For the past few decades, dear Laurel faithfully read the Ordo, the Christian lectionary of prayers and Scripture for each day of the calendar year. Laurel would read those verses to me wherever we were: over a meal, at a picnic at Spanish Banks, or in a hospital room. Today’s readings begin with Psalm 27:1-4. I will read verse 4:
There is one thing I ask of the Lord,
Only this do I seek,
To live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
To gaze on the beauty of the Lord,
To inquire at his temple.
I hear Laurel saying those words in her mellifluous voice, as a prayer and an affirmation. As it was in her life, is now, and ever shall be.
Laurel did gaze on the beauty of the Lord at all times. She helped me—and others of us—do the same. In 1979, she arrived in Berkeley with Ward, the newly appointed Founding President of the fledgling school for Christian laity, New College Berkeley, a post he served in for three years. It was a risky venture for both of them, and for teenaged Michelle, it meant going to school in yet another country. They could have stayed at their beloved Regent College, but they were enthusiastic to take the vision of graduate education for all Christians to a new place, a place that was only beginning to emerge from the tumultuous Sixties, a place profoundly in need of Gospel grace.
Laurel, an art historian and impassioned lover of art, brought visual and musical art into our everyday lives at New College and the life-sustaining arts of hospitality, friendship, and care for community. Heaven is now blessed with her gifts.
The last line of verse 4 of Psalm 27 makes me laugh when I think of Laurel: “To inquire at his temple.” How the Lord must be enjoying Laurel’s inquiring mind! I know I did. I think we all did, persistent as it could be.
Every conversation with Laurel became an intellectual journey into her vast knowledge of theology, church history, art, and more, always tied to the people and communities who developed the ideas and art. Not only did Laurel not shy away from hard questions or the work entailed in addressing them, she embraced them with gusto. Even as she grew older and was weighed by quotidian elderly concerns about finances and health, Laurel most wanted to talk about early church writers or the philosophical underpinnings of a current ecclesial trend. She had quite a few things to say about recent American politics.
I was Laurel’s friend for 46 years. We met a few months after Ward’s first visits to Berkeley in 1979 when he interviewed with Earl Palmer, David Gill, my husband Steve, and other Trustees for the New College President position. Laurel was completing advanced studies in art history in Edinburgh and that summer moved back to North America. She and Ward visited Steve and me on Bay Island in southern California for a happy week of getting to know each other.
Laurel struck me as shy, earnest, blessed with an incisive and wide-ranging mind, warm-hearted—and also strikingly beautiful. Along with Ward, she had a deep commitment to the theological formation of all followers of Jesus. She was an extremely theologically and biblically informed layperson, committed to lifelong learning.
Steve and I had breakfast with Laurel and Matthew Steem a few weeks ago in Vancouver. She was full of new ideas, suggestions, and connections for Matthew as he edits Radix Magazine and for us to convey to Craig Wong as he steers New College.
In addition to being committed to lifelong learning, Laurel was committed to lifelong living in the house of the Lord. She and Ward showed me what it looks like to do that. Their hospitality felt like space in God’s dwelling place, chaotic as it sometimes was. On the Gasques’ Berkeley refrigerator, Laurel placed information about a different country every month, a prompt to pray for each corner of God’s creation. She was a global citizen, eager to see the world, and the world was always welcome in the Gasque home.
Laurel was an amazing cook. I remember when David Lyle Jeffrey came to lecture at New College, Laurel created a feast from her complicated, gourmet cookbooks. This was 45 years ago, and I still remember the homemade maple syrup ice cream she prepared for the Canadian-American guest. Moreover, she was up to date on his writing and enlivened the conversation even as she served. My family benefited from her hospitality and joy in life. Once, she served Dubonnet to my mother, who never drank alcohol. Knowing Laurel’s rock-solid Christian commitment, my mother assumed the drink was alcohol-free, and she loved it.
Laurel and Ward put the “fun” back in the fundamentals—of theology, work, study, and community life. They barbequed saucisse fumée for picnics, introducing us to a French enhancement of our lowly American hotdog. At the first New College Berkeley open house in the fall of 1979, both Ward’s and Laurel’s mothers were on hand to serve tea to the guests from a silver tea service. They wore floral dresses and hats. In Berkeley. In the Seventies. Across the street from People’s Park.
Over the years, I came to count Gram, Laurel’s mother, as a friend, too. When my then eleven-year-old son Andrew and I visited the Gasques in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, where Ward was Provost at Eastern University and Laurel and Gram maintained in their home what amounted to an elegant retreat center for visitors and students, the family toured us through Amish country. It was an informative and enormously playful day, with us all crammed into a small car, chattering away while we passed soberly dressed folks in horse-drawn buggies.
I’ve been fortunate enough to become Michelle’s friend, too. For many summers, when I came to Regent to teach and Laurel and Ward lived elsewhere, Michelle would carve out time from her very full life as an art director for major films to be with me. I’m so grateful for the years we’ve shared and will continue to share.
Laurel privileged sacramental living over many other activities—that kind of living that imparts God’s grace. One of Laurel’s most sacrificial choices was giving short shrift to her writing. In those years at New College, she struggled to find enough hours in the day to write her Masters’ thesis. In those years, I read Tillie Olsen’s compelling book Silences, in which she describes the challenges of writing when also doing the work of the household: “Work interrupted, deferred, postponed makes blockage.” Yes…and…. In Laurel’s case, work interrupted made for flow, the flow of Holy grace through her and into the world.
I admit I have had mixed feelings about benefiting so much from the time Laurel gave to me and the New College community, hours which could have gone to writing more of her brilliant thoughts. I’m grateful to have received her caring attention. I’m also grateful that she went on to write articles, book chapters, the significant biography of her friend Hans Rookmaaker, titled Art and the Christian Mind, and so many pieces for her beloved ArtWay, the online hub of resources dedicated to faith and the visual arts.
At the end of “Dry Salvages,” the third of the Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot writes that we can find contentment in having lived “the life of significant soil.” The life of significant soil: That’s the life Laurel lived.
Two blessed educational institutions, Regent College and New College Berkeley, have flourished for decades with Laurel’s unstinting, thoughtful care. Unlike some people who leave a place and turn their full attention to a new location, Laurel always remained connected, more a gardener than a landscape architect.
I led New College for nearly three decades, during which time Laurel was always ready to lend me her ideas, connections, and prayer. She stayed on the Board of Trustees until she left this life a few weeks ago. She was friends with every president of New College Berkeley, from her beloved Ward to Craig Wong today.
To be supported in our lives and ministries is essential. To be cherished is sheer grace. Laurel offered both. I am grateful that I, my family, and New College Berkeley continue to grow in the significant soil of Laurel’s precious life.
Susan S. Phillips (Ph.D.), sociologist, spiritual director, and professor of Christian spirituality, served for twenty-eight years as the Executive Director of New College Berkeley and served on the Core Doctoral Faculty of the Graduate Theological Union. Her books include Candlelight: Illuminating Art of Spiritual Direction and The Cultivated Life: From Ceaseless Striving to Receiving Joy.