Bill's Letters from the Peace Corps

As my wife and I were cleaning out our basement this week, I ran across some old letters from one of my dearest friends. Bill was my best man at my wedding. He gave a very humorous speech at our wedding on June 8th of 1994. Bill is full on uncommon wisdom and is direct in an uncanny way at times, a directness that gives tremendous insight at times. Bill's letters were from the Peace Corps. He was on assignment in Malawi at the time and it was the early 1990's.

Bill has a totally unique way of expressing himself. Here are some quotes from Bill.

"Jaiffa, kiss a tree, a dog, a pregnant mother; eat a County Stadium brat with stadium sauce n'onions; watch someone else fly a kite." (my nickname which I will reveal in this blog now is Jaiffa. Don't ask me how I achieved this. )

"My man Jaiffa, how in the everlasting life are you?" "In my collection is a 1991 release by Seattle's soft-sided boys---The Posies 'Dear 23.' It was played a lot on this groovin' Minnesota station I listened to prior to my departure to the Peace Corps. If you don't recognize it for GOD sakes go and get it. Think of it--young men with long hairs on their head and thoughtful brains inside. I saw 'em at an in store appearance, an acoustic set that made me tingle."

"I heard that you are doing a 'Coaches Show' at the radio station you are working at. Do you ever ask them what they think of the cheerleaders' uniforms? Or does that cross the magical journalistic river of good taste? "

"Death is merely a part of life here. Almost daily I know of a friend or a friend of a friend who has passed away. AIDS is a very silent force here. It's talked about secretively but the tests are too expensive to run at the hospital so people die of "tuberculosis, cancer or fever etc. but not AIDS. Approximately one in five people carry the virus in their bodies."

"Instigate peace wherever, whenever forever."

"Was Martin Luther King Jr. right after all? I mean his leadership through some pretty damn violent, unjust times is actually difficult for me to believe."

"One of the books I've been reading lately is 'Religion in the Secular City.' It deals with developing a post-modern theology based heavily on action as well as belief using a Latin American, liberation theology. Life is so interesting."

(I searched for this book on Amazon and there were no reviews. Wow. I did find a book of essays dedicated to the author, Harvey Cox. That was published in 2001 I assume posthumously. Harvey Cox burst onto the religion-publishing scene in 1962 with his provocative book, The Secular City. His assertions about the consequences of the modern secular world for religion changed forever the way that theologians and clergy approached their tasks of God-talk in late modernity. Always prescient about the religious scene, Cox virtually predicted the "turn east" that many American religious seekers took in the late '60s and early '70s. His books on world religions (Many Mansions), Pentecostalism (Fire from Heaven), and fundamentalism and liberation theology (Religion in the Secular City) have all provided trenchant commentary on the changing face of American religion. In this exciting collection of twenty essays, Sharma and his contributors honor Cox's seminal contributions to the study of religion. The first section of the book includes essays on Cox's life and work at Harvard, where he is Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity, and his work as a liberation theologian in the Third World. The second section features theologians such as Leonardo Boff, James Cone, Hans Küng, Jürgen Moltmann, and Richard L. Rubenstein, who use Cox's themes of interreligious dialogue, grassroots theology, and religion and secularization as the starting points for their own essays on these themes. )

There is one thing for sure, my precious friend Bill has a voracious appetite for life and knowing Bill teaches me the urgency of living each hour with the highest amount of meaning and quality as possible. Another quote that made me think that Bill said to me one time...."Live today, because tomorrow we die."

Bill was diagnosed with melanoma about a year ago. Bill's hundreds of friends are thinking about him and wishing him a full recovery. He is a great husband and father to his wife and two young girls. I plan to call my friend Bill tomorrow night to see how he is doing. As Barack Obama would say, "The fierce urgency of now is taking over."

Have a good night. Hug your spouse and children and all the other important people in your life. Life is short.