Below are the prepared remarks I made for the time of shared remembrances. It was a joy to celebrate such a life before God.
"We knew we could never get enough of him."
Those were the words first spoken by a friend upon hearing that Ted Dotts -- Methodist minister, wise counselor, friend of the earth, and Christian -- passed away Sunday morning.
I tell my children they owe their lives to Ted Dotts. I first met Ted in 2000 when I was considering seminary and my great-aunt Opal suggested I visit with him. I contacted Ted and he invited me to lunch at Covenant Hospital where he was then serving as chaplain. I came into that lunch with my heart set on applying to one seminary; I went out open to others -- including Duke Divinity School, where I eventually enrolled and met my wife, Irie. That is why my children owe their lives to Ted -- literally.
What I remember most about that initial conversation with Ted was just how peculiar he was as a person. First, he didn't eat any meat! But even more interesting was the way he responded when I told him the name of my initially intended school. There was the raising of his eyebrows, and then questions -- a series of questions which led me down a new path of my own discovering. I thank God for that moment and the way Ted refused to patronize me by telling me what I wanted to hear -- namely, that my school selection was just fine. In that Ted gave me the first great gift I was to receive from him. He gave me the gift of what psychologists call self-differentiation, but what can also be called freedom. Ted was the freest man I have ever known.
There is an old proverb that says, "When the student is ready, the teacher comes." Ted came again into my life just when I was ready to begin trying to live freely myself. I had the privilege of meeting with Ted and a few other friends once a week for the past year and a half. It was in the group that Ted's incisive questions and insights led me to a new place of freedom from my need of approval and my fear of disappointing others. In other words, he helped me begin the journey of self-differentiation.
Ironically, however, it was a stumble down that path that brought me the second of Ted's great gifts to my life. I had gotten myself into a little hot water on some hot button issue and was telling our group that I decided I had come on too strong and was arriving at a place of deeper compassion for those who disagreed with me. "What I need to do is learn to love more deeply," I said. Another member of the group asked me how I knew I wasn't betraying my convictions for the sake of equanimity. No, I didn't think so, I said; I wasn't going to sell myself out. That's when Ted spoke. "Ryon," he said, "you will sell out. You will betray your convictions. You will compromise your values. So what?"
I would later discover that "So what?" is in essence the first part of the last words in "Diary of a Country Priest", Ted's favorite novel which he read over a dozen times. Lying on his death bed, soon to succumb to cancer, the dying country priest thinks of all his perceived failures in ministry, but then manages to mutter touchingly, "What does it matter? Grace is everywhere."
And there it is, another lesson Ted taught me and so many others: that grace abounds; and that God's power is made perfect in our weakness.
But Ted saved the greatest lesson he had to teach us for the last. When his own time came, Ted taught us to die -- even as he taught us to live.
I will forever remember that holy night in the Grand Hall at Second B as his serenity of spirit as he spoke of death as being nothing to God. And who could forget when he described his idea of heaven as the joy of chasing Betty around for an eternity! That night's conversation was titled: "A Conversation About Death and Dying with a Dying Man"; but have we ever seen a man so fully alive? Will we ever again?
My friend was partly right; we knew we could never get enough of Ted -- not enough of what we wanted of him anyway. There could always be one more visit, on more session, one more group, one more word of wisdom. But on the other hand, we also know he gave us all he had. And in the end that will be all that we need.
For grace is everywhere.
Ted was such a humble man, always deflecting adoration and turning the spotlight on to someone else. I know this essay would embarrass Ted and likely would not approve.
And to that I say, well, so what?
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