Jonathan and Martha Kent

Everyone should have a Kent couple in life--those older-than-you perpetual pillars of morality and unconditional love.

I met mine during my first year in college. I randomly decided to go to a church and met them--he was the pastor and she was the pastor's wife. I'll call them Mr. and Mrs. Kent.

At first I didn't like them at all. They seemed too perfect and clearly thus hypocritical. But I got to know them a bit at a time, and I liked them better than the students of my school.

When I first heard that Mr. Kent had gone to school at a peer institution, I knew I had to get to know him. Schools like his and mine were known for breeding careerist, pre-professional assholes. You really aren't supposed to go such a school unless you are one. Moreover, if you are not one upon entering, you will likely become one by the time you leave.

However, Mr. Kent headed a small and by most standards an insigfnicant little church. He didn't seem to participate in the the status-whoring that went on amongst most alumni. The name of his school alone could carry him nearly anywhere he would have wanted to go in life. His perspective on life was definitely not conventional.

During my first conversation with him I realized he was brilliant. He grew up modest if not down-right poor and had truly earned his way into his alma mater. His work-ethic was unbelievable and he was in every sense of the word a recovering workaholic.

Like the Jonathan and Martha Kent of the comic-book series--this couple could also not bear children. Ironically, they instead headed a church adjacent to a college campus with many students away from home for the first time. The situation was a kind of ironic twist of fate. They were collegiate surrogate parents.

While the Kents are very conservative in many of their views, they are also very progressive in others. They don't necessarily fit a mold. As a result, the non-student congregation members eventually did not agree with them and they were dismissed.

They moved to a different and similar area by another college campus. But I kept in touch with them, and called them for a long while very often.

Eventually, I changed a great deal and I felt that my views were growing apart from theirs. Although I stopped calling them, they were scarcely out of my mind.

Rarely had I ever met people with such beautiful resignation. They accepted life as it came--they were not restless for something they did not have. They were so content and enjoyed life as it was. If a winter was rough and they didn't have too much money--they just somehow enjoyed what there was to enjoy about a winter. They undertook every season in that way. If they suffered a major disappointment in life, they just mourned it and then they would let it go--it didn't trouble them afterwards.

Mr. Kent pursued many intellectual endeavors regardless of whether they would bring him recognition or not. One of his projects may very well fundamentally change his field--however, he had been pursuing it before that became clear. His project picked up a great deal of attention the years following his dismissal from the church where I met him--however, his approach to his work remained the same.

I can't but admire that. I don't understand that. It is something beyond my present maturity. It is only something that I can hope for one day--to truly express selflessness. Not to emulate it or to attempt to artificially create it, but to truly be it.

I feel safer in loving them than I do most people, because they will not take love and misuse or abuse it. In that sense, they offer a sort of epitome of a home--a place where the ids and the egos of the world cannot enter to eat away at the good things of the heart.

I haven't called them in a very long time. But recently, I had a host of questions gnawing away at my mind and heart. So I began sending Mr. Kent these long e-mails. He responded to each of them in detail and at the necessary length. Few people have the patience or the dedication to follow my philosophy. Mr. Kent has a remarkably dexterous and uberly keen mind that can mince through my questions at a near instantaneous pace.

I couldn't have gotten more lucky.

Yesterday, amongst the many calls I placed was one at their home. They were however organizing a funeral (more irony) for someone who I thought was rather young to have passed away.

This morning Mr. Kent sent me an e-mail saying that he hoped we would speak soon. He added that Mrs. Kent somehow knew that I was going to call.