Salt Lake City — Cynthia Rigby watched a lot of sports this past year because her family watches sports, and because the challenges of her Young-onset Parkinson’s disease have required her family’s close, constant care. Cynthia’s written openly about her Parkinson’s in her Living Theology column for the Presbyterian Outlook, and she was open with those of us gathered to hear her at a luncheon during General Assembly (GA). The meal, sponsored by Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, celebrated Cynthia for winning the assembly’s Excellence in Theological Education Award. The citation, also posthumously granted to Dr. Melva Costen, is the highest honor in the PC(USA) for those who teach, lead and support theological education.
At the podium, Cynthia recounted watching the NBA finals, where the Dallas Mavericks were losing to the Boston Celtics; one commentator caught her attention.
“Stephen A. Smith pleaded with Dallas to pick up the pace against Boston. ‘Go after the ball,’ he said. ‘Now shoot it into the basket. What the hell are you doing? Put it IN!’ The other four commentators weren’t even trying to get a word in, they were looking at [Smith] as though they were feeling convicted of their apathy. And the whole thing struck me as funny because there wasn’t really any analysis going on. Then he got to the best point when he said, ‘Just try to win. Try to win! Try to win! Try to win!’”
She laughed. “And I think this would have irked me if I was playing for the Mavericks. ‘Oh, try to win.’ I would’ve said, ‘I hadn’t thought of that. That’s an idea.’
“But it would’ve been hard to stay mad at Smith because he was so darn hopeful. He seemed to think that the Mavericks could win. And that they had the resources to win. He obviously thought they could give it a stronger go.
“So this is how I’m thinking about us. But, we’ve got the win in the bag. The prize is held out for us in Jesus Christ. So we can try to win and we should try to win. And this is not antithetical to grace. This is jumping fully into grace.”
It pains those of us who love Cynthia, including her family, her students, her colleagues, all those who have been graced by her extraordinary life and work as one of our best Reformed theologians, to witness her physical struggles with Parkinson’s. But when she speaks, it’s clear God graces this theology professor with extraordinary gifts, and she is determined to put them to good, generous use.
“Try to win,” Cynthia repeated Smith’s encouragement throughout her remarks.
“I mean, I’m not going to defeat Parkinson’s,” she said. Then, “Well, who knows? They just passed a bill a couple of weeks ago that is going to put more money into Parkinson’s research.”
Cynthia Rigby is stunning in her unrelenting hopefulness and in her gratitude for the resources God has provided. Cynthia’s “great cloud of witnesses” isn’t, she said, “an amorphous, non-particular thing,” but “particular faces of people” surrounding her.
“They’re after me all the time,” she says, laughing. “Everyone watches my every move,” referring to her husband Bill, her mother-in-law Sylvia, her mother Ethel, and her former student, Ann, who found a brush to do Cynthia’s hair before her speech because the hotel-room hairdryer wasn’t working.
“I’m powered by the encouragement that you are giving me,” Cynthia said, also referring to the tribute video produced by the Presbyterian Foundation.
But Cynthia wasn’t just going to use her time at the podium to simply say thank you. She wanted to encourage us as well: “Try to win,” she repeated.
First, “Try to win by creating space in your life and the life of your parishioners for theological discourse and reflection. If we do not power up our theological minds and hearts, we’re not going to have fuel for the journey.”
“Second, try to win at reshaping Reformed identity. It’s not just for theologians to reshape Reformed identity. We have to think about what Reformed theology is going to look like and we need to have more confession of the problems with our Reformed tradition.”
“Lastly, try to win at reserving energy for creativity. Creativity is underrated in our culture, and thinking is part of creativity. But we have to save energy for these things. They take a lot of energy.”
Before the luncheon concluded, Gary Matthews, Austin Seminary’s Director of Alumni and Church Relations, surprised Cynthia and all attendees with a special gift — a Professor Cynthia Rigby bobblehead to take home. I scored two, one for myself and one for my theologian husband.
I’m home now from General Assembly, and I’m tired. Ministry, no matter what shape it takes, is constant and exhausting. But as I sit at my writing desk, my Cynthia Rigby bobblehead smiles and nods encouragingly with every word I type.
“Try to win,” she’s telling me, despite all that is hard and exhausting. Try to win despite all the suffering; despite all the challenges and the reasons to despair.
Try to win.
Because Cynthia believes in me, and in us, how can we not believe in ourselves? When she is so relentless in hope, how can we not try?
To read more of Cynthia’s writing for the Outlook, see here.
