>> welcome to mosaic on a summer morning. i am sitting in for ron swisher. we are very glad you are joining us. we are going to do profile, which we do from time to time, of a religious date leader. we are excited to introduce you to dr. james emerson. he is the pastor of calvary presbyterian church here into the cisco where he served until 1990 and has just turned 85 years old, so we are delighted to help celebrate her birthday and bringing him to you. we want to get toward your book, which is forgiveness, the key

to the creative life. it's a great contribution, honestly, into people who simply want to get in. you are talking about forgiveness long, long ago. we will come back to that, but start us off. you are a pencil boy. >> my dad taught at stanford. i have a great fondness for cal. i grew up there, the only child of my parents. dad was sick most of his days. he had tuberculosis from world war i. i also got it from him, so i really started out as being a consequence of the trances of world war i. that is where she got tv, and ultimately when i caught it, i got it from him. i didn't start school until the 3rd grade. i had to be homeschooled.

i went to princeton for seminary. in a that was very, very serious in those days. in a very serious or you'd. >> so it was a full recovery? >> a full recovery. i do have lesions on my lungs that show me i have it, but there is no tv there. i asked the doctor if i had to worry about it, but he said not more than anybody else but everybody else needs to. >> so you were home until 3rd grade. you got a nice integration back in and went to the campus school. once it got out of high school, you went where? >> i went to stanford. >> you stayed at stanford. >> you know, son of a professor there. my stanford education cost me $25 per term. imagine that. >> and what did you major in their quest mark. >> i started out thinking i was going to be a lawyer. my dad was and so forth.

it came the time of it, cause he in world war ii. i was studying comparative religions right at that time and realize the connection between those, causing planes and shinto and began to think, maybe the questions of the world are not legal but more ideological. that started me into thinking about the ministry, and they didn't -- i didn't think necessarily i would be a pastor, but i got so much out of seminary and discovered i had some ability to get up and speak and could preach. it was well received and found fulfillment in it. the next thing i knew i was graduating from seminary and most of my life i have been a pastor, but there was one time when it broke from that because of my

other background in counseling, which i got from the university of chicago. i wound up as head of the community service society in new york city, which did a major study on developing -- delivering social services. >> i want to go back here. you are about 25 years old when he graduated with three years from seminary. you wake up and say, what am i going to do? and it actually, i was 22 years old. i was the product of, because of the war, they were pushing us through high school and college as fast as the country we went to school in the summer. we just went around the clock. actually, i graduated from stanford at the age of 19. again, not because i was smart but because they kept us going. then i went right into simmering -- into seminary.

along comes the avon and suddenly the war is over, but it felt like a call to me. i became a pastor. >> that's probably a good place to break. jim emerson has some choices to make in life. we'll be right back. >> a profile of a beloved

religious leader, dr. jim msn. he just shared that he grew up on the peninsula. your father was a professor there. surprisingly, at 22 years old you end up with a masters degree. the war is over. now, you have some choices to make about what to do. what did you choose and why did you choose them customer. >> well, i chose the ministries because i was going in that direction anyway. i was interested in theological issues. all of the war i felt the issues between japan and the united states were really no political but ideological. it had a lot to do with concept of the divide, however, you work with that, whether you believed in god or didn't believe in god. if he did, how you believe in god. this became very interesting to me. i came to a view that we are very much determined by the perspective from which we stand and look at the world. everyone of us. you will perspective, i have a

perspective. these perspectives relate to our background. that has become my thing. if i can put it that way, i spent my life trying to understand individuals perspectives. you don't have to agree with me. i want to know where they are and in terms of their perspective help them help themselves. in terms of dealing with a marriage, with a divorce, with business decisions, whatever. >> and still you have gone between teaching and being a parish pastor, soul right out of seminary, what did you choose? >> right out of seminary i was an assistant minister in a church in philadelphia working with young people. that was exciting. i probably wasn't that much older than they were, but we were all thinking of the same thing trying to figure out some of the same things. it was a rather conservative church, yet we went to the home

of one of them and it was a liquor cabinet we saw. we sat and had some conversation. in no, you are married to an absolutely wonderful, spectacular woman. she is no longer with us. how did you all meet? >> her father was father at the presbyterian church in new york, and i was going through some struggles, relative to my own parents divorce and things of that sort, and i went to him because of the reputation he had as a counselor. he taught counseling and seminary. i got so much help from that that i began to move more and more into that direction. i never sat down and said, i want to do with other people what he did with me. in effect, that was the inspiration. that was the motivation. so i went on and did formal

training in psychotherapy, in counseling. karl rove sure of the university of chicago was my mentor. i went through all of that and then decided at that time i was one of the few people who had doctoral level training in counseling who was also a minister. my whole life has been -- >> maybe had a degree in this. >> she was making her little and in counseling, but i wanted to work as a pastor. that's what i did. >> so you all were married what year? >> 1952. september 15th. >> and children? >> we have john who is a lawyer, head of a major program in southern california in the area of communication, actually. we have a daughter who is in

tampa, and she graduated also from college back east, in colorado, i should say, and then oregon this is just. some people may know him because he has developed a view called blended values. it is the basis for looking at stocks you are going to buy not just from their economic value but from their social impact value. >> name is the company is what? >> well, he's independent right now. he's in new york, and he consults. he really does quite a bit. >> lended values. so you find yourself in the east as an assistant pastor and then hopscotch us how to god -- how to you and how you got to denver. >> i've wasn't assistant pastor, but presbyterian church was a church of about 250 members in

a 90 piece and jewish area. i really had a wonderful time with some rabbis who were there. in fact, one new synagogue was getting started. they started -- >> they started in your place and went to the u.s. open. >> and then from there i received it call from a fairly large church across the hudson river in bloomfield, new jersey. that was a multiple staff church. at that time, the cause of the fact that i was one of the few people with this kind of training who stayed in the parish and didn't go into full-time teaching counseling, i was in demand, to be frank. there weren't many people like that terri is. >> why did you stay in the parish? >> because i wanted to be where the action was. that's where the action was.

you could do so much from the parish. he didn't have power, but you had influence. and mayors of the cities, governors of the state, it wasn't because of any of us trying. natural things put me in situations to meet these people. i had the invitation to go down and meet the president of the united states one-time, mr. nixon. regardless of people's politics, that was quite moving. >> we are going to take a break and come back. we would talk about your book on forgiveness and more about his life. fascinating stuff. they with us.

>> dr. chamber -- dr. james somerset is with us. i want to follow the thread how you got to calvary church here in

san francisco, but you said under a debt growing up you were -- you said under it, you were a break that you had inside how to relate to people. >> i discovered the first thing is that people are people. i read a book about the training of kings of england. in it one of the things they said was, be sure that you know how to get him to the laboratory if you do. it was a basic -- just that basic area so one of the things i did was i went around the stanford campus and i figured out where all the laboratories were. by golly, i am there on this one location and faisal is there. he needs to know where the laboratory was. and i knew.

>> the skill you develop with people i think is important because you were able to then pastor churches. there were people with significant secular positions broadcasting and printing. tell us something about your people skills. maybe some insight of someone watching. >> and on the other side i was very comfortable in the center of harlem. you know, it really starts with family. people are people. my mother, somebody came by right after the war area we had a japanese friend who basically was a gardener and no place to stay. my mother said, stay with us. i grew up with people of all different types actually living in the home and respecting them as

people and what they did and what they could do. >> that's a good lesson for us to remember right there. people as people. he went to denver and pastor there at central church for seven years. >> the shorter time than i wished it had been, but it was about seven years. >> you decided to come to calvary church in san francisco. it's a wonderful, delightful congregation. how do you decide to move from church to church? what are the factors in that? >> well, there is the question of what i think other factors, and the questions as to what were the factors. when calvary church was expressing an interest in me, i was very excited. i was a californian. there was the thing of coming back to california and so forth, i also believe very sincerely, you went where you thought god wanted you to

be. so i was telling my wife that i thought god wanted me to be at this church. she looked at me with a stern eye and said, jim, if you were to simply tell me you would really love to be in california, i think i could handle that that are then wrestling with god. there was truth in what she was saying. that also teaches me that we have to be careful about what we attribute to god and become clean as to where we are. but the important thing from my standpoint is my wife had gone on and got her doctorate as a psychotherapist, and we were able to come here. she was able to set up work in blue state professional therapist here in the area, very well known, loved, and appreciated. we had our two careers together here, and that in many ways is a new life for us when we came here. we were a team. i respect her work and she respected my. from then on, whatever we did,

we did together. i was part of her and she was part of me. i didn't retire to retire. i retired because he had invitation to go and teach in japan, and china, n korea, and in india. so we took a year each. >> so a career is not everything. what has been most difficult about living alone since her untimely death? >> the sense of loss. no matter what you say -- it has nothing to do with faith. i believe in god. i believe she is fine. i believe she is in gods hands, all of that, but bishop pike some people would remember here. a friend of the family has told me that when he died, somebody said, well, he's with god. mrs. pike said very honestly, i

am fine about him being with god, but not now. i want him with me. well, that's what you have. >> every day i miss her greatly. i say to my kids that i have theology, because i was supposed to say what would jesus do. and i say, what would my wife do? she is very much part of me. to think about what she would do in some situations that come up in the appellant to myself. >> will be right back. i want to say a word about your book on forgiveness.

>> back with dr. james ayres -- james emerson. forgiveness, the key to the creative life, is your book. you can probably get it online. you tell me about this. jim dobbs is the -- what is this about, why did you read it? >> it goes back to my coming to

terms with the fact that my parents didn't make it in the marriage. i had to come to terms with that, and then they were separated for a long time. they never lived together again. after i had gotten started in the east, my mother had been -- she took pictures, and she was a photographer are you coming back from one of her trips, she stopped to see my dad and how awful -- in palo alto. the call i got was that i want to tell you that you're father and i have forgiven each other. what i did to free me to begin with as they had always allowed me to have a good relation with the other. i never counted against either one. i got such a freedom of it. i began to think of it more and more and read about forgiveness not as a theory but as an emotional dynamic 3-d but emotional dynamic is -- and the question i was

asking, how do you realize forgiveness so that you feel forgiveness? how do you feel forgiven and how do you help other persons feel forgiven? i came up with the concept of realized forgiveness as an experience and did a double bond the entitlement of forgiveness, which had a lot of research to it. not everyone would be interested in it. it wasn't my best writing, but it was the foundation book 44 years ago. i only i came to the k for three years ago that i've got to put this together again as he would've learned. what i learned is that thanks to mri, we now know a lot more about the brain that we never knew before, so i really studied that material and came back. really, this book is -- now that we know what happens in the brain with regards to forgiveness and the

way we did before, how would i rethink the whole matter of the experience of forgiveness customer that is what this book is. i have made a real attempt to write it for everybody. >> so this is a new work. this is the work of someone not young. >> that's right, that's right. >> the forgiveness is key to the creative life. >> defendant is interested, the bookstore to find if anyone is interested, the bookstore can open it. otherwise you can get on the internet. >> at 85, you don't seem to be done. >> i do feel that there is still something for me to do. i'm not sure quite what it is, but i'm excited about the future. i think i've got -- my sons tell me i will make it to 95, but i think i've got five good years ahead, what am i going to do with it customer asked him if what are

some of your choices? >> well, you are giving me an opportunity right here. i think you for that. i am taking this summer to think that through, but my expectation is that i will come back and say to the seminary, and i'm going to say to presbyterian san francisco, i'm here, he hears what i can offer. if you have a place you need me, it let me know. >> so you can teach and mentor. would you take the same path as he went back and looked at things now? >> i think it is one of the things that makes me believe there is a providence of god, something that guides you. as you probably remember, somebody wrote a sermon, every persons life is is a plan of god. but i think that there is a place for each of us. it will come to you. doors will open and other doors will close.

so i am just going through doors as they open. >> and that's an important approach in theology, because your beliefs has changed over these years. amid the dow, you keep going and the doors will open. >> and i will say to you at the age of 40 or 45, when a lot of people have a midlife crisis, i had my own little crisis. i wasn't sure i believed in god anymore. i went back into that. i went back to the very beginning in my dreams and everything else as to what i thought as a child, and i worked through my theology. i never blamed it on other people. i never blamed it on god, certainly. i thought this was my problem. if that happens to one, i would say take the opportunity to work it through, because he will work it through and get a faith. >> i even remember you went to your toll-free church and said, i'm

not sure i can preach this and this. and they said, preach what you can. that's very good counsel. thank you for being on, sir. >> it's been a pleasure. >> happy birthday to you. and to you back there, thank you for being with us. i am cute girls for mosaic. -- i am q burroughs for mosaic. it's been a delight.