BOB HAMMEL: A DEATH TOO SOON [Sat, 1-17-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Personal Reminiscences of An Old Man—BOB HAMMEL: A DEATH TOO SOON [Sat, 1-17-26]

 

The Indiana House just voted, unanimously, to name a section of IN 45 as the Bob Knight Memorial Highway. It’s appropriate. Bob certainly created a lot of traffic on that road, for three decades, as folks came to fill up Indiana University’s Assembly Hall every time one of his teams ran out onto the hardwood.

But it’s another thing Bob Hammel should get to celebrate, and he won’t. He died too soon.

Hammel was 88 when he died. That’s hardly a tragic death. It would be tragic at 8 or 28, and regrettable at 58 or 68, but hardly unexpected at 88, the age of double infinity. [The sign for infinity is a horizontal 8.] But it was too soon, to witness what he had a right to see.

 

Hammel was the long-time sports editor of the Bloomington, IN “Herald-Times,” and Knight’s best friend and staunch supporter. He was accused, especially by other sports writers, of being blind to Knight’s flaws, but he wasn’t. He just wasn’t vocal about the shortcomings of his friends. Or anyone else, for that matter.

He deplored some things that Knight did, like swear. I don’t think even a tinker’s damn ever crossed Hammel’s lips. But friendship to Hammel was a matter of constant, loving, Christian support, regardless of how badly his friends behaved, or how sick they got. His friendship did not waver. As another of his friends, I had reason to appreciate that.

 

So he would have delighted in driving on the Knight Memorial Highway. But, he died too soon.

The worst thing, though, about Hammel dying too soon, is missing out on the Indiana University football team of these last two years. He wrote columns and essays and books about IU athletics for 40 years, and only once did he get to write about a good football team, the one that lost the 1968 Rose Bowl game to OJ Simpson [USC]. Oh, how he would have delighted in and written about Coach Cignetti and the current football Hoosiers in a way no one else could.

Current IU Athletic Director, Scott Dolson, knows how much IU sports meant to Hammel, and how much Hammel meant to IU sports. He saw it up close and personal, from the time he was just an undergrad student, when he was a student manager for Knight’s teams. One of the first things Dolson did when he hired Darien DeVries as the new IU basketball coach was take him out to Gentry Park Retirement Village to meet Bob Hammel. Bob had been retired for almost 30 years, but Scott knew whose unofficial imprimatur DeVries needed.

Hammel greatly appreciated that visit. He told me about it during one of our regular Thursday morning coffee times in the Gentry Park dining room, when we got together to talk sports, yes, but more so, faith and family, memories and hopes.

I enjoyed and appreciated Bob Hammel’s friendship so much, but I was always surprised by it. When we started hanging out together, often with our wives, he was a legend, known to all. I was a small town preacher, who got his notice because I wrote him a letter about one of his columns.  

When the best sports writers of the 20^th century were named, he was always on the list, along with folks like Frank Deford of Sports Illustrated and Jim Murray of the LA Times. Hammel was on a first-name basis with sports stars like Michael Jordan. He was welcome in the news room of any newspaper. But next to Bob Knight, he said I was his best friend.

I think it was because his true identity was not as a great sports writer but as an honest-to-God Christian. He was a totally dedicated member of his congregation and denomination, but that was only a minor part of this Christian identity. His Christian identity meant that he was a constant advocate for those who were left out. He lived the gospel of personal holiness--he didn’t drink or smoke or swear, etc. But also he lived the gospel of social holiness--promoting civil rights and economic rights for “the least of these.” He was a Matthew 25 Christian.

We were almost the same age, so had grown up in Indiana at the same time. I think he saw in me a fellow spirit, a guy who loved sports, especially IU sports, but a fellow traveler on “the Way.”

I guess everyone dies too soon. No one gets to see everything in life that would have brought them satisfaction. But come Monday night, when the worst team in the history of college football does the unthinkable and wins the national title, I shall be reading Bob Hammel’s report of it in the Herald-Times of my brain.

John Robert McFarland

Bob Knight used to say, “Basketball is a simple game that is difficult to play.” I’d add that life is the same way.

 

A PRIVILEGED LIFE [R, 1-15-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Personal Reminiscences of an Old God Botherer in Winter—A PRIVILEGED LIFE [R, 1-15-26]

 

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: Now this column is only the personal reminiscences of the author. If you get anything worthwhile, it is either by accident, or because you have a special ability to discern wheat in chaff.

As I enter this year, I think how richly I am blessed. I got to live in the last 63 years of the 20^th century, and, so far, the first 25 of the 21^st century—the best time to be alive, ever…

…at least, for a tall, straight, intelligent, English-speaking, decent-looking white man, with a deep voice and good genes.

For a man like that, the America of the modern era has been a land of hope, of promise, of the dream.

For colored folks, or gay or female folks, or people with learning disabilities, or brain or body problems…not so much so.

Is it wrong for me to give thanks for my privileged life, to count my blessings? Are we not supposed to enjoy all the good life brings to us? After all, I did not choose the givens of my life—race and gender and intelligence and such—anymore than anyone else did.

In a Call the Midwife episode, Nonnatus House nurse, Jenny Lee, is upset when a baby is taken away from a sixteen-year-old, exploited, “feeble minded” girl, and given to adoptive parents. Jenny protests to the priest who runs the adoption agency. He explains to her that the girl has no prospects, no family, no one to support her, no job, no education, no place to live, a low level of intelligence even to care for herself, no way to care for her baby. Furthermore, even though she does not want to give up the baby, she is underage. She has no rights in 1950s London.

Jenny has herself lived a privileged and sheltered life before coming to Poplar, London’s poverty-stricken east end. She says to the priest, “You must think me extremely naive.”

He says, “I think you fortunate. There is no need to apologize for that.”

Okay. I’ve lived a privileged life. I won’t apologize for it.

The problem with inherited privilege is when we who are privileged think that such advantage makes us better than others, rather than just different. Jesus constantly excoriated the rich and privileged not because they had more, but because they considered it as a birthright rather than a gift, because they thought it made them more a child of God than any of their brothers and sisters.

A privileged life takes you in one of two ways. Either you think that you are privileged because you deserve it, and that others do not deserve privilege…or you realize that privilege is just a fortunate accident.

If you know privilege is just an accident of birth—race, gender, intelligence, culture, etc—then you can give thanks and use your privilege in service to all.

I have lived a privileged life, and I’m thankful for it.

John Robert McFarland

“My experience has taught me that the future does end up better, even if it seems a bit delayed.” Lauren Jackson, the host of “Believing,” writing in “The NY Times.”

 

 

PERFECTION [T, 1-13-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Musings of An Old Man in the Winter of His Years—PERFECTION [T, 1-13-26]

 

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: This column is no longer “reflections on faith and life.” It’s reasonable that you might get something worthwhile for your own life from such “reflections.” That is no longer a reasonable assumption. Now this column is only the personal reminiscences of the author. If you get anything worthwhile, it is either by accident, or because you have a special ability to discern wheat in chaff.

 

 From my first memory on, all I really wanted was to be a good person. In my time and place, that translated into wanting to be a good Christian, which mostly meant to be a good follower of Jesus.

I didn’t feel much need for Christ.

I understood that Jesus and Christ were one and the same, that he/they were the disclosure of God. But I felt entirely comfortable with going directly to God. No need for an intercessor, even Christ.

I didn’t always know what God wanted of me, though, but I could look at Jesus and say, “Oh, that’s the God way. That’s the way to be the good person I want to be.”

Basically that meant always being respectful—of God and God’s world, especially other people, but all of God’s creation, including myself. You never intended to be mean or inflict pain. You were always kind.

Except when you weren’t. Then you asked for forgiveness and tried to do better.

John Wesley’s theory of “Christian perfection,” perfection in love, found a ready adherent in me. If you were always a good person, you’d be perfect.

Actually, I wanted to be more than perfect in love. I wanted to be perfect in everything. Still do. Perfection in everything has not worked out very well, though.

And certainly perfection “only” in love is a lot easier in belief than in practice. I often wanted to practice unkindness. I wanted to lash out in anger. Oh, I never wanted to hit or shoot or lynch anyone, but I wanted to be unkind with words. I wanted to say nasty things to people I thought deserved it. Often I did, but not where anyone but me could hear those words.

So, yes, I guess I was a hypocrite. But a fairly harmless one.

And, I didn’t “think more highly of myself than I ought to think.” I didn’t lie about who I was. I always admitted that I was a flawed and imperfect Christian, a rather poor follower and emulator of Jesus.

I saw Jesus as the embodiment, the incarnation, of God, even though I did not know those words early on, so I knew that to be friendly with God, I needed to follow the examples of Jesus.

I didn’t want to get in good with God to avoid hell or go to heaven. That was the standard reason when I was growing up. No, I just couldn’t figure any reason to be alive in this world without God. God was the alpha and the omega. Again, not words or concepts I knew early, but I knew that God was the only way to meaning, to a meaningful life.

For a long time I was able to confuse being a good person with being a good parson. I was pretty good at being a preacher, so thought that meant I was being pretty good at being a Christian. Old age, when I can no longer be a preacher at all, good or otherwise, has revealed a rather fatal flaw in that idea. You can be great at preaching about the light and still live in darkness.

I still want to be a good person. Now, though, I have to try walking the straight and narrow with no robe or stole or sermon notes.

Sixty-two years ago, I answered “Yes,” to the traditional Wesleyan ordination question, “Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?” It was an honest answer, but I really need to get busy.

John Robert McFarland

So far, I have been perfect in 2026. I haven't written 2025 even once!

 

THE REASON FOR PULPIT ROBES [Sun, 1-11-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—THE REASON FOR PULPIT ROBES [Sun, 1-11-26]

 

It’s Sunday, and I’m not wearing either of my pulpit robes. Not the black one with the doctoral stripes. Not the white one, either. So, why do I still have them?

Recently I gave my clergy cap to a colleague, Pastor Teresa. It’s a black baseball cap with a white clerical collar tab just above the brim. Now everyone in the softball game at the church picnic will know who the preacher is. I enjoyed that cap but got to wear it only a few times, because I got it just as I retired. I’m glad Teresa has it. She’ll get a lot more good out of it than I ever could.

One of the problems of old people is that nobody wants our stuff. And there aren’t many people we can force it onto, especially if it’s niche stuff. You can require your children to take a few things, because they are family heirlooms. These days, though, adult children don’t want good china and silverware. They eat from take-out boxes. Not even The Salvation Army wants your classy stuff.

But what can you do with your pulpit robes if your kids aren’t clergy and the up-and-coming younger preachers are five-foot women instead of six-foot men? Giving away the black robe is even trickier, because it has doctoral stripes. Yes, a non-doctored clergy person could remove the stripes, but there would be blacker doctoral-stripe chevrons left on the sleeves.

When I started seminary, I was appointed to a church that was used to seeing its pastor on Sunday morning in a pulpit robe, but I didn’t have one.

I had been preaching in little churches for three years. People wore “good clothes” to church in those days in little churches—dresses and hats for women, suits and white shirts and ties for men. Yes, it was okay if a woman wore a “house” dress, or a man came in overalls, but those were rare. I had only one suit, that I had worn every Sunday for a long time, but that was okay; that was all I needed to look good enough for a little country church. But Cedar Lake expected a robe.

We could not afford to buy one, of course, so Helen made one. Plain black. Nothing fancy. I wore it for fifteen years, until I got that doctoral robe. Then Helen began to use my old robe for the preachers at the mock weddings in her high school “adult living” classes. One of their assignments was to plan a wedding so that they would learn how expensive those things can be.

That was the robe I was wearing when high-school friend Phyllis Graham grabbed my robe lapels after worship one morning, when I was a new campus minister and she was a new math professor, and said, “You don’t know it yet, but when you’re in that pulpit, you’re something special. People will believe what you say just because of the way you say it. So you make damn sure that what you say is true.”

I’ve always felt that those robes were reminders to me. When I was wearing one, I had to make damn sure that what I was saying was true. Nobody wants my robes. There are not many folks these days who want that reminder.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

FOLLOWING THE KIDS’ TIME STAR [F, 1-9-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—FOLLOWING THE KIDS’ TIME STAR [F, 1-9-26]

 

It’s Epiphany season, and well, we understand the mother who said, “If three strangers showed up with spices and said that my child is tender and mild, I’d be worried.” Even more, I’m sure, if the strangers were trying to smoke a rubber cigar.

But I digress…Epiphany is in great part about that star. And kids time in worship. [Yes, there’s a connection. Look at the last paragraph.] To do kids’ time in worship well, you don’t follow an outline; you follow the star.

Not long ago, I was in a group of people who have discovered livestream worship, not just in their own local churches, but all over the nation, even the world. Some of them “go” to worship in several different places each week. Not surprisingly, they do a lot of “compare and contrast.”

The subject of our conversation turned to the now-mandatory kids’ time in those worship services, and the way different preachers/leaders do it.

The main complaint I hear, about the people who lead kids’ time, is this: they are too well prepared.

That sounds counter-intuitive, but I understand. Some of the best times I had with children’s time in worship was when I was appointed to a new church and inherited the “what’s in the bag” method.

Each Sunday a different child would take home the cloth bag we used for kids’ time. They would bring it back the next Sunday with some object in it. I had no idea what it was until the kids were seated around me and I was handed the bag. Then I did a children’s homily based on whatever was in the bag—a thermometer or light bulb or salt shaker or toilet paper… [Yes, there are attempts to create chaos for the preacher, which I suspect the adults of a household are involved in. That’s a good thing, kids and adults at home thinking about church together.]

It’s a lot of fun and much easier than it sounds. You don’t “preach” about the spoon or Pokémon card or dog biscuit. It’s just the starting point for a mental and spiritual journey. All such journeys lead to God. Everybody in the congregation enjoys seeing how the preacher finally gets to God from that unexpected starting place.

The main point: the preacher has to improvise. No idea ahead of time what the starting place will be, and only the star in the East to lead the way.

Most preachers are prepared for children’s time, on the same theme that is later being laid on “the big kids.” A kids time should never have more than one point, but preachers feel naked with only one point. So they have lots of points, that have to be in correct succession, so the preachers have to ignore or put off questions that get the points out of sequence. They use a bunch of words that kids don’t understand, and then end with a lame joke that is really directed at the adults present.

The preacher interacts primarily with his/her subject and its correct presentation, and with the adults, but not with the children. Regardless of how squirrely they get, how many raised hands are not acknowledged, the preacher plows on to the finish, because that is what she/he is prepared to do.

If you’re not prepared, you have to pay attention to the kids, and how they are responding. You go where the kids lead you, and you end not because you are finished with what you prepared, but because the kids are through listening.

When those kids came up for children’s time with Jesus [Matthew 19:14], the ushers tried to keep them back because they knew Jesus hadn’t prepared for kids’ time. But Jesus said, “Let them come.” A good preacher is always prepared to pay attention to the children, especially when not prepared.

 

We don’t enter the kingdom of heaven except as little children, Jesus said. [Mt. 18:3] Children are not prepared; they follow the star.

John Robert McFarland

ASHES TO ASHES [1-7-25]

CHRIST IN WINTER: A Final Reflection on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—ASHES TO ASHES [1-7-25]

 

My sister-in-law has begun to scatter the cremains of my late brother, Jim, in the places important to him. That will include here in Bloomington, Indiana, when she comes for a memorial service for him. That has started me to thinking about where my ashes will go.

Yes, cremains is a good word, but I prefer ashes. You know, “ashes to ashes and dust to dust.” When I was a boy, I shook down the ashes in our Franklin Stove and carried them out back and scattered them on our garden. Yes, I prefer to think of my cremains as ashes.

That’s the main point of ashes-scattering, I think. Not what is actually done with them. That won’t matter to me then. But I think the deceased should get to enjoy thinking about where their ashes will go when they are dead.

Helen and I have asked our daughters to hold onto us until both of us are ashes, then mingle our ashes together for scattering. They have agreed.

Our original idea was that they would scatter us in the old woods on the Indiana University campus. That’s where we met and married. That’s where we bloomaranged to live out our years.

However, in addition to being illegal, I think--and I don’t want to think about my daughters spending time in jail--that’s not very practical. IU has the largest number of alums of any university, anywhere. If we all got scattered on campus, pretty soon the students would be walking to class ankle-deep in ashes.

I am, however, going to scatter us in those woods now. It’s pleasant to think about being there forever, about new students walking through the woods, hearing a whisper out of the ashes in the rustling leaves, “Go, Hoosiers…”

And I’ll scatter us in the woods behind Bob and Kathy’s house on Thunder Ridge, in Brown County. That was our spiritual home.

And some at Campground Cemetery, on Paradise Lake, near Mattoon, IL, where we once had a little weekend cottage.

And some more at Forsythe Church cemetery, down at Oakland City, on the graves of my parents.

There may be some left, so… there is a cemetery in Bloomington, IL. I don’t know its name, but I had a funeral there once. It was during the 6 years we lived in Normal-Bloomington, when I was campus minister at IL State U. Being a campus minister, I had a lot of weddings, but only one funeral. It was for an anonymous bum.

He was homeless, unknown, no identity, a traveling vagrant. Just happened to be in Bloomington when he died. Since he had no name, no family, no people, no church, the sheriff called the least reputable preacher he could think of to do the code-required, cheapest funeral possible.

I don’t remember what I was expecting, but not what I found. It was a sunny day. Pleasant. I was dressed in my dark suit and white shirt and tie, carrying my Book of Worship. The only other people there were the sheriff, in his uniform, and the undertaker, in his regular suit. The sheriff waved at a newly dug grave and said, “He’s over there.” He went back to his conversation with the undertaker. I wandered over to the grave of the unknown bum, by myself. I opened up my Book of Worship and read the entire liturgy.

I think I’ll just dump the rest of my ashes there.

John Robert McFarland

This seems to be a good column to finish up “reflections on faith and life.” I’m out of stories and ideas on which to reflect. But I need to keep on writing, for my own sanity. And you need to keep on reading, something, but probably not this column, for it will no longer be “reflections on faith and life.” It’s reasonable that you might get something worthwhile for your own life from “reflections.” That will no longer be a reasonable assumption. Now this column will be only the personal reminiscences of the author. [Yes, I know, that's pretty much true already.] I’d be delighted to have you read my reminiscences, but if you get anything worthwhile, it will be by accident, or because you have a special ability to discern wheat in chaff. So I’ll keep on posting, every third day or so. If you’ve decided you’ve had enough, thank you for reading.

 

IT IS WINTER; I STAY IN MY HOUSE [Sat 1-4-26]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Reflections of An Old Man—IT IS WINTER; I STAY IN MY HOUSE [Sat 1-4-26]

 

It is winter. I stay in my house.

Winter makes hermits of us all.

I think of Thoreau beside the pond called Walden. I should get that book out and read it again. I read it first in college, in the spring time of my life. I knew it was a classic. I knew thus that I should appreciate it. I suppose I did, but I cannot remember. I just wanted credit for the class. And a good grade.

Now I am past the point of needing credit, of any kind. 

I do not need a good grade, either. I do not need others to tell me that my life is worth living. Either it is or it is not, regardless of what others think. I do not need their grade. 

Thoreau was a hermit by his choice. I am a hermit by winter’s choice. Winter’s choice has, however, become my choice. I stay in my house.

The winter is outside, in the snow, in the tracks of the deer, in the disappearing tail of the rabbit, in the quick flash of the fox, in the slow snore of the bear, in the bare space in the cold air where the hummingbird used to hover. The winter is in here, too, in my house.

There is the cold air of absence here, but there are also the tracks of memory, the disappearing tale, the quick flash of understanding, the slow snore of acceptance, the question about spring, about when it will come, if it will be early or late, if the bushes will still flower, or if the deer, in the empty gnawing of their winter, will have killed them with desire, desire for one more meal before the boom of the hunter’s gun. 

I stay in my house. I look out the window at winter, and I wonder about the spring.

John Robert McFarland