| by Dr. Jeffrey Lant My Cambridge, Massachusetts neighborhood, where the soaring steeple of Harvard's Memorial Church is so prominent, reminding us of the eternity to come, is today in mourning for a man of God, of grace, and an affability so distinctive it was his own special concoction, enjoyed by all. The Reverend Peter Gomes is dead at 68, February 28, 2011. Our world is a duller, less amiable place, his crucial support of pluralism, acceptance, and love bereft of a paladin. A journey so improbable it had to be real. Peter Gomes, born May 22, 1942, started his journey in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the very place the Puritans arrived to colonize a great nation and control (so they thought) its destiny. Peter Gomes must have found that quaint notion piquant, and he would, in due course, inject an irony into the tale that must have pleased him, for he was mischievous to a degree. For you see, Gomes had none of the blue blood and Mayflower pretensions about him. He was well and truly the descendant of the Fulani, Tikar, and Hausa peoples of West Africa. He had DNA test results to prove it. More recently, through his father, he was descended from Portuguese Jews and the Cape Verde Islands. Gomes' idiosyncratic journey began, therefore, at conception. As a result, he had virtually everything about him that would irritate the shredding remnants of the lordly fathers of the Commonwealth, who claimed primacy hereabouts, especially at their own educational bastion, Harvard. The first time I ever heard Gomes' name was when one of these notables, with a name of high renown, called him an "Oreo", a black man pretending to be white. It was a notable slur, and it was Peter Gomes' reality. You little know the man or his achievements, unless you understand this. Set against the immensity of the task before him he had one over arching benefit: he was the most affable of men. All his life he had this at his command, and he rose on this from the very first, perfecting his skills as he learned how invaluable, how necessary they were. Right from the start this affability was present. In white Plymouth, the only black boy in the class, he was regularly elected to school office, including president (in 1961) of his Plymouth High School graduating class. People of whatever persuasion and temperament liked Peter; it was almost impossible not to. And he reciprocated by liking them. It was his personal benediction, and it lightened the burdens for many who needed it. He was an alchemist who could diminish hatred and transform it into good will. It was a very special gift indeed and, as he understood it, he perfected and used it. A graduate of Bates College (1965), Gomes disappointed his father profoundly by telling this practical business man he wanted a religious career. Disgruntled, his father said, "I had hoped my son would do honest work." Admitted to Harvard Divinity School (from which he graduated in 1968), he spent the rest of his life showing his father that he had. For 2 years, 1968-1970, his Harvard bachelor's degree of sacred theology in hand, he ventured into entirely alien territory, teaching at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. "I saw more black people in my first half hour at Tuskegee than I had ever seen in my whole life," he told The New Yorker magazine. He wanted to come home... to Cambridge... to Harvard. It is a feeling, a yearning that so many hereabouts have felt. Back in Cambridge, he rose, never inevitably, always steadily, leading within just 4 years Harvard's church. It had need of his talents. A gifted preacher and writer, he was celebrated for his wit, abundant conversational talents, and an essential skill of delivering important messages in a style calculated to gain maximum adherence, while avoiding offence. He had now the good life, a lifetime position, one of the fine properties of the university (Sparks House) where he served tea and guidance to generations of undergraduates. He was the author of 10 volumes of highly readable sermons and best-selling books, "The Good Book: Reading the Bible with mind and heart," (1998) and "The Good Life: Truths that Last in Times of Need. (2003) .And so it might have gone on, a good vicar for a flock that needed him and valued him. But in 1991, a group of intolerant undergraduates, secure in their corrosive hatred, published a violent attack on gay people at Harvard, a place so progressive it had almost forgotten such insufferance even existed. The Reverend Peter Gomes, happy amidst his congregants and loved by a great institution, could have winked, seeing nothing, doing nothing. But he was ready to draw upon his mother's early admonition: "You must invent your own reality," he remembered her saying, "Reality will not conform to you. You must invent your own and then conform to it." And so he did, eschewing comfort for veritas and transformation. He stood on the steps of his church, Maritn Luther like, in his finest moment: "I am a Christian," he said, "who happens as well to be gay... Those realities, which are unreconcilable to some, are reconciled in me by a loving God." Such intolerance was not the way of Harvard... of America... or of God Himself. Because of who he was, the office he held, and his renown at Harvard, this was another shot heard round the world. However, it came at a terrible price. He made it known, too, that he would embrace chastity for life, like the Mahatma Gandhi. Perhaps it was, in a way, easier for him this way. But it cut him off, this most lovable of men, from an essential intimacy and empathy of life that even God could not replace. It was Gomes' gift, however, to give, and he gave it fully towards the cause of pluralism, acceptance, and harmony for all. Now Peter Gomes is gone from us. But God had need, too, of Peter's gifts, erudition, kindness, sympathy, endless curiosity, acceptance, and enough affability for the eternity which God endures. We shall miss him here, at Harvard,in Cambridge, but he and his abundant gifts have gone to One who can appreciate and finally liberate him from every shackle. Thus, while grieving, we rejoice. |
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