If you ask me what his favorite dish was, what his political affiliation was, what his religious beliefs were, what the personal preferences of his life were, I couldn’t tell you. Because he didn’t seem to want to talk about those things. He was an educator to the max, that was his passion, that was his life. So it was very difficult to get him to talk about these kinds of ultimate issues. I am not sure if I am remembering what he said or what David Booth said about him but I believe somewhere in my mind is the idea that he did not believe that man could arrive at the truth by his own rational means. And therefore he had to live with half-truths and hunches and belief systems and data but that he couldn’t come to an over-arching belief system in many ways that dovetails with Christianity because Christians don’t believe that you can argue somebody into the faith. There’s a revelation aspect to faith that puts everything together and you can’t use an Enlightenment mindset to kind of rationalize yourself into Christian belief.

I would have liked more of what it was like to be him and what he thought was happening to him and where he thought he was going when he died or if he just thought oblivion–death is the end and this is something I have to walk through and go through.

Now it seems to be coming back to me. My feeling is it might have been at his house. It wouldn’t have been the Lord’s Prayer. We would have laid hands on him and asked God to touch him and to heal him from his sickness.

Jay Haug '73