IT’S A STORY, FOLKS [10-6-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of A Narrative Theologian—IT’S A STORY, FOLKS [10-6-25]

 

The Bible is not God’s World Book of Facts, or God’s Book of Science History, or God’s Book of Helpful Hints for Easy Living. Definitely not God’s Book of Theological Propositions. It is God’s story book. Not God’s Book of Stories, but God’s Story Book. One story.

The Bible creates all sorts of problems and divisions when we don’t understand that. Well, no. It’s not the Bible that creates those problems. It’s the way we misunderstand God’s purpose for the Bible that is the problem.

I did a lot of counseling throughout my ministry, not because I was good at it, but because people need counselors, and I had credentials, and I was cheap.

Especially in my campus ministry days, the counseling was non-stop. Young people like to talk about their problems.

One girl came to see me because she could not decide between Roy and Stan. I used my best counseling technique, helping her compare and contrast the two. Roy had every attribute a girl could possibly want. Stan was a total loser. She said, “Well, the decision is clear, isn’t it? I felt quite smug; good counseling had brought her there. “Yes, it’s Stan,” she said, with a satisfied sigh.

What? No! It’s not Stan! Weren’t you even here?

I didn’t say any of that, of course. I just watched as she made her dreamy exit out my door to go devote herself to the biggest loser I’d ever heard of.

I don’t think I put it into those words right then, but I began to understand: it’s the story that matters. She was telling herself a story, a story of romance that needed no facts. I was dealing with a list of categories.

I already knew that was true in preaching. I don’t know why it took me so long to understand that story is foundation and center to all the other tasks of ministry, because it is the foundation and center of life.

After campus ministry, I went to the University of Iowa to do a doctorate in theology. I wanted to be a preaching professor in a seminary, and I needed the union card, a PhD.

I quickly ran into trouble. I had already done graduate work in communication theory, and I wanted to concentrate my dissertation on the interface between communication theory and theological methodology. But my professors thought that was frivolous. Theologians had to compare and contrast the soteriology of Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard. And then the teleology of Augustine and Kant. And then the Christology of Barth and Bultmann…

But I had begun to read people like Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. And James William McClendon, Biography as Theology. They were putting into words what I already knew: God is telling a story, and the task of preachers and the church is to help people find their place in it.

Fortunately for me, the U of Iowa was in a consortium, “The Schools of Theology in Iowa,” that also included Wartburg [Lutheran], U of Dubuque [Presbyterian], and Aquinas [Roman Catholic]. I was able to find professors who let me write my own narrative theology.

I suppose that in some ways, all those years of graduate work were wasted. I taught in a lot of short education conferences for preachers, but I was never a prof in a seminary. In the process of all that schooling, though, I learned the reality that has centered all my work, and my life. It you want to know it, read the first paragraph again…

John Robert McFarland

"The future belongs not to those who have the best story, but to those who tell their story best."

CAN I MAKE IT THROUGH THE WINTER? [10-3-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—CAN I MAKE IT THROUGH THE WINTER? [10-3-25]

 

October is a dying month. Can I make it through the winter? That is what old people ask. If they do not want to try it, they die in October, before winter gets started. Ministers and funeral directors know this. 

Unfortunately, by asking if we can make it through the winter, we lose the joy of October, by dreading the advent of winter. October should be a joy in itself,

Yes, October is a joy in itself, but also a joy that winter is coming, because winter is a privilege. If you give up in October, you don’t get to have a winter, and winters can be fun. I am glad if I can make it to winter, whether I make it through winter or not.

Yes, winters can be fun. No, I don’t mean skiing and ski jumping and snow shoeing and ice fishing dancing the parka polka. What? You’ve never danced the parka polka?

Lace up your boots and zip up your coat, let’s do the parka polka. Pull on your ski mask and grab your wool scarf, let’s do the parka polka. Pull on your mittens and your flannel-lined pants, until not an inch of skin shows. The only way I know you’re female, is by the way you do the parka polka. [The tune of The Pennsylvania Polka, of course.]

Winter is fun because it is a gift. Not everyone gets to experience the winter years of life, those years when you have time to forgive trespasses and make peace with what has been. Those extra years of trying to make the world a better place. If you can no longer climb up on the barricades and march in the streets, you can try for a better world through prayer and hope and faith. The world always needs more folks who can pray and hope and keep the faith. 

I think I can make it through the winter. I’ll put on my warm winter faith. I may not be able to dance the parka polka, but I can sing We shall overcome…

Until winter comes, though, I’m going to enjoy October.

John Robert McFarland

Recently I heard this statement by Confucius: We have two lives. The second one starts when we realize that we have only one life.

 

 

 

COMMUNITY IN WINTER [T, 9-30-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Communities of An Old Man—COMMUNITY IN WINTER [T, 9-30-25]

 

I went to the dentist last week. I do that whenever we have too much money in our bank account and I need to get rid of a bunch. I had a new hygienist, the delightful young Erin. I told her that Claudia Byers had been my hygienist for such a long time—in the office of Alejandra Haddad, before both Dr. Haddad and Claudia decided to retire—that it was strange seeing dark hair hovering over me, instead of white.

“Oh, Claudia,” Erin said. “She’s a legend in the dental hygiene community. I met her recently and told her, ‘I feel like I already know you, because I’ve heard so much about you.’”

 

Isn’t that interesting? It never occurred to me that there is a ‘dental hygiene community,’ but, of course, every job and activity category has an automatic community. It may be unorganized, but it exists, because people need community, and the quickest and most comfortable community is with folks who do the same things we do.

I think I felt that most keenly in my cancer support group. Automatic community. Every person there was an old-timer, from the moment they walked through the door, because it was a community of emotions as well as activities. We shared the same fears and hopes and anxieties. That’s deep community.

One of the things I like best about being a preacher, even now, when I no longer “share the practice,” [1] is simply being a part of “the goodly fellowship of the prophets.”

My home church never had an ordained, educated preacher. We just had a lay preacher who showed up on Sunday morning—sometimes Gene Matthews, a factory worker from Evansville, or Kenwood Bryant, a school teacher from Evansville, or Paul Burns, the local post master. They were good people, and I learned from them some useful lessons in what makes a sermon helpful, but I never saw anyone dealing with all the other stuff that comes up in a pastor’s week

So, throughout my career, even now, I watch other preacher/pastors carefully. I still want to learn from them. That community is still important to my identity.

Community can be an elusive thing for folks in their winter years, especially those who are so old that they are beyond winter. When we are young [under 85] and out in the world, going to a job or church or gym or book club, there are automatic communities. When we are “puny and feeble,” stuck at home most of the time, community is more elusive, so we need to work a little harder at taking care of cultivating possible communities.

Helen and I have a community of young men who come to do our quarterly pest control. We’ve seen them long enough and talked with them as they go about their duties that we know their names and know all about their children and dogs and frustrations.

And we have a community at the dentist’s office. This week my dentist had a couple of students shadowing him, so—after asking, “Why? Were all the places in Janitorial School already taken?”-- I took the opportunity to instruct them in dental practice from the patient’s point of view. Hygienists and assistants came from all the other rooms to listen.

Up front, after cooling off my credit card, I grabbed a couple of pens from the reception desk, and Emme said, “Oh, yes, take those. I know Helen loves them.” That’s good community.

As I went out the door, I could hear them talking about the community there that we help create. One said, “He’s so…” I couldn’t hear the rest of it.

John Robert McFarland

 

1] “Excellence in Ministry Through Sharing the Practice,” was the motto of The Academy of Parish Clergy, of which I was a Fellow and past-president.

THE BIG STORY [Sat, 9-27-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscing of An Old Man—THE BIG STORY [Sat, 9-27-25]

 

[Another personal reminiscence story, 765 words instead of my usual 500, so do something else if you’re pressed for time.]

Helen and I have coffee and muffins and talk for an hour or two at mid-morning. Recently she asked me how I knew so early that I wanted to be a newspaper man. This is what I told her…

It was because of newspapers themselves, and WWII, and Ernie Pyle, and the radio, and my big sister, Mary V.

 

NEWSPAPERS IN THE CITY

            We moved to Indianapolis when I was four. The Times was an evening paper and delivered to our front porch by an impressive grown-up of thirteen or fourteen years of age. That was my first inkling that I wanted to be a newspaper man. I wanted to be a grown-up and deliver the paper, because…

            …I knew the newspaper was important, because as soon as it hit the front porch, everyone wanted to see it. Including me, when I learned that there were comic pages. You didn’t even have to be able to read to enjoy them.

            More importantly, it was the source of news about my beloved uncles, who were fighting the fascists and dictators around the world. Most of the time, we weren’t even sure where they were, which meant we needed news from every front in the war.

            In my quest to be a news boy, I made a deal, when I was about eight, with the news girl—a real rarity then—who delivered The Times on East Oakland Ave. In the winter, it was dark by the time she got to our street, the last one on her route. I would meet her at the New York Street end and take the requisite number of papers for my side of the street. I knew every house that got a Times. She delivered on the other side. When we got to Washington Street, if she had an extra, she would give it to me. I would go across Washington St. to where the day shift was leaving the Mallory plant and sell my paper to the Mallory’s office lady in the red coat, for a nickel. Journalism was obviously the way to get rich!

           

NEWSPAPERS IN THE COUNTRY

            When I was ten, we moved to a primitive farm three miles outside Oakland City. No newspaper delivery there. I think it was The Courier that we got, the day after publication, brought in the mail by the rural route carrier. Yes, it was a day late, sometimes two, but so what? It was news to us, and the source of baseball statistics that allowed me to argue with the Cardinals and Cubs fans on the school bus.

            More importantly, it was contact with the outside world. I desperately wanted a life that was more than hoeing weeds and gathering eggs and chopping kindling. Yes, I still wanted news of The Phantom in the comic section, but I wanted to be part of that world the newspaper told about.

 

ERNIE PYLE

            Ernie was from Indiana. We were proud of him. We were told that he wrote the truth about the real soldiers, the ones fighting every day, like my uncles. I wanted to be a war correspondent who told the truth about men like my uncles. I wanted to be Ernie Pyle.

 

THE BIG STORY

            A radio program from 1947-55, each week it dramatized how some newspaper reporter had gotten his [always “his” in those days] big story. It was so heroic and romantic. I knew I’d never get to the major leagues [too slow] or med school [too squeamish] but I could write. I wanted to be the guy who got the big story.

 

MARY V

            My sister, four and a half years older than I, was the most important person in my world. In a family that was chaotic at best, she was an oasis of calm. Anything she did, I wanted to do, and she was on the staff of the high school newspaper, Oak Barks.

Since high school in Oakland City started with 8^th grade, and since I was a mid-year kid [starting in January instead of September because of my birthday] I got to share one semester with Mary V before she graduated. When Alva Cato and Grace Robb, our class sponsors, asked if anyone wanted to be the 8^th grade reporter for Oak Barks, my hand was up first [and probably alone]. 

I think I would have been a good reporter, and I would have gotten retired, just barely, before newspapers became extinct. Yes, I got sidetracked into being a preacher, but I still got to tell The Big Story.

John Robert McFarland

“If I had to choose between newspapers and government, I’d take newspapers.” Thomas Jefferson

 

 

AN EISENHOWER EDUCATION [W, 9-24-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Out-of-date Reflections of An Old Man—AN EISENHOWER EDUCATION [W, 9-24-25]

 

[Continuing my reflections on the 70^th anniversary of my college matriculation… Remember that you read at your own peril since I am now so old I just write for myself instead of trying to be inspirational or efficacious…that’s why I now use the sub-title of “Beyond winter…”]

I had the good fortune to go to college when a college education was primarily to help you be an educated person, not as a path to a particular job.

Yes, there were courses of study that were designed for certain professions—business, music, theater, pre-med, pre-law, etc--but a bachelor’s degree was designed first to give everyone the same “liberal” [general, broad] education.

To that end, there were a lot of required courses that were designed not to fit you for a particular job but to help you be a person who could think well, and be a good citizen, regardless of what vocation you pursued.

Majors and minors at Indiana University required remarkably few credit hours, in part, I think, because there were so many required courses that took up a lot of hours. A major was only 25 hours, and a minor, I think, only 12. So I had a history major with minimum courses in the History Dept, because I also took courses in Folklore and Religion [History of Christian Thought] that counted toward a history major.

As a freshman, I was a journalism major, but frosh didn’t take courses in their major back then. Freshmen were all in “The Junior Division,” which was a bit confusing, since “junior” was also used for students in their third year.

That Junior Division year was dedicated entirely to required, basic, and “intro” courses, such as basic psych, English comp, “Intro to Lit,” etc. and a foreign language [almost always French or German]. The foreign language courses were hours heavy—five per semester—and didn’t count toward a major.

As sophomores, we started working on “majors.” In the summer between my frosh and sophomore years, I had decided that I had to honor my deal with God--to be a preacher if “He” would save my sister’s life--so I was no longer a journalism major, as I had expected to be. I was either a pre-theology major [like pre-med or pre-law] or a religion major, except that IU, being a “Godless state university,” had neither. It didn’t even have a Religion Dept. So I had to do majors and minors that were available, and still do what the seminaries said in their catalogs was necessary for a good pre-theological education, a little bit of everything—philosophy, history, psychology, sociology, foreign language, composition, literature, music, art, speech, science… thankfully, math was never mentioned.

I got an English minor because, in addition to required courses in English, in my pursuit of a religion major, I took courses like The Bible as Literature. It didn’t take many courses to add up to 12 hours.

Even though I had 15 hours of French, I don’t think that was considered a minor.

IU had no religion dept. It did, however, have the Indiana School of Religion, a separate institution that offered courses in religion at IU. They counted as regular IU courses. But the ISR had its own board, building, professors, and budget, so IU could legitimately say it was not spending any tax money on religion. The Director of the ISR, D.J. Bowden, became my de facto mentor and major advisor.

Between his time as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in WWII, and his time as President of The United States, Dwight Eisenhower was the President of Columbia University. As he took that university presidency, he said, “The principal purpose of education is to prepare the student for effective personal and social life in a free society. From the school at the crossroads to a university as great as Columbia, general education for citizenship must be the common and first purpose of them all.”

That was at the start of his university presidency. At the end of his political presidency, he said, “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, either sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

His words are prophetic now. Universities have traded their ideals for money, given up their role in education-for-citizenship to be vocational schools, “training” workers for the military-industrial complex, doing away with general education, especially history, lest anyone be reminded of the words of Eisenhower.

Yes, I’m disillusioned by the current state of education, but I know there are teachers and professors, and maybe even a few administrators, who are trying to keep the flame of liberal education alive. I applaud them. And I’m reminded of what a privilege it was to be a student in the Eisenhower years. Yes, we were “The Quiet Generation,” but we were quiet because we didn’t have to shout at people to remind them that they should be good citizens instead of cogs in the military-industrial machine.

John Robert McFarland

Just after I finished writing this, I received an email, sent to all alums, from The Executive Dean of my university, touting a new undergrad educational experience, not only new to IU but the first in the nation. The first word he used to describe it is “career-focused.”

 

 

 

WHY I PRAY FOR OTHERS [Sunday, 9-21-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Hopeful Praying of An Old Man—WHY I PRAY FOR OTHERS [Sunday, 9-21-25]

 

Because I refuse to admit that I am helpless, even in the most hopeless circumstances, that’s why I pray. One of them, anyway. The main reason in my old age.

God has given me a brain and a will. If I can’t use my legs or my hands, I can still use my prayers. If you’re in trouble, I’m going to pray for you, dagnabit! As long as I have breath, even if I’ve got nothing else, I’m not giving up. On life… On God… On you…

Okay, that’s the first reason I pray for others: I refuse to give up.

Now, there are a lot of other reasons for intercessory prayer. For one, it works! That’s the second reason.

Yes, not always, but as Larry Dossey, MD, says, in Healing Words, “Surgery doesn’t always work, but we keep using it. Chemo doesn’t always work, but we don’t give up on it. Why should we give up on prayer just because it doesn’t always work?” He is so convinced of the efficacy of prayer that he said, “I would be guilty of malpractice if I did not pray for my patients.”

All the research into the usefulness of intercessory prayer—yes, double-blind research that accounts for all the variables—says that such prayer makes a difference.

Not only intercessory prayer, but also prayer in itself. Research shows that the patients who do best with cancer are those whose first reaction, upon hearing their diagnosis, is to pray.

And there are other reasons to pray…like the third one: it’s good for the one who prays, good for our spiritual and mental health. I suspect that is true because it does what I said at the top…it shows the whole durn world that we are not helpless, that we are not giving up. It’s important for your health to have control of your own life. Praying may be the last bit of control you have, but it’s still control.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember about prayer, the fourth reason for doing it, is community. Its main purpose is not results, but presence.

Intercessory prayer builds community. We kiss the booboo not so much to take away the pain but to take away the loneliness. [I think I got that from Rachel Naomi Remen.]

People are almost always helped by knowing that someone is praying for them.

There are exceptions. When I was in college, the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship decided to pray for me because I was not “saved.” I’d be walking across campus with friends and some IV kid would yell at me, “We’re praying for you, John.” That did not make me feel better.

But if you know an honest person is honestly praying for you, without judgment, only with concern, that is a great uplift. That is great community.

Well, yes, there are other reasons for prayer, but I’m at my word limit, so I’ll just be satisfied for now with: I pray because 1] I’m not giving up. I want the universe to know I’m still here. 2] It works. Not always the way we want, but it works. 3] It’s good for the one who prays. 4] It’s good for those prayed for. 5] It builds community.

John Robert McFarland

“Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the community must enter every day.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

THE TIE THAT BINDS [R, 9-18-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Experiences of An Old Man—THE TIE THAT BINDS [R, 9-18-25]

 

Two experiences converged for me this week. I no longer remembered how to tie a tie, and former IL Gov. Jim Edgar died, at age 79. Ties tie the two together. So does church.

John Huff has been our pastor only a little over two months, so he does not know how decrepit I am. So he asked me to give the pastoral prayer at worship last Sunday. I had told him when he came that, even though “puny and feeble,” [1] I could probably fill in for him in an emergency. I’m not sure a pastoral prayer is an emergency. Anyone can do it. As an old woman once told a struggling young preacher, “It ain’t hard. Just call him Father, ask him for something, and sit down.” [2]

Anyway, I did it, and enjoyed it, but it was almost prayed by a tieless preacher. Yes, most preachers these days wear jeans and “Grateful Dead” t-shirts as they preach, but I’m old school. I wear a tie or clerical collar when I lead worship. Since Helen and I have been puny and feeble ever since covid19, we have livestreamed worship for five years. I wear shorts and a Cincinnati Reds t-shirt for worship. I had forgotten how to tie a tie. Took five tries, because I couldn’t remember how Jim Edgar did it.

I’m sure Jim Edgar never forgot how to tie a tie. Probably wore one on his death bed. He was that kind of guy. But he did have to change one at a party at the home of the Eastern IL U president, and it wasn’t my fault. In fact, he was the one who got me into trouble.

It was one of those stand around and talk parties. I was the new pastor at Wesley UMC in Charleston, IL, Jim’s home church. He was a state legislator who had just been promoted to be the executive assistant to IL Governor “Big Jim” Thompson. Jim and I were chatting in the dining room. We did not realize everyone else had gone into the living room and were being informally addressed by the EIU president. Apparently our conversation was too loud, so Brenda, Jim’s wife, came in to tell us to shut up. She didn’t do it that way. She was invariably classy. But it startled Jim. He was holding a plate of party food. He spilled some on his tie.

Unlike my Sunday morning tie experience, this one became an emergency, for we were all going to some performance at the EIU auditorium after the party [I think it was a concert by Andy Williams] and Jim felt that the new exec assistant to the governor could not be seen in public with a stained tie. [3] He was about to melt down when Brenda said, calmly, “I put another tie in the car. I’ll go get it for you.”

So I watched Jim Edgar tie his tie, but last Sunday Morning, I couldn’t remember how he did it.

John Robert McFarland

1] “Puny and feeble” is what folks wrote in the membership book beside the names of old folks in the Solsberry, IN Methodist Church when I was their nineteen-year-old college student preacher, to let me know who I should call on since they could not come to church.

2] No, although I was once a struggling young preacher, I’m not the one in that episode. It’s just an old preacher story.]

3] Jim could have just done like Richard Leonard, a Methodist preacher who was a PhD history professor at IL Wesleyan U when we lived in Normal, IL. It was said that he kept his ties in the refrigerator because they had so much food on them.

Here is the link to Jim Edgar’s obit in his hometown Charleston, IL newspaper. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/jg-tc/name/jim-edgar-obituary?pid=209834305