[Dialogue] 6/18/09, Spong: Among My Souvenirs: A Walk Down Memory Lane

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— Deepak Chopra, author of The Third Jesus 








Thursday June 18, 2009 



Among My Souvenirs: A Walk Down Memory Lane



One of the privileges of growing older is the opportunity to return to places and to revisit relationships that were once vital parts of one's life. That is why "reunions," that strange activity in which we pretend that the clock can be turned back and that yesterday can be relived, has continuing appeal. We all know that those hopes are fantasies of a game called "Let's Pretend," but pretending does little harm and actually serves to complete some open circles in our lives and, as such, brings closure, peace and wellbeing. At least that was my experience recently as I returned to Charlotte, North Carolina, late this spring for two purposes. First, I went to be present
 at an open house and dinner with those who were fellow members of Central High School's class of 1949, who were marking the 60th anniversary of our graduation. Second, I had a chance to return to St. Peter's Episcopal Church in downtown Charlotte, a church and congregation that shaped my life more dramatically than any other institution I have ever encountered. The weekend was all that reunions tend to be: poignant, touching, sad and surprising, but through all these emotions it was filled with insights into the meaning of life that were revealing. 
More than half of my high school classmates are now deceased, so at this reunion we were very aware of our own mortality. Perhaps as many as twenty percent of this class were in the category of "whereabouts unknown," so we felt separated, not knowing anything about them, not even whether or not they were still alive. In that "unknown" category was my most serious high school girlfriend. How transitory are young relationships that we are certain in our immaturity will be eternal! There were some individual classmates who had maintained close friendships through the years, but the class itself had no great sense of identity. Even Central High, our school, had ceased to exist about ten years after our graduation. There had been other class reunions before number 60, but they were primarily attended by those who lived in the Charlotte area. I, for one, was never even tempted to return for these gatherings. 

In fact, in the 60 years since my days in high=2
0school, I have encountered only four of my classmates who just happened to show up in places where I was doing lectures, places as diverse as St. Petersburg, Florida, Washington, D.C., Raleigh and Hendersonville, North Carolina. Each of these four had been friends, and I remember being surprised at how happy and pleased I was to see them in a different place and time. We were able to catch up as much as one can in a large public gathering and on at least two of those occasions I could introduce them to my wife. Of these four, three I immediately recognized while I would never have been able to identify the fourth, if my life had depended on it. We do change over the years. 

At least a part of my unwillingness to return to previous reunions was that high school was not a particularly happy period of life for me. My father had died when I was 12 and in the seventh grade, and my family sank into what can only be called a survival mode. All of our family's limited financial resources were drained by his final sickness and death, leaving us with very little of this world's goods. My mother had less that a ninth-grade education and few marketable skills. As the eldest son I found a series of odd jobs that helped keep our family together, including helping at a dairy farm where I "stripped" the cows after the electric milkers had done their best, then hosed down the barn and turned the cows out to pasture. I got to the barn about 4:30 p.m. each day and usually got home by
 8:30 p.m. My wages were $3.00 a week. Next, I carried the afternoon paper called The Charlotte News (now extinct, like so many daily papers) and, by the time I was 15, I was carrying the morning paper, The Charlotte Observer, still a lively part of Charlotte's life. This meant that I rose at 4:30 a.m. each morning to deliver about 150 papers on my bicycle, the last of which was left at the home of Billy Graham, who was at that time a star, but still only locally. In high school I coupled that job with afternoons and Saturdays working at an establishment known as "The Sanitary Laundry," or as my brother like to quip, "It was sanitary until you started working there." Given the pressures of these commitments there was little time left over for athletics, other school activities or even for studying. I was not academically motivated and our lack of financial resources was apparent in the clothes I wore, which in turn seemed to relegate me to the lower social echelons of high school life. So at least until my senior year, I was clearly in the "nerd" category. 

That was, however, not so about my life in St. Peter's Church. I joined this particular church alone, leaving my family's church affiliation just a few months before my father's death. The reason for drawing me in this direction was that I became a member of St. Peter's locally famous boys' choir. In turn, St. Peter's provided me with a series of substitute father figures to fill that enormous gap in my young life. The first=2
0was my choirmaster, a kindly man with white hair, named William Wall Whiddit, who must have become aware of my lostness and who provided an anchor of caring that bound me to that church. Because this choir sang at the major Sunday service each week, I escaped the rigors of what had been to me a Sunday school that insisted on a literal Bible and I entered the mystery of liturgical worship in what was to me an awe-inspiring dark church with Gothic arches and magnificent stained glass. When World War II ended in 1945 that church also provided me with the person who would leave a deeper imprint on my young life than anyone else. His name was Robert Littlefield Crandall. He had served as a chaplain on an aircraft carrier in the South Pacific. Like so many others at that time he was now ready to pick up the pieces of his war-interrupted life and so had responded positively to the call to become the new rector of my church. 

I cannot emphasize strongly enough the impact this man had on me. First, he was only 32 years old. I had never known a priest who seemed younger than 80, so I thought being elderly was a prerequisite for ordination. He wore "white buck" shoes, not the laced-up oxfords I assumed were a prerequisite to priesthood. He drove a Ford convertible. I thought clergy only rode in hearses. He played a guitar and put Bing Crosby in "Going My Way" into the shade. Finally, he had an exquisitely beautiful wife named Erin, who was probably no more than 30 at that time, b
ut with her jewels, furs and long golden cigarette holder she was awesome to me, probably the most sophisticated woman I had ever yet met. The Crandalls had no children at that time, so perhaps my wild-eyed enthusiasm to be in their presence met some need in them. For me, however, Robert Crandall was the father I had always wanted. I did anything to be near him. I became an acolyte, then the chief acolyte. I became active in the youth group, then president of the youth group, then president of the Episcopal Young People in the Diocese of North Carolina, whatever it took to live in his orbit. 

I served regularly, if not always well, at the 8:00 a.m. communion service each week. I found being near the altar compelling and no other acolyte was willing to get up that early. My much idolized rector had told me that I should always receive the sacrament fasting, lest some bit of undigested toast be mixed with the body of Christ. So fast I did each Sunday. It was not easy. I would rise at 4:30 a.m., deliver my 150 papers and then return home to shower, dress and finally catch the bus to downtown Charlotte in order to arrive no later than 7:30 a.m. to prepare for this sacred act. That routine left me famished. For this reason I did not always finish my duties at this service. I would either faint in that sanctuary and have to be physically carried out or, what was infinitely worse, I would turn green and throw up, leaving my Sunday offering at the foot of the altar for the 
mop brigade to clean up. That behavior, however, did not appear to diminish me in Robert Crandall's eyes. When the service was over we went a few yards up Charlotte's main street to a greasy spoon restaurant and had breakfast together and we talked. Robert Crandall was the only adult I can remember who, in my teenage years, actually talked "with" me instead of "at" me or "to" me. This man in this simple way gave me the affirmation I found nowhere else, and it was primarily because of him and his impact on me that by my senior year in high school I had become an all "A" student. My teachers and classmates did not know the whole story, but they did see the change and were amazed by it. Prior to my senior year I could not have qualified (in those pre-SAT days) for any university. Because of that senior year, I won enough scholarships to enter the University of North Carolina, completing it in three years because I was so eager to get to my graduate theological training to prepare myself to be a priest. I wanted to be like Robert Crandall more than any other person in the world. All he did was talk with me, to treat me as if I mattered and, in the process, he turned my life around. 

All of that I relived recently in Charlotte. Robert Crandall died long ago, and so did Erin Crandall, but so much of them made it possible for me to become whatever it is that I am that surely both continue to live through me far beyond their own days. Robert Crandall preached at my 
ordination in 1955. I saw him only one more time in my life after that. The weekend of my high school class reunion I related this story to the congregation of St. Peter's Church, where this drama had once been acted out. Very few in that congregation today have any memory of Robert Crandall, so I recalled for them their own history. In that same weekend I talked with my classmates about our mutual journeys through the last 60 years. Both experiences constituted for me a trip down memory lane. That weekend made me realize how very important the ordinary gifts of caring and sensitivity are in the life of a troubled teenager. It is the stuff by which life is changed and heroes to little kids are born. 


– John Shelby Spong
 







Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong




Jody Jones from Cedar Park, Texas, asks: 
I recently attended your three lectures in Austin, Texas. You are an important person in my growth. I was raised as a fundamentalist, and you allowed me to begin and continue my journey. You mentioned prayer, and defined the prayers of most as "adult letters to Santa Claus." I must admit that it is an excellent definition. My question is this: What does prayer look like you to today? Thank you for continuing to educate.




Dear Jody,

I don't like to use the word prayer, because it is culturally translated as one person approaching the theistic God above the sky with a request. The word itself has become bankrupt and not capable of20redemption. 

Instead, I think of prayer as communing with the holy, that which is transcendental, the power of life, the consciousness of the divine, the Ground of Being or perhaps the source of love. I do not commune with God in order to seek divine favor or to engage in religious flattery that people call praise. I commune to discover God within me and to be more open to that presence. I do not separate prayer from life. I do not think prayer is something I do, so much as it is something I am.

Public worship has elements of liturgical prayer in it and I engage in public worship every Sunday. I believe the purpose of liturgy is to open us to the presence of the holy in the gathered community. I resent having medieval patterns of liturgy imposed on me, as if somehow plainsong music and priestly chanting creates holiness. To me it only creates irrelevant liturgy. I have written on prayer many times. I experience more in prayer than I can describe in words. That is as far as I can go.

I hope this helps.


– John Shelby Spong












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