THE HOLY MAN’S WAND

Yesterday Stephen Coburn posed a general question on Facebook and it lead to a brief stroll down Memory Lane:  What is the most practical life lesson ever shared with you and who shared it?

The summer of 1975 was memorable for several reasons.  I would be married for the first time in mid-August. I was the summer youth director at First United Methodist Church of Russellville, Arkansas.  I lived in a dorm room on the campus of Arkansas Tech with a handful of Wonder Boy football players doing summer school to shore up their academic standings.

The senior pastor at the church was the venerable Charles Ramsay.  He was very generous with me.  He allowed me to lead worship, to preach a couple of times, and even to wear his second-hand pulpit robe when doing so.  He seemed interested in me and in what I was doing with the kids which largely consisted of hanging out with them in my little office while listening to Earth, Wind & Fire’s That’s the Way of the World. I also took them to Opryland that summer.  It was fun.

In the last week of my time there and a little over a week away from my wedding, Charles shambled into my office very early on a Sunday morning – a highly unusual event since his sermon prep time was almost exclusively restricted to the early morning hours of our Protestant Sabbath and we all knew to not disturb him.  He genially inquired of my welfare and my feelings about the huge changes ahead of me.  Then he gave me a piece of unsolicited advice I have not to date forgotten.

“Be careful, John.  There are a lot of women who would like to get hold of a holy man’s wand.” He grinned and leered at me, the thick lenses of his glasses magnifying his beady eyes.

I was shocked enough that I have no recollection of what was said next or who said it.  Even after we became clergy colleagues we never discussed it and I doubt he would have even recalled having said it. But its memory intrigues me.  Was he talking about himself and his own experiences?  Was this a whimsical reflection of some kind about a path he had walked or come dangerously close to walking?  Had he seen something in me, prophetically it turns out, that lead him to issue this humorous and gentle warning? Had his association with me that summer led him to look back over his younger years through the lens of “If I had only known then what I know now…”? Sadly I was not curious about this until many years after Charles’ death.

Like almost all the counsel offered me in the first forty years of my life, I blew it off.  I wish I hadn’t. For those of us wired in a certain way, the best advice is nearly always unheeded.