My First Hundred Years
Описание книги
This is the self-portrait of a missionary, minister, and teacher, at age 100, sharing the adventures of his childhood in Korea, exhilarating academic career at Princeton University, and then a lifetime of purposeful dedication to the ministry and to teaching. The author, a poet and gifted prose writer, engages the reader in beautiful landscapes of rural Korea, a trans-Siberian journey in the 1930s, his pioneering ministry in the desert of northern Chile, and the throes and conscientious commitment to civil rights in the 1960s. His life partnership with Martha, a church musician, features prominently in the book, as does their experience with her Alzheimer's disease. The writer shares moments of epiphany, and the discovery of God's will, represented by turning points in a life lived on three continents. More than just a memoir, this is a book full of devotional meaning and spiritual inspiration, for readers who enjoy a good story and excellent prose.
Оглавление
Donald R. Fletcher. My First Hundred Years
My First Hundred Years
Table of Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Preface
“Look to the Rock”
Foreigners in a Familiar Land
Voyage of the S. S. Sphinx and Beyond
Needing to Be Brave in a New World
Fear and Love of the Sea
Rolling for Eight Days and Nights
“In Praise of Old Nassau”
Beer Jackets and Pine Logs
Martha
Medellín and Mountains of the Moon
Going North
“Oasis of the Soul”
Communism and a Lecture on Melville
A Play with a Purpose and Leaving Home
Caribbean Travel and A Front-Lawn Wedding
A Gospel Parable and a Department. to Chair
A Last Supper and a Madonna. by Raphael
“Have You Thought About High School Teaching?”
Unexpected Call
The Gradual, Total Eclipse
Three-Digit Milestone
Illustrations
Other Works by Donald R. Fletcher
Отрывок из книги
Donald R. Fletcher
Donald R. Fletcher
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As children in Taegu, we four played games, inventing new ones as we could. The side yard of our house was gravel, just a thin layer over rock. It was on the sunny side of the building, and Mother was determined to grow some flowers. The outsideman went to work with a pick, chipping at the sedimentary rock a short while each day, until there was a rectangular basin deep enough to hold the soil for a small flower plot.
Then we took over. In the basement we found half of a packing case for an upright piano. The size was just right, to cover that flower-bed excavation. We also found some rice straw to make it more comfortable inside. One could wriggle through an opening we left at one end, and a few—if not all four—of us could squeeze inside our shadowy “barrow.” It was a special place. A point of protocol established that anyone, on entering, must be chewing one of the faintly sweetish stalks of the rice straw.
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