"SHE MADE A WAY"

 “SHE MADE A WAY”

The advance copy of the book has arrived – yay!  “She Made A Way:  Mother and Me in a Deep South World” is published by Wipf and Stock (they did my book of sermons “Deeper Waters” in 2017), and it should be available now at their website (orders@wipfandstock.com), bookshop.org, Amazon, Thriftbooks , or from me.  Let me know if you want to get one from me.  And, of course, I’ll be glad to do a book-signing/talk with any group of which you are a member.  Let me know, and we’ll line something up.

The liner notes from Wipf and Stock have this to say:

“She Made a Way is a memoir of survival and growth under the twin threats of white supremacy and male dominance. It is an intimate story of perseverance and coming of age: how a single, white working mother and her only son made their way in the patriarchal and racist world of postwar Helena, Arkansas, a Mississippi river town. It is also a story of transformation: a lifetime of journeying together out of captivity to white supremacy and toward the deeper truth of compassion and liberation. In an era saturated with forces of racism and sexism, we find here a mother and son struggling in their relationship to each other and to America, maintaining love while living toward a new vision of themselves and the world.”

My friend John Blake (if you haven’t read his memoir “More Than I Imagined” about his relationship to his mother, please do so!) wrote the Foreword to “She Made a Way.”  Here’s part of that Foreword:

“I know this story so well because I was one of those journalists who

stopped by Oakhurst to write about Nibs and the church. But unlike the

other journalists, I stayed and joined Oakhurst. And what I discovered

was that the story behind Nibs’ conversion on race was no racial kum-

baya story. It was much richer, confounding, and ultimately more inspir-

ing than any brief news report could capture. And today I would make

another argument: At a time when the United States is more divided than

arguably anytime since the Civil War, Nibs’ story is more urgent than

ever.

Nibs is one of the most insightful and thought-provoking com-

mentators on race and religion in contemporary America. His range of

experience is virtually unmatched by any of the leaders that the media

traditionally go to for commentary on race and faith. He has a visceral

understanding of how racism warps the souls of White America, and

the psychological games many play to deny their complicity because he’s

played those games himself. As Nibs once told me, he grew up in the

“belly of the beast”—the segregated world of Helena, Arkansas where

White supremacy was widely considered to be normal and ordained by

God. ‘I know this stuff; it’s in my veins,’ he once told me.”

I had wanted for so long to write this book, mainly to express my gratitude to my mother for raising me as a single, working mom in the midst of a patriarchal and racist time.  Yet, in doing so, I discovered a key nugget in my work on combatting racism – most of us who are captured by its power learned it not from mean and nasty folks, but from good folks, people like my mother who loved me, and whom I loved.  I learned it from my church and my school system.  To use St. Paul’s provocative metaphor from Ephesians 2, we breathed it in, as part of the power of the prince of the air.  Because we learned racism through loving, it makes it so much harder to engage and to find liberation, because we risk not only our loving relationships, but we also risk changing our view of ourselves, our history, and our way of living.  

This book “She Made A Way: Mother and Me in a Deep South World” is the story of one constellation of that journey of loving, of captivity, of seeking liberation in complex and essential work.  It is multiplied many times in America, and I urge you to get a copy of this book, read it and let’s talk!

"50 YEARS!"

 “50 YEARS!”

Caroline and I were married 50 years ago on May 18, 1974, in Ed Loring’s back yard in Decatur, with Ed and Caroline’s long-time friend Sandy Winter officiating.  It was an outdoor “hippie” wedding, though we did not think of it in those terms then.  We asked people not to bring gifts but rather to make donations to four non-profits that we designated – if they did not like any of those, we asked them to make a donation to a non-profit of their choice.  We had a potluck, covered dish lunch, and many people brought dishes and Corningware.  They did not clean them up and take them home with them.  We wondered what was going on – how would we get all those dishes back to the owners?  Then it dawned on us – they had left them as “unofficial” wedding gifts for us.  We are still using some of those Corningware dishes to this day.

Caroline did not want to be a June bride, so we got married in May in the middle of my final exams at Columbia Seminary.  We only had a couple of days for a honeymoon, and we are ever grateful to Erskine and Nan Clarke for allowing us to use their apartment for it in Montreat.  During that time, we went in to Asheville (long before it became so hip), and we toured Thomas Wolfe’s home there.  As we were approaching the Wolfe home, we saw a man who had huge hands and who looked like a Wolfe.  He introduced himself, and it was Fred Wolfe, brother of Thomas Wolfe.  We had a great and somewhat awed conversation.

Caroline and I met at Robin and Linda Williams’ wedding in Nashville in June, 1972, and I was smitten with her.  I moved to Decatur in the summer of 1973 to resume my seminary career at Columbia, after serving as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War.  Spurred on by Pat Loring (now Pat Hiott-Mason) who played matchmaker for us, we started dating that summer.  Caroline had already been ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1973, to serve as a campus minister at Georgia Tech, with an emphasis on the growing number of women students there.  I had one more semester to complete my seminary career, and we began to look for churches where we could serve as a clergy couple.  There had never been a clergy couple serving in the same church in the former Southern Presbyterian Church, so we started a pioneering ministry there.  Indeed, our pioneering and partnering ministry will be the subject of our next book.

Though the denomination’s leadership discouraged us –(“you’ll never find a call – just let Nibs find a church, Caroline can find something in the area”), we were blessed to find a church in Norfolk, Virginia that was looking for a woman pastor to minister to Navy families in a huge housing complex in Norfolk.  They were willing to add me on as part of a clergy couple, and we became co-pastors of St. Columba Presbyterian Church in Norfolk.  The ministry that we established there became a powerful one, even with only 12 official members.  We were blessed to receive the Presbyterian Women’s Birthday Offering in 1978 to establish St. Columba Ministries, which still is rolling today, even though the church itself is closed.  Our son David was born in Norfolk in 1980.  He was conceived in Montreat – we had gone there to do study leave with Ed Loring and Murphy Davis at the Davis home in Montreat.  It was in April and still cold in Montreat, but being the Spartan people that they were, Murphy and Ed would not turn on the heat.  We found a way to stay warm, and David was born 9 months later.

We left Norfolk for Nashville in late 1980, and it was a difficult parting with St. Columba Church – it had grown, and the ministry was booming, even as we fought the city, which wanted to tear down the apartments to make an industrial park.  The elders and members were shocked and hurt when we announced that we were leaving for Nashville, where I would be working on the staff of the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons.  Our hearts were hurting too, but we missed our families.  That pain lingered for a long time, and perhaps that is one of the reasons that we stayed so long at Oakhurst – we did not want to experience that pain again, nor inflict it on anyone else.

Since it took so long to get pregnant with David, we began pretty quickly “working on” getting pregnant with Susan, and she was born in September, 1982.  I had been a part-time supply pastor at Second Presbyterian in Nashville while they were between pastors.  They were such a great congregation to us, and it reminded me how much I missed being a pastor in a local church.  I began looking for a church, while Caroline stayed home with our small children.  Through Ed Loring, we were connected with Oakhurst, and I was called to be their pastor early in 1983.  Caroline continued to stay home at first, but she came on staff on a part-time basis in the fall, 1984.  We would remain as co-pastors there for 30+ years, and Caroline had to work several other part-time jobs to keep us afloat financially.  But, it worked – Oakhurst became a nationally known leader in multicultural ministry, and the membership grew to over 400.  You can read more about this part of the journey in our book “O Lord, Hold Our Hands: How a Church Thrives in a Multicultural World,” which the denomination asked us to write in 2003.

So, 50 years of pioneering and partnering – quite the journey!  We’ll celebrate our 50 years this Saturday, June 22 – lift up a glass to us, and of course, we’d be glad to see you or hear from you.

"PRIDE MONTH"

 “PRIDE MONTH”

This month of June has come to be known as “Pride Month.”  It started as Gay Pride Month, and then it went to LGBTQ Month, and now it has settled into being “Pride Month.”   Though as a Calvinist, I am a bit squeamish when it comes to affirming “pride,” I understand this to be something deeper than puffed-up ego.  This is a month of celebrating the gift of God’s creation of people whose sexuality and sexual orientation is different than heterosexuality.  In the last decade we have all become aware that there are many permutations of sexuality, and the old norm of heterosexuality is beginning to be expanded to include many other orientations.  We are also recognizing how much oppression and shaming there is of people of alternate sexualities.  “Pride Month” is a time for all people to affirm that there are a variety of sexual orientations, and we are all asked to give thanks for God’s gift of sexuality in our lives, no matter what the culture tells us, or what we tell ourselves.

The month of June was chosen as “Pride Month” because it was the month in which the Stonewall Uprising was held in New York in 1969.  So, yes, this month is the 55th Anniversary of that event on Christopher Street in New York.  The Stonewall Uprising refers to spontaneous rebellion by the LGBTQ community in response to the police harassment of them.  The match that lit the fire was a police raid at the Stonewall Inn bar on June 28, 1969.  Stonewall was a gathering place for gay men, lesbians and transgender folks, and in the early morning hours of that night, police raided the bar in Greenwich Village in Manhattan.  Rather than allowing themselves to passively be arrested for their sexuality, the LGBTQ  community rose up in protest that night and for several nights following.  It was a time when those in the LGBTQ community sought to regain and to re-affirm their God-given sexual selves and to let the heterosexual world know that they would no longer slink back in hiding.  They would claim themselves and would seek to force themselves into the consciousness of the world.

Thanks to the work of many activists, we have made some progress on this issue, though with MAGA always lurking in the background, we never seem to be on solid ground.  SCOTUS voted in a 5-4 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that states cannot deny same gender couples the right to get married, but some justices are grumbling and seeking to revisit that decision.  For those wondering about this, there is almost a straight line between the movements for racial justice, gender justice, sexual justice, and economic justice.  From Trump’s venom on immigrants to Harrison Butker’s demeaning of women to the murder of Black people by police and white vigilantes to the oppression of people who love others of the same gender, there is a long and continuing voice of oppression, violence and death.  And, make no mistake about it, the MAGA movement is intent on taking us back to the 1890’s when white men were firmly in control.

PRIDE Month gives us an opportunity to give thanks for those who continue to enrich our lives with the diversity of the great garden which God has created among us.  I know that my life and my perspective have been deepened and challenged and instructed by friends who love people of the same gender.  I am grateful that they have taken the time to engage me and to care for me, that they have deemed me worthy of the struggle to convert me.  So, in this PRIDE Month, let us give thanks for those who see a different world, who see a world where all are welcomed and valued because of God’s grace in their lives and in all of our lives.  May we join in that vision and in that ongoing struggle for the dignity of all, for the blossoming of the idea that we are all children of God, no matter who we love, or what we look like.  Seems pretty simple, doesn’t it?  But, we are in a battle for our lives and for the idea of equality.  It’s up to us to find our places as witnesses to this ongoing struggle – may God give us eyes to see and hearts to act.

"WNEN WILL THE TIDE TURN? OR WILL IT TURN?"

 “WHEN WILL THE TIDE TURN? OR WILL IT TURN?”

Thursday’s conviction of Donald Trump on all 34 counts of improperly influencing the 2016 election is still reverberating, and we won’t really know how it will influence voters until the November elections.  In past times, such a turn of events would automatically eliminate Trump as the Republican candidate, but these are not ordinary times.  Trump understood better than most of us how deep the white grievance is, especially white male grievance.  And, he predicted correctly that his base would follow him no matter what he did, or what he was convicted of.

Perhaps this conviction (and his sentencing on July 11) will turn some independent voters to vote for Biden, thus denying the election of Trump.  Perhaps this will turn the tide on Trump, and we can leave him behind in the dust of the 3 trials left to come.  If they do not, then God help us.  For Trump seems hellbent on bending the American system of government so that it serves him and him alone.  He has already attacked the criminal legal system, which admittedly is skewed towards people like Trump.  As President Trump, he will fill the benches with Eileen Cannons all over the country.  If the Republicans continue to control Congress after the November elections, we face the prospect of their refusing to certify the election results if Trump does not win.  So, Trump has already bent two branches of government – the judicial and the legislative – leaving only the Presidency to go.

If he wins in November, Trump intends to move the Presidency towards the imperium similar to Hungary, and unless the Supreme Court rules otherwise soon, he will not be held accountable for such moves.  For all their talk of being “originalists” in regard to the Constitution, the reigning SCOTUS conservative majority seems to have forgotten that the Constitution was formed to be a bulwark against a President like Trump.  Their decision on presidential immunity, which will be announced soon, will be a huge one.  Roberts, Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch hold the fate of democracy in their hands.

This is a grim rambling, but I do believe that we stand on the threshold of moving towards fascism if Trump is elected.  As I have written earlier, I am so sorry that Biden chose to run again – a strong Democratic candidate (which he is not), would give me much more cause for optimism.  Yet, it is what it is, and our calling is to get ready to work as hard as we can to elect Joe Biden as President and to make sure that the Democrats control the House after the November elections.  

And, perhaps, there is some hope.  Twelve New York citizens did their duty in the trial in Manhattan last week, seeing through all the hype to the truth of Trump’s lifelong campaign of lies and flight from accountability.  District Attorney Alvin Bragg had the guts to bring the case. Though he was excoriated by many for bringing such a “weak” case, it looks like his case will be the only one that will go to trial before the election.  Perhaps Judge Chutkan will allow Jack Smith to bring forward the January 6 case, depending on the SCOTUS ruling.  

So, we are in perilous times – Trump scares me more than anyone who has run for President in my life time, even more than Barry Goldwater.  Perhaps my fear is rooted also in my own childhood – I grew up under fascist governments in the South.  They favored me as someone classified as “white,” but they were fascist towards those classified as “Black.” I believed in this fascist power, though none of us called it that, because it benefitted me and answered the longings of my heart for order.  As I note in my forthcoming book “She Made A Way,” fascism in the South was maintained by good and loving white people.  I do not want to return to those times.  Please lift up our country and our democracy in these next 6 months – it will be quite a dangerous ride.  And, of course, practice what you pray.

"GRADUATIONS"

 “GRADUATIONS”

Caroline and I were up in Michigan this past weekend for our granddaughter Zoe’s graduation from high school at Interlochen Academy for the Arts.  Zoe has spent two years there and has turned into a fine singer/songwriter.  She will be attending University of Colorado-Denver this fall, which has a great music program.  In the meantime, she and another friend are lining up gigs for Salt Lake City, Denver, and other places – the life of the artist! 

We’ve had a mini-family reunion up here with Emma returning from Paris after a semester abroad, Susan joining us from Baltimore, Erin’s mom and stepdad from Washington State, Erin’s younger siblings from Texas – so a lot of folk from around the country!  

This graduation weekend reminded me that this is the 60th anniversary of my graduation from high school on the Friday before Memorial Day in 1964 at segregated Central High School in Helena, Arkansas.  Most of it is a blur, but I do remember it being an exciting time.  I also remember giving the valedictory address from memory – I had no notes at all.  I quoted from JFK (who had been assassinated the previous fall), from Thoreau, and from Emerson.  My mother’s aunt Bernice (whom I called “BB”) came and was nervous all the way through my speech because she said that she was so afraid that I would forget some of my speech.  I had it down, however, and I nailed it.

This is a bittersweet time for Zoe, as she says good-bye to most of her friends and goes to live in her new home in Salt Lake, where David and Erin have now moved.  My graduation was a bittersweet time for me also, as I got ready to go to the National Youth Science Camp in West Virginia before enrolling in Davidson College (where I stayed for a year before transferring to Southwestern at Memphis – now Rhodes College).  Big events were also waiting to unfold in that summer of 1964.  Mississippi Freedom Summer was coming, which included the killing of young people who came to help register Black people to vote in the middle of neo-slavery.  In just a few weeks, the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.  Later that summer, three civil rights workers in Mississippi went missing near Philadelphia – James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman.  Their bodies were later found near Philadelphia, and during the FBI search for them, other bodies were also discovered.

In early August of 1964, Congress also passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, giving President Johnson almost unlimited power to increase the number of US troops who would go to fight in Vietnam.  This resolution would lead to the deployment of over 550,000 American troops to Vietnam, with over 58,000 of them being killed.  I would later serve as a conscientious objector to that war in 1970-72.  It was a war that would ultimately end in 1975, when all American troops were finally withdrawn.  But, in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson was riding a strong wave of popularity and was easily re-elected as President over Barry Goldwater.

Zoe’s future bends out before her in similar ways.  We face an uncertain future, based in the conflict over the decade of the 1960’s, where we fought a cultural war over what it means to be an American. In many ways, it seems like we are still fighting over the 1960’s, with both Presidential candidates having been children of the 60’s.  Trump’s fascist campaign centers on white grievance, especially white male grievance, with the longing to return to the 1950’s, when white men were clearly in control.  President Biden’s decision to run again in his 80’s makes this presidential election an unnecessarily close one, and we have the terrible prospect of electing a would-be dictator.  The issues of the 1960’s stand at the center of this struggle.  

Zoe’s high school years began in the middle of Covid, and now she is graduating when the future of the USA seems so uncertain.  We will be counting on her and her generation to help us find a way out of the wilderness.  By the way, Zoe’s first song “Colorado Bruise” was released last Friday on all streaming platforms – for look for it!  The link https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/zoestroupe/colorado-bruise?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2vfeLUKMylbH4lMys1m81Wi6aVaBdG49zOpF51cxVTL0oHAir0Um3eBBI_aem_AQk4gtur86PlAEE03wXUnaJnyP6ZSaWNbwwdcHbiH1jzlHlh_UjktnI4nWCWYrLZ3pNtakdNSycM2LGrH-D76Lp7

"SHE WOULD BE THERE FOR ME IN THE MORNING"

 “SHE WOULD BE THERE FOR ME IN THE MORNING”

My mother Mary Stroupe’s birthday is May 24 – she was born at home in Byhalia, Mississippi, in 1919, born to a close-knit family structure.  Most of her relatives were farmers, but her father owned a store in Byhalia.  When she was in high school, her mother died of ovarian cancer in 1934, and her family went to live with her paternal grandparents.  Mother was an excellent student and was valedictorian of her high school class when she graduated in 1937.  She was smart enough to go to college, and she wanted to go to college, but it was during the Depression, so there was no money for her to do that.  Instead she went to cosmetology school in Memphis.

She graduated from there and began working in Memphis as a beauty operator, while dating a young man Bob Buford in Byhalia.  After my mother’s death in 2004, I found letters from Bob to her, and they were looking forward to getting married after World War II was over.  He had gone to Europe and went to pilot’s school to be able to fly missions in the war.  In 1944, Mother received a terrible letter from one of Bob’s relatives – he was missing in action somewhere over France.  I don’t know if his body was ever recovered, but it was a second huge blow to Mother.  First her mother, now her fiancé.

My father fought in World War II, but I have no idea where.  Sometime after he returned to Byhalia from the War, my mother started dating him, and they were married on Christmas Day, 1945.  They soon became pregnant with me, and I was born eleven months later in November (yes, I counted the months).  My father abandoned my mother and me soon after my birth, a third huge blow to her.  Although he made child support payments somewhat regularly, I never heard from him or saw him until I was 23.

So, my mother was it for me, and I am so grateful to her for stepping in that breach and raising me with a fierce and deep love.  We never talked much about my father – apparently he had left my mother for another woman.  On one level, I regret that, because there is a lot that I do not know and will never know now.  Yet, I do know that she became both mother and father to me, and she relied on that Southern style family structure.  When I was an infant, we moved to Helena, Arkansas, to live with my mother’s grandmother’s sister named Bernice Higgins, who was a widow by that time.  I called her “Gran,” and though she was technically my great-great aunt, she functioned much more like my grandmother until her death in 1959 (on May 20, so this is a big week in my family history!)

I owe my mother much of my life because of her love and dedication to raising me.  The title for this blog comes from the closing of Harper Lee’s powerful novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” in which Lee describes Atticus Finch protecting his son Jem who was threatened the night before.  I’ve adapted it for Mother, and I’ve always felt this way about all of her gifts to me.  Indeed, I’m pulling a “Scout” from “To Kill a Mockingbird,” by writing a memoir about Mother and me, with the main difference being that I am writing about a real person.  That memoir is now in the process of being edited by folk at Wipf and Stock Press, and if all goes well, it should be out for publication late this summer.  It is about our personal journey together, but it is also about our engaging the powers of Southern white supremacy and patriarchy – race, gender, class, sexual orientation, militarism and many others.  

    The title is “She Made a Way:  Mother and Me in a Deep South World.” Plan to get your copy, and I’ll be glad to do a book signing for you and for any groups with whom you are associated.  I am delighted to honor my mother this way, but I am also delighted to tell our story as we journey from mother and son, to mother and young adult, to mother and daughter-in-law, to mother and grandchildren, to our then switching roles, as I became the manager of our relationship as she aged and got the lung cancer which has plagued all of the Armour family.  This was all in the context of my beginning to seek liberation from those forces of oppression of Southern white supremacy and patriarchy – Mother and I both clashed and learned from one another, as we made this treacherous journey together.  

    As I reflect in the book, it was indeed a treacherous journey, but it was eased so much by my mother’s tenacity and love.  She made a way, and in this week, I give thanks for her!

"WHAT A WEEK!"

 “WHAT A WEEK!”

This week of May 12-19 has always been an important one in my life, even before I knew it.  On May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” was the law of the land.  This ruling firmly and legally established “neo-slavery” that would be king of the USA for almost 60 years. It filled the atmosphere of my boyhood with the authority of white supremacy and racism that so captured my perceptual apparatus.  

    Catherine Meeks and I went to talk with the children of Morgan Oliver School last week about Ida B. Wells and about the racism that pervaded both of our lives growing up in rural and small town Arkansas.  I described myself as having grown up in the “belly of the beast.” Many of the kids were intrigued by that metaphor and wanted to know if I still lived in the belly of that beast.  I indicated that some courageous mentors and prophets had helped to pull me out, but that I still had residues of slime on me and in me from my time in the beast.  

    Yet, while I was not aware of it because I was only 7 years old, on May 17, 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education, SCOTUS reversed the Plessy decision and ruled unanimously that legal segregation was no longer lawful because it established inequality as the law of the land.  I don’t remember knowing about that decision until I was somewhere in my college years, but that decision had set off the beginning of a revolution in regard to the legality of white supremacy, declaring that it was no longer the law of the land.  This year will mark the 70th anniversary of that landmark decision.  Unfortunately, we have not decided as a nation which decision we want to affirm – the “neo-slavery” Plessy of 1896 or the “created equal” Brown decision of 1954.

    Most important to me, however, about this week is that it marks the 50th wedding anniversary for Caroline and me.  We were married in Ed Loring’s backyard on May 18, 1974,  with Ed and Sandy Winter officiating – Sandy had been a long-time mentor of Caroline’s.  Caroline was a campus minister at Georgia Tech at that time, having been ordained as a minister in 1973 (the 21st woman to be ordained in the former southern Presbyterian Church).  I was in my final year at Columbia Seminary, having transferred there from Vanderbilt Divinity School, with a two year hiatus in between while I performed as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War.  We had met at the wedding of Robin and Linda Williams in Nashville, Caroline having accompanied her friend Murphy Davis, who was Robin’s cousin.

    While our 50th anniversary is May 18, we are postponing any official celebration until June 22 because our granddaughter Zoe is graduating from high school in Michigan on May 25, so we will be up there for that great occasion.  If you haven’t received an invitation to our 50th on June 22 in Decatur, please let me know, and we’ll get one to you – the mail has been kind of crazy lately!  

    It has been quite an adventure, with many milestones along the way.  Even before I graduated from Columbia, we had received a call from St. Columba Presbyterian Church in Norfolk VA, to be the co-pastors at a small church there, which also served as the base for a developing community ministry in a 5000 resident low-income housing complex.  We cut our teeth on urban ministry there, and we were fortunate enough to receive the Women of the Church Birthday Offering in 1978.  That great gift established St. Columba Ministries, which does ministry with those who are poor and especially those who are homeless.  It is still doing ministry today.  

       After our son David was born in Norfolk in 1980, we wanted to get closer to our families in Chattanooga and Arkansas, so we moved to Nashville where I worked on the staff of the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons.  I also served as part-time supply pastor at Second Presbyterian while they looked for a fulltime pastor.  Our daughter Susan was born in Nashville on a Sunday morning in 1982.  My time at Second Church convinced me that I wanted to return to the pastorate full time, and in February, 1983, I gladly accepted the call to become the full-time pastor at Oakhurst Presbyterian in Decatur.  Since Susan was still an infant, Caroline stayed home for another year.  She came on staff at Oakhurst in September, 1984, and we shared ministry there until we both retired – Caroline in 2012, and me in 2017.  Whew!  Quite a journey – you’ll hear more one of these days.  We are just beginning work on a book about our pioneering and partnering ministry.  If you have any stories or insights, please share them with us.  In the meantime, raise a glass to us this Saturday!