In last week’s sermon, I gave some optional homework: “Consider taking some time to dwell on some of those essential, defining stories from your life of faith, and from your ancestors, your family, your community. How do those stories shape who you are today, how you practice your faith now, how God might be calling you in the future?”
Pete Ross emailed me that afternoon with these moving and beautiful words, which he gave permission to share with you all. I hope they’re as inspiring to you as they were to me.
My Faith Journey
My faith journey probably began before I was born when my parents debated what to name this bulge in my mother’s abdomen. My father, descended from a long line of Simon Rosses (his name was Donald), was adamant that if the child was male, he would be named Simon. My mother was against what she viewed as an “old-world” name and insisted that the male child have a more modern name. She chose her brother’s name, Bruce, a name my father disliked. So, they compromised. They named me Simon Bruce but called me Peter. So, I began life nicknamed after a member of Jesus’s inner circle.
My father was employed in a company manufacturing war materials during World War II. His wife was a stay-at-home mom to me and my sister. I was born in Chicago (in Chicago Lying-in Hospital, a facility specializing in maternity) on Sunday morning, May 26, 1940. Soon after, I was baptized in an Episcopal church in Evanston, Illinois. (There are three such, but the name St. Mark’s rings a bell.) My father attended the early service. My mother, sister and I attended the later service where I earned some hardware (a pin or two) for good church school attendance.
With the end of the war came the end of my father’s employment leading to our departure for the west coast in 1947. I remember the several days journey on the Super Chief train to Los Angeles and the drive down the coast to La Mesa (near San Diego). The air was so clear I could see the San Gabriel Mountains to the left and endless orange groves, the Pacific Ocean, and Catalina Island to the right. It was a turbulent time for our family while my father sought gainful employment. I have no firm recollection of church attendance during that time. I do remember playing checkers against my grandfather, the stroke disabled Simon Ross, on the front porch of their house that was just up the hill from ours. I also remember the many avocado trees that were on the property and the only time I ever saw my mother fat (she loved avocados).
Eventually, after being taken in by a crooked partner in a real estate firm they founded and then bankrupted when the partner stole the assets, my father conceded (strongly against his will) that his wife would have to find work to help support the family. She was hired by the United States Naval Ordinance Test Station, in Pasadena California, as an editor of highly classified operational manuals for various submarine launched ordinance about which she could never talk. My father was able to secure a job as a writer for Lockheed and we moved to Altadena, California. We attended (probably) St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. (That may be the St. Marks I thought of in Evanston.) At St. Mark’s I learned to sing in the boy-choir, rose to second lead, thought I would be lead when the lead’s voice cracked, but my voice cracked at the same rehearsal.
My father was a man of principal and would not abide what he perceived as inappropriate conduct. And so it was, in a dispute with members of St. Mark’s, he transferred our membership to All Saints, Pasadena. I loved that All Saints Church. It was beautiful, of traditional structure,
and had (maybe still does) a passageway that ran behind the altar leading to a vestry and sacristy. Serving as an acolyte, I could sneak back into that passage and appear on whatever side of the altar I was supposed to be whenever I wanted. I and my fellow acolytes had many minutes of dalliance in that passage. We also had many hours of kneeling on hard marble at the base of the altar. I guess it all balanced out. My time at All Saints was the most fun I’d ever had in church. But worship, it was not.
I was fourteen when my dad died. He was an experienced mountaineer and loved hiking in the mountains behind our home. One afternoon he went hiking and never returned. That night I had a dream. Dad stood at the foot of my bed and told me he was dead. He said I needed to support my mother and advise her to get everything out of the safety deposit box at the bank and from his desk at Lockheed before the authorities secured them. In the morning the Sheriff’s Mountain Patrol appeared on our front porch with news that his body had been found at the bottom of a cliff. I learned later that he had his mother’s wedding ring taped over his heart. She had died five days earlier of a massive stroke while riding with him on a sight-seeing trip over the mountains into the dessert.
That was when I turned my back on God.
In the years to follow I would all but destroy my right leg in a motorcycle crash, be invited to leave high school, finish high school at a private school, be accepted at the University of California, Berkeley, be invited to leave there, spend three years in the United States Army and seven years as a broadcast journalist and disk jockey. I remember attending church only once, during that period, when a friend suggested that church was a good place to meet women. It was during my broadcast career that I met Margaret Jo Maxey on a blind date. We met in November of 1966. I proposed on New Year’s Eve, we eloped and were married (by a justice of the peace) on March 18, 1967. Margaret, who I called “Peg,” had only one condition to our merger: that we attend church. She said, “The couple that prays together stays together.” She said she could be pretty much anything, so I said my background in the Episcopal Church would give me a modicum of comfort.
Slowly, skeptically, tentatively, reluctantly, I dipped a toe into the waters of faith. Like my dad, I am strongly principled, so it was easy to find fault with the humanity that made up the church and miss seeing the Christ in each one of them. That was not the case with Peg. She loved everyone (well almost) and (I believe) could see and interact with the Spirit in each one. Through her I began to perceive the Body of Christ in those who shared the pews.
We did Cursillo and then Marriage Encounter (both weekend retreats – one for individuals, the other for married couples seeking to enhance their relationships). The Marriage Encounter weekend was pivotal for me. When we were asked to become presenting team, with Peg’s cautious agreement, we accepted. We served many years, became lead couple, National Board members, and writers and presenters of a follow-on weekend. I became involved in the Episcopal Church hierarchy, serving as a member of the Diocesan Trustees, the Diocesan Council, and as a Deputy to three General Conventions (each a three-year committeemen).
In retrospect, to a significant extent, much of that involvement, from Marriage Encounter to Deputy to General Convention, was for my ego enhancement more than worship.
When we attended the third General Convention it became apparent to me that Peg’s Parkinson’s was basically confining her to the hotel, so I did not seek a fourth term. After years of being heavily involved in church my role had changed. I was to become a full-time caregiver. As Peg’s diseases (she also developed Crohn’s, had a colostomy and then an ileostomy) progressed she never lost her faith, her drive, her love, and her stubbornness. She literally radiated love. I have a picture of her in her wheelchair with the Most Reverend Bishop Michael Curry at the installation of the Eleventh Bishop of Michigan (taken by our Interim Rector, Maryjane Peck, where you can see that love in her posture and particularly her eyes.
I absolutely believe, without question, that Peg saved my life. In retrospect, my lifestyle when I met her was clearly headed to doom. I absolutely believe that Peg’s faith drew me into belief. In the blaze of her unquestioning faith, my skepticism faded, and I saw (in her first and later in those around me) the face of God. It was she, at first, and then the support group of the pastor and congregation that enabled me to see the Spirit in others and feel joy in that vision. The Sunday after she died, I attended service at St. Clare’s. I confess inattentiveness during the Sermon. My excuse was that I had a vision of Peg dancing in a field of wildflowers. She was no longer constrained by disease.