God’s Good Pleasure

Born November 8, 1945 
Entered August 21, 1964
Resides Chicago, IL

God’s good pleasure – I suppose that would be the phrase that best hits off my fifty years in the Society. It was also the phrase that struck me when I took my final vows in 1992.  

My years in the Society have been marked by significant changes in the Society and in the Church.

Through all of them I have felt God’s guidance, although I must admit I didn’t always, or even often, recognize it at the time. But in the end I’ve ended upsomehow near where I ought to be – in God’s good pleasure.

Part of that has been what the Society has asked me to do which has, for the most part, matched what I could do well and truly enjoyed. As an opinionated introvert, teaching and scholarship have been a good fit.

I enjoy sitting alone at my desk reading and writing. I have also enjoyed working with undergrad and graduate students.

Encouraging thought and guiding that process for students in their first year of college, through students writing their dissertations, has been a gift to me. Writing and doing research has been a kind of asceticism, the asceticism of delayed pay-offs. But being encouraged to continue doing that over a period of nearly fifty years has been one of the most wonderful gifts the Society has given me.

But certainly the best of all gifts, of God’s good pleasure, has been the companionship of that menagerie that is the Society, in all its variety.