This post is devoted to The Rev. Schuyler Rhodes who is one of my lifelong best friends and a PK. (Preacher’s kid for those secular Jewish agnostics)
I fancied myself a cynical Jewish agnostic during my teen years. Why not? I felt alienated and knew the only person who could relate to me was Holden Caulfield, just like every other post-modern tween in the mid 60’s.

I often ask myself why the two best friends I ever had in high school were religious. I spoke about Chip and his attempt to save me through Christ.  When my friend Chip[1] moved away in tenth grade, I became friends with a very cool guy, whose dad was a Methodist minister, Schuyler Rhodes.   In those days Schuyler went by the nick-name Skip. He was good looking and always had the girls swooning.  Of the two of us, I was the funny geeky guy, the proverbial sidekick to his charming, unassuming swagger. I have to say, for whatever reason, his good looks, swagger and intellect in no way made him insufferable. (Probably because at heart he was more like me than he appeared. I couldn’t understand why until much later)

We became friends in eleventh grade and he and I loved to fence, intellectually. I hung out at his house which was another version of a Norman Rockwell vision of suburban America. His mom was a doting mother with a dry humor and his father was the Reverend James Rhodes, a poet and larger-than-life Orson Welles-ian figure who loved to tell jokes and trade jokes with me. He had sisters, but was the only son in a very patriarchal home.

We hung out with some friends of his from MYF, the Methodist Youth Fellowship and I met another friend Jim Marks. For a while we were a triumvirate. My specialty was making them laugh and together we did all the things that kids our age did; we tried getting drunk on Southern Comfort, listened to Monty Python, tried pot, and spent nights at each other’s house. That is to say, I spent time at theirs since my house was too toxic.

Although I hung with the Methodists, I was not influenced to become one. It was more or less, that’s who my friends were. I did have to sit at the dinner table at the Rhodes’ and hold hands during the doxology.  I suppose, part of why I was so accepted is Christian charity, but more I think, I was somehow aligned with a spiritual quest. I was not going to follow any one doctrine because of my skeptical nature, but I was drawn to friends who were.

Schulyer and I were, for a time great, roommates and we called ourselves “Suburban Heroes” thinking we were going to settle into a nice life as part of the great American dream, but our natures led us to break from that mold and seek higher ground. He, in religious life as a community builder, and me for the glamor of a show biz career, and the gospel according to Spolin.

Schuyler today is in charge of a region of Methodist churches having spent his career as a socially conscious Methodist minister and our friendship has stood the test of time. As a matter of fact, it was Schuyler’s dabbling in college theater that led me to meet the greatest influence of my life, Viola Spolin[2].

My first friend Chip, dropped out of art school to become an evangelical preacher and eventually had a church somewhere, before leaving the ministry to lead a civilian life.

The next friend I had, I found through my performing life. Caleb Chung my long-time comedy partner and friend was involved in a new Islamic based religion called Subud.  More on that in my next post.

God bless.

Gary

[1] (I spoke about him in my last post – http://gary-schwartz.com/friends-are-my-salvation/)

[2] http://www.improv-odyssey.com/viola-spolin-and-me/