This treatise was given the rather pretentious title "Heritage and Hope" when I started it. Now that I am on the home stretch, the phrase reminds me of sermon titles intended to catch the eye on church bulletin boards or newspaper ads, or to fit into church bulletins without taking up too much space.

In reviewing this material, I note that it provides some information about my heritage, but offers little in the way of hope, unless one reads between the lines here and there.

However, I think it is reasonably accurate to say that my attitude about life in general and our lives in particular has been guided largely by the definition of hope St. Paul gives in his letter to the Romans, chapter 5:

"Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endur ance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us." (RSV).

According to this definition, hope is the end product of suffering by way of creating endurance and character.

This is a sharp contrast to the popular notion that hope is based on the enjoyment of favorable circumstances and avoiding suffering. But Paul's analysis of the way to hope conforms to my experience as a father and as a minister.

One of my most painful experiences as a parent came in the summer of 1963 when I was the summer preacher for a week in Sequoia National Park. The compensation for this was the free use of a cabin. One day we drove down to Kings Canyon for a picnic and swim. We had set a deadline with the children for our return to the cabin. All were ready at the time except Charles, who had just come back from a year as an exchange student and was hoping to be admitted to UC. Charles had disappeared and did not respond to our repeated calls.

By the time he turned up, I had become convinced that he was deliberately challenging my authority, and I found it hard to be lieve that he had been reading a book and didn't hear our calls.

As we drove down the road leading out of Kings Canyon, I be gan bawling out Charles, and he responded defensively rather than contritely. I finally lost control of my temper, used some language I had never used with the boys before, and ordered Charles out of the car. He got out, and I drove a little distance down the road until I realized it was insane to leave him there to get back to camp on his own. He could have done it, but I would have felt so dreadful in the meantime that I would have punished myself as much if not more than I would have punished him.

So I backed up, ordered Charles back in the car, and we drove back to camp in sullen silence.

Part of my brain was saying that it was healthy for the boys to know that my patience had its limits. Another part was saying that I had forfeited their respect for me as a father, and thereby had lost my right to be an authority figure.

It was a turning point in my relationship with all of the boys. From that point on, I realized that I could not success fully maintain a pedestal like position as a father, and that I had been undoubtedly fooling myself in thinking that they had seen me in such a saintly position before.

Fortunately, the tension between Charles and me was relieved considerably when Carol suggested that I drive home with Charles while she went with the other children in my mother's car. On the way home, I realized that he had been given too little time to tell about his year's experiences in Germany, and to share his hopes and anxieties about the year ahead.

As I reflect on the experience now, I realize too that he had done a remarkable job in adapting to all sorts of new condi tions and learning experiences during his exchange year, and he may have had more inner strain in adjusting to life at home again than we recognized. When I think of the amazing adaptations he has made through the years in his life and work and family situa tions, I still feel a stab of pain at the memory of our blowoff in Kings Canyon. At the same time, I see it as a growing experience for all of us, which led to the fufillment of hopes which might not otherwise have been realized.

The only other stormy exchanges I can remember were a few with Paul during our years in Redding. But these also seem like valuable learning experiences in retrospect. I hope other experiences which our sons have had as fathers themselves will seem the same, at least in retrospect.

I certainly have the same impression of the times of tension we experienced in various local churches. At the time, some of them seemed very serious. Yet the times when I have felt most restless in the ministry were the times when the situation in our local church was the least challenging, when the leaders of the congregation were the most complacent about the status quo and apparently satisfied also with my ministry.

Sometimes I have felt that my decision to transfer from the Presbyterian Church to the Methodist Church was a professional disaster. In terms of financial and social rewards, it probably cost us a significant amount, provided I had played the Presby terian game of angling for the more affluent and socially presti gious churches. I would like to think that I might have been better off financially even if I had not schemed and contrived in this way, but had merely found myself wanted by churches which assumed that their pastor deserved a higher salary than the Meth odist system provided.

Yet that would certainly have been moving away from embracing the experience of suffering at least the kind of suffering that comes from having too little money.

As it turned out, our family had a very adequate level of physical comfort. If our income had been higher, Carol might well not have been drawn into teaching or her other professional work. But these experiences had rewards beyond money for the whole family, and she seems to be happy now that she did these things.

Furthermore, the boys were able to qualify for scholarships by virtue of family income as well as their abilities. It is im possible to say now whether they would have qualified so easily if our income had been higher. They will have to speak for them selves as to whether they felt deprived as children.

Most of all, I think, we escaped some of the pressures of "keeping up with the Joneses" which might have assailed us in more comfortable circumstances.

That temptation assailed me more at times in terms of keeping up with my professional colleagues in terms of church size and resources. I never had any interest in becoming a Dis trict Superintendent, much less a Bishop, the prizes that held the most prestige in the Methodist system. But I realize now, even more than I did at the time, that I resented and probably envied the adulation and power which came to the pastors of the largest churches. Rationally I told myself that this adulation and power came with a price, a price I wasn't willing to pay. Yet I confess that I was not as nobly self sacrificing in spirit as I may have tried to seem outwardly.

It was the same sort of dilemma that every professional person faces, in one way or another. But in the ministry this kind of ambition and pecking order seemed more sinful than in secular occupations.

Now that we are free from this kind of competitiveness, I see that it is hard to escape in any circumstances from such jockeying for position or concern about one's "status". The only real escape is spiritual cleansing through a process compared in the Bible to the "refiner's fire".

This is what St. Paul must have had in mind when he wrote about suffering producing endurance, then character, then hope. Suffering is like that refiner's fire, which burns away pride and other sins associated with it.

In some ways living in Rossmoor provides a very mild form of this. All around us are people who have been much more successful in terms of acquiring prestige and money. Some of them seem able to soft pedal these superiorities and to show a friendliness which does not seem to reflect any sort of pecking order. Others give the impression that they are trying to make the most of these privileges and to maintain their superior status in every way they care about.

Both types tend to remind us to emulate the good examples and to avoid imitating the negative ones.

Yet in comparison with the vast majority of people in the world, Carol and I are among the most privileged.

The very fact that we are able at the moment to live so comfortably is a great joy in many respects. The achievements of our children and their wives, and the wonderful richness of love and life in our grandchildren, are particular joys we hope to relish for years to come. At the same time, we realize that merely enjoying our retirement is not enough to give the deepest satisfaction.

So far the little bits of volunteer work we have done in various directions have not given us a strong sense of direction.

We daydream at times of doing something dramatic like apply ing for the Peace Corps, but we know that we are not likely to find the right niche or adequate strength to tackle a whole new career.

In terms of St. Paul's formula for achieving hope, it would appear that we must anticipate suffering of one kind or another. If it is not self inflicted through some sort of sacrificial ser vice, then the logic is that the suffering will be inflicted upon us through one set of events or another.

As we listen to the predictions of environmental disaster if present pollution trends continue, or through a major earthquake, or some other natural or man caused disaster, it is easy to wait for calamity to strike or else to ignore all of these gloomy projections and "live it up" for the moment.

Yet as I look back at the period through which we have lived, it seems to me that the most ominous trend and the one which has mainly thwarted the idealism which inspired my choice of the ministry has been the short range selfishness of too many people in various positions of authority and influence. It has meant glorifying those who have money and power, regardless of the means by which these were acquired.

Along with this has gone the assumption that immediate sen sual gratification is the most important goal in life, regardless of the long range consequences. In short, it is the psychology of a war time sense of desperation projected upon a whole culture for a whole generation.

Yet anyone with any sense of history knows that this is the stupidest form of selfishness. Even long range selfishness is smarter than the myopic "me first, right now" childish kind of selfishness.

History gives us ample warnings that this kind of childish selfishness will produce its own retribution. Still, part of me wants to spare ourselves and our country from the bitter consequences of the damage that has been done already, just as I have wanted to spare our children from suffering caused by their actions or by injustice or meanness on the part of others.

From that perspective, I think I can feel more sympathetic with my father's bitter antagonism toward my decision to go into the ministry.

Not long ago, my brother Frank told me that when our father got the news that I was definitely planning to start seminary, he exploded:

"I'd rather see him be a truck driver!"

Frank went on to remind me that when Dad was working with the CCC boys, the privileged ones got to drive the government trucks, and they were often reckless in their driving and broke the rules about taking the trucks out of the camp on personal ex cursions. So in his eyes a truck driver was very low on the social scale.

However, as I have tried to see the situation from his view point as a parent, I can see that my decision was disappointing in terms of his parental pride. He did not feel he could impress the friends whose opinions he most cherished by reporting that I was planning to be a minister.

He may have been prejudiced against the ministry also by his memories of having to bail out his older sister Alta when she lost her husband George Studley in the Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago and she came home to San Francisco with her four small children. She also tended to be improvident, from his viewpoint, in money matters later. Whatever shaped his thinking, he obviously thought of the typical clergyman as a woolly headed idealist who didn't have much common sense when it came to managing practical matters.

In contrast (and perhaps with some empathy with my father's attitude), all of my sons have achieved professional positions which are admired by the secular world. Some ministers would feel disappointed that none of their sons chose the ministry for themselves.

It is a common human failing to want to control our children's choices in greater detail than we should do for their best welfare. Carol and I feel grateful that our children have made basic choices that are compatible with their upbringing, although not identical with ours.

My father may also have been very negative about my choice of vocation because he was concerned for the hardships or frustrations he feared I would experience. In that respect he was being more realistic than I was at the time.

But in terms of St. Paul's analysis of the way hope is achieved, that desire to avoid suffering for oneself or one's children may be flying in the face of God's strategy for our lives or for our nation or planet.

This would seem to pose a no win situation for us. When we think more deeply, though, we realize that it is a much firmer basis for hope than if we were to count absolutely on avoiding pain and suffering as the basis for our hope.

Therefore as Carol and I look ahead to whatever years are left to us, we are bound to feel somewhat uneasy if things are going too smoothly at a particular moment.

At the same time, we can enjoy the good times and not be unduly fearful of whatever bad times may lie ahead. Thus we live in hope hope for the immediate future and for the long range future for ourselves, our loved ones and our world.