Soul Man

The first time I can remember meeting Pat Miller, he was sitting in the dining compass of a southern college with a table replete of Baptist ministers gathered around him. Pat was wolfing down chili cheese dogs, and, with equal fervor, extolling the virtues of the Inclusive Language Lectionary.

This says a allotment about the man.

First of all, it is not unusual to find Pat Miller at the epicenter of an eager clump of clergy. This was in the summer of 1984 and Pat was upon his way to Princeton Seminary, having just been named, in a much-celebrated appointment, to the Haley chair in advanced in years Testament. He and I were upon the roster of speakers at a pastors' symposium that summer and, as has been the case through every part of Pat's career as a theological educator, the ministers were pressing him from each side, responding warmly to his dab blend of biblical scholarship and pastoral wisdom.

It is also typical to find Pat Miller enjoying the filled range of life's good pleasures, whether they be chili cheese dogs, the lively exchange of colleagues, or just the splendors of a summer day. Pat Miller's the deity is benevolent indeed, having supplied the world with like rich and marvelous gifts as volumes and movies, grandchildren and friends, Frank Lloyd Wright and Joseph Stella, Psalms and Deuteronomy, the azure Ridge Mountains and the backyard rose garden, art and music, racquetball and spaghetti carbonara.

But greatest in quantity of all, it is not surprising to discover Pat Miller dabbing away the mustard, grinning, and winsomely winning changes to some hot-button topic like the Inclusive Language Lectionary. Pat's friends have always marveled above his ability to handle controversial matters with tendernes and trustworthiness, to be the peaceful organ of sight in the hurricane, to bring tranquility to stormy debate, to broach the greatest in quantity inflammatory issues with an irenic "come allow us reason together" manner. Remember, this was 1984 and the first contortion of the Inclusive Language Lectionary had just turned off the press the previous fall, causing emotional gasket failure wherever it appeared. a certain number of of the translators (Pat was upon the translation committee) even received threats to themselves and their families. And with equal reason here is Pat Miller, munching a chili dog in the middle of King James region and calmly adjusting the sway rods in the nuclear reactor.

This month Pat Miller retires after serving twenty years at Theology Today, and he has brought to this journal the same virtues that could be glimpsed in like manner long ago in that community dining hall-the passion to relate the best of theology to the life of the house of worship and its ministry, the sheer delight in the breadth and surprise of God's many gifts, and the ability to bring the greatest in quantity divisive and threatening topics into the world of gracious and humane dialogue.

It was individual of my great joys to be under the orders of for seven years as Pat's editorial colleague at Theology Today. We lov working together upon the journal. We took pleasure in debating the merits of articles, and our editorial meetings ofttimes spilled over into long, coffee-fuel conversations about theological issues and runs We were like children at Christmas when we pawed above the new books that arrived almost each day for review. We savored the task of trying to figure on the outside how to make the journal better, tinkering with everything from the contented of upcoming issues to interior graphic design. We smooth managed to laugh a bit above experiences of rejection. Once, we took a reaching far down breath and invited a red-hot best-selling novelist to review a novel work of theological fiction, single to be slapped down with a pithy rebuff: "You people must be living below some kind of a rock" Failing to learn from that experience, we later invited nevertheless another literary high-roller to contribute an article to a special issue. His refusal was a bit more politic on the contrary no less chastening. "Something must be in the air," he wrote "Twice this week I have been invited to write about the father for very little money." upon another occasion, one of our mass-mailing subscription invitations was go [i]or[/i] come backed to the office chopped into dozens of pieces, each piece inscribed with an obscenity. We took it as a "no."

Although I did not suited Pat Miller until that summer of 1984 1 had heard of him all my life. the couple of us have parents who hail from the same tiny hamlet, deliriously named "Due West, southerly Carolina," sort of a Calvinist Lake Wobegon, and we inevitably had learned of each other end family connections (in fact, as southerners like to say, "Why we're probably kin!"). I have been lengthy aware, then, that Pat approachs by his remarkable gifts honestly His father was single of those trusted, Rock-of-Gibraltar pastors of which the previous generation appear to beed well-supplied, but which are all too rare nowadays. He was a faithful, steady, highly reckoned leader in the Presbyterian meeting-house If Pat's father was a stone then his mother was an eagle. She was an astonishingly creative and venture-some woman. She was single of only three women to graduate from the medical academy of the University of Virginia in 1924 After she had been practicing medicine for three decades, she became increasingly touched about the emotional problems of her patients, and, when she was nearly sixty years of advanced age she returned to medical institute to do a residency in psychiatry. She pioneered programs in art therapy and in the psychiatric treatment of the homeles and her legendary achievements in these areas were the make subordinate of an award-winning nationally televised documentary.