As Charles Dickens once wrote to begin his Tale of Two Cities: "It was the best of times . . . it was the worst of times." That would describe my three years at Duke University Divinity School.
I went there because the campus was beautiful, but my suffering as a writer was immense. First, one year at Duke cost more than my entire undergraduate degree at ISU . . . no big surprise there. And the work load was immense, too. Mounds of books, mounds of research, mounds of time. It was tough for me to write a research paper on, oh, say, Ulrich Zwingli or a ten page paper on the Greek word LOGOS, when what I really wanted to write was the first chapter of a novel or a humorous essay that could be entitled, "How to Live on a Dollar a Day." But I did study, and I did do the work required. In fact, that's all I did. I had no friends. No buddies. No fun pursuits. I accepted a pastoral call in a small rural church and worked my fanny off, I worked a campus job, I wrote minuscule columns for even smaller pay . . . and in between the cracks I studied and wrote my dry, boring little papers for guys like Dr. Steinmetz and Dr. Langford. (But I loved them, anyway . . . just like a Div School student at Duke is supposed to do!)
About the only superb writing I turned out were love letters to Becky. We were not yet engaged and I was sending a letter every few days to Purdue to make sure she knew I still cared, and that I was living on a dollar a day, gnawing on chicken bones, sucking at the marrow for sustenance, and awaiting her graduation. (She was one of those slow-pokes who took four years to get her B.A.)
These were grand love letters. The real McCoy. All written on Duke University stationery in Duke blue ink.
And I kept telling her . . . some day I'm going to get out of this asylum and come for you and sweep you off your feet and then you can get a job and support me while I write.
She has not yet accepted that charge.
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