stay pure and show up
by pat beebe

He was an enveloping kind of man. Of average height and build, George somehow filled up the room, hugged without touching, warmed with his smile, cheered with the resonant thunder of his laughter, reassured with the confidence of his simple faith.

He went about applying salve to wounded spirits, sheltering children of the town drunk, persuading a distraught women to live another day, comforting every sad soul.

Do what’s important, he said, not what’s urgent.
Be the head, not the tail.
Anything worth doing is worth doing well.
Stay pure and show up.

Yes, Daddy.

He didn’t look like a minister, people said. As a young man, he was exquisitely handsome – dark wavy hair, deep dimple crevices in apple cheeks, pale blue eyes, an aristocratic nose that ended sharply above a wide sensuous mouth, clean shaven (though I seem to remember a pencil moustache for a few weeks in the ‘60s). He relished the latest fashion, interpreted with a bright slash of color – pleated pants and wide flamboyant ties in the ‘30s, single breasted suits and narrow flamboyant ties in the ‘50s, leisure suits and wide flamboyant ties in the ‘70s. He changed shapes with the decades – from slender to roly-poly and back again, ending up at 69 with the slim, gaunt look of a jogger who ran six miles a day. Women loved him. Until the end, the mobile home park widows kept hoping he’d outlive my mother.

Counting Sunday nights and Wednesday prayer meetings – even subtracting four weeks a year for vacations – he delivered well over 5,000 sermons during 40 years of ministry. They were handwritten in bold vertical strokes that only he could read, atop a desk strewn with books, papers, letters, lists of people and things to pray for, and his calendar – a random assortment of notes on old church bulletins and envelope backs. God’s love was his stock in trade, but a dose of hellfire and brimstone, punctuated by an occasional fist to the pulpit, kept his congregations from complacency.

The routines of his life were orderly if his desk was not. Three cups of coffee before breakfast, at his desk by nine, lunch at noon, dinner at five-thirty. Mornings were for study and sermon preparation. Afternoons for visiting the sick, the sorrowing, the needy. Evenings were for meetings – deacons’, trustees’, the music committee, the finance committee, the missionary board, Wednesday night prayer. He was rarely home. And when he was, he was always on call. Any routine was interruptible for suffering souls. Sometimes he brought them home, mostly the ones with empty stomachs and empty pockets. They departed with our food in their tummies and our money in their pockets and we seldom saw them or the money again.

His heart was strong as a 25-year-old’s. As if to prove it, he died of a 25-year old’s disease. Aplastic anemia, the doctor said, rarely happens to people beyond their 30’s. At his funeral, thirteen ministers lined the front of the church and we sang Crown Him with Many Crowns and Victory in Jesus. “It should be a celebration,” he said, “you can miss me but don’t wish me back.”

But I do, Daddy. I miss you and I wish you back.

Pat Beebe moved to Asheville from Westchester County, New York, in late 2000. In 1989 she had left a 15-year IBM corporate communications career to venture into the world of freelance, handling writing and other corporate assignments in the U.S., the Far East, Europe, and South America. In March 2003 she and a partner established Carolina Image Builders, a public relations agency based in Asheville. [ 828-687-0077 ]