Grace in the Complexity

Although my Dad and I had similar personalities, low-level tension, mostly unspoken, lurked between us all my adult life until his death in 2009. In high school I committed my life, by walking to the front of a church service during the altar call, to “full-time Christian service,” assuming I would, like Dad, become a church pastor. But when I was a sophomore in college—majoring in religion and minoring in speech, what better preparation for a preacher?—he abruptly abandoned his church and his family.

He, apparently—I had no clue; I was blissfully in love with Jesus—experienced an unmanageable rebellion at the church where I had joyfully, triumphantly, walked the aisle. Dad was in such psychic pain that he believed he had to escape (to where, I still do not know) for his own sanity. He left some notes describing his agony and vague intention to start a new life—somewhere.

That unrealistic plan, predictably, didn’t work, and he returned in a few weeks. But the harm was done. I discovered his main antagonists were my valued Christian mentors, thus my personal and spiritual confusion—and resentment—began.

We in the family were obligated (without it being overtly stated) to never ask him about his escape and return, so my bewilderment  and anger stayed below the surface. When I visited Mom and Dad, things were mostly jovial and fun (he loved to make jokes and laugh), but the tension remained.

After his brief exile and return, he was secularly employed for a few years, then returned to being a traditional Mississippi Baptist pastor. I attended seminary and achieved master’s and doctorate degrees and joined a liberal Baptist church in Atlanta. I disdained churches that weren’t theologically sophisticated or engaged with social issues: churches like Dad’s. He didn’t care much for the academic study of religion, to which I had devoted nine years. Our lines were drawn.

Recently, thanks to my Mom, who keeps just about everything (especially pictures and letters), while going through old boxes at her house, I discovered a letter Dad received in 1994.

It was from George Wardlaw, a childhood friend of Dad in tiny Baldwyn, in northeast Mississippi. Born one year apart, they were years-long schoolmates. They encountered each other one day in 1947 on a Baldwyn street. Wardlaw was recently discharged from the Navy and returned to his family’s sharecropper cotton farm. Dad was home on a break from college. Dad asked him if he still enjoyed drawing, something he was known for. When Wardlaw said he did, Dad “convincingly” encouraged him to attend an art school in Memphis, Tennessee.

Forty-seven years later, he wrote Dad a thank-you letter.

Within weeks of their sidewalk chat, Wardlaw had enrolled at the Memphis Academy of Arts. Soon, a painting of his was part of a nationwide traveling exhibit sponsored by a New York art museum. His career took off from there. Wardlaw earned a BFA at that Academy and an MFA at the University of Mississippi. Later, he was chair of the Art Department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for 20 years.

He became a highly regarded award-winning artist with exhibits in museums and galleries around the country, including the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the National Gallery in Washington DC. In 1982 he was awarded the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award. He was not famous, but in the art world he was well respected in painting, silver work, sculpture, and a hybrid 3-dimensional form that he called “an equal marriage between painting and sculpture.”

One New York art critic wrote that Wardlaw “has produced a rich and varied body of work whose scope defies the limits of a human lifetime, an output that resonates with the insights he has gained in the spiritual quest that eventually led him from Christianity to Judaism.” (He converted in 1955.) Like me, much of his art incorporated spirituality.

He wrote to Dad that he had watched a television program about “conversation related to things that have significantly changed one’s life. I made myself a promise…that I would write to you and thank you for making the suggestion that resulted in one of the greatest and most important changes in my life. Your recommendation that I go to art school and your identifying the Memphis Academy of Arts as a place to consider set in motion for me a very happy lifelong career in art.”

Perhaps Wardlaw would have become a thriving artist anyway, but he said my Dad’s advice changed his life. He went from Depression-era poor cotton farmer to artist, scholar, professor, and mentor.

In another box, I discovered a letter somewhat similar to Wardlaw’s that I had written to Mom and Dad in 1998. I had forgotten all about it. I thanked them for a “generous gift” (that I don’t remember) and said I decided to “put into words the ways you have shaped my writing.”

I wrote that Mom had

“a dramatic flair and a gift for exuberant story-telling. You keep pictures tucked away, and I tuck away little bits of people’s stories and use them in my writing. You fill your letters and emails with delightful details that portray the small, revealing poignancies that make life so interesting, and I try to give my stories details that reveal something deeper.”

I wrote that Dad, particularly in his sermons, showed

“a gift for using story to signify something important, and, while I don’t often explicitly say the meaning of stories I tell, there is usually something important lurking in the background. You and I are both observant of people’s behaviors and mannerisms, and we both draw conclusions from them.”

I added, “All three of us have a curiosity for what is humorous, compelling, and humanly provocative.” I said to honor them I bought two hymnbooks for my church with their names inscribed in them.

In speeches and writings, Wardlaw also spoke of his parents’ influence on his craft. His father, in addition to being a gifted storyteller, bred and trained hunting dogs. To register dogs he was required to submit hand-drawn diagrams of the markings and spots in each dog’s coat. Wardlaw was “deeply intrigued” by his father’s method and the drawings he created. His mother crafted quilts, and, observing her, he learned to appreciate color, pattern, and communal art making. He also recalled boldly colorful depictions of biblical scenes on hand-held fans that Baptist church-goers swished for relief in the sweltering Mississippi heat.

Wardlaw’s letter and mine inspired me to reflect on how I may have not recognized meaningful connections between me and Dad. While he and I were cordial and never argued and family visits were always fun, the tension remained. It was a barrier that I now wish I had tried more to transcend.

I thought of tender moments between us that I may have not appreciated at the time. Among other memories, I recalled that when he officiated at my wedding, while I was reciting my marital vows I became so emotional and choked up that I couldn’t complete them. He compassionately covered for me by reading them aloud for me. It felt protective and comforting. Now I wish I had thanked him after the ceremony.

I doubt we could have resolved my feelings about his abandoning our family for a while and not explaining why or apologizing when he returned. I mentioned it to him twice over the decades, and he said little in response. Some things are painful to talk about, and I didn’t press him, even though I had many questions and felt deeply hurt. I wish both of us knew better how to heal our own selves while offering solace to the other.

We both had conflict-avoidance personalities, so a confrontation over my feelings was unlikely—even if it might have, in its awkwardness, broken open fruitful conversation. He was a fine man and widely adored pastor, and when he died, many people described him as a compassionate listener and counselor. So the disconnect was as much because of me as him.

Years after his death, I can celebrate those kind, bonding moments that happened alongside the tension. They didn’t remove it or change it, but they give me a healthier way to look back on a relationship that, like many, wasn’t ideal but was very human in its joining of two people trying to make their way through a jumble of emotions.

My letter to Mom and Dad reminded me that I did make at least that effort to connect, and that their gift was a thoughtful gesture toward me. There may be, if we think about it, little breakthroughs in these sorts of relationships that inject grace in the complexity and shine a little light on what it means to love when it’s not always easy to love.