ALL THE DAYS OF MY LIFE

[Well, it happened again. For some reason Blogger decides to disappear what I'm working on and I have to start over.]

 

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

 
Sunday’s worship focus was the 23^rd Psalm. It reminded me of an old preacher story about a little boy in the Sunday School class of a rather stern maiden-lady, Miss Murphy. One night his parents heard him praying Psalm 23: Surely good Miss Murphy will follow me all the days of my life.
 
My Sunday School teacher has followed me all the days of my life. East Park Church in Indianapolis doesn’t exist anymore, but Mrs. Darringer does.
 
Mrs. Darringer was a formidable woman. Like Miss Murphy, I don’t think she had a first name. Even her husband referred to her as Mrs. Darringer.
 
As our pastor, Paul Mallory, preached very helpfully on Psalm 23 last Sunday, comparing it to a run-away truck ramp, an opportunity to slow down beside still waters, as I approach closer to that valley of the shadow myself, I was renewed by the knowledge that I’m in Psalm 23, because I’m in the Bible story. Because of Mrs. Darringer.
 
The Bible is not God’s book of theology or philosophy. It’s not God’s book of helpful hints for healthy living. It is not God’s science book. Theology and philosophy and helpful hints are all a part of it, but not in and for themselves. They are there only as a part of God’s story. The Bible is God’s STORY book. The great good news is that we, you and I, we are a part of God’s story.
 
Salvation is neither through beliefs nor works. We are saved when we stop trying to write our own story and become a part of God’s story.
 
When I was nine years old, Mrs. Darringer gave me my first Bible. In it she wrote “For Johnny McFarland.” Underneath she wrote, “From Mrs. Darringer.”
 
The one person I knew who had the authority to put my name in the story had done so, and just to be sure everyone understood, she added hers as well. My name is still in there. I’m sure Mrs. Darringer is no longer in that formidable body, but her name is still in that book, along with mine.
 
With you in the story,
Johnny & Mrs. Darringer

 

 
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/}
 
I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.
 
I have nothing to do with those double under-linings Blogger puts into the body of these posts, randomly, it seems, to lead you to advertisements, and I wish they would stop that.
 

 

 

FUNERAL WORDS

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

 

{Once more I must apologize for the length, twice what it should be. If you’re pressed for time, skip to the last three paragraphs.}
 
I was willing to accept the $10 the county would pay for the graveside service for the “homeless bum” who died, without identification, while passing through town, but I was attracted more by the honor.
 
I arrived at the cemetery at the appointed time. The funeral director and the sheriff were chatting beside the hearse. I walked up to them. “Oh, he’s over there,” the funeral director said, motioning in the direction of a very plain coffin suspended over a grave. He went on talking with the sheriff. I wandered over to the grave. I opened up my Book of Worship and read the entire funeral ritual, aloud. I was the only speaker.
 
Pastoring in a retirement community, Suzanne Schaefer-Coates has done a lot of funerals over the years. Sometime back she conducted a discussion group on Facebook about whether it’s appropriate to have an “open” period in the funeral/memorial service for people to share their memories of the deceased.
 
Those of us in the winter years have a vested interest in this discussion, since our own funerals are not that far away. We hope that there will be more folks at our funeral than a marginal pastor who inserts “homeless bum” in the funeral ritual whenever the decedent is to be named.
 
Any of us who have opened up a funeral service to the congregation, or been to one where that was done, know there are a lot of potential pitfalls. There are people who want to talk, whether or not they have anything to say. They use acquaintance with the deceased to talk about themselves.
 
In most of the years of my ministry, open sharing wasn’t even an option. The minister conducted the funeral, period. He [and it was almost always a “he” in those days] was the only one who talked.
 
In fact, in seminary we were encouraged not to talk about the deceased at all! The reasoning of our seminary professors was that a funeral is a worship service and it is about God and eternal life and such and not about the person who died. That sounded right, but it didn’t feel right, so I didn’t buy into it, not very far. I’m sorry, though, that in my early years I too often gave scant mention to the life of the person we were memorializing.
 
At some point I read, in one of those very helpful preacher periodicals that don’t exist anymore, a simple little funeral formula: Say a word about God, a word about Christ, and a word about the deceased. That worked for me.
 
If you’ve been to seminary, you don’t have much problem saying a word about God or one about Christ. It’s sometimes hard, though, to say a word about the deceased. Pastors don’t often get homeless folks no one knows, but we often have to conduct funerals for people we barely know. Twice in my career I had to do funerals for long-time members within the first 3 days after I had moved into town.  I’ve done funerals for children whose families never brought them to church.
 
Mourners usually want to talk, share their memories with the pastor prior to the funeral. I have always done my best to contact everyone I could who knew the deceased, to listen privately to their memories, to learn where the contradictions were [so that I didn’t extol someone in a way that half of the family would think inaccurate] and to learn what the themes of that person’s life were. Then I tried to pull those memories together in a coherent way in the service.
 
I have no problems with sharing the service with others who are designated beforehand, some family members or friends who are selected by the chief mourners, but I do think it’s best not just to open the service up to anyone who decides on the spur of the moment that they would like to say something. I’ve been to “open mike” funerals where words were spoken that hurt good grieving instead of helping it.
 
Helen and I happened to be back in Sterling, Illinois, taking our granddaughter to see a friend, when we saw Eunice Snider’s obit in the online edition of the Charleston newspaper. We drove down to LaSalle from Sterling, even though we had no funeral clothes with us. [1] When we walked into the church, Art asked me if I would be a “sharer” in the service, as their former pastor, who had done their son’s funeral, along with Max Chapman, as a long-time friend, and Susie Hay, who had shared a career with Eunice. That strikes me as a good approach, a few people selected ahead of time who can speak to different aspects of the person’s life.  
 
The main person who should speak at a funeral, though, is you. At George Paterson’s memorial service, which featured a lot of jazz, the kind of worship for which George was so well-known, Pastor Barry Tritle read a message George had left for us. “Don’t burden yourselves unnecessarily about my passing.” George lived his life as hospital chaplain, and as a chaplain to everyone who knew him. Even in death, he was still teaching us how to grieve well.
 
I’m not saying everyone should leave a message, but in case you’re wondering, it’s okay. Write your own obit if you wish; that’s okay, too. Old friends Pat and Lyndon Dean recently asked me if they could print my poem, “I’ll Walk the Last Mile with You,” on their funeral bulletins, because they were going to talk details with their pastor. Talking with your pastor and your family ahead of time is an excellent idea. Tell your pastor who you want to speak at your service, and if there’s someone you want to be sure does NOT speak, tell him/her that, too.
 
So, here is the list of those I want to speak at my funeral… oh, wait, I’ll probably outlive them all… so if there’s ANYBODY who wants to say something… even a marginal pastor to homeless bums…
 
John Robert McFarland
 
1] I’m not exactly sure what “funeral clothes” are anymore. I’ve been to funerals in recent times when I was the only person wearing a shirt with a collar, and where at least one pallbearer wore shorts so low that he must have been training to be a plumber.
 
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/}

 

I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A COUNSELING GENIUS

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

Karen [1] came to see me first. Her husband, Dan, came a few days later. I had married them a couple of years before. Apparently my pre-wedding counseling hadn’t been very effective. Neither had my warranty checks.
 
I usually started pre-marriage counseling by asking, “What do you like most about him/her?” One prospective bride answered, “He doesn’t hit me.” I did a lot of counseling, but I don’t think I ever felt sadder in a counseling session than I did right then.
 
That wasn’t the case with Karen and Dan, though. They were bright and happy and in love. Each had a whole long list of things s/he liked about the other. They didn’t have to get married. They weren’t trying to get away from something else. It was a good match.
 
In pre-marriage counseling I always talked with the couple about seven areas of problem potential:
 
1] Money: What is one person’s luxury may be the other’s necessity. Make sure you understand the differences and work them out before you get married.
 
2] Sex: What strengthens love is good; what weakens it is not good. Neither use nor abuse is love.
 
3] In-laws: You aren’t marrying just each other. You are getting new families and new traditions. But remember where your primary commitment is.
 
4] Religion: What does the other believe/practice that is different from your beliefs and practices? Can you live with those? If not, what are you going to do about it?
 
5] Children: How many? When? How and by whom will they be raised?
 
6] Housework:  Who does what?
 
7] Communication. When you have disagreements, how will you resolve them?
 
The idea, of course, was to work out each of these areas BEFORE the marriage. Through the years I learned that that wasn’t very effective, because they didn’t pay attention. They were so eager to get married that they would say anything they thought I wanted to hear and assumed their love [or need] was so great that they could handle anything that came up. That hardly ever worked.
 
So I began to do warranty checks: thirty days, 6 months, one year. I would go to their home and we would run through the list again. Every time I heard some variation of: “We thought we had this worked through, but it turns out that…” The unresolved problem that came up most often in warranty checks was money.
 
Karen’s and Dan’s warranty checks had gone well, so I was surprised when Karen came to see me. I was pleased, though, because it gave me a chance to play with their one-year-old.
 
“The problem is, Dan wants another baby. I know he does. And we just can’t afford one now.” “Have you talked with him about this, the way we did in communication practice?” “I don’t have to; I can tell.”
 
Then Dan came. “I know Karen wants another baby,” he said, “but we just can’t afford one now.” “How do you know?” “I just know.”
 
“Tell you what,” I said. “Simply talk to each other the way I taught you. Trust me, it will work.”
 
Another thing I learned about counseling over the years, unfortunately late in my career, is that I’m really bad at it, for three reasons: 1] I’m gullible. I believe anything anyone tells me, but a counselor needs to be able to smell it when something is B.S. 2] I want people to like me, but a counselor can’t worry about that. In fact, if folks like you, it probably means you’re letting them skate by without really dealing with the problem. 3] From the time I was a child, whenever anyone told me of a problem, I thought it was MY responsibility to fix it, but a counselor needs to help people fix things for themselves, not do it for them.
 
Karen and Dan didn’t see any of my counseling deficiencies, though. They talked to each other, as I told them to. They told everyone that I was a marriage counseling genius.
 
John Robert McFarland
 
1] Karen & Dan are not their real names.
 
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 and infrequent “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/}