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October 1, 2007
Dear Friends,
Well, we had some excitement last month! No, not the expected excitement of the approaching Mission Challenge ’07, the effort that Lora has been leading for the past 18 months. In the middle of the final preparations for October’s activities, Lora started having abdominal pains. We thought at first that it was just stress, but when Lora finally went to the doctor, it turned out that she had gallstones. One laproscopy later, and now she has neither stones nor gall bladder. She was up and around and hungry again within a couple of days, and reports that life is much better without a gall bladder! We are very thankful that this happened here, in our time of easy access to good medical care, between Vanuatu and Ethiopia.
Bruce was scheduled to speak at the Montana Presbyterian Convocation, when the two Montana presbyteries meet together once each year, and Lora’s recuperation was rapid enough that he could keep the date. He led workshops, preached at the closing ceremony, and renewed a lot of friendships in the area. He also spent three days in Billings, where he visited his parents. Ray and Harriet are doing well in their retirement home. They describe themselves as pampered, and are happy and well cared for. The understandable grief at leaving behind their long-time home has mostly subsided. Harriet gardens in a small, raised bed in a courtyard, so she doesn’t have to kneel, and we celebrated the visit with fresh-cut zinnias, perhaps the last of the season. Bruce really appreciated the chance to see them in their new home, and have so much time to talk and laugh together. He stayed with his brother, Dave, who works as a baker and writes songs in his spare time. He also got to visit his sister, Kathy, who owns Ornamental Iron, a welding shop. She took Bruce along on a site visit for a railing on a handicapped-accessible ramp, and Bruce got to hold the measuring tape. It was a gift to spend time with family again, and to see Montana in the early fall. The highs here in Louisville had been steadily in the 90s, but the low Bruce’s first night in Montana was 34!
The following weekend, Lora and Bruce drove together to Franklin, Tennessee, where they spoke several times. We appreciated the wonderful, warm reception and the intense interest of this very mission-minded congregation in becoming a supporting church. This visit was a perfect complement to the Montana visit—the beginning of a new relationship after maintaining old friendships.
In our recent letters you’ve read of Kinsey’s graduation, Emily’s “nerd camp,” and Brandan’s marriage. Now Bridget, my 26-year-old daughter, has some spectacular news. Bridget has just completed her first year of studying at Stanford in a doctoral program. Right now her studies are still generalized, but she will specialize in the late medieval and early Renaissance era, somewhere in the intersections of literature and faith and gender. She likes to say that she’s majoring in nuns’ diaries!
Bridget Whearty is studying for a doctorate at Stanford in English literature.Bridget, who is on a full-ride scholarship, explained, “My summer job was to read the great works of English literature, think about them, and string them together into an arc. It’s the best job I’ve ever had.” She laughed, remembering her years of waiting tables, and added, “What a blessing!” But then the fun part was over. Last week Bridget took “quals,” the qualifying exams that permit her to stay in the program. “You go into a room with three examiners and an observer,” Bridget explains, “and for one hour they can ask you anything they want. Then you leave the room and they talk about you!” A thousand years of English lit, from Beowulf to the present, with answers limited to two-and-a-half minutes! She passed handily, and her professors commented on her “rigidity of fact and fluidity of thought.” We are, of course, very proud of her for passing this major milestone. We’re also grateful to her partner, Nickie, for all the moral and emotional support that she provides. Bridget will take her final classes (and teach undergraduates) this school year, spend one year preparing for her next big hurdle, comps, and then work for the following two years on her doctoral dissertation.
I asked Bridget once why her studies were important, what difference they might make beyond earning her a post as a professor somewhere. She said that she saw a lot of similarities between our era and the early Renaissance, that there are a lot of small voices that are being lost in the great movements of our times, and maybe our spirituality could be informed by those forgotten, marginalized voices from the past. She added that this was the period in art and literature where people went from being icons to unique individuals.
Not all of us are given the immense blessing of having three months to read and ponder, but I suspect that each of us could spare 30 minutes a day in deep, reflective reading, cloistered from the mass media and the noise of our times. If you already have this discipline, good for you! If you’re like us, though, and find study difficult in the daily press of things, let’s start today, OK? We’ll make a pact! Let’s build small convents for ourselves, constructed not from stone but from moments set apart for meditation and for reading. Who knows? We might become more unique as individuals, and begin to hear more clearly the forgotten voices around us, including our own.
We wish each of you a Renaissance, a rebirth!
Love and peace,
Bruce and Lora
The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer
& Study, p. 259 |
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