Beginning this (virtually secret) ministry I felt a great need for spiritual community and support. (That hunger, I suppose, has been one of the guiding motivations of my life, leading me to do things otherwise inexplicable.) I believe that spirituality is social in nature, or at least it may be expressed only through social means. I use the term social very broadly here: a man like William Blake, whose primary communication was posthumous, nevertheless carried out a highly social function, by my definition of the term. It is by the spirit that we speak to others in whatever language, of word or deed, and this is the only way that we may exercise any spiritual gift. As a very young child I was taught that isolated Christianity is a contradiction in terms.
Be that as it may, in our first months in Winston-Salem we looked for a spiritual community. Orion Hutchinson, pastor of Ardmore at that time, visited after we had appeared at his church. I appreciated his visit, but I made it clear to him that my agenda was not exactly congruent with his. We did however find quite a few friends at Ardmore, especially in the adult couples' class which included Carlton and Betty Adams, Lib Johns, and the Pinkstons. This class provided for us some nurture.
We also joined a group that was forming an alternative church. A young Presbyterian minister named Jim Chatham, probably with financial assistance from his denomination, convened this group. It contained people who like us wanted something different from the conventional religious experience. Jim however did not want anything as different as what we wanted. In particular he wanted to exercise spiritual authority and proposed various conforming activities such as litanies. We soon dropped out of that group.Those were the days of Lyndon Johnson's great society. Louise Harris, a black woman of unusual culture and breeding was in charge of the local War on Poverty. She had hired one of my first probationers, Lec, a 63 year old alcoholic with 64 previous convictions. She called him Mr. Hemrick, and they might have actually helped him, although through a chain of unfortunate circumstances I had to revoke his probation.
One of Mrs. Harris' programs was to establish a group of community houses in the inner city sponsored and operated by local white churches. Ardmore took one on 8th Street, and Ellie began working down there, maybe a couple of afternoons a week, getting involved with the local children. This was one of her earliest commitments to working with children, leading to a long succession of highly satisfactory ministries which she has had to children through the years.
Be that as it may, in our first months in Winston-Salem we looked for a spiritual community. Orion Hutchinson, pastor of Ardmore at that time, visited after we had appeared at his church. I appreciated his visit, but I made it clear to him that my agenda was not exactly congruent with his. We did however find quite a few friends at Ardmore, especially in the adult couples' class which included Carlton and Betty Adams, Lib Johns, and the Pinkstons. This class provided for us some nurture.
We also joined a group that was forming an alternative church. A young Presbyterian minister named Jim Chatham, probably with financial assistance from his denomination, convened this group. It contained people who like us wanted something different from the conventional religious experience. Jim however did not want anything as different as what we wanted. In particular he wanted to exercise spiritual authority and proposed various conforming activities such as litanies. We soon dropped out of that group.Those were the days of Lyndon Johnson's great society. Louise Harris, a black woman of unusual culture and breeding was in charge of the local War on Poverty. She had hired one of my first probationers, Lec, a 63 year old alcoholic with 64 previous convictions. She called him Mr. Hemrick, and they might have actually helped him, although through a chain of unfortunate circumstances I had to revoke his probation.
One of Mrs. Harris' programs was to establish a group of community houses in the inner city sponsored and operated by local white churches. Ardmore took one on 8th Street, and Ellie began working down there, maybe a couple of afternoons a week, getting involved with the local children. This was one of her earliest commitments to working with children, leading to a long succession of highly satisfactory ministries which she has had to children through the years.
The Cutting Edge:
I think Ellie must have gotten acquainted there with some of the people who later joined us in the formation of the Cutting Edge. Anyway sometime around 1969 a group of people, all of whom were friends of a young Baptist minister named Roy Hood, met with him to organize a sharing group. Roy was very different from Jim Chatham, one of the humblest in a profession noted for arrogance. Roy convened the Cutting Edge and made no attempt to shape it; he was content to leave that assignment to the Holy Spirit.
Providentially just after the group became organized, when it was clear and obvious that it was going to be a meaningful experience for us all, Roy Hood got an opportunity to work in Raleigh for the prison department. He shared this with us and expressed some hesitation because of the group. We unanimously released him to Raleigh.
I had a chance to lend him a small amount of money making it possible for him to buy a home down there. Sure never regretted that. With Roy's departure the Cutting Edge became a leaderless group, likely the first in the experience of any of us. Of course every group must have leadership, but our leadership was completely unstructured, free, alternating; each person provided whatever gifts he (she) had in that realm.
Strangely a young man in the earlier (Jim Chatham) group, named Buckalew, had proposed a rotating worship leadership. Jim vetoed the idea, but it struck a deeply responsive chord in me. I had renounced leadership of a religious organization, but I was not disposed to submit to it from a boy with limited spiritual authority. The beautiful thing about the Cutting Edge was that no one wanted to be the leader; no one had "his own agenda" or wanted to exploit the group. I learned at the Cutting Edge that such a group is the only one worth belonging to, but it was another decade before I found another such group.
The formation of the Cutting Edge was a wonderful experience to all of us; we discovered and achieved a level of community that was rare, that perhaps none of us had ever experienced before. Looking back at a distance of 30 years I can see that the absence of constraints probably had a lot to do with the success of the group. It was more like the Quaker groups we experienced years later. Nothing was laid on anyone; no requirements for membership, no expectations! We just met for one another's company and to enjoy spiritual refreshment together.
We met on Sunday about 1 o'clock, had dinner together, had a semi-formal hour of worship, stayed around talking often until 10 p.m. I can't remember exactly how we structured all that time, but it was meaningful. We were in houses where we felt free to stay, and we stayed, going from house to house: Carla's, Miriam's, our house, The Millers, the Prices, where else? The Adams of course. It was more like an extended family than the usual church gathering. We met at Dot's house at least once, at Lib John's house.
The Cutting Edge had been a really great experience for Ellie and me, and for many others who were involved in it. The high point was the first retreat at Betty Motsinger's where we began to pray for one another, laying on hands: certainly one of the most meaningful communal worship experiences of my life. This is how it happened:
One Sunday at Carla's house a young German pediatrician named Chris Seivers, who had been in Washington and had some exposure to the Church of the Saviour, said that she was looking for the Holy Spirit. Carla sort of took charge, had us hold hands and pray. We resolved to have a retreat. I had recently encountered Betty Motsinger's place (I don't remember offhand the circumstances of that) and we determined to meet up at High Pastures.
(Betty was a poor little rich girl, an old lady actually, an heiress, a millionaire who had met the Lord and was trying, with partial success to dedicate her gifts to God. She had a lovely home outside of Burnsville at the end of the Black Mountain chain, the other end from Mt. Mitchell. She made her house available to groups like ours who wanted to pursue spiritual endeavours, and she took part in these retreats. Later she became more highly organized, eventually hired managers and turned it into a sort of foundation. I had little to do with that.)
Well we all went up there for a retreat. By that time we had spent enough time together that we were very comfortable with one another. We were sitting around thinking and talking about how we might structure the retreat. Chris again expressed a spiritual need. I made the comment that if Joe Petree were here, he would propose that we pray for her at that point. So we did: we had her sit in a chair, and we gathered around, laid hands on her and prayed for her in turn. It was a moving moment, a healing moment. As soon as we finished, someone else asked for the same. In the next three hours we all prayed for each other, one at a time. Many tears shed, but quietly. I think it was perhaps the greatest release I have ever experienced, second only to August of 1956.
One person didn't join in this activity. Dr. Carlton Adams an obstetrician approaching retirement found it traumatic. He didn't take part whatsoever. He later told us he was afraid he might lose control of himself. He arranged for me to meet Dr. Valse(?), head of the Dept. of Medicine at Bowman Gray for a physical. Dr. Valse told me I might have emphysema. At the next meeting I asked the group for intercession. My emphysema "miraculously" cleared up. More importantly Edna Clark came into the group in a big way. She had serious emotional problems stemming from being raped by her father. After that evening the group became a very important part of her life.
The Cutting Edge experience was downhill for me after that retreat. I guess I've always had to have change, and it didn't seem like anything was happening to the group after that. We had two more retreats at Betty's place, but they were not exciting in the way that first one had been.
One of them was rather interesting however. Joe Petree came to it, and not only he, but a black preacher he had encountered somewhere. This black preacher attempted to take charge of the group. He began to preach, and worse, he had brought his P.A. system, which he hooked up, making his preaching rather excruciating in volume. After a while I turned it off. We told him that wasn't exactly what we wanted. It precipitated a crisis of course. He felt like it was race discrimination; we all guiltily tried to express our solidarity with him. In retrospect it seems quite funny, but it was deadly serious at the time. I resented Joe bringing the man to the group.
(Joe made a habit of doing unpredictable things.) A couple of years later Kenneth Johnson, a local pastor, and I organized a retreat of forty Methodist ministers at High Pasture's (Betty Motsinger's place in the mountains). The bishop was scheduled to take part, but something kept him away. Joe showed up unexpectedly with a Catholic priest, which changed our agenda significantly.
At an early point, when we began to deliberate about what we might do, Joe proposed that Pete, the District Superintendent, might come up and let us pray for him--with laying on of hands. Pete was perfectly amenable to that, but some others objected. That little incident showed the underlying tension which Joe Petree's presence caused in Methodist gatherings; he was persona non grata for a fair number of the brothers. Nevertheless years later one of them, Dallas Rush told me what a thrill it was to hold hands and pray with a Catholic priest--obviously liberated. God's agenda is never ours, and it pays to be loose about it.
The end of that retreat saw another memorable experience. Carla and Miriam, two dear old saints, had provided kitchen help, and prayed along with us (silently) the entire time. When the forty preachers left, they decided they wanted to be baptized in Betty Motsinger's special baptismal font in the midst of a mountain stream that flowed through her yard. So Alfred Amick and I performed the sacrament. (For years afterward I told people that Miriam was the only Baptist deacon I had ever baptized.)
I'm sure the Cutting Edge served a need for a lot of people. We long ago realized that people are starving for community, for intimacy. They hunger for it, and they dread it. To reveal yourself at a deep level is to become vulnerable. I guess almost everyone fears rejection more than anything else, so we arrange our relationships to prevent that rather than to achieve intimacy. To reach out to someone is a risk of being snubbed, and most people just won't take that risk, so they stick with their own, their own clan, their own tribe, and reserve their negativity for the 'other', the alien, the unknown.
Community, when it happens, is a miracle that breaks down that destructive psychic pattern, lets in the stranger and allows him to become the friend. The most powerful force in the world, the love of God expressed in social relationships!
I decided years ago that the Spirit is social in nature. I mean by that that He expresses himself through relationships. I can't love God without loving my neighbor. (We got that from Eric Fromm's little book, The Art of Loving, back in the fifties). At the Cutting Edge the love of God and of the other members of the group coalesced in a beautiful way. We spent lots of time together; there was no sense of oughtness about any of it. We did things for one another out of love, and it all came back seven fold.
I think Ellie must have gotten acquainted there with some of the people who later joined us in the formation of the Cutting Edge. Anyway sometime around 1969 a group of people, all of whom were friends of a young Baptist minister named Roy Hood, met with him to organize a sharing group. Roy was very different from Jim Chatham, one of the humblest in a profession noted for arrogance. Roy convened the Cutting Edge and made no attempt to shape it; he was content to leave that assignment to the Holy Spirit.
Providentially just after the group became organized, when it was clear and obvious that it was going to be a meaningful experience for us all, Roy Hood got an opportunity to work in Raleigh for the prison department. He shared this with us and expressed some hesitation because of the group. We unanimously released him to Raleigh.
I had a chance to lend him a small amount of money making it possible for him to buy a home down there. Sure never regretted that. With Roy's departure the Cutting Edge became a leaderless group, likely the first in the experience of any of us. Of course every group must have leadership, but our leadership was completely unstructured, free, alternating; each person provided whatever gifts he (she) had in that realm.
Strangely a young man in the earlier (Jim Chatham) group, named Buckalew, had proposed a rotating worship leadership. Jim vetoed the idea, but it struck a deeply responsive chord in me. I had renounced leadership of a religious organization, but I was not disposed to submit to it from a boy with limited spiritual authority. The beautiful thing about the Cutting Edge was that no one wanted to be the leader; no one had "his own agenda" or wanted to exploit the group. I learned at the Cutting Edge that such a group is the only one worth belonging to, but it was another decade before I found another such group.
The formation of the Cutting Edge was a wonderful experience to all of us; we discovered and achieved a level of community that was rare, that perhaps none of us had ever experienced before. Looking back at a distance of 30 years I can see that the absence of constraints probably had a lot to do with the success of the group. It was more like the Quaker groups we experienced years later. Nothing was laid on anyone; no requirements for membership, no expectations! We just met for one another's company and to enjoy spiritual refreshment together.
We met on Sunday about 1 o'clock, had dinner together, had a semi-formal hour of worship, stayed around talking often until 10 p.m. I can't remember exactly how we structured all that time, but it was meaningful. We were in houses where we felt free to stay, and we stayed, going from house to house: Carla's, Miriam's, our house, The Millers, the Prices, where else? The Adams of course. It was more like an extended family than the usual church gathering. We met at Dot's house at least once, at Lib John's house.
The Cutting Edge had been a really great experience for Ellie and me, and for many others who were involved in it. The high point was the first retreat at Betty Motsinger's where we began to pray for one another, laying on hands: certainly one of the most meaningful communal worship experiences of my life. This is how it happened:
One Sunday at Carla's house a young German pediatrician named Chris Seivers, who had been in Washington and had some exposure to the Church of the Saviour, said that she was looking for the Holy Spirit. Carla sort of took charge, had us hold hands and pray. We resolved to have a retreat. I had recently encountered Betty Motsinger's place (I don't remember offhand the circumstances of that) and we determined to meet up at High Pastures.
(Betty was a poor little rich girl, an old lady actually, an heiress, a millionaire who had met the Lord and was trying, with partial success to dedicate her gifts to God. She had a lovely home outside of Burnsville at the end of the Black Mountain chain, the other end from Mt. Mitchell. She made her house available to groups like ours who wanted to pursue spiritual endeavours, and she took part in these retreats. Later she became more highly organized, eventually hired managers and turned it into a sort of foundation. I had little to do with that.)
Well we all went up there for a retreat. By that time we had spent enough time together that we were very comfortable with one another. We were sitting around thinking and talking about how we might structure the retreat. Chris again expressed a spiritual need. I made the comment that if Joe Petree were here, he would propose that we pray for her at that point. So we did: we had her sit in a chair, and we gathered around, laid hands on her and prayed for her in turn. It was a moving moment, a healing moment. As soon as we finished, someone else asked for the same. In the next three hours we all prayed for each other, one at a time. Many tears shed, but quietly. I think it was perhaps the greatest release I have ever experienced, second only to August of 1956.
One person didn't join in this activity. Dr. Carlton Adams an obstetrician approaching retirement found it traumatic. He didn't take part whatsoever. He later told us he was afraid he might lose control of himself. He arranged for me to meet Dr. Valse(?), head of the Dept. of Medicine at Bowman Gray for a physical. Dr. Valse told me I might have emphysema. At the next meeting I asked the group for intercession. My emphysema "miraculously" cleared up. More importantly Edna Clark came into the group in a big way. She had serious emotional problems stemming from being raped by her father. After that evening the group became a very important part of her life.
The Cutting Edge experience was downhill for me after that retreat. I guess I've always had to have change, and it didn't seem like anything was happening to the group after that. We had two more retreats at Betty's place, but they were not exciting in the way that first one had been.
One of them was rather interesting however. Joe Petree came to it, and not only he, but a black preacher he had encountered somewhere. This black preacher attempted to take charge of the group. He began to preach, and worse, he had brought his P.A. system, which he hooked up, making his preaching rather excruciating in volume. After a while I turned it off. We told him that wasn't exactly what we wanted. It precipitated a crisis of course. He felt like it was race discrimination; we all guiltily tried to express our solidarity with him. In retrospect it seems quite funny, but it was deadly serious at the time. I resented Joe bringing the man to the group.
(Joe made a habit of doing unpredictable things.) A couple of years later Kenneth Johnson, a local pastor, and I organized a retreat of forty Methodist ministers at High Pasture's (Betty Motsinger's place in the mountains). The bishop was scheduled to take part, but something kept him away. Joe showed up unexpectedly with a Catholic priest, which changed our agenda significantly.
At an early point, when we began to deliberate about what we might do, Joe proposed that Pete, the District Superintendent, might come up and let us pray for him--with laying on of hands. Pete was perfectly amenable to that, but some others objected. That little incident showed the underlying tension which Joe Petree's presence caused in Methodist gatherings; he was persona non grata for a fair number of the brothers. Nevertheless years later one of them, Dallas Rush told me what a thrill it was to hold hands and pray with a Catholic priest--obviously liberated. God's agenda is never ours, and it pays to be loose about it.
The end of that retreat saw another memorable experience. Carla and Miriam, two dear old saints, had provided kitchen help, and prayed along with us (silently) the entire time. When the forty preachers left, they decided they wanted to be baptized in Betty Motsinger's special baptismal font in the midst of a mountain stream that flowed through her yard. So Alfred Amick and I performed the sacrament. (For years afterward I told people that Miriam was the only Baptist deacon I had ever baptized.)
I'm sure the Cutting Edge served a need for a lot of people. We long ago realized that people are starving for community, for intimacy. They hunger for it, and they dread it. To reveal yourself at a deep level is to become vulnerable. I guess almost everyone fears rejection more than anything else, so we arrange our relationships to prevent that rather than to achieve intimacy. To reach out to someone is a risk of being snubbed, and most people just won't take that risk, so they stick with their own, their own clan, their own tribe, and reserve their negativity for the 'other', the alien, the unknown.
Community, when it happens, is a miracle that breaks down that destructive psychic pattern, lets in the stranger and allows him to become the friend. The most powerful force in the world, the love of God expressed in social relationships!
I decided years ago that the Spirit is social in nature. I mean by that that He expresses himself through relationships. I can't love God without loving my neighbor. (We got that from Eric Fromm's little book, The Art of Loving, back in the fifties). At the Cutting Edge the love of God and of the other members of the group coalesced in a beautiful way. We spent lots of time together; there was no sense of oughtness about any of it. We did things for one another out of love, and it all came back seven fold.
Tennis:
In the summer of 1969 Paul went to New Orleans to spend the summer with his grandparents. He had a close relationship with his fisherman grandfather, and in fact he seemed more of a Babylon when he returned.
While he was in New Orleans I began teaching Mark tennis. We both became pretty avid tennis players; Paul joined us in September. Tennis became such a big part of our lives that after a year or so Ellie in self defense joined us, and we became a tennis family. From 1969 to date tennis has been an almost daily experience for Ellie and me, somewhat less intense for the children, who obviously had other interests intrude at various times.
Hanes Park, with a dozen courts, was two blocks from the house, and we were generally down there by 4 o'clock, as soon as I could get through with work. The city decided to spend its 'revenue sharing' to develop it as a tennis center, and one summer Paul got a job running the place.
Paul and Mark both played extensively for their schools. Although Paul was the older, Mark was the more aggressive player. I remember one memorable incident that must be included in this account. After a couple of years the kids and I were playing doubles with another adult. He was quite impressed with their ability, and as the match ended he asked us which of the two was the best. Paul responded, "He is, the little bastard." However Paul eventually outstripped his little brother. They played in quite a few tournaments and in junior and middle high school.
Meanwhile Paul had become a Boy Scout. He and Mark had been inseparable until he joined the Scouts. Then he seemed to turn away from his little brother. I felt this was a tragedy for Mark, who had invested everything in the relationship. (I guessed it evoked in me the painful sibling feelings I had lived through.) It also made Mark probably more family oriented than he might have been otherwise.
Sometimes I felt that the tennis had become very much of a narcotic for me--probably more so in the years in Virginia than in Winston-Salem. Frustrations could become heavy, but I could forget my troubles after whacking the ball for an hour; then we'd go home, I would lie on the sofa and rest while Ellie prepared supper. What a life!
But on the whole we consider our tennis an unalloyed blessing. Above all it has drawn us together, maybe at times kept us together when the centrifugal forces were strong. After 30 years Ellie and I have learned to delight in one another's game, and it has become a more and more central part of our lives. And I'm convinced it has kept me young, and perhaps alive! I hope to play until 85, then take up golf.
In the summer of 1969 Paul went to New Orleans to spend the summer with his grandparents. He had a close relationship with his fisherman grandfather, and in fact he seemed more of a Babylon when he returned.
While he was in New Orleans I began teaching Mark tennis. We both became pretty avid tennis players; Paul joined us in September. Tennis became such a big part of our lives that after a year or so Ellie in self defense joined us, and we became a tennis family. From 1969 to date tennis has been an almost daily experience for Ellie and me, somewhat less intense for the children, who obviously had other interests intrude at various times.
Hanes Park, with a dozen courts, was two blocks from the house, and we were generally down there by 4 o'clock, as soon as I could get through with work. The city decided to spend its 'revenue sharing' to develop it as a tennis center, and one summer Paul got a job running the place.
Paul and Mark both played extensively for their schools. Although Paul was the older, Mark was the more aggressive player. I remember one memorable incident that must be included in this account. After a couple of years the kids and I were playing doubles with another adult. He was quite impressed with their ability, and as the match ended he asked us which of the two was the best. Paul responded, "He is, the little bastard." However Paul eventually outstripped his little brother. They played in quite a few tournaments and in junior and middle high school.
Meanwhile Paul had become a Boy Scout. He and Mark had been inseparable until he joined the Scouts. Then he seemed to turn away from his little brother. I felt this was a tragedy for Mark, who had invested everything in the relationship. (I guessed it evoked in me the painful sibling feelings I had lived through.) It also made Mark probably more family oriented than he might have been otherwise.
Sometimes I felt that the tennis had become very much of a narcotic for me--probably more so in the years in Virginia than in Winston-Salem. Frustrations could become heavy, but I could forget my troubles after whacking the ball for an hour; then we'd go home, I would lie on the sofa and rest while Ellie prepared supper. What a life!
But on the whole we consider our tennis an unalloyed blessing. Above all it has drawn us together, maybe at times kept us together when the centrifugal forces were strong. After 30 years Ellie and I have learned to delight in one another's game, and it has become a more and more central part of our lives. And I'm convinced it has kept me young, and perhaps alive! I hope to play until 85, then take up golf.
[Actually I’m now 88 and we’re still going!]
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