Currents of Faith: Open and Unfolding Reflections

I was the only graduate of Buhl High School to enter Idaho State College, indeed, one of a handful of young men who even went to college. So I enter alone and scared! There I was a sixteen year old walking from Ferris Hall, the freshman dorm, to classrooms around the campus wearing one of my home-made polka dot short sleeved shirts–green, yellow, or blue– tucked into my white cord trousers with rolled up cuffs. The Kid had arrived!

I had not been a devoted student, but I became one. There were two reasons for this change. First, I was not at all sure I could make it in college and second, after I turned eighteen the Twin Falls draft board would be watching over my shoulder at my grades to see if I might be a candidate for the war in Korea, raging for three of my college years.

Another part of my past emerged. I decided that since I was baptized Methodist as an infant and my father was nominally Methodist, that I must be one too, a simple, unreasoned choice, but in retrospect a beginning. I entered the Pocatello Methodist Church. The transforming event was emotional: hearing the organ music in the sanctuary and feeling “deep calling unto deep.” I could not describe or explain at the time what occurred within me. Something from my depths was awakened by the rich waves of majestic vibrations. I was touched, moved, tears welled up in my eyes. A movement, more like a release, flowed in my depths through the dense layer of unthinking above it. Music became my introduction to faith. The divine, who I had not recognized before, not even as a shadow, was taking form. It would take me years to understand this moment and the faith to which I was called.

I joined the church choir and sang throughout my college years. Early in my freshman year I was lured again. A poster invited students to audition for the ISC A Cappella Choir. As I looked, another freshman youth, whose mother was a professional gospel singer, encouraged me to try out. To that young man I continue to remain grateful. With shaking knees and sweaty palms I took the leap and stood before Wesley Harris, the choral director. I had no previous musical training with the exception of piano lessons at age five and later in grade school. Indeed, there was no musical ensemble on the cattle ranch. I was accepted and was placed in the bass section where I stood for four years, beginning with the community performance of The Messiah that fall. In recent years I have heard many stories about how persons come to faith and realize that my initial pathway was auditory, music.

Dr. Edson Fichter, a zoology professor, was the advisor to Wesley Foundation, a fellowship for college youth. He was an important mentor and model, a scientist with faith, as I was considering my new faith. I was not one of those college students who has earlier beliefs shattered by the new knowledge of science and the humanities. I was taking science classes—biology, zoology, botany, inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry—at the same time I was exploring faith.

I learned that the pharmacy students were among the elite on campus, proudly wearing slide rules on their belts. They were surely to be distinguished from other students who did not have the heavy load of three to four labs a week. I was proud to be among them and worked hard to stay there. Gradually I began to respect my own capabilities, especially my capacity to memorize and retain material. I would become one to whom classmates would come asking, “Bob, what answer did you get for number four?” I was gradually creating The Intellect within me. The Kid, always two years behind the others, began to use that fact to gain attention. I would enjoy telling others my age and delight in their disbelief, pulling out my driver’s license to clinch my case. The Show Off was created. “Look at me. Look at me. See how special I am. Look at me!”

The music continued to play in the depths of my being while I learned about how to extract oxygen in the chemistry lab and dissect a frog in zoology lab. After a year of study in pharmacy, initiation into the professional pharmacy fraternity, Phi Delta Chi, and a summer in Jackson Hole, Wyoming as a soda jerk at Lumley Drug, I had second thoughts about my career. Late in my sophomore year I decided that this profession was not for me. I was heartened that the faculty strongly urged me to stay, yet I could not. I knew what I did not want, but certainly not what I did want. I had not yet discovered my heart’s desire. I was not at all sure how I wanted to create myself. I thought perhaps education and enrolled in several courses in my junior year, then gradually came to ministry. The rhythms of music were stronger and deeper than the laboratories.

One Sunday morning I stood between the church building and an old garage now serving as a classroom. I had just finished successfully teaching a class of fifth and sixth graders, which usually meant that you kept them inside the room and an even greater success if they stayed in their seats most of the time. In this time and at this place, I chose to believe in God. I made a decision to complement the emotion I had felt earlier. I knew about laboratory experiments in which you try out something to see what would happen. Researchers hypothesize and run experiments to seek results. I would do the same, try and see. I ushered in decision, my volitional part, to my spiritual quest.

This transition from laboratory to ministry was not a total surprise. I had awakened to another realm, community. People liked me, cared about me and valued me. I basked in this attention, could not get enough of it. I gradually became involved in religious activities, moving into leadership roles: president of Wesley Foundation and the College Religious Council, and counselor for the high school Methodist Youth Fellowship. In looking back, the combination of the mystery of the music and the richness of the community called me not only to be a part of the church but also be at the center of the church.
 
I really liked the church youth and they liked me. Many were only two or three years younger than I. So it was with Alice, a beautiful, friendly and gracious young high school junior. I became infatuated with her, was greatly attracted to her. My responsible side told me that a leader does not become romantically involved with a group member. I listened, but my feelings toward her did not. Later, when I was engaged to be married, I still longed for Alice and wanted to break free and seek her out. My responsible side won again. Alice would appear frequently in my imagination and once again later in my life.
Perhaps she was a later transformation of the tender woman comforting the lonely boy at Albion.

The Rev. Harold  Hebblethwaite, known to college youth as Hebby, was pastor after my freshmen year and I came to truly love him. He was not only mentor and friend, he was like a parent to me, becoming the caring father I had never experienced. He offered me  encouragement and affirmation. How new it was, how good it felt! I thought: I will be like Hebby, affirming and encouraging to others while standing in the center of the community.

I completed study for a Local Preacher’s License and obtained that credential after appearing before a licensing committee. I was encouraged by the committee to leave my college and enroll at Willamette University, a Methodist school in Salem, Oregon. I simply could not bring myself to leave my community, but rather hastened to graduate in four years, waiving some courses while majoring in sociology and minoring in political science. It was difficult and a close race.

After earning my preaching license I was designated as Assistant to the Minister of the church, while continuing my role as youth counselor. My mother was not that excited about my plans to enter the ministry: “Are you sure, Bob?” How could I answer such a question? To the degree that I knew my own self, Yes! I was. My eyes were set now toward Garrett Biblical Institute in Evanston, Illinois and a career in the Methodist ministry. I had come a long way from the sixteen year old freshman with polka dot shirts who thought magically that he was a Methodist.

As a junior I met Patty in class. She illustrated a refreshing difference between the humanities and pharmacy, where there were two women students in our class. She was a freshman who spoke Spanish with a Southern accent. She was attractive, studious, and active in Wesley Foundation. Our dating was usually studying together in the library. Later we would both lead youth groups in the church. Since her parents lived in the community, we spent time regularly in their home.

In my final two years on campus I engaged in several diverse arenas, head dishwasher at  Graveley Hall, the girl’s dormitory, president of the junior class, and a member of the college  student council. In addition, I had a rather unusual part-time job for a college student, assisting at a local funeral home owned by Jack Henderson, a prominent church member. My task was to drive the hearse in the funeral procession to the cemetery with the officiating pastor in the passenger seat. I would vacuum the carpets and dust the hearse before and after a funeral. During the service I would be available with a small vial of smelling salts in my jacket pocket, ready in case a grieving family member would faint.

The summer following my junior year I lived for two weeks in the apartment at the funeral home, located on the same floor as the casket room and above the embalming and viewing rooms. Shades of my past! This situation called forth the complex of feelings I experienced playing in the basement following my father’s death, except now there were real bodies in real caskets. I endured the two weeks!

June, 1953 was a momentous month. I graduated with high honors on June 1, married Patty on June 10, and celebrated my twentieth birthday on June 17. I had been accepted at Garrett Biblical Institute and received a scholarship. Patty and I were living in the apartment at the Student Union, a plum offered to two responsible students. Life was good! In the fall I would be in theological school and Patty would be a junior at Northwestern University.

July shattered the glow! Less than three weeks after officiating at our wedding, Hebby was found in a sexual situation with a woman in a poor neighborhood of Pocatello. He was quickly taken to Idaho Hospital South, a psychiatric facility. Jack Henderson, then the lay leader of the church, affirmed to me that the charges made in the  newspaper article were true. I drove to the hospital in Blackfoot, but was told by the attending psychiatrist that I could not see Hebby. Nor did I ever see him again. My model and father-figure was broken and gone. I was devastated. It was a shock akin to that of my father’s death.

Amazingly, I, a twenty year old with a local preacher’s license, was the one who preached each Sunday and served as pastor of the second largest church in Idaho for the remainder of that summer. Did I ever feel like The Kid! Looking back, I marvel at this. Today a team of trained persons would come quickly to the church to both listen and comfort while the wisest, most mature pastor would be called, even if temporarily from retirement, to lead that congregation through its crisis and help it heal.

In my shattered state I simply could not go on to theological school. It would have made sense for me to take a year off, but the draft board made that form of recovery impossible. I had been granted a student deferment for two years and would now be fully eligible to fulfill my obligation to my country in the military. As one who was starting a new marriage and reeling from a loss of direction and a cherished mentor, I would not have been a good recruit. I rather think that I would have been dangerous with a weapon.

I sought a way out. My former sociology instructor found an opening for me in the graduate school program at the University of New Mexico, where I would spend the next year earning a Master’s Degree in Sociology. My hastily developed career plan was that I would teach sociology in a college. Ministry was set aside, little knowing it would not remain there.

I quickly changed my directions, both educationally and geographically, sociology not ministry, Albuquerque, not Evanston. In Albuquerque, I was a full time graduate student and Patty worked at the city water department. There I discovered a vastly different terrain, sand everywhere, especially in the wind, red sunsets painted across the flat horizon, and the wonderful scent of burning mesquite wood. I encountered cultures which previously I had only read about, Hispanic, Pueblo Indian, and Navajo. Here I first learned that I, too, had a name: Gringo! I recall with delight a visit to a pueblo where among the costumed characters played by dancers was the anthropologist fully arrayed in pith helmet and khaki garb.

Though I had been shattered, I had not lost my faith and we sought a church. We found Central Methodist Church near the campus and became a part of a young adult group composed of single and married students along with young men in the Air Force stationed at nearby Sandia Air Base. We entered a home away from home, enjoying great fun, wonderful fellowship and new friendships. Each Sunday evening a vesper service was led by Dex, The Rev. Roland Dexter, the associate pastor. As the lights were dimmed and the soft organ music began, he would announce, “It’s prayer time.” In my mind, I can still hear his voice speaking those words. Even today I cherish those quiet times for deeper reflection, for I believe that it was at the altar on those evenings that my healing began. The lure which first called me to faith was still quietly surrounding my being—the organ music. And there was community.

I was the Energizer Bunny at the university, finishing my class work in one academic year and my thesis by the end of summer. My research, using content analysis, was focused upon “The Stereotype of the Indian in the New Mexico Press,” and led me to the archives of the Albuquerque, Gallup, and Taos newspapers.

As I neared the completion of my Master’s Degree program I applied for admission to the doctoral programs at several universities. A professor of sociology needs to have a Ph.D. after his or her name. I was admitted to The Ohio State University but they could not offer me a fellowship or a graduate assistantship, assuring me that those doors could open after my arrival.

Then came a disturbing and later delightful event. In late summer my mother came to visit and join us on a short trip into Mexico. She brought with her an envelope which she had received at her Twin Falls address about two months before. Thinking it an advertisement, she set it aside to bring with her later. The return address read Michigan State College and the letter within offered me a Predoctoral Fellowship of $2000. Needless to say I was exasperated with my mother and ran quickly to the nearest pay phone. With great relief I learned that the offer was still in effect! In that moment my next destination quickly changed from Columbus, Ohio to East Lansing, Michigan. With this financial assistance, Patty could finish her last two years of college while I pursued a doctorate in sociology.

Packing up our belongings we made our way back to Idaho to visit Patty’s family before  re-packing and heading East. It was in Pocatello in 1954 that we watched our first television programs, black and white images flickering across the small screen below the rabbit ears. Given our busy schedules ahead we would not see even those primitive images for a long time. I told everyone that I was going East to school, finding that after driving five days and arriving at our destination we were still in the Midwest.

The colleges I attended were increasingly larger, ISC at 1,500 students, UNM at 3,000, now MSC at 15,000. The size of this new campus was overwhelming and even worse the parking lot for new students was a long distance from classrooms. We first found an apartment some distance from campus, but later learned that the Student Ministries was seeking a couple to be custodians for College House, a meeting place directly across Grand Avenue from the campus. We jumped at this opportunity. Our apartment was on the third floor. Here we were again, from residents of the student union at ISC to custodians of College House at MSC.

Throughout the year I became increasingly dissatisfied with studying sociology. I now see that the divine lure can take many forms, including a growing realization that where you are is not right for you. I slowly gained, or more likely regained,  the awareness that I wanted to work with people not study them. When I told my academic advisor he literally ran to the next office to place another name by a graduate assistantship that was to be mine. That day I walked down the hall in the same building to the office of counseling and guidance, surely, among the most fruitful steps I ever took. Not only was I welcomed and admitted to this department, but in a short time I was offered a graduate assistantship. I would now spend twenty hours a week working in that office. What a relief, what a joy! I had found a home!

I was delighted with my classes, the instructors, and especially with a new found mentor, Dr. Carl Rogers. Through studying his theories of Client-Centered Counseling I came to value the importance of listening. My final two years I had an internship at the student counseling center, where most of the faculty had been either colleagues or students of Dr. Rogers. I found the highlight of my education to be counseling with students while being supervised. The methods of active listening and showing respect for the speaker clearly fit who I wanted to be. It meant empathizing, entering the world of the other, walking in the other’s garden, which naturally involved accepting diversity. I am not the other, the other is not me. We are different and both of us may be enriched by this encounter. Little did I know then that this was wonderful preparation for understanding the God who had been empathizing with me for years.

Alice entered my life again. She and two other friends visited us in East Lansing. I became so distraught during the night that I went to where she was sleeping and began talking with her, telling her of my long term feelings for her. I was astounded when she replied to my earlier desire to date her. “Why didn’t you ask?” That question drove me to psychotherapy. Was Alice a person with whom I might have partnered and I was too cowardly to take the risk? Was she simply the refuge I sought at times when my marriage relationship was not satisfying? Was she the imaginary caring woman who lovingly carried me as a twelve year old at Albion now reappearing in a new form?

Great timing! As counselors in training, we were encouraged to have the experience that clients have with us, to know first hand what that is like. In the process we would also know ourselves better and not allow our unique qualities and needs to distract us from our clients’ needs. I began to explore those earlier parts of me, especially the Lonely Rescued Boy reawakened by my talk with Alice, but also the Coward as he transformed into a reluctant leader and The Kid who was using his age to gain attention, thus creating The Show Off. For two years I struggled with my present issues and my mixed past. I remain grateful to Dr. Norman Bryce and Dr. Paul King for their caring and expertise.

My education was interrupted by an obligation. I was fast approaching my twenty-fifth birthday, which hurled me to a choice-point. I would need to fulfill my military obligation. Would it be seeking a commission as an officer, spending two years as an enlisted man, or entering the “six-months program” which was open to persons aged 18 to 25? Six months of active duty would be followed by five and one-half years in the active reserves. I chose the option with the shortest active duty time and began visiting the reserve units of the various branches of the service. The Army quota was full, the Navy was full, the Air Force was full, the Marine Corps was open. In my wildest dreams I had never imagined myself as a Marine. Yet, on July 4, 1958 I flew from Michigan to Parris Island, South Carolina to begin boot camp. I signed my name. It became the last decision I would make for six months. I told myself, “I can take anything for six months.” I ate those words daily in the heat of the parade grounds. My experiences in the Corps will be expanded later. In later years I found a silver lining: I would know from personal experience what my veteran clients endured.

Ironically, after I enlisted we found that Patty was pregnant and I would not have had to enter the service. She had finished her degree in history and was now working as a secretary in the Mechanical Engineering department on campus. She endured the difficulties of the pregnancy while I was sweating on Parris Island. I returned in January and Judith Anne Brizee was born February 15, 1959. I completed my Ph.D. that August.

My first position was at Washington State University as a staff counselor and instructor in psychology. We lived in a small pink house on campus reserved for faculty and graduate students. Life seemed normal now. Patty was parenting Judy and I was engaged in a career that I had worked toward for ten years. We set about to buy a newly constructed tract home and we were in the process of becoming pregnant again. All this normalcy would be threatened during my first year, at age 26, when one day my urine ran red. This sobering event will be explored later.

In the counseling center, there were nine persons; four were named Bob! My professional activities were varied: I supervised counseling interns, taught study skills to athletes, engaged in research, facilitated a graduate counseling course in the summer quarter, spent most hours in counseling and psychotherapy, and gradually became known as the one to call if your residence hall, fraternity or sorority  wanted a speaker for a special event.

I was also actively involved in preparing for my professional future. My new career plan was to become a director of a university counseling center. Part of that preparation was seeking an ABPP behind my name, becoming a diplomate in counseling psychology accredited by the American Board of Professional Psychology. I learned that the first step was to become a licensed psychologist in my own state. Thus began a year of early morning study and auditing those psychology classes I had not taken in my training, since my degree was in the college of education.

It was a snowy day that several of us made the trip to Seattle to take the written psychology examination. I sweat blood for three hours and was completely drained afterwards. I felt a real sense of pride when I learned later that not only had I passed but had scored among the highest taking the exam. My arduous early morning study had paid off. I was now a Psychologist and was issued License  No. 5 in the state of Washington.

Working with high school youth at Simpson United Methodist Church, I began to hear again the call to ministry ten years after the earlier call. I related well to youth, I was a good speaker, I loved to counsel, I thrived in the community of the church, and yes, I continued to sing in the choir. I thought that those qualities would fit well with becoming a counseling psychologist on a large church staff. Dr. Robert Albertson, a professor in the religion department of the University of Puget Sound said, “You need a year of theological school and the one to go to is the School of Theology at Claremont.” After four years in Washington we sold our house two days after putting it on the market, searched for a job in southern California, prepared to pack the U-Haul truck and head south. California here we come!