new church life: march/april 2015
keith morley
I first met Keith Morley years ago when he and Rachel
came to visit our new (and forever) friends Geoffrey
and Helga Childs in Michigan, while I was still the
Convention pastor there. I saw in him what I regard
as an ideal combination of qualities for a New Church
person: worldly knowledge, ability and sophistication,
along with innocence, love of truth, and boundless
enthusiasm for the Heavenly Doctrine.
I recall a time, some years later, when I was a guest at Keith’s and Rachel’s
home in Toronto. (A memorable footnote from that visit: I was to preach in the
Olivet Church that weekend, and when I came down to breakfast on Sunday
morning Keith and Rachel, both born in England, informed me they had just
heard on the radio that Princess Diana had been killed in a car accident).
That evening, we began dinner with a toast to the Church, and Keith led
the dinner conversation by bringing up one doctrinal point or question after
another, as usual. Like a number of New Church men and women I have
known, he was very accomplished in the world of business, but also had a keen
interest in the doctrines of the Church, inspired by his love for them.
The doctrines easily lend themselves to bridging the gap between spiritual
and worldly concerns because they simultaneously instill in us a simple faith
in the Lord and belief in spiritual reality, appeal to rational understanding,
and are always directing us toward useful applications of spiritual principles in
actual life. These are the qualities Keith Morley embodied.
News of his passing into the spiritual world arrived. He will be greatly
missed, especially in Toronto, but throughout the Church.
(Photo: Keith Morley – Photo by his granddaughter, Kat Gatti)
(WEO)
col. b. dean smith (usaf-retired)
(Following is a tribute written for Dean Smith, who passed into the spiritual
world January 29, written by Gael Pendleton Coffin for the Washington
(Society) Echo. It is reprinted with permission.)
“Dean Smith was one of the good guys. He loved the important things: his
wife, Cathy, their family, his community, his church, and his country.
“A graduate of the Academy Boys School in Bryn Athyn and the U.S. Naval
Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, he chose to serve in the United States Air
Force as a pilot. He wore his uniform with pride, saying that he did so, first and
foremost, to keep his country safe from war. During his military career, he was
tapped by NASA to be a part of the astronaut program, a period chronicled in
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