Passing Through
Monday, July 14th, 2008I’ve been to some amazing places on this earth, some of them highly populated and some of them extraordinarily devoid of population. Some of those places have been startlingly beautiful, some of them have contained great works of art, and some of them have been sculpted into great works of art. I consider it a blessing to both see and appreciate all of that.
But the greatest joys of life — at least for me — involve people. So I was just a little sad this afternoon as I said goodbye (temporarily, but for a while) to Sterling Stuckey and his amazing wife, Harriette, who, in passing through the Bay Area for a season, came into my life and the life of PACC and made us all better for it.
Sterling is, in some circles, kind of a famous fellow, I suppose. He might say, with a wry smile, “Oh, I don’t know about that.” But he had stopped by the church today to give me a copy of the manuscript for his latest book, African Culture and Melville’s Art, a work that will be published this year by Oxford University Press, and anyone who can get a book like that published by a major house, let alone write it, has got something going for him.
The book’s subtitle is The Creative Process in “Benito Cereno” and “Moby-Dick.” Probably not what one would call “light reading,” but I’m looking very much forward to it.
Why? Not because the title itself interests me, although it does interest me very much, but because of Sterling.
By many of the world’s standards, one might not think that Sterling and I would have much in common. But he showed up one day at PACC, and in fairly short order we learned we had three important things in common: we love creativity and the artists who created; we love to think; and we love God.
As time went on we found out that we disagreed on a few things, too, and that enriched our friendship as much as our agreements. (See “love to think,” above.) But my point is this: my life is richer because Sterling and Harriette passed this way. I hope and expect to see them again, and look forward to it.
In the meantime, my goal is simply this: to enrich the lives of those I meet, even in places where I’m just passing through.