As a freshman at Harvard, David Johnson felt displaced, homesick, and overwhelmed by new intellectual challenges. So he began exchanging letters with his father, a Presbyterian pastor. Years later, David rediscovered those letters and realized how much candid, fatherly advice they contained -- and how their wisdom had shaped his life. Based on excerpts from these letters, Learning from My Father reflects movingly on life and death, faith and doubt, as seen through the eyes of a father and a son.
LEARNING FROM MY FATHER
Lessons on Life and FaithBy David Lawther JohnsonWilliam B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Copyright © 2012 David Lawther Johnson
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-0-8028-6708-7Contents
A First Word The Last Lesson..............................................1The First Lesson Beginning with Belief....................................12The Second Lesson Leaping to Faith........................................35The Third Lesson Love to the Limits.......................................51The Fourth Lesson Self-Indulgence to the Point of Sin.....................70The Fifth Lesson Riddled by Evil..........................................81The Sixth Lesson Not Immortal but Eternal.................................97The Seventh Lesson Showing Up for Work....................................113The Eighth Lesson The Need for a Good Witness.............................128The Last Word First Steps, Endless Lessons................................144
Chapter One
A First Word THE LAST LESSON
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His last lesson in life was how to leave it. In this as in all else, I was his student. I thought we'd have three months. That was the estimate his doctor gave me, on a rushed 7 A.M. cell-phone call to announce the suddenly discovered, incurable gallbladder cancer in early spring 2004. That was the time I began to count, and count on. I was scrambling, but at least, being with him was something I could do. I wanted to do it "right." He was in no pain, and under minimal medication. His mind was clear, even if his body had betrayed him. And so I wanted to have chances to reflect with this man — my lifelong friend and teacher — on what it all meant, how he felt, the state of his health and the state of his faith in medicine, family, and, most importantly, God. But as it turned out, we had less than three weeks. And then he was gone.
He knew he was going, long before I did. After all, he was a pastor by vocation, having spent a career of nearly fifty years in hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices ministering to the sick and the dying. During his own admission and preliminary tests at the hospital, he studied the concerned expressions of the medical residents examining him, and quickly confirmed the hopelessness of his condition. The doctor then arrived, reviewed the charts, and made the bad news official. The patient was uncharacteristically withdrawn for about two hours, clearly desiring to be left alone. When we rejoined him, he was sobered and sad. Even at this tough moment, however, he declared himself ready for whatever came next.
What came immediately next was yet another exhausting change of setting, with a move from hospital to hospice. Finally allowed to rest more comfortably in quieter surroundings, he began to get busy. He made it clear he had people to see, and good-byes to say. True to his intellect and his integrity, he didn't try to hide the fact that he was not ready to die, and that he believed there to be considerable portions of the world and its people still needing him to put things right. Advice and opinions flowed ever more freely. He even began, rather joyously, to abandon a lifetime's worth of those political skills that are the hallmark of a good pastor — familiar traditions like seeing all comers without hesitation or distinction, expressing and sharing concerns for all, or dispensing advice and good humor to everyone. Now, knowing his time was short, he determined to speak only with those he really cared to see. For the rest, he feigned sleep or confusion. How wonderful it was one morning to watch a pious, pompous fellow clergyman come to his side, hoping for a final and quotable conversation, only to find the afflicted with his eyes stubbornly shut and his breathing heavy. As the unfulfilled pilgrim tiptoed away, the dying man's eyes flickered to become slits, and then fully opened. And then, to me — his son &mdash my father winked.
The next several days, before the onslaught of painkillers in overwhelming doses, were his best. He spent many hours with our then eleven-year-old daughter, with whom he had always had a special, easy relationship and who, like my mother, was now determined never to leave his side. He spoke warmly as a parent with my brother Jerry, who now commuted back and forth from his home in Michigan, bringing both stability and strength to all of us. And he spoke fondly, like a parent, with my wife Anne, whom he had always loved as a daughter, and who continued to supply him with favorite books and favorite food for as long as he could maintain an appetite for either one.
Then usually, toward the end of a long day of tests and conversations, he would turn his attention to me. He was ready to talk. We would discuss the sorry state of world affairs, the sorrier state of domestic politics, the stories of those who had come to see him, and most importantly, how he was holding up. Throughout, he remained fully engaged, neither wistful nor sentimental. He was sad but never visibly scared. He spoke of being "on a new journey," but did not dwell on his emotions surrounding it. From his substantial library assembled over a lifetime, he requested only T. S. Eliot's small volume The Four Quartets — fittingly, first published in the United States in 1943, the year of his ordination to the ministry. He focused on certain verses, especially the affirmation of East Coker that "In my end is my beginning," and the observation in The Dry Salvages that "These are only hints and guesses, / Hints followed by guesses; and the rest / Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action." (He concluded that he'd done pretty well in at least four out of those five categories, coming up short only in his demonstrated powers of productive prayer.)
Time accelerated, as my father declined. He slept far more. When he was awake, his attitude was positive. At times he seemed almost excited as to what awaited him next. The final time we spoke, before he lapsed into one last deep sleep, my father asked for my views on a number of subjects, secular and religious. Happily for me, he appeared generally satisfied with my responses. His final advice was to indulge in my — to me, still hidden — sense of humor. He also suggested I might occasionally offer a few lighter notes of evidence of enjoying life more.
His calling and funeral (drawing upon years of pastoral preparations, he had planned the service, down to the hymns, long before) brought out hundreds from all walks of life. Former church members and fellow clergy, of course, as well as community leaders, neighbors, fellow residents from the retirement center — all were there. But there too were the waitresses from favorite restaurants he had counseled over the years, the bank clerks he had befriended, the janitors he had slipped an occasional five-dollar bill to over time, the middle-aged businessmen from the local restaurant who had delighted in seeing him for coffee many mornings and arguing over issues of "God and country" (my father was equally adept at voicing provocative views on both). His touch had extended in all directions, blind to distinctions of age, occupation, or social standing.
This was his life, and this was the quality of his faith. Like the crowd that came to his calling, his presence was diversely rich. He touched people where they lived and as they lived, without platitudes or contrivance. His message was almost always action-focused. He could be counted upon to respond sharply to unloving or bigoted conduct, without coming...
