Just to let you know that I haven’t forgotten, the promised upcoming blog that explores some of the elements and the practice of compromise is in process and will be posted within the next week or two.

Meanwhile, I offer the following observations that have to do with a very common experience: and that is that most of us are not able to live our lives entirely on the basis of our first choices. With unabashed candor, I acknowledge that I borrowed this idea, and a few observations which I will identify, years ago from—no surprise—Harry Emerson Fosdick.

Since Fosdick’s approach was in sermon form, it’s hardly surprising that he used an interesting biblical reference to set up the point he wanted to make. In just four simple verses in Acts, we are told that Paul had intended to carry the story of Jesus to Bithynia—one of the richest provinces in Asia Minor—but for reasons we are not told, he was prevented from going.  So instead of Bithynia, he went to Troas, on the West Coast of Asia Minor, from there to Macedonia, and then to Philippi. In those simple verses, one of the most significant events in history took place—Christianity passed from Asia Minor into what we now know as Europe.  In a few centuries the predominant religion in Asia Minor would be Islam, while the Christian community Paul subsequently established at Philippi was the first Christian church on European soil, where it would have its best chance.

In Fosdick’s words, “Paul rendered his most significant service with the left-overs of a broken plan.”

In the rest of his sermon, which I will not walk you through in detail, Fosdick notes that “wanting one thing and getting another” is a familiar experience, but so is the taking of a “second best” and turning that into the opportunity for a real accomplishment. He suggests that people who read biographies find this a common experience in the lives of many well-known figures. He offers as one example James Abbot McNeil Whistler, who is famous as an artist.  But only after discovering that he wasn’t suited for a career as a minister, tried and failed to succeed at West Point, and became bored in a brief period as a draftsman, did he finally turn to painting—and with remarkable success, including the widely known portrait of his mother, known as Whistler’s Mother.

Fosdick also offers lengthy accounts, which I will minimize, of several historical figures:

• Phillips Brooks, whose great passion was always to be a teacher, but who failed miserably, then became one of the greatest preachers of the 19^th century.
• Sir Walter Scott, author of Ivanhoe, had planned to be a poet, but Byron so overshadowed him that he found his best work in writing novels.
• Then, from the Old Testament, there is Joseph—“stolen from home, betrayed by his brothers, dropped in a pit, sold as a slave”—but who turned that misfortune into the greatest opportunity of his life.

I’m guessing that most of us can identify with this experience—wanting one thing and getting something else. I’ve certainly landed in some second choices I couldn’t have imagined.

As Fosdick also noted, even though his sermon was written almost a century ago, I wonder about the current younger generation—whether they will be able to handle it when they are forced to confront some second, or third, choices. It takes some imagination, some resilience, and some willingness to believe in one’s ability to “turn lemons into lemonade.” But as I hear my wife talk about some of the students that she encounters, I am fearful about the mental “toughness,” the determination, and the persistence that will be required to handle the “forks in the road” that they will inevitably come upon. One hopes, if they are able to persevere in their studies, that the liberal arts values which form the context for their major concentrations, will help equip them for what lies ahead.

That said, here are some instances of people successfully coping with those second choices, along with a couple of my own experiences.

When her local school district cut its budget and booted her from her part-time job coordinating substitute teachers, Lori Volk had two children in college and one in high school. She not only had to figure out how she was going to pay for college but wondered who would hire her at age 50. One day, she joked with a friend that she’d like to bottle and sell the lavender lemonade she created for the stand her children had run years before from their driveway. A student who overheard her asked to try it, so she brought some samples to school, everybody loved it, and she decided “on the spot” to go into business. That was in October 2011, and in four months her lemonade was on the shelves in two local stores. The momentum built until it made its way into Whole Food Stores, and now it appears in 800 stores in several states and she employs about a half-dozen workers.  Having successfully “made lemonade,” literally, when life handed her a lemon, she says that, in your 50s, “You know what you’re good at.”

When I started to college in 1954, I was convinced that I had a “calling,” which meant, to someone of my background, specifically a “call to preach,” so I was one of a crowd of “preacher boys” at that Baptist college. Since revivals were popular and occurred often in churches during the summer, I had begun to think about being part of a revival team as a way to answer my calling as well as earn some money to help pay for college, since my parents were unable to contribute. Then a friend, Hal Brooks, asked me if I’d like to join him to form a revival team. I was thrilled, assuming this meant our sharing the preaching duties. Then he shocked me by saying he wanted me to be the “song leader” and music director. That didn’t fit with my hope or my expectation or my sense of “calling.” But I was a first year student, had no connections in the community or the self-confidence to venture out on my own, while Hal was older, more experienced, and better known among the churches in the area. I had some musical experience in high school, so I swallowed my pride and my regret at losing the chance to answer my “calling,” and decided to give it my best shot. To make a long story shorter, it turned out to be one of the most productive “extra-curricular” learning periods of my college days.

Hal and I became roommates and the best of friends. He was an impressive and engaging preacher and we held revivals every week in churches large and small for two summers, as well as during the school year—traveling to services in the evenings and going to classes during the day—until he graduated and I moved on to a couple of church positions for my last two years. Despite my later uneasiness about our relative immaturity for such heavy responsibilities in those days, the experience did sharpen my musical skills and my singing voice, and enabled this “second choice” to help pave the way for music to be an important part of my life many years later, from singing in a professional choir to extensive experience in musical theatre.

Another experience that involved a “second choice,” was included in an earlier blog, but it’s also relevant here.  After finishing my basic divinity degree at Southern Seminary, I applied for admission to doctoral studies in Old Testament at Duke University and was accepted into the program. Because of the high tuition, I applied for a scholarship, but one of the letters of recommendation missed the application deadline and I lost my chance to be considered for a scholarship.

I was then faced with a dilemma: borrow the tuition money and go into debt, but have the prestige of a doctoral degree from Duke; or stay at Southern Seminary—where I was also accepted for doctoral work and the tuition was affordable, but whose scholarly reputation was less widely known.

It was an agonizing decision, but despite Duke having been my hope and my first choice, I decided to stay at the seminary, where I subsequently developed an intense interest in and passion for the field of philosophical studies, which became my concentration and the area of my dissertation.

When the faculty position at Mars Hill College became available, I qualified primarily because of my major in philosophy. So had I gone to Duke I would not have been hired at Mars Hill, where being able to teach both religion and interdisciplinary courses—in addition to philosophy— allowed me to enjoy the additional role of the “unrepentant generalist” that fed my curiosity and my need to explore “around the edges.”  As I looked back, it was clear that had I not decided to make the best of a second choice, my career, my personal life, and my friendships would have been very different from the ones I experienced and now gratefully cherish.

Parker J. Palmer, in his book, Let Your Life Speak—which I’ve been reading recently—draws heavily, and with startling candor, on his own life experiences in an effort to urge his readers to seek their true vocation. So while the message of his book has that larger purpose, he also speaks of times in his own life when he encountered the necessity of dealing with second and third choices on the way to his search for his own “true self.”

He recounts, for example, that early in his life he was in a doctoral program at the University of California in Berkeley, preparing for what he then believed was his true calling, namely a career in teaching. But to his deep chagrin, he was fired from his research scholarship in sociology, which meant that he not only lost the source of his summer income, but his entire graduate career was in jeopardy. As he put it, “My sense of identity, and my concept of the universe, crumbled around my feet for the first, but not last, time.”

To make a long story short(er), Palmer acknowledges that he did not work hard enough or take it seriously enough to keep that research scholarship, but that at a deeper level, he was fired because the job “had little or nothing to do with who I am, with my true nature and gifts.” Eventually, Palmer did complete his PhD but not in order to pursue his first choice as a teacher in higher education—which he tried but also failed. In the end, as he pursued second and third choices, he found the career that has distinguished him as a writer (author of over ten books), lecturer, teacher and one of the most influential senior leaders in higher education. He put it this way:

“ . . . each time a door closes, the rest of the world opens up. All we need to do is to stop pounding on the door that just closed . . . and welcome the largeness of life that now lies open to our souls.”

And of himself, he says, “ . . . the anxiety that kept me pounding on closed doors, almost prevented me from seeing the secret hidden in plain sight. I was already standing on the ground of my new life . . . if only I would turn around and see the landscape that lay before me” (pp. 54-55).

The final story involves some young adult volunteers who confronted a circumstance that altered their experience in a way they never could have anticipated. This incident arises out of my serving on the Board of Directors for the non-profit organization entitled Hands and Feet of Asheville, which is a Young Adult Volunteer [YAV] site of the Presbyterian Church USA, and tends to function as a progressive, ecumenical Christian service program for young adults to pursue their passions, serve others, build community, and explore their faith. Throughout their volunteer year, participants, who come from all over the country, live in an intentional community and provide direct service to local non-profit organizations that work primarily to end homelessness, hunger, and discrimination, and to support justice for those trapped in cycles of poverty. Among the community partners where the volunteers serve are 12 Baskets, Asheville Habitat for Humanity, Haywood Street Congregation, and Homeward Bound.

At the end of their year of service, the YAVs participate in a “storytelling evening” in which they reflect on their experiences and clarify their own sense of purpose and call. These are always engaging and touching stories but this past year was an exceptional one because no one could have foreseen this pandemic that rather abruptly turned their world upside down. Their time here was cut short and they had to return home, yet they “rolled with the punches,” served the helping organizations to which they were assigned—remotely and virtually but substantively—and, with the marvelous guidance of Selena Hilemon (Mars Hill College graduate and Executive Director), they read, discussed, learned, and communicated with each other. This is what I told them after hearing their stories:

“Thank you for your service and for your stories—they were intimate, creative, articulate and very moving! To put it simply, life ‘handed you a lemon’ but instead of making a ‘sour face,’ you made ‘lemonade’—you took a difficult set of circumstances, not of your making and not your first choice, turned it into a life-altering experience, and shared who you are and the gifts you have with those who needed them.“

They made the very best of an extraordinarily difficult second choice!

And with that, I will call this overly long reflection “done” and hope that it has allowed you to recall times in your own life when you made the best of a second choice, and that we will each be prepared to respond creatively the next time we inevitably experience “wanting one thing and getting something else.”

Sources Consulted

Harry Emerson Fosdick, “Handling Life’s Second Bests,” pp. 54-62, Riverside Sermons, Harper and Brothers: New York, 1958.

Miriam Cross, Lisa Gerstner, “Making Lemonade out of Lemons,” 5 Great Second Career Moves, Kiplinger, September 17, 2018.

Parker J. Palmer, “When the way Closes,” Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, CA, 2000.