He was told by the profs
of pastoral care (and that
bled over from one dept.
to another because it was

a denominational seminary,
which by nature is all about
training people to serve the
church as pastors so all the

profs get to weigh in) that
we needed to spend at least
twenty-hours a week prepar-
ing Sunday’s sermon. For the

first few years in the parish,
painstakingly he would count
the hours of reading the script-
ures for the week with some

but minimal at best attention
to the original languages and
consulting the commentaries
and writing and condensing

and editing and he got close
but never up to the twenty
mark. Then he thought about
life experiences and added

those and, low and behold,
he was hitting around a hun-
dred in just a few hours. Now
his poetry is running about

the same way. So if asked how
long it takes him to write a
poem, he says, “About a life-
time in a few hours.”