ALONE

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

 “One of you will die first.”

 
That’s what Jeanette Ericson said the day she and Darrol went with Helen and me to ride the riverboat. It wasn’t much of a boat, and not much of a river, but we had a good lunch, and it was fun. Until Jeanette told the truth, when I said “If one of us dies first…”

Well, of course. Either Helen or I will die first. It is highly unlikely that we shall die together. We have done all else together, but this we cannot. Today we start our 54^th year of marriage, but at some time after all these years together, one of us shall finally be left alone.

Within our circle of friends, the wives die first: Dianne Bass, Jean Cramer-Heuerman, Eileen Wilkey, Ruth E. White, Joyce Peacock, Ila Fisher, Darlene Barrett, Dee Lemkau, Rose Mary Shepherd, Eunice Snider, Phyllis Graham Parr, Linda Soper, Jan Rossow Brown, Betty Dees, Marian Ekin…

We, of course, have friend couples where the men have died first, but mostly it’s been the men who have been left alone.

This has been sobering. For many years, insofar as I thought about it at all, I assumed I would die first. That is the way it goes in general. But now I see so many of my men friends living alone, and I realize it could happen.

I have tried my best for 53 years to keep the vows–for better or worse, in sickness and in health, in [relative] rich or in poor. Now the time is closer for until death do us part.

Certain members of our family think that I will be remarried in 6 months if Helen should die first. Not so. I shall be hugely lonely for HER should I be left alone, but I shall not be lonely in general.

Those family members think I would HAVE to remarry because I need a caretaker. They think that I cannot take care of myself because in 53 years of marriage I never have. [As Helen famously said, “Men enter assisted living the day they get married.”] I do have someone who takes care of me, but I don’t NEED someone to take care of me. I can LEARN to cook, to do the laundry, the taxes, etc. [I’m not asking for a show of hands on this.]

That’s not really the major issue, though, is it?

Paul Tournier says: “You are never too young or too old to give your life to Christ; after that, what else is there to do to get ready to die?”

I think that’s true about aloneness, too. You are never too young or too old to give your life to Christ. After that, what else is there to do to get ready to be alone? Because after that, you are never alone.

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/}

When Bad Proms Happen to Good People

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

The Question of Theodicy: Why does God allow evil, like tornadoes and wars and high school proms?

I think it was Mike who first told me that I was taking Judith to the prom at a place I’ll call Fort McCracken, 17 miles from our town. I had never heard of her.

Judith was the only child in a wealthy family. Her father was a judge. Her parents had given her a new Chrysler convertible at the start of her junior year. That guaranteed that no Fort McCracken boy would date her, since no Fort McCracken boy had a car that could compete. So when prom time came that year, she was dateless.

Her mother was a friend of Ann’s mother. Ann was in my high school class. Judith’s mother told Ann’s mother of the problem. Ann’s mother asked what Judith was interested in.

“Journalism. She’s editor of the school newspaper.”


“Have I got a deal for you,” said Ann’s mother. “My daughter is in class with the editor of our school newspaper. He’s a nice boy.”

That’s the curse mothers always put on me: He’s a nice boy.

So Ann’s mother and Judith’s mother decided I would take Judith to the prom. The irony is that I was further out of my league than any boy in Fort McCracken.

I had no car and no suit, so the mothers arranged for my friend Mike, who was dating Ann, to get invitations to their prom, too, and my sister, who had graduated and was working fulltime, bought me a suit, and a pink and gray tie, which I still have. [You don’t outgrow ties.] Ann’s mother, of course, knew all about Judith’s dress, so she bought a corsage that would coordinate with it.

Mike and Ann drove down the gravel roads to our farm and I rode to Fort McCracken in the back seat of Mike’s two-door hardtop Pontiac, with Judith’s corsage in the front seat beside Ann. When we arrived at Judith’s house, it was almost dark. Ann scrunched up toward the dashboard and I pushed the seat forward to get out, thus crushing the corsage.

It was a big house, fronted by a high porch with a dim light. I carried the crushed corsage up the long walk and climbed the creaking steps to the shadowed front door. I knocked. The door opened. A classy blond girl in a formal stood there. I spoke one of the best opening lines in the annals of blind prom dates: “It looks like I’ve come to the right place.”

I pushed the crushed corsage at her. She looked at it and was speechless. An older blond appeared over her shoulder, took the corsage away to the kitchen, where she performed voodoo on it. Judith and I stood there and tried not to look at each other. “That’s my father,” she said, indicating a man sitting in a dark corner of the living room, peeling an apple, with a butcher knife, one long peel sliding off the apple with surgical precision. He didn’t say anything.

Judith’s mother returned with the corsage, and taking no chances that her daughter might get crushed, too, pinned it on Judith herself. She handed Judith a boutonniere. Judith tried to slip it through the button-hole of my new lapel. It wouldn’t go. The mother tried. “It’s not cut,” she said. [What farm boy knows you have to slit the buttonhole in a new suit yourself?]

“I’ll take care of him,” her father said, jumping up and advancing on me with the butcher knife. He grabbed my lapel and began to saw at it, the knife an inch from my throat. As a judge he must have used the Solomonic solution, because he was really good with that thing. The slit was perfect, and Judith slipped the flower into it.

I don’t remember much from that point. I assumed my job was to make the Fort McCracken boys jealous, since Judith had gotten such a much better date from out of town, so I acted mysterious, which meant I spent the evening doing what Helen calls my “tall silent thing” while Mike and Ann danced. The only thing I remember for sure was that I mispronounced the word “intricate,” while explaining my reasons for eschewing all dances but the “bunny hop.”

It’s important when looking back on such experiences to find the good in an otherwise disastrous event. I have done so. I’m sure Judith won the contest among the sisters for who had the best reason to become a nun.

JRMcF

Every bit of the above is true, except for the name of Fort McCracken. I named it in honor of the IU basketball coach in my days there, Branch McCracken, who coached the first two of IU’s 5 NCAA championship teams. Also I’m just making a reasonable guess about Judith’s career choice.

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 Big Bang Theory

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

It is 3 a.m., and I am faced with that haunting wee-hours question that we all must answer sooner or later: why am I interested in the big bang theory? No, not the world creation theory; I settled the question of loop quantum gravity vs. string theory a long time ago. [1]

It’s the Big Bang Theory TV show [BBT] that fascinates me.

Sheldon Cooper [the amazing Jim parsons], Leonard Hofstader [Johnny Galecki, who can nerd you out just by wrinkling his face], Raj Koothrapalli [whom Helen wants to keep as a pet, Kunal Nayyar], and Howard Wolowitz [Simon Helberg], are brilliant physics profs at Cal Poly. Except for Sheldon, who lives entirely in his mind and whose only goal is a Nobel Prize, their only interest is sex. And, occasionally, a bigger office, or a paint-ball victory over the Anthropology Dept, or winning first prize at the comic book store’s Halloween and New Year’s costume contests.

Of course, that’s why they supposedly don’t get sex [although it’s amazing how many otherwise intelligent and attractive women get involved with them ]. When they are not being brilliant, they live in the nerd world of SciFi and fantasy movies and action figures, comic books, Renaissance fairs. They have no clue how the rest of the world works.

Each character is limited by partialness. Howard “is an ass,” [and lacks a Phd]. Raj can’t even speak to a woman without booze, and then he becomes as much of an ass as Howard. Leonard was raised by a mother [Christine Beranski] who is a child psychiatrist with less warmth than a frozen salamander. Sheldon lives entirely in his mind and fantasy.

Still, women who are just as hampered try them out. The short, naive Catholic microbiology PhD candidate, Bernadette Rostenkowski [the adorable Melissa Rauch] falls for Howard, who lives with his mother and can’t leave her. Totally needy nerd Leonard is clueless and is always amazed when Penny [Kaley Cuoco], their next door neighbor and waitress/actress-wannabe, or the voluptuous medical doctor, Stephanie Barnett [Sara Rue], or Raj’s beautiful and talented lawyer sister, Priya [Aarti Mann] or fellow physics prof Leslie Winkle [Sarah Gilbert], who uses men like a… well, like a man uses women, comes on to him. Prof Amy Farrah Fowler [Mayim Bialek] is just as one-dimensional [brain only] as Sheldon, but is also desperate for love and negotiates with Sheldon for affection by starting out with a request for wild all-night animal coitus [Sheldon’s preferred word] and eventually manages to get him to agree to a hug.

 

There are only three nods to religion in the BBT. Howard is a totally secular Jew. Raj is a superstitious Hindu. Sheldon’s mother [the delightful Lori Metcalf] is an E. TX fundamentalist who believes in religious string theory, that Jesus pulls strings. But she is quite pragmatic if it turns out that she’s wrong about which way the strings are pulled.

On the face of it, I have little in common with the folks of the BBT, but I love Sheldon and his little group because they remind me of the church in which I have lived my life. [2] They want love but settle for attention. They want joy but settle for pleasure. They want friendship but settle for competition. They want truth but settle for knowledge. They want Spirit but settle for spirits. They want communion but settle for theories. [3]

At the end of the day, though, they care about one another. They take care of one another. If someone is sick, someone sings “Soft Kitty.” And the next day they get up and try again for love and truth and joy and friendship and communion.

Which is what I think I’ll do now that the day has started. Besides, the BBT re-runs don’t start for another 18 minutes.

JRMcF

1] Bazinga! What Sheldon says when he thinks he’s pulled a fast one on you.

2] The BBT and UMC [General Conference] both end their seasons this week, BBT on CBS at 7 PM, CDT. The end of GC of UMC is a good deal less predictable.

3] Their communion service [The Sheldor’s Supper ?] is fascinating. The remarkably patient Leonard is always the steward because Sheldon won’t partake if the elements are not prepared correctly [diced, not shredded], or if they have been sacrificed to an idol [purchased at the wrong place]. They argue about who gets the best seat. They argue about who gets the last dumpling. They argue about which movie they’ll watch. The same problems Paul had with the church in Corinth. The same problems we’ve had ever since.

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.)