William Sloan Coffin
William Sloan Coffin died yesterday. He was a giant of American religion, a true prophet, of such stature that Doonesbury even satirized him. He joined hands with Martin Luther King, Jr. in marches in the scary south, he marched and preached against the Viet Nam War during his tenure as pastor of the largest protestant church, Riverside Church, in NYC.
When I was going through the dark days of my divorce, a young pastor myself in a parish that had never experienced anything like this with their spiritual leader (neither had their spiritual leader), I did a weeklong retreat at an Episcopal monastery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While I was there I read Coffin's autobiography and discovered that he, too, had been divorced (maybe twice?) and it, too, had been among his darkest days walking through the end of what he had sworn was "until death do us part." I wrote to him my gratitude for his candor that was holding me together. He responded by return mail with a letter so kind and gracious I still mark it as one of the saving moments of my life.
What follows is a prayer Coffin (a graduate of Yale and later its chaplain) prayed when president Kennedy came to receive an honorary degree. (The occasion on which Kennedy uttered his famous, "I now have the best of two worlds, a Yale degree and a Harvard education.")
"For glimpses of beauty, for hours of truth, for tastes of justice and the feel of freedom, for music and mirth, for love and laughter, Lord, we love thy world, this nation and this place.
"Because we love the world we pray now, O Father, for grace to quarrel with it, O Thou whose lover's quarrel with the world is the history of the world. Grant us grace to quarrel with the worship of success and power, with the assumption that people are less important than the jobs they hold. Grant us grace to quarrel with a mass culture that tends not to satisfy but to exploit the wants of people, to quarrel with those who pledge allegiance to one race rather than the human race; and with those who prefer to condemn communism rather than to practice Christianity. Lord, grant us grace to quarrel with all that profanes and trivializes and separates men.
"Number us, we beseech thee, in the ranks of those who went forth from this university longing only for those things for which thou dost make us long: men for whom the complexity of issues only served to renew their zeal to deal with them; men who alleviated pain by sharing it; and men who were always willing to risk something big for something good.
"So may we leave in the world a little more truth, a little more justice, a little more beauty than would have been there had we not loved the world enough to quarrel with it for what it is not but could be. O God, take our minds and think through them; take our lips and speak through them; and take our hearts and set them on fire. Amen."
When I was going through the dark days of my divorce, a young pastor myself in a parish that had never experienced anything like this with their spiritual leader (neither had their spiritual leader), I did a weeklong retreat at an Episcopal monastery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While I was there I read Coffin's autobiography and discovered that he, too, had been divorced (maybe twice?) and it, too, had been among his darkest days walking through the end of what he had sworn was "until death do us part." I wrote to him my gratitude for his candor that was holding me together. He responded by return mail with a letter so kind and gracious I still mark it as one of the saving moments of my life.
What follows is a prayer Coffin (a graduate of Yale and later its chaplain) prayed when president Kennedy came to receive an honorary degree. (The occasion on which Kennedy uttered his famous, "I now have the best of two worlds, a Yale degree and a Harvard education.")
"For glimpses of beauty, for hours of truth, for tastes of justice and the feel of freedom, for music and mirth, for love and laughter, Lord, we love thy world, this nation and this place.
"Because we love the world we pray now, O Father, for grace to quarrel with it, O Thou whose lover's quarrel with the world is the history of the world. Grant us grace to quarrel with the worship of success and power, with the assumption that people are less important than the jobs they hold. Grant us grace to quarrel with a mass culture that tends not to satisfy but to exploit the wants of people, to quarrel with those who pledge allegiance to one race rather than the human race; and with those who prefer to condemn communism rather than to practice Christianity. Lord, grant us grace to quarrel with all that profanes and trivializes and separates men.
"Number us, we beseech thee, in the ranks of those who went forth from this university longing only for those things for which thou dost make us long: men for whom the complexity of issues only served to renew their zeal to deal with them; men who alleviated pain by sharing it; and men who were always willing to risk something big for something good.
"So may we leave in the world a little more truth, a little more justice, a little more beauty than would have been there had we not loved the world enough to quarrel with it for what it is not but could be. O God, take our minds and think through them; take our lips and speak through them; and take our hearts and set them on fire. Amen."
posted by Blayney at 2:10 PM
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