “major” at Amherst. Neither man was a great deal older than I, but each occupied a position of authority, and each brought to my mentoring a wisdom beyond their experience.

John Coburn later became Bishop of the Massachusetts Episcopal Diocese, and was also Dean at the Episcopal Divinity School. I remember visiting him when he was the Dean, and he shared with me his decision to leave that position, to teach in the East Harlem Protestant Parish. He was teaching people to “get out in the world”, and knew that he had to do what he preached to and for students. He wanted to have his faith grounded in an experience which was different from all that his life had been until then. He did leave the Deanship, and went to Harlem to teach. That conversation was perhaps one of the moments when I learned most from John.

Bob Brown, of course, became the great liberation theologian, anti-racist and anti-war activist, whose life and witness has influenced thousands across the world. While I did not remain in contact with Bob, on countless occasions across the years I have used his work and words as points of inspiration and sustaining grace.

One moment during the planning of the student conference stands for me as a learning experience, although at the time I did not recognize its importance. In a committee meeting, Betty Johns, YWCA staff person for the Student Christian Movement, raised a question about why we named the gathering a ChurchMANship Conference! The question was not received seriously, and was the subject of some private joking after the meeting. I don’t even remember the arguments Betty made, or what suggestions she had for a different name. I do know now that it was the unrecognized dawning of a feminist conscience. Many years later I found my “ease” with life disturbed by an analysis which mirrored me as sexist, and part of a system which fostered sexism. Dear Betty, how I wish I could tell you how important that “moment” was for me.

While at Amherst I spent most of my weekends in the tiny community of Pelham, staying in homes there, working with the Sunday School and youth group of the small congregation. That led me to the summer Boys Camp sponsored by the rural Pelham Federation of Churches, and two summers of directing the week-long camp. Each summer the Boys Camp was followed by a week of Girls Camp. One of those summers, two women who were to co-direct Girls Camp came a week early to cook for our Boys Camp. One of the two was Sylvia Lushbough, a student at Hartford Seminary. Of course it was a changed life for me!

After that lucky summer, I traveled by bus often between Amherst and Hartford, and by time of my graduation from Amherst, and Sylvia’s graduation from Hartford, we were engaged. The story of the actual engagement says much about my father and Sylvia. One weekend Sylvia journeyed by bus to Haverhill to meet my parents. I knew that father was in love with her immediately. That Saturday evening, after my parents had retired, Sylvia and I sat on a couch in the downstairs den and decided to become engaged. We agreed that we would announce it at breakfast.

At the Sunday breakfast, before I had gathered the words or the right moment for our announcement, my father looked at us, and said, “When you are ready for a ring, let me know”!!!!! That may have been one of the biggest risks my father ever took! Somehow he must have known there was no risk. After church that morning, he took us to a jewelry store, which he asked the owner to open, and he bought the ring which Sylvia wore back to Hartford. We stopped in Amherst, to tell our news to friends, Doug Heath, Dave Cross, Harry and Betsey Barnes, and then Bob and Sydney Brown.

The wedding had to be postponed until 1950. For the fall of 1949, Sylvia had already accepted a position doing Methodist college student work at Oregon State, and I was to enter my theological training at Andover Newton Theological School.

Today, looking back on my decision to enter theological education in Massach-
usetts, while Sylvia was to be working in Oregon, causes reflection on that choice. As I look back, it is clear that choice was encumbered by sexist assumptions. I think it never occurred to me, nor do I remember Sylvia and I even contemplating the possibility of my enrolling in a west coast seminary near her work! The decision meant that for a whole year we were separated, after engagement and prior to marriage. It also meant that Sylvia, after a year, had to leave a position she loved, which was financially and professionally more rewarding than the job she had when she joined me in Newton. Sylvia was known as one of the best college student workers in the Methodist Church. When she came east we lived at Andover Newton, and she accepted a position doing college student work at Boston University. There she was assistant to a man who had not one tenth of her ability, for a “salary” which barely kept us above water. Additionally, travel to B.U. meant that coming home each day she had to climb a steep hill to reach our room; that climb often left her weakened by painful asthmatic breathing.

Reflection leads me to believe that the reason why the option for me to move to Oregon with Sylvia did not occur to us, was rooted in a common assumption that the woman joins the man, and that was just the “way it is”! Had our decision been different, and I joined Sylvia, it may also have opened to us a further option, now quite a common one. We could have treated our entire subsequent ministry as a joint one. In such a case Sylvia and I would have shared both the position and functions of “pastor”, rather than she being “the minister’s wife”. Such a possibility would have made Sylvia’s brilliance and dedication much more available to people in the churches and communities we served. It would also have transformed family life, with a sharing of roles, which might also have been better for us and our children. If I had known, if Sylvia had known then, what is known today about family options which reject traditional, sexist forms, life might have been better for us, for our children, for all who knew us. Today it seems almost impossible to think that Sylvia and I never even thought of such an option. Without these options, we moved forward with marriage plans.

The wedding was on June 24, 1950, in the Methodist Church, Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, where Sylvia’s parents were members. Simple is the descriptive word.
Sylvia made her dress; a cake was made by friends of the family, flowers and food brought by members of the congregation, and all was fine. My parents and sisters had driven from Massachusetts, and of course, Sylvia’s family, brother, sister, and relatives were all present. Dave Cross, friend from both Amherst and Andover Newton, served as best man. We honeymooned in northern Wisconsin, then returned to Dousman, a neighboring town to Oconomowoc, where I served a church for the summer. That summer we bought our first car, a used two-door Ford sedan, which got us back east in the fall.