What Is Your Calling?: A Memoir - Softcover

Newell, Philip R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1504371232 ISBN 13: 9781504371230

Verlag: BalboaPress, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

In this riveting memoir, What Is Your Calling?, the author describes his journey from a picture-book childhood in suburban Detroit to early family tragedy and dislocation. This created an inner quest for meaning that over time convinced him that a fulfilling life demands commitment to equality and justice for all. Philip Newell became a minister at a time when the majority of religious denominations in the United States confined themselves to "caring for their own." Convinced that religious teachings call on us to care for all and most especially the dispossessed, Newell played a pivotal role in the 1960s in mobilizing first interdenominational and then broader-based support for the Black population of Wahington D.C., and for the national cause of civil rights. Later in his career, he worked to help organize and empower working-class people throughout the country who had lost jobs and livelihood through deindustrialization. Newell founds his vocational and avocational commitments on his understanding that the Bible clearly articulates that true living is living for the empowerment of each and every person. A profoundly personal memoir, this book also raises the question for each of us: "What is your calling?"

Über diesen Titel

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

What is Your Calling?

A Memoir

By Philip R. Newell Jr.

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2017 Reverend Philip R. Newell Jr.
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-7123-0

Contents

Acknowldgement, ix, 
Foreword, xi, 
Introduction, xv, 
Chapter 1 Beginnings, 1, 
Chapter 2 Expanding Horizons, 12, 
Chapter 3 Transformation: George MacLeod and the Lessons of Iona, 22, 
Chapter 4 In Search of Ministry, 33, 
Chapter 5 Vision and Social Action, 42, 
Chapter 6 Ministry in Service of Civil Rights, 61, 
Chapter 7 Moving On: A Season of Change, 79, 
Chapter 8 My Faith, 92, 
About the Author, 101, 

CHAPTER 1

BEGINNINGS

* * *

The persons who make the biggest impression on us aren't always those we spend the most time with. That was how it was for me with my paternal grandfather. He visited us rarely when I was a child — perhaps once or twice a year — but I remember those visits vividly. He had an imposing, authoritative presence. Wherever he was, he filled the space, emanating an unmistakable virile force and mental strength, as well as a dignity, that I instinctively recognized as a child and responded to with awe. That impression predated my discovering any of the details of who he was and what he did. Later, I learned that my grandfather was an eminent Christian theologian and teacher, as well as the author of famous commentaries on the Bible, including Paul's Letter to the Romans.

When I was old enough to understand, my father told me my grandfather was always on the road, lecturing and preaching on the Bible. He worked for the famous Moody Bible Institute, which was founded in 1886 and which he joined in 1895, when Moody invited him to become the assistant superintendent, under R. A. Torrey. My grandfather would give a lecture in Chicago on Monday night, take the train to Detroit and give a lecture on Tuesday night, then take the train to Toronto and give a lecture there on Wednesday night, finally winding up back in Chicago toward the end of the week. His name was William R. Newell. His lectures were attended by thousands of people who regularly formed enraptured audiences. Nonetheless, I know that it was less what he preached and believed that made an impression on me as a child, since I had little contact with him in this capacity, than it was the fact that he was a man who clearly was passionately and completely filled with a sense of dedication and mission. That life could be filled with that level of passion and commitment formed an unconscious though deep imprint on my impressionable mind.

My father, Philip Newell, after whom I am named, also held his father in awe. He once told me his first memory of hearing my grandfather lecture in Detroit, and seeing a sign on a public streetcar saying, "Tonight: William R. Newell, 'Fourteen Ways to Hell!"' Apparently, however, the powerful nature of his father's teaching did not dissuade my father as a young man from pursuing a different kind of life. Perhaps he just needed to get away and decide things for himself. Besides, since William Newell the preacher was always on the road, as a child my father had not been particularly close to his own father.

In the summers, William Newell would park his wife and three boys, including my father, at the Gull Lake Bible Conference near Kalamazoo, Michigan, while he fulfilled his theological and lecturing duties. The conference was sponsored by the West Michigan branch of the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, and was financed by the famously rich McCormick family, the inventors of the reaper, that large farm machine for harvesting crops. After the summer conference, my grandfather would ship his entire family down to Florida for the winter while he continued lecturing.

All three boys went to boarding school, my father in Essex Falls, New Jersey. He then attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In his senior year in college, he worked at a local clothing store in Ann Arbor called Wild and Company, and originated the slogan "Be a Wild Man,' a slogan of which he was very proud. After college, he went to work for the Pelton and Crane Company in Detroit. Still well known today, the company manufactures the bright light that shines in your mouth, but amazingly enough not in your eyes, when you sit in the dentist's chair. My father did very well for himself, and became managing director of this nationwide company. Along the way, he met, fell in love with, and married my mother, Frances Furst, a high school biology teacher whose father had built a house on Gull Lake, Kalamazoo, that later became our summer home. My father settled down with his new wife in an upscale suburb of Detroit and they had three children: my older sister Martha, me, and my brother, Rick, in that order.

I was born in 1927 in Detroit, Michigan, and weighed in at a hefty 10 pounds, 11 ounces. What I remember of my earliest years of life was comfortable and uneventful. Looking back, I can see that our family was pretty much given over to money and proper behavior. We lived in a beautiful home and sported a Packard car, a luxury item in those days. On Sundays, my father would drop off his three children at the local Episcopal Church, and go home to work on the garden. Occasionally we also said family prayers. I have memories from early childhood of being close to my mother, who was very gentle, and I remember being regaled with stories by my father, who was fun loving, playful, and very much present to his wife, whom he adored, and to his children.

All that started to change, and our family comfort to break apart, when I was six years old. That is when my mother, who today would be diagnosed as having bipolar disorder, had her first nervous breakdown. Bit by bit, our life began to unravel. My strongest memory of the early days of my mother's illness was of coming home from school, and having her greet me by asking me to brush her hair, as she sat listlessly on her bed or on a couch. That was just one example of the awful reversal of roles that can happen when a parent can no longer take care of a child, and asks the child instead to take care of her.

My mother increasingly withdrew. Not understanding what was happening to her, I felt helpless, hurt, and confused. I also remember feeling some shame around my mother, as her illness progressed and our lives were increasingly constrained by her erratic behavior — sometimes deeply passive and listless, at other times agitated and very angry. I certainly didn't understand what was happening, and only knew that my mother was not there for me, and that her alternating patterns of depression and violence were relentlessly undermining the tranquility, order, and sense of meaning in my world. However I interpreted what was going on, I knew one thing for certain: I no longer had a mother.

My mother never recovered. Deeply devoted to her, my father was stricken with grief and loneliness, and tried for the first few years to handle the situation by keeping her at home and having in-house help. But that didn't work. My mother was too ill, my father couldn't find adequate help, and there were no effective medications at the time for my mother's illness. By the time I was nine, my mother disappeared from my life completely. She was sent first to a private hospital for two or three years, and then transferred to the Kalamazoo State Hospital for the "insane." All told, she spent seventeen years in an institution. Many years later, when her symptoms abated somewhat, my mother was able to live with my father again, but that was after I was...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: BalboaPress
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1504371232
• ISBN 13: 9781504371230
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 118
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland