I hope to live up to…

Moving enables me to look through long kept stuff. When I left employment at Kent State University, among the good folks of Undergraduate Studies (who I still miss, today) for seminary in NYC, they sent me off with a lovely bound folio of written remembrances and well-wishes. My dear friend, Amy Quillan (now Dr. Quillan, PhD.), with whom I shared a great deal during our graduate studies and life at Kent afterward, wrote a long bit to me. One paragraph probably hits closest to my hopeful self-perception (or self-delusion, depending on who one talks to), and here it is (a bit of self-indulgence, if I may):


“You are a man of vision and passion, a lover of life, and a tenacious pursuer of the greater good. And you unabashedly call others to that great good, too, challenging and encouraging them to think, reflect, and ponder, and maybe change for the sake of a higher calling. You’ve done that for me, and I am forever grateful.”


I guess if one is to have a legacy, what Amy wrote about me, then, would be a pretty darn good one to have. I can only hope that I have lived up to her perception of me over the passing years, and now live even more fully into such a way of being. With a bit of self-reflection, I have to admit that I’ve missed the mark, but my hope is that I will be such a man for the rest of today and tomorrow and the remainder of my life.