WEST VIRGINIA COUNTRY ROADS

We commented about John Denver's "Country Roads" as we were enjoying the fall colors last week on our way to Greensboro, NC to visit family---Laura and Bob. On the way we drove the country roads and hiked in New River Gorge National Park.

We spent a night at the White Horse B&B in Fayetteville, WV. We felt like we were staying in a honeymoon suite. John snapped some photos. What a wonderful place to stay if you're out that way. We walked the town in the evening and stopped by a diner for a nice hearty meal.

We had a perfect time with Laura and Bob---good conversation and food and sightseeing. Also an absolutely wonderful time at Triad Stage for the unforgettable musical, "Beautiful Star: An Appalachian Nativity." This is a series of Bible stories reenacted in modern mountain music and dialect--absolutely great acting, and sold-out performances between now and Christmas. That alone would have been worth the trip to Greensboro.

On the way down and back on the 13-hour trip, we listened to books on CD: The Quilter's Legacy and the Mermaid Chair, and here and there I managed to get some good writing done on the book---due next month! Life is just too good.

SAN FRANCISCO SUN

After a wonderful 3 day trip to San Fran, we're back in dreary Michigan. What a wonderful place to spend a few fleeting November days--though during our brief stay, a Korean tanker unloaded it's oil in the Bay. It was the talk of the town. We didn't see the damage, though when we were out visiting Alcatraz, we were prohibited from taking the lower walkway due to the oil spill. But our time wasn't all pure vacation. The reason for our trip was a research assignment for me. I've been commissioned to write an article for a Festschrift for Moishe Rosen, founder and long-time director of Jews for Jesus. We stayed at the JFJ hospitality house and each day we jumped a bus, and with one transfer we were dropped off near his home. Moishe is getting up in years and his health is not good, but we had some good times together, and I gleaned some good information for my article, which will be a historical overview, placing Moishe in the context of Christian leaders from biblical times to the present. Here is the tentative title, and the opening quote:

Lonely Prophets:
Eccentricity and the Call of God through the Ages

A genuine first-hand religious experience . . .
is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses,
the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman.
If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others,
it becomes a definite and labeled heresy.
But if it then still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution,
it becomes itself an orthodoxy;
and when a religion has become an orthodoxy,
its day of inwardness is over:
the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively
and stone the prophets in their turn.

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Here is my letter to the Grand Rapids PRESS in today's paper:

It was sad to read about Calvin College not permitting Denise Isom to find her church family with Messiah Missionary Baptist Church, a landmark faith community in Grand Rapids ("Calvin to oust Baptist prof," Press, Oct. 31). As a Calvin faculty member, she is required to join a church with the “right” Reformed theology, with no consideration for where she might find fellowship most conducive for worshipping God. Her options? She can attend a white, mostly Dutch-American church or one of the very rare Reformed multi-cultural churches in town. But Caucasian faculty are not forced into these limited options such as an African-American or multi-cultural church. The Calvin community just doesn’t get it, as I discovered when I, as the only woman faculty member (and an outsider), was hounded out of the Seminary. They just don’t get it.