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/}
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/}
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/}
