Episode Six: The Faithfulness of Fred Rogers

Welcome to the Neighborhood, a Mr. Rogers tribute podcast. I'm your host, Rick Lee James, of rickleejames.com, and I run the Mr. Rogers Quotes Twitter account found @MrRogersSay. As we again walk into this podcast neighborhood, we want you to know that no matter where you are from, You are welcome here. I'm glad to be your neighbor. Every daughter, every son, every tribe, and every tongue, in the spirit of Fred Rogers and the life of welcome that he lived, welcome to the neighborhood. This week in the neighborhood, our subject is faithfulness.

He is our very own version of Mr. McFeely, always delivering good conversation for us on the program. He's an expert at helping people tell their stories. He produces engaging, innovative media for public radio, public television, and public events. He's the executive producer and host of Things Not Seen: Conversations About Culture and Faith, which airs weekly in Chicago, and it's distributed by PRX. He's also the executive producer of The Francis Effect podcast. David Dalt, my friend, welcome to the neighborhood.

Rick, it's always so good to be back with you. Thank you.

And I do want to say again at the beginning of our conversation today, please go to fredrogerspodcast.com and you'll be able to find out more about David and what he does. He really has— you have a lot of different hats that you wear and you do them all very well. But I'm always so glad to be able to have these conversations with you. Dive right into our conversation this week. The show is about faithfulness and the faithfulness of Fred Rogers, and I think you have some pretty good questions for us to think through about this today.

Well, one of the things that I was thinking about was the fact that Fred went to seminary and he was an ordained Presbyterian minister, but he never wore religious garb on the program, and he didn't talk oftentimes like you would expect a preacher to talk. And I know that you've had some seminary training, I've had some seminary training, and when I was, when I was in school and learning these sorts of things, I came across a quotation that I really was thinking about in, in the context of Fred Rogers, and that was, and I forget who said it, but it was, your life is the only sermon that some folks will ever hear. And the way that you live your life, your integrity, your authenticity may be the only testimony to the gospel that anyone will ever encounter. And so I think that one of the things that I was curious about was the ways that you think that Fred Rogers practiced this idea that one's life is the only sermon that someone will ever hear.

That's an excellent question. I actually wrote some notes down this morning. And, you know, as much as I try to, especially on the podcast and really even on the Mr. Rogers Say Twitter feed, because we have a lot of listeners and a lot of people who are are followers on the Twitter feed that don't have any sort of religious affiliation at all. I try not to be overtly religious in a lot of my conversation, at least in that context, because I want to be just aware of those who are around us. But it's really hard without including that in the life of Fred Rogers because he really couldn't separate his practice of faith from the way that he lived his life. So just a few things that I was noting about this, I mean, he embodied Jesus' teaching to love your neighbor. So when we're thinking about this idea of being a sermon in front of people, the whole Neighborhood Show was set up on that premise of just simply following Jesus' teaching to love your neighbors and to show what that meant. So Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, it's far from being a shallow TV show, and his life was far from being shallow. It really was this lived-out sermon, and it might surprise people to find out that his life really was lived in a sharp political response to a society that was really poised to kill. And I think we still are in that kind of sharp society. He didn't do it through culture wars and through talking a lot about it, but he lived it out. He was not a lightweight who wouldn't engage critically with the world. And part of his faithful witness to the world as a minister of the gospel was that he extended this peaceable invitation to all of us through numerous— he did have some sermons that he did in his life. He wasn't known for his preaching, and I don't think there's very many, if any, recorded, but he did have some sermons about this, prayers that he prayed, speeches he delivered, letters, books, interviews. And he made it clear that his calling as a minister, his vocation, was a call to embody and enact the unconditional and the expansive love of God. That is revealed in Jesus. So he worked to make sure that his work of creating peacemakers was a faithful continuation of the ministry of Jesus and his lifelong effort to create this peaceful neighborhood, this just reign of God on earth. It was embodied in the neighborhood. So as a faithful Christian peacemaker, Rogers, he knew to embody Jesus and the love of God faithfully, both on the TV set and off. And I think he just embodied that by turning to the teachings and the life of Jesus. And those were concrete ways that he just lived it out before people, both on and off the set.

There was something in your answer just now that really got me thinking. Actually, two things. One, you used the word political, and I'd love to I'd love to dig into that. But even before that, I think that the perception a lot of times in popular culture was that Mr. Rogers was a pushover or a lightweight, or that his meek— that his meekness somehow was indicative of weakness. But I loved in your answer how you pointed out that he was not weak. He was willing to stand up in his convictions and utilize his television program and utilize his platform as a known person to speak out on issues that were very important to him, didn't he?

Yeah. Yes, very much so. And when I use the word political, too, I'm thinking of it in the ways that often philosophers and theologians will use it. I'm not thinking in terms of like Republican or Democrat or independent, anything like that. I'm using it in the sense of politics being the way that a society structures itself and how it's going to be lived out in the day to day. And so for him, yeah, He was embodying what life looks like when you live it out according to the Kingdom of God, you know, which is fascinating. And you're right, he did that in a way that was not a pushover. I mean, you can see in some of his episodes and some that we've even talked about on this program, whether it be about pacifism and dealing with racism and things like that, he was very strong in the way he presented things, but he wasn't preachy about it. Does that make sense?

It does, but what that makes me think of, Rick, is so often when we hear about political discourse in America right now, we hear about it in a pragmatic sense, you know, uh, compromise to make sure that you can get things done, and don't try and be too principled or have too many morals that are tied into your politics, because at the end of the day, you know, it has to go through a process. One of the things that I think Fred Rogers showed us in terms of his faithfulness was that he trusted that if he brought these higher ideals into the public square, that the public would respond. And he— and that, that is— that's a form of trust in both your, your own moral conviction, but it's also a trust in the way that the, the world works. And I think since we're talking about faithfulness, that was an aspect of the faith of Fred Rogers, the faithfulness of Fred Rogers, that he trusted the good in other people to respond to the good that he was bringing. Do you see that too?

Yes, yes, I really do. I, I, and I couldn't have said it better, to respond to the goodness in other people. And, and he, he really was a strong believer in that. Yes.

Well, another thing that I encountered in seminary was this quote that I think is attributed to Francis of Assisi, and it— the quote says, "Preach the gospel at all times. When necessary, use words." And I'm wondering about the ways that Fred Rogers, not just in his words and the way that he structured his show and the way that he structured his public comments, but also some of his actions, some of the things that he did with his life that were nonverbal. How did some of those things demonstrate his faithfulness?

Hmm, that's an excellent question. And I think I want to try to answer that with, with First, because he cared so much about words and he wrote a lot of letters to people. That was one of his actions, actually. His correspondence with people was, was incredible. And our listeners will hear later in the show about that and how much he corresponded with people. But in 1979, he wrote this letter to a friend, and I think it speaks very much to what you're asking about here. He wrote in the letter, he said, "What a tough job to try to communicate the gift of Jesus Christ to anybody. It can't be simply talked about, can it? Jesus himself used parables. So I guess that's our directive, to try to show the kingdom of God through stories as much as possible." And that is in a letter that Fred, in his own hand, wrote to a friend talking about this very thing, about showing much more than telling. And I think that's what he did in the neighborhood, on the TV show, and outside. He was showing as much as telling through faithful consistency how to love neighbors, how to handle conflict, how to learn new things, how to embrace diversity. And I think he was a master at this. And it may sound odd, but part of his actively doing this was in the way that he would not engage in like culture wars and things like that. Like, I don't think you would hear him front and center in any of the debates that are going on today. It's interesting that I do think a person's silence and gentle demeanor on a matter can speak volumes, you know, much louder than a person who is screaming and shouting about something. And there are just really too many things to mention about the things he did in life for other people. But I don't know if that answers it as thoroughly as I could have, but he really, I think, tried to embody his entire life as a parable, just like he says in that letter.

I really like that, the idea of a parable, because it's something common. I mean, when, when Jesus used parables, he was talking about things that were part of the daily life of the people that were listening, and he was teaching larger lessons using very common activities and stories. And I think that you've hit the nail on the head, that that's exactly how Fred Rogers thought about this. But As we're moving towards sort of the end of our conversation, Rick, the other thing that I was thinking about is the question of the relationship of faithfulness to comforting others and trusting that others can be comforted. You may have heard in the news— I heard it at the time— when Mother Teresa passed away, you know, she had been seen by so many people as a godly and faithful person, but then after her death, some of her letters were were brought to public attention. And in, in her letters and writings, she wrote about feeling towards the end of her life very abandoned by God and very much like God was silent. And I'm wondering what you think Mr. Rogers might have said to give her comfort, because I'm sure that some of our listeners also feel sometimes that God has become distant, or that they have no contact with a higher power, or maybe they just simply feel alone in the universe. And I'm wondering What are some of the things that Mr. Rogers might say to comfort people who feel alone or who feel abandoned like that?

Yes, that is such an excellent question. And I do want to, before I give my answer, which is really going to be something else that he wrote to a friend, you know, that is such a sacred place to enter into for anyone. And I know a lot of people who listen to this show, maybe not a lot, but some, They've been there. Maybe at one point in their life they would consider themselves devout to a certain faith and have just gotten to a place where maybe they can't believe and there's doubt, and that's a sacred place to enter into. And oftentimes what comes with that is fear. What's going to happen? Are people going to still love me if I decide to stop being a Christian because I just can't believe anymore? I'm trying with doubt. How does a fellow Christian respond? And so there's a lot at risk with a person who's going to be be honest. And I always think it's much more important for a person to be honest and ask other people to walk through those things with them, even if they come to different conclusions. And so I feel like maybe one of the best ways to answer this, whether it be for Mother Teresa and her doubt and her feeling the absence of God or anyone else, any one of us, myself included— this is actually a letter that was included in Tim Madigan's book where he tells the story. The book is called I'm Proud of You, by the way, by Tim Madigan. And he wrote a letter to Fred. They did a lot of correspondence together. And Tim's marriage was falling apart and it was really just about to crumble. Thankfully, if you read the book, you find out that there's a lot of healing that takes place in Tim's life. But at this point, it looked like the end and Tim was feeling like his life was a failure. And he was afraid that like so many other adults in his life, Fred wasn't going to be there for him. And so this is Fred's response to him when Tim reveals the problem with his marriage and the struggle he's having, and he's so scared that Fred is going to maybe turn his back. And this was Fred's response in a letter. He said, "My dear Tim, bless your heart. I feel so for you." for you all. But Tim, please know that I would never forsake you, that I will never be disappointed with you, that I would never stop loving you. How I wish we could be closer geographically. I'd get in my car, drive to your house, knock on your door, and when you answered, I'd hug you tight. You are a beautiful man inside and out, and those who care about you are privileged to share your pain. As for suffering, I believe that there are fewer people than ever who escape major sufferings in this life. In fact, I'm fairly convinced that the kingdom of God is for the brokenhearted. You write of powerlessness. Join the club. We are not in control. God is. Our trust and affection run very deep. You know you are in my prayers now and always. If you ever need me, You have only to call and I would do my best to get to you or you to me. You are my beloved brother, Tim. You are God's beloved son. And I think he might reply to Mother Teresa or any of us who are having those doubts in that same way. You are my beloved sister. You're my beloved brother. You're my beloved son. And you are in my prayers now and always. I think sometimes the greatest evidence for God You know, we often miss him and say we're not experiencing God when in fact we may very well be experiencing God through that person who is loving us so tenderly and coming so near to us. And I do think that God will incarnate himself in other people in that way. And I think Fred was really a good example of doing that.

You know, Rick, what your response makes me think of is when we started this conversation, I was thinking of faithfulness as a one-way thing, our faithfulness to God or to some divinity or to some higher power. But as we've been talking, I also realize that what we're talking about is faithfulness to one another. And Fred's letter to Tim demonstrates that he was willing to be available and attentive even in the midst of Tim's pain. And so often we're scared of pain, and we live in a culture that is so eager to distract us from even being in the physical presence of other people. I, I think about rooms full of people where they're all sitting close to one another, but they're all looking at their smartphones or whatever, and their, their minds are very far away from the people that are closest to them, either emotionally or physically. And one of the things that Fred was demonstrating was that he was willing to be vulnerable and he was willing to be available. And that also takes a very great faithfulness. It takes a faithfulness that the strength that you have will be sufficient for the other's pain. I just so love that letter from Mr. Rogers that you read. Thank you.

Oh, my pleasure. He did so many correspondents, and our listeners are going to hear in the remainder of the show part of Fred's faithfulness. Again, like you said so well, it is in our faithfulness to each other and the way that he would enter into each other's circumstances, whether it be joy or pain. And I'm just very grateful for the life of Fred Rogers and the example. And I'm grateful for you, my friend, and thank you for taking time to ask good questions and have these conversations with us. And I look forward to when we get to do this again.

Rick, thank you so much for letting me be with you, and I enjoy it too.

All right, well, uh, we're gonna end our conversation right here, but there's plenty more of the show to go. So thank you for listening to Welcome to the Neighborhood, and let's continue on into— I guess it's not the land of make-believe because we don't have a trolley, but into the life of Fred Rogers just a little bit deeper.

There is a wonderful quote attributed to Buddha, which says, "Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship." Faithfulness is the key to any relationship, isn't it? Fred Rogers was a wonderful example of what faithfulness looks like. There was faithfulness to the look of his television set that stood the test of time. He called it his television house because he wanted children to know it wasn't his real home where he lived with his family. No, Mr. Rogers' television house was the place where he stopped by during his workday to have a visit with his television neighbors. In over 30 years of production, the old-fashionedness of the house barely changed. When Mr. Rogers would enter through the front door with a song, changing from his work clothes to a sweater and sneakers, he was inviting both children and adults into a welcoming, warm, and comforting setting. It was a very homelike setting. The consistent look of the set was intentional because Fred wanted to faithfully offer a feeling of familiarity to all of his television neighbors. His faithfulness and commitment to his audience was very important to him. Over the years, it was here in this television house where Fred talked to children and their parents about their feelings. He covered various topics such as why kids shouldn't be afraid of haircuts, going to school, brushing teeth, and how they could never go down the bathroom drain because, of course, you won't fit. It was also here that Mr. Rogers faithfully gave children a safe place to think about much bigger issues like death, divorce, poverty, and even war. Fred wanted to be faithful to his audience and what their needs were. He disliked ad-libbing because he felt that he owed it to the children to make sure that every word on his show was well thought out. Words meant a lot to him. And he wanted to be faithful, to never speak a careless word during his television visits. He also had a faithfulness to his viewers off of the set as well. Throughout the course of his lifetime, Mr. Rogers received tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of letters from fans. It's outrageous to think that he would have had time to answer every piece of mail that he received. I mean, he's only one man. But here's the thing: I'm unable to find a single instance of someone claiming to have written Fred Rogers who didn't get a reply. It seems that he not only answered every letter he ever got in the mail from a fan, but that his responses to his fans were never generic boilerplate responses that you would expect from a person who was so busy. His letters were always deeply personal in nature. He would read every letter and email, and he read them attentively, writing each fan back to let them know how much their message meant to him because they sent it. Then he would go out of his way to make sure they knew he was both proud of them and happy to call them his friend. Talk about faithfulness! He was also faithfully committed to his friends and his family outside of the neighborhood. When Fred Rogers was in seminary, he met Dr. William Orr, the chain-smoking seminary professor who focused on the New Testament. Orr loved to debate theology with his students more than anything. And he particularly loved debating with Fred. For Fred, Dr. Orr was the closest thing to a living saint that he had ever known. After Dr. Orr's retirement, he became confined to a nursing home, and he was suffering ill effects from all of his years of chain smoking. Well, Fred would visit him at least once a week for several years. Dr. Andrew Purvis referred to Fred's visits to Dr. Orr as examples of the covenantal faithfulness that Fred Rogers represented, marveling at how thoroughly the student had become the teacher. Fred was also faithful in his most important relationship in life, his marriage. Fred and Sarah Joanne Byrd, whom I will from now on refer to as Joanne, were married in 1952. And remained married for 50 years until his death in 2003. Though most of us love Fred Rogers, Joanne is the one who knew and loved our sweater-wearing neighbor the best. Fred and Joanne first met in college in Florida, where Fred instantly caught Joanne's eye. She told Jimmy Fallon on a Tonight Show appearance in 2018, He was different. In his young days he was lively and full of fun, but he talked about his feelings, and I could talk about my feelings to him, and the things that bothered us, the things that we loved, and don't you have to have a friendship to fall back on through your married life?" She added, "And we had it for 50 years, so that was nice." And of course, there was a sweet significance to the number 143 for the couple. Fred would often tell people the significance of the number. It takes 1 letter to say "I," 4 letters to say "love," and 3 letters to say "you." 143. According to Joanne, he even weighed exactly 143 pounds for much of his adult life, and he was always happy when he stepped on the scale and saw that number. The faithfulness of Fred Rogers even extended to his diet, his prayer life, and his exercise routine. He was a strict vegetarian. He woke up early every morning for prayer and Bible study, well before the sun came up, and he daily swam laps to stay in shape and maintain his weight. Of One Four Three. Fred Rogers simply and very intentionally cultivated a life of faithfulness. Faithfulness is a choice that each of us have to make. Fred was committed to being faithful in his life as a whole. He worked very hard to be faithful to his television viewers, who he called neighbors, his fans who sent him mail or who sought him out on the street, his friends, his mentors, his wife, his children, his health, and his God. Fred Rogers lived his life in faithful readiness, and I think this might be best illustrated in a story that Joanne Rogers shares in the book The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers, written by Maxwell King. She said, "A teenage neighbor who taught Sunday school classes at church told us about the lesson of the second coming of Christ. She said, 'He's going, He will come again, and we will never know when or where it will happen. Why, it could happen tomorrow.'" All of a sudden, I could feel my whole body flush. I absolutely panicked. I must have been around 6 or 7. I ran out of the neighbor's house over to my mother, crying as if my heart would break. She said to me, "What is the matter? Are you hurt?" And I said, "No, no, no, but Mary Maud said that Jesus is coming tomorrow, and I don't want Him to come." I still feel that way. I'm not ready. But Fred was. Fred was ready for him to come. And doesn't that describe the Fred Rogers that we all knew so well? He used to say, "Neighbors are people who are close to us. Friends are people who are close to our hearts. I like to think of you as my neighbor and my friend." He was that neighbor who always welcomed us for a visit and was always glad to see us. He was faithfully there with open arms to welcome whoever might walk through that door, be it a child, an adult, a friend, a mentor, a family member, his own wife, or even the Lord Jesus himself. In faithfulness, Fred was always ready for a visit. Living a faithful life is living a life that's ready, present to the moment. We get so wrapped up in numbers in our society, and the most important The important thing is that we're able to be one-to-one, you and I, with each other at the moment. If we can be present to the moment with the person that we happen to be with at the moment, that's what's important. Near the end of the documentary "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" Joanne Rogers shares a story about Fred on his deathbed. He was still concerned about being ready, about being faithful, and he asked Joanne, "Do you think I'm a sheep?" referring to the story of the sheep and the goats from the Bible. Joanne answered him, "Fred, if ever there was a sheep, You're one. Thank you, Mr. Rogers, for showing us what faithfulness looks like and for always being ready for a visit. To read more about the faithfulness of Mr. Rogers, I recommend The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers by Maxwell King. There is a link in our show notes at fredrogerspodcast.com. Thank you for joining us here this week in the neighborhood. Music featured on the podcast was Nouvelle Noël by Kevin Kevin MacLeod and all other music by Benjamin Tausett at bensound.com. Special thanks to my guest David Dalt and the Mr. Rogers Say community on Twitter. I'm your host Rick Lee James. My Twitter account is @rickleejames. My website is rickleejames.com. My other podcast is Voices in My Head: The Rick Lee James Podcast, and I look forward to Being with you again next time. Until then, remember, you make each day a special day.

You know how?

By just your being you. There's only one person in this whole world like you, and people can like you exactly as you are.