Ron Turner Is Presbyterian Poet, Lawyer, Teacher

by Ray Waddle

In 1995, Ron Turner — lawyer, father, Presbyterian, poet — had just won election as a Nashville city councilman after a long campaign. He was exhausted. He needed to get away before returning to face 15,000 new constituents.

So for four days, he went off and left the known world, living alone in a small hut in the rural Middle Tennessee hills at Penuel Ridge Retreat Center. No family, no TV, nobody. “It’s the only time in my life I’ve done such a thing,” he recalls. “The main thing I learned was I could do it. I thought I’d be bored. Instead, it was wonderful. I took long walks, played a guitar, ate when I was hungry, slept when I was sleepy.”

Turner’s spiritual retreat was one of a series of turning points in his life. Where others talk or dream of changing their lives, Turner goes for it. And he gives others the same advice. “Life is wonder-filled. It really is,” he says.

He was a busy lawyer for 20 years before quitting his full-time practice to do what he really loves, teaching. (He still practices law part-time.) He was writing nothing but legal briefs, year in year out, until he acknowledged the tug of his heart and started writing poetry. He published a book of poems called My Father My Sons and Me In Between in 1997 — a book about family life, God and the gift of time.

He decided to acknowledge an abiding interest in theology by diving in and getting his masters degree at Vanderbilt Divinity School. A faithful churchgoer at Hillsboro Presbyterian Church in Nashville, he decided to intensify his involvement by starting a men’s group there. It has been going every week since 1988. “I’m a feminist, a supporter of the ERA,” he says. “But there’s something valuable about men getting together to talk with men, women with women. Everything that’s said in our meetings is confidential. We meet at church, start on time, finish on time.”

Having grieved the death of his father in 1996 and endured a divorce in 2000, Turner now lives with a sense of adventure about the unfolding journey of life. “I don’t mean to be trite, but everything happens for a reason,” he says. “We might not have a clue about why. But looking back over things, you can see the hand of God in your life, see a thread. There’s a reason for everything.”

Turner, now 55, ended eight years on the Nashville Metro Council in August (2003). He’s glad he held elected office (he was re-elected in 1999), and he’s glad it’s over. “It’s an honor to be elected to represent your neighbors in a democracy — the highest honor,” he says. “The system works better than you might think. I learned to listen to people. It’s a lot like being in the ministry. People just need to be heard.”

His new freedom as a private citizen again means more time for writing and traveling. In June he spent a week in Cuba with a group of 18 students, faculty and others from Vanderbilt Divinity School. His eyes go wide at recalling the rich and disturbing contradictions of socialist life on the Caribbean island. “It’s the most beautiful — and the neediest — place I’ve ever seen,” he says. “There’s live music everywhere, and romance in the air — couples walking hand in hand — yet 50% unemployment. There’s passion, but oppression — church services, pockets of capitalism, but no free speech.”

The trip was a blur of juxtapositions — sumptuous meals, ugly poverty, stunning beaches, encounters with party-line Marxists and mini-skirted customs agents. Pessimism dominates the political mood: People are fretting about what Cuba will be like after the inevitable passing of the aging Fidel Castro. Will there be chaos, suffering, redemption?

As is his habit, Turner wrote down his swirling thoughts in a journal during his trip. After some early-morning anguish about Cuba’s political future, he wrote the following passage, giving him new insight into the nature of hope: “I prayed for an hour, looking at the blackness . . . I listened to the waves. I looked at the sky through the palm trees. And I realized there is no solution. There’s not meant to be. We have an eye-blink of time in this life — 70, 80, 90 years, if we’re lucky — and we do what we can while we’re here. That’s all. We aren’t called to solve the problems. We’re called to not lose hope. The contradictions I’ve been struggling with so much since I got here aren’t unique to Cuba. They’re inherent in creation. Love-fear, black-white, good-evil, are the way it is. But love always overcomes fear. Light always overcomes dark. Strike a single match in a dark room, and the dark goes away. Our call is to strike that match. If possible, we add a little tinder and kindling, but we aren’t ultimately in control of whether the flame grows. We just keep stoking it, no matter what.”

Back in Tennessee, Turner is now assistant professor of criminal justice at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tenn. It is the answer to the calling he had felt for years, a sense of vocation as a teacher. “Being in a classroom always fed my soul in a way that the courtroom or law office never did,” he says. “I knew I was being called away from law practice, and I have found that inner satisfaction, that calling, as a teacher.”

When the semester is over, Turner will give each of his (startled) students a copy of his book of poems, as a token of encouragement to get in touch with their own creativity. The book’s preface urges everyone to take up their own muse — writing, painting, photography, whittling, whatever — and find the courage to live up to their gifts. “Be free. Create,” he writes. “You’ll be more fun to be around and you’ll be a better lawyer (or whatever) as well.”

Ray Waddle’s new book, A Turbulent Peace, The Psalms for Our Time ($14)
may be ordered by calling 1-800-972-0433.