A Turtle on a Fence: A Memoir of Gratitude (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798988534037)

This memoir is more than a recollection of events-it is an autobiographical litany of thanksgiving, a sacred remembering shaped by over forty years of pastoral ministry, public witness, and personal transformation. Structured as a reflective 100-day countdown into retirement, the book unfolds as a series of journaled meditations that weave together memory, meaning, and ministry.

At its heart is the enduring image of a "turtle on a fence"-a metaphor of grace and communal investment that frames the author's life as one lifted, carried, and sustained by others. With honesty and reverence, Alvin C. Bernstine bears witness to the many hands, voices, and souls who nurtured, corrected, challenged, and sheltered a young, severely at-risk African American boy into a life he could not have imagined for himself.

Beginning in the fragile yet faithful world of a family marked by hope and wounded by personal, social, economic, and ecclesial disappointments, the narrative traces a journey across geographies and generations-from Oakland to Dallas, from Dallas to Nashville, from Nashville to Brooklyn. Along the way, a diverse and often unlikely community converges to shape one life, revealing how place, people, and providence collaborate in the making of a calling.

But this work does not stop at storytelling. It is also a reflective theology of Black life, a meditation on preaching as both vocation and survival, and a set of hard-earned lessons on emotional awareness, resilience, leadership, and liberation. Through stories, reflections, and pastoral insight, the author explores what it means to preach with integrity, to live with emotional truth, and to serve a people whose faith has been forged in struggle and sustained through collective memory.

In the end, this is a drama of redemption-not sentimental, but hard-won-made possible by one of the most enduring and generative institutions in the world: the African American Church. It is a testimony to the power of community, the necessity of witness, and the mystery of grace that lifts turtles onto fences-and calls them to help lift others.