THE UNSPOKEN WORDS

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…
 
While our pastor recovers from heart bypass surgery, I’m filling in. During the worship last Sunday, not counting announcements and items printed in the bulletin and hymnal, I uttered, out loud, 6,820 words.
 
I don’t write those words down ahead of time. I figure if I can’t comprehend and remember them in my brain and spirit as I speak them, I can’t expect those in the pews to comprehend and remember them as they listen. That does not mean I don’t prepare. I spend almost every waking moment in the week before a worship service, sometimes several weeks, sifting through the words I might speak on the scriptures and the subject of the day. For the 6,820 words I finally utter, there are 675,180 I don’t speak, that are rejected as being unworthy of God and not useful for the congregation. Only one percent of the words that go through my brain comes out of my mouth.
 
The words spoken are a gift. The words NOT spoken are often an even greater gift. That is true every time we speak, even though most of us are never in the pulpit.
 
Rejoice, ye peoples, ye peoples of Chrisney and Crossroads and Bloomfield, of Solsberry and Koleen and Mineral, of Greene County Chapel and Walkers Chapel, of Cedar Lake and Creston, of Terre Haute Centenary, of Normal First, of Stanwood and Red Oak Grove, of Orion, of Hoopeston, of Charleston Wesley, of Mattoon Faith, of Arcola, of Mason City Wesley, of Walnut, of Tampico, of Morrison, of Sterling Wesley, of Iron Mountain Trinity, rejoice in the 99% that God led me NOT to utter on the Sundays of the last 56 years.
 
Rejoice ye people who read Christ In Winter, in the several thousand words God took away to the recycle bin so that you would have to read, not counting the announcements, only 316.
 
Rejoice, ye peoples of the world, as we come toward the end of Advent/Christmas, the season of preparation and proclamation, that God prepared well enough that it was necessary to speak but one Word.
 
John Robert McFarland
 
***
 
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 folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin, or make it into a movie or TV series.
 
{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/}

 

 

THE FORGOTTEN WEDDING

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…
 
It was the Sunday before Christmas. We’d had two good morning worship services. I was tired. I was sitting at the table in the kitchen, sans shoes and tie, gratefully full of lunch, sipping a second cup of tea, when the phone on the wall beside me blared more forcefully than necessary. I picked it up. A rather thin, small voice…
 
“Rev. McFarland, aren’t you coming to our wedding?”
 
A minister should not schedule anything on a Sunday afternoon. A Sunday morning is intense. It empties your brain out. By the time it is over, there is no room to remember anything that is coming up.
 
In over 50 years in ministry, I forgot two events. The first time I was supposed to be part of a panel discussion for an evening program at a church on the other side of town. It’s not too bad if one member of a panel doesn’t show. It’s definitely not good if the only minister doesn’t show up for a wedding.
 
It’s even worse if the bride is a scared teen-ager whose family threw her out when she told them she was pregnant.
 
I hadn’t known her or her boyfriend, but they came to me when her pastor refused to marry them. “People say, when there’s no place else to go, they come to you,” they told me. Now the pastor of last resort had forgotten about them, too. 
 
I set a record for retrieving shoes and tying tie, and I flew out the back door. Helen was right behind me. Mary Beth and Katie, who were teenagers, were right behind her. Fortunately, we lived next door to the church building, and there was already a path shoveled through the big snow drift that always swept in and up between the back doors of the parsonage and the church building.
 
They were in the kitchen, the bulging bride, and her skinny husband-to-be, and the nervous teen couple they had brought along as witnesses. This was well before cell phones. When I had not showed up at 1:00 o’clock, they had wandered through the building and found the phone in the kitchen.
 
I led them back to the sanctuary. Oops. I had forgotten something else. After the morning services, we had prepared for the Christmas program that evening. The pulpit and lectern and altar table had been removed, turning the chancel into a large Akron-plan wrap-around stage. The chancel was bare.
 
But we were decorated for Christmas. Wreaths and candles and red ribbons, and a crèche set. They took their vows standing in front of the manger, part of a scene that said, “Love came down at Christmas.”
 
Every Christmas, the wedding I forgot is the one that I remember.
 
John Robert McFarland

***

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 folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin, or make it into a movie or TV series.
 
{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/}
 
I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.

 

STRENGTH & AVAILABILITY

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith For the Years of Winter…
 
STRENGTH AND AVAILABILITY
 
I have just learned of the death of George Paterson.
 
Helen and I met George and Ida Belle in 1972, when we moved to Iowa City so I could pursue a PhD in the School of Religion at the U of Iowa. We had a lot in common. Their Lisa and our Katie were in the same grade at school. We were both former Wesley Foundation ministers, we were Methodist clergy without a congregation, and George himself had gotten his PhD at U IA. George had two jobs, as chaplain at University Hospital and as a professor in the School of Religion.
 
There were three pivotal moments in our relationship:
 
1] I was doing a quarter of Clinical Pastoral Education under David Belgum, professor of pastoral counseling. One day he brought to class a woman in her forties, who was struggling with cancer. She told us of how George had walked into her room…
 
“I knew him. I thought, What is the trombone player in jazz groups that play in seedy places I frequent doing here? Then he explained that his real job was hospital chaplain. He made all the difference for me. He had just the right combination of strength and availability.”
 
I have spoken to many clergy since then, in various settings—conferences, retreats, classes, periodicals. I have always told them: Be like George Paterson. You’re no good if you’re only strength, because people can’t receive you if you’re only strength. You’re no good if you’re only availability. They can get into you easily, but there’s nothing there. Be that combination, like George.
 
2] Second pivotal moment: George flunked me out of the PhD program, which means he failed my qualifying exam. He put it as nicely as he could: “You have such a creative mind,” he said. “You use so many ideas and stories from so many different fields, and so many parenthetical expressions to explain them, I can’t tell what you’re saying.” [I appreciated that he said “creative” instead of “disorganized.”]
 
When I began to write in earnest—stories, essays, reference works, professional articles, novels, books for cancer patients—in my mind I always put at the top of the every page: Write this so that George Paterson can understand it or you will fail! It has served me well.
 
3] When the grandchildren moved to Mason City, IA, 175 miles northwest of Iowa City, we retired and moved there, too. George and Ida Belle had relatives in Mason City, so they stopped in to see us whenever they were in town. We went through Iowa City on our way to IN to see my father, so we’d meet for lunch on our way through. We had just begun to get really acquainted again when fifteen-month old grandson Joseph was diagnosed with liver cancer one Thursday afternoon. By Thursday evening Katie and Patrick were at Children’s Hospital in Iowa City with him. George and Ida Belle were there, too, and they remained. Often Katie was there alone with Joe. Patrick had to work to keep insurance in force. Helen and I had to care for four-year-old Brigid. But Katie wasn’t alone. George and Ida Belle were there, surrogate parents and grandparents, and with a bed and a meal and a hug for the rest of us when we could be there, too—a storm home, all the way through. Joe is now an extremely handsome young man of 13, with an easy mix of strength and availability. Along with their own grandchildren, his picture is on the Paterson’s refrigerator, as is Brigid’s.
 
As regular readers know, I recently learned from Father Guido Sarducci that things are so backed up in heaven that when we die we are judged in groups of ten thousand, to expedite things. George was the first person I contacted. “Wait around for me when you get there,” I told him. “I figure my chances are a lot better if I can be in the same group with you.”
 
On Monday at noon, we’ll celebrate a life so well-lived that ten thousand can ride to salvation on it.
 
May the peace of Christ be with George, and with us all,
JRMcF [John Robert McFarland]
 
{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.)

 

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…
 
JUDGMENT DAY
 
According to Father Guido Sarducci, and who should know better about heaven than a faux-Italian faux-priest, when you get to heaven you have to wait 8 and ½ years for your judgment appointment with God because He is so busy with running the universe and other such “acts of God.” The good news is that you get to stay in heaven that whole time, but the bad news is that because of the time crunch, you are in a judgment group with 10 thousand other people.
 
This set me to worrying. I have never even considered the possibility of group judgment. What if I’m put into a group with a bunch of… well, people like me?  
 
Eight and ½ years is plenty of time for the seraphim to pore over the records and find ten thousand people just like me, which would make group judgment simpler. But I definitely don’t want to be in THAT group on judgment day!
 
The seraphim have better things to do, of course, like flying around singing # 64, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” [I assume that for the sake of convenience in judging Methodists, they use the 1989 version of The United Methodist Hymnal.], and so if the above plan were ever considered, I’m sure the seraphim nixed it in favor of the time-of-death plan: your ten thousand will be the ones who died at the same time you did. I can hear the heavenly operators say, “Your death will be answered in the order in which it was received,” and then you hear “Stairway to Heaven” on the Muzak as you wait.
 
I’m not at all sure I want to get the same judgment as 9,999 other Methodists, even though some were probably young enough when they died that they didn’t have enough time to sin as much as much as most of us… But wait!
 
Yes, wait! The time-of-death plan means I’ll be judged not just with other Methodists, but all sorts of people—Muslims, Tea Partyers, Yankees fans, tax collectors, lawyers, gays…
 
It would be okay if they’re all sheep, but what if some are goats? That’s the way Jesus said God actually does the judgment, when She finally gets around to it, separating the sheep from the goats. Apparently God doesn’t care if you’re a Methodist or a gay Muslim Tea Party Yankee-fan lawyer, just if you’re a sheep or a goat.
 
Because of that judgment backlog, separation into judgment groups has to be done as efficiently as possible, so the only plumb line the Seraphim use for sheep and goats: Did you give drink to the thirsty and food to the hungry and clothing to the naked and visit the sick and imprisoned? [2]
 
Almost everyone knows that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Younger folk may not know, though, that the standard method of conveyance on said road is a hand basket. Apparently everyone has one. Most of us fill them with complaints about younger people and technology and those who disagree with us. But Jesus said that we’re supposed to turn those baskets upside down and dump all that stuff out and fill them with water and food and clothing and medicine and songs and stories and jokes and ballots and prayers [3], and then go out to the highways and byways where the thirsty and hungry and naked and sick and imprisoned are waiting for us, and strew the contents of those baskets like rose petals, a different kind of pavement for the road to forever.
 
JRMcF
 
1] Matthew 25:31-46.
 
2] Jesus often cured the sick, and bade his disciples do the same when possible, but he knew that healing was even more important than cure. There is healing in “visiting” the sick, being at one with them, taking away the dis-ease of loneliness even if the disease of sickness cannot be removed.
 
3] You can always visit the sick and imprisoned through prayer even if you’re too puny and feeble to do it in person.
 
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 folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin, or make it into a movie or TV series.
 
{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, butoccasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

 

THE NATIONAL PASTIME

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…
 
[I try to keep these columns to a readable length, around 500 words. Be warned; this is twice that. I apologize.]

 It was literally, “I live and die with my team.” That’s what we say about our love of our sports teams, especially today as we start the baseball playoffs.

 
Twenty-two seasons ago, the Cincinnati Reds were entering the post-season. They had won their first game of the regular season and had never given up the lead. Now all they had to do was win out. [1]
 
I was starting the 8^th month of my 12 months of chemotherapy, [2] following surgery on my birthday in February. My first oncologist told me I had one to two years. I wasn’t sure if I would even make it through chemo.
 
But I had started my chemo season at the same time my team started the baseball season. They got out ahead on the first day and stayed there. Somehow it seemed if they could win, I could, too. For me, it was, “I live and die with my team.”
 
I wasn’t a Reds fan because I grew up in Oakland City, IN, the home of the Reds Hall of Fame center-fielder, Edd Roush. [3] His twin brother, Fred, was one of my coaches, and sometimes Edd, in retirement, hit line drives to us. Or because my great-uncle, Rufus McFarland, had played on the same teams as Edd and Fred as a kid, intending to go up to the majors together. [4]
 
No, I was a Reds fan because Grandma Mac was. That’s mostly how we choose our teams. That was good enough 75 years ago, in the days of Ernie Lombardi. It was good enough in the days of Ted Kluzewski, of Johnny Bench and The Big Red Machine, of Eric Davis. It’s good enough now, in the days of Joey Votto, when I’m one of only three Reds fans in the UP. [Helen and daughter Katie are the others.]
 
They were my team then; they are my team now. Not because they are better players or better people or better for society, but just because they are my team, because they were Grandma’s.
 
Sports competition is a fun thing. We developed sports originally so we could compete without killing one another. You could be a winner without chopping someone’s head off, or starving them out. If we competed to win at sports, then we wouldn’t have to compete in everything else, to WIN at everyone else’s expense in areas of social life where we needed to cooperate instead of compete in order to survive.
 
Unfortunately, sports winning has become a metaphor and model and excuse for competing at everything else, even the areas of life where cooperation works better than competition. We are constantly told that “government should be run more like a business” because the competitive element of business gets things done that cooperation can’t. But it’s business that should be run more like business. Government should be run more like government. Education should be run more like education. Church should be run more like church. One model, the sports model, does not fit all.
 
Vince Lombardi famously said that “Winning isn’t the most important thing. It’s the ONLY thing.” We have taken that idea into government and education and religion. Winning isn’t so we can be useful in society; it’s its own goal. That’s okay in sports, but it’s a killer in the rest of life. Capitalism where only one team wins destroys competition which destroys capitalism
 
Competition is a useful tool for getting things done, but it is not the only one. More importantly, winning for its own sake actually destroys competition. I want the Reds to win, but not all the time. If one team wins all the time in sports, what you get is an empty field, because nobody else wants to play. If one team wins all the time in government, what you get is Mexico.
 
 A couple of guys on Jesus’ team, urged on by their soccer mom, argued about who should get the gold and silver medals in the Righteousness Olympics. Jesus said, “Whoever would be the winner among you must be the water boy.” [Matthew 20:27, MSM] [5] Jesus was in favor of competition, but the winners aren’t the ones who get the most power over the people, but the ones who get the most done for the people, not the ones who grind their opponents into the dust, but the ones who pull the most folks out of the mud.
 
Some future Edward Gibbon won’t need 6 volumes to explain the decline and fall of the USA. He can just use two lines: Winning wasn’t their most important thing. It was their only thing.
 
You’re never too old to become a fan, but be careful when choosing between the Lombardi team and the Jesus team. You’ll live and die with your team.
 
JRMcF
 
1] The Reds were in the NL West in 1990, with the Dodgers as their main challenge, which accounts for Katie McFarland [now Kennedy], who bleeds red, saying about the Groshong chemo catheter Dr. Alan Hatfield punched into my superior vena cava, “Oh, no, it’s Dodger blue.”  The Reds won the division by 5 games over the Dodgers. Then they beat the Pirates, 4 games to 2 to win the NL pennant. No one gave them a chance to beat the Oakland As in the World Series, but they swept it, 4 games to none.
 
2] I was on a clinical trial to learn if colon cancer patients needed 6 or 12 months of chemo. Naturally I was in the 12 month group. We proved you only need 6. If you’re one of those 6 month people, you owe me.
 
3] I wrote the biographical entry for Edd in Scribner’s AMERICAN LIVES.
 
4] McFarlands were not very tall in those days. At 5 feet 3 inches, Uncle Rufus intended to be the shortest man in the majors. Unfortunately, they didn’t want a stop who really was short. In the next generation, my father was the tallest of 7 children at 5’7”. He  married into a family with tall men, so my brother and I tend to look down on the rest of the family at reunions.
 
5] MSM is The McFarland Sports Metaphor translation of the Bible.
 
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 folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin, or make it into a movie or TV series or Broadway musical.
 
{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/}

 

 

 

HELEN GOES TO MARS

[Some folks have asked to receive Christ in Winter by email. If you’re not one of those, I don’t mean to be intruding in your In box. I’m just sending to you this way because I think you may be interested in the subject or the places or people mentioned and I didn’t want you to miss it in case you don’t check the blog site today. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/]

 
CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith For the Years of Winter…
 
 
Arcola, IL friend Jane Jenkins sent Helen a link to watch, “How the rover got to mars.” Below is Helen’s reply. I asked her if I could share it more widely, and she agreed. It seems very appropriate
as winter comes on.
 
 
Thank you, Jane. I enjoyed this. As I watched it, I marveled at how the spaceship was designed to eject some of its parts periodically as their task was finished. It hit me that that is similar to people at our age. Many of the parts of my life have served their purpose and I have ejected them (physically, my gall bladder and uterus are examples, though I guess I could still use the gall bladder, but I don’t miss it). In other areas, I find myself constantly working to edit my possessions, interests, and activities. I just don’t have the energy to do everything I once did, so I must make choices and set priorities. I once read an article about moving into a small retirement apartment. The author, talking about what furniture to keep, said, “Keep the best pieces and the best memories.” I thought that was pretty good advice.
 
I’m paring down my clothes and getting rid of the “mistakes” I’ve bought and kept for years without wearing. Sometimes I look around the room I’m in and think about what furniture, pictures, etc. I would keep if we were moving to smaller quarters. This morning I’ve been potting up a few plants from the deck to bring in for the winter (parsley and chives), throwing away some that are spent, and setting out a few new, cool weather things that will stay there through the snow of winter (mums and flowering kale). I call them my “winter garden.” The deck looks so much nicer in winter with snow-covered plants than with everything cleared off. Even there, I guess I’m keeping the best pieces and the best memories.
 
Love and good memories to you,
Helen

 

JRMcF
 
{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.)
 
 

STRUTTIN' WITH JESUS

[Some folks have asked to receive Christ in Winter by email. If you’re not one of those, I don’t mean to be intruding in your IN box. I’m just sending to you this way because I think you may be interested in the subject or the places or people mentioned and I didn’t want you to miss it in case you don’t check the blog site today. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/ I especially apologize if you’re too young to think about winter.]
 
CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…
 
STRUTTIN’ WITH SOME BREAD AND WINE
 
I wrote this with jazz worship services especially in mind.
 
To the tune of STRUTTIN’ WITH SOME BARBECUE, by Lil Hardin Armstrong [1898-1971], Louis Armstrong’s piano player and 2^nd wife.
 
Barbecue in hipster jive was a good looking woman, so when Louis was “struttin’ with some barbecue,” he was struttin’ with the song’s composer.
 
It may seem strange to think of Jesus struttin’, but the word barbeque comes from a Native American word meaning “sacred.”
 
Remember John 10:10, where Jesus says, “I’m here; let’s party,” which means that the point of life is to have a good time, to go struttin’, not to show off, but to show up, on the side of those whose life is not abundant. A truly good time is a time of joy, not just pleasure. Joy comes in wholeness, when everyone has a chance to march in the struttin’ parade. The point is not to get to heaven but that God’s kingdom might come on earth. [Matthew 6:10]
 
The “meek,” who shall “inherit the earth,” [Matthew 5:5] are not the weak, as that word has come to imply, but the humble, those who are not proud in the ways of the world, not those who are proud of worldly wealth and power and success, but the humble who know that “It is God who has made us, and not we ourselves.” [Psalm 100:3]

 

 
Struttin’ with some bread and wine
With Jesus and his friends we’ll dine
Feeding on the word divine
Struttin’ with some bread and wine
 
Struttin’ with the low and meek
It’s our inheritance we seek
Into heaven we’ll just peek
Struttin’ with the low and meek
 
Struttin’ with those left behind
Struttin’ with the man born blind [John 9:1-41]
It’s our inheritance we’ll find
Struttin’ with those left behind
 
Struttin’ toward those pearly gates
Hurry, friend, let’s don’t be late
Leave behind those earthly hates
Struttin’ toward those pearly gates
 
Struttin’ in my heavenly shoes
Singin’ loud the Jesus blues
‘cause I’ve paid earth’s union dues
Struttin’ in my heavenly shoes
 
Struttin’ with some bread and wine
With Jesus and his friends we’ll dine
Feeding on the word divine
Struttin’ with some bread and wine
 
© John Robert McFarland, 2012
 
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 folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin, or make it into a movie or TV series.
 
{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/}

 

Doing the Best He Can

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…
 
 
Bob Butts and I share a common culture. He grew up in MS, and I grew up in “the pocket,” the SW corner of IN, what I call “the MS of the North.” In that culture, you can say anything about a person if you preface it with, “Bless her heart, she’s doing the best she can, but…”
 
I used to say it about our pastor at Wesley UMC in Mason City, IA, Bill Poland. “Bless his heart, he’s doing the best he can, but he’s just making so many changes…” In fact, I said it about him once when he made the mistake of leaving town and asked me to fill the pulpit that Sunday.
 
Bill went to too many conferences at places like Willow Hill. There he got ideas, and he came home and put them into practice.
 
He shut down the organ and got a clavicle, or clavidingdong, or clavisomething… it was sort of a piano, and it sat out where it got in the way when we knelt at the communion rails.
 
So he took out the rails and made us shuffle up the center aisle to get communion, like prisoners in the cafeteria in The Shawshank Redemption, where somebody gave us a little piece of bread and somebody else put a little cup into our hands and said, “God loves you, and keep moving,” both of which are good sentiments, but you had to chew and gulp fast or you’d miss the little basket to deposit the cups and run into the claviwhatsit.
 
The clavithing didn’t know any hymns, so we sang praise songs, for which we had no music, since they weren’t in hymnals, and there wasn’t room on the wall for a screen, so we sang them from words in the increasingly lengthy and hard to handle bulletin. The absence of music was especially noticeable because the praise songs didn’t have recognizable tunes, or any tune at all in some cases. They did, however, have questionable to objectionable theology, so I sang only the words I could sing with integrity. Sometimes that was only “Jesus” and “the.” Helen said that standing beside me as we sang was like driving along when the radio went out every time the car drove through an underpass.
 
And “standing” beside me she did. We stood for everything. We stood so long I grew stalactites. [Winters are cold in Mason City.] If there had been any place to store them, I think he would have taken out the pews, too.
 
The problem was that every time Bill changed something, attendance went up. It wasn’t because of the changes, though. It was because we loved Bill, because we knew he loved us. He was kind and gracious and generous. We not only liked him, we respected him. He could have handled snakes while doing Gregorian chants and attendance would have gone up. We kept coming back and bringing our friends because worship with Bill was a special occasion. But he was humble, so it didn’t occur to him that attendance kept going up because of him; he thought it was the changes.
 
Bill was a perfect pastor. [So naturally the powers what am made him into a District Superintendent.]
 
So, as I explained in that sermon when he was out of town, I complained to God. “God, our pastor keeps making all these changes, and I don’t like them. They don’t make any difference, anyway. Attendance goes up just because of Bill.” And God said, “Bless your heart. You’re doing the best you can.”
 
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 folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin, or make it into a movie or TV series.
 
{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/}
 

REINFORCEMENTS

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…
 
I was sorry when 2011 came to an end, for it meant my 1994 calendar of Indiana nature pictures in the basement would no longer be accurate. The whole of 2011, whenever I walked by it, I knew that the 1994 days coincided with the 2011 days. A Saturday was a Saturday in either year.
 
Then, oh joy, I discovered that my 1995 vintage baseball calendar’s days are the same as 2012 days. I can still know what day it is, even in the basement. [Spending money for a current calendar for the basement is not an option.] 
 
I keep a lot of old calendars on the walls, even the ones that don’t fit the current year. When a new month starts, I turn to it on all those calendars. The pictures don’t go out of date.
 
As I turned the Indiana nature calendar from Jan. to Feb, the calendar fell off the wall. The hole on the Feb page had torn out. No problem. I had the solution in the second drawer of my desk. The solution has been there in a little box for over 50 years now. The solution is called, simply, “Reinforcements.”
 
Ace is the brand. The box says there were 100 # 2 size gummed reinforcements in it originally. There is a picture on the back that shows a 3 ring notebook with pages tearing out around the rings, with a little note that “A Reinforcement Will Prevent This,” and arrows pointing at the tears.
 
They don’t work as well as when they were new. They are yellowing and curling up. The gum doesn’t stick very well.
 
As the calendar pages turn, there are tears in my life. Sometimes I don’t even know what day it is. Through the years, whenever one of the pages in my life story began to tear, there was a reinforcement to paste it back into place.
 
Fortunately I had a box of 100 reinforcements. Well, there aren’t that many now. Some have been used up through the years. Some of them don’t stick to their task as well as they used to. They’re curling up and discolored.
 
I keep a lot of reinforcements in the little box of my memories. They’re called friends. I keep them around because the pictures don’t go out of date.
 
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/

MY HALL OF FAME

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…
 
MY HALL OF FAME
 
Walt Wagener called a month or so ago. He does that every once in a while, when there is some special baseball achievement to discuss. Since we were on the subject of achievements anyway, we talked about our careers, what we had achieved and not achieved. Old people do that, trying to assure ourselves that our lives mattered.
 
Walt and I were roommates at Garrett Theological Seminary [at Northwestern U]. Not for very long, but we were the only Garrett roommates either of us ever had. In fact, I was the only roommate Walt ever had. He lived at home to attend U of WI at Milwaukee, and then was married during Garrett years.
 
He graduated Garrett in 1962, and was appointed part-time as campus minister at the Wesley Foundation at Whitewater State and part-time as pastor of the Methodist Church in Milford, WI, which meant he had two full-time jobs. However, he was one course short at the 1962 commencement and had to return for a four-week summer session to make his diploma stick to the wall. I normally commuted, four to six hours a day, from Cedar Lake, IN, 30 miles south of Gary, to Evanston. That worked alright for courses that were a whole semester long. But I was a transfer from Perkins School of Theology at SMU, and so there were courses I needed at Garrett that I could get only in the summer. With a four-week summer course, there wasn’t time to study at all if I commuted daily, so I stayed at Garrett during the week.
 
Walt and I, being the two oddballs who were in the dorm for only one summer course, were assigned to the same room in Loder Hall. We actually were in residence together only about 15 days, since we both went home for extended weekends, but from that chance assignment to the same room came a life-long friendship. We have visited in each other’s homes in at least five states. Most recently I got to visit with his son, another John Robert, while he was becoming a fellow colon cancer survivor.
 
So Walt and I talked baseball and careers for an hour or so, and I felt better about my life, as I always do when I’ve talked to Walt. But when the phone rang the very next day, and Walt’s name appeared on the caller ID, I feared that something bad had happened. But, no, it was just Walt reminding me of something I omitted when we had talked of our career achievements. “I got to thinking about it,” he said.  “You didn’t mention that you wrote books. Good books!”
 
Being baseball friends, Walt and I watched the Hall of Fame inductions this weekend, of course. In a snippet from his induction speech in 1999, George Brett said, “We live with our friends, not with our achievements.”
 
You know you’ve had a good life when you don’t even need to keep track of your achievements because you have friends who do it for you.
 
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 folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin, or make it into a movie or TV series.
 
{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/}

Anne Lamott & Jealousy

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

I am considerably ill at ease about this, but I am enormously jealous of Anne Lamott.
 
Before she became a Christian, and sometimes after, it seems, she got to live a dissolute life of drugs, affairs with married men, booze, abortion, more affairs, single motherhood, more booze… It’s what’s called in conservative Christian circles “building a testimony.” After you’re converted, when you’re too old for dissolution anymore, you get to tell about all the cocaine and affairs and booze and how Jesus has saved you from all that, and people say, “Isn’t that dramatic?” and they buy the books in which you give your testimony, and give you more money to come give it in person.
 
I would have built a testimony, but I never got the chance. At age 14, I traded my life for my sister’s. She was desperately ill, and I told God I’d be a preacher if “He” would keep her alive. It was mostly selfishness; I just didn’t want to do without her. God came through, despite my motive. [1] Mary V is still alive, notoriously healthy, and works fulltime, even though she’s still four years older than I. How can you build a testimony when you have to start living like a preacher when you’re only 14? Oh, sure, some churches think it’s neat to have preachers who build a testimony on Saturday night and preach about it on Sunday morning, but Methodists are picky about that sort of thing.
 
To be fair to Anne Lamott, she lived in CA, I lived in IN. That may explain it all.
 
She was the state tennis champion in her age group. I never even saw a tennis ball except the one we used to throw through a hoop on a barn side when a pig ran off with the basketball.
 
I desperately wanted to be a cocaine-crazed, booze-swilling, sexually promiscuous, unwed parent, self-loathing former sports star, but I had no choice. I had to live the life of a coffee-sipping, tee-totaling, totally married husband, doting father and grandfather, personally sensitive, hillbilly liberal. Who wants to pay to read or hear a story like that?
 
I can’t even say, “Yeah, but I’ve had a better life, because health is better than illness, and faithfulness is better than promiscuity, and wholeness is better than brokenness,” because that would sound self-righteous and holier-than-thou and mean-spirited and small-minded and intolerant and judgmental and unforgiving. It would make me sound like the elder brother, or the workers who spent the whole long damn hot day detasseling corn at Princeton Farms and only got the same pay as the slug-a-beds who didn’t show up until the last hour. Everybody knows those are the worst kind.  Jesus said so.
 
[Even for a hillbilly liberal Christian, some words of Jesus are hard to hear and bear. I prefer Matt. 5:18.]
 
I wish there were something I could say to ameliorate my jealousy, like Anne’s testimony makes me laugh and cry at the same time, and that I read her sentences over and over just for the sheer joy of it, and that any day you get to walk toward God with Jesus at your side is a better day than any other, and that we’re not so different, really, because we both try to walk that walk every day, and we both write little essays, stories, really, about faith and life, but that would remind me that the only thing that separates us is that she’s the best writer in the world and that I write a blog with 20 underappreciated followers, which would make me even more jealous.
 
Tony Bennett said of Faith Hill that “She is the Sinatra of female vocalists, always just a little better than everyone else.”
 
Okay, so in addition to having a better testimony, Anne Lamott is the Sinatra of writers. But I forgive her.
 
JRMcF
 
Anne Lamott’s reflections on faith are in TRAVELING MERCIES and PLAN B. Her book on the art and craft of writing is BIRD BY BIRD.
 
1] There is a bit more to this story. You can read about it in THE STRANGE CALLING.
 
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 folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin, or make it into a movie or TV series.
 
{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/}
  

Living Fancy

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

We were on our back deck yesterday morning, July 4, Independence Day, watching the tiny triplet fawns and squirrels and rabbits use our back yard to go from our south woods patch to the north woods patch. It’s almost like living in the woods, since we can’t see the other houses. But yesterday morning we could hear them. At 6:00 am, on a holiday, very loud and sustained talking and laughing from down the street. It wasn’t very good neighboring. It was almost like living in a fancy neighborhood again.  
 
It was by accident, really, that we once lived in a fancy neighborhood. It wasn’t nearly as fancy as it thought it was, but it was definitely fancy. It was the worst neighborhood we ever lived in, and that includes the slums of Dallas.
 
There were lots of rules. You couldn’t have a garden or a clothesline. You couldn’t park a car overnight on a street. You couldn’t park a truck overnight even in your own driveway, even if it was your truck. There were lots of committees, including one that had to approve the color before you could repaint your front door. You got a nasty phone call if you didn’t pay to have the same half-class lighted Christmas candy canes installed along your sidewalk, the way everyone else did, so that no one would mistake us for an un-fancy neighborhood.
 
Despite all the rules, there was lots of noise. People who had swimming pools would leave town at night, but not take their teenage children with them. Said children would then have swimming parties into the wee hours. It wasn’t very good neighboring.
 
It wasn’t just teenagers, though. One night about 2 am, there was so much ruckus at the house one door down and across the side street that we called the cops to investigate. They reported back. “That’s the governor of the state of Illinois down there.” He was visiting his brother. Since this happened to be in the state of IL, they seemed reluctant to tell anybody to shut up. Except us.
 
The governor’s brother’s wife had been a cheerleader at the local college. She went by the name of Kitty. [Not really, but it was sort of like Kitty, so I’ll use that name for this story.] About forty years after she had led cheers, I was speaking to a group of several hundred cancer survivors in Hartford, CT. My introduction included my place of residence, the city of the fancy neighborhood. After the talk, a fairly large man approached me. “I went to college there, where you live,” he said. “Played football. There was a cheerleader by the name of Kitty. I think she stayed in town there. Do you know her?”
 
I admitted that I knew her. His sixtyish countenance took on a look of rapture. “She was so hot,” he said. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that although she was as loud as when she led cheers, her temperature had cooled off quite a bit, simply because that’s what age does to folks, we cool down.
 
Which is a segue to the point of this meander… as old people, we often end up living in places that are strange to us. We are sent to “the home,” overlooking the IGA parking lot, or to the Ancient Arms retirement center, or some place closer to the children, who have not the good sense to live anyplace we’d like to live. They might be fancy, but they’re not where we want to be.
 
I advise that if you don’t like “the home” or Ancient Arms or where the kids live, just live where you want to, as I do. I live in Bloomington, IN, in 1957. That’s where I met Helen, my personal Lake Itasca [1], from which all the rest of my life has flowed.  It’s not fancy, but it’s quiet. There, the girls are all 102 degrees, and they are all fascinated by a skinny crew-cut guy “doing his tall silent thing.”
 
JRMcF
 
1] The little lake in MN that is the start of the MS River.
 
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 folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin, or make it into a movie or TV series.
 
{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/}