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A MAJOR CHANGE IN DIRECTION
10. What? Me? A Pastor?I have not used the real names of any of the people in this article, except for Dr. MacDonald (Dr. Mac, my pastor at the time), and, obviously, actor Karl Malden and poets Emily Dickinson and John Donne.
It was quite natural for Beth and I to spend time together as two friends who shared a loss, or, at least, what we each perceived to be a loss. We often talked after church. Sometimes our conversations were about the two people who had broken our foursome. But sometimes we just enjoyed talking together, often about spiritual things, and lessons the Lord was teaching us.Beth was not a blonde; she was more of a brunette. That was a major change for me. I always had a thing for blondes. And it is difficult to remember after all these years whether her eyes were blue. We were very comfortable with each other. It was easy for us to talk about serious things and to pray together. And I am not completely stupid. The thought occurred to me that Beth would make some Christian young man a good wife. Bob’s loss might certainly be some other guy’s gain. Something else began to happen in 1961, even before Beth and I started talking. The Lord was working on me about how He wanted me to spend my life. One of my friends from youth group had commented one day that I should consider being a pastor. A pastor! Me? Hardly! But one afternoon at the Pharmacy stockroom, when Mrs. Norris was attending a class and I was alone, and no labs were scheduled so no students were coming to get supplies, I talked it over with the Lord. At first I thought He might just want me to go to a Christian college, like Bob had gone to Cedarville. But where would I get the money for that? As I prayed about it and tried to listen to what the Lord was saying, it was becoming clear that the Lord wanted me to enter the ministry. Me? Ministering to people? Preaching? Why, I had for so long wanted to write and work on a newspaper. How could I give that up? I had always been much better at writing than at confronting people verbally face to face. And, if I were to go into the ministry, how could I get the training I needed at Wayne State? WSU offered majors in just about everything. But it was not a seminary. Christian ministry was not its forte. It was not even on the menu. Later that day, after work, I sat in a student lounge in one of the buildings on campus and looked out the window at a construction site. The university was building again — it seemed it was always building — and the site was barren and bleak as the cold winter wind blew loose construction materials around the site. I began to think my life was something like that, barren and bleak. I had lost my girlfriend, and now it seemed the Lord was asking me to give up the career I had always dreamed about to do something I knew nothing about and didn’t think I was cut out for. I shared that experience and that feeling with Dr. Mac in his study a few days later. I had asked him to meet with me. He said, “Tom, your life is not barren. God’s hand is on you. And if God wants you in the ministry, He will enable you to do what He wants you to do.” Then he said something that was really an encouragement to me, something I still remember him saying even today, over forty years later. “Tom,” he said, “ever since you came to our church I have felt the Lord had something special for you. I have often thought that you were our church’s gain, and your previous church’s loss.” “And maybe Janet’s loss, too,” I thought to myself. Somehow I had begun to think that Janet did not have the depth of mind, or heart or spirit to take on the things that God might want to put in my life. I began to think she might smother in my life. There was that old sin of pride again. Janet was God’s child, too, and He had a plan for her life as well. If it did not involve me, that was not necessarily a loss for either of us. But that is what I thought, sinner that I am. So I continued to pray. And that is when Beth and I started spending some time together, not romantically, but just as friends. We prayed together frequently. And soon the Lord had convinced me. He did not create me to work on a newspaper. He created me to serve Him. I saw my advisor at college later that spring and discussed my major, which had to be declared before I could begin my junior year. I chose communications with an emphasis on speech. This had always been a challenging area for me, and it was certainly a skill I could put to good use in any kind of ministry the Lord might lead me to. So, with speech as my major and Beth as my friend, I began the next year of college at Wayne State University. In spite of our protestations, it was obvious in our conversations together that Beth was not completely over Bob, and I was not completely over Janet. However, Beth and I spent several interesting dates together. One Labor Day, we went to the Detroit Zoo. It is one of those interesting facts that the Detroit Zoological Gardens are actually located in the suburb of Royal Oak. And that day in Royal Oak, at the Detroit Zoo, I learned some things about Beth and her family. Beth’s mother did not attend church with her, like my parents did not attend church with me. There was no father in Beth’s home. She and her mother lived alone. I think Beth had a younger sister, but I’m not certain if I am remembering that correctly. I had suspected that Beth’s parents were divorced. However, that day at the zoo, I learned the truth about Beth’s dad. As we walked around the zoo, sometimes Beth would grow quiet and pensive as she remembered something about her dad that the zoo brought to her mind. Apparently, one of the last things he had done with his wife and daughter (or daughters) was bring them to the zoo. I believe he was in a wheelchair at the time, but I am not certain of this. He had been ill for some time, and shortly after the visit to the zoo, he died. Another time, I took Beth to see the Cinerama movie How The West Was Won, which was shown at Detroit's Music Hall. Older readers may remember the Cinerama process. It involved a three-part camera that shot three side-by-side pictures on standard 35mm film. The projector also had three film paths and three lenses. The resultant picture on the screen was huge. And the seven-track sound system heightened the effect of being in the picture, not just an observer of it. Of course IMAX today is more spectacular, but in 1963 when HTWWW played in Detroit, Cinerama was big stuff. |
Prologue 
We watched the unfolding story of a family from the east who crossed the Ohio River into the west to make a new home for themselves in the golden land of California. But on the way, during a stretch of wild river in which the family’s raft was battered and torn apart, the father of the family, played by Karl Malden, and his wife, played by Agnes Moorehead, lost their lives to the river. The wild journey of the raft on the rough waters played out on the huge screen in front of us was attention-getting to say the least. 
I heard sniffling next to me. The scene that followed, in which the family stood at the place where they buried the dad and paid their last respects, brought tears to Beth’s eyes. I looked at her and smiled weakly. I didn’t know what to say to her to comfort her. I knew the scene brought vivid memories of her own father to her mind. Some pastor I would be. I had no words of comfort for the girl I was such close friends with, and could have easily fallen for if the circumstances were different.We also saw the film Mary Poppins together. It was a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious evening. I felt like going out and flying a kite! Beth was becoming the spoonful of sugar that helped the medicine of life go down. But we were too close as friends to ever be anything more than that. We were like, well, like brother and sister. We enjoyed each other’s company, and we talked less and less about Bob and Janet, and more and more about what the Lord was doing in our lives. Our relationship was very encouraging for both of us. There was never anything that would indicate romance. We never kissed, although I have a vague recollection of Beth kissing me on the cheek once. We never held hands. Our dates were platonic and completely above reproach, yet we were able to be intimate in the way only good friends can be. But time changes everything. Today, the Cinerama Corporation exists but has not made any new films for years. MGM, which made How The West Was Won jointly with the Cinerama Corporation is now owned by the Sony Corporation and is only a shadow of its former self. In Detroit, the Music Hall where Cinerama movies once played now provides a stage for jazz musicians and fans to congregate. The rights to the film are now in the hands of the Turner Entertainment Company, and although it has been shown in special theaters in London, England, Seattle, Washington, Dayton, Ohio and Hollywood, California, to see it today one must rent the DVD owned by Turner. To include all the film's wide scope, the letter-box format on the DVD makes the actors' faces extremely tiny in long shots. And the young man and young woman who, according to a journal kept by the young man in 1963, sat in the eighth row of the middle section in the Music Hall and watched American history pass before them in super-wide vision and stunning seven-channel sound parted and went their separate ways. Beth and her mother had survived a terrible crisis in their lives, the death of a husband and a father. Death is such a terrible and unkind enemy. Death doesn’t wait for an appropriate time to visit; he comes calling whenever he feels like it. He doesn’t care whether a person is old or young, sick or healthy. He just comes. Emily Dickinson wrote, “Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me.” Another poet, John Donne, wrote, Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. Both Dickinson and Donne are dead. Their lives, during which they wrote about death, ended. Death proudly and kindly stopped for them and took them. But the last lines of Donne’s poem have always struck a rich chord in my heart. Those lines reflect a truth taught by the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 15. Donne wrote, One short sleep past, we wake eternally And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. Death will die. Certainly and permanently. Death is proud now; he will not be so permanently. I have already written of my brother, Ron, whose life tragically ended before his twenty-second birthday. Death took him. His body lies in a grave in Windsor, Ontario where my parents laid him to rest on a cold March day in 1947. Death came calling, and because my brother could not stop for death, death kindly stopped for him. Death overthrew him, mighty and dreadful death. Death stalked my brother for three long, hard years on the U. S. Dunlap in the south Pacific ocean during World War II only to take him on a bright winter day just twenty-five miles from home. Death had taken Beth’s dad while she was still a young girl who needed her father, who loved her father. Death took the man Beth’s mother depended on. Death took the man away from his work, his family, his friends, his life. And proud death would be back. He has kept up his all-to-frequent invasions of my circle of friends and family. You may be proud now, Death, proud of your exploits, proud of your invasions, proud of your ability to rob people of life and take them away. You may think of yourself as mighty and dreadful, Death, and some may view you as such even now. But just remember, Death, just remember the truth taught in the Scriptures and reflected in the poem of John Donne. O death, where is thy sting? Oh, grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, but thanks be to God Who gives us the victory in the Lord Jesus Christ. Death, be not proud. You shall die. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. Could I minister to people who had lost a precious life to proud death? Could I comfort them, encourage them, and help them? I would soon find out. The image from How The West Was Won c. MGM and Turner Entertainment. The sequence involving the raft breaking up on the Ohio River was not filmed using the three-camera Cinerama process but rather the super-wide anamorphic process which used 70mm film instead of the three strip process. This is the method used to make Cinerama movies after HTWWW, and is the basis for the current IMAX process. The photo of The Music Hall on Madison Street in downtown Detroit, Michigan is from Flickr. To read another article about the film How The West Was Won, please click here.
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| Copyright © 2008, Thomas M. Parsons, All Rights Reserved. - 106 | ||
