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| Dr. Margaret Cubine with Sarah, 2009 |
Yesterday as my good friend
Marilyn was burying her father, our Seminary theology professor Dr. Dill
Allison, we learned that our Bible professor from college had also died. These
two deaths have left a hole in our hearts.
Dr. Margaret Cubine was one
of our Bible professors in college. She
was the “odd” one. She smoked then and
she would sit back in her chair and puff on her cigarette and challenge us to
really think of the messages in the Bible…not the comfortable ones we had
learned in Sunday School growing up, but messages
of justice; and she challenged us to think more broadly – or as they like
to say now – to think “outside the box.”
She took many students – including
Sarah, Mike, and me – on a “Riches to
Poverty Tour” of Atlanta. We started
with the wealthy homes and then in the course of a day worked ourselves to the
ghettos of Atlanta where we stayed the weekend learning and having our eyes yanked wide open.
Dr. Allison taught Mike and
me theology. We argued with him over
many of Calvin’s ideas…John Calvin, the one on whom Dill wrote his
dissertation. We argued predestination
and what that means. I remember writing
a paper claiming that maybe we were predestined to live lives in service, but God
would not predestine souls to hell. Dill
cleared his throat and shoved his glasses up on his nose and said, “Well, maybe Calvin went too far there.”
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| Dr. Dill Allison teaching class |
With
our eyes opened – thanks to Margaret – Dill encouraged us to work for change
through a course on liberation theology…in the 1970s…in South Carolina, no less! We read Rosemary Reuther, Mary Daley, James
Cone, and Gustavo Gutierrez. We were
challenged to not only look at poverty and recognize the pain and injustice
there, but see that because of our faith it is imperative to address poverty and injustice and work to
change them.
And look where we ended
up. Taking our youngest son to school,
we leave poverty to go to an area of wealthy homes up on the ridge surrounding
Managua, and then back to the poverty of Ciudad Sandino. We
live in the only country where liberation theology strongly influenced government
policies in the 1980s…though its influence on policy is now seldom seen. The challenges Margaret and Dill set before
us are still in our hearts. They showed
us sides of the Divine and sides of humanity that in turn showed us how to live.
We would be different
people…lesser people without them.
Here, many call on the
presence of those fallen in times of death by saying:
Margaret Cubine
¡Presente!
Dill Allison
¡Presente!
And we thank you, our dear
teachers. – Kathleen
