Recalling 1969

The end of a year always stimulates in me the sort of mood that might not have been tolerated for a moment by Adelaide Ann Procter. That indomitable lady, whose restless fingers originally hit upon the “Lost Chord” (rediscovered a century later by J. Durante), struck also a brisk note worthy of a school principal after summer vacation:

The Past and the Future are nothing,

In the face of the stern To-day.

There’s something theologically awry with that—perhaps because it seems to preclude the blessed memories and lively hopes that are to me inseparable from the present season.

What follows here may be dubiously current, religious, or thoughtful, but may be welcomed as affording some relief from my customary high-handed discussion of this or that.

Of all my recollections of 1969, the drollest was of an item by William Pratt in Conference, a missionary magazine:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

I don’t wonder what you are;

I surmised your spot in space

When you left your missile base.

Any wondering I do

Centers on the price of you,

And I shudder when I think

What you’re costing me per twink.

My most bizarre memory of the year I owe to the question-and-answer column of a religious weekly not normally given to humor. “Is it sinful,” a correspondent asked, “to use extra-sensory perception to correspond with an atheist … while the mailmen are on strike?” You think the question a humdinger? Read the answer (I’ve mislaid the precise wording, but I can vouch for the sentiments): “You do not mention the purpose of your correspondence. If it is the conversion of the atheist, by all means go ahead, but the indiscriminate use of ESP for general secular purposes is not recommended.”

My most nerve-shattering moment came at a conference center on being wakened to the ear-splitting tidings over a loudspeaker that “We Shall Know Each Other Better When the Mists Have Rolled Away.”

The most asinine piece of red tape in a country where it flourishes came in the news that a fellow Scot in exile, a distinguished surgeon, was solemnly censured for discrimination by the Race Relations Board because he advertised in an English newspaper for a Scottish cook.

The most sermon-provoking word came from a notice I saw while walking within the legal precincts of Lincoln’s Inn, London: “Persons with burdens are not allowed to pass through.”

My most memorable moment poses a conflict, but innate modesty must take second place to the reputation of this journal. During the Church of Scotland General Assembly in Edinburgh, the Queen invited the twenty-four-strong regular press corps to a reception at the Palace of Holyroodhouse. Having been presented to the royal couple, I was asked by Prince Philip: “Who are you with?” Before I could reply the Queen said: “CHRISTIANITY TODAY.” It could, of course, have been a deft piece of regal oneupmanship after consulting the list in advance, but I would like to think …

For the worst ecclesiastical policy of the year I nominate a high-level Baptist pronouncement on ministerial manpower: “The superintendents are always conscious of the need not to place a man where his message is unacceptable or where he feels ill at ease theologically.” I would like to hear C. H. Spurgeon on that.

My most moving experience of 1969 came during a brief stop in American Samoa. A coachload of Roman Catholic ladies with their aged choirmaster had come to see their bishop off. For half an hour the airport lounge rang with a fascinating recital of Samoan secular and sacred songs. The choirmaster then politely requested everyone to be quiet. They were. He invited them, regardless of creed or color, to join them in saying goodbye to “the first real Samoan boy” who had ever made bishop. As we walked out to board our plane, it was touching to see each of the singers take farewell of the bishop, who can visit that part of his diocese only every third year. For the first time they broke out into English, singing over and over again, “Oh, we never will forget you.” The bishop, who was traveling alone, was still brushing away tears as he took his seat in the economy section of the plane. I couldn’t help contrasting the incident with the hurried and arid manifestation of Protestantism at the previous day’s church service in a local hotel, when worship was curtailed to thirty minutes so that the room could be used for a fashion show.

My most gripping—and most jolting—book of the year was the Zondervan publication Black and Free by Tom Skinner. Brash it undoubtedly is in parts, but even that is a byproduct of the singlemindedness found in too few of us. Listen to this: “I don’t have to go out and struggle for human dignity,” says the young evangelist. “Christ has given me true dignity.… As a member of the family of God, I am in the best family stock there is.… My message to society is very simple. If you want status, maybe you ought to rub shoulders with me because I’ve got it as a son of God.”

Some people tend to go all morbid at New Year. One could understand it of someone like Caesar Augustus, who, when fortune had been lavishing her richest gifts on him, prayed that some very great sorrow might speedily come, lest the gods be jealous. But even Charles Kingsley, a writer for whom I have the greatest admiration, could say at the start of a new year: “I am never better than at present; with many blessings, and, awful confession for mortal man, no sorrows. I sometimes think there must be terrible arrears of sorrow to be paid off by me, that I may be as other men are. God help me in that day!” (He sounds a little like a friend of mine who, far from regarding it as a bonus, greets a sunny day in December with the dark mutter: “You’ll see; we’ll suffer for this yet.”)

And yet and yet … There is something right-rooted about Kingsley’s reaction to God’s overwhelming benefits. While I know that the proper tack should be “Glory to Thee for all the joys I have not tasted yet!,” I find that this stocktaking season invariably cuts me down to size with the realization that nothing will ever alter my status as an unprofitable servant. It irks me that I am called not just to action, but to dependence; not to give God instructions, but to report for duty.

As a spiritual corrective I find much value in occasionally reading books originating in another religious tradition. Here the most helpful of all to me has been Friedrich von Hügel. This baron of the Holy Roman Empire, master of seven languages and one of the greatest Christian thinkers of modern times, is buried in a little Somerset churchyard beneath a tombstone that displays the simple but profound thought: “Whom have I in heaven but Thee?” Seven salutary words for the self-sufficient seventies!

J. D. DOUGLAS

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