This post will be devoted entirely to relationships with two of my treasured friends, each of which has, sadly, ended — but their deaths in no way diminish what they brought to my life and they will never be forgotten!

• Some of what I have to say about this first dear and cherished friend is drawn from remarks I made at his memorial service. It’s hard to believe that was over six years ago, but I have no difficulty remembering the myriad ways my decades as his friend and colleague affected and enriched my life.  I recall fondly our many times on the tennis court and, less often, the golf course—since we were pretty bad at it—and the countless trips we made with our colleagues as an academic department and sometimes just the two of us; the conversations we had over meals, coffee and “nameless libations” about departmental and college issues, about theological and biblical questions, about students, family, politics, and sometimes about deeply personal matters.  There was nothing at all that I couldn’t share with this man who was always open, supportive, and never judgmental.  He was superbly intelligent, informed, and wise, but incredibly humble, unassuming, and unpretentious.  It was a rare and cherished friendship which was literally life-changing for me.
• It started sixty years ago when both of us were engaged in doctoral programs at the same seminary.  We had study carrels on the same hallway, were so comfortable with each other personally, as well as in our theological and biblical perspectives, that it was the beginning of a friendship that grew and deepened over the next two to three years.  And along the way, I learned about the college from which he was on leave for his doctoral studies, which hadn’t been on my radar, and about which I knew virtually nothing. Since he was able to devote his full time to his studies and his dissertation—while I was pastoring a church at the same time—he completed his doctorate ahead of me and returned to his faculty position. But a year later, he let me know that the college was seeking, for the first time, a faculty member qualified to teach philosophy.  He urged me to apply.  I knew that if this was a place where he was comfortable pursuing his calling, I could be, too.  I applied, he supported and recommended me, I interviewed and, as they say, “the rest is history.”  But that simple phrase encompasses everything that happened in my life from 1968 until today.  Had it not been for my friendship with him, nothing in my professional life, my avocational life, my friendships and relationships, and most of my personal life would or could ever have happened.  I owe him all of that!  
• As a crucial example, move forward to 1974, six years after I first became his faculty colleague.  He had begun to plan a three-week, January term study tour for students to Switzerland and had talked briefly about my accompanying him on the trip.  Then it turned out that he couldn’t go after all and he asked if I would consider leading the trip myself.  At 38 years old, I was completely unprepared for such an experience: I’d never led a student tour anywhere, never been out of the country, and didn’t speak the languages of Switzerland.  But I parked my ignorance and jumped at the chance, taking 10 or so students for a week each in Zurich, which then had a Baptist Seminary there, in St. Gallen, with its famous monastery, and in Geneva, where the World Council of Churches was located.  That experience was “the spark that lit the fire” and I have been absolutely smitten for the rest of my life with the joys of eye-opening, enriching international travel.  The multiple trips over the years encompassing 30 countries, the dozens of students I was privileged to know in this unique way, would never have happened without his thoughtfulness, trust, and generosity. It was, again, literally life-changing, as were many other professional, personal, and relational experiences—all of them opportunities that I owe to this treasured friend!

My mind, my heart, my memory are filled with overwhelming gratitude for my friend and will be for the rest of my days.  My visits with him in the nursing facility where he spent his last days, usually ended by my saying, “I love you, my brother” and he would say, “I love you, too.”  I say it again today:  “I love you, my brother.”  Requiem aeternam, my dear friend, et lux perpetua.

• The other one of my friends, who is now deceased, occupied an office next door to mine for all of my years in full-time teaching. He was my friend, pure and simple and it is hard to believe he has been physically gone from my life for almost 20 years. For all the years I was blessed with his presence, whether he agreed with me or not—and sometimes he didn’t—I never had reason to doubt the support and loyalty of his friendship. On one of my last visits with him—when he knew that he was in “countdown”—he said, “I want you to do the eulogy at my service.”  And with one of his wry smiles, he said, “You know. . . do the best you can.”  I did tell him that he knew he was giving me a gift: it would be the first time in 36 years I ever got the last word on him.  He cut his eyes at me and gave me a lopsided grin that said, “Yeah, I know.” Much of the substance of what I say here I have drawn from that eulogy. At heart, he was a “knowledge junkie.” Of all the bright and knowledgeable people I have known, no one was more widely read, knew more sheer information, or who could talk about it better—or  longer—than he. We used to say that there were people who could talk for an hour on any subject at all, but only he could talk for an hour on no subject at all.  Whether history, Bible, theology, art, language, sociology, mathematics, philosophy, or music, he could talk about it from the prodigious store of knowledge that tumbled from his brain. But it wasn’t just what he knew—it was what he did with it.  He loved to take an idea apart and make connections.  I recall countless conversations, in his office or mine, in which we talked about ideas—historical and contemporary, large and small.  No one loved an argument more than he did—regardless of what you said, his retort more often than not began, “No, but the thing is . . . .”  And you couldn’t tell whether he was about to agree or disagree with you, because for him argument was not about who wins, but about the encounter of minds, about who learns and what is learned. However, while he loved being in the classroom, if a student wanted a course with an inviolable syllabus and a well-organized lesson plan—forget it!  No matter what the subject was, you were as likely to get a story as you were a biblical or historical allusion.  But the connection was always there, and the student who could “go with the flow” had an extraordinary encounter with learning.
• This friend and colleague also blazed a trail for academic integrity.  He took a stand for a historical/critical approach to the study of religion and the scriptures.  That courage cost him an exile from his chosen field for a time. That’s the real story behind all those subjects he taught—history, sociology, French, English. He purchased the academic freedom we now enjoy and take for granted.  We owe him for that. But most important, it is and always was about the students.  The walls of his office and his desk were covered with maxims and mottos, and two of them were about his respect for students and for teaching and learning.  The first is Thomas Jefferson: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”  The second was his own and we heard him say it many times:  “The student is sacred in MIND and BODY.”  He walked that talk!

I’ll close with an excerpt from a letter my son wrote to him a few weeks before my friend died.  After acknowledging my friend’s health crisis and updating him on the good course of his own life at this point, he concluded the letter this way:

• “When I was 16 and dropping out of school because of problems I was dealing with at the time . . . I remember being in dad’s office in Cornwell.  You came by his office and told me, “Do not grow up to be a bum like your dad.”  So every morning I drink a cup of coffee, walk out my door and try not to be a bum that day.  One day at a time is the only way to take things anyway.  Always remember that it is not only the students you taught that you have affected during your life.”

And so it was!

With this expression of my gratitude for these two extraordinary friends and my grief at their loss from my presence, I will end this post. I hope you will continue to read about my experiences with and my gratitude for a number of my cherished friends in a final post coming up in couple of weeks.