Rob McCall is walking the tightrope again without a safety net. It's time for "Stump the Preacher," his occasional Sunday morning high-wire act at the Blue Hill Congregational Church, where questions can range from "Is there a God?" to "What do you wear under your robe?"

This morning, a Sunday school youngster has asked, "Do you think the squirrels want to be members of the church?"

McCall waits patiently for the laughter to die down, cocks his head, strokes his chin, and looks heavenward. "Could be," he says, in a playful, musical, mid-western baritone. "Maybe they think we're all nuts."

It's no stumper for the Reverend Rob Marshall McCall, who has probably thought more than most clergy about our fellow creatures and the lessons they might teach us. For the past decade, he has urged humankind to aspire to, as he puts it, "feeling at home in Nature and breaking down the wall of hostility between us and the rest of Creation."

Poet, environmentalist, orchardist, philosopher, theologian, humorist, outdoorsman, artist, songwriter, and folk musician: this Harvard-educated Johnny Chapelseed has come to be seen by many as Blue Hill's conscience for his support of the underprivileged and his vocal, sometimes controversial, advocacy for environmental responsibility and social justice.

During his four years at Harvard Divinity School, as the Vietnam War escalated, McCall's activism included participating in the 1967 March on the Pentagon. His thesis took a hard look at the church's historical treatment of minorities. He wasn't ordained until 1985, and explains simply, "There were a lot of things I had to do first, trying to understand the natural world. I spent about twelve years working very closely with trees and plants, took a lot of courses in pest management, entomology. I think it was time well-spent." Then, in July 1986, he was called to the historic Blue Hill Congregational Church. "I was home," McCall says of his arrival in Maine. "It was like my life had been a winding river which had now become straight."

The Congregational church is renowned for its association some 200 years ago with another Harvard graduate, Jonathan Fisher. He and McCall share the distinction of being the longest-serving ministers in the history of the 231-year-old congregation. McCall doesn't compare himself to his famous predecessor, but the thought intrigues him. Parson Fisher shows up frequently in his sermons, and reproductions of woodcuts from the parson's 1834 Scripture Animals, or Natural History of the Living Creatures Named in the Bible Written Especially for Youth Illustrated with Cuts often grace Sunday bulletins.

McCall’s preaching style mirrors his low-key, humorous, self-deprecating writing style. No pulpit-pounding or shouts of evangelical joy, a minimum of pomp and circumstance. He doesn't like to be called reverend, and he grudgingly wears a robe only from "the first Sunday in Advent through Pentecost." The role of minister is "not exalted," he explains. "I like the shepherd image, the caretaker. A church has a life of its own, and the minister's job is to enhance that life and keep it healthy. It takes tending."

McCall has written about a "spiritual vortex" centered on Blue Hill, the intangible presence of spirit or "genius of place," as the ancient Romans called it, of the mountain and the reversing Blue Hill Falls, a natural wonder that has evidence on its banks of Red Paint people from as far back as 4000 BC. He has collaborated with Native American tribes' repatriate burial remains found at the falls site.

And threaded through nearly every observation on natural and "unnatural" events, no matter where he might be, is Awanadjo, the Native American name for Blue Hill mountain. Not Everest, certainly, but one would imagine so by listening to McCall’s rapturous descriptions of "this great beast that you climb up on its back and it heals you."

In winter, long after the goldenrod and asters have gone to seed and the icy trail makes his regular climbs up the mountain more challenging, McCall revels in the cold, clear air that enhances his view from the bald summit. He can see all the way to Cadillac Mountain to the east, to the Camden Hills to the southwest and even a faint Isle au Haut to the south. He watches hawks riding the wind, and squirrels scavenging for food in the cracks of the weathered granite.

"The spirit is powerful," McCall says softly. "Be careful: it'll change you." But he adds an invitation: "Don't take our word for it, we're no experts. Go out and see for yourself."

This is an excerpt from “Parson Progressive”, an article by Luther Young that appeared in the December 2003 issue of Down East Magazine