A Run-in with History Monday, May 9th I am pretty involved with my local Euclid Av. United Methodist Church particularly as chair of the African T/F which supports ICA Zimbabwe HIV/AIDS and another project in South Sudan. So today is the Northern Illinois Methodist Conference and the Conference asked if I would do a table on our African work. Sure. So go to Conference that has about 1,000 people. Get table set-up and people stop by. Lunch comes and my pastor and the Euclid delegation ask me to go to lunch..sure, as they had a Conference special at Culver’s across the street. We go over and get in line which goes out the door. I am sort of not listening but know my pastor is speaking to two older men behind her. Suddenly, I hear them talking about Paul Tillich and You are Accepted. I look at the man talking and he has a retired pastor badge on. I said I had been with the Ecumenical Institute and knew the paper. The pastor said he had the paper in his brief case and carried it with him always. He asked if we could sit together along with his friend who turned out to be a seminary professor. This retired pastor (Thomas Babler) said he had actually met Joseph Mathews in Singapore. He was a seminary intern in Singapore when Mathews came there. Thomas was in a group of about 8 people who met with Joe. Two of the people in the meeting were from the Singapore House. They sat in a circle and Joe asked them to stand and he proceeded to walk around the circle and stand facing each of them, staring deeply into their eyes. As he stood facing you he would breath very deeply.. the pastor said it was like he was breathing spirit into you Then Joe gave a talk. The one thing that stood out for Thomas is that Joe said they were going to put a religious house in each of the 24 time zones around the planet Now the older seminary professor said he had actually been at Union Seminary when Tillich was a professor and heard Paul Tillich give the You Are Accepted sermon at Union. Amazing what can happen over a lunch The next Day I happened to be in an office of a friend of the Institute and on his wall he had what is an appropriate Tillichan quote: “ The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted” Mother Teresa Dick Alton, spent the best part of my life in a Religious House and may never have left. Richard H.T. Alton 166 N. Humphrey Ave, Apt, 1N Oak Park, IL 60302 T:1.773.344.7172 richard.alton@gmail.com Don't let the fear of striking out hold you back Babe Ruth