The Dungeon Upstairs

{Forty days in Lent, forty thoughts, room-inations, about room(s). That’s what I’m doing here. What are you doing here?}

Dungeon: “A dark, often underground, cell or chamber for confining prisoners.” The official definition. But, you notice, not always underground. The one I write of today was on the top floor of a seminary building. If that old red brick church building had had a bell tower, this would have been the tower room. A chamber, for sure. I wasn’t exactly a prisoner there, but I did some time there, and not by choice.

The highest windows provided some light to the “dungeon.”

Let me go back aways. When I entered seminary, my understanding was that my work scholarship was to be in the school’s radio station, at that time a 16,000 watt FM. I had done campus radio in college, and had in fact chosen this seminary primarily because it had that broadcast outlet. My call to media ministry was that strong. So, indeed, I received my work assignment, and there were some hours announcing at the station. But wait. What’s this? This thing about cleaning films? What films?

It turns out that part of my work scholarship included laboring within the bounds of the school’s Audio-Visual Center, the anchor of which (at the time) was the Reigner Recording Library. The shelves there included thousands of recorded theology courses, lectures, sermons, panel discussions, and the like, all on reel-to-reel audio tape. And then dubbed onto audiocassettes for convenient mailing to the school’s constituents. (Now, I suppose much of the material has been digitized.) This was an deep trove of church history and educational materials available to anyone who wanted to do continuing education, research, or personal devotions. (I’ve previously mentioned that I used cassettes of Thomas Merton’s lectures while I retreated at Holy Cross Abbey each summer. I borrowed those recordings from the Reigner Library.)

Also a part of that collection was a huge library of 16mm films, not necessarily for distribution or borrowing, but simply in storage. Many of the metal film cans contained network television programs that had been produced by or for the National Council of Churches. Somehow, our seminary had become the repository for those movies. “Look Up and Live” and “Lamp Unto My Feet” were long-running network series that again had some historical value, and unlike most of today’s media resources, these recordings were preserved for…well, mostly for preservation’s sake. They were stored in a non-descript (saves me from finding desciptors) “chamber” up a steep, dark stairway on the uppermost floor of the building. No rooms adjoined the film room, and no one would have heard our cries for help, we who were sentenced there to clean films.

Periodically, evil dust particles would penetrate the film cans, and to preserve the library of NBC and CBS films, we A-V scholarship recipients would have to rack up the reels and manually turn a crank to move the film to a take-up reel, and back again, while applying a cloth saturated with some unknown solution that would clean the film without melting it into a mass of celluloid. Boring. Not what I had signed up for.

Apparently the radio station announcing staff numbered so many guys (yes, all men back then) that we first year students had to work some of our weekly hours in the upstairs dungeon. We worked alone since there was only equipment for one operator. Though the work was routinely uninteresting, I have to admit that I was fascinated by the labels on the film cans, titles that showed the progressive nature of the then-mainline denominations. The films were primarily from the 1950s, and the topics ranged from the arms race to racial justice, from fresh interpretations of scripture to jazz performances. Those were the days when national networks donated production facilities and broadcast time as a public service. The ecumenical nature of the National Council of Churches allowed the networks to broadcast religious programs to a wide audience without being accused of aiding those church groups in proselytizing.

I guess a phone call to the seminary would answer a question that still occurs to me all these decades later: are those archived films still there? Have they been sent off to film heaven? Or, digitized to further preserve the historical content? Or, if they remain in that dungeon of a room, is there still a hapless seminary student dumping some unknown liquid onto an old sock and cleaning the films that will probably never seen the light of a projection bulb again?

I think I’d rather not know.

 

The Teaching Lab

{Each day in Lent 2024, I write of a room or just “room” itself. Today, a creative space within what was once “A Graduate Center for Educational Ministry.” I worked there.}

Before it was absorbed (“federated” was the preferred term) into what is now Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, VA, The Presbyterian School of Christian Education (PSCE) had a campus right across the road from the seminary. The two schools shared buildings, professors, and students, but had two distinct personalities. I won’t describe them here. It would take up too much space. (Well, OK…one thing, and maybe unfair– but I once compared my specific area at PSCE and the corresponding one at Union this way: I had little budget, but all the permission in the world. They had lots of money, but little permission.) Union focused on preparing future ordained ministers, and at PSCE students earned advanced degrees that would prepare them to be church educators.

I graduated from the seminary, and eventually worked at PSCE. Looking back, I realize I had many roles on that campus. Early on, the school provided me an office for my media ministry in radio. But later I became the Director of the Video Education Center. And while in that position, I was asked to teach Youth Ministry a couple of years, as well as co-teach a Media and Values course with my very good friend and colleague Dr. Chuck Melchert.

PSCE was a very special place. Yes, it was a graduate school. Classes in education, theology and ethics, recreation, and church leadership were stimulating and rigorous, plus the small student body made for a tight community of folk committed to stengthening the educational ministry of the wider church, including a global reach. (I remember how our professors and staff were so diligent in learning to pronounce the names of our international students. When one new international student student told us his name, he said, “But you can call me by an Amercian name [i.e., Tom], the prof said no, we want to learn and know your “real” name.)

On the basement floor of the central building on campus, PSCE had developed a “Teaching Lab,” a large room adapted for countless uses during the years I was there. It had been established primarily by two nationally respected educators, Locke Bowman and Donald Griggs. I wasn’t on campus at the time the project was intiated, so my facts need checking. {And they were! See below.} But Bowman came to PSCE as the past Executive Director of the National Teacher Education Project, a program funded jointly by the Lilly Foundation, the National Presbyterian Board of Christian Education and an anonymous donor. Don Griggs came to the school as a well-respected Presbyterian educator, author of several books (including Teaching Teachers to Teach and Generations Learning Together: Learning Activities for Intergenerational Groups in the Church), and a well-deserved reputation for cutting edge teaching/learning practices in church education.

The Teaching Lab was in use day and night as space for microteaching, learning centers, continuing education events, simulation games, video and technology training, and small group experiences. One student wag told me later that the name of the school should have been the Presbyterian School of Small Groups. The technology ranged from the days of Kodak Carousel projectors and overhead projectors to U-Matic video, video projection, and satellite feeds. The work in the room was as practical as it was theoretical, with students easily finding handles on how to move their learning in that laboratory to the classrooms of the local church.

Behind the camera at PSCE

When I came to PSCE to be Director of Video Education, Don Griggs was my educational mentor and also my “boss.” My department was called an “extended ministry” of the school, and Don was the Dean of Extended Ministries, as well as a tenured professor. The school’s adoption of video, when the equipment was just becoming practical and affordable for local churches, meant that PSCE could produce educational video programs to carry the school’s resources beyond the campus. One of our first projects was creating a Griggs-produced video called “The Art of Asking Questions,” helping teachers help students…to be more fully engaged, and to freely offer thoughts and ideas that may well enrich the whole class. We also produced Pat Griggs’ “The Art of Storytelling,” as well as a documentary we shot at seminaries around the U.S. about “The Pastor as Educator.”

The other purpose of our video ed program was to teach our students how to use the medium in local church settings. So students became familiar with camera work, video recorders, and some basic production and editing techniques. Remember, this was way before everyone had video cameras in their pockets!

But I digress, don’t I? This is about the room. Two memories stand out. I taught courses there in how to use video in the local congregation. And I was blind for one day’s class. As a volunteer in a Richmmond program to teach community leaders* about disabilities, I was blind-folded for the day and led to the campus and my classroom by an unsighted young man. Using our white canes we entered the Lab and I explained to the class that we’d go on as usual so we wouldn’t miss a day’s work. Someone thought the project for the day should be the students videotaping an interview with me and our guest. With blindfold removed for the next class, we could all critique it together.

I also think about teaching youth ministry in that Lab. Having space and technology there helped us explore the many facets of youth work that church educators would encounter in local churches. My co-teacher one term was an experienced educator from Australia, Christine Gapes. She was a delight to teach alongside and helped this novice build a thoughtful and creative syllabus, while adding her fresh perspective to the class. Having had many practical experiences in youth ministry, I hadn’t actually taught theory and concepts before, so Christine’s presence was personally reassuring.

I know I’m selling the Lab short here. But it’s enough to say that what graduate students learned in that environment made a lasting impression on their own ministries of education, whether in the context of the local congregation, running church camps and retreats, or even teaching in seminaries on the other side of the globe. It’s gone now, with the closing of the school. But I wouldn’t say that it will be a room full of memories, so much as it is still one of continuing influence, educational integrity, and life-long learning.

*Yes, I was deemed a community leader…just because I was on the radio!

{I knew I needed some facts checked, and Don Griggs read the above and clarified the story of the founding of the lab. Here’s part of what he just wrote me: “The lab was in fact, originally, a partnership with the National Teacher Education Project, founded by Locke Boman. However, the director of the Teaching Lab at PSCE was Donald MacInnes who was employed by PSCE and NTEP…Both of us were associated with Locke Bowman as consultants, writers, and occasional workshop leaders. Don was invited to be the first director of the PSCE/NTEP Teaching Lab…Don was very influential in me being called to PSCE as the first Director of Continuing Education and Associate Professor of Christian Education. (That’s another interesting story.) I arrived at PSCE on January 1, 1978, and Don left in June that same year. He felt the lab was in good hands after my arrival and knew its mission would carry on after his departure.”

I must add: It’s mission does carry on decades later as PSCE alums continue their roles as church educators.}

The Campus

The Merch

 

Bright Intimidation

{Lent 2024 brings the opportunity to write. I could write every day I suppose. I have lots to say and if you read these entries, you know I can be verbose, use too many parenthetical interruptions, and love commas. Nonetheless (or all the more), [told ya] I am writing on the broad topic of “room.”}

In the weeks before leaving college and driving 399 miles to Union Seminary in Richmond, I found in the school bookstore a volume entitled The Kingdom of God. I noticed that the author John Bright was a professor at Union and I’d be sitting in his classroom before long. When I enrolled in my three-year course of study at seminary, I found that Bright had also authored THE resource for Old Testament studies anywhere: A History of Israel.

Watts Hall, Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond

Sure enough, I was his student. OK, it was more like, I was a student among others in his classroom for two courses. (“His student” implies a special relationship. Far from it.) John Bright was a sturdy man, a challenging lecturer with a deep, gravel-pit voice. When I took his course in the Prophet Jeremiah, using another of his remarkable books The Anchor Bible Commentary on Jeremiah as the text, Bright became the voice of the prophet. When Bright’s throaty vocal chords intoned Jeremiah’s words, we sat up and listened…and took some notes. If I were to hear the literal voice of God someday, I’d mistake it for Bright’s.

If you think the room I write of today is that second floor lecture room in the seminary’s Watts Hall, you’d be mistaken. I write of a room more mysterious, just down the corridor. Before we enter it, I have to confess that I was a terrible student of the Old Testament, or as it is referred to these days, “the Hebrew Scriptures.” I was weak in that Biblical material in college studies, and downright anemic in seminary course work. Maybe there were just too many books in the OT. Too many details. Too many kings, prophets, and years. I took the minimum required courses in that field. The introductory survey course was inescapable, and every student had to take Hebrew in a short January term. As a third year student, having to have one more course in OT, I signed up for Bright’s “Jeremiah.” I loved Dr. Bright’s lectures, tolerated the readings, and flunked more tests than I passed.

Given the struggles I faced in Bright’s classes, in the hallway one day I asked to speak with the professor about my awful grades. He gave me an appointment, and I knocked on his office door. And I was invited into that room. I felt I was entering something akin to the Holy of Holies, behind the curtain through which mortals do not enter. The door opened, and there stood Dr. John Bright in the doorway of a darkened, cigarette smoke-filled study. That unsettling classroom lecture voice spoke surpringly gently. More startling was what the man said. “Come on in, Jeff.”

“Jeff!” Until that very moment, I had been “Mr. Kellam.” Almost all our seminary relationships were quite formal. We were all “Mr.” or “Miss” or, in a rare instance back then, “Mrs.” And calling a professor by his or her first name would be like calling your Nana “Helen,” or your mother “Bev.” It just wasn’t done! But Bright had invited me into that Watts Hall room of his calling me by my first name. And more quietly than I had heard him speak in two years of seminary life. “Jeff.”

I don’t recall much of the detail of what the room looked like, what the furniture was, or how the light beamed from window to floor. It was dark in there. That I remember. And the book shelves, and the various papers and files askew on desk and floor. I think we must have settled into heavy, comfortable chairs. I explained my difficulties in grasping the content of readings and lectures. Bright was very pastoral in his attitude toward one of his worst students. He was grateful I had sought his help, and would be happy to work with me on any further assignments. If I had had shaky knees upon entering his sacred space, I left…comforted. Relieved. Jeremiah 26:48 says, “As for you, have no fear, my servant Jacob. [or, Jeff!], says the Lord, for I am with you.” The previous verse had said, “Jacob shall return and have quiet and ease…” Jeff, too.

Well, not quite ease, but some less fear as that semester rolled on. My visit to Bright’s office did soothe my soul more than a little. And I passed, barely.

I hasten to add a note of victory here, and that I owe to John Bright as well. As seminary came to a close after three years, those of us who were headed toward ordination as ministers in the Presbyterian Church were required to take (and pass) standard exams in various fields of study, including an exegetical exam of a Biblical passage in either Greek or Hebrew. Now, my Greek was OK, but my Hebrew was, as you might expect, really weak. However, one of the passages we were to choose from in this “open book” written exam (either one in Greek or one in Hebrew) was a passage that John Bright had previously dealt with in class! And I still had my notes. So, I used that classwork to write the exam. (Yes, totally legally and ethically!)

Unlike some of my classmates, even ones with far better academic records than mine, I passed all my ordination exams on the first try. And received a letter of surprise from my home presbytery which was to ordain me. [A paraphrase: needless to say, Jeffrey, you have given us some concern throughout your academic career…but we are so pleased you have passed these exams!]

Though I long ago sold my Hebrew Bible, John Bright’s textbooks still sit on my shelf within reach. But the main thing is, I can still imagine that darkened room and a voice that called me “Jeff.”

Being gentle works!

 

Another Union Place

{Lent progresses, and I keep writing each day, with my theme this year (2022) “place.” These are personal reflections, not as “meditation” or devotional oriented as previous years, but almost every day I offer something for the reader to consider.}

My first home was in the Union District of Endicott, NY. The church where I was nurtured was Union Presbyterian Church in that village. And for graduate school, I chose Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, now known as Union Presbyterian Seminary. All I missed was going to Union College, but I couldn’t spell Schenectady.

Watts Hall, Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond, VA

Some Presbyterian ministerial students chose their grad schools for a prominent professor in the field of Old Testament studies. Or, because a renowned author of theological tomes resided on campus. Some may have chosen their seminaries because their own pastors earned their degrees at those schools. I had a different, maybe even unique, reason. Union Seminary in Richmond owned and operated a 16,000 watt FM radio station. I’ll admit that a secondary reason was its location: somewhere between my fiancée’s home near Philly and my parents’ home in Raleigh. But WRFK-FM was the main draw.

In my senior year in college, I had attended a Princeton Seminary recruiting weekend and heard two Presbyterian media producers play some new radio spots our denomination was airing. They had enlisted the comedian/satirist Stan Freberg to write and produce the PSAs, and those three 60 second spots blew me away. They were totally unlike anything any church had done previously. (Check one out at the link below.) They were bright, brassy, and funny. But made their point: a life with Church was a very good thing. If that’s what my denomination was doing, I wanted in.

I went back to my own college campus and had a role in “Waiting for Godot.” Visiting the campus that weekend was Robert Martin, Dean of Students at Union Seminary in Richmond. He was going to interview me the next morning about my application to his school, but I was afraid I might make a bad impression due to the profanity I had to utter in the play. (We were all a bit conservative in those days.) When Bob Martin saw me after the performance he exclaimed, “Well, here I am meeting the Richard Burton of the Westminster campus!” I think I was OK.

A few weeks later I got a call from Dr. Robert Kirkpatrick, a UTS homiletics and speech professor. He said he understood that I was active in campus radio, and he offered me a work scholarship at WRFK. My vocational journey had truly begun.

WRFK-FM, 1968

With my college academic background less than stellar thanks to a plethora of extracurricular temptations, I ignored the seminary darkroom when I arrived, not even asking where it was. WRFK wasn’t a recreational activity; it was my job. So, I worked my hours there each week and studied hard. The station broadcast classical music, some educational programming, and a theological lecture to end the broadcast day. Dr. Kirk (as he came to be known) had started the station with the purpose of helping students use their voices in a professional way. Being one of the schools related to what was informally called “the Southern Presbyterian church,” many students came with various southern dialects, even, um, twangs, and learning correct pronunciation and practicing an “open throat” announcing voice — well, that might help in the pulpit. Plus, the seminary earned great respect (a PR value) for being what NPR stations would become for their communities a decade later. (In fact, WRFK became a charter member of NPR in February, 1970, and increased its power to 50KW.)

I struggled with many courses, especially the Hebrew Scriptures and the Hebrew language itself, a requirement along with Greek in our denomination. Old Testament courses were also a challenge. But the seminary community was alive with fellowship, calls to social action, and creative worship, in addition to the rigorous courses in church history, pastoral care, Biblical literature, ethics, and liturgical studies. It was the mid-to-late 1960s. The white supremacist leadership of the Capital of the Confederacy was being challenged by the African-American community and the seminary crowd was among the progressive thorns in the side of the city’s newspapers and many big steeple churches. The Viet Nam war was raging, students died at Kent State, and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. Seminary students were not hiding in ivory towers, but many went into the inner city to serve alongside the poor and disenfranchised. It was quite a time for theological education.

Calling the shots in the director’s chair at WRVA-TV

My vocational goals were becoming clearer due to two media opportunities. Dr. Kirk had secured a National Council of Churches grant for a television internship my first summer in Richmond. I would be working on the floor crew of the NBC affiliate, running camera, serving as “floor director,” and also “switching” in master control. When the professional TV directors on staff learned I was in seminary, they were very happy to hand over the director’s chair for a religious hour-long program produced for the University of Richmond. “TeleCollege” was a real bore for them, so I was asked if I wanted to direct that college credit course in Biblical studies. Sure. It was a valuable experience. My summer internship grew into a parttime job in the fall, something the seminary frowned on, but I was glad for the money and the additional media experience.

It was while I was in seminary and while I worked at the TV station that I also started my rock radio program on Richmond’s top-40 station “Big ‘LEE” — WLEE. That story is told in detail in my previous blog at http://www.celebrationrock.wordpress.com — page after page of details, but fascinating reading (for some).

Probably the most notable event in my seminary career was my marriage to Joan after we had both completed a year of graduate work, she at Temple University and me at UTS. Maybe I’ll get to some stories of early marriage on campus. Maybe.

Now, as a reward for reading this far, here’s one of the original Stan Freberg PSAs that nudged me into media ministry.

Stan Freberg, PSA for the Presbyterian Church USA, c.1965

To consider: I’ve experienced many doors opening to opportunities I’d never imagined. I take them all as being part of my Call, my vocation. What doors suddenly appeared in your life? Did you leap through? Did you hesitate…too long? Not hearing an actual cosmic Voice speaking to us in our dreams or over morning coffee, what other means might God use to nudge us toward a life plan?

 

Living and Breathing Faith: Day 7

{Each day during Lent 2021 I am writing about sanctuaries, especially since we aren’t seeing many of them these days. I miss worshipping in the sanctuary of our local church, and that leads me to look back at how much many of those sacred spaces meant “home” to me. Some were home for a few years; others for an hour.}

Last year during Lent my writing theme was “windows.” And the stained glass window in this old photo was the focus of a story you can find at jeffkellam.wordpress.com/2020/04/01/ . Today, a slightly different view of that whole room.

This was the sanctuary of Schauffler Hall on the campus of Union Presbyterian Seminary. When I was a student there, the school was known as Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, and Schauffler was the home of classrooms, the radio station, the Audio Visual Center, and this sanctuary. (The whole building was radically and beautifully transformed into the seminary library a few years ago.)

During my years there, this balconied sanctuary was rarely used. Most worship services and “practice preaching” classes were held in the main administration building’s Watts Chapel, a more intimate space for daily chapel and teaching. Schauffler was the setting for an annual lecture series (“Sprunts”) and commencement, as well as special events that attracted a crowd too large for Watts Chapel.

By the time I was a student at the school, the pipe organ had long since disappeared, and a baby grand piano provided accompaniment for singing. And what singing there was! Now this was back before the majority of seminary students were women, so the hymns that filled that space were sung by male voices. Imagine a male chorus of two or three hundred strong, and that was the sound that visitors exclaimed about. When an event brought local church folk to campus and they heard men singing, well, it was something they didn’t hear ordinarily from the men meekly mumbling hymns in their congregations. Those days are over, at least in Schauffler.

Oddly, for someone who spent three years in “training” there, and another few years working on the campus, I have only three memories of that room. One was my graduation. (Again, see the link above.) Since I had missed my college graduation, a story in itself, it was important to me that my parents witnessed the awarding of my degree. Back then, it was officially a Bachelor of Divinity degree. Four years of college (a B.A.) and then three years of graduate school — and another Bachelor’s?! Not long after, a post card arrived in the mailboxes of all who had earned the B.D. informing us that the degree had been magically transformed into a Masters degree. Well, OK then. Where’s my hood?

The second memory was treating that room as nothing more than a hallway, a shortcut from one end of the building to another. One would think that a sanctuary would be a special place, even as I’ve referred to it above, a “sacred” space. A place set apart for worship of the Almighty, or to hear the holy texts read and expounded upon, or a place of quiet prayer — or lifting joyful songs. When I grew up, one didn’t treat the church sanctuary as just another room in the church. We couldn’t even have a youth fellowship dance in the fellowship hall in the basement below the worship space. You just don’t dance under that sanctuary! Even in college, the chapel seemed truly “set apart,” a place where at almost anytime, someone might be kneeling in prayer, and if you did cut through there on the way from one place to another…well, you didn’t speak and walked quietly through. And at college, that chapel was filled every Sunday night for Vespers with a choir of 120 voices and prominent guest speakers.

But for the most part, Schauffler Chapel was relegated most of the time to being just a big empty hallway, not at all a sacred venue set apart for worship.

Memory number three. I suppose I should mention the well-known scholars and theologians who read their lectures to us at Sprunts. Or, the fact that that annual lecture series was a delightful reunion time for alumni to gather and inquire about what churches might be open to their candidacy should they be ready to move. But something else leapt to mind: a talent show one Saturday night based on “A Prairie Home Companion.” It was staged in that larger space for the whole seminary community (and that included students from the neighboring Presbyterian School of Christian Education) as well as scores of “inquirers” who had been invited to campus as potential students preparing for ministry. I was one of the emcees, and I remember the laughter that filled that hall, skits and songs so funny we wiped away tears of pure joy! The scriptures say that some of the fruits of the Spirit are joy, love, faith, and peace, and they were so alive that night, in that space once set apart for worship. (Another fruit, self-control, not so evident.) So, when I see that photo, I remember the rowdy fun we had in the presence of God.

Our church has a similar “show” each year (and it will resume once we have mastered the pandemic) and there are some folks who get nervous, or downright put out, that we use the sanctuary as theater space. Everyone acknowledges that it’s for a good cause — it’s a fundraiser for One Great Hour of Sharing. But singing “secular” songs, playing jazz tunes, telling funny stories or acting out silly skits? My “Bob and Ray” routines? Not appropriate. Not at all. But I disagree. As far as I know, our sense of humor, our delight in fun, our efforts at re-creation — those gifts come from the same God whom we gather to worship in that space. I believe there’s a glimpse of heaven in smiling faces, laughing eyes, and joy-filled singing. I doubt God is too stern to welcome good-humored gifts to the altar of any sanctuary.

That photo at the top shows an empty, silent room. But you should have heard it when…

 

Lenten Windows: Darkening Jesus

During Lent 2020 I am pulling 40 pictures from my files to prompt some writing. I’d hardly call these essays “meditations” or devotionals. They are just quick thoughts that are more or less inspired by the windows I’ve photographed.

I’ve had to reduce the size of this photo due to its blur. I had a very inexpensive camera and the light was dim, and this was the result. Not a work of art, but a reminder of a time and place long gone.

The “room” is no longer there. This was the sanctuary of Schauffler Hall on the campus of what is now Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. The building still stands but the interior has been transformed from classroom and worship space to the school’s impressive “new” library. My seminary graduation took place in this sanctuary, under that stained glass window. And that day is what this entry is about.

Within the main proscenium-like arch of the chancel area are three Gothic-arched “windows.” The one in the middle holds a stained glass representation of Jesus, his arms outstretched in welcome. The other two arches were organ cases, the instrument long gone by the time I was in school. One thing to note about the actual window is that it is an interior window, with a hallway and classrooms behind it. It is lighted (or was) by fluorescent tubes. In this photo, you can see that only part of the window “works,” that is, the lower bulbs are either dim or just plain off. Jesus is seen then in what video pros call a “head and shoulders shot.”

It was 1969, and our senior class at what was then Union Theological Seminary in Virginia was meeting about the shape and direction our graduation ceremony would take. Remember the time. Viet Nam. The civil rights movement. The Martin Luther King, Jr.  and Robert F. Kennedy assassinations had been the year before. The shootings at Kent State were fresh in our class’ memory. Turmoil at every turn. At one point in our planning, thoughts moved from who our speakers would be and what hymns we wanted…to the Jesus window. “Can we keep the lights turned off?” someone asked.

Why? “Because some of us are bothered by how ‘white’ Jesus is in that stained glass. He wasn’t white; his skin color would have been much darker.” This was the first some of us had noticed the hue of this glass-faced Jesus. I don’t recall that the discussion was at all heated, but there was some give and take, not to say debate. Eventually we voted.

And the decision was that our class would ask that the fluorescent lights would remain off. That would mean the fair-skinned Jesus of the window wouldn’t stand out, and the darkened glass, for those who actually looked at his face that afternoon, would be, well, dark.

Richmond, the one-time Capital of the Confederacy, was changing. Its white establishment would, in a handful of years, cede leadership to its sizable African-American citizenry. The City Council would have black membership, and in 1977 the city’s first African-American mayor was elected. In some ways, the seminary and local Presbyterian leaders helped early on with the local civil rights movement, with the city’s evening newspaper especially complaining about the liberal extremism of the Presbytery, some seminary professors, and even our Presbyterian camp which had  integrated in the late 1950s.

We in the UTS Class of 1969 wanted to make a statement, subtle as it may have been, that we were being racially sensitive by, well, darkening Jesus. Graduation came, and the sanctuary was filled with faculty, classmates, families, and friends. And then, you know what they say about the best-laid plans? Something unexpected happened. (Tune in tomorrow…no, I’ll go on.)

As the service progressed, with carefully-crafted liturgy, inspiring speakers, loud hymns (people loved hearing seminarians sing!), the interior Jesus window remained in the “off” position. Until it didn’t. Suddenly, the window came alive with flickering fluorescents lighting up all of Jesus, top to bottom. Had someone not gotten the message? Was a rebel (pardon the expression) student responsible? Surely no one from the administration would violate the vote of the senior class.

Turns out, it was an innocent, inadvertent act. Someone standing near the entry doors of the sanctuary had rubbed up against a wall switch, an ordinary array of light switches that controlled the overhead lights, as well as the stained glass window of Jesus. The perpetrator certainly had no idea what he or she had done as Jesus lit up.

All that discussion, so deeply meaningful…that important vote among classmates…the communication of the vote to the seminary administration (and perhaps their own serious discussion about the window)… this conscientious act expressing our sensitivity to issues of racial justice… it was all undone by someone backing into a light switch.

I don’t recall that anyone flinched when the lights blinked on. I don’t think someone rushed over to turn the window off again. But I will always remember how one little thing can reverse the best of intentions.

What happened to the window when the building was gutted and renovated I haven’t a clue. If it was rescued and donated to a church somewhere, I hope on an outside wall it sees the light of day and that it doesn’t depend on artificial lighting. The Light of the World deserves better. And maybe they can tint that glass face a little darker color.