CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter… ©
I posted this story in a
slightly different form five years ago, but since most of CIW readers are old,
I trust you will have forgotten it by now. Also, I just wrote it again, for a
book I’m doing on preaching, and writers hate to get only one use out of a
piece, so…
One evening I sat around
in a big lounge with Will Campbell and Doug Marlette, the cartoonist. There
were about twenty of us. Will started strumming his guitar and singing a story
song. As Will sang, Doug sketched images from the song on a big pad on a stand.
The song was about a man
who lived in the country begging his beautiful redheaded wife to stay home and
not go to town. The refrain of each chapter of the story, as he begs every
evening and she eventually leaves, is “She gave her heart to Jethro, but her
body to the whole damn town.”
Tom T. Hall later had a
hit with that song, but I had never heard it before. I was really upset with
that redhead by the time Will finished the song. I mean, “Some of her lovers
were strangers.” How bad can a wife be?
Will let us sit there and
stew. It was a bunch of preachers, so we were righteously judgmental of this
nameless woman. We were sort of intrigued, and wondered if maybe she lived nearby,
but mostly we condemned her.
There is nothing in the
Tom T. Hall song lyrics about what Will told us next. I just looked them up to be sure. After letting us think shallowly for a while, Will explained that
the beautiful redhead was the night nurse in the emergency room at the
hospital. I suddenly realized that it was Jethro, not his wife, who was being
selfish and unfaithful, unfaithful to all his neighbors who needed help for
their afflictions, unfaithful to his wife’s calling. He had her all the rest of
the time, but he did not want to share. She gave her heart to Jethro, but her
body was a gift from God to give to a suffering world, to the whole damned
town.
JRMcF
A SIDEBAR ON WILL AND DOUG
That time with Will and
Doug was one of the highlights of my ministry years. First, I got to spend a
lot of time with my great friend, Jack Newsome. We drove down to North Carolina
from Illinois together and back again and never stopped talking the whole time.
His car’s heater gave out on the way home, and we froze, but that didn’t hinder
our talking at all.
Then there was Will
Campbell, one of the main civil rights activists of the South, who was an
unofficial chaplain to the KKK at the same time. When asked how he could do
that, he said, “They’re people, too. They need a pastor, just like everyone
else.”
He and Doug Marlette the
great Pulitzer-winning political cartoonist for “The Charlotte Observer,” whose
cartoons were always picked up and distributed nationally, became friends along
the way, and Will was the inspiration for “The Preacher” in Doug’s comic strip,
“Kudzu.”
Will was born in 1924 and
died in 2013.
The Will and Doug
friendship was unlikely in many ways, including the age difference. Doug was
born in 1949. Unfortunately, he died in an automobile accident in 2007. In
addition to cartooning, he was a novelist.
To top it off, when one of
the attenders at this small conference at Lake Junaluska saw my name tag, he
said, “Oh, I know who you are. I read your articles in The Christian Century.” No greater recognition for a writer than
recognition.
When you get to spend a
week with a friend like Jack Newsome and a legend like Will Campbell and a
creator like Doug Marlette and a stranger who knows who you are, that’s a good
week!
I tweet as yooper1721
I became disturbed by the
huge number of military suicides, both veterans and active duty, so I wrote VETS, about four handicapped and
homeless Iraqistan veterans accused of murdering a VA doctor. It’s a darn good
tootin’ adventure mystery story. My royalties go to helping prevent veteran
suicides. You can buy it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. [VETS needs to be all caps when you look
it up.]
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