CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…
I have been struggling with the most recent mass murder, the one in Norway. Trying to understand. Trying to pray. Trying to re-channel my own rage into something constructive.
As usual, I am not being very successful.
I’m not helped by an abcessed tooth. There is this dull, constant, throbbing pain in my head. It beats in disharmony with the dull, constant, throbbing pain in my soul. Why is there so much evil in the world? Why are we so evil?
I have lived a long time, and I am supposed to be wise because of it, but I have no answers, no wisdom. Indeed, one of the worst things about living in the years of winter is the accumulation of evil. When I was twenty, an evil act of destruction was new in my experience. I thought I could do something about it. Now I have observed countless acts of destruction, singular and mass, and I have not been able to do anything about them.
So why not curse God and die? That was the advice Job’s wife gave him. [Job 2:9]
At the end of her life, Isabella Beecher Hooker, the social activist among the thirteen remarkable children of Lyman and Roxana (& Harriet) Beecher [1], was bemoaning the state of the world. “Well, at least you have the satisfaction of knowing you did all you could about the world’s evil during your lifetime,” said her granddaughter. “That’s the problem,” said Isabella. “When I was young, I could do something about it. Now I can’t do anything.”
When Steve and Tony, the 18 and 19 year old sons of my older sister were killed in a car crash, I said at their funeral that this was NOT the will of God. “God does not will that beautiful young men should be cut down before they’ve even really started growing. It is the law of physics that when a small car and a large truck collide, the people in the small car will get hurt, but God does not pull strings to cause these things to happen. This was NOT the will of God.” I must have said it ten times in one way or another.
That night, as Dick, their father, and I sat in his darkened study in masculine silence, the president of the sports booster club came by. [Tony was quarterback on the football team.] “Well, as you said earlier,” he said to me, “it was the will of God.”
I was astonished. I know I’m not the world’s best preacher, but I’m a pretty accurate communicator. How could he turn my words around to say the exact opposite of what I had preached? Then it came to me: he wasn’t saying God caused this. He was just saying that in the midst of the tragedy, God was still in charge, that the everlasting arms are still upholding, even in the midst of evil, perhaps especially there, God is the only reason, the only hope, the only cause worth serving.
JRMcF
1] Lyman had 9 children with Roxana Foote. When she died, he married Harriet Porter and had four more. Harriet was Isabella’s mother. The most famous of the children were Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Arthur is my favorite. The first month he was the Presbyterian pastor in Elmira, NY, he was thrown out of the ministerial association for heresy. For the next 37 years he never missed a meeting of the association, although he was never readmitted to membership. Think about that—he got free coffee every month but never had to pay dues or be an officer or serve on a committee!
The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!
You are always welcome to Forward or Repost or Reprint. It’s okay to acknowledge the source, unless it embarrasses you too much. It is okay to refer the link to older folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin.
{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}
(If you would prefer to receive either “Christ In Winter” or “Periwinkle Chronicles” via email, just let me know at jmcfarland1721@charter.net, and I’ll put you on the email list.)
Iron Mountain ski jump
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Blowin' In the Wind
CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…
Recently I have followed an online discussion about the different recorded versions of Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In the Wind. The discussion was sparked by the publication of Milt Okun’s memoir Along the Cherry Lane. [1]
Okun was the musical director for both The Chad Mitchell Trio [CMT] and Peter, Paul, and Mary. [PPM] The song was originally offered to CMT, but their record company at the time--Okun had not yet established his own record company--said no one would listen to a song that contained a reference to death and so turned it down. Okun then took it to PPM, which had a huge hit with it. Strangely, CMT--having changed companies--actually recorded it first, on an album with the title, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” but it was already associated so strongly with PPM that most people have always thought it was only a PPM recording.
You can hear both versions on YouTube. They are quite different, but most folk music aficionados refuse to compare them, saying that each is perfect in its own way.
Why so different, when Okun was musical director for both groups? Because Okun was a musical genius. He tailored each arrangement to the musical strengths of each group. The PPM version is wistful, yearning, hoping that there is an answer, and if we listen to the wind, perhaps we can find it. The CMT version is urgent, forceful, proclaiming that there IS an answer, and that it is important to listen to that wind, now. [2]
For Christians, I think the two versions complement each other to make a whole.
The PPM version represents Hope. The wind of the Spirit will continue to blow. [3] The answer will always be there, and whenever you have “ears to hear,” [4] as Jesus put it, you can hear those answers. The CMT version represents “realized eschatology,” [5] the faith that the Kingdom of God—the place where God rather than the greed-of-self reigns—is right here, right now.
The wind in winter can blow very cold, but there is still an answer there, if one has ears to hear. Regardless of age, the place is always here, the time is always now. For hope. For salvation, from fragmentation into wholeness. The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, yearningly, urgently.
JRMcF
1] Cherry Lane was the name of Okun’s record production company, because when it started, he lived next to the Cherry Lane Theater. He was the musical director for PPM, but he says it’s just an accident that Leonard Lipton’s and Peter Yarrow’s “Puff, the Magic Dragon” contains the line, “Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane.”
2] Paul Prestopino plays backup on both recordings. It is interesting to hear how he plays the same song differently according to the way Okun has arranged for each group.
3] In both biblical languages of Greek and Hebrew, the words for wind and spirit are the same word, ruach in Hebrew and pneuma in Greek.
4] I haven’t counted the times Jesus used this phrase, but one site I consulted says he used it 7 times. I know it is in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Mark.
5] The term “realized eschatology” is most closely associated with British biblical scholar C.H. Dodd.
***
The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!
You are always welcome to Forward or Repost or Reprint. It’s okay to acknowledge the source, unless it embarrasses you too much. It is okay to refer the link to older folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin.
{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}
(If you would prefer to receive either “Christ In Winter” or “Periwinkle Chronicles” via email, just let me know at jmcfarland1721@charter.net, and I’ll put you on the email list.)
Recently I have followed an online discussion about the different recorded versions of Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In the Wind. The discussion was sparked by the publication of Milt Okun’s memoir Along the Cherry Lane. [1]
Okun was the musical director for both The Chad Mitchell Trio [CMT] and Peter, Paul, and Mary. [PPM] The song was originally offered to CMT, but their record company at the time--Okun had not yet established his own record company--said no one would listen to a song that contained a reference to death and so turned it down. Okun then took it to PPM, which had a huge hit with it. Strangely, CMT--having changed companies--actually recorded it first, on an album with the title, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” but it was already associated so strongly with PPM that most people have always thought it was only a PPM recording.
You can hear both versions on YouTube. They are quite different, but most folk music aficionados refuse to compare them, saying that each is perfect in its own way.
Why so different, when Okun was musical director for both groups? Because Okun was a musical genius. He tailored each arrangement to the musical strengths of each group. The PPM version is wistful, yearning, hoping that there is an answer, and if we listen to the wind, perhaps we can find it. The CMT version is urgent, forceful, proclaiming that there IS an answer, and that it is important to listen to that wind, now. [2]
For Christians, I think the two versions complement each other to make a whole.
The PPM version represents Hope. The wind of the Spirit will continue to blow. [3] The answer will always be there, and whenever you have “ears to hear,” [4] as Jesus put it, you can hear those answers. The CMT version represents “realized eschatology,” [5] the faith that the Kingdom of God—the place where God rather than the greed-of-self reigns—is right here, right now.
The wind in winter can blow very cold, but there is still an answer there, if one has ears to hear. Regardless of age, the place is always here, the time is always now. For hope. For salvation, from fragmentation into wholeness. The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, yearningly, urgently.
JRMcF
1] Cherry Lane was the name of Okun’s record production company, because when it started, he lived next to the Cherry Lane Theater. He was the musical director for PPM, but he says it’s just an accident that Leonard Lipton’s and Peter Yarrow’s “Puff, the Magic Dragon” contains the line, “Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane.”
2] Paul Prestopino plays backup on both recordings. It is interesting to hear how he plays the same song differently according to the way Okun has arranged for each group.
3] In both biblical languages of Greek and Hebrew, the words for wind and spirit are the same word, ruach in Hebrew and pneuma in Greek.
4] I haven’t counted the times Jesus used this phrase, but one site I consulted says he used it 7 times. I know it is in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Mark.
5] The term “realized eschatology” is most closely associated with British biblical scholar C.H. Dodd.
***
The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!
You are always welcome to Forward or Repost or Reprint. It’s okay to acknowledge the source, unless it embarrasses you too much. It is okay to refer the link to older folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin.
{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}
(If you would prefer to receive either “Christ In Winter” or “Periwinkle Chronicles” via email, just let me know at jmcfarland1721@charter.net, and I’ll put you on the email list.)
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