My college roommate, one of my dearest friends, sent me a text this weekend that read, "I don't know if you'd heard this, Katy, but I thought you would want to know. Bev Asbury, Conscience of Vanderbilt, dies.
How one sentence can bring so much to you instantaneously, is a mystery. It's like being enfolded in your own history, your feelings for a person, your wistfulness at the briefness of life and of having lost touch, and gratitude for another's existence - all of it happens at once and is outside of time. That's how I felt when I received Krissie's text.
Reverend Bev Asbury, or Rev Bev, as we called him when I was in college, was both the university chaplain and a professor of religious studies and I met him, in a sense by accident (if you believe in accidents), when I signed up for a class he taught called, "Death, Religion, and Human Meaning." I had no idea, not even a little inkling, that one day I would work as a hospice social worker. Or that I would be a 'grief therapist.' I just knew that the questions of human meaning, those examined in literature, drew me in. I thought I might be a teacher or a lawyer - I really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.
And I found myself in this class of about 15 students around an long rectangular table, where Rev Bev sat at the front, teaching and listening. I can still hear the sound of his soft, gravelly voice, like Winnie-the-Pooh, but deeper and more resonant. This was not an ordinary class - we were flexible - sometimes meeting in the evening to watch a movie like Harold and Maude (I'd never seen anything like it). We talked about moral relativism - when do we know something is wrong or evil - is female genital mutilation evil? Is abortion evil? What is taking a life? Is all life equal? How could a loving God allow atrocity? If there is an all knowing, all powerful God, where is God in history? Where was God in the Holocaust?
One thing I learned from Rev Bev is that great faith and great doubt may be hand in hand.
We went to his house as a class experience - this beautiful retreat in the woods and we ate lunch with his wife and took a walk through the woods, evening drinking fresh water from the fresh spring on his property. He was generous and open, treated us as equals and conveyed adult expectations.
And over the course of the semester, Rev Bev became my friend. He was in charge of a program on campus called Project Dialogue that he asked me to join - it was a board of students and faculty who brought speakers to campus to instigate dialogue in the community - lawyers, celebrities, provocateurs, politicians. People like Sarah Weddington, who argued Roe v. Wade, or Sandra Bernhard, who at that time, was seen as an outrageous voice for feminism. Sometimes Rev Bev and I would just sit in his office and talk. I distinctly remember one moment in his office - he'd situated his desk so that he looked out the window while he worked - I was getting ready to bounce off to do whatever sorority thing or studying thing I had to do and we were both looking out the window together at a wintry day, a rare Nashville snow flurry. I realized, "If he were 40 years younger or I was 40 years older, we'd probably fall in love.' And it was a good, weird, wise feeling. There was never anything romantic in the friendship - not one untoward moment or even an inkling of a flirt. But, our friendship gave me a deep sense of connection and time. I thought about how we are little blips on this planet and we intersect with other little blips and how we are lucky to intersect with certain people at all. Just the overlap gives me a sense that something mysterious and big is going on.
When I moved to DC after college graduation, Rev Bev and I saw one another a couple of times, as he sat on the board of the Holocaust Museum there. He met one of the boys I dated at that age- an Irishman from Belfast- so charming and witty. But Rev Bev said, "Katy, he doesn't have kind eyes. I would be careful." And when we broke up, I felt quite good about it, as if Rev Bev knew some secret of the universe and kind eyes had something to do with it and I would look for that from now on. (I will speak to Bev about this when I get to wherever he is - I'm not sure kind eyes is the key to lasting love, but I'm open to hearing more!)
We exchanged Christmas cards over the years, but he and his wife, Vicky moved a number of times. I tracked him down out West in 2009 and we shared a few emails and I shared some poetry with him. I lamented that I didn't have enough time for all the poetry and writing I wished for and he reassured me that life is long and there will be different times - a time for more poetry too.
Rev Bev really molded my interests and what I thought of myself, where I found my identity, at a pivotal time. While I was a cheerleading co-captain and president of my sorority and pursued outward accolades and leadership, Rev Bev saw in me an academic. Or an artist. Or a young woman who would thrive in the questions as much as the answers. I don't know if I would have found that in myself, if not for him. I think his influence rippled out into all the choices I've made and what I've gotten from the richness of a life of questions, rather than answers, is everything to me. He called himself a post-Holocaust Christian. Or an Agnostic Christian. He didn't fit the mold and he gave me a vision of how to live my life in a way that doesn't fit the mold.
I am sad that now I am living on an earth where I cannot track down Rev Bev and catch up. But he lived a long, productive life and I am probably one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of people he shaped, challenged, saw or lifted. We used a book in his class, The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, where Becker says that almost all human endeavor is a denial of death - if nothing else, we work toward some legacy that will be eternal - whether it is our vocation, our art, or our children. Rev Bev, I think, would say, that this is a fool's errand and that nothing is eternal. But I hope, wherever he is, that he knows I am part of his legacy. His Causa Sui.
I am a grief therapist who knows that grief comes in many shapes and sizes and flavors. This is one. I mourn the death of someone who may have been greatest influence on my life aside from my family.
I hope that if you've read this far, you will read more about Reverend Beverly Asbury's life. I also hope you will take some time to think about the people who have shaped you outside of your family and the gifts they have given. If you don't have someone like that, may these ideas guide you along your way - may you choose mentors, teachers, and even hero(ine)s who don't force or even ask you to fit a mold - who encourage you to expand and grow and choose.
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