Letter from Mark and Liz Smith
Pat,
Liz and I are writing to express all our good feeling for you. You have been an enduring presence in our lives, especially for your scholarship and for your personal care.
I read so much of everything that you have written, and I hear your voice in them. One example, Right now I am in the middle of your notes to the HarperCollins NRSV to the Psalms, specifically to Psalm 77. I am very taken by your note to verse 19 (page 794): "Your footprints were unseen refers to the appearance and work of God that is without visible proof, in the present as well as in the past." It is the brilliance of what is said about the past that is evoked for the present that instills hope in me. Thanks for your word here, and across the pages of all your works.
You know all the rest. Some examples leap to mind. Our first real meeting with you when you visited Yale and three of us went out for Italian food in Worcester Square neighborhood and drove around together. Second: your great help in authoring the preface to the second edition of The Early History of God. We could add our experiences of your gracious self at Montreat when the colloquium was held there.
More recently, though you may not quite sense it, I sense myself retracing your invisible footsteps at the seminary. I took over the God in the Old Testament course this term. I have your old syllabus (I think from Dennis), and I look to you as a model for teaching the seminary today. I reread a couple of your essays for my PTS inaugural lecture (that took place in early February) and I again retrace your steps. Really, you are the only person I know who has tried to hold together fully the historical and the theological.
It saddens us that we will not visit together with you in the future. In my present I continue to have so much of you; and for that I will continue to be grateful in the future.
All this is to say is that we feel love for you and also sympathy for you as you pass through these days.
With affection,
Mark & Liz
