A man I deeply loved, but whom I only briefly met, died this week and it makes me very sad.
Willliam Sloane Coffin was the kind of man that made me believe in America and made me believe in the church. There are only a few of those folks around (some of them even read this blog) and I consider myself abundantly priviledged to have gotten to meet even a single one of them. Some (a very few) I have even gotten lucky enough to call my friends. Bill wasn't one of those… but there are many times when I feel like he was.
The first time I met Bill Coffin I was at a "refugee conference" in Tucson Arizona. There were many strange things about that weekend in Tucson… Not the least of which was going with my then lover to see The Talking Heads concert film (directed by Jonathan Demme) "Stop Making Sense" at a theater where in high school I had gone with a then girlfriend, to see the musical "You're A Good Man Charlie Brown." There were several other weird experiences on that trip and it was the last time I entered the city limits of Tucson… When the week was through, I really had no desire to ever go back.
"Same… as… it… ever… was."
I was there for the first time since I had graduated from the University of Arizona. I was there because the conference I was attending was a church conference, and in Tucson I had been very active in the church… but the only people I knew at the conference - just around the corner from where my grandmother had lived, and just a few blocks from a big Baptist church where I had spent an enormous amount of my time - were from California. I had gone to jail with some of these folks… the folks I had gone to church with in Tucson were nowhere to be seen... "Same… as… it… ever… was."
The conference was on immigration and refugees, and I was in from San Francisco where I had developed a small reputation with people that I worked with for being "the guy who said 'no' to Bank of America." I didn't think it was a big deal, because it was really based on the simple fact I didn't want to subject some of the people that I was employing at the time to the idiotic, capitalistic grandstanding of a project I was being asked, by the bank, to produce. I had actually said NO to a whole lot of people and things at the time (including the IRS, the State Department, the INS, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Southern Baptist Convention), but in Tucson I met the real thing… Bill Coffin stood up before us and shouted in that Bronx Preacher accent that we were CALLED damnit… CALLED to stand up for the people who could not stand up for themselves. And he proved it… He had been there… He was one of the real ones. He stood and stood and stood... until finally toward the end, he really just had to sit.
At the same conference, another of my life's heros, Elie Weizel, stood up and made the statement that has come to define large parts of my life and psyche ever since… "NO PERSON CAN BE ILLEGAL." I will never forget that moment… and I will never forget that phrase. It, perhaps more than any other set of words, has defined what I believe about responsibility, citizenship, and personhood for the last 25 years.
"Same… as… it… ever… was."
On another occasion, I had the opportunity to hear William Sloane Coffin in his home church, that big grand amazing building that Rockefeller built on Riverside Drive as much as a memorial to himself and to money as it is to God… but Coffin (like so many other preachers in that pulpit) seized the moment and stole the show, speaking truth to power and suffering no fools, gladly or otherwise.
Recently, as a result of that little storm from last summer (remember Katrina?), I have of late had the opportunity to meet with, visit with, and break bread and fish with another of those heros that make me who I am. Dr. C. T. Vivien. A man who walked the roads and stood the lines with Dr. King, who calls me (and just about everybody else) "Doc" and loves to talk about church, and preaching and Jesus… while also talking about the great paintings on the walls, and the great food that comes out of the kitchen, of Dukie Chase's restaurant in New Orleans. When I sit to dinner (or in the car on a ride like hell's fury to catch a plane out of NOLA) with C.T. I am simply in awe; I experience the moment like one of my favorite scenes in the movies when Jack Nicholson looks at "his girls" in The Witches of Eastwick and says to his dog… "see what humans can do?" When I'm with C.T. I find he calls my mind to another Son of the South, a man who I have had great conversations with on the phone, but whom I have never met in person, Brother Will D. Campbell. He's another one of those folks that gets under my skin and makes me want to suck meaning out of every moment I've been given on this planet. I'll never get to that place... but it's one hell of a ride tryin' out the path.
I just want to thank all y'all… But… tonight… especially I want to thank Bill. You - a Presbyterian - made me a better Baptist, a better American, a better man, and a better human being. A dear friend of mine recently had the opprotunity to get to know Bill as a friend... I envy him that oppportunity, but I'm glad he had the chance. As I look up from my computer and out the window across the city, the big bright moon shines right in my face and it feels like Bill's come by to check up on me.
Here's to ya Preacher Coffin... I hope the beer's cold… the music's good and the conversation's as spicy as ever.
