Recollections of the gift of a life

Carolyn Ratliff remembers the first time John Claypool preached at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in 1987.

“It was so clear to me that he was such a holy man and so authentic,” she said. “People felt God’s love through him.”

In fact, she said it was after that Sunday that she and her husband decided to start coming back to church. Almost three decades later, Ratliff has memorialized Claypool’s influence in a new book. The collection of 99 essays, Life Is Gift, will be released Aug. 30. 

Forty of the essays were written by members of St. Luke’s, where Claypool served as rector for about 14 years, but the remainder come from those he knew in other chapters of his life.

Claypool grew up in Kentucky and served as a Baptist minister for the first part of his career. His preaching developed a strong following.

“People were so drawn to him,” Ratliff said. “They say his sermons were confessional. Other preachers would pick things from his sermons to use in their sermons, and they’ll admit to that.”

Claypool was active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, as evidenced by the photo of him with Martin Luther King Jr. in the book, but he had to withdraw from his involvement when 8-year-old daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. Her death two years later would lead him to write a book of three sermons Tracks of a Fellow Struggler, which the Amelia Center in Birmingham still gives out to families.

“The questions he asks about human suffering and death were so profound that that book is a comfort to people who have lost children,” Ratliff said. 

His daughter’s death would also redirect Claypool’s life. He and his wife grieved in different ways, Ratliff said, and after 10 years they divorced. At the same time, his theology had evolved to help him understand and manage his grief. 

“He came to understand every single day is a gift, and that this child was a gift,” Ratliff said. “That helped him live with the loss.”

His divorce and soul searching along with changes in the Baptist church led him to enroll in an Episcopalian seminary, and from there he was called to St. Luke’s. 

“He had these two lives,” Ratliff said. “He was a total superstar in the Baptist church and then such a superstar in the Episcopal church.”

Ultimately, his life story would come full circle. After leaving St. Luke’s, he later taught at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology, a Baptist school, before he died of cancer in 2005.

Ratliff’s book recounts perspectives from people from all phases of Claypool’s life, revealing his humor and wisdom as well as his compassion and clarity regarding all facets of life.

 The beginning of the book also includes a page of his sayings, such as: “God’s middle name is surprise,” “None of us has earned our way into this life,” and “The worst things are never the last things.”

Life Is Gift is available for $35 at St. Luke’s or saint-lukes.com. Proceeds benefit the St. Luke’s Episcopal Church ministries, including the Claypool Lecture Series.