Westminster Memories
Reflection by Gordon Stewart
Westminster’s 150th Anniversary opens the floodgates of memories kept and moments yet untold. Until memory goes wherever it goes when it’s gone, I’ll hold dear the people of Westminster. I still see the faces and hear the voices of the PNC — Dan Houston, Oscar Bradfute, Sue Coleman, Dick Beery, Pauline Ihrig, Edna Comin, Rich Bell, Fran Loess — who whet my appetite for the unique combination of church and academy which was Westminster.
The call at that time was two-fold: Pastor of Westminster and Pastor to the College, more like a wishbone than two sides of the same coin. The Pastor to the College was an ex officio member of the College Board of Trustees; member of the Religious Dimensions Committee; “Chaplain-like” voice at public College events; and ministry with COW faculty and administration, as well as with students.
As is always the case with churches and marriages, neither you nor I really knew each other before the knot was tied. The miracle is that you stayed with me, as you did with Barrie and Cindy, and would do with Mark, gently calling attention to the slip of a split infinitive — eternal thanks to Pauline Ihrig making the catch without one hint of the meanness that sometimes comes with criticism — and the unfailing support and encouragement of the Session whose Ruling Elders’ wisdom that kept us true to our best selves.
FOUR O'CLOCK TEA
A month or so after settling in as Pastor of Westminster and Pastor to the College, a member of Westminster called to ask if I might join her and “the Dean” for tea. They had looked forward to meeting the new pastor, but the Dean’s stroke had prevented them from coming to church. Although they were still home-bound, the Dean was now well enough to resume their customary tea time every afternoon at four o’clock. We arranged a date for our visit.
In the days that followed, I wondered whether “tea” meant a cup o’ tea or something more formal, like the High Teas at Oxford or Cambridge. It seemed likely they would have had one or more sabbatical leaves during his years as Dean of Faculty in the golden era of Howard Lowry’s presidency. Perhaps High Tea had become part of life after a sabbatical in the British Isles. Mrs. William Taeusch met me at the door with all the warmth of a loving grandmother and the dignity of a queen. She was in her late 80s; I was 36. Dean Taeusch was likely in his 90s when the stroke slowed him down.
The experience was not what I had expected. It was not High Tea where the tea drinkers are proper and unrevealing. This tea was revealing, and more impactful than a High Tea. Mrs. Taeusch asked the question that pulled back the curtain from the land of Oz. Every member of the faculty and staff had signed a covenant of moral turpitude as a condition of appointment or employment. They had solemnly pledged that they did not, and would not, imbibe in alcohol. They presented themselves as teetotalers.
“Well,” said Mrs. Taeusch with a mischievous twinkle in her eye while the Dean looked on with a smile, “in our home you’re welcome to have a cup o’ tea, or, if you prefer, you may enjoy something else. Bill and I prefer Sherry.” I chose the Sherry. They seemed relieved and delighted.
In the hour that followed, the Taeuschs told their new pastor a dirty little secret that wasn’t a secret: the difference between appearance and reality at the College. I learned why the blinds had gone down at “tea time” and wondered what secrets were hidden now.
APPEARANCE AND REALITY
Looking back all these years later, the tea with the Taeuschs serves as a metaphor for how I came to see the calling at Westminster and the College: shining the light of the crucified-risen Christ on the difference between appearance and reality — who we are when the shades are up, and who we are when the shades are down.
My sense of ministry had been honed by the critiques of religion as illusion (Marx, Feuerbach, and Freud) and participation in Christian-Marxist Dialogue. The gospel of Jesus crucified and risen tears apart the temple veil, revealing the demonic power of the un-named ideological convictions that frame what we see, how we see it, and how we respond. Naming the powers that hurt and destroy was central to my understanding of ministry.
Tea with the Mrs. Taeuschs and “the Dean” confirmed the value to church and College alike of bringing to Wooster theologians-in-residence and guest preachers William Stringfellow, Paul Lehmann, Mohammed Kenyatta, William Sloane Coffin, Angolan Bishop Emilio de Carvalho, and Cuban seminary dean, Adolfo Ham. These visits led to ongoing working relationships with faculty of the political science, history, sociology, history, philosophy, and religious studies departments. Faculty welcomed Westminster’s theologians-in-residence to join them in their classrooms and informal home gatherings.
If the walls of the Church House ’s upper room could talk, they would tell the untold stories of church members, student, faculty, and administrators wrestling, like Jacob at the Jabbok, wrestling with the Presence we cannot see.
They would tell of students “coming out” for the first time; of faculty and spouses struggling with whether they really belonged at the College, sometimes to the cliff of suicide; of shouts of rage for having been tricked and left alone, staring into the abyss; of students working through what it meant to be a woman — straight, gay, or bi-sexual — and what, if any, difference it made; of the lamentations by the most inside of the insiders, whose outward appearance in suits, ties, and academic robes and hoods that reminded everyone who was high and who was low in the pecking order of the academy, but who, behind the blinds, in nothing but slippers, sneakers, ragged shirts and sweat pants, felt like motherless children, orphans caught in the split between appearance and reality, longing for home under the shelter of the Most High.
But the walls of the upper room would tell more than the secret “dangers, toils, and snares” they hold in silence. They would gladly tell of the faith, courage, and resilience that sometimes, by grace alone, led to that deeper knowledge about which Jean Calvin spoke in the first sentences of the first paragraph of the Institutes of the Christian Religion:
“Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, comes of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But, while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern.”
How that works remains a mystery to my small mind, but I know it’s true. Closer to hand on your 150th Anniversary is Bill Weiss’s “History of Westminster,” a kind of practical theology and wise counsel. “Both church and college,” he writes, “face daily challenges. Perhaps the final instruction to church and college is from a source often attributed to Plato: 'Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.’”
Thank you, friends, for the kindness. I wish I could be with you as you celebrate Westminster’s Sesquicentennial.
<< Back to Collection of Memories and Reflections
