14/50: George, pt. 1
“Hold me fast, hold me fast
’Cause I’m a hopeless wanderer”
Like parents, pastors are not supposed to have favorites, and on record, I do not have favorites. But over the decade I’ve been a pastor, I’ve had some beautiful friendships with a few men older than my father who are former fundamentalists. I ask the questions they have lived, we share the grief of leaving a childhood faith, and their affirmation has comforted the grief that I bear in leaving the evangelical spaces of my childhood and losing the comfort of a tradition that nurtured me as a child.
A few years ago, George passed away after 90 some years. He was an early innovator in the Silicon Valley and pioneered many inventions in computer science that propelled the industry forward in its early days. He had an enormous intellect — taking courses in everything from foreign languages, mathematics and philosophy at Stanford University until he died. And George was a regular in the Adult Education group that meets before church every week at Valley Presbyterian Church. He was opinionated, at times, cantankerous, and proudly so. He didn’t help foster effective small group dynamics.
George was at best agnostic about the reality of God. Growing up with a legalistic religion that rejected science, he preferred to put his confidence in science and mathematical proofs. But George was also a lover of poetry and immersed himself in beauty. He would take me to lunch and we would share theological questions and ideas. When George passed, his wife Anne, a dear friend and modern day mystic, invited me to preach at his memorial service.
My personal opinion is that no one comes to a wedding or a memorial to hear a sermon and so I keep them pretty short. Here’s what I said at George’s service:
Knowing George as you all do, you likely do not envy my job today: to speak an appropriate word of faith from my role today as the “religious professional.”
George was not known as a man of confident and assured faith in God and the Bible. Instead, he was known as a person who questioned everything. His favorite place here at Valley Presbyterian Church was in the Sunday morning Adult Education group, which he attended nearly every Sunday. He was known in that group for asking pressing and difficult questions as they discussed faith and religion. And I don’t think he would mind me saying – George was not confident in the existence of God, but he was confident in his struggle with faith.
However, you would be mistaken to think that I wished George had been more compliant or easier to figure out. Instead, I found a fellow companion on the faith journey in George.