Watching her agonized breathing, my love for her was such that I prayed for the Lord Jesus to take her. He immediately reached his hand out and grasped hers and she was on her way into the everlasting arms. I have never had so vital a prayer answered so quickly.

The Priest’s Wife

Rosemary and I met on the steps of St. Luke’s Church, Hampstead, London, in 1966. I was the field education student attached to the parish and she was an undergraduate at the university college next door. We became companions, we fell in love, and 18 months later we were husband and wife. I used to joke with my brother-in-law that he and I married above ourselves. She was a remarkable woman, rich in faith, selfless in service, highly intelligent, and always glorying in the privilege of being a priest’s spouse. My privilege was to be her husband and soulmate.

She was, indeed, half my soul, a line I’ve borrowed from Sabine Baring-Gould, the author of hymns like “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and a parish priest in Devonshire, who had those words etched on the headstone of his late wife, Grace.

She was often asked why she did not get ordained, but she rejoiced in what she considered the sacred office of being a clergy spouse — part of a long tradition in Reformation churches and Orthodoxy. I remember a conversation between Rosemary and Eugene Peterson’s wife, Jan, as they shared their insights into what they thought had become one of the most undervalued roles in churches. Neither objected to women’s ordination, but they firmly believed their place was sharing their spouse’s ministry.

Like all marriages and all ministries, we had our ups and downs, and during more than half a century of ordained life we had just about everything slung at us. Yet for Rosemary this meant praying; it also meant using her honesty and integrity to strengthen my spine when times were hard, and her counsel was almost always good — if I chose to listen to it! Over time that puppy love of our first years together deepened, becoming indispensable to the work to which the Lord led us, drawing us ever closer to him and to one another.

The Mother

Rosemary’s passion was motherhood. We had trouble getting started with our family, and then she experienced two miscarriages, the second of which almost killed her. During that hospital stay, she experienced what she described as dying grace. She was slipping away until the necessary medical procedures and nursing care drew her back, but the wonder of what happened then remained with her forever after. She spoke little about it, but I am certain that as she began slipping away again it was Jesus Christ who similarly came to her, and this time took her proffered hand.

The Homemaker

My darling wife was a homemaker, and the doors of our home were always open to visitors and guests. She made our home, while hardly a model for Better Homes & Gardens, into a place where all sorts of people of every age and background could be welcomed. It was the nest in which our two daughters grew up, and where since the beginning of our marriage there has been a succession dogs and cats sharing our lives — her last gift to me some months ago was our two rescue dogs, Cooper and Eden.

The Exile

When we were engaged, we earnestly committed ourselves to go wherever the Lord would send us. In our minds was some modest ministry in England, but we didn’t put any boundaries around our obedience to God’s call. To end up in the United States was a shock and a surprise. We came for three years, but our whole family is still here; America, it seems, was God’s purpose for us.

This was always a huge sacrifice for the quintessentially English Rosemary, yet during these years she was involved in refugee resettlement, deeply concerned for those who were no longer able to live in their homeland. Over the years there were Laotians, Ethiopians, South Sudanese, Congolese, and most recently Afghan families she loved into the United States. Many were present at her funeral. I have often thought that Rosemary’s attitude was like that of Ruth: “Where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die— there I will be buried” (Ruth 1:16-17). Her ashes are interred in the columbarium at St. George’s, Nashville, right against the wall of the chapel in which I celebrate the Eucharist every Thursday.

The College Professor

It was because she was a priest’s wife that a career beyond the life of ministry or parish was vital. For 20 years she taught French and Latin at Middle Tennessee State University. Also at her funeral were students for whom she was the model of a loving, caring teacher, and have themselves gone into teaching. Retiring from college teaching, she dug deeply into ministry among women at St. George’s. When she died, she was stepping down as president of the Daughters of the King.

A Grief Observed

After her death, when I turned my mind to reading, I returned to A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis. It was at least 40 years since I had first picked it up, unable to grasp its meaning. Now, having shared Lewis’s experience of letting go of the love of his life, I read it again. While I have not railed against God as Lewis did, the opening words told me we were on the same page. “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid.” Yes, a great void had opened, making me like a ship without a rudder. I have been lost and listless. This has been the most painful way to lose weight, hard to organize my mind as well as my work. Rosemary is with the Lord, and I can’t wait to see her again — what a reunion that will be!

Going through her files and her writing, our daughters Olivia and Lindy discovered a little piece she wrote on shaping her life. The governing text for her striving was Philippians 4:8:

Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Just days before 9/11, Bishop Bertram Herlong parachuted me into a recently founded and now foundering congregation in the Diocese of Tennessee. I was supposed to be there a few months, which stretched into four years — difficult years both for our nation and for the Episcopal Church, the consequence of whose roiling reached down to where I was at the tender grassroots.

The majority of worshipers disappeared, but some of the finest people had stayed put as we started again. I quickly discovered that personal devotion, even the most basic reading and study of Scripture, was barely on the agenda of even spiritually mature congregants. I had also become aware that everyone had an email address, still something of a novelty at the turn of the century.

Coming to faith as I did from what can only be described as a post-Christian home, I was certain from my personal and pastoral experience that intimately engaging with the Bible would be transformative. Something had to be done about the devotional life, prayer, and Bible study of this struggling fellowship, the Church of the Apostles. So, after prayer and seeking counsel, I set about devising a Scripture-focused devotion delivered daily to every worshiper, as well as anyone else who might want to join in.

Hoping for encouragement, I explained to Bishop Herlong what we were doing. While he liked the idea, his response drenched me like cold water — “You’ll never be able to keep that up.” Saying nothing, I gave an awkward grin, while thinking, “Bishop, don’t underestimate how stubborn I am!”

So, on January 1, 2002, we launched Daily Devotions to be delivered online Monday through Friday. To my surprise, over time it did as I intended and helped people mature in the faith. Gradually, we gathered subscribers from way beyond our congregation. Some who were there at the start are still taking the devotions, and they are being used in various corners of the world. Of course, there have been ups and downs. The first major crisis came a couple of years in, when Internet providers began blocking mass emails sent from individual accounts. Then, beginning in late 2012, they hiccupped when I experienced two spells of significant ill health that led to my “retirement.”[1]

When my wife and I were returning to our home in Tennessee after a spell working in Cambridge, England, the Rev. Leigh Spruill, then the rector at St. George’s, Nashville, invited me to join the clergy team. Of course, the Daily Devotions came with me, and at St. George’s they have found a permanent home.

During the 16th-century information revolution, Martin Luther translated the Scriptures into German because he recognized the potential of placing printed Bibles into the hands of an increasingly literate population. The Internet in its infancy offered similar promise. There have been times when my resolve has wobbled, and I have wondered if the time has come to bring the Daily Devotions to an end. Surely they had served their purpose. Yet when such temptations reared their heads, plenty of people were telling me what a mistake that would be. (Just before I wrote that last sentence, I received one such call.) With the help of calendar and calculator, I estimate that by now we have distributed around 7,500 daily editions, and there are no repeats — a fresh devotional is composed for each day of the year.

The onset of COVID was its own challenge. Social isolation was stymying worship, and church life was in confusion just at that moment when people genuinely needed daily spiritual encouragement. As part of St. George’s dynamic response to the pandemic, we geared up the Daily Devotions from five to seven days a week. This made more work for me, but has garnered new participants, many of them embarking on serious daily Bible reading for the first time. I cannot pretend producing a daily devotional is undemanding, but for me it has with each passing year become ever more significant to my spiritual discipline.

Now that I’m a “retired” priest, the preparation helps fills the gap left by the near-disappearance of a half-century dominated by weekly preaching and its preparation, something I truly loved. I would never describe myself as scholarly — more a fairly intelligent pastor who loves the Bible and is privileged to opening the Scriptures for others. The Daily Devotions require continued study and digging into the text, but I am also drawing on more than a half-century of “reading the holy Scriptures, and in such studies as help to the knowledge of the same,” to which I committed myself when ordained by the Bishop of London in 1970 (“The Ordering of Priests,” 1662 Book of Common Prayer).

The menu for each day’s devotional is simple:

• A short passage of Scripture
• 200-300 words of exposition/explanation
• Thanksgiving for the day
• Intercession for the day
• Collect, short prayer, hymn, poem, etc.
• Additional Old Testament, Psalm, Epistle, Gospel from the Lectionary for that day

This can then be put alongside or into the framework of the morning “Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families” (BCP, p. 137).

The Revised Common Lectionary Lesson Calendar of Sunday and Weekdays provides the skeleton for the devotions, but it is only partially adequate. Huge chunks of Scripture and entire books are either missing or have been edited according to compilers’ presuppositions, and significant biblical doctrines are assiduously avoided.[2] To resolve this, I occasionally stray off the lectionary reservation. The Daily Devotions respect the lectionary without being its slave. We honor red-letter saints’ days and do our best to present to readers with the whole counsel of God. During 2024, for example, we are occasionally taking a few days to explore the lives of some of the magnificent women who cross the Bible’s pages.

Over the years circulation has varied. We started with 38 in 2002, and in our heyday, we were sending out over a thousand. Now our numbers are 350-400, with around 70 percent opened daily. A surprising number of subscribers pass on the devotions to others, while there are parishes that circulate them to all their members each day.

What began as a stopgap measure to nurture a struggling congregation has, in the evening of my life and toward the end of my active ministry, turned into something unexpectedly significant. The Rev. Dr. Alec Motyer, former principal of Trinity College, Bristol, England, my dearest Irish friend and mentor, talked of the pastor and preacher needing to always be “in the Scriptures.” These devotions have been one way I do this, and there has seemed no good reason to slack off now that a major chunk of our income comes each month from the Church Pension Fund.

I will keep going as long as I can. Meanwhile, my eyes are open for individuals who might in due course pick up the ball and run with it, taking the Daily Devotions into their next chapter, perhaps even developing the work so that it fits the ever-changing kaleidoscope of communications technologies.

[1] It is 30 years since I realized retirement was not for me. I wasn’t quite sure how that would work out, but God in his providence made a way for this to happen within the context of the congregational family of St. George’s, Nashville, and the Daily Devotions are part of that.

[2] N.T. Wright writes, “The merest mention of final judgment has been squeezed out of Christian consciousness in several denominations, including my own, by the cavalier omission of verses from public biblical reading. Whenever you see, in an official lectionary, the command to omit two or three verses, you can normally be sure that they contain words of judgment” (Surprised by Hope, p. 190).

Bullying is not solely the realm of testosterone-overloaded teenage males. Alas, today we live in what might describe as a nationwide bullying culture, both in real life, online, and amplified by cable television news. Hardly a day passes without our hearing of another fatal bullying incident, while it has become the norm with politicians to shout abusive odds at one another, modeling the bullying culture for our “edification.”

It should not surprise us that there’s bullying in the life of the church. I have seen and experienced my fair share during 55 years of ordained life. I was naïve enough when made deacon in March 1969 to think I was removing myself from the danger of bullying, but it comes in varied shapes and flavors. It did not take long to discover bishops, priests, deacons, and laity (mostly male, but sometimes female) who were unrepentant bullies. There have also been times, I sadly confess, when I have been tempted into the sort of bullying seen in so many ecclesiastical settings. Sometimes it is evident; more often it is cunning, indirect, even flaunting a veneer of pretended spirituality.

Parish dynamics can be such that parishioners, often fine people in so many ways, develop a taste for picking on clergy, wardens, and so forth. The worst culprits are those whose emotional needs are not met either at work or home, so the congregation becomes the arena in which they work out ego issues, sometimes planting landmines for those in leadership.

I was 23 and very green when made deacon, beginning ordained life as curate of a lively parish in the Diocese of London. There were great folks and good things happening, yet I hadn’t been there long before grasping that the vicar had issues. My predecessor as curate, a delightful man, bailed out early.

We managed to survive for the three years to which I was committed, but I came within a whisker of leaving parish ministry, even abandoning the priesthood. The vicar was a surly man, a former naval engineer who treated people as if they could be coaxed into what he thought was the right shape, then welded into place. When they didn’t fit, he was deft with a heavy emotional hammer.

Fifty years have passed since then and my assessment of him is a little kinder than it used to be, but it was a mistake to ordain a man so prone to harassment. A loving mentor intervened, helping me find a setting in which I could thrive. He and his wife provided Rosemary and me with prayer backing, love, and encouragement. They were also there for us as we lived through two miscarriages. God’s grace and this priest’s experience had tempered the aggressive side of his strong personality. All this taught us that Christian leaders, clergy especially, need a network of friends and mentors for shelter and support.

I have served under 14 bishops in six dioceses on both sides of the Atlantic — diocesans, suffragans, coadjutors, and assistants. To date, all have been men. Four of them have been everything I could want in a bishop, especially when I have stumbled, been hurt, or have backed myself into some kind of ministerial or spiritual cul-de-sac.

Yet some were overbearing and inevitably domineering. I am sure they did not set out to terrorize, but under so many ministry pressures, bullying seemed to have become part of their defense mechanism. I have watched contemporaries being elected bishop, some maturing into shining examples of grace, especially when stressed to the limits, but others have cracked under the weight of being the ordinary, becoming aggressive, bad-tempered, and hiding behind all that a purple shirt symbolizes. I have wondered where grace in pastoral care and firmness in necessary discipline morph into hurtful abuse of those they are called to serve while leading.

Even as I have defended myself against bullies, it always makes me feel bad about myself. This then gets taken home.  Being on the receiving end of ecclesiastical bullying can be a significant source of stress in a priest’s home life. We have over the years been greatly helped by good counselors and therapists, and our daughters have grown into stable human beings, mothers, and committed Christians.

As I said at the outset, ours is a bullying culture. Even as I was writing this, the phone rang and I found myself on the receiving end of a conversation that out of nowhere turned nasty when an elderly man turned on me over something that had not been part of our talk. His tone became menacing, blaming, and attacking. Such is the approach of the innate bully, but we managed to end without lasting animus.

Bullying is about grasping for power over others, snatching at a place higher up the pecking order, demonstrating a pretended superiority. Yet our model should be the one who humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on the Cross. The question is how we nurture this humility as citizens of the kingdom of Heaven, and in Christ.

When in 1985 our family moved to Sewanee, Middle Tennessee was very different than it is now. I often jokingly described Nashville back then as a hick city with rhinestones. Middle Tennessee was less prosperous: unemployment was horrendous, Music City’s symphony was on the verge of going under, and the city had a less cluttered skyline. Nashville has since become fashionable. Hundreds of thousands of people have packed up their belongings and moved here. Alas, this means much of the beautiful farmland and countryside on the edge of the city, where our home is, has been plowed under by rapacious developers, but that’s another story.

Nashville is very much an “in” city: thousands of young families settling, and then in their wake come legions of grandparents. The Economist (Jan. 16, 2023) tells us that grandparents are globally one of the fastest-growing demographics; there are approximately 1.5 billion of us (2.1 billion by 2050), and with family sizes shrinking there are relatively fewer children for us to dote on!

COVID and the seemingly unstoppable inflow of people is changing St. George’s Episcopal Church, Nashville. Seldom does a week go by when new families don’t find their way to our doors, accompanied or followed by grandparents. The older folks, usually aging Boomers, are most often attracted here by their little ones, and a desire to be involved in their children and grandchildren’s lives. (In the Kew family we did it the other way round. When Rosemary and I moved back to our home in Middle Tennessee after a spell overseas, our daughters, who both grew up in Sewanee, migrated back, bringing their families to us.)

As with many seniors, grandparenting is at or near the top of our priorities. The presence of our four grandkids, ages 10- to 17, is a constant reminder to us that contemporary grandparenting is a very different ball of wax, a perception endorsed by so many other grandparents, both new and long-timers in the congregation. With this in mind, we decided to try a 12-week forum looking at Christian grandparenting as a Christian Education offering. Three couples launched the Grandparents Forum, hoping we might draw a dozen more participants and reckoning we had enough material to keep us from September to Christmas.

Numbers have steadily increased, and even out-of-town grandparents join with us when here with their families who live locally. The camaraderie of fellowship has deepened, and once comfortable together, participants started raising being grandparents amid the issues today’s world has spawned. Around Thanksgiving, we floated the idea of another semester and got a unanimously positive response. By January we had sort of developed an Epiphany-Lent program that builds on the biblical undergirding of the fall. Almost every week there are new faces — often anxious folks wanting to be the best grandparents possible. Some who have become engaged with the forum have not ever been traditionally involved in Christian Ed. Fellowship and the desire to take grandparenting seriously brings them at first, and keeps them coming back for more.

While living around us isn’t always easy, grandparents inevitably play an important role in extended family life. They are the ones who pass on traditional beliefs, stories, songs, a sense of history, the continuity of any one family. Grandparents play a crucial role in helping to raise children, enabling parents to work outside the home, or being another pair of helping hands for the increasing numbers whose technology lets them work from home. Whilst this burden has traditionally fallen on grandmas’ shoulders, more grandpas are eagerly involving themselves with their grandkids.

Even though in theory we knew that our grandchildren are growing up in a very different world, only as we started digging into it have we realized just how dissimilar it is. Values are more fluid, and our children’s children are born into the digital environment that is enveloping everything. Technology and social media are the air they breathe, providing great advantages, while rife with pitfalls.

One advantage is that wherever we live and wherever our grandchildren are, it is much easier to keep in touch with them. The Internet makes it possible for families to remain connected as never before. We have friends in England whose daughter’s family lived in New Zealand. Time zones made it possible for the laptop to be on their breakfast table while on the other side of the world the family did the same at their evening meal. This was before smartphones had really taken off. Several members of our Grandparents Forum have developed a daily conversation with their grandkids through texting, and phone calls cost next to nothing compared with just a few years ago.

On the down side, the culture raises issues that are bewilderingly new to us oldies, in many respects there are ways that this is tougher for kids growing up today. We are being confronted by issues like gender identity, sexuality, eating disorders, depression, and suicide when it comes to the kids’ lives, but there are also increased complexities in our relationships with our daughters- and sons-in-law. Then there is the challenge of kids being raised by a single parent, or in the custody of our child’s former spouse or partner. In the past the religious issues were more likely to be denomination; now are children might have married into a totally different religion like Hinduism, or of no religion at all, often bitterly opposed to the Christian faith. We are discovering that some of the things we do which we think are helpful are a burden to our sons or daughters, and then we are being as an interfering pain in the back. Being grandparents requires a degree of humility.

Being involved grandparents means learning how to provide a loving, praying, caring presence in the life of the extended family, and knowing where the potholes might be — especially in a rapidly changing culture. Grandparents are important anchors in the life of a family, linking our grandkids with their roots, but also there to model in a gently and loving way what it means to be a disciple of Christ. We are in many respects something of a safety net, there in differing ways for our grandchildren and for their parents. We are representatives of their past, where they came from, but we are also a vital bond with their Christian legacy, especially our Anglican and Episcopal heritage.

This is just an interim report on a work in progress. We are realizing a lot, almost every week unaware of just how untutored we were when we started sharing the journey of grandparenting. We have a long way to go. But at the heart of it all is love for our grandchildren and a desire for them to grow up not just to be good and wholesome citizens, but faithful followers of our Lord Jesus Christ. We often are the ones who have the time to listen and then perhaps to talk through things they raise — which means giving them time and being open to whatever it is, mundane or magnificent, that is on their minds.

Grandparenting is an artform and not a science, a joy and not a burden, and for all of us who have reached this point in life a profound responsibility. The Grandparent Forum works well in a large parish like St. George’s, and it is our attempt to enable ourselves in this ministry to our children and children’s children. Different sorts of congregations will address the challenge differently. A high school teacher who spoke to us the other week is a member of a smallish nondenominational congregation. He told his pastor he wouldn’t be there the coming Sunday because he was going to be with us. His pastor replied, “Bill, see what you can learn from them. Something like this for grandparents would be wonderful for us, too.”

It is thirty years since the late Bishop Roger White and I authored New Millennium, New Church, the first of several books in which we challenged the church to think seriously about what the future might look like, the opportunities it presents, and how we might get there.

Looking back at what we wrote, I now admit we were overly naïve and simplistic, yet we were asking the right questions. We were right to attempt to shape the church’s agenda in terms of tomorrow, but then the Episcopal Church allowed itself to be diverted, among other things, by issues of human sexuality. Important as these may have been, the mission of the Church and the Great Commission were literally and often deliberately driven from the agenda. During the time since Bishop Roger and I wrote, we have watched the Episcopal Church shrink, split, and become ever more myopic.

I cannot claim to have been any more focused than anyone else. Desperately hurting from what had been going on, in 2007 I accepted the invitation to serve back in Britain for half a dozen years. Initially, we wondered if we might stay there, but I quickly realized that although it was where I might originated, it was not where I now belonged. Not only had I been Americanized, but as I had over the decades been absorbed into the Episcopal Church, the Church of England had itself moved forward on a very different trajectory.

For me, the years leading up to starting my new position in Cambridge were as traumatic as any I have experienced what is now more than half a century of ordained life. Tensions had been enflamed and, although it was slow motion at first, it became evident to division would soon become inevitable. There were accusations and counter-accusations, friendships were splintered, and it seemed that the ‘progressive’ juggernaut was determined to get its own way regardless of the long-term consequences. The Episcopal Church had ceased to be a comfortable place for an old-fashioned Evangelical Episcopalian like me. What being back in England taught me was that although it was my country of birth, no longer was it where I belonged.

Yet here we are finding ourselves trying to make sense of living with a pandemic, something global health experts had been predicting, but about which few took their forecasts seriously. The year 2020 is turning out to be a watershed, or to use another metaphor, a hinge in human history. The issues are those of life and death, and the consequence of COVID-19 will not only be with us for a very long time, but we have yet to seriously wrestle with what is actually happening and what possible outcomes might be. Church life is already starting to look remarkably different — a challenging ball has been dropped at parish and diocesan fee and we are not quite sure whether to pick it up or kick it away; I think we are still mourning the what-might-have-beens. Our churches are just a slice of life in a culture that is utterly at sea with itself and, to mix metaphors again, is prone to bury its head in the sand hoping that somehow the old and familiar will reappear.

COVID-19 is actually a wrecking ball, especially in the USA where it has been handled more ineptly than anyone of us could have imagined. Yet it is also a wake-up call for the Christian community in general, and the Episcopal Church in particular. These next years are likely to be as uncomfortable as any we have experienced perhaps with church life faltering in unexpected ways, perhaps because we are unwilling to put ourselves under a microscope to honestly examine what needs massive reconsideration. This will require a not only a strong stomach, but a robust theology and a persistent prayerful posture. We are being forced to our knees as we seek God’s vision for our future and how to walk in God’s way.

Bishop White and I loved shooting the breeze, maybe wondered how the Episcopal Church would respond to something really tectonic happening. It has now happened, and there is no place for complacency. Roger and I used to joke that the seven last words of the church are “We’ve never done it that way before.” We now live in a time when there is a huge amount that we will never do the same again.

Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to work, think, and pray ourselves toward a new normal shaped by God’s vision. This is not a temporary emergency but a major turning-point whose consequences will be working themselves out for at least five to ten years, and maybe a good deal longer. We are entering a transitional time when it might be wise to grieve what might have been, but then to willingly think outside the box, exploring ideas and options that even in the recent past might have seemed totally out of the question. This will require not only robust theology rooted and grounded in Scripture, but also the sort of leaders who are willing to walk a walk that will of its very essence require the sacrifice of a few sacred cows — and we Episcopalians have herds of them!

My generation is quickly moving from the stage, and our role is to encourage, pray, and guide, but this is a task for rising generations. There are some extraordinary young leaders coming up, men and women who are equipped to address the gospel challenge in a very different and changing environment. These should be leaders willing to ask, “Where do we want to be twenty-five years from now, and what are the real issues and concerns that we need to address now, with” — as Karl Barth would have put it — “the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other?”

The Rev. Richard Kew is priest associate at St. George’s Church, Nashville.