Angel Killed by Drive-By Shooter

There has been a merciless assassination in Connecticut:

Sometime during the night of Friday Jan. 18 or the morning of Saturday, Jan. 19, someone driving on Pendleton Hill Road took aim at two cows in a field. Using a high powered rifle, the shooter or shooters shot a Holstein and an Ayrshire in their faces.

The good news is, the Holstein will recover. The Ayrshire, whose name is Angel, will be euthanized. The damage is apparently too extensive. I can't help but agree with the owners evaluation:

“They have to be degenerates. They have to be someone who has nothing to lose,” he said. “I don’t have any enemies that I know of.”

I can't imagine the Ayrshire having any enemies either. Perhaps the worst part is that these gentle creatures were destined for a life as dairy cows on a little New England farm as part of a herd of five, no reduced to four.

All elegiac excesses aside, what sort of callous anthropo-chauvinism makes someone believe that it is appropriate to shoot cattle with a high powered rifle for thrills (or revenge)? Perhaps the same logic that permits sport hunting.

Remembering Ken Neller

I was forty hours without sleep on the last leg of a cross country Greyhound trip last night when the news, vague and uncertain, that Dr. Ken Neller of Harding University had died. Unfortunately, I awoke this morning to find that news confirmed:

We are grieving tonight the sudden passing of our friend and colleague, Ken Neller. Ken collapsed this afternoon while playing racquetball. Attempts to revive him were unsuccessful. Ken would’ve been 59 next month.

We have mourned here the deaths of several great figures, those I have known and those who have influenced me indirectly, but Ken Neller stands apart both as a man who leaves us without warning and before his time and as a mentor of mine during my formative years at Harding. As a mark of the greatness of his character, word of this tragedy has spread quickly through the diverse networks that demonstrate the far-flung, perhaps unknown reaches of Ken Neller's spiritual and intellectual influence.

I had the privilege of taking roughly half a dozen courses with Dr. Neller as an undergraduate, from larger required courses to small, intimate independent studies, and we came in further contact through my close relationship with Downtown. The memories which I might share about him have flooded back to me in the last twelve hours, and I suspect I will be trading stories with those who knew him in the coming days. For now, let one anecdote serve as a memorial to his character.

Toward the end of my time at Harding, having developed an easy rapport with Dr. Neller, I found myself in a small seminar he was teaching on the prison epistles. It wasn't a class I was required to take or even supposed to be allowed to take, but scheduling conflict has allowed me a special curriculum dispensation. I had taken an independent study with Dr. Neller focusing on the Greek of Ephesians and Colossians the previous semester, so I was more than amply prepared for the kind of vivid discussion that only happen in those last fleeting moments of college when every bit of knowledge seems so urgent.

The seminar was like nothing I had ever experienced, not because of the content or even because of any special insight from Dr. Neller. Instead, what set that experience apart was the respect Dr. Neller paid to his students. So rare in a world in which professors jealously guard the teacher-student power dynamic, Ken Neller treated me more nearly as an equal than a pupil which was all the more humbling. In a debate about the existence of demons, Dr. Neller sacrificed precious class time (and the patience of my peers, no doubt) to make sure he understood the theory I was espousing about the meaning of Ephesians 6 about which I was writing a paper. Only when he was sure he grasped my point and acknowledged that he hadn't thought of it that way before did class proceed. One day, when I had skipped class for no other reason than I didn't want to go, he found me in the student center to express his regret that I hadn't been there. Not disappointment, mind you, that I had shirked my academic duties but genuine regret that we hadn't been able to enjoy our customary interchanges. And when the time came, as it inevitably does, for him to assign readings which he had written and published, he singled me out and solicited my public criticism of his argument, which I offered and which he accepted as valid.

Death has a way of chiseling our memories into marble, smoothing out the rough-hewn edges of humanity. It would be all too easy to forget times when I fumed against his comments on my papers (sometimes to his less than patient person) or his intransigence about breaking from the traditional Greek curriculum. Still, the essence of his character was gentle and compassionate. He smiled easily and perhaps a little goofily. He spoke of his wife often and only with the greatest respect, an important influence for a newly married nineteen year old me. He calmly advised temperance when my lust for academic conflict prompted less than diplomatic word choice. He will be deeply mourned, but the loss to his family and those of us who knew him is arguably inestimably less than the loss to the hundreds of future students we all assumed he had left to teach.

Goodbye, Gene Genovese

I realize that I am late commenting on this, but the unfortunate truth of our culture is that we do not announce the deaths of great thinkers with quite the same vigor as the deaths of mediocre musicians. I met the news of Eugene Genovese's death--a few nights ago when I finally heard it--first with disbelief and then with a profound, perhaps misplaced, sense of loss. I came to Genovese somewhat late in my academic career, after making the unlikely shift from Byzantine intellectual traditions to Southern ones, from oriental mysticism to Baconian rationalism. Genovese became something of an inspiration to me, both because of the monumental shift in focus that he represented in his academic life (from Marxist to conservative, the mind of the slave to the mind of the master) but also simply as a native northerner who developed a profound fascination for southern history. My comparatively recent turn to southern history means that I have only just scratched the surface of Genovese's contributions to the field, but Consuming Fire and The Southern Tradition proved easily the two most influential works in cementing my love for the South as an object of study. Genovese will be missed. He was the sort of scholar who might very well have gone on producing monumental new works indefinitely if life allowed it. It is my good fortune to be left with so many volumes of his thought still unread so that I might continue to have new experiences of him for years to come.

In tribute, let me leave you with these thoughts by Genovese, a voice from beyond critiquing the blindness of that overwhelming majority on the Right who proudly claim conservatism in ignorance of its most basic features:

Southern conservatism has always traced the evils of the modern world to the ascendency of the profit motive and material acquisitiveness; to the conversion of small property based on individual labor into accumulated capital manifested as financial assets; to the centralization and bureaucraticization of management; to the extreme specialization of labor and the rise of consumerism; to an idolatrous cult of economic growth and scientific and technological progress; and to the destructive exploitation of nature. Thus, down to our day, southern conservatives have opposed finance capitalism and have regarded socialism as the logical outcome of the capitalist centralization of economic and state power...

What goes largely unnoticed is that, on much of the American Right, the conservative critique of modernity has largely given way to a free-market liberalism the ideal of which shares much with the radical Left’s version of egalitarianism. The traditionalists are entitled to gloat, for they have always regarded socialism and radical democracy as the logical outcome of bourgeois liberalism. The free-market Right professes to believe in a level paying field and an attendant doctrine of equality of opportunity, despite all evidence that neither could ever be realized. The projected hopes are no less an invitation to disillusionment and despair than their counterpart in the Left’s chimera of equality of outcome and ultimate condition. And they are just as cruel. The left-wing version of egalitarianism generates the politics of envy and the degrading psychology of victimization. Those who cannot match the performance of others blame sexism, racism, and other forms of social oppression for their personal failures and shortcomings. Their frustration, anger, and irrationality produce effects all the worse since there is often a measure of truth in the complaints.

World's Third Spermiest Cow Dies

Let me share the abridged Reuters eulogy:

Dairy cows across the world are mourning the loss of "Jocko", ranked as the world's third most-potent breeding bull, who has died of natural causes leaving behind as many as 400,000 offspring.

Jocko Besne had an industrious 17-year career donating some 1.7 million sperm straws that were used in France and abroad to keep alive the Prim'Holstein cattle strain, the main strain of black-and-white milking cow used in France....[Creavia] said it believed he had could have spawned between 300,000 and 400,000 offspring. Officially he is credited as being the father of a mere 161,888 cattle in 21 countries as not all nations have kept records.

Jocko was allowed to retire last year and died earlier this month. Rather than becoming prize beef, his body is to be sent to Paris' natural history museum where his prowess will be studied.

A moment of silence please.

Joe Paterno Has Died

After having one of the most trying years imaginable, legendary sports icon Joe Paterno has died. I hold the Penn State board of trustees personally responsible. Sure, you may say that is an irrational, knee-jerk overreaction, but who are they to judge?

Goodbye, Harry Morgan

At the ripe old age of 96, actor Harry Morgan died today. Most, including myself, knew Morgan as Col. Sherman Potter from M*A*S*H, though he could be found as a supporting character in countless films and television shows.

It happens that last night I was watching an episode of M*A*S*H which centered on Morgan, whose character was struggling to deal with the loss of the last of his old friends to death. Through the course of the episode, we walk with him through anger and grief and finally joy in what still lives on. It strikes me how apropos it was that I should have watched this particularly fitting episode. There is an especially poingant scene, long one of my favorites from the series, in the middle where Morgan takes a young, tattered, and bruised little Korean refugee onto his lap and begins to speak to him about life. The moment represents one of those rare gems in film narrative that has all the genuine complexity of real life: the old man imparting his wisdom to a child, the absurdity of the surroundings, the faint noise of human drama linger just beneath the surface, and the irony that we know Morgan's wisdom will never reach the boy not, as expected, because children never listen but because the boy speaks no English. Nevertheless, Morgan offers his wisdom to the child and to viewers, and there is in it the appropriate voice of mourning and of hope that should accompany us in the face of death. In that wry, folksy style that characterized all his performances, he shows the boy a picture of himself as a youth and explains, "Yep, life is a kind of now you see it, now you don't proposition. It was all in front of me then, though, like it is now for you. You're off to kind of a rough start, but I bet you've got some glorious times ahead of you."



Harry Morgan, you will be missed but not forgotten.

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