What Have You Learned, Bob Scott?

When did you first come to Trinity?

I started as a freelance screenwriter in 1989. Trinity was producing content for a national interfaith cable network called VISN. I worked on a series of short story adaptations for TV.

How did you get here—to ministry and working in formation?

This may sound corny, but having been in churches all my life, I’d never encountered the kind of engaged, intelligent, and open-ended theology that I found at Trinity. I never expected that either I or anybody else would want me here for so long, but opportunities in producing, writing, and teaching kept coming, and at every moment I felt challenged and like I was learning. Somewhere along the line I went to seminary…

Can you tell us about a favorite or memorable moment here at Trinity?

After three decades it’s hard to choose one. I’ll offer two, briefly. The first is when we were doing the TV adaptations. I wrote a script about life in SRO hotels based on Jonathan Kozol’s Rachel and Her Children. The late, great Ruby Dee starred in it. One day, during lunch, she talked about her activism (she and her husband, the late Ossie Davis, were in the thick of civil rights). Recalling the struggle, she looked blissful and said, “I wouldn’t have wanted to live any other time.” The other is 9/11, leaving the building. Mid-morning looked like night. Ash covered everything. What flashed through my mind was, “Now I know what nuclear winter looks like.”

What is one thing you’ve learned, one thing you’ll take with you, into the next part of your life?

Keep learning. Constantly.

Where are you going and what will you be doing?

My wife and I have been planning for retirement for some time. The only thing that hasn’t fallen into place is where to live now we no longer need the house where we raised our son and daughter. Waiting on the Holy Spirit for that one. I plan to write. What I’ll say is that the projects I’ve outlined are not what anybody would expect. Having been result-oriented all my life, my spiritual goal is to write with commitment and at the same time as if the outcome doesn’t matter at all.

Anything you’d like to add?

“Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans” (John Lennon, Beautiful Boy). Does anybody get to this age and NOT love that quote????