Bill Moyers Journal; 137; The Interpreter

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BILL MOYERS' JOURNAL

"THE INTERPRETER"

December 26, 1973

MAN (DOUG SHEPARD): The real Doug Shepard has sort of been covered over by the titles of "Reverend," and I know that that's not me; I just "Reverend," it just something sort of grates within myself. And some say it with a sneer, and that even is worse.

I think it's a role; don't you? The role that you have to, you know, get up and and preach and pray and visit the sick and bury the dead and marry people, and so forth, until you just get covered over by it, I think. You know, like the like the story, maybe the guy who sees "P.C." written in the skies oughta "plow corn" instead of "preach Christ." And I've had the feeling maybe I shoulda plowed corn.

BILL MOYERS: I'm Bill Moyers. You're about to meet a man on a journey a pilgrim, to use an old word- in search of self-understanding and moral courage. The road he's on is crowded with people who have asked to journey with him, men and women facing a personal crisis, or wrestling with some specter from the past that won't let go, or trying to find meaning in the chaos of our times.

These pages from my journal were written in the fall, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, at a place called Interpreter's House. But they reflect something I've found happening all over America, as human beings grope for renewal and recovery, to give their own brief pilgrimage a sense of high worth and purpose.

Carlyle Marney came to these mountains seven years ago after a heart attack and two serious operations had threatened to end his career. He was a widely respected Protestant minister, whose writing and speaking had gained him influence among all faiths and made him welcome in places as disparate as a small black church in the south and Harvard, Princeton and Yale. Illness led him to resign his prestigious pastorate, but as his body healed here in these mountains he conceived a way to fulfill a long-time dream to get the church out of the house, in his words, where it could infiltrate and confront the contemporary American culture.

Since then, almost six thousand people have passed through Interpreter's House here in Haywood County. They include clergymen, doctors, lawyers, scholars, students, businessmen and just plain people. They have in common a willingness to travel with Marney on a journey inward.

In this session, twenty clergymen have gathered for three weeks to explore their life and work.

DAN: Much of what you said last week I believe, and I had a lady at my last church say to me after I was there three weeks; she said, "Now, I've got to talk to you," and she said, "You know, you're fine, but it doesn't come across

MARNEY: That's right.

DAN: "...and I want to know why." And that's my agenda,

MARNEY: She's right, and you're right. We come here ready. You came here loaded; what are you loaded with? And it's okay. Because it's probably been fired in here before.

DAN: Angry at myself.

MARNEY: Well, you don't have to carry it; and these guys can help you carry it. Frankly ...

This is one of the best balanced, most mature, sickest and wellest groups we've had.

MARNEY'S ASSISTANT (TO DAN): Who around the table will you let hurt you? Okay? And if you let somebody around the table hurt you, you might find out you don't die.

MOYERS: What are you trying to do here?

MARNEY: Well, I'm not trying to save the church; I'm perfectly willing for it to blow. I'm not trying to fix an institution. I'm answering you negatively; is that okay?

MOYERS: Hmm.

MARNEY: I'm not a refugee either, Bill, as you know, from a church that wasn't happening. I'm a kind of a burnt-out hulk of one that was happening faster than I could keep up with, that is, people were happening faster. So I'm not trying to save the bucket. I am convinced that a person who is committed to the work and meaning of Christian symbols, who has done his homework - this is what I wrote Dr. Menninger who's done his homework by that, I mean, he's stood with his hat in his hand before a competent psychiatry, sociology, history, drama, art, theology - who's done his homework, has more to say to, for, with, in behalf of, on account of man, than from any other specialty he can fill. For years, I was jealous of the psychiatrists I worked with, or of the surgeons they could fix folks - but I now see that a grown man, a growing man, who knows the score about humanity, and that this is the only Christian mission - we've talked to well, I never did like the "death of God" people, and did some debating with T.J.J., and others, but they were a worthy rebuke; we've - we've used "God talk" to keep from talking about the real issues. We use "God language" to keep from talking man. We've got a lot to say about man. This is our native base, this is our and that's all I'm up to. We're hoping to see a man who had called into being that would not otherwise get called out.

MOYERS: Can you expect, fairly, these men, who were sitting there this morning, to become psychiatrists, historians, dramatists, and then go back to their small parishes, wherever they may go, and talk about the very thing you're talking about here, and be accepted in their cultures, be effective?

MARNEY: That's my proficiency, not theirs. But they can do some of it. And what I'm calling them into is a manhood that many have missed, by diversion or divertisement, by being turned to other functions rather than relations. All I want them to learn here in three weeks you can't do much in three weeks - we're a schooling hearing, and the only way a guy can learn to hear is to be heard, to have been heard.

MAURICE: The day we came we shared something about ourselves, and I'm sure that most of you've not forgotten what I said about having had an accident. The accident happened, the original accident happened down on a lonely country road one night, late. and our rescue squad was going pretty well; and I was in the rescue squad, and we went down to pick up a girl. On the way to the hospital, a car hit the side of the ambulance

know we know, the group is of the essence; so I'm not entering a diatribe against group encounter sessions, I'm simply saying it ought to be led by a man who's

who has little to gain. I become angry at the table, and make no attempt to hide it. I also become very sad, or I've been made to weep, or, as I suggested, I've been ordered out by a group because I was in their way. It becomes a candid exchange in a place where it's safe, in the hope that the people experience the fact that they could live this way all the time, and that it would be a better way to live.

MAN (TO MAURICE): What have you done for yourself lately, without excuses, without good reason to; what have you done for my friend, Maurice?

MAN: I was thinking last - about it last - yeah, last summer, when I was home recuperating for a month, you know. I really needed the doctor's orders, and all that reason, to enjoy

MAN: Yeah.

MARNEY'S ASS'T.: And when can we get over the fact that we didn't need that accident, illness, doctor's reason today?

MAN: Right on, Preacher.

MARNEY'S ASSIST: What can I claim for myself, that I claim for myself, that I do not have to explain to myself, that I do not have to explain to them; what can I claim for myself simply because I am, and I deserve it? Or even if I don't deserve it, I claim it because I want it?

MAURICE: And I had to have a reason even for recuperating, so I could get back to

preaching.

MAN: Sure, you did. Of course (laughter) That's what it was all about. Christ, there was no reason to recuperate

MAURICE: Well, if I couldn't recuperate, I couldn't work.

MAN: you should have just died (laughter)

MAURICE: I couldn't work (laughter, inaudible).

MAN: The Lord saved you.

MAURICE: Yeah (laughter)

MARNEY: Young men, boys, are taught that one comes into his eye-worth only by performance. The crude word would be "doo-doo," the baby word. Now, when it's carried on in the educational process, in the vocational training process, and in the life work process, where I achieve my identity by what I do, I am dwarfed at the very outset from the realization that being and "being" in relation, to use a phrase which Buber was very fond, he learned it from Hasidic Jewery, I think - I'm deprived of the primary value of being, because I get my being by doing; but quite the reverse is true.

MARNEY: Probably. But my limit is close at hand; it's closer than I thought it was. Should I talk like an ornithologist, or a nixiologist, or a psychologist; am I going to have a broader hearing? Why, I'm talking like a human being.

MARNEY: Jack, how come your appointments have never been commensurate with your training, your ability or your personality? You have a reason to be angry.

JACK: Yeah.

MARNEY: You're one of the best prepared and most committed men among the four or five hundred in that conference I hear from other sources. How come your churches are so small? Is it possible you haven't come across to the people who do the appointing, any more than you have to the finance committee?

JACK: I think that's true. And, here again, for the first time in in my ministry, when it came to appointments in June, I told the District Superintendents - there were several of them that I didn't think I was getting a fair shake when it came to appointments

MARNEY: Did they fall over dead?

JACK: Well, I think they were sort of surprised, because I - I think they've always felt, "Well, Jack will go where he's where we tell him to go ...

MARNEY: How come you don't admire Jack?

JACK: Well, that's one of the reasons why I'm here, to try to understand that.

MARNEY: There ain't no way a man can be humble who has no cause to be proud. Only a man who has great reason to be proud can be humble. But we were taught a kind of self- abnegation, which is denial of that self-love and regard, without which no "I" genuinely exists; and so you get little half-developed "I's" "I," capital I - pushed around by sophomore bureaucrats. Throughout our culture we've taught meekness as a milquetoast. Here's this Moses, so angry at Yahweh that he takes his stick and smashes his rod; and then he says he's a meek man. What does it mean? Means he's a stud who's got a boss.

DAN: Is that so bad?

MAN: That's exactly what he's saying, it's not.

MARNEY (laughing): Damn, you have to get in, don't you? I'm gonna put you in a corner pocket. This is what our whole culture missed. They taught us that meekness was sub- missiveness.

Now, you submitted - and it takes nerve - you submitted your image, and somebody's been rough with it. But there's no blood, is there?

JACK: No.

MARNEY: Unless I misread your face, you said said, "Hey, I'm okay, I'm all right.'

for just a just a glimmer

-

JACK: You know, this is we've talked among many of us here about this whole share, you know, what that thing is saying to you; and I've tried it enough to know, you know, the only thing you'll get is, you know, "Hell, you'd see that in anything, you know, a commercial; it doesn't say a thing to me. Aw, you know

JACK: I figure you're saying you killed your wife.

FRANK: I've had dreams of her death many times

MOYERS: How do you explain the constant returning to family, to the relationship with wives, to questions and concerns about children?

MARNEY: Wasn't that gorgeous? Wasn't that gorgeous? And wasn't that - wasn't that young woman from the Foundation sharp at that point? Boy, she - she was right. Because this is primal. Now, I don't know what St. Paul meant about the Church "that's in thy house," but I think that's what she meant, but she would have used different lingo; so would I now. But we can't talk intimately without Judy getting in on it, without Elizabeth being in the picture - these are our primal relations.

MOYERS: But these men's relations, their primal relations, seem in such disorder.

MARNEY: Precisely. Because they have used their outside function to try to establish an inner relation, when just the reverse is the way one goes about this. He celebrates outdoors what he's got at home indoors; and what's primary really is at home. Otherwise, there's no marriage. But if it is all my Catholic teachers are right it's a sacrament. It's a sacrament when this man and this woman are related.

MOYERS: But how do you explain the fact that so many of the men who come here seem to have an insufficient personal relationship with their families? Is it just simply because they've used their profession as their obsession; or is that, in your judgment, an underlying failure of our society?

MARNEY: I don't know

DAN: I'm having a problem there, she's often tried to get me to get out of the ministry. And this has bothered me. She had a calling to the mission field while she was in college, and then later on we got married, and I and this is something I picked up while - while Frank was talking, I was working through some things; it all of a sudden occurred to me that if I'm not producing, then my wife's not on the mission field. Do you hear me?

DAN: My wife had a call to the mission field, but she relinquished that to be married to me, and yet she's always, you know, "You only made five calls today, you didn't win any souls today," you know, and "Do! Do! Do! Do!," you know, "Produce! Produce! Produce!" and if I don't get those visits in, you know, I'm not doing the job. And I think what she's really saying and it just occurred to me is, you know, "If you're not cutting it, then I'm not on the mission field; and I've got to be on the mission field."

MARNEY'S ASS'T: I think that your relationship with her seems to be one in which you kind of have a report card in your pocket

DAN: Uh huh.

MARNEY: Of course. I care enough to dislike you. And I care enough to be prepared to, hell, relate. Berth me. Say, "Hey, man, come in. I'm glad to see you! Where you been?" Say, "How you doin', honey?" Give grace. 'Stead of takin' it. They didn't have to have you. You may have been an accident, but what a fearful prospect. It might even be worse to think somebody did it on purpose (laughter) ... But Nature is prodigal with her seed. Ten million sperm! and one connected. And here you are, thirty-five, whatever, years later. You an accident, man. You a miracle. You can afford to let the incidental causes rest, and celebrate your existence by taking in, by giving out. Because a system that only goes one way either bloats or dissipates. You stay in that tar barrel - swim in it, till it congeals. Then we'll heat it up, try to get you out.

MOYERS: You were really doing more to those people, you weren't just asking them to examine their tent poles; you were stripping them buck naked

MARNEY: Uh-uh! I got no right to do that. I was I was hearing through their offering, their mask, and refusing to let him go on lying to himself, or to me, by saying, "Hey, we're not talking about the issue." If I stripped, Bill, if you stripped and you can, I've seen you when you could a man freezes, you don't jerk his mask off. "Persona, as a number of people have seen, but in the meaning of person it comes clearest, is to hear through what's offered you. So all you were watching me do was what I did in counselling for thirty years, was to hear through. We all put masks on.

MOYERS: Don't we need them?

MARNEY: Yes. They are absolutely, layer, after layer, after layer, essential to personality. The trick, the core, the meaning of human relation, then, is in hearing. Christian humility is the willingness to hear. And this is what's been forced on me. I got heard. I got heard by my wife. I got heard by Bob McLaren. I got heard by my private church, of whom you're a charter member. I mean by this everybody has one. of those where it's safe to be heard. That man's in church only when it's safe to be who he is; he can out-span(?) his oxen and throw off the gear and take a bath and relax and be at home. That's all you were watching. It wasn't brutal. It was simply a refusal to let him lie to himself.

DAN: I'm beginning to hear now, but I want to be able to do something with it.

MARNEY'S ASS'T: Well, care for somebody here, then; start off there. Who here have you got anything to offer to? Don't have to answer. Who can you care for here, or do for here, without that "I gotta watch out 'less I be screwed by them score sheet you carry?" I think the insights you were offered about your wife were incredible ... it was I was struck by the fact you don't you're not even talking about her needs; you're talking about your needs, your needs, your needs, your needs.

MAN: I'd sort of thought of Dan as putting - you know, being hurt somewhere along the line, wanted to keep his defenses up so nobody gets quite close enough to him, so he puts himself on a pedestal so that people - you know, just out of reach of everybody; and they then react by saying, "Boy, one thing I want to do is to knock this guy off the pedestal so he's down with us. And so they take a swing at him, or he thinks they do; and then he puts himself up a little higher. You know, I - I hear your wife saying,

MAN: Who held you then?

DAN: The bed?

MAN: There was nobody?

DAN: Oh, my mother and dad were around, but ... My mother was so busy the youngest of the three she was so busy, she never could rock me to sleep; and when I was twenty-three years old I was still sticking my hand behind my head and rocking myself to sleep. And this is - this is what really disturbs me, not so much this garbage about me - which I think's garbage, but the fact I feel locked in and don't know how to get out. See? Because I've never been out.

MAN: What is the "garbage" part that's been offered?

MARNEY'S ASS'T: You hadn't never been loved like this before, have you? It's got a lot of garbage, but it all has to it's all wrapped up in L-O-V-E.

MAN: You know, Dan, when I came here, I suppose of all the people around this table that I thought I could in any way relate to, you were the least one. But at this moment, I feel closer to you than anybody. Because I think you came off the table off the pedestal, and you're down here with the rest of us hurting mortals. And I love you.

MOYERS: When they go back, what do they take with them, and how do they how do you how do you keep them from becoming wounded when they realize they can't keep up what's gone on here?

MARNEY: Well, they can't be saved from being wounded. A grand friend who helps us here, Stuart Henry, Professor at Duke, first used a line in a contemporary play I don't even know the name of the play, but I can hear Stuart say it now, "In the Army of the Lord, all are wounded." Kierkegaard has a line, "Thoughts which wound from behind." The goal is not to come out unscathed. So I have no hope that they won't bleed. I have a hope that they won't bleed unnecessarily, unworthily and fatally.

MAN (to DAN): You've always come across to me as a guy that's got a lot of guts. You

you are a fighter. And I'm thinking about some of us have a different kind of problem; I think I do. I find myself relating a lot to this guy over here, because we're guys who we we're always trying to fly that kite, and it gets stuck in the tree every time; doesn't look like we can do anything right. And we we think we're licked, to begin with. And that's why, when I looked at you, I I felt he's got something I want.

MAN: I just want to say I'm as happy for Dan tonight. We all knew you were dealing with a bad problem, and I think every man around the table wanted to to try and deal with it for you, and yet that's something you have to do. And when you really came down, I expect I'm not the only one that almost got up and went and put his arms around you.

MARNEY: Well, the demands the role makes on a minister are not Godly; they're un-Godly. We've built into his work a demand that he at least, a demand he thinks he hears that is dehumanizing and depersonalizing. But in the ultimate analysis, I'd have to say the groups of lawyers, carpenters, city councilmen, school boards, police departments, we work the same way; in fact, we mix them. I have put two or three sharp high school kids who thought they were in real trouble in with twenty-five veteran ministers just like catfish among a bunch of codfish, and man, it comes alive.

WOMAN: If you could understand each other and share your searching and your seeking and your growing with your families, then when you feel down your wife could help pick you up, and your kids could help pick you up. And I feel that what you people are doing here is is what I wish I could have done, or my father would have had a chance to do; but none of you ever get down to the grit of that. I think you're failing in your marriages because you don't mention it, they're not partners. And it's sad, for a whole group of you men to be struggling to prove points, whether it's in bed or in the pulpit and you're all doing it for the same reason, which isn't a very good one. It's just sad to know that two people can share a home, a bed, that a minister can be part of a community, and need just as much as he's trying to give his parishioners, need just as much as he's trying to give his wife, and be afraid to admit it. And submit to it, and sort of dissolve into it.

FRANK: No. No, I don't think

MARNEY: She's a pro, isn't she? my wife doesn't give a damn about me.

FRANK: And she's the one, you know you know, the one that I I can get it anywhere else, but, uh, she can be as bored about those things which are the - I feel to be essential for

MAN: She's bored with your functions?

Frank: Yea ...

MAN: But not bored with you?

FRANK: Oh, she's bored with me.

MAN: You come across as very boring. But I don't think you really are.

MAN: If she really knew who you were, she'd be delighted and happy with you.

FRANK: The one person I would like to give the gift of fulfillment of life, joy, excitement, won't receive it, or can't receive it, or doesn't give a damn about receiving it. I get sort of, you know, I like interpretive stuff, and then we'll be sitting there and watching a (inaudible) movie, you know. God, you just ache to share, you know, what that thing is saying to you; and I've tried it enough to know, you know, the only thing you'll get is, you know, "Hell, you'd see that in anything, you know, a commercial; it doesn't say a thing to me. Aw, you know

JACK: I figure you're saying you killed your wife.

FRANK: I've had dreams of her death many times

MOYERS: How do you explain the constant returning to family, to the relationship with wives, to questions and concerns about children?

MARNEY: Wasn't that gorgeous? Wasn't that gorgeous? And wasn't that - wasn't that young woman from the Foundation sharp at that point? Boy, she was right. Because this is primal. Now, I don't know what St. Paul meant about the Church "that's in thy house," but I think that's what she meant, but she would have used different lingo; so would I now. But we can't talk intimately without Judy getting in on it, without Elizabeth being in the picture these are our primal relations.

MOYERS: But these men's relations, their primal relations, seem in such disorder.

MARNEY: Precisely. Because they have used their outside function to try to establish an inner relation, when just the reverse is the way one goes about this. He celebrates outdoors what he's got at home indoors; and what's primary really is at home. Otherwise, there's no marriage. But if it is all my Catholic teachers are right it's a sacrament. It's a sacrament when this man and this woman are related.

MOYERS: But how do you explain the fact that so many of the men who come here seem to have an insufficient personal relationship with their families? Is it just simply because they've used their profession as their obsession; or is that, in your judgment, an underlying failure of our society?

MARNEY: I don't know

DAN: I'm having a problem there, she's often tried to get me to get out of the ministry. And this has bothered me. She had a calling to the mission field while she was in college, and then later on we got married, and I and this is something I picked up while - while Frank was talking, I was working through some things; it all of a sudden occurred to me that if I'm not producing, then my wife's not on the mission field. Do you hear me?

DAN: My wife had a call to the mission field, but she relinquished that to be married to me, and yet she's always, you know, "You only made five calls today, you didn't win any souls today," you know, and "Do! Do! Do! Do!," you know, "Produce! Produce! Produce!" and if I don't get those visits in, you know, I'm not doing the job. And I think what she's really saying and it just occurred to me is, you know, "If you're not cutting it, then I'm not on the mission field; and I've got to be on the mission field."

MARNEY'S ASS'T: I think that your relationship with her seems to be one in which you kind of have a report card in your pocket ...

DAN: Uh huh.

MARNEY'S ASS'T: ... and you check off to see how you've done today. And we're not just talking about vocation, we're talking about how you've done as Dan. And this would be a pretty bad pressure to live under.

DAN: But there are times when I need to talk, you know, and or "lean" may be a better term, and I can't lean on her; because the minute I talk, I start getting a whole bucket of shit dumped on me because I'm not producing, you see.

MARNEY: Bestow a blessing on me. Quit sucking in, quit taking, and overflow me some grace. I need grace. I don't like you, but I'm not getting along well with you. You would destroy me. You would zero in on my anus, like a rocket, and take everything I've got to feed you. Give me some grace. Bless me. Confer upon me an acceptance that will let me accept you

DAN: I hear you.

MARNEY: turn loose o' my tit. Now, is that too mean?

DAN: Uh huh.

MARNEY: You're tough. And I wouldn't dare slug you like this, if I didn't respect you. You may slug back. And it's okay. That would be a grace.

MAN: But he won't do it.

-

MARNEY: Oh, yeah; yeah, he'll slug. But but he won't bless and then he won't bless his wife. She has to bless him. Suckle, suckle, suckle, suckle. You never got enough, did you?

DAN: Uh uh.

-

MARNEY: Well, I'll give you anything I have, in the way of resources; and I am prepared to say okay. But give us some grace, quit the suckling, quit asking for grace; confer some. This make any sense?

DAN: Uh huh.

MARNEY: How much sense does it make?

DAN: Makes a lot, makes

MARNEY: Or are we just scratching your itch?

DAN: No.

MARNEY: Are we feeding your demand for masochistic suffering; are we helping you crucify yourself; are we attendants at the barbecue, roasting your little ego till it drips?

Grace. Gimme some grace.

DAN: Acceptance of her as she is?

MARNEY: Of course. I care enough to dislike you. And I care enough to be prepared to, hell, relate. Berth me. Say, "Hey, man, come in. I'm glad to see you! Where you been?" Say, "How you doin', honey?" Give grace. 'Stead of takin' it. They didn't have to have you. You may have been an accident, but - what a fearful prospect. It might even be worse to think somebody did it on purpose (laughter) .. But Nature is prodigal with her seed. Ten million sperm! and one connected. And here you are, thirty-five, whatever, years later. You an accident, man. You a miracle. You can afford to let the incidental causes rest, and celebrate your existence by taking in, by giving out. Because a system that only goes one way either bloats or dissipates. You stay in that tar barrel swim in it, till it congeals. Then we'll heat it up, try to get you out.

MOYERS: You were really doing more to those people, you weren't just asking them to examine their tent poles; you were stripping them buck naked

MARNEY: Uh-uh! I got no right to do that. I was I was hearing through their offering, their mask, and refusing to let him go on lying to himself, or to me, by saying, "Hey, we're not talking about the issue." If I stripped, Bill, if you stripped and you can, I've seen you when you could a man freezes, you don't jerk his mask off. "Persona, as a number of people have seen, but in the meaning of person it comes clearest, is to hear through what's offered you. So all you were watching me do was what I did in counseling for thirty years, was to hear through. We all put masks on

MOYERS: Don't we need them?

...

MARNEY: Yes. They are absolutely, layer, after layer, after layer, essential to personality. The trick, the core, the meaning of human relation, then, is in hearing. Christian humility is the willingness to hear. And this is what's been forced on me. I got heard. I got heard by my wife. I got heard by Bob McLaren. I got heard by my private church, of whom you're a charter member. I mean by this everybody has one of those where it's safe to be heard. That man's in church only when it's safe to be who he is; he can out-span(?) his oxen and throw off the gear and take a bath and relax and be at home. That's all you were watching. It wasn't brutal. It was simply a refusal to let him lie to himself.

-

DAN: I'm beginning to hear now, but I want to be able to do something with it.

MARNEY'S ASS'T: Well, care for somebody here, then; start off there. Who here have you got anything to offer to? Don't have to answer. Who can you care for here, or do for here, without that "I gotta watch out 'less I be screwed by them score sheet you carry?"

I think the insights you were offered about your wife were incredible ... it was I was struck by the fact you don't you're not even talking about her needs; you're talking about your needs, your needs, your needs, your needs.

MAN: I'd sort of thought of Dan as putting you know, being hurt somewhere along the line, wanted to keep his defenses up so nobody gets quite close enough to him, so he puts himself on a pedestal so that people - you know, just out of reach of everybody; and they then react by saying, "Boy, one thing I want to do is to knock this guy off the pedestal so he's down with us. And so they take a swing at him, or he thinks they do; and then he puts himself up a little higher. You know, I - I hear your wife saying, you know, "I I wish you'd just come down, down here and, you know, be with the rest of us mortals." And I sort of feel that's what we're saying, too. And, you know, if - and if you were just down here, we could we could relate.

I had a feeling that your wife really she doesn't really cares for you. And care whether you make ten or fifteen or twenty calls; but she wants a warm human being beside her. And the only way she knows I suppose, to get you down there is to say, you know, "Let's show this guy he's human. But you won't show them.

MAN: You know, a minute ago I don't have anything to say to you that Jim or Phil hasn't already said. The only thing I have to say to you is, I like you. But the problem is, that's very hard for me to say; and you can't hear it, anyway. And so why say it? I couldn't say it. But but that's all I have to give you.

MAN: You know, maybe I identified with this in one area, maybe that's why I could share it. For about ten years I was the pastor of a church. Everything went beautifully, and I was king. Then I moved to another church, and I wasn't king and I, uh it was tough. And my wife was quite unhappy. And for a number of years, you know, I said I got everything into control. And, you know, this created the some tensions. And she kept after me, you know, "But don't you see what these people are doing? Don't you see these problems?" You know, I didn't want to disturb her, you know, I wanted to protect her, and also to let her know that, you know (makes verbal sound)

you know, I got it under control. And one day when she asked me, though, you know, "Don't you see what's happening?" I said, "Yeah, I do." And I leveled with her. And I said, "Sure, I- you know, I feel hurt, and I feel that I don't have things under control." And she said, "What - what a relief!" And - and from that moment on, uh, you know, things with us went much better. And she saw me, you know, for for a human being that she could relate to.. And then we tackled the church together. Not that she went out to do it, but, you know, I had this undergirding support. And, first of all, I didn't have to be king out there. And and, you know, it was nothing I did, except I - I said, "I don't have it all made." Which I knew all the time, but I just wasn't going to admit it to her.

MARNEY'S ASS'T: Do you feel the love that these guys are offering you? Now, what are you going to do to deserve it?

MAN: Perhaps we'll know you trust us when you know that we trust you, or can trust you. A moment ago Jerry said "I'm not sure I trust you yet." You could bless me, bless us. Maybe that

would be a clue to us that you - you trust us, we can trust you; it's a two-way thing.

MAN: Where's your lap that you lay in? Do you have one?

DAN: I think my problem is, I don't know how to lay.

MAN: Don't know how to what?

DAN: Don't know how to lay in one.

MAN: do with Didn't you tell us that you had some kind of childhood illness, had to

DAN: Rheumatic fever.

MAN: Rheumatic fever, yeah.

MAN: Who held you then?

DAN: The bed?

MAN: There was nobody?

DAN: Oh, my mother and dad were around, but ... My mother was so busy the youngest of the three she was so busy, she never could rock me to sleep; and when I was twenty-three years old I was still sticking my hand behind my head and rocking myself to sleep. And this is this is what really disturbs me, not so much this garbage about me which I think's garbage, but the fact I feel locked in and don't know how to get out. See? Because I've never been out.

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MAN: What is the "garbage" part that's been offered?

MARNEY'S ASS'T: You hadn't never been loved like this before, have you? It's got a lot of garbage, but it all has to it's all wrapped up in L-O-V-E.

MAN: You know, Dan, when I came here, I suppose of all the people around this table that I thought I could in any way relate to, you were the least one. But at this moment, I feel closer to you than anybody. Because I think you came off the table off the pedestal, and you're down here with the rest of us hurting mortals. And I love you.

MOYERS: When they go back, what do they take with them, and how do they how do how do you keep them from becoming wounded when they realize they can't keep up what's gone on here?

MARNEY: Well, they can't be saved from being wounded. A grand friend who helps us here, Stuart Henry, Professor at Duke, first used a line in a contemporary play - I don't even know the name of the play, but I can hear Stuart say it now, "In the Army of the Lord, all are wounded." Kierkegaard has a line, "Thoughts which wound from behind." The goal is not to come out unscathed. So I have no hope that they won't bleed. I have a hope that they won't bleed unnecessarily, unworthily and fatally.

MAN (to DAN): You've always come across to me as a guy that's got a lot of guts.

you are a fighter. And I'm thinking about some of us have a different kind of problem; I think I do. I find myself relating a lot to this guy over here, because we're guys who

we're always trying to fly that kite, and it gets stuck in the tree every time; doesn't look like we can do anything right. And we we think we're licked, to begin with. And that's why, when I looked at you, I - I felt he's got something I want.

MAN: I just want to say I'm as happy for Dan tonight. We all knew you were dealing with a bad problem, and I think every man around the table wanted to to try and deal with it for you, and yet that's something you have to do. And when you really came down, I expect I'm not the only one that almost got up and went and put his arms around you. It was all coming through you. We were with you.

MARNEY: And every adult, every young person, is a complex of drives and pressures and influences and loves and hates with which he has coped. I no longer say that mamas did this, or daddies do this; I say, "How you'd cope with that?" Cope ability. It's a good word.

MOYERS: Is that what you want to give these men by the time they leave here?

MARNEY: No, but I want them to become at least aware that they are responsible for coping, that they have some power with which to cope, that the culture can be stood over against, it can be infiltrated, it can be lived alongside of, it can be participated in. I am not this much a victim.