Iron Mountain ski jump

Iron Mountain ski jump

Monday, December 12, 2011

The Borlaug Polka

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter For the Years of Winter…


I woke up two hours past midnight and had to face that question that sooner or later all old people must answer: Did my life have meaning if there is no Finnish polka named for me?

The musical guests for The Second Sunday Folk Dance/Concert [1] last night was Kaivama, [2] composed of fiddler Sara Pajunen, from Hibbing, MN, [3] and guitarist and harmonium player Jonathan Rundman, from Ishpeming, MI. [4] They bill themselves as “Finnish-American Excavators,” meaning they dig up old Finnish and Finnish-American tunes to play, as well as create new ones. [5] One of their new ones is the Norman Borlaug Polka. [Polska in Finnish]

Borlaug was an Iowa farm boy who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize and is often called The Father of the Green Revolution. It is said that his third-world agricultural innovations have saved a billion lives.

Jonathan Rundman had never heard of Borlaug until he saw his obituary in 2009. “Why haven’t I heard of this man?” he thought. “Why hasn’t everybody? He deserves to be known.” He did the logical thing; he composed a polka in Borlaug’s honor. Now every Finnish polka aficionado will know about the unassuming but amazing Borlaug.

Most of us won’t have polkas composed in our honor, because we didn’t save the lives of a billion people. About the only thing I have done in the billions is eat cookies, a billion and five if you count last night at the concert. I’m not sure that’s even worth a shanty. Maybe a country song: “He ate a billion cookies and saved a billion Keebler elves…” Or maybe not.

Maybe none of us gets meaning for life finally from what we do here on earth. Maybe meaning is just in what we are, children of God. I believe that.

I’m a Methodist, though, a follower of John Wesley, the great advocate of free will. We believe that what you do matters, too. [6] What Norman Borlaug did was a matter of life and death to a billion people. That’s important. It’s also important that Jonathan and Sara and Dean and Bette made us laugh and dance and sing last night. It’s important that we broke cookies together. Not all of us can do what Norman Borlaug did. But we can add to the storehouse of the world’s love by sharing our music and our cookies.

That’s what Christmas is about, I think. Our lives have meaning because they are the gifts of God. God shares us with the world, gives us as gifts, just as God gives to the world the gift of Christ. So we don’t have to give meaning to our own lives. That’s already God’s gift. That frees me to share my meaning, my songs and my cookies, with the world, even if I don’t have a personal polka. [7]

Merry Christmas.

JRMcF

1] Second Sunday is hosted and fronted [opening set] by White Water (Dean and Bette Premo), with Susan, Emma, and Carrie Dlutkowski.

2] www.kaivama.com

3] There was a Zimmermann boy from Hibbing who used to play and sing a little. I wonder what became of him…

4] Second Sunday is held at Fortune Lake Lutheran Camp, where Jonathan learned to play guitar while a lifeguard at summer camp, so this was a homecoming for him. Summer camp lifeguarding in the UP means wading through the snow with a brandy flask around your neck to chop a hole in the ice…

5] Kaivama also means they both grew in open pit iron ore mining areas. Kaivama comes from the Finnish kaivaa, meaning to delve or dig.

6] I don’t mean that Methodists are the only folk who believe that what we do matters. I’m admitting to my Methodist leanings simply in the interest of full disclosure. And while on that subject, I admit that I made up that last bit about lifeguarding.

7] Hint to Jonathan: A Christ In Winter Polka would be nice, though.

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.)

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Long Underwear of the Spirit

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…

Helen and I took off our long underwear yesterday. Actually we did it last April 2. It just seems like yesterday. Now it’s time to put it on again.

Perhaps I shouldn’t say “we took it off” then. Better would be: We “stopped wearing” long underwear April 2. Saying we took it off then indicates that we had not taken it off at all since we put it on last Dec. Helen would be mortified to have people think we did not change underwear all winter, because she did.

Long underwear is supposed to be donned on Dec. 1 and doffed on April 1. We did not change on April 1 because we had a big snowfall that day. We put it on last Dec. 2 because we did not have a big snowfall Dec. 1.

Helen’s father, Tank Karr, always said that spring starts March 1. In the UP there is no such thing as spring; we simply think in terms of short underwear season.

Sometimes the weather fools the underwear. We had to put our long underwear back on last April. In addition to our big April Fool’s snow, we had another 7 inches April 9 and another two on April 11. UP here, April can be not only the cruelest month but the snowiest.

We learned about long underwear season from Arch Davidson of the Stanwood, IA Presbyterian Church, which I pastored while a doctoral student at U of IA. It was the first Sunday in December, which meant communion. It also, that year, meant a record high temperature of around eighty degrees. Arch was dressed in his gray three-piece church suit. As we sang the final hymn, he wavered and began to pass out. He was too hot. Under his church suit was his union suit. Arch was a man of conviction and predestination. It was Dec. 1, and by hokies, that meant long underwear.

Cold is a particular concern of old people. As a pastor, I have visited in the homes of many old people in the winter. I did not wear long underwear then, but I had winter-weight stuff on. I often had to cut the visit short and get out because the thermostat was cranked up to eighty degrees. I never felt the need to go to Florida in the winter; I could just go to Maple Adams’ house.

Many old people go in the wintertime to where the air is hot. I think long underwear is a better solution, for when you are old, you have less tolerance for hot air as well as less tolerance for cold air.

The cold does not seem to affect young people as much. I cannot remember being young myself, but I observe young people. Our granddaughter, Brigid, goes around in short sleeves and bare feet during long underwear season.

There is also an emotional coldness that comes with age. Neither cranking up the thermostat or fleeing to Florida helps that much. I recall talking with a man whose wife had died suddenly. “I just feel cold,” he said. His emotional long underwear had been removed.

That happens each time someone we love is taken from us. That person who kept us warm with love and laughter, who held us close when we shivered at the ways of the world, is gone. We are without the long underwear on which we counted.

I am told that the last test for soldiers in training for arctic duty is to be dropped alone into the arctic wilderness, in regular fatigues, clutching their arctic pack. They will not survive unless they strip completely naked, in brutal temperatures, and don the survival pack.

We do not survive in this cold world without the right long underwear. I am tempted from time to time to try to get along without it. Then some layer of my long underwear is taken away, and I realize how cold I am without it. I give thanks for Filson and L.L. Bean. I save my greatest thanks, however, for those who wrap me in the warmth of love, even though now that warmth comes, from many of them, not in presence, but in memory and in hope.

JRMcF

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.)





Friday, December 2, 2011

Occupy the World

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith For the Years of Winter…

Folk-singer Jim Manley and I go back a long way together, but I’m sort of sorry that I brought him six thousand miles to sing "Raggedy Band" at IL State U 45 years ago. Now he seems to think we’re kindred spirits, so he sent me his new environment-hugging CD, "Pilgrim on a Brave New Planet: Just and faithful living in a tough and changing world."

Apparently he is such a pilgrim. It’s also obvious he wants me to be such a pilgrim. But I’m too old to be a pilgrim. The problem with blaming old age is that Jim’s older than I am. Who does he think he is, Abraham? [1] Some Old Testament prophet claiming that “old men shall dream dreams?” [2]

The first track is Jim’s famous "Take Off Your Shoes." Great song. I hum it all the time. He wrote some new, very specific lines about taking care of God’s holy ground, but I didn’t pay much attention, because I knew the original lyrics. The second track is "Come, Old Pilgrim." That appealed to me. I figured it would be a nice ditty about old folks gathering around the fire to keep warm as we tell stories of our past victories over the forces of darkness. Wrong! What does he mean, “We’ve pleasured in green pastures as we’ve lived beyond our means?” Now he’s quit preachin’ and gone to meddlin’. [3]

On through the tracks he keeps meddlin, in very specific ways:

When “Drill, baby, drill,” turns to “Spill, baby, spill,” God’s counting on me, God’s counting on you.

This is how the world attacks, with car exhaust and chimney stacks.

Feel the temperature arising, no more time for compromising, endless data analyzing, what more do we need?

“Too big to fail” demands revising/New needs prove that “less is more.”

He even got Bob Dylan to let him use "The Times They Are A-Changin’" and add a couple of Jim’s own verses. So gather round people, rise up and stand, Unite with each other on earth’s shifting sand…

I thought old people got to rest a little bit. Shouldn’t young people be responsible for the stewardship of God’s earth now? Everybody? Sheesh!

For earth’s sake, don’t buy this CD or its accompanying songbook at http://manleymusic.com/index.htm, or you’ll be rolling your walker out to the barricades. On the other hand, if each of us bought a copy and sent it to our Senator or Representative…

Please excuse me. I have to stop occupying the sofa and go Occupy the World.

JRMcF

I have told the story of how Jim and I have interacted through the years in “Spirit of Gentleness,” the title of Jim’s most-sung song, in Christ in Winter for Dec. 13, 2010.

1] Abraham was 75 when God told him to leave his native land and strike out for “The Promised Land.” Genesis 12:4.

2] Joel 2:28. “Then afterward I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.” NRSV

3] Old preacher joke about the evangelist who condemned booze and the old farmer yelled Amen. He condemned gambling and the farmer yelled Amen. He condemned chewing tobacco and the old farmer yelled, “Now he’s quit preachin’ and gone to meddlin’.”

{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.)