Читать книгу Becoming a Counselor - Samuel Gladding T., Samuel T. Gladding - Страница 41

was named for my maternal grandfather, Samuel Huntington Temple-man, I who was among other things a prominent Baptist minister in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in the 1930s. I grew up thinking I wanted to be a minister like him. He was apparently a very good man. Once when he was pastor of a church in South Carolina he prevented the lynching of an African American man.

My maternal grandfather, who was born 20 years after the end of the Civil War, was a Virginian. He graduated from the University of Richmond, but instead of staying in the South where he would have been safe and welcomed, he finished his theological education at Colgate-Rochester Divinity School and Columbia University. Going north was a bold move because feelings between the North and South were still tense when he went. However, he thought he would be a better person and a more effective minister if he left his region for a while and got to understand other people and ways of life.

After I graduated from Wake Forest University, I too went north and attended Yale Divinity School. I felt that if my grandfather could do it in a time of tension, I could do it in a time of relative calm. I did not end up becoming a minister or saving anyone’s life in a dramatic way. However, getting outside my region helped me to become a more understanding person and relate to other people better. I owe a debt to my grandfather for giving me the courage to go beyond the safety of the world in which I grew up and get out of my comfort zone.