Reflecting
As I lay here on my sickbed today, feeling just tired, achy and miserable enough that working anywhere else would have been futile and struggling to string together thoughts from a fuzzy brain (not to mention the occasional expectoration), I received the latest update on moves and transitions in the PCC. Included was the news that an ex-colleague of mine from my time on PEI had died.
My feelings about this fellow tended toward the dislike. I found him to be arrogant and insufferable when he thought he was right and vicious and unyielding when he was wrong, no matter who told him so. He was the subject of a General Assembly Commission when I was on the Island, as he had alienated one of the two points of his charge to the point where they would not attend church at all if he was to be in the pulpit, and when we tried to be nice to him and forge an agreement whereby he would retire at a certain set time, it was not put in writing but was sealed by a handshake whose terms he amended just before he took his grip. He appealed all the way up the chain and came to the Commission's finding day with a number of responses in his valise (I would *never* call it a briefcase). When the findings were against him, he tried to read one of them and was shut down immediately by the Chairman of the Committee. I almost cheered (but didn't). I remember going to a different GA and being asked by the Moderator, a former Principal of one of our colleges, if the fellow who had been writing him increasingly anxious application letters in King James' English was still on the Island. Many are the stories of his actions over the years. So, shortly said, he had a high opinion of himself but managed to create a low opinion in many others.
And yet, when I was inducted, he was the first one to greet my wife.
When his tie was severed, several members of his congregation spoke of his great pastoral presence.
Children in his congregation loved him, and he knew them all by name and hobbies.
His obit says that he will be missed, and he will be. Just perhaps not in the way he might have hoped.
My feelings about this fellow tended toward the dislike. I found him to be arrogant and insufferable when he thought he was right and vicious and unyielding when he was wrong, no matter who told him so. He was the subject of a General Assembly Commission when I was on the Island, as he had alienated one of the two points of his charge to the point where they would not attend church at all if he was to be in the pulpit, and when we tried to be nice to him and forge an agreement whereby he would retire at a certain set time, it was not put in writing but was sealed by a handshake whose terms he amended just before he took his grip. He appealed all the way up the chain and came to the Commission's finding day with a number of responses in his valise (I would *never* call it a briefcase). When the findings were against him, he tried to read one of them and was shut down immediately by the Chairman of the Committee. I almost cheered (but didn't). I remember going to a different GA and being asked by the Moderator, a former Principal of one of our colleges, if the fellow who had been writing him increasingly anxious application letters in King James' English was still on the Island. Many are the stories of his actions over the years. So, shortly said, he had a high opinion of himself but managed to create a low opinion in many others.
And yet, when I was inducted, he was the first one to greet my wife.
When his tie was severed, several members of his congregation spoke of his great pastoral presence.
Children in his congregation loved him, and he knew them all by name and hobbies.
His obit says that he will be missed, and he will be. Just perhaps not in the way he might have hoped.