It seems I'm reaching that stage in life when mentors and teachers begin to join the communion of saints in greater numbers. In the past few years several wonderful teachers who I've encountered -- Tim Lull, Don Juel, Howard Harrod -- have died. And just this Lent two more -- Robert H. Smith of PLTS and William Sloane Coffin, who was a visiting prof when I was at Vanderbilt, have also died. You can read far better obits at the links above than anything I could write. In fact, I can't count any of the men listed above as mentors per se -- I had at most one class with each of them. . and yet their minds and spirits were bright enough that I feel blessed to have known them and real loss at the news they are no longer in the land of the living.
The burden of having learned from someone now gone is that you feel some obligation to carry something of what you gained from them forward. . . I hope I will.
