The Oral Tradition

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

Helen says that if women talked to one another the way men do, there would be much wailing and scratching with claws.

Male friends greet one another with sobriquets of affection, such as “You’re even uglier than the last time I saw you.” Try that on a woman friend and see what happens. “Oh, and your feet smell, too.”

The late Dave Goodell and I were at a conference at our theological alma mater [1] some years back. The chapel organist, a pretty and sincere young woman, ended up seated at the end of our table, probably because it was the only place left when she arrived, with Dave on her right hand and me on her left. With no one else to talk to, she did her best. She asked Dave about the church he pastored. I explained that he had retired but had not yet informed the church. She asked me about the sales of my book. Dave explained that “two” should not be decried because it was twice as many as my last book. This went on for some time, until she finally threw her fork down in exasperation and said, “Whenever I ask one of you a question, the other one answers!”

Well, of course. The only thing better than saying rude things to a friend is to say them in front of an audience.

I once was part of a theological discussion group in a foreign land, the North IL Conference of The United Methodist Church, one of the stops in our odyssey of following the grandchildren. My own land was the Central IL Conference, the border of which was thirty miles south of where we lived. Charles Sensel, a fellow pastor who had served his sentence in Central IL but had now retired to North IL, was also in the group.

Charles is one of those good-hearted people who, despite being a leading Bonhoeffer scholar, [2] or perhaps because of it, dresses differently, just enough that you’re not sure if it’s intentional or accidental. As Bill Browning said one morning when Charles arrived at a meeting of SADMOB [3], “His wife’s letting him dress himself again.”

As foreigners do, Charles and I always huddled together in the discussion group, speaking of persons and events from our past that no one else in the group shared. We also said affectionate things to each other, like “Have you been arrested for malpractice yet?” and “The Salvation Army rejected your hat again, didn’t they?”

A young woman pastor always sat with us, even though she did not share our memories or receive any of our affectionate remarks. “I just love to hear you old guys talk to each other,” she said. “You’ve been through it all, and you’ve survived.”

That’s always been one of the ways young people learn, through the oral tradition, the ways of the clan, the stories of the faith, “overhearing the Gospel.” I suspect, though, that if Rev. Sensel and Rev. McFarland had told Pastor Nancy [note how we distinguish generations by forms of titles] that she should do her ministry in this way, or her preaching in that, she would not have been interested. In fact, she would have resented it, just the way we resented it when we were young and older people tried to force on us ways and ideas that had been precious and valuable to them but were no longer relevant.

We need to tell our stories, but we need to let young people listen to us, not require them to.

Oh, and Sheila, please don’t let Charles out of that house in that hat.

JRMcF

1] We graduated from Garrett Theological Seminary. It later united with Evangelical Theological Seminary and became Garrett-Evangelical. It is located at Northwestern U, in Evanston, IL.

2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German theologian, a leading foe of the Nazis, a participant in the Abwehr’s plot to assassinate Hitler, who was hanged in prison at the age of 39, 23 days before the Nazi surrender. The established church embraced Nazism, and Bonhoeffer was the first and almost only voice for church resistance to Hitler and the Nazis, founding The Confessing Church as a means of resistance.

3] SADMOB = Senior And Directing Ministers Of Bigchurches.


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!

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{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/}

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