Iron Mountain ski jump

Iron Mountain ski jump

Monday, March 18, 2024

REVERSE ALMS JUSTIFICATION [M. 3-18-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—REVERSE ALMS JUSTIFICATION [M. 3-18-24]

 


I think another necessary Lenten discipline—one that I not usually listed by the ecclesial calendar makers—is accepting alms, not just giving them.

Justice is restored when there is equality between giver and receiver. It’s like the old auto mechanics who talked about “justifying” an engine. It was justified, ran correctly, when all its parts were working together in the correct ways. There is no alms justice when giving and receiving are out of balance.

One of the kindest things people have done for me in my old age is to accept alms from me. Not just money or stuff, but books, time, advice… You are accepting from me right now by reading what I am thinking.

After a lifetime of giving, in my old age there is little I can give, and even less that people want to receive from me. It is almost a work of supererogation for someone to accept something from my hand, or brain.

When someone does accept something from me—including reading what I write—that reminds me of who I am, reminds me of my calling, reminds me of who called me.

I am restored to wholeness not just by receiving the help that people give to me in my old age, but by being allowed to give help to others. You give me a gift by accepting my gift.

Individual personalities make a difference of course. There are old people who only want others to do for them. There are others who don’t want to accept any help at all. [They are usually the ones who cause the most trouble!]

This is true throughout life, regardless of age. Many folks can’t accept. They don’t want to be beholden. Others can’t give; they feel the world owes them an easy life.

If you are a giver, this Lent, practice receiving. If you’re a taker, this Lent, practice giving.

Lent is the time for working on the discipline at which you are least able. That way your personal life is justified. You are made whole.

John Robert McFarland

Friday, March 15, 2024

THE MAC HOUSE HIT MAN [F, 3-15-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--THE MAC HOUSE HIT MAN [F, 3-15-24]

 


[I’m proud of this story. I think it’s one of my best. But I’ve never gotten anyone to publish it, perhaps because it has only a niche audience—people who have spent time in a Ronald McDonald House. It’s fiction, but many of the people and scenes are ones I experienced myself as a Mac House grandpa. I really was a cancer hitman, taking contracts on other patients, usually given by nurses or social workers, to get them to “straighten up and fly right,” but that was in a cancer center, not in a Mac House. Be warned: My usual CIW columns would print out at 2 pages. This one is closer to 6.]

I am up at five, but I know Parker will beat me to the Ronald McDonald House. He is probably already there, baking. Parker is the handsomest man I know, but he did not have a date last night. Never on Friday. He has to get up too early on Saturday to make it to the Mac House, as the volunteers and the families all call it. No, I said that wrong. It is not that he has to get up too early. It is just that he does get up that early.

            I asked him once why he does it. “Kids like cookies,” he said. His face got red as he said it. He does not want anyone to notice that he is doing good things for sick kids and their families. He is as shy about getting praise as he is good looking.

            Don’t get me wrong. I do not normally notice whether a guy looks good or not. Raymond, in my support group, is gay. We talked in Group one night about how cancer is equal-opportunity. It doesn’t care if you’re black or white, straight or gay, male or female.

“You’re so straight you squeak,” he said to me that night while we munched oatmeal cookies. “I don’t blame you,” he went on. “Your wife is… well, let’s just say she makes me want to be straight.”

            I didn’t know what to say, so I just slugged him on the shoulder. Gay guys like to get whacked on the shoulder as much as straight guys do. It means that, gay or straight, we all belong to the same fraternity, Iota Beta Delta [I Bea Dumbass.]

            But Parker is so good-looking even squeaking straight guys notice. He’s sort of the good-looking version of George Clooney. He is a hell of a baker, too. In the time is takes me to clean the toilets at the Mac House, he can turn out six dozen cookies, two dozen muffins, a couple of loaves of bread, some of those twisted stohlen things, and three birthday cakes, just in case anybody has one that week.

            He says he gets there so early every Saturday so he can use all the ovens at once without getting in the way of the families when they get up and need to use the kitchen to fix breakfast, but it’s really so when the moms and dads and sisters and brothers and grandmas and grandpas of kids in the hospital come down to the dining room area, they will sniff all those baking smells and know that there is something in their lives that is going to be good that day. I tell them the smell of a clean toilet is just as good, but nobody pays attention to me. The mothers and sisters and, yes, even the grandmas are too busy staring at the fast-reddening Parker, and the dads and grandpas and brothers are too busy gobbling up cookies for breakfast while the women are not noticing what they are doing.

            All but Crystal, and the mother from Israel.

            That is the other reason I am there this morning, in addition to cleaning the toilets. There is a contract out on Crystal.

            I am the cancer center’s hitman. When there is a deal with a patient beyond medicine, I get the contract. Sometimes a fellow patient can get stuff done that nobody else can.

Crystal’s mother is fixing a bowl of cold cereal. I offer to fry her some eggs. Parker uses only the ovens, not the burners, of the six stoves in the big kitchen.

“I’ve got to lose some weight,” she says, as she stares at Parker.

If I could just troll Parker around town, I could call it the Mac House Diet and make a ton of money. He reminds every woman that she wants to look good, which women always interpret as losing weight.

“Cereal is not good for you,” I say. “You ever heard of cereal killers?”

“I’ll take eggs, provided you washed your hands,” says a gruff voice from behind me.

I know it is Keeley, the day manager. She does not get up until seven on Saturday. Here she is, in her flannel moose pajamas and bunny house slippers and all-night hair.

“Don’t you need to lose weight, too?” I ask her.

Every head in the whole dining room turns. Every voice goes quiet. Keeley is bigger than I am.

“I’m used to him,” she says, tilting her head toward Parker.

Parker gets redder, which goes very nicely with his black tee-shirt and tight jeans.

“Bacon, too,” Keeley adds, tilting her head back toward me.

I put on my Kiss the Cook apron and start scrambling. A grandpa rises and makes a little bow in my direction. He is impressed. He knows that I have said the one thing a man must never say to a woman, and yet I have survived. Unfortunately, Keeley sees him.

“Don’t encourage him,” Keeley says. “He gets to live only until I get those eggs.”

She flops down into a chair and puts her bunny slippers up on the table and wiggles her toes so that the bunny noses do the bunny nose thing at a little brother. The kid giggles.

Keeley and I do an improv routine every Saturday morning. It goes along with Parker’s baking. We try to loosen up the families before they trudge back over to the hospital.

Also, Keeley is the one who put out the contract on Crystal.

I start some whole-wheat toast so it will be ready when the bacon and eggs are. I am impressed when my timing works. Nobody else notices. I take a cholesterol special plate to Keeley and some toast to Crystal’s mom. She needs something warm to go with the cereal.

“I don’t see Crystal this morning,” I say.

She looks at the toast and her face begins to dissolve, like those old-fashioned computer screen-savers. My toast isn’t that bad.

I sit down and butter her toast for her.

“TV room?” I ask.

She nods.

Crystal is in eighth grade. Her little brother is over on Floor Seven at the hospital. He is not doing well. She is acting out her anxiety about her brother and her anger at God by taking it out on her mother, by refusing to relate to the poor woman at all. She slept in the TV room last night rather than stay in a room with her mother. Now she is skipping breakfast rather than be civil to the poor woman. She is even skipping the chance to stare at Parker. I know this because it is not the first time.

The way we work out love-worry never makes much sense.

I get a plastic bag and put some of Parker’s new muffins into it. I stick a jar of apple butter and a knife into my apron pocket and wander upstairs to the TV room. Crystal is watching Hanna Montana reruns with the sound off. She is wearing jeans and a ratty tee-shirt and dirty socks, the clothes she slept in.

I sit down on the floor, take a muffin, spread some apple butter on it, eat it in two bites. I take another muffin out of the bag, spread apple butter on it, hold it out to Crystal. She looks the other way. I eat that one, too. I get out a third muffin, spread apple butter on it, start it toward my mouth. Crystal reaches out her hand, palm up, without looking at me. I put the muffin into her hand. It disappears in one bite.

“Parker makes good muffins,” I say.

She does not reply, just holds out her hand again. I take another muffin, do the apple butter thing, put it into her hand. It takes two bites this time.

“He has good buns, too,” I say.

Crystal begins to giggle. The giggle does not last long. Now tears are spreading down her cheeks. She looks an awful lot like a little girl instead of an all grown-up eighth grader.

I let her cry, every once in a while handing her a new muffin, until they are all gone.

“I need you to do something for me,” I say.

“I’m not talking to her,” she says.

“Somebody else,” I say.

“Who?”

“Go get showered and put on some makeup and clean clothes and meet me in the little lounge,” I say.

“Only the Jew goes in there at this time of day,” she says.

“You owe me for the muffins,” I say.

She gives me the finger, then sticks it down her throat like she is going to give me the muffins back.

“Okay, okay,” I say. “We’ll go to the mall with you dirty and stinky.”

Her eyes take on a radioactive glow. The word mall has that effect on teen-age girls.

“Tell her not to come in the room while I’m there,” she says.

“Okay.”

“219” she adds, as though her mother would not know their room number. I am glad she said it, though, because that was my dorm room number in college. It brings back good memories, back when I did not know that children got cancer.

I go back to the dining room. Crystal’s mom is talking with Keeley and another mom. I go up to Keeley, whisper into her ear, telling her to keep Crystal’s mom busy for half an hour. She slaps me.

“You make a proposition like that to me again, mister, and I’ll take you up on it and you’ll die,” she says.

Parker turns red. The other women snort.

“I do all the scut work around here, and you still won’t put out,” I say.

“What does put out mean, Mama?” one of the little brothers says.

“It means I won’t put the garbage out in those big cans in back because that’s his job, but he’s too much of a moron even to find the cans. Can you help him?”

Keeley really thinks fast.

“Sure,” the boy says. He is proud to help a moron. Great. Now I have to put the garbage out, too.

I take the kid by the hand and we go to the kitchen to get the garbage. Parker snickers. At least it will keep me out of trouble until Crystal is ready to help me get the Israeli mother out to the mall.

Yeah, right. She is going to cooperate with me like Jerry cooperates with Tom.

Crystal does not know, of course, that “the Jew” is going with us to the mall.

The Israeli woman has brought her little girl all the way from there to here because we have a doctor who can operate on little bodies in a way that very few can. Right now the girl is undergoing chemo to shrink the tumor, getting ready for surgery.

Unfortunately, the mom, Tama, speaks just a few words of English, and her daughter, Adira, not even that much.

One of our nurses, Rabab, is a Palestinian refugee who speaks Hebrew. She and the little girl get along famously, but something happened the first day between the nurse and the mom that neither one will talk about.

The bottom line, though, is that they refuse to speak to each other, and Rabab won’t go in Adira’s room if the mom is there. If communication gets done between Tama and the medical staff, they have to call in Rabbi Friedman, and that takes a while to set up. Also, the rabbi seems to like the nurse more than the mom, which doesn’t help the tension.

I have to admit that Tama is hard to like. She acts as if she is a celebrity and everybody else should know it and be glad to be her servants. She gets mad if you don’t understand what she is saying, like everybody should know Hebrew, too. Well, actually, she doesn’t get mad anymore, because no one will have anything to do with her. At the hospital and the Mac House both, she is increasingly isolated.

If she does not fit the medical definition of depression, she will soon. She spends all her time in the little lounge at the Mac House. Does not even go to the hospital much to see her daughter.

Crystal shows up in the little lounge as I am practicing my Hebrew on Tama, who is slumped in the corner of a couch like an old-time movie actress.

I know about ten words in Hebrew, including shalom and hava nagila and aloha and terre haute.

“I told you she’d be here,” Crystal says.

She knows Tama does not understand what she is saying, but she probably would say it anyway. She is, after all, an eighth grade girl.

I ignore Crystal and say to Tama: susi zaqen gadol, which means My horse is old and large. At least, that is what I think it means. I do not have an old and large horse, but I know how to say that I do. Tama looks at me like horse is slang for something else. At least, that is what I think that look means.

Crystal looks at me like she’s impressed. Or disgusted.

“Are we going to the mall or not?” she asks.

“Mall,” I say, sort of like I am thinking about it. “Mall…”

Tama perks up. Mall is a universal word to women. I continue to mutter: labas yape beged, which I think means to put on a beautiful garment. I add issa, which means woman, because I know it, and jerk my head at Crystal and say ebed, which means servant, I hope.

Tama stands up. She brushes her hair back from her face. One thing about celebrities: You don’t really have to invite them, because they assume it’s all about them.

“Oh, no,” Crystal says. “I’m not going anyplace with her.”

I take out my credit card and wave it in front of her face. I take her hand and press the card into it. She puts it back in front of her face.

“Wow, platinum,” she says.

Damn. I meant to give her the one with the $100 limit.

Tama grabs her purse. It looks like the feedbag for a sus. She hands it to Crystal, the ebed. 

Tama pulls up short when she sees my truck, but Crystal has that credit card and she is not about to be deterred. She pushes Tama up onto the running board and then into the center of the bench seat and climbs in behind her.

I always park as far from the mall doors as possible. It means I get more exercise, and I figure people who can’t walk as well as I do need the places closer to the door. Crystal and Tama don’t even notice that it’s a mile from the doors. They are off before the motor has shaken to a stop.

“Make sure Tama uses her own credit card,” I yell at Crystal’s retreating back. She gives me the Hawaiian good luck sign, which I think is not a good sign.

            I can’t possibly keep up with them, but I don’t want to follow them around anyway. I figure they’ll know to look for me in Starbucks. I go to Books on First first. It used to be on First Street before it moved to the mall. I buy the new edition of Now That I Have Cancer I Am Whole. Hardback. I have finished it, plus three coffees and four scones, by the time Tama and Crystal arrive.

They are carrying a whole lot of fancy looking sacks, none of which says Target. I think that is a bad sign, too. Crystal blows on my credit card and shakes it, trying to get it to stop smoking. Tama giggles. She is carrying her own purse.

On the way back to the Mac House, they “talk” to each other by pulling various garments out of the fancy sacks and showing them to each other, even though I am sure they have seen them before. They make sounds men can only shudder at, and Tama says, “Just gorgeous” with great frequency, and totally without accent. I assume that Crystal has been drilling her.

I let them out in front of the Mac House. I don’t want to go in, in case Keeley has thought up something else for me to do. Crystal hands me a little sack.

“We got you something, too,” she says.

I open it. There’s a cloth bookmark that says, “No day is wasted if it makes a memory.” There is also a big wad of credit card receipts.

 

 

           

 

 

 

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

SINGING AS A LENTEN DISCIPLINE [T, 3-12-24]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—SINGING AS A LENTEN DISCIPLINE [T, 3-12-24]

 


I recently heard Bono, of U2, say that we sing to combat our demons, and when we sing together, we combat the demons of society.

Lent is an opportunity to practice the disciplines of spiritual growth—Bible reading, prayer, meditation, worship, alms giving. Singing is rarely mentioned, but I think it is an important spiritual activity.

So, each morning during Lent I am gathering my missing friends, from the various eras of my life, and we sing the hymns and spiritual songs of those days that we shared.

We sing our songs of youthful aspiration

“Pass me not, O gentle savior, hear my humble cry. While on others thou art calling, do not pass me by…”

We sing our songs of youthful purpose…

“I know the Lord, I know the Lord, I know the Lord has laid his hand on me…”

We sing our songs of youthful courage

“Are ye able, said the master, to be crucified with me? Yea, the sturdy dreamers answered, to the death we follow thee…”

We sing our songs of preparation

It’s me, it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.

Give me oil in my lamp to keep me burning, give me oil in my lamp, I pray. Give me oil in my lamp to keep me burning, keep me burning ‘til the break of day.

We sing our songs of our youthful witness

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace.

I love to tell the story. Twill be my theme in glory. To tell the old, old story, of Jesus and his love.

We sing of how sometimes we are lost…

Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand. I am tired, I am weak, I am worn. Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light. Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.

We sing of how we are being found…

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.

Beneath the Cross of Jesus, I fain would take my stand. The shadow of a mighty rock, within a weary land. A home within the wilderness, a rest upon the way, from the burning of the noonday heat, and the burden of the day.

We sing of our maturing witness…

They’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love. Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

I shall not be, I shall not be moved. I shall not be, I shall not be moved. Just like a tree that’s planted by the water, I shall not be moved.

We sing of hope…

We shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall overcome some day. O, deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome some day.

We sing of eternity…

For all the saints, who from their labors rest, who thee, by faith, before the world confessed. Thy name, o Jesus, be forever blest, Hallelujah. Hallelujah.  

I’ll fly away, oh glory, I’ll fly away, in the morning. When I die, Hallelujah by and by, I’ll fly away.

Finally, we sing of resurrection, the end that is the beginning…

He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today. He walks with me, and talks with me, along life’s narrow way. He lives! He lives! Salvation to impart. You ask me how I know he lives, he lives within my heart…

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

Saturday, March 9, 2024

EAT DESSERT FIRST [Sa, 3-9-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—EAT DESSERT FIRST [Sa, 3-9-24]

 


One of the lesser-known disciplines of Lent is eating dessert first. It is important to get temptation out of the way quickly.

The great thing about old age is that you have permission to eat dessert first. You might die before the meal is over, so why miss out on the best part?

Our friends, Glenn and Allyson, used to visit an elderly couple in the local version of Shady Pines. I’ll call the old couple Homer and Hazel. They had children, but they lived a long way off. So, Glenn and Allyson went in their place. One visit they took cookies. “Don’t you eat a cookie, Homer,” his wife said. “Sugar isn’t good for you.” “For heaven’s said, Hazel,” Glenn said. “Let him have a cookie. He’s 102 years old.”

I was a campus minister in the 1960s. Boys from my campus began to go off to Viet Nam as soldiers. When they returned, they told of life in the war. One thing they told about pierced my heart. They said that when they broke open their meal packs, they took first the little metal can of peaches and ripped it open and gulped it down as quickly as possible. “It was the only good thing in the meal. If you got killed before the meal was over, you didn’t want to miss out on the one good thing.”

It was so sad. I still cry when I think about it. But even in the midst of chaos and pain and evil, they were doing the right thing. They were eating dessert first.

It’s so easy to want to get everything in order, get the little stuff out of the way, before you start on the important stuff. No, don’t wait until you’ve trashed all the spam emails. Let them lie. Go ahead and write that note of appreciation, or help, or love. Don’t wait until you’ve balanced the check book; go ahead and make that donation to the food pantry now. Don’t wait until the dishes are clean and put away and you have time to fold your hands and kneel; go ahead and thank God for all your blessings now.

The lesson of Easter is that life doesn’t begin until the end. Eat dessert first.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

ADDING TO LOVE [W, 3-6-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—ADDING TO LOVE [W, 3-6-24]

 


I am re-reading Rachel Naomi Remen. Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather’s Blessings. Stories from her life, about how she changed from a human doing to a human being, changed from a medical doctor to a human doctor.

She grew in three stages. She went from scientist to oncologist to psychologist. She doesn’t tell it that way, doesn’t use the taxonomy of three stages, but that is what I see in her story. As she went from one stage to another, she did not abandon what she had learned before. When she became wholistic, she didn’t give up using her skills as a surgeon, but she added on. She did not grow out of any stage. She added onto each stage.

That’s the key to aging, I think—not discarding, or outgrowing, but adding on.

That seems to me to be the way we all age, in three stages. We add each stage to the one before it. Of course, they are not the same for everyone.

I would describe my own add-on stages as going from a human doing, to a human being [cancer], to a human waiting. Or maybe, doing the Word, hearing the Word, listening for the Word. [Yes, hearing and listening are different.]

In my human doing stage, I said often that love is a verb. Love is doing.

Cancer brought on my human being stage. I couldn’t do love nearly as much, so I was able to be in love. Love was sharing.

Now I’m waiting and watching, to see how love will be. Love is.

Physical life is designed so that energy come first and wisdom comes last. That is especially true of brain development. We are built for: fire, ready, aim. It doesn’t make sense, but that is the way it is.

Throughout these stages, two different emotions are at war within us. They are original sin and what John Wesley called prevenient [preventing] grace. Original sin is represented by first man, Adam, who tried to outdo God by eating from the tree of knowledge. Preventing grace, that saves us even in the midst of our original sin, is represented in the new man, Jesus Christ.

[Original sin is not very original at all in the way we use that word currently. It’s just the same old boring sin everyone has always had. “Original” means that it was present at and in the origin of humanity, and in and at the origin of each of us, origin-al.]

Original sin is love gone wrong. Prevenient grace is love gone right.

My three stages of understanding and living love have gone like this: Love is a verb. Love is a noun. Love is a hope.

I did not give up the doing of love when I started into the being of love. And I gave up neither the doing or the being when I started the hoping. Love has simply become fuller with each new stage.

Okay, three stages is arbitrary. The main point about growing in love is this: don’t give up any of love as we go along-- how we do love, how we are love, how we hope love--but to add onto it.

John Robert McFarland

I’m thinking about love today because it’s the birthday of the woman who has taught me all about it.

 

Saturday, March 2, 2024

SATURDAY SPENDING {Saturday, 3-2-24}

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--SATURDAY SPENDING {Saturday, 3-2-24}

 


Dory Previn’s “Come Saturday Morning” was published in 1969. It was a hit song for The Sandpipers. I have always loved the opening and repeating lines:

            Come Saturday morning, I’m goin’ away with my friend

            We’ll Saturday-spend to the end of the day

            Just I and my friend…

It’s clearly the anticipation of a young person who is spending the week working or studying but thinking about what it will be like, “Come Saturday morning.”

Maybe something particular on the agenda, but that is not necessary. No sex or competition or schedule involved in “Saturday-spending.” Just friendship.

 There is something special about Saturday morning, even when you’re retired. It has a different feel, an anticipation and remembrance of “Saturday-spending.”

Just to spend schedule-free time with a friend, what a blessing. True if that friend is your long-time spouse. True if you are single or single again. For anyone, single or not, at any age, just to be able to Saturday-spend with a friend, what a blessing.

“Come Saturday morning,” God said, “I can’t go away with a friend unless I create one.” So, on the 6th day, the first Saturday, God created humans… to have a friend for Saturday spending.

Just in case, that Saturday creating included dogs and cats and horses and skunks… in case people didn’t work out as friends. [Genesis 1:24-26] I suspect God is very pleased about making sure there were other friend possibilities.

The ecclesial calendar makers don’t say anything about “Saturday spending” as a Lenten discipline, but I suspect it will do more good than any amount of personal introspection.

Maybe that’s why we anticipate a heavenly afterlife, because it will be the ultimate in Saturday spending…

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

Thursday, February 29, 2024

POPPING OUT A DEMON [R, 2-29-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—POPPING OUT A DEMON [R, 2-29-24]

 


I had a woman friend I’ll call “Jean.” Her husband, “Jim,” and I were friends first. That was true with many of my women friends over the years. They started out as the wives of men friends but became friends in their own right as we shared experiences.

Jean and an adult daughter, “Susan,” were totally estranged. The estrangement had caused problems with Jean and Jim’s other children, too. Susan was not speaking to her mother, would have nothing to do with her. But Susan would call the house to talk to her father. Jim would take the phone into a different room to talk to Susan.

One day, Jean called me, crying. “She’s ruining the family, but Jim’s choosing Susan over me,” Jean sobbed, “and I’m his wife. It’s not my fault Susan won’t talk to me. That’s her choice. Jim should be supporting me, not her.”

I felt her pain, and I knew she was right.

Jim and I were close friends, had shared a lot of life, so I felt comfortable talking to him about it. “I know Jean feels that way,” he said “but what can I do? I can’t turn my back on my daughter. Besides, somebody has to stay in contact with Susan or there’s never any chance that she’ll return to the family.”

I felt his pain, and I knew he was right.

The problem was, Jean and Jim couldn’t both be right. But that’s a false alternative, isn’t it? Because they were both right.

Poor Jim was caught in the middle. He needed to show Jean that he loved and supported her, but he needed to show Susan that he loved and supported her, too.

Jim was making one major mistake as he tried to deal with his wife and his daughter—he tried to reason with them. Tried to get them to see a better way. Appealed to their better angels. All that brain stuff.

I thought about how the disciples of Jesus had tried to rid a boy of a demon and been unsuccessful. Demons aren’t all the same, so they can’t be driven out the same way. Jesus said, “This kind can come out only by prayer.” [Mark 9]

Estrangement is caused by a demon, the kind that can come out only with prayer, the kind of prayer where you hug a person so hard that the demon just pops out.

I said, “Jim, you need to shut up. When Jean cries, don’t tell her she should try to understand Susan better. Don’t say a thing. Just go to her and hold her. When Susan calls, tell her that you aren’t going to say anything, you’re just going to listen to her talk about anything she wants to say. Don’t say a word about Jean. Just tell Susan that you love her.”

Susan asked me to officiate at her wedding. When Jim died, of her several children, Jean went to live with Susan.

There are some demons that come out only through a special kind of prayer, the sort of prayer where we listen instead of talking. Then the demon pops out.

John Robert McFarland