PREFACE
My father, Charles Edward
Rice, wrote the bulk of The View From My Ridge in 1977 while living in
Nashville, Tennessee. An Episcopal priest, he was appointed diocesan consultant
by the Bishop of Tennessee, John Vander Horst, in 1968, but with the Bishop’s
retirement in 1976 came a period of limbo for the consultant. Although still on
the payroll, his duties were lessened considerably and it was understood by all
that he was seeking a return to parish ministry. The author of a dozen or so
published articles and theological essays, he spent much of this transition
period composing a manuscript drawn from his professional experience. That
work, entitled The Political Shape of the Church, remains enigmatically
tucked away in a footlocker. Following
the completion of that ecclesiastical study, he began writing a series of
essays recounting his childhood in the mill town of Rossville, Georgia, where
he was born in 1929.
Although
he normally banged out his ideas on an old typewriter, for this diversion he chose
instead to write in longhand, using a hardbound “blank” book that my brother
Hal had given him. The pages were 8” x 11” and he decided to confine each essay
to a single page. He may have written rough drafts or outlines—given his
discipline and preciseness as a writer it’s hard to imagine otherwise—but the
handwritten quality retains an air of spontaneity while the space limitations
highlight his talent for literary brevity, already a lauded hallmark of his
oratory style. Initially a memoir of growing up in a Southern mill town during
the depression and World War II, The View From My Ridge evolved into a
set of tightly-wrapped vignettes, each self-contained yet thematically linked
as part of a continuous narrative.
In 1978 he moved to Gatlinburg, Tennessee to serve as
rector at Trinity Episcopal Church. The first 78 or so installments of The
View From My Ridge were finished by that time, and over the next few years
he would add only an occasional entry. He was rector of Trinity for
considerably longer than at any of his previous pastorates, but the composition
of the Ridge pages devoted to parishes and parishioners precedes his
tenure there, so such essays as “From Steeple to Steeple” and “Homemade
Theologians” do not include references to the many people who helped shape the
landscape of his final years as a clergyman. The reflections he might have
penned on his time in the Smokies, had he lived into retirement, defy
speculation, but suffice it to say that some of the most profound and enduring
friendships were begat during his time as a preacher in that bustling mountain
village.
During the Gatlinburg years he penned “The Waiting
Mountains,” a masterful piece of prose that was accepted for publication by the
Tennessee Conservationist in 1981. In the Ridge essay “Writing,”
Dad confesses that he has “toyed with some fiction and a little poetry but my
ambition in these has remained more realistic—virtually nil.” That sentiment
would change following the success of “The Waiting Mountains,” when he went on a
literary bender that produced the manuscript for a substantial novel he called No
Next of Kin. Despite the fact that his rapid digestion of books—he would
often knock off a thick paperback in a single afternoon—rarely included
anything that wasn’t filed under military history or theology, the as yet
unpublished novel reveals a remarkable intuition for fiction.
He
would eventually write a dozen or so well-crafted short stories, and even a
couple of children’s stories, but the essay remained the genre in which his
talents soared. At the time of his death in 1986, he was shopping two freshly
written pieces, “Endless Playgrounds,”—which was an expansion of the Ridge
essay “Playgrounds”—and “Another Bullet, Another War,” a tribute to his friend,
paraplegic World War II veteran Gordon W. Scott. He also wrote a light-hearted
bit of prose, possibly his last composition, entitled “Survival of the Unfit,”
which pays subtle homage to his often under-appreciated wife and caretaker,
Jo—a wonderful example that it is never too late to show a little gratitude.
These three essays, along with a few other selections representing different
phases of his career, are included in the second section of this book.
Readers
may note that the traditional biographical highlights—such as his marriage, his
children, many of his closest relationships, etc.—are not given much, if any,
ink in The View From My Ridge. But those who have an understanding of
the book’s author will understand and accept this fact. For better or worse, he
pandered to no one, and providing gratuitous affection or attention was not his
style. Such omissions also reflect his keen sense of purpose as a writer and as
a preacher: he sought to point the way based upon observations from his ridge
and the lessons he encountered as he continued the climb. The responsibility
for the telling of our journeys is our own; each must individually seek to
traverse the path to the ridge top to discover the view that awaits. And the
path, like the view, is eternally unique.
Charles
E. Rice wrote The View From My Ridge, as stated on the original
hand-written title page, “for my children and theirs.” And this publication,
dedicated to Joann, is likewise for his children: Carol, Hal, and Philip; and
theirs: Tierney, Dustin, Christi, Bridget, Charles, and Paul; and also for
Pati, Barbara Jean, and Maggie and Christi “Belle;” and for all who loved him.
He always maintained a very inclusive sense of family, and that family is very
extensive, an infinite list.
In
the world surveyed from his ridge, family ties are defined by the limitless
bounds of the Holy Spirit, and to that family—and theirs—we offer these essays.
As he tells us in “Writing,”
When
I sit down to write I am sitting once again on the brow of a solitary ridge not
knowing what, if any, worlds my thoughts may touch. Whatever, I know that words
are powerful, both spoken and written. Our Lord cautioned us that the idle word
is no light matter. And in Biblical terms words are deeds—and deeds, in turn,
become language.
Pray so.
Philip
Rice
2002