FALL BACK [F, 10-31-25]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—FALL BACK [F, 10-31-25]

 

Yes, an extra hour of sleep is fine, but, more importantly, come Sunday at 2:00 a.m., the rest of the world will once again be in sync with my wrist watch.

Old people love change. We like to be in the forefront of new achievements and ideas and technology and systems. Such as wearing wrist watches. And since the world in general has been threatening for some time to eschew DST [Daylight Savings Time], and stay on GST [God’s Standard Time] all year, for the last few years, I have kept my wrist watch on GST, so that I would be on the cutting edge, pushing the envelope, and all that stuff, the very first to be on GST year-round

All I have to do, six months each year, is mentally adjust the time one hour from what my watch shows.

Well, plus minus four minutes. The watch gains time, about a minute per year. When I started, I had to adjust the time by two minutes. Then three. Now four. I like it. It’s progress.

Yes, it is true that I couldn’t change the hour and minutes even if I wanted to, because I don’t know how to change either the hour of the minutes of my water-proof Casio. Charlie Matson can’t figure out how to do it anymore, either, and he’s an engineer!

But that has nothing to do with my decision to live dangerously close to being an hour early wherever I go, for 6 months of the year, since I might forget to make the mental adjustment. That’s another thing old people like, living dangerously. [We usually show up an hour early, anyway.]

It’s also true that I don’t need a water-proof watch since I don’t go near the water. These matters are insignificant, though, compared to the thrill of being out in front of a major societal change, such as doing away with DST. It’s important for old people such as I to show that it can be done; we can live successfully on GST alone.

I’m sort of looking forward to my watch being right on its own, though…

John Robert McFarland

SIMPLE SONGS FOR SIMPLE PEOPLE [T, 10-28-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Lyrics of An Old Song Writer—SIMPLE SONGS FOR SIMPLE PEOPLE [T, 10-28-25]

 

What is art? There are a thousand definitions. Anything artistic is notoriously difficult to define.

Justice Potter Stewart said, “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.”

I can’t define folk music, but I know it when I hear it.

Folk music is both immediate and simple. Immediate and simple are not necessarily better than distant and complicated, especially in music. But I’m simple, so I’m a folkie.

Young people like to think of themselves as complicated. I certainly did. I thought I was complicated when I was really just confused. The older I get, the more I realize how simple I am. I’m a simple guy, so folk is my music.

Folk has no intermediaries, no handlers who present an image different from the musician him or herself. The same is true with the songs.

In a former life, I was a bassoonist. Bassoon isn’t a folk instrument. It really needs other instruments, preferably an orchestra, at least an ensemble. It’s hard to sit around the camp fire and sing to a bassoon, especially if you are the bassoonist, and also trying to eat s’mores.

I like simplicity. The older I get, the more I like it.

I am partial to running/walking as a sport because it is so simple and immediate. You just put on your shoes and go out the door. Other than the shoes--and not even those for folks like Zola Budd-- you need no clubs or rackets or skis, no special court or floor or field, no machines or pool. Unlike other sports, you can use running/walking actually to go some place useful, like the donut shop, to recoup the calories you lost along the way.

Because I like simplicity, I am a folk music singer-songwriter. I’m known for writing songs like “I’m In the Poor House Now,” and for my renditions of the songs of others, like the Snake Oil Willie Band’s I Don’t Look Good Naked Anymore or If My Nose Was Running Money, I’d Blow It All On You. [1]

Our granddaughter is coming to visit us, and she is bringing with her Pansy. Well, not the whole band named Pansy, just the lead singer/songwriter, Vivian, who needs a place to get away to write some more songs. I assume they are coming to visit us because they know I can be helpful with the writing. Electric punk isn’t all that different from acoustic folk, is it?

John Robert McFarland

 

1] The internet is confused about who wrote If My Nose Was Running Money… It was either Mike Snider or Aaron Wilburn.

 

 

 

 

 

I DON’T KNOW, AND I DON’T CARE [Sat, 10-25-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—I DON’T KNOW, AND I DON’T CARE [Sat, 10-25-25]

 

The responsive reading to start tomorrow’s worship service:

Leader: I don’t know and I don’t care

People: I don’t know and I don’t care

Leader: If the devil wears fireproof underwear

People: If the devil wears fireproof underwear

Leader: Amen!

People: Amen!

Leader: Hallelujah!

People: Hallelujah!

All: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John… Matthew Mark,  Luke! John!

Wouldn’t that be a great responsive reading to start a worship service?

It’s October. Yes, it means colored leaves and such to me, as it does to everybody else, but to me it also means marching in ROTC. That was one of the cadence counts in ROTC marching when I was in college. I have changed the words a little from the original, which was…

Leader: I don’t know and I don’t care

People: I don’t know and I don’t care

Leader: If the general wears dirty underwear

People: If the general wears dirty underwear

Leader: Sound off!

People: Sound off

Leader: Cadence count

People: Cadence count

All: One, two, three, four… one, two,   Three! Four! [1]

One of the great things about being old is that you no longer have to know anything. Or care about it. You can say, “I don’t know, and I don’t care.” It’s very relieving, to have that responsibility off your shoulders, that responsibility for knowing things, and for caring about what other people know or don’t know, caring about who’s right.

Even if old people do know things, young people don’t want to hear about it.

Uncle Johnny Pond was in his early 20s when he started building Francisco Hardware and Lumber, right beside his oldest brother’s general store. Ted Ellis was 20 years older than John Hubert. He knew a lot about stores and shared his knowledge freely. But, Uncle Johnny told me, “I want to make my own mistakes.”

I have talked before about Harry, the older man in one of my churches, who was so disappointed that “the younger men in the church don’t ask for my advice.”

You’ll be disappointed almost all the time if you wait for that.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m well aware that “those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.” And who better than old people to provide history? After all, we’ve lived it.

People don’t need our advice all that much. They need our support, a prop up on their leaning side, a push back onto the path.

“I don’t care” doesn’t mean I don’t care about people. It means that I don’t care whether I understand, understand the politics or the religion or the falderal of what’s going on. So many of use our lack of understanding as an excuse for not acting. We don’t have to care to care.

As Kris Kristofferson wrote, “I don’t care who’s right or wrong. I don’t try to understand. Let the devil take tomorrow, Lord, tonight I need a friend. Yesterday is dead and gone, and tomorrow’s out of sight. And it’s sad to be alone, help me make it through the night.”

That’s why I’ll be joining folks from all over the Midwest at the Miami

Correctional Facility [ten miles north of Kokomo, IN] at 2:00 pm, EDT, Monday, Oct. 27, to pray together for the migrant detainees, and their families, being held there. This is neither a protest nor a demonstration. It is a witness, to say to those who are held there, and to those who put them there, “We see you. We are with you.” I can’t be there in person, of course, but I shall be praying along with those who are, and I invite you to do so, too.

If someone says to me, “Did I get it right?” I say…

I don’t know,

and I don’t care.

I’ll still be with you,

in hope and prayer.

John Robert McFarland

1] I suppose in the ROTC cadence count above, I should have put “Sgt.” where I have “Leader,” and “Marchers” or “Soldiers” where I have “People,” but I have been writing litanies for churches for so long that I automatically used “Leader” and “People.”

 

ADDICTIONS IN OLD AGE [R, 10-23-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Psychology of An Old Man—ADDICTIONS IN OLD AGE [R, 10-23-25]

 

As a pastor, I had church members who were addicted. Many were secret, but I knew about some of them. Those were the ones who came to me for help. One man—I’ll call him Jake—came not to get help with dealing with his addiction, but to get help with negotiating his sobriety.

He said, “I’ve been sober long enough now that I’ve learned why I started drinking in the first place. The drinking covered up the other problems. Now I have to deal with those problems, and I don’t know how to do it without the booze.”

He had dropped friends he’d had before his drinking. Now his only friends were drunks, and he couldn’t be around them. He felt very much alone. In addition to AA, he looked to the church for help.

That worked for a little while. He liked me. He liked our worship. But our church was too open. He felt exposed in all that open spiritual space, where everyone mingled around with everyone else. He decided to go to a more conservative church, one with narrow and strict expectations about what to believe and how to think and with whom to associate. He needed a more rigid structure.

It worked. For a while. The only thing that really works with an addiction, though, is to stop doing it.

Addiction changes your brain. Not just physical addictions, like dope and booze, but activity addictions, like gambling. Often for old people, it’s thinking addictions. If you rehearse negative thoughts and memories over and over, your brain gets literally grooved in such a way that you can’t think positive thoughts. That’s where angry old men and crabby old ladies come from.

Most physical addictions develop early and simply become more pronounced in old age. That is true with thinking addictions, too. Defensiveness, blaming, criticism, negative thinking—all develop early. Many old people think about all that is negative and hateful and excluding, and have been doing so for so long that their brains are grooved. They can’t think good things.

Psychologists tell us that almost all addictions are the result of unresolved grief over loss, not just the loss of people, but anything else that is important to us. That’s an intriguing insight.

As I dealt with addicts, though, I found that it was never very effective to try to figure out what their unresolved grief was so that they could go back and resolve it. For one thing, it took too long. They needed help right now with dealing with the addiction.

Stop doing it is the first command for addicts. It’s only then that you can see what your real problems are. For negative thinking addiction, the apostle Paul outlined the antidote long ago, in his letter to the Philippians [4:8] Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, think on these things. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

So, I think about puppy dogs and laughing babies. Works great.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

GOOSEBERRY GOSPEL [T, 10-21-25]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Memories of a Sojourner in the Years of Winter—GOOSEBERRY GOSPEL [T, 10-21-25]

 

When John hanged himself, in the county jail, he was 20 years old. His mother’s response was to bake me a gooseberry pie.

I had spent a lot of time with John, as he wrestled with his demons. They started bedeviling him when he was a young teen and never let up much.

I also spent a lot of time with his parents, as they tried to understand their son. That was when I told Eunice about gooseberry pie.

When we moved to our little hardscrabble farm, when I was ten years old, we had a gooseberry bush. It was very protective of its berries. Sharp thorns on the bush made picking the berries a painful experience. But it was quite productive. It was also our only source of fruit, which meant it was our only source of pie.

So I would pick the berries, and Mother would bake a pie. It wasn’t a very good pie. Gooseberries are really sour. They have tough coats, and once you get by them, they’re sort of slimy. You have to use tons of sugar to make them edible.

We didn’t have much sugar, though, because we had no money to buy it. Mother would sweeten the gooseberries as much as she dared, needing to save sugar for other uses, but eating it was still a sour experience.

A sour experience. A real pie experience. A satisfying experience.

It was satisfying because we had done the best we could with what we had, to create a pie experience, especially for my little sister and brother, barely toddlers back then, almost 80 years ago.

That’s why, when her son committed suicide, Eunice baked me a gooseberry pie.

As I write this, my little brother is in a cancer hospital, readying for surgery. My little sister is dead. So is Eunice. And, as I pray, gooseberry pie is sweet in my memory and in my hopes, a symbol of the Gospel.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

JESUS AND THE SECOND GRIZZLY [10-20-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Grizzly Reflections of An Old Story-Teller—JESUS AND THE SECOND GRIZZLY [10-20-25]

 

A story-teller of the Old West used to say, “If you’re tellin’ a story ‘bout fightin’ a grizzly bear, and it looks like folks ain’t believin’ ya, or they ain’t payin’ attention, throw in a second grizzly.”

He got that idea from Jesus.

I really don’t think Jesus meant literally that we should forgive “seventy times seven;” it would just be too much trouble to keep track of the number without a cell phone. He was trying to get our attention for the main point—forgive! Seventy times seven was a second grizzly.

Theologians have traditionally noted the difference between the theology of Jesus and the theology about Jesus. It is sometimes referred to as the difference between the pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus.

The divisions we have in the church are almost always because we favor one Jesus over the other. Some follow the moral/ethical, life-now Jesus [pre-Easter]. Others follow the risen/salvation, eternal-life Jesus [post-Easter].

The theology of Jesus has to do with turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, feeding the hungry, forgiving sins… All of the second grizzlies of Jesus.

I try to follow the whole Jesus, but it is hard for me to get excited about the post-Easter Jesus. He’s far away. What’s the point of “salvation” if you mistreat your brother or sister? I keep hearing that phrase from the book of James [1:22], “Be doers of the word and not hearers only.”

The earthly Jesus is here and now, telling me not to lust, to forgive, to give all I have to the poor and come to follow, that in so far as I have done it unto the least of these, I have done it unto him…

Being in the heavenly Jesus camp these days seems too much like trying to avoid the demands of the earthly Jesus. That’s because so many heavenly Jesus followers ignore the clear requirements of Jesus—they work for vengeance and refuse to forgive, they ignore the poor, they store up treasures where moth and rust corrupt--and yet they claim they are the true Christians…not because they do the commands of Jesus, but because they believe the doctrines about Jesus.

Jesus throws in the second grizzly to get my attention, because he knows how hard it is for me to forgive even once. So, he says I should do it 490 [I hope that is 70x7]. He knows how hard it is for me to part with my hard-earned pension money, so he tells me to give away everything, my Social Security check, too. He knows how hard it is for me to walk one mile with someone who chatters incessantly, so he tells me to walk two…

Jesus doesn’t really want me to be a super-human person. He knows that is not possible, because I am just a regular person. But he does want me to be a forgiving person, to be a giving person, to be a kind person… so he uses that second grizzly to get my attention.

John Robert McFarland

“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

 

 

 

IQ, PI, and NPD [Sat, 10-18-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Insights of An Old Man—IQ, PI, and NPD [Sat, 10-18-24]

 

Narcissists live in a world of one. I’ve dealt with quite a few narcissists professionally. They are very simple to read, but difficult to know. We once had a narcissist in the family, though. Since our relationship was familial instead of professional, I got to know him very well, “up close and personal.”

When he wanted to defend his self-indulgence, he would point out that he had a degree from an Ivy League university, and that he could recite a lot of facts about many things. He was intelligent, far more than other people, according to him, and so, automatically, he had to be right. The fact that all he did was to his advantage, regardless of who was disadvantaged, was simply the result of superior intelligence.

He was right about being intelligent. He had a high IQ. Being a narcissist, though, he had no PI, no personal intelligence, no psychological intelligence.

To a narcissist, lying isn’t lying. Hypocrisy isn’t hypocrisy. Logic does not exist. Facts do not exist. Truth is only what he wants it to be. Other people exist only to get him what he wants. There is only one thing in his world, and that is himself. Everyone else and everything else exists only for his use. A narcissist can be quite “intelligent,” but that does not mean he is smart.

Anyone who knows even a little psychology understands that Donald Trump has NPD, Narcissistic Personality Disorder. So I really don’t blame Mr. Trump for the wildly inaccurate and immoral things he says and does. Narcissists don’t have a moral compass. Their brains are simply deficient. To blame a narcissist for having a bad brain is like blaming someone born deaf for not hearing.

How do you deal with a narcissist? The usual methods of persuasion—truth, facts, logic—mean nothing to him. You can’t reason with him. He has no shame or embarrassment about lying or hypocrisy or abusive behavior.

The only thing you can do is make him uncomfortable. And show him a way to get comfortable.

By that, I mean personal comfort. The world exists for him. If what he is doing is not getting him what he wants, he will change, not because he thinks his former behavior is wrong, but because it isn’t getting him what he wants.

Just make him uncomfortable when he does wrong and make him comfortable when he does right. Simple, isn’t it? No, because someone with NPD rarely does right, especially if he has enablers who will tell him that wrong is right.

I think that the only way to deal with NPD folks is to say “No” to them. Keep them at a distance from the levers of family and society, so that they can’t pull those levers, since they can’t reach them.

Too late for dealing with Donald Trump, but, at least, he is a cautionary tale for the future…if there is one.

John Robert McFarland

“People who believe in absurdities will eventually commit atrocities.” Voltaire