Calvin Miller - Life Is Mostly Edges: A Memoir

All the way from Vernon, Texas, to the uttermost parts of the world, Calvin Miller gleans the fields of his life to produce an amazing crop of humor, insight, revelation, romance, and pathos. Not your typical biography, this memoir is a must-read of total delight.

Gloria Gaither, best-selling author
and award-winning songwriter

Calvin Miller unwraps the gift of miracles and lays it exposed for all of us to see and understand. And he does it perfectly while celebrating the wonder and mystery of God.

Karen Kingsbury, best-selling author

When I pick up a memoir, it is not because I am hungry to learn the details of another persons life (although that sometimes helps, especially if the person turns out to be as irregular as I am). I pick up a memoir because I want to learn how other people come to their senses, learning to live the lives they have been given instead of the lives they might have planned. If they happen to write truthfully, with generosity and humor, then I also hope those virtues will rub off on me. Calvin Millers book fills my cup. You can read him for the great stories he tells or read him for the great soul he is. Either way, he will show you the art of brinkmanship, inviting you to join him at the unsafe edges of human life where true joy is found.

Barbara Brown Taylor, author of
Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith

The writings of Calvin Miller have consistently stirred joy in my heart and brought focus to my faith. For over three decades, I have turned to his penned reflection for guidance. This new book is a welcome addition!

Max Lucado, minister and
best-selling author

Calvin Miller has for a long time been one of our Christian communitys best story tellers. This is one of his best: the richly textured narrative of his becoming a Christian, becoming a pastor, becoming a professor. None of these becomings easy; all of them poignant, painful, and praise-filled

Eugene H. Peterson, author of
The Message

Calvin Millers great gift is to sing Jesus powerfully, to the blessing of our generation and those to come.

Dallas Willard, author of The
Divine Conspiracy

This is a rollicking account of a rollicking life. Calvin Miller is a master of our language and all its idioms; hw is a literary stylist, a rare phenomenon in whatever circles one reads.

Bill Griffin, editor, writer, and
playwright

Calvin Miller is the Poet Laureate of todays Evangelical World. He has something profound to say, and he says it beautifully.

Michael Duduit, editor of
Preaching

Also by Calvin Miller

The Singer

Preaching: The Art of Narrative Exposition

Conversations with Jesus

Loving God Up Close

The Unfinished Soul

Walking with Angels

Into the Depths of God

Sermon Maker

Celtic Devotions

The Celtic Path of Prayer

Apples, Snakes, and Bellyaches

When the Aardvark Parked on the Ark

2008 by Calvin Miller

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ( NIV ). 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

Data Miller, Calvin.
Life is mostly edges : a memoir / Calvin Miller.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8499-2057-8
1. Miller, Calvin. 2. Christian biography. I. Title.
BR1725.M44625A3 2008
277.3082092dc22
[B]

2008013237

08 09 10 11 12 QW 5 4 3 2 1

Information about External Hyperlinks in this ebook

Please note that footnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication.

To Barbara, fellow sojourner and lifelong companion,
whose courage has taught me confidence,
whose insight has been a light in lifes dark passages,
whose love strengthened me for the journey, and whose buoyant spirit gave me wings
to soar above despair and name it joy.

Contents

P ART O NE
T HE E ARLY Y EARS
19361955

P ART T WO
S TAYING H UMAN W HILE B EING A P ASTOR
19561991

P ART T HREE
T HE P ROFESSOR W HO L IKED T EACHING
B UT L OVED L EARNING
19912007

PROLOGUE
A Backward Glance at
Up-Front Things

A T THE AGE OF SEVENTY-TWO, I HAVE GROWN HONEST ABOUT THE best years of my life. I have lived those yearsall of thempast threescore and ten, knowing all along that this life was never mine. It has belonged all the way through to another.

Given the size of the universe, the world I have lived in is quite small, and I have lived it out mostly along its edges.

This is not surprising, for life is mostly edges. It is smalllike a postage stamp. So small that it all but disappears against the busy days it devours.

My own small stamp has retained just enough sticky on its backside to adhere to the strongest of my memories. It comes dated with my long ago birthplace, but as of yet has no final return address. The time of my passing lies out ahead shrouded in the mists of things undefined. So the following account is all a matter of memory. It is this that makes my story shaky.

Memory arrives sometime after we get here, and generally abandons us long before we leave here. So the umbilical trot that squirts us into the world is unremembered, and the EKG we need to keep it all going is likely to abandon us too suddenly to allow us to write it all down before our passing.

Like the rest of the human race, I grew slowly to self-awareness on the fuzzy front edge of the stamp, and am now approaching the fuzzy back edge. I can neither remember getting here nor what I did after I got here. So I cant remember how old I was when I learned that my mothers name was Ethel and I had no knowable father. I cant even remember enough about life in the middle of the stamp to get the story exactly right. But all that follows herein is an actual account of my years, as faithfully recounted as I can remember them.

I do remember enough to know I liked the middle of my stamp more than the edges. This is not unusual. We all like the middle. The middle is safe. You cant fall off the middle. Only the edges are dangerous. The great lessons, the deep tragedies, the storms of unbearable heart-quakes always happen along the edges. We dont cry much in the middle, but then we dont laugh much there eitherat least with any belly-deep laughter. Still, every day, nine to five, we suit up for the only contest that can be played along the unsafe edges of our years.