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One Long, Exhilarating Conversation
Paul Little: A Memoir
by Marie Little
In March 1952 David Adeney, a senior InterVarsity Christian Fellowship
staff worker, ushered me through the sprawling student lounge
of Columbia University, in the heart of New York City. A solitary
form unmolded itself from one of the many sofas as we approached.
Paul Little stood and shot forward to greet us. A year and a half
later I would take his name.
I had just returned from a missionary stint with the China Inland
Mission—two years in “Free China” and two in “Red
China”—and was about to begin InterVarsity campus ministry
in New York. My mission would be to Chinese students now in exile,
coming to terms with the final thud of the “bamboo curtain.”
Paul, David and I sat in the lounge for a long time. At first
glance Paul distinguished himself only by the rhythmic bobbing
of his crossed foot and the nervous opening and closing of his
ball-point pen. A slightly rumpled suit jacket draped casually
over his “scholar’s hump” touted the message that
he cared little about his tailoring. Something about this loose
but graceful presentation identified him to me as Ivy League—at
home in a college lounge and unthreatened by academia. His generous
nose, wide smile and stubborn, upright eyebrows were set against
a clear, fair complexion that more than compensated for his scant
brown hair. Behind Coke-bottle wire rim glasses his eyes burned
brilliant blue. He spoke with a masculine intensity, gliding from
jovial to spiritual without ambivalence. After a while we prayed,
and I remember only thinking This is a spiritual man.
I couldn’t foresee that over the next year and a half I would
spend virtually every day working with him at high-rise New York
campuses, dorm Bible studies, foreign student teas, prayer meetings,
staff meetings and summer camps. We visited international dorms
to make new friends, and we greeted incoming foreign ships to
help international students adjust to their first hours in swirling
New York City. We shared coffee and conversation with Christian
students, brainstorming ways to engage the interest of commuting
students. We planned weekend conferences. We searched out lonely
students. Ours was a “subway romance,” Paul used to
say.
What makes a leader? What seed of inspiration buds forth to raise
a person above the crowd? Such questions remind me of a summer
at Cedar Campus, an InterVarsity camp in northern Michigan. I
was joined by a young staff worker on a walk along the stony beach.
He had been talking to Paul until 2:00 a.m. the night before,
and he was exploding with enthusiasm about their conversation.
Paul had answered questions he had wrestled with for months and,
as an added benefit, had cranked out a few rollicking jokes. I
could feel the young man’s eyes studying me before he finally
mustered the courage to ask, “What’s it like to live
with Paul Little? Is life one long, exhilarating conversation?
Is there no end to the bright stream of wisdom he puts out?”
This staff worker had witnessed Paul in fraternity houses and
college auditoriums debating skeptics, relativists and materialists.
He had heard Paul answer challenges from Muslims, Hindus and Mormons
at international student house parties. He had listened to Paul
at the Urbana Missions Conference exhorting us to affirm the will
of God. He had watched Paul talk for hours at a time with students.
He had followed Paul’s expositions of Scripture. He had seen
Paul in action.
“What’s Paul really like?” The question could not
be easily answered then, nor can it now. At one of Paul’s
lectures on the well-traversed subject “How to Give Away
Your Faith” a student asked me, “Do you ever get tired
of hearing the same sermon? I’ve heard your husband give
this message at least five times. You must have heard it twenty-five
times!” It makes a difference if you love the person; I knew
almost every word, every inflection Paul would use as he preached,
yet I still found myself laughing at all the right places. At
times God spoke to me through even my twenty-fifth hearing of
Paul’s sermons. I’ll try to communicate here what Paul
was really like—what made him tick. But it won’t be
an unbiased picture: it makes a difference if you love the
person.
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