“Further Up and Further In”
Guest Writer Don Follis
When I read Joanna Seibert’s July 5 inspiring reflections on her 50 years in Little Rock—as a physician and as a deacon in the Episcopal Church—I had just finished rereading C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis famously concludes the final book—The Last Battle—by telling the Pevensie children (Peter, Lucy, and Edmund) that although Narnia had come to an end, their lives and adventures in Narnia had been only the cover and the title page. They were just beginning “Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever.” As the characters run joyfully through the new Narnia in Chapter 15, their cry is “Further Up and Further In.”
I started reflecting on my nearly 50 years in the ministry.
Forty-eight years ago this month, I married a young, blonde-haired woman from Phoenix. Together, we drove across the United States to Champaign-Urbana, IL, where I began a 20-year campus ministry at the University of Illinois.
Though I met new students every year, I felt like I was just beginning year after year. There were new problems to solve, new books to read, and new ideas to explore. In my early days, I wanted to be the best campus preacher, the best campus apologist, and the best writer among my campus ministry peers.
I was none of those, and yet I grew as a preacher, read hundreds of books, and ultimately wrote 800 religion columns for the local newspaper. At heart, I knew that I was a little red-headed boy from a working-class family in northwestern Kansas, who was taught to work hard, be kind, and treat people the way I wanted to be treated.
On the last day of my 20-year campus ministry, I slipped into St. John’s Catholic Chapel on the edge of campus to pray. Over the years, I had met hundreds of students in the St. John’s Newman Center cafeteria. Several priests were friends. As I knelt to pray, I felt the tension of having made hundreds of friends while hoping and praying that I had done enough to make a difference in their lives. Suddenly, in the quiet of my heart, I sensed the Lord’s voice. “I’m proud of you, son. You have done enough.”
In the ensuing years, I went on to pastor a church for 7 years. For the last 15 years, I have headed a ministry that counsels and mentors clergy. Talk about often feeling inadequate. Happily, not long ago, one of my pastor friends smiled and said, “All we can do is all we can do, brother. And all we can do is enough.”
Whatever the future holds, I will always be the kid who wonders what comes next. Way more than I’ll ever know, my decades in the ministry are merely the cover and title page of what lies ahead. I gladly take my stand with the Narnia characters on the cusp of a new world, saying over and over, “Further up and further in!”
Don Follis
Joanna joannaseibert.com