Stony the road we trod...

A big salute to Lipscomb University's Institute for Conflict Management for hosting an interfaith dialogue on campus. Thank you for being forthright, proactive, intentional and honest. A big salute for taking a risk.

Given the significance of such an event 1) at all, 2) in Nashville, and 3) at Lipscomb, you'd think the Tennessean could have done a better job of covering it. Sure, they gave the event front-page coverage today, but gracious, what sorry reporting it is. It's sensational, uselessly provocative, and rather dismissive of the true import of what Lee Camp said.

So, another big salute to Randy Lowry for issuing this statement. Kudos to Lipscomb for being forthright, proactive, intentional and honest by issuing the statement. Way to go friends, I'm impressed.

If the talk-radio blather from early this morning right on through the afternoon is any indication, I'm sure there will be letters to the editor (look at some of the comments already online) and lots more ranting. In their righteous indignation (based on a poor example of newspaper work) I hope folks will take the time to hear Dr. Camp out and try to understand the larger context of his argument (see Mere Discipleship and this blog (http://discipleshipdiscussion.blogspot.com/).

I hope they grapple with how truly radical his call is. It's radical all right, but not in the ways they think. In fact, its much more provocative and much more significant than we would like to admit.

And so it goes in Nashville tonight. Hope things are well with you, wherever you are.

And so to bed.

Dr. Ice

Dr. K. C. Ice and the little frame building which housed one of his earliest practices. He looks proud doesn't he?

The fourth of six boys, he was born into poverty, yes, in a log cabin, in the hills of central West Virginia. His father and grandfather were veterans; they fought with the Union troops in the "Late Unpleasantness" as it is known in the state of my birth (or, if you prefer, the War of Northern Agression). His father was a boy of fourteen when that War began, and was still a boy when it was over. When K.C. was six, his father dead of appendicitis, he and his siblings lived for a time with his grandparents Ice and Roberts. Mary Ann Roberts Ice had six sons to raise, ages 12 to just a few months. So a natural gas well discovered on the Ice property was no doubt a God-send. It provided the funds to send KC and at least one of his brothers to Salem for school (what we would call High School). The well also sent him to Hiram in 1897. By 1900 it either stopped producing or the residue went to the younger boys.

The same family stories which have young KC with his heart set on foreign missions also have him pressing his clothes between his mattress and and springs in order to save money while in medical school. No doubt he kept in touch with brothers and both the Ice and Roberts families while in St. Louis from 1900-1903. Not only did he keep in touch, he went back. Though born in the woods, he was educated in the cities and had a world-wide vision sparked within him. Yet he returned to the hills. To Rockport, West Virginia, circa 1904, where he set up practice and took up the ministry of the healing of bodies.

Having his own practice, a place to hang a shingle and engage in a honorable profession, really meant something. I'd be proud, too.

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Comments are back up.

Reflections on my Stone-Campbell Heritage, Part Second

Installment #2

Choosing a college was not a agonizing decision for me. That I would attend one of "our" schools was not really up for grabs (though my parents certainly didn't force it). Late in high school I had determined to be a youth minister (how the path of my life has meandered through a variety of ministries is a different post for another time), and so attending Lipscomb University (DLU then) was a no-brainer. I had entertained going to ACU (and almost did) but a greater academic scholarship and being closer to home won the day.

Both Mom and Dad went to Lipscomb (DLC then): Dad after two years at Ohio Valley (OVC then, still a 2 year school, and he attended in the very early days of OVC); Mom all four years. My mother was the first from her immediate family to go to college. The Ice's have had a much stronger history of higher education.

Grandad Ice attended and/or graduated from more schools than anyone I've ever known. For a few weeks he and my great-grandfather, in a Model T Ford and a canvas tent, toured the South (they were living in southeast Ohio at the time, the early 1920's) to decide on a college for young McGarvey and hit, in geographical order, Harding College, David Lipscomb College, Milligan College, Johnson Bible College, Christian Normal Institute (later Kentucky Christian College, now KCU). As far as I can tell they didn't even stop at Freed-Hardeman or the College of the Bible in Lexington (both of these schools then representing the farther ends of the spectrum of the Disciples). In the end Grandad wound up at CNI, though he did study a semester at Harding in 1930. He finished his BA at Cedarville College (a Baptist school) in Ohio. Then came graduate schools in a couple of different disciplines. I could post on and on about Grandad.

Grandad's father, K. C. Ice, from central WVa, took his BA at Hiram College in northeast Ohio, in 1899. He evidently was awakened to missions at Hiram. Who or what the driving force was I do not know. Family stories have him with eyes set on medical missions in either China or India. He immediately went to St. Louis and took his MD in 1904. From there he headed back east to (cue Handel's Hallelujah chorus...) Bethany College for his Master's in Philosophy. He was the village physician in Bethany while taking his degree and no doubt cared for many notables, perhaps even Campbell family members in their old age. Having finished in 1907 he spent a year in doctorin' and doctrine (ha ha, I amuse myself) throughout West Virginia. Long story short...he married, soon had a son and whatever plans for missions to India and/or China he had were abandoned in favor of missions to the poor of eastern Kentucky, southeast Ohio and southwest West Virginia. Though a medical doctor, he was never wealthy. Often just getting by and thankful to accept payment in kind, whether books, chickens, rocking chairs or garden vegetables.

That's the gist of it. What I haven't been able to do yet is to chase down the influential professors at Hiram and Bethany. The earliest that I can trace my family's (either maternal or paternal side) in the Campbell-Stone Reformation is the early 1860's. More later.

Time for a change

I switched to the new format/template/whatever-it-is that Blogger has come up with.

It is more user-friendly and there are more options for just about every aspect of the blog. So a fresh look is in order. I've also added a new blog just for the friends and family: theicefamily.blogspot.com. Sign up and log in!

Since most of my readers are friends and family anyhow, it might seem redundant to create another blog. Granted, but I want to post pictures and not have the world see them, and I would rather keep the more personal stuff personal. The rest of this theologically vapid blather will stay here. The really neat goings-on, as well as photos of the beautiful children, are now and will be at theicefamily.blogspot.com. Again, you are all welcome to join. If you are not a friend or a family member, sorry, but you are not welcome to join.

So, what do you think about the new look? (not that you can reply, since I've disabled the comments for at least the time being).

Grace and peace, friends.

"The library is not...

...a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one's devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. A Library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life."

So goes the blurb on the front of the flyer advertising the mix-and-mingle celebrating of the completed renovation of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library. I didn't make the social gig, but I have spent some time recently in their delivery room being that I am now a card-carrying, borrowing-privileged local clergyperson.

I particularly appreciate the breadth and depth of the periodical holdings and the friendly staff, not to mention that the lunch-hour walk to VDS from my office takes all of 27 seconds. Its a real swanky joint now that the renovation is finished. Swanky enough, in fact, to burn some literary incense.

a quote without comment

from this weeks' Christian Standard:

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."

--Attributed to Anne Lamott, or a friend named Tom

(for CS readers, this quote is the last one on the back page)