I lost a dear friend recently.
I’m still reeling from the news that Ted Lewis, a leader in restorative justice and a regular contributor to Radix, died on July 23, 2024. Ted succumbed to glioblastoma, an inoperable, fast-moving brain cancer. He was 66 years old and a good friend of mine.
Truth is, most people who knew Ted would say he was a good friend of theirs as well. Ted valued relational integrity; he didn’t shy away from connectedness. He often wrote about the importance of moving from the “head zone” — the world of defensive narratives —to the “heart zone,” the deeper sharing of personal stories that lead to empathy and trust.
I’ve never known anyone quite like Ted, whose love for theology, peacemaking, and folksy wit led him to impact many lives, including my own. He was a writer, Bible wonk, and superfan of C.S. Lewis and Jacques Ellul.
I met Ted in 1987 in Oakland, California, when we were both at a significant crossroads. My wife and I had just returned from a year of teaching in China, broke and uncertain, while Ted and his wife Nancy had just married and were pondering their next steps. I felt an instant rapport with Ted, who approached life with a disarming humor and improvisation.
Ted believed in do-it-yourself fun. He disdained what he called “packaged entertainment,” mass-produced consumer amusements. He wrote his own songs, created his own games, and invented his own faith rituals. One night, he schemed a Maundy Thursday service in a dark corner of a railway yard outside of Oakland. Ted, myself, and another friend scoped out the setting: a decaying concrete smokestack beset with graffiti. The plan was to paint a skull on the tower to represent Golgotha, to which we would return later for an alternative worship gathering. Unfortunately, the police showed up, wondering why three guys were trespassing on railroad property with spray cans in their pockets. Spread eagled against the patrol cars, Ted remained silent as the police frisked all three of us. After a long scolding, the cops let us go. Ted treated us to beers at a neighborhood pub, seething about police overreach.
A child of missionary parents in Portugal, Ted inherited from them a deep curiosity about world cultures and the scriptures, particularly the Old Testament. At age 14, Ted accompanied his father on a 3-month teaching trip to Jerusalem, where he wandered freely without supervision. “The world of the Bible opened up in astounding ways,” he wrote. It proved to be a watershed moment for him as he wandered the Old City and hiked all over Galilee with Bible scholars.
From those days forward, Ted loved to hoof around, exploring whatever interested him. He possessed, in his words, “a perennial tug toward all things alternative.” He questioned conventional structures of education, medicine, and technology. His grad school thesis on “Idolatry and Iconoclasm in Ancient Israel” got him thinking about idolatry in a modern context and “the prophetic form of debunking sacralized culture.” This led him to a lifelong study of the French theologian Jacques Ellul, who wrote prophetically about the darker sides of technological systems and their curve toward dehumanization. Ted became executive director of the International Jacques Ellul Society, where he republished many of Ellul’s books and writings.
Ted, Nancy, and their two daughters Elie and Clarity, lived several years in an ecumenical Christian farm community in Kansas that was “dedicated to the healing of persons and the earth.” Catholic sisters lived side by side with Mennonite families. We visited the Lewis’s twice. Our children played with theirs on tightropes Ted strung between tall elms. I recall a walk down a gravel road at dusk as coyotes yipped in the surrounding fields. Ted told me he didn’t know where God was leading him, but that he was leaning toward restorative justice, an alternative approach to crime that defined justice as repair rather than punishment. “It’s about bringing victim and offender together to repair harm,” he said. “Restoring trust and moving forward.” At the same time, Nancy became involved in Waldorf education, a holistic learning process focused on children’s imaginations and creativity. Ted wanted to support her vocational yearnings as well. But how to merge the two?
A labyrinthian journey took them to many settings in Oregon, Wisconsin, and finally, Duluth, Minnesota. They sojourned as Christian activists, often on the edge. “They lived close to an empty wallet,” one friend remarked at Ted’s memorial. “We all did. Ted was not afraid to couch surf when necessary.”
Over the years, Nancy went deeper into Waldorf teaching while Ted became a restorative consultant and trainer at the Center for Restorative Justice and Peacemaking at the University of Minnesota. He was also a board member of the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice, which recently awarded him its prestigious Faith Based Award for “significant contributions to restorative justice in the context of faith-based organizations.”
Though we lived far apart, Ted and I exchanged our poetry and essays via email. We engaged in a healthy rivalry: Ted was more experienced at prose, and I with poetry. We critiqued and learned from each other’s work. I looked forward to Ted’s annual advent and lenten essays.
We talked freely about faith and doubt. Once, I shared with Ted my discomfort with the story of David and Goliath. “How tragic,” I wrote, “that this young shepherd boy would be compelled to cut off Goliath’s head. The stories of Samuel, David, and Saul are grand, epic, and terribly sad.” Ted wrote back, with his typical thoughtfulness, “Yes. God working with a people despite the culture…Everyone is enculturated in a violent ethos…Everyone is a victim; everyone is an offender.”
Ted taught me the importance of having friends who differ on important issues. We often disagreed. While Ted bent toward “all things alternative,” I leaned toward the conventional. Ted derided smart phones; I embraced the latest releases. He felt the news media had far too much power; I believed a free press was essential to democracy. He distrusted modern medicine; I did anything my doctor recommended. We took opposite sides on vaccines and masks during the pandemic. I trusted Dr. Fauci; Ted believed government agencies wielded far too much authority. I was scared Ted would fall sick with Covid. That strained our friendship, but Ted pursued dialogue. He suggested we follow a restorative justice approach and share each other’s backstories during two Zoom calls. “Tell me what led you to feel the way you do,” he said. “I’ll just listen. Then, on our next Zoom, I’ll tell you my story.” For two hours, I shared how Covid had sickened my friends and ravaged my community. In turn, Ted shared with me how past experiences had led him to distrust government policies and big pharma. He couldn’t, with a clear conscience, accept a vaccination. In the end, we still disagreed but trusted each other more. I felt the weight of anger lift, and our friendship moved forward.
At Ted’s memorial service, one of his many buddies described him as “neither left nor right. He was kind of left, kind of right. He had questions for both… He believed that a Christian in the modern world was first and foremost a person who was deeply aware, lived with eyes open, and had a commitment to looking below the surface of things.”
Psalm 73 was one of Ted’s most treasured biblical poems. It ends with the following:
“Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.”
I miss my friend.
Many of Ted Lewis’s essays and reflections on restorative justice can be found on his Restorative Church website at https://restorativechurch.org.
Read a memorium to Ted on the International Jacques Ellul Society website at https://ellul.org.
Ed Aust is a writer, editor, and photographer living in Oakland, CA, and serves as poetry editor for Radix Magazine.