SAYING SOMETHING TO SPRING TO MAKE IT MAD

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

The telephone rang on Sunday afternoon, as it often does in a parsonage.

“Why did you say in church this morning that we shouldn’t pray for my son-in-law?” the voice demanded.

“Well, Bernice, I just wanted to do something nasty to you and make you mad,” I replied.

There was a long pause. Then she said, “I thought it was something like that.”

I had recognized the voice because I was expecting the call. Earl had already telephoned to warn me. Bernice had called him and wanted to know why I had said during Joys and Concerns in the worship service that we should not pray for her son-in-law.

Prayer requests during Joys & Concerns come in a wide range. In the same minute someone asks for prayers for someone badly injured in a car accident, someone else will ask for prayers for a paper cut. It’s all prayer-worthy, but discombobulating. Some people get very specific in their requests. We visited in a church where J&C took a lot of time. At one point the man behind us whispered to his wife, “Was that the left ventricle or the right ventricle we are supposed to pray for?”

Bernice didn’t come to worship regularly, but she had telephoned me about her son-in-law. He lived in another state and had a paper cut type of problem. We didn’t make distinctions, though. If someone asked for prayer, we prayed.

I assured her we would put him on the prayer list and pray for him in worship, which we had done for three weeks before Bernice showed up at church. When I opened Joys & Concerns that morning, she asked for prayer for him. I pointed out that he was in the printed list in the bulletin and that we had been praying for him for several weeks and would continue to do so.

Earl said Bernice had already telephoned several others in the congregation, before she called him, all of whom had told her what he told her: “No, he didn’t say we should NOT pray for him. He said we had been praying for him and would keep on doing it.” Bernice was not deterred.

I like people with problems, in part because there is no other type of person to like. I have trouble, though, liking problem people, and in every church I pastored, there was a problem person or two… or ten.

People with problems are a possibility. You might actually be of some help to them. Problem people, though, are help-less. They are sure they are already right about everything. To them, it’s always someone else who is the problem. They are those “who have no need of a physician.”

We went on to have a nice conversation, Bernice and I, because her world had been restored to normalcy. She had been proved right. To anyone else, my stated desire to “do something nasty to make her mad” would have created a problem. To Bernice, it had solved a problem. I was back in her good graces.

I’m not sure I want to recommend this as a general communication method. I doubt that it would do Barack Obama much good to go on Fox News and say, “Yes, I was born in Kenya and I’m a secret Muslim socialist Nazi communist who hates white people.” Then his detractors would say, “See, he’s a liar, too,” not even noticing the contradiction.

You can’t help problem people, because they won’t acknowledge that they are the problem. So you might as well have some fun.

Which is what I did on the first day of spring, when it was snowing yet again, and we were getting ready for another week-end of below zero [F] lows and single digit highs. I said something nasty to spring, just as I did to Bernice. But I prayed for spring, too, just as I did for Bernice… and her son-in-law.

It worked. We were able to walk in sunshine in the park yesterday afternoon, at 50 degrees.

John Robert McFarland

jmcfarland1721@charter.net

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!

I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.

Crossing to Safety--a poem

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

On Sunday mornings

I pray for preachers

“The goodly fellowship

of the prophets”

In whose ranks

I once stood tall

Now I mumble

My few words of hope

As Solieri

Gave thanks

For his few notes

That Mozart

the enfant terrible

eclipsed with one flourishing

arpeggio

I do not envy

Those who stand now

To preach

But lay my mumbled prayers

Down in the mud

That they might cross

Not even knowing they are there

To safety on the mountains

Where their feet are beautiful

John Robert McFarland

jmcfarland1721@charter.net

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where people are Yoopers [UPers] and life is defined by winter even in the summer!

You don’t have to bookmark or favorite the CIW URL to return here. Just Google Christ In Winter and it will show up at the top of the page.

I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.

RIP, Joe Frazier

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

            Joe Frazier died yesterday, March 28.

            Joe was the baritone in The Chad Mitchell Trio, and the vicar at St. Columba’s Episcopal Church in Big Bear, CA. We were working on a book together, although most of the work was me cracking the whip to try to get him to write, without much success.

            Helen and I were in Oakland City, Indiana, there for my 60 year high school class reunion. In the afternoon before the evening banquet, we turned down the narrow gravel road to go see the little hard-scrabble farm where I grew up. We had made the turn before we realized it wasn’t really narrow anymore, or even a road. There was just a hard scraped, totally barren, yellow wasteland where the farm fields of the Steeles and Heathmans and Wades had once been. We topped the little rise to our farm. It was gone. Just gone. The big maple trees, the orchard, the barn, the chicken house, the pond. Only the house remained, abandoned and neglected, holes in the roof, trees growing out of the windows. The entire neighborhood had been strip-mined.

            We managed to turn around and get back to the road that would take us to Forsythe Methodist Church. It was a hot day, especially in the open part of the Forsythe cemetery, where my parents are buried. Since we live 750 miles from Oakland City, their grave stone had been set in our absence. Backwards. Every other stone in the cemetery faced west. My parents faced east, looking across the field to our farm, except there was nothing there now. The strip mines had come right up behind the cemetery. Looking the wrong way, at nothing. I don’t think I had never felt so sad.

            We were driving out, past the church building, when my phone rang. Helen answered it, as she always does when I am driving. She listened for a moment and then said, urgently, “Pull over in the shade. It’s Joe Frazier, of The Chad Mitchell Trio. He wants to talk with you.”

            Joe had read my book of stories about my ministry, THE STRANGE CALLING. He wanted to write something similar about his own life and wondered if I would help him. I said I would, but how could we get together, since he lived in California? Well, the trio was going to perform in Wisconsin at Labor Day, not too far from the UP. We could get together then. But they wouldn’t be there long, had to leave right after to start a performance cruise from NYC up the Canadian coast. Helen could hear only my side of the conversation, but when she did, she said, “Hot damn, we’re going on a cruise.” It was the perfect call, the perfect invitation, at the perfect time.

            The CMT performed formally several times on the cruise, but I enjoyed most the personal conversations, and the informal times late in the evening, when we sat around, Paul Prestipino and Bob Hefferan and Ron Greenstein and anybody else with a guitar or banjo picking, Chad Mitchell and Mike Kobluk and Joe singing, the rest of us humming along. Joe and I led a Sunday morning worship service together, him doing the liturgy and me preaching, typical of an Episcopalian and a Methodist.

            We first saw The CMT when they came to Indiana State University in Terre Haute, when I was the Methodist campus minister there. Others will say that The Kingston Trio or Peter, Paul, and Mary were the best musical group of what Dave Van Ronk called “the great folk scare” of the 1960s, but for us, it was always The Chad Mitchell Trio, later just The Mitchell Trio, when Chad left to pursue a solo career and an unknown singer named John Denver replaced him.

            It was the 1960s, and Joe got into the drug scene, dropping out of the trio and of life in general. I think it was Tennessee Williams, in whose pool Joe used to go swimming, who recognized something in Joe that he had not quite realized himself and said to him, “Have you ever considered the priesthood?” He went to Yale Divinity School, was ordained an Episcopal priest, and practiced “the high calling” right up to the day of his death. I’m pretty sure he’s the only professional musician with whom I have discussed the theology of Karl Rahner. He was of the “radical priest” school, protesting every injustice, advocating for the poor and neglected and abandoned.

            We’ll never get that book written. I regret that. Joe had so many great stories to tell, of taking Pete Seeger’s daughter to her first arrest, of demonstrating for justice with Yip Harburg, who wrote “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” of being in Miriam Makeba’s dressing room when a couple of South African diplomats, in the apartheid days, said they hoped she would come home soon and she said, “Why? Do you need another maid?”

            Helen and I decided not to say anything to the gravestone people. Mother never saw things the way other people did. It’s okay for her to be eternally looking in the other direction. But I’m eternally grateful that Joe Frazier, another one who looked in a different direction, called that day.

            The CMT introduced almost all the songs of the great Tom Paxton. In his words, “Come along, won’t you come along home now, night is fallin’ and the path is steep. Come along, won’t you come along home now, water’s runnin’ and the river is deep.”

John Robert McFarland

jmcfarland1721@charter.net

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!

I am able to email CIW posts only occasionally now. I rely on my readers to check the website, http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/  once in a while. You don’t have to bookmark or favorite the CIW URL to return here, though. Just Google Christ In Winter and it will show up at the top of the page.

I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.

Learning to Meditate-a poem

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

Old age is the perfect

Time to learn

To meditate

It requires sitting still

For long, long periods

And saying Ohmmm

Whenever you arise

John Robert McFarland

jmcfarland1721@charter.net

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!

I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.

THE PEANUT BUTTER ANGEL

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

[I wrote this seven years ago, when we lived on Riverview Drive in Sterling, IL.]

            My wife is not God for the little creatures that come to the magnolia tree just outside our living room window, since she did not create them, but she is an angel, The Peanut Butter Angel.

            It’s been a bitterly cold month, so Helen has taken on the messy and frigid task of smearing peanut butter on pinecones, rolling them in birdseed, and hanging them from branches on the magnolia. A bevy of birdies comes each day to feast–cardinals and sparrows and chickadees and juncos and grackles. Actually, I don’t know what a grackle is, but those black birds that come look grackly. They are augmented, of course, by a regiment of squirrels. Our eight-year-old grandson claims he can tell them apart and has named each of them.

            Jumpy and Hoppy and Flighty and the others may have seen The PB Angel hang pinecones on the tree, but that’s the most they know about her. Even then, they probably did not make the connection between this heavily bundled and muffled earthbound thing, so different from themselves, and the good stuff that appears for them to eat. It just appears, like manna, and they eat it and, I’m sure, are glad.

            I’m not sure about the reality of other angels, the kind many people accept as heavenly beings who somehow look over us and look out for us human beings. Since I have seen The PB Angel at work, however, I am more inclined to believe there may be other sorts of angels at work as well.

            Perhaps my understanding of the work of heavenly angels is no greater than the birds’ comprehension of The PB Angel. Maybe, when heavenly angels hear us humans laugh at the creatures with “birdbrains,” they laugh and call us “humanbrains,” with the same dismissal of our mental abilities. Perhaps the gap between humanbrains and angels is as great as the gap between birdbrains and humans.

            If heavenly angels exist and are at work, it makes no difference whether I believe in them or not. They’ll do their angelic thing just because they are angels. The birds don’t have to believe in The PB Angel to get her to look after them. The PB Angel does her thing just because she’s an angel.

John Robert McFarland

jmcfarland1721@charter.net

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where people are Yoopers [UPers] and life is defined by winter even in the summer!

You don’t have to bookmark or favorite the CIW URL to return here. Just Google Christ In Winter and it will show up at the top of the page.

I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.

THE UNION FOREVER

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

The Union Forever

I never knew my grandfather, Elmer Pond, my mother’s father. In1928, he died in a coal mine cave-in. He was a volunteer organizer for the UMW [United Mine Workers, not United Methodist Women], advocating for greater mine safety, and was often harassed by “goon squads” hired by the mine owners. Many people thought that the cave-in that killed him was not an accident. I grew up hearing, “Whatever you do, don’t go down in the mines.”

My grandfather belonged to two unions, the UMW and The Methodist Episcopal Church. He advocated for better working conditions in both. He wanted people to be safe in both, to know the love of God wherever they were.

One of the agonies of old age is the realization that you can work your whole life to help people have better lives, but at the end of the day, there are those who will try to undermine that work, to take away all the gains that have been made on behalf of people over profits.

March 25, 1911, the year after my mother was born, 146 women, including two fourteen-year-old girls, lost their lives in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. They could not escape the fire because managers had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits. One result of the fire was the formation of the LGWU, the Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, combining the voices of all the garment workers to insist on better working conditions.

The same year, 2719 coal miners died in mine accidents. [1] The United Mine Workers union was formed in 1890, but was ineffective. Thousands of coal miners were killed every year. The Triangle Fire and the unnecessary deaths of so many women brought new impetus to the union impulse and the necessity of bargaining about working conditions.

Coal mine safety is still an issue. 29 miners were killed in the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster in WV. Massey Energy, owner of the mine, had often been cited and fined for safety violations prior to the deaths of those 29 miners. Don Blankenship, the CEO of Massey Energy, said in a radio interview following the disaster, “Violations are...a normal part of the mining process… There are violations at every coal mine in America.” [2]

BP’s Deep Water Horizon oil rig accident in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers because management insisted on unsafe procedures.

Last year Governor Scott Walker and the WI legislature passed legislation that prohibits public union workers from negotiating about working conditions.

One of my early colleagues was a very conservative minister who had grown up in Ft. Branch, IN, the home of Emge Meating Packing. “Old Oscar Emge was so hurt when his workers voted to unionize,” he said, “because he always took such good care of them. He just didn’t understand that people need not just to be cared for but to have a voice in what happens to them.”

I never knew my grandfather, but I belong to one of the same unions he did. It’s called the church. There we advocate for better working conditions. The best working condition is to be surrounded by the love of God, the God who loves us all, and values humans above profits. “You cannot serve both God and money.” Who said that, anyway? Oh, yes, our union leader.

John Robert McFarland

1] The deadliest year in coal mining history was 1907, with 3242 deaths.

2] http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2010/04/the_massey_mine_disaster_isnt.html

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!

John Robert McFarland

jmcfarland1721@charter.net

I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.

ELLIPSES-a poem

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

There are days…

…sometimes longer than the day

I sprawled small in the waiting room…

…when I am enough like myself

that it makes me sad.

There are other days…                                          

…sometimes shorter than the day

I went up in the little airplane…

when I stand outside myself

and wonder…

John Robert McFarland

jmcfarland1721@charter.net

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where people are Yoopers [UPers] and life is defined by winter even in the summer!

You don’t have to bookmark or favorite the CIW URL to return here. Just Google Christ In Winter and it will show up at the top of the page.

I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.

"Life begins when your husband dies"

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

Helen and I were chatting with Barbara after church. Well, it was mostly Helen and Barbara chatting, with me standing there.

“Life doesn’t really begin until your husband dies,” Barbara said.

Then she remembered that I was right there. She was slightly flustered, but not really embarrassed. After all, she was telling the truth.

As Helen has famously said, “Most men enter assisted living the day they get married.”

Barbara was born almost a century ago. She spent most of her life assisting her husband’s life. That’s what women did then. [That’s what a lot of them do now.] When Barbara’s husband died, she got a chance to live her own life. She wasn’t glad her husband’s life was over. She was glad hers had started.

I saw a sign on the street recently [via Facebook]. It said, “The beginning is near.”

I’m not going to say, “You’d better enjoy today because you don’t know what tomorrow will bring.” We all already know that. But whatever tomorrow brings, it won’t be just a loss, just an ending. It will also be a beginning.

It might not be the beginning we want, but it will be the one we have.

Mourn the losses. They are real. They deserve grief. But live the new life, too.

John Robert McFarland

jmcfarland1721@charter.net

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where people are Yoopers [UPers] and life is defined by winter even in the summer!

You don’t have to bookmark or favorite the CIW URL to return here. Just Google Christ In Winter and it will show up at the top of the page.

I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.

THE FOURTH STRANGER

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

We meet four strangers in the course of life. Whether we make friends or enemies of these strangers determines whether we live in the joy of wholeness or in the anguish of fragmentation.

In our early weeks and months of living, we don’t know the difference between ourselves and the world around us. That is especially true with our mothers. We grow to birth inside of them. We are not separate individuals. When we are first born, we still feel like we are a part of our mother’s body, especially as we nurse. We feel like we are a part of the rest of the world, too. We can’t tell the difference between where we end and our crib begins. 

Gradually, though, we become aware that we and the world are not one. We are separate from everything else. Our skin is a dividing line, between us and all else.

That is especially true as we encounter other people. Brothers and sisters or playmates want the same attention and the same toys that we want. That is a rude awakening. We are not the whole world. We have to deal with the stranger called Otherness.

Then we encounter Mortality and Sexuality.

It is said that we learn when we are in grade school that others die, but in high school, we learn that we shall die. That is one of the reasons for teen suicide, meeting the stranger called Mortality. Even though a child has many years of life ahead, the thought of death is so depressing that, paradoxically, he or she kills him or herself to avoid dying. On the other hand, there is the conventional wisdom that teens think they will live forever, that nothing can kill them. That is why they drive and drink so recklessly, and take so many other chances. But they take those chances not because they believe that they are invulnerable, but to try to prove that they are.

Thankfully, most of us don’t kill ourselves as teens, but the stranger called Mortality keeps looking over our shoulder, making us uneasy the rest of our lives.

            At about the same time, Sexuality comes along. We are having a good time, playing games, going to school, teasing girls about having cooties or claiming that “Girls rule, boys drool,” when suddenly hormones jump onto us and turn us into sex maniacs.

            Then there is The Fourth Stranger, the one who can approach us at any time, but who chooses most often those times when our lives are being turned upside down by the appearance of the other strangers, Otherness and Sexuality and Mortality.

St. Augustine talked about “a God-shaped void within us.” John Wesley talked about “prevenient [preventing] grace.” Whatever image you use, we don’t know any better how to accept The Fourth Stranger than we do the other three. We sense that strange presence, though, in various ways. We can deal with The Fourth Stranger by denial or superficiality or hostility, methods we use with the first three strangers, or we can try to make friends.

For those of us who want to bloom before we are planted [1] for the last time, this is our moment. This is the time that Mortality has quit lurking in the background and has slipped up close. The very closeness of Mortality gives us a chance to make friends with the whole strange bunch. We have a final chance to get whole.

Making friends with The Fourth Stranger, at any time of life, makes it possible for us to be friends with the other three strangers as well.

Do we see strangers as enemies, or can we accept them as friends?

John Robert McFarland

jmcfarland1721@charter.net

1] I was once extolling our friend, Walt Wagener. “He is such a perfect example,” I said, “of blooming where he’s planted.” Helen replied, “I want to bloom before I’m planted.”

I am grateful to John Dunne, SJ, for his book—I can’t remember the title—that introduced me to the concept of “The 3 strangers.” I added the fourth.

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where people are Yoopers [UPers] and life is defined by winter even in the summer!

You don’t have to bookmark or favorite the CIW URL to return here. Just Google Christ In Winter and it will show up at the top of the page.

I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.

Defined by Winter

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

Fred Skaggs says that he can’t look at snow for more than three days in a row without seeing a therapist. He doesn’t even care if it is his therapist; he just has to see somebody’s therapist. [It would be fun to slip in an albino therapist on him.] So he asked for an explanation of the tag line of these CIW mutterings: “…where life is defined by winter even in the summer.” He says he thinks others might like to know, too.

When you retire, you can live any place you wish, and grandchildren are more important than anything else in your life, and if only one of your children has produced grandchildren, you can just trail them around. To Mason City, IA, the “River City” of Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man.” To Sterling, IL. Finally, the coup de grace, to Iron Mountain, MI.

We moved to Iron Mountain on July 11. It was a warm and lovely day, typical of Iron Mountain summers, high in the 70s, low in the 50s. We did not know that on July 10 the last of the snow had melted because the temperature finally got above freezing. Nor did we know that the snow and cold would return on July 12.

I should have known. I read Sports Illustrated. There had been an interview in SI with NFL coach, Steve Mariucci, who grew up in Iron Mountain. [1] They asked him what folks in Iron Mountain did in summer. He said, “If it doesn’t snow that day, we have a picnic.”

But on July 11, there were bright flowing hanging baskets of summer flowers on every porch, and people had turned their garages into summer homes, complete with sofas and TV sets. They just leave the doors up, for, unlike the rest of the UP, where people are called Yoopers [UPers], Iron Mountain has no problem with mosquitoes or other bitey bugs. We have about 50 thousand bats that live in an old mine shaft. At dusk they come out and fan out across the town. A bat can eat up to one thousand mosquitoes in an hour. Our bats have a comity agreement, assigning specific bats to specific yards. Ours is Walter.

We learned that the flowers were all in hanging baskets to keep the deer and rabbits from getting at them. We have as many deer as mosquitoes, but they are too big for the bats to eat. That first summer, our daughter planted a rose bush. She went around the corner of her house to get the hose to water it. By the time she got back around the corner, the rose bush was gone. [As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.]

The hanging baskets come from about two dozen temporary summer greenhouses that are set up in tents or parking lots, so folks can do drive-by planting. UP here you don’t have enough summer to plant seeds and wait for flowers to grow. They would be eaten by the deer, anyway. You just buy a hanging pot with the flowers already blooming and put it up and stare at it.

Summer is so short here, and beautiful, that you don’t want to waste a single precious minute of it. The first day above freezing, you get the lawn chairs, shovel off the deck, and start summering. You know that winter is looking over your shoulder.

So, on this first day of spring, where March is just February under an assumed name, and our average temperature the February just past was 5.4 degrees [F], and the city snow plow truck just went by, and we’re slated for below zero temperatures again this weekend, when we’ll celebrate Helen’s March 6 birthday because we’ve waited until the weather was better for our Chicago daughter to come, I’ll remind you that Iron Mountain is where “Life is defined by winter, even in the summer.”

John Robert McFarland

jmcfarland1721@charter.net

1] Folks here are highly, and rightly, proud of former Iron Mountain High School teammates Mariucci and Tom Izzo, MSU basketball coach.

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!

I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.

NINETEEN YEARS-A poem

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

My father died at the age of ninety-six

The age I shall be in nineteen years

It does not sound like long

But nineteen years ago

I carried bookcases

Up long flight of stairs

Alone

Walked five miles

Hit a home run

Carried children on my shoulders

And churches on my back

Much can happen

And much can change

In nineteen years.

John Robert McFarland

jmcfarland1721@charter.net

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!

I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.

LATE MARCH SNOWFALL

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

“Wash me and I will be whiter

than snow.”

Surely there has been enough

snow to cover all our sins

from avarice to zenophobia

including the misspelling

of xenophobia.

Scramblers, gamblers

midnight ramblers.

When the covered sins

have frozen hard 

as driveway concrete,

or blue-streaked ice cream,

only then can hearts be thawed

and spirits revivified,

so much that the hidden drive

is seen between the piles

of blanketed sins

and dog doo

which are much the same.

Then some personage

who shall remain unnamed

but whose mother

obviously never married

his father

has to go and sin again.

John Robert McFarland

jmcfarland1721@charter.net

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!

I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.

SERVICEBERRY TIME

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter…

The serviceberry bush/tree is basically a northern plant, from Maine to Iowa. It has beautiful spring buds and bright red and orange leaves in the autumn. Its berries are important to plants and animals and can be used by humans to make jellies and jams.

Oh, and you can’t get married or baptized until it blooms.

If you lived in Maine or Iowa or in-between back in the day, when roads were dirt tracks, or mud tracks, or snow-covered tracks, you were shut-in from the rest of the world from November to May. But when the serviceberry began to bloom, it meant the minister could get through. Church services could be held again, not just Sunday morning gatherings, but baptisms for those born over the winter, and weddings for those who had started babies over the winter. It was a time of rejoicing.

The roads are better now. Folks have more money, so they can afford to pay a preacher to live in their midst all through the year. We don’t have to wait until the serviceberry blooms for baptisms or weddings or memorial services. [Although in the UP we often have to wait for the ground to thaw for burials.]

The snow is melting, though. Soon the serviceberry will poke its spring buds out. That means it is time to rejoice.

John Robert McFarland

The place of winter mentioned above is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where people are identified as Yoopers, and life is defined by winter, even in the summer.

I tweet occasionally as yooper1721.

It Will Not Be in the Morning-a poem

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

It Will Not Be in the Morning

It will not be in the morning when I rise

Nor will that be the time I fly away

But when the night is dark and deep

that time of staring but not seeing

as in a stand of rooted pines

I shall slip away

between tall trees

A new-born fawn will see me go

John Robert McFarland

The place of winter mentioned above is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer.

Room in the Garage

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

We are a one car family again. It’s like being newly-weds. Slow, forgetful, decrepit newly-weds.

At least it was like being newly-weds in 1959, when you were lucky if one person had a car to bring into a marriage. Now it is more likely that each person brings a car to the union.

We became a two-car family very quickly when our babies came. A preacher is gone all day in a car, so a mother needs another car to take the babies to the doctor and to get groceries. Two cars was the minimum necessary when the babies got drivers licenses and Helen commuted to work. Our two cars were usually not new, and never expensive, [except that all cars are too expensive] but we were a two-car family for over fifty years. Now we are not.

We are enjoying our new status, sort of. It gives us a reason to talk to each other. “I’m thinking about taking the car to have coffee with Paul next week. Will you need it?” “No, I’ll need to go to the grocery some time, but I’ll probably do it this week.”

That’s why we sold our “Inferno Red” PT Cruiser to our daughter; we really don’t need it anymore. We rarely go out unless we’re together. And Katie does need it. They have three drivers in the family, one a teen-ager, with another only a few months away from a license.

It was time for us to go to one car. Still, it seems strange. Part of it is that I miss PT. We’ve had it for thirteen years. It was “my” car. I knew it was always there, any time I wanted it, in all its Inferno Red splendor. [We paid an extra $200 to get that paint.] Part of the strangeness is the realization that our Cream [interior] and Crimson [exterior] 2012 Ford Fusion is probably our last car. When it has run its allotted miles, we’ll become a no-car family. 

We spend so much time building up our supply of stuff. Just when it seems we’ve got all we need, for whatever need arises, it becomes obvious that those needs aren’t going to arise now. We have to start ridding ourselves of the stuff we spent so much time accumulating. That’s strange. That’s life.

There is so much room in the garage now. That’s freedom.

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!

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SING ME NOT

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

There is probably no one else left alive who remembers my night of shame in Mineral City, IN, but I still turn red and hang my head whenever I hear “Pass me not, O gentle savior…”

It was 1958, and I was riding the Solsberry [1] Methodist Circuit while a student at IU {Indiana University}. I was riding a green 1951 Chevy instead of a horse, like the original circuit riders, but the circuit was spread out far enough, 16 to 35 miles from Bloomington, that I could get to only two churches on Sunday morning. I preached at the third one in the evening.

Of course, none of the three wanted only early or evening services, so the first Sunday of the month I went to Koleen and Mineral in the morning and Solsberry in the evening. The second Sunday I managed Mineral and Solsberry in the morning and Koleen at evening. Third Sunday was Solsberry and Koleen and then Mineral. Fourth Sunday was… oh, I don’t know. How could anybody know? The people didn’t know the schedule, either, but all three churches had Sunday School, so everyone came for that, and if the preacher showed up, some would stay for worship, too. Twice in the three years I rode that circuit I went to the wrong church. The schedule was so confusing that we didn’t even try to have services on a fifth Sunday. It is only partially true that I proposed by saying, “A fifth Sunday is coming up so why don’t we get married?”

Evening services were not well attended, since most folks couldn’t remember which Sunday they had 7:00 pm worship, and Mineral was the worst. [2] In the morning 50 or 60 folk would turn out, but we rarely had more than 20 for an evening service.

So I did what stupid young preachers do. I dared them. I vowed if they ever got 50 or more folks to come to an evening service, I’d sing a solo. Now why in the world I thought getting to hear me sing a solo would motivate anyone to evangelism I have no idea; that’s the “stupid” in “stupid young” above. I wasn’t worried, though. There was no way they’d ever get 50 for an evening service.

But because I was their pastor, young and stupid and skinny though I be, they assumed it was something they ought to do. I counted twice to be sure. Not just 50, but 51, not even including babies.

I had a decent enough bass voice, but a very limited range, like two and ½ notes. I did not know that, because my roommate then, a friend already from back home in Oakland City, was Jim Barrett, an IU music major. When he was available, Jim went along to services with me to play piano. When we sang, he just transposed the music to go wherever my voice went.

I chose “Pass me not” that night. I sounded so good on that song with Jim on the piano bench. I didn’t know he was transposing; I just thought I was getting better. But Jim wasn’t on the bench that night. Instead it was the 90-year-old lady with the good heart but trembling hands. She knew nothing about transposing.

I tried every key, including Q and Z. I switched octaves, almost note by note. I switched clefs. I turned the book upside down. I turned myself upside down. Nothing worked. It was a disaster. If you went to that church today, I suspect that page 145 has been ripped from all the hymnals.

The people were kind, though. They concentrated on how nice it was to have so many at worship, instead of how pathetic the preacher was. They always did that. They were uncommonly generous. I thought I was supposed to be perfect, but they knew I was just young and stupid, and they made allowances accordingly. They knew I was doing the best I could, within my limited range. As I think about those kind hearts and gentle people, I sing a little solo: “I could have loved you better, didn’t mean to be unkind. You know that was the last thing on my mind.” [3]

Yes, they did know that, even then.

JRMcF

1] I thought Solsberry was just a misspelling of Salisbury. It was forty years later, when I pastored the church at Arcola, IL and met Jim Cummings, that I learned that the town was named for his grandfather, Sol, and the wild berry patches on his land on those Hoosier hills.

2] It was officially Mineral City, but a church and three houses don’t really constitute a city, so we always just said Mineral.

3] Words and music by the great Tom Paxton, but I always hear the voice of Joe Frazier of The Chad Mitchell Trio doing that song, even when I sing it. Joe doesn’t need Paul Prestipino and Ron Greenberg and Bob Hefferan to transpose.

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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CENTRAL-A Poem

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

My great-aunt Anna was like God.

She was Central in our town,

the telephone switchboard operator.

You had to go through her to talk

to someone, anyone, else.

The switchboard was in her living room,

so she could get up,

even in the wee hours,

if someone had to make connections.

She knew things

that no one else knew.

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!

Waiting for the Once-Moment

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

One of my heroes is Aunt Gertrude [AG], the widow of my Uncle Randall. She has many fine and admirable qualities, chief among them being her devotion to Indiana University basketball. She lives in Ohio State territory, though, so she doesn’t get to see many IU games.

Another of my heroes is AG’s granddaughter, Brigid, my cousin Kae’s daughter. Brigid is a young wife and mother. I’m sure she has many fine qualities, too, but I don’t know what they are. She’s my hero simply for one choice she made on one day, the day she and her grandmother were going to pick out her wedding dress.

When she got to AG’s house, she said, “Change of plan. We’re going to Bloomington.”

“Is there a special wedding shop there?” asked AG.

“No, the IU basketball team is there. I got us tickets to the IU basketball game.”

“But… what about your dress?”

“Grandma, we can look for a wedding dress any day, but how often do you get to go to an IU basketball game?”

I know my hero-worship of Brigid might be dismissed as male talk. If a man were picking out a wedding dress he would go to K-Mart and take the first one on the shelf. That’s how men pick out anything, unless it’s a car or a chain-saw. The first one looks good enough.

When daughter Katie and son-in-law Patrick were first dating, they had to go to a mall to buy a wedding gift for friends. Helen told Katie, “Be careful which door you go in. He’ll want to take whatever you come to first.” She was right. I was relieved; she was marrying a real man.

Brigid was a soccer star, good enough to win a college scholarship, but she’s all girl. That wedding dress was as important to her as to any other bride. It just wasn’t as important as her grandma. Any girl named Brigid who thinks taking a grandparent to an IU ball game is more important is Number One in my book. [Discerning readers may guess that I have a granddaughter named Brigid.]

It’s important to choose people over things, and to choose the once-moment over the any-moment. Jesus understood that. That’s why he “passed through the crowd” when the hometown folks were trying to throw him down the mountain. The once-moment hadn’t come yet.

When I was a young minister and in constant trouble with church authorities because I was determined to follow Jesus regardless of how much consternation it caused those who preferred calm at all costs, a veteran pastor, John Adams [1], a past-master at following Jesus into hell and back out again, said to me, “Jesus didn’t get crucified on every little hill. He waited for Golgotha.” That simple reminder changed my whole approach. I learned to wait for the once-moment.

John Robert McFarland

1] I first met John P. Adams when he was pastoring in Hammond, IN and I was at Cedar Lake, IN. He became world-renowned for his peace-making efforts in the trouble spots of the world, especially at Wounded Knee.

The “place of winter” mentioned above is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer.

WONDERING WHAT BECAME OF YOU

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

 Along about 1950, when my little brother was around four years old, we were at 909 Main Street in Hamilton, OH, at the home of Grandpa and Grandma Mac, for a family reunion. Nobody stayed in motels in those days, so our family and several others spent the nights on floors in various rooms. At the end of the day, Mother sent Daddy to bring Jimmy in to give him a bath before everyone else needed the bathroom before hitting the floors.

Daddy had lost his eyesight in an industrial accident a few years before. He was blind in one eye but still had a little sight in the other. He had to wear very thick glasses, with a black lens on the blind side. It was almost dark out. All us kids were having a great time, the older cousins trying to out-cool one another as we slouched around in the back yard, the little ones trying to outrun one another in various games of “You’re it; no, you are.” In the gloaming, Daddy chased and grabbed a four-year-old and tried to drag him into the house. He was not surprised the kid resisted; Jim still doesn’t like to stop playing at the end of the day, but now it’s more watching satirical TV shows than dashing in mad circles around the house. But the kid resisted more than usual. He pulled, he howled, he screamed.

“John,” Grandma called from the front porch, “that’s the little boy from next door.” [1]

Everyone laughed, but it must have been traumatic for that poor child, being dragged to a strange house by an angry and hairy man with one eye blacked out. I have often wondered what became of that kid. Did he become a maker of horror films, a mass murderer, an Olympic sprint champ?

Back when you were little, there were people observing you, the time the headless chicken chased you and everybody laughed, the time you fell down in the park and split your pants, the time you offered a little girl a pansy and she pushed you down on your splitting pants. They’re saying, somewhere, right now: “I wonder what became of that kid—maybe the proprietor of a chicken restaurant, a designer of underwear, a writer of country songs?

There are people who saw you then, who are wondering about you now. But you are the only one who knows what really became of you.

John Robert McFarland

1] I think when Jimmy was finally located he got spanked because he wasn’t there to be the right child. Parents often punish kids for embarrassing them by not being the right one.

‘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!

DAYLIGHT SALVATION [Poem]

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

“The darkness around us is deep,”

on this morning of all mornings

the one day of the year

when Daylight experiences salvation

All the rest of the days and hours

and even minutes

live constantly in peril of hell

No Twilight Savings Time

or Wednesday Savings Time

What is so special about Daylight?

It is two a.m. that needs salvation

John Robert McFarland

BIRTHDAYS & BASEBALL

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

 Today is Helen’s birthday. I will give her a special gift. I shall not talk about baseball the whole day, nor shall I turn on the MLB channel in hope of catching a Reds spring training game, even with the sound off.

I have not always been this sensitive. For our honeymoon I took her to a Reds double-header against the Pirates in Crosley Field in Cincinnati. I didn’t have much [i.e, any] money, just enough for baseball tickets, so we spent the night on a pullout bed in Grandma Mac’s living room. It was a good doubleheader. We saw Willie “Puddinhead” Jones of the Reds hit a home run to give the Pirates’ Elroy Face his only loss of the year. [Talk about losing face.]

Helen did not like baseball because as a child her mother listened to Cubs games on the radio instead of paying attention to her. She was an only child for her first ten years, and her father, whom she adored and who took her fishing and let her drive the Hupmobile when she was only five and let her drive the big Hudson to high school, where she was thus known as “Hot Rod,” was gone all week for his job. Helen resented her only playmate giving so much attention to a bunch of losers like the Cubs when she could have been reading to her.

Over the years she has learned to tolerate baseball, at least to enjoying the log-rolling bears in the Hamm’s beer commercials between innings.

In our winter years, though, this is a dangerous time for our relationship. We’ve been stuck in the house for a long time, because there is a lot of snow and below-zero outdoors. It’s spring training time, and I want baseball, and my only potential playmate doesn’t care if Joey Votto will widen his strike zone this year in order to hit more home runs.

Fittingly for Lent, today I shall give up something I love for the woman I love. Whether I grow spiritually, in the way Lenten fasts are meant, remains to be seen.

John Robert McFarland

The “place of winter” mentioned above is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer.

Misdiagnosing the Misdiagnosis

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

 I’m reluctant to address this, because it is sad, and abrupt, and embarrassing. The sadness outweighs all else, but for me personally, the embarrassment is real.

If you’ve not read the CIW of Feb. 17, this would be a good time to scroll down and do so. Okay, now that you’ve done that…

Bob came up from FL to IN for his mother’s funeral. Friends who attended her funeral and talked with him said that “He looked as good as any of us,” which is faint praise, since Bob always looked better than any of us, but they were pleased to see “The miracle boy,” as they were calling him in FL.

Since I had only a snail mail address for him, I printed a copy of the CIW and sent it to him, with the notation on it that I would call him the next week “to take back all the sappy things I said about you.”

Just as I was getting ready to make that call, Dave called me first. He had just heard from Charlie Bob. When Bob returned to FL, he began to feel bad. He returned to the doctors. They said, “Apparently our idea that we misdiagnosed you was a misdiagnosis. You have five hours to five days to live.” Bob had died the night before.

Judging from when I mailed it, my letter probably arrived at his house the day before his death, arrived with the notion that Bob might not be trustworthy because he wouldn’t even die when he was supposed to. I can only hope that it was lost in the shuffle. But it probably wasn’t. That’s the embarrassing part.

I have some experience with healing miracles, when one you love gets well against all odds. I know what joy that is. I’ve not suffered a reversal, though. I have no idea how it must feel to be told that you yourself, or someone you love, has been cured, only to have it taken back and told you have almost no time to go from the joy of healing to the free fall of death. That’s the sad and abrupt part.

Brenda Egolf-Fox called this week to say Kim had died. We were close friends from The Academy of Parish Clergy. She asked me to let the other APC members know that Kim had finally died from his long struggle with an ALS type of disease. He had plenty of time to prepare himself and his family. Brenda said he had done that well. Then last night I got an email telling me that Don Survant, one of my closest buddies from high school, the kind you double-date with, the kind you’re Best Man for, had died almost two years ago. Don had told me in October of 2010 that he had cancer, asked for prayers, then remained quiet, as was his way, and slipped off two years later.

Why is death is so eccentric in its ways, giving one time to prepare, another time to slip away, another no time at all? I do not know. I do know, though, that “Since we know not what the day may bring forth, but only that the hour for serving thee is always present, may we wake to the instant claims of thy holy will, not waiting for tomorrow, but yielding today.”

May the peace of Christ be with you.

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!

Watchman, a poem

Lying awake in darkness

two in the morning ‘til four

soft snoring in gentle rhythms

at my side

What I call my watch time

“Watchman, what of the night?”

The faces of my friends

hover here in gentle sweetness

just beyond my reach

Watchman,

what of the night?

Watchman!

What of the night?

John Robert McFarland

EXCEPT FOR TED

I receive a plenitude of church newsletters. In one of them, this note was posted by a woman: “I want to thank everyone for their prayers, except for Ted.”

I have no idea what to make of this. Did Ted refuse to pray, and so deserves no thanks? Is he just no good at praying and so does not deserve thanks? Is she going to thank Ted in a more personal way? Does Ted usually pray but was exempted this time for medical reasons?

All I know is that I’m now praying for Ted.

John Robert McFarland