She was on my shuttle from the airport to the conference, along with two other women, and hey, we were hungry. We asked the driver to stop for fast food before we reached the seminary, because dinner was still hours away. Well, the others asked, and since I am from the “eat now because you never know when food will be available again” school of pregnancy, I happily concurred.

I’m sure the woman is fascinating, but part of me just wanted to leave the poor dear alone. I wonder if she gets tired of explaining how to pronounce her lovely but unusual name. Does she enjoy hearing stories about how her father held a group of 9-year-olds rapt during one of his speeches? Or how a congregation uses his words as a benediction each week, reciting them by heart? Or does she just get tired of it? When someone turned to her, incredulous, and said “You’re Bishop Tutu’s daughter?” she said wryly (or was it wearily?), “That’s what my mother tells me.”

But there’s more to this conference than minor celebrity. I’m having a great time. The seminary campus is peaceful and the nights are cool. I have the smallest room I have ever seen. It’s the width of a twin bed and not quite double the length, with a sink at one end and a bathroom down the hall. But hey, I have a window and a plug for dialing in, and how much space does one person really need? All I'm saying is, this is not the room that Uncle Walt gets when he comes to present here.

There are roundtable leaders, who are pastors like me, and there are workshop leaders, who run the gamut, and there are seminar leaders, who are mostly seminary professors. Although I’m here to help young people discern their call, connecting with the profs is a piece of the discernment puzzle for me as well—do I want to be one of you? Am I called to be? Could I be? Should I be? Some of them are lovely, and they all seem interesting, but academics are also frequently tedious and insufferable. Then again, so am I. Then again again, so are many pastors I know.

My roundtable group of prospective pastors (I’m sure none of them will be tedious and insufferable!) consists of nine young women who make me wonder what the heck I was doing with my life in my early 20s. Is this crop of young motivated world-changers an encouraging sign for the future, or are they on the fast-track to burnout? Time will tell; my job is to hold space for them while they get pushed, pulled, folded and spindled over the next few days.


Our limo driver insisted on telling us his faith story. (Goes with the territory.) He was an agnostic until the age of 43, always holding out for a burning bush. Finally, through a series of life events, he came to put his trust in God. He remembers the moment when he made the decision, when he asked God to come into his life while driving in his car. It was a drizzly morning and the sun was still low, and within minutes of his confession, he was literally surrounded by a rainbow, so close he could reach out his window and touch it. For him it was a burning bush, but it came afterward. Who am I to say?