#300

In keeping with time honored tradition, this three hundredth post commemorates the great quotes that have appeared here over the last hundred entries. Below are my personal top ten notable quotables, though you are welcome and encouraged to disagree.

10) The last hundred posts began with one of my first comparative series, this one examining points of contact between Christianity and absurdism. As a near rabid fan of Albert Camus, it was difficult to select only one quote. Nevertheless, here is a thought of his from The Absurd and Science:

And here are the trees and I know their gnarled surface, water and I feel its taste. These scents of grass and stars at night, certain evenings when the heart relaxes -how shall I negate this world whose power and strength I feel? Yet all the knowledge on earth will give me nothing to assure me that this world is mine. You describe it to me and you teach me to classify it. You enumerate its laws and in my thirst for knowledge I admit that they are true. You take apart its mechanisms and my hope increases. At the final stage you teach me that this wondrous and multicolored universe can be reduced to the atom and that the atom itself can be reduced to the electron. All this is good and I wait for you to continue. But you tell me of an invisible planetary system in which electrons gravitate around a nucleus. You explain this world to me with an image. I realize then that you have been reduced to poetry: I shall never know. Have I the time to become indignant? You have already changed theories. So that science that was to teach me everything ends up in a hypothesis, that lucidity founders in metaphor, that uncertainty is resolved in a work of art. What need had I of so many efforts? The soft lines of these hills and the hand of evening on this troubled heart teach me much more. I have returned to my beginning. I realize that if through science I can seize phenomena and enumerate them, I cannot, for all that, apprehend the world.

9) More recently, we find ourselves int he midst of a comparative examination of Christianity and Jain. While there are still many great quotes yet to come in this series, the following excellent excerpt could have easily been from any number of Byzantine Christian mystics but is in fact a saying of Mahavira, posted in Christ, Jain, and the Material World:

...there is no analogy whereby to know the transcendent; its essence is without form; there is no condition of the unconditioned. There is no sound, no color, no smell, no taste, not touch--nothing of that kind. Thus I say.

8) The past hundred posts has seen an unusual output of advice to parents, including from such notable figures as Stephen Prothero and the inimitable David Bentley Hart. Still, none left quite the impression as J. C. Ryle, who proved that some child-rearing wisdom is timeless. While there is much to commend the meat of his teaching, the most memorable quote came from The Wisdom of J. C. Ryle: An Appendix:

Never listen to those who tell you your children are good, and well brought up, and can be trusted.

7) I find the news deeply frustrating, as so many of us do. No story has so grated against my sensibilities for the last hundred posts than has the unceremonious dismissal of Joe Paterno. Still, the best quote here has come from the relatively minor Rep. Brad Drake, with this profoundly nonsensical, self-defeating comment posted in the Oct. 19th edition of In Other News:

I have no desire to humanely respect those that are inhumane.

6) I never seem to be lacking in pithy, inspirational thoughts from great pacifists. Last time around it was J. W. McGarvey. This time, let me offer one from J. D. Tant in The Wisdom of J. D. Tant:

I would as soon risk my chance of heaven to die drunk in a bawdy house as to die on the battlefield, with murder in my heart, trying to kill my fellow man.

5) Without a doubt, the past six months in the United States has been completely dominated by the American electoral process. More important than anything the candidates might be saying is this sentiment from Stephen Prothero offered in Knowledge and Franchise:

Few Americans are able to challenge claims made by politicians or pundits about Islam’s place in the war on terrorism or what the Bible says about homosexuality. This ignorance imperils our public life, putting citizens in the thrall of talking heads and effectively transferring power from the third estate (the people) to the fourth (the press).

4) Pope Benedict XVI has done more shocking things this year than kissing an imam. In addition to renewing the Catholic Church's stand against capital punishment, he had this to say about the Christian use of war in history, in Pope Shocks World by Doing the Right Thing:

"As a Christian I want to say at this point: yes, it is true, in the course of history, force has also been used in the name of the Christian faith," he said in his address to the delegations in an Assisi basilica.

"We acknowledge it with great shame. But it is utterly clear that this was an abuse of the Christian faith, one that evidently contradicts its true nature."

3) In a post which happened to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks which launched the world headlong into two prolonged multinational wars, I shared a Tentative Description of a Dinner Given to Promote the Impeachment of President Eisenhower, a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti:

And after it became obvious that the strange rain would never stop and that Old Soldiers never drown and that roses in the rain had forgotten the word for bloom and that perverted pollen blown on sunless seas was eaten by irradiated fish who spawned up cloudleaf streams and fell on our dinnerplates

And after it became obvious that the President was doing everything in his power to make the world safe for nationalism his brilliant military mind never realized that nationalism itself was the idiotic superstition which would blow up the world

...The President himself came in

Took one look around and said

We Resign

2) On an anniversary which personally touched me a little more dearly, On the Anniversary of David Lipscomb's Death, I shared these thoughts of Price Billingsley on the great man who was so influential in his own day and continues to touch the hearts and minds of Christians who read his works:

I then got my first sight of the dear old Brother Lipscomb dead. I was amazed to see how fine looking and tall he was when straightened out in the casket. I saw him when he was dying, and a more abject object of decaying senility I never before beheld - body and soul distraught in the parting! But did I pity him? I pitied myself for not being as ready to die as he!

1) The recent past has had more than its fair share of high profile deaths, from entertainment stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Harry Morgan, to intellectual celebrities like Christopher Hitchens. The more important loss for many, however, was a completely overlooked Bible professor at a small Arkansas university. Before offering my own eulogy concurrent with his memorial service, I shared this quote from Amelia Burr on the day of his passing:

Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.

Here's looking forward to another eventful hundred posts with even more memorable thoughts to share in the months to come.

In Memoriam Neale Pryor

There is no greater eulogy for a man than those who carry on consciously indebted to his life. In view of this, there is perhaps no man with a greater living memorial than Neale Pryor, who through a profound commitment to teaching and preaching has touched innumerable lives. Those who were fortunate enough to have known him gather today, in body and in spirit, to commit him to the ground for a time and to God forever.

Neale Pryor began preaching at the prodigious age of twelve and dedicated his life to the ministry. His sermons at countless churches, lectureships, university chapels, and Gospel meetings represent a body of biblical wisdom which few preachers can ever hope to match. His plainspoken, unpolished speech was both endearing and affective, giving the impression that you were not being preached at so much as having a candid conversation with a trusted friend. He would walk with you hand-in-hand through the tapestry of Scripture, navigating it by memory and gently guiding you toward the conclusions that a lifetime of study and experience had taught him were right. His preaching was lavishly sprinkled with anecdotes from his life and insights into his character, and so it is perhaps uniquely appropriate to remember him as he revealed himself in his preaching.

In particular, I have in mind a sermon he delivered at a recent Harding University homecoming Sunday before the early service at the College Church of Christ. The aptly titled "Coming Home" addressed in broad strokes the theme of what home was, the universal sentiment of homesickness, and the joy we feel at going home. Yet, as expected, as much as we may be moved by the man's treatment of the theme, we are equally touched by the man who is so self-revelatory, and therefore so self-sacrificial, in his message.

This comes out particularly in his candid humility, whereby he reveals his unashamed humanity. Well advanced in years, he recalls over the course of his sermon what it felt like to be a young man, hundreds of miles from home, in a foreign and unwelcoming place.

I know you would probably be greatly shocked to hear this. I've never confessed this before, so for you this is a first I guess, but my first day here at Harding was not all that much fun. I packed my bags in a '47 Chevrolet--which isn't as old as it would be now but it was old--and putted all the way down here. And I remember getting in to West dorm, one of the Hilton's of those days, there in that little room. And I remember that night, me looking at my roommate, and I said to him, "If I don't feel better tomorrow, I'm going home."

Willing to admit his weaknesses, he was also capable of owning up to his faults. He recounts another story of his early days at Harding when he encountered a new student, alone and clearly unhappy, and befriended him. The two would go on to be lifelong friends. His point is not to revel in the goodness of his action, however, but to lament how out of character it was. He said "it's to my shame" that "I seldom did that," because he can imagine how impoverished his life is for not having been as welcoming as he could. "I wonder how many potential best friends I passed by and never even took the time to say "Hi" to or tell them my name." I cannot express the profound effect it has to see a man who commands such respect and admiration admit his regrets. It has the dual affect of dampening our own feelings of regret and inspiring us not to share in his.

Yet, his own memory of how seldom he reached to people is betrayed by the memory of so many to whom he was so generous with himself. There are, certainly, countless warm and welcoming professors who walk the halls at Harding, but Neale Pryor alone was always Brother Pryor first and Dr. Pryor second. Offering more than just a cordial nod or a compulsory "Hello," he would gladly stop with anyone he passed and ask, "How are you" and leave with, "God bless you, brother." Even though you knew--though his mind was still capable of instantly recalling large passages of Isaiah--that he would have forgotten the conversation before he reached his destination, you were always equally confident that his interest was genuine and his love sincere. Even in the midst of self-deprecating humor, he tells of the night before the sermon was delivered when he offered his time to someone for whom Pryor represented home.

It's so interesting, I had a phone call last night, when I was trying to get this sermon ready and this fellow talked to me for thirty minutes. And I finally said, "Well it was good to talk to you, you know. Call you again some day." You know what he was? He was a former classmate of mine. He had gotten homesick, I guess, and he was calling me all the way from six hundred miles away.

That abundant love overflowed particularly for his wife Treva who he took every opportunity to dote on from the pulpit and the lectern. He probably would have shouted it on street corners if propriety would have permitted. During the course of his sermon, he never missed an opportunity to praise her, even above and beyond token references to what home meant for them. "I remember when we got married and moved to Illinois. And, of course, it was wonderful. Being with Treva is always wonderful, but you don't need me to tell you that. You already know that." Later, he recalls his disappointment at being young and single at Harding: "You know when I was at Harding as a student, I had my own circle of friends. I really didn't need anymore...it would have been nice if I'd have had a good girlfriend, but the Lord was saving another one for me, so I'll not go into that."

Reflecting on a sermon about home is appropriate for obvious reasons, given the connection to our hope for an eternal home with God. Calling it one of the most beautiful passages in Scripture, Pryor quotes from King James Version of Isaiah 35: "And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." Certainly these words can be a comfort for those who reflect on his death much as they were a comfort for him during life. But the theme of home is more than merely a vehicle for reflecting on eternity. In his sermon, Pryor dedicates more time than anything to the earthly homes we make for ourselves, not disparaging them as transient but encouraging us to embrace and to perfect them. He speaks of the obvious homes we have with our parents and later as adults, perhaps with our spouses and our children. He also speaks of the homes we make in our universities and our churches, through the communities of faith and friendship that we construct. We can understand our homesickness for heaven, if you will, only because we have true homes on earth to long for. They are the places whose foundations are a common love and a common memory which we can never be too far from, no matter where we are.

Near the end of his sermon, Pryor confronts his audience with this: "It makes a great deal of difference to answer the question 'When I die, am I leaving home or am I going home?'" He leaves the question unanswered, hanging ominously in the air. I would like to believe that he would say "Both." While I certainly hope to see Brother Neale Pryor some day beyond this land of parting where the ransomed of God have a home forever, it seems undeniable that he has left a home here on earth, a home full of people who loved him, who were changed by him, and who will never forget him.

Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.

-- Amelia Burr