Throughout this trying period, Dr. Stephan Pearson clung to his hard-earned balance with the tenacity and integrity we might have expected of him. There was no reason why his convictions should be any less valid in wartime than they were in peacetime. He had never denied that the world is evil: he had merely affirmed that God is good and that He strengthens and vindicates His people in the face of evil. It was God’s business to do whatever He chose to do with man’s sincere and honest efforts to serve Him and his fellowmen. With this stalwart faith firmly implanted in his soul, he was able to find relief from the tensions of the world in his cozy office, in his ever-fertile mind, in his vocation as a teacher, and above all in Kay.
It would have taken more than a distant war to break Kay’s gracious hold on him. She remained first and foremost the rejuvenating elixir of his life, his daily contact with a world of tenderness and care. When they were alone with each other in the world they shared between them, it was as if no other world existed. Of course, these hours of deep happiness came and went, but they were always there to return to on a regular basis.
He loved her more each day and wasn’t shy about saying so. As the days stretched into years, his admiration for her grew apace. He found her quick mind ever more able to pick up the thread of complex concepts he happened to drop in her presence, sometimes of a technical nature, sometimes of a metaphysical nature. In this way, little by little, she developed into a partner with whom he could share many things he would otherwise have had to keep to himself. He probably never realized what effort this took on her part, the library books and articles she studied in order to communicate with him more nearly at his level. But his obvious delight in her in this facet of their relationship was reward enough for her.
His ongoing concern for detecting positive results from scientific progress opened a door in his mind which, if Kay found it ajar, was receptive to any insights she might supply him from her daily life as an elementary school teacher. Sometimes he was even aggressively curious about the details of what to her seemed like an insignificant incident from her day which she happened to mention to him in passing, as though he could not hear enough from her about the mind-set of the younger generation. When he was in that our-hope-lies-with-the-younger-set mood of his, she would have to tackle all sorts of questions from him about the attitude and values of her students. She enjoyed this, as it made her think, even as it drew her more deeply into the soul of the man she loved.
Moreover, each day Kay grew more beautiful in his eyes. Her sparing table habits, her enforced exercise regimen, and her overall enthusiasm for life surely contributed to this. Her bright and hopeful spirit made her a delight to be around and indicated an underlying reserve of courage which she could call on to get her through tough times.
No, the war did nothing to loosen Kay’s gracious hold on Steve.
Nor could the war undermine the joy and consolation he found in worship and adoration. The deeper the world pressed him into the bosom of the Church, the more he encountered Her rock-solid foundation and Her sublime constancy. Let the world disembowel itself in its madness and fury! In its very midst stands the Church, steadfastly looking to the eternal God whose goodness always has the last word. The world must stand speechless before Ultimate Truth as expressed, for example, in Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” or in his “Mass in B Minor,” both of which were gloriously presented at Christiana during the Korean conflict. The world was powerless before that which it could neither fathom nor produce of itself—pure adoration of God from a people He would never allow to be confounded.
And in that faith in God and that hope for the future, Stephan Pearson went on teaching and inspiring his students year in and year out.