GOOD TRADE

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

A woman was driving along in the West when she saw a Navajo woman standing by the road. She stopped and offered her a ride. In the car, she saw her rider eyeing the big bottle of whiskey in the back seat. “I got that for my husband,” she said. The Navajo woman nodded wisely. “Good trade,” she said.

When emergency surgery at midnight on my 53^rd birthday revealed colon cancer, and the pale oncologist told me I’d be dead in a year or two, I began to think about my funeral.

It would be grand, for death at 54, or hopefully 55, at the height of one’s career, is tragic. The church would be packed. All my friends would eulogize me. Some would cry. At the end of the service, all my ministry colleagues would gather around my coffin and sing Amazing Grace, although before death I would have crawled into the church and replaced the music in their folders with Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone, and everyone would laugh and say, “Isn’t that just like him?”

I have lived too long now for that to happen, and I live too far away. Many of my friends have already transferred from the church militant to the church triumphant. Those left are not very good singers, or travelers. There will be no singing at my funeral, for there will be only eight people there, and one of them will be paid to come. The paid one will eulogize me, but she will have known me but two years, in my dotage, and will only be able to say that for a curmudgeon, I was a relatively nice old man.

I have lived well beyond the “one or two.” There have been a lot of problems in those years. My parents have died. So has my little sister. Our grandson died three times before he was two. His slightly older sister was traumatized by that, as were we all. My wife got cancer. So did our older daughter. The surgical altering of my colon into a semi-colon means that I have to be up in the morning for four hours before I can leave the house. That schedule has limited my life in many ways for 24 years. 

In that time I have walked my daughters down the aisle. I got to care for our granddaughter in her time of trauma and see her grow into a beautiful and brilliant young woman. I got to care for my parents in their long declining years. I have ministered to many other cancer patients through a book I wrote and in conferences and personally. I went through their cancers and recoveries with my wife and daughter, and saw our grandson cured to become a handsome and multi-talented and appropriate young man. [1]

Old age brings a lot of pains and problems. And loneliness. When I die, there will be no one left who remembers the parsonage in Stanford or Crossroads Church or Uncle Rufus. My funeral will not be grand. In fact, it will be sort of pathetic. As the Navajo woman would say, “Good Trade.”

John Robert McFarland

jmcfarland1721@charter.net

1] Until recently, I had never heard “appropriate” used to describe someone. After a band concert, in which Joe was a clarinetist closest to the audience, a woman said to me, “He is such an appropriate young man. His looks and actions are always appropriate to the occasion.”

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! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

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

Caught Between Word & Words

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

 [John 1:1-18.]

I was singing along with “It Is Well with My Soul” as I walked.  I was struck by the phrase, “…the clouds be rolled back as a scroll.” As I sang along with it, I had sung “like a scroll.” Horatio Spafford [1] used “proper” English when he wrote it in 1873, meaning grammatical English. I had not used proper English when I sang it 139 years later.

I should have known better. At IU when I was in freshman composition, that would have been a “gross illiteracy.” If you committed 3 gross illiteracies in a composition, it was an automatic F.  [2]

During those same 1950s college days, a Winston cigarette commercial that used the phrase, “Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should,” caused quite a controversy. Grammarians were offended and protested so much that Winston’s advertising agency actually came out with a new magazine ad wherein an English professor marked through “like” and replaced it with “as” while smiling college students looked on with nicotine addled approval. [Their bright teeth gave lie to the idea that they actually smoked the things.]

I have always been caught between the law and grace of language, wanting to be accurate, keeping the laws of grammar, but also wanting to be creative, using the flexibility of the words to convey old truths in new ways.

That’s our problem, caught between grace and law, even in our language, caught between language by the rules and language in the streets, or these days, language in the tweets. [3]

One of the graces of the English language is its flexibility. We have so many ways to say things. The more arrows we have to shoot at the truth, the more likely we are to hit it once in a while.

The grammar laws are important. They help us to communicate. I cringe when I hear someone say “I could care less,” because they are trying to say the exact opposite, “I could NOT care less.”

Language laws are there, though, not for their own sake, but so that communication will be clear. In common usage, we all know that “I could care less” means “I could not care less.” It’s clear enough.

In the era of tweets and texts and autocorrects, there are no language laws, and meanings are often muddled. Old people don’t much like that. We put in a lot of time learning the rules, so we want folks to use them. Let’s relax a little. The Word doesn’t need laws to be the Word. There are many ways to put the Word into words.

John Robert McFarland

1] The music is by Phillip Bliss.

2] Another gross illiteracy was splitting an infinitive. Now it is almost mandatory to boldly split every infinitive.

3] I’m quite sure I have mentioned this before, and I apologize for doing so again, but I think it’s insightful, and fun. Daughter Katie said years ago, when Vance Law played 3^rd base and Mark Grace played 1^st base for the Cubs, that the reason the Cubs could not win was that they were caught between Grace and Law.

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!

ON THE JERICHO ROAD

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

        I’m listening to Kate Campbell singing Three Rusty Nails. The devil has ten thousand lures, she sings, but three rusty nails, that’s the cure, for ten thousand lures. It is a great song, and it makes me miss going to professional conferences.

        Not the conferences themselves. I don’t miss the trivial arguments over irrelevant issues. I miss the fellowship. And I miss driving to get there. And listening to Kate’s CD as I drive.

        Not just driving to conferences. I miss driving to church, too.

        At the start of my preaching career, and at its end, I drove on Sunday mornings to where I would preach, twenty to thirty miles. In those early days, I drove to Solsberry, Koleen, Mineral, Walker’s Chapel, Greene County Chapel. At the end, I drove to Walnut or Tampico or Morrison.

        Throughout, I would drive to retreats and conferences and district meetings.

        Those drives were times of anticipation. The greatest anticipation was being with my friends, feeling that great joy of being with my teammates, sharing stories, being reminded of who I was.

        In the early days I sang as I drove. I especially liked to sing Don S. McCrossan’s Gospel song, “On the Jericho Road.” I sang that in the later days, too, but by then cars had tape and CD players, so I could listen to Kate Campbell and others sing. That’s why listening to Kate now reminds me of those days alone in the car, anticipating with joy that I would once again find out who I was.

        That’s why I went to conferences, and why I go to reunions, and why I go to church—to find out who I am.

        Life is lived in relationships. We know who we are only in relationships to others. I am the son of John and Mildred, the grandson of Harry and Henrietta, of Elmer and Maggie, the brother of Mary and Margey and Jim, the husband of Helen, the father of Mary Beth and Katie, the grandfather of Brigid and Joseph, the father-in-law of Patrick, with too many uncles and aunts and cousins and friends to name, the colleague of even more.

My parents are dead. So is Margey. So are many of my aunts and uncles and cousins and friends and colleagues. Those relationships are gone, in person, but my identity from those relationships remains. My identity is more than just the sum of those relationships, but I am who I am, and remain so, because of them.

I’m still on the Jericho road, listening to the voices that remind me who I am.

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!

X MARKS THE SPOT

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

Finally, a Hymn that Begins With X

[I do meditations by starting with any letter of the alphabet and singing a hymn, what I can remember of it, that starts with that letter, and working all the way through the alphabet that way. I have never been able to find a hymn that begins with X, though, so I decided to write one. X, of course, is the Greek letter Chi, an ancient way of saying Christ. Feel free to sing it if you have a tune…]

[Refrain]

X marks the spot

of the greatest treasure yet,

buried ‘neath the sand of sin and pain.

X marks the spot

where the treasure was revealed,

where the tears of the sinners fell like rain.

[Verse 1]

God is Alpha and Omega,

X reveals the in-between,

the simple mark upon the page or soul.

God is the complex One in Three,

X is the Story heard,

the simple One that makes the broken whole.

[Refrain]

[Verse 2]

God is Awesome and Transcendent,

X walks with us all the way,

making holy every foot of land.

God is Creator and Provider,

X is a nail-pierced hand in mine,

the one who with me always takes his stand.

[Refrain]

[Verse3]

God is Sovereign of the Kingdom,

X is of a peasant born,

hallowing the body and the blood.

God is the mighty hand of judgment,

X is a shelter in the storm,

the one who pulls us from the ‘whelming flood.

[Refrain]

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! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

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

Jesus & The 2nd Grizzly

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

                    

Jesus was such a kidder, such an exaggerator.

There is a maxim among story-tellers. If you’re telling a story about fighting a grizzly, and it looks like people aren’t believing you, throw in a second grizzly.

Jesus liked to throw in a second grizzly. Forgiveness? Seven times? How’s about seventy x seven?

He was probably the first one to tell about the man who lied so much he had to get a neighbor to call his hogs.

There are different forms of truth-telling. Factual truth is one of those, but only one. There is also the truth of love and wholeness, and that truth is best told in extravagant terms, just like that story of the prodigal father.

Jesus claimed to be the Truth. Sometimes people don’t hear the truth unless it comes in the form of a second grizzly.

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! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

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

I'M THE GORILLA

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

Is there something still to do today, something I may have forgotten?

I lived with that nagging thought for forty years of work. The answer was always Yes! There was always something more to do. I had not necessarily forgotten it. I might have been better off if I could forget it. There was never a day when I did not leave something undone, just because there was too much to do. There was always that nagging feeling of things undone.

That feeling is still there, even though it’s usually wrong. Well, not absolutely. There is always something more I could do–write a letter, weed a flowerbed, sweep out the garage. But those are not things that must be done, certainly not right away. They’ll still be there tomorrow, and it’s okay if they’re still there tomorrow.

They don’t feel okay, though. They feel the same as when I did not get a call made at the nursing home or did not get the fundraising plan for the homeless shelter finished.

When you are used to being nagged by things undone, the feeling remains the same, even though the things undone are much less important.

I’m sure you’ve heard the old question about where a nine hundred pound gorilla sleeps: any place it wants to! In business it is said about the CEO, in politics it is said about the president or governor, in churches it is said about the bishop: He, or she, is the gorilla.

Bishop Leroy Hodapp was adept at using gorilla status for good. During meetings, he would write letters, by hand, in green ink, with a fountain pen–not a ballpoint, while listening to the business with one ear. If you are not the gorilla, you can’t get away with that. But Leroy was the gorilla, and a total multi-tasker, and he got everything done, on time. Until he retired.

He and I were on our way to a basketball practice [watching, not playing!] one day when I thanked him for his Christmas card. It had just come. It was February. He laughed and said: “When I was a bishop, I had to get everything done, today, because there would be no time for it tomorrow. Now, I look at tomorrow’s schedule and say, Oh, there will be time for that then. So I don’t get it done today or tomorrow, either one.”

“Doesn’t it bother you, that nagging feeling, the feeling there is something you’re supposed to be doing?” I asked him.

“No,” he said. “When I was working, I did what I was supposed to do. Now that I’m retired, I’m still doing what I’m supposed to do, except now I’m supposed to go to basketball games and put off writing Christmas cards.”

When the nagging feeling comes, that feeling that developed back when, I try to remember who I am now, not who I was back then. I don’t have to live with the naggers from back when, because I’m not the person I was then. Now, I’m the gorilla. Gorillas take a nap, wherever they want to, and clean out the gutters tomorrow.

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! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

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

DREAMS & MEMORIES

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

I’m always reluctant to share dreams. People who know more about them than I do are likely to say, “If you dream about that, it means you’re crazy as a loon.” I don’t need to know that from dreams; I have people for that. Occasionally, though, a dream seems right on the mark…

Last night I dreamed that I had become so lost that I could not find my way home. I was in that dream town, familiar, the town where I live, but only in my dreams. It’s a small town, but it has a lot of large church and college buildings. Many of them are neglected or abandoned. My wife had taken my father to the hospital, and I was trying to go there, but I had walked in from the country, and I was a long way from the hospital. I kept seeing familiar sights and sites, but I kept taking wrong turns. To make matters worse, I tried to call Helen to come get me, but I couldn’t remember her phone number. [Anyone familiar with my life can make a LOT out of all that!]

Old people worry a great deal about losing memory. I suspect that one reason for that dream at this time is that I had several conversations this week with other old people about how we can’t remember where we put our glasses or parked our cars. [BTW, a good reason to have a land-line as well as a cell phone, or at least two cell phones, is so you can find the phone you’ve lost by calling it. I know that for a fact.]

Men rely on wives for memory. Earl Davis used to say, “I have a perfect memory system. It’s called, ‘Martha, where is that?’”  I love the story about the old man who was trying to tell a friend about a new restaurant but couldn’t think of its name. “What’s that flower with the nice smell and thorns?” he said. “A rose? Oh, was the restaurant called The Rose?” “No. Hey, Rose, what was the name of that restaurant we went to?”

My wife is especially helpful when I worry about losing memory, because she says, “I’ve know you since you were twenty, and you’ve always been this way.” At least, I think that’s helpful.

Of course, forgetting your glasses or the third thing she told you to get at the grocery is just a frustration. Forgetting where home is, that’s tragedy.

After my friend of 60 years, Darrel Guimond, was in a car accident that left him brain-damaged, he was able to remember one thing. He told Linda, “I know you. You’re the best thing ever.”

The good news is that we don’t have to remember everything, because God has a perfect memory. It’s not perfect just because of total recall, but because it’s a forgiving memory. As Paul Tillich said, “Forgiveness doesn’t change the facts, but it does change the meaning of the facts.”

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 Easter Message-Let Go of the Rope

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

I had been enlisted to help entice the hardware company to place its new distribution center in our town. All their executives and all the employees who would have to come live and work with us had been flown in for the weekend. The industrial development people brought them to my church that morning “because you have the best music,” which was true, but they might have said something about us having the best preaching, too.

            Now it was evening, and I was at a bar-b-q at the country home of Mike, the local businessman who “has the best toys.” The toys included a hot air balloon. Although hot air itself is readily launched at any time [see comment on preaching above], sunset is the best time if it is encased in a balloon. There were some delays, however, and by the time the executives were in the balloon and all the young guys were holding the ropes to keep it under control until Mike lit it to, the sun had gone beyond setting.

            We were way out in the pasture, beyond the reach of the barn light. Although in my 40s, in that group I was one of the young guys, so I was casually holding onto a rope and chatting with the truly young, and muscular, warehouse man on the next rope, trying to convince him to come to our church when he moved because we had more than just good music. It was then that Mike decided to lift off.

            Suddenly all of us rope holders were air-borne, alone with the balloon, in the dark.

            Have you ever had one of those moments when not only your whole life flashes before your eyes, but every possibility for the future flashes before you, too, and none of them are good? We had gone up so quickly and unexpectedly that I had no idea how high we were. I could not see the ground or the trees. I could not see the young man beside me, although I heard him say a number of words that suggested that if he had a vote, his company would put its distribution center at the North Pole, where he might expect light much longer into the evening, like all night. I could not see him in part because his skin was as dark as the night. Since mine is white, I considered asking him if he could see me, but even if he could, it would not tell us how high we were, and that was all that mattered.

            It’s amazing, but while I was thinking all these thoughts, and he was describing the darkness and the uncertainty with a quite remarkable combination of words, we managed to have a rather extensive conversation, encompassing the powers of darkness, what either of us could see (nothing), how high we might be (15 yards to 2 miles), how long we could hold on (his best estimate was a minute, mine was 10 seconds), whether the balloon would set down again before we lost our grip (NO!), if the balloon and all the executives would fly away forever if we let go (We didn’t care), and whether angels can fly.

            Then a voice said, “Have faith. Let go of the rope.”

            I let go. So did the young man on the rope beside mine.

            Despite the age difference, we were both athletes. We knew to hit the ground on flexed legs, let them buckle, go fetal, and roll.

            I felt his legs. “You break anything?”

            “No. You?”

            “No.”

            “Hey, man, that was a good thing, telling me to let go of the rope.”

            “I didn’t say that. I thought you did.”

            I’m pretty sure it was Jesus who first said, “Let go of the rope.” We hang onto so many ropes, thin threads of security as we’re dragged up into the darkness by the devil’s hot air, ropes of money and power and sex and addictions and resentment and grief and anger and revenge and violence, unsure how far into the darkness we’ve gone, afraid of how far we might fall if we let go, of how hard we’ll land, of what we might fracture. But our arms are aching, to the point of breaking, and we don’t know how long we can hold on. That’s when we hear that voice: Let go of the rope.

            We asked around, that young man and I, asked all the folks in the balloon and on the ropes and on the ground, asked who it was that night who told us, Let go of the rope. Each one claimed not to have said anything.

            The message of Easter is: Let go of the ropel

            The hardware company put its new distribution center in our town.

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! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

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

FORGIVENESS IN THE MIRROR

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

We can learn important thing from our children.

When daughter Katie was about 3 years old, I passed her the butter at the supper table. I pushed it a little too hard. Her little thumb went into the end of the butter stick. “I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s okay,” she replied. “I forgive you. I forgive you for all the mean and awful things you’ve ever done to me.”

I had no idea that I had done mean and awful things to her, but I was grateful for the forgiveness.

And I learned from it. Now I look into the mirror and say, “I forgive you for all the mean and awful things you’ve ever done to me.”

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! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

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

EARS AND COWS

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

I’m listening to my Pandora Radio station on my computer. With Pandora you get to choose your music. My station has only folk music and Broadway musicals. [www.pandora.com]

I’m listening to Mike Kobluk, Joe Frazier, and Chad Mitchell—The Chad Mitchell Trio—sing “Four Strong Winds,” and marveling at how each one always hits just the right note at just the right time. That was one of their special qualities, hitting just the right note, especially difficult because they use such complex arrangements, which they never wrote down, just worked out, with their musicians and Milt Okun, their musical director, in their heads.

I was in the band in high school. I used my eyes for music, reading the notes on the page so I could reproduce them, more or less, on the bassoon. No one ever taught me to use my ears for music, though. In fact, my ears were used for non-musical sounds.

The third of John Wesley’s rules for singing says, “Do now bawl..” I understand that. I have an ear for bawling. I grew up on a hard-scrabble farm with one cow, Old Jersey. She regularly jumped the fence into Mr. Thieman’s corn field. It was my job to bring her back. I developed a good ear for bawling, so I could find that damned cow.

When I entered Perkins School of Theology at SMU, they gave all the entering students an ear test. They determined that three of us had such good ears for language that we should start both Greek and Hebrew. I had no idea I had such a great ear. I was proud. Then I found out that wasn’t so great. We three were also expected to keep up with the English Bible course all the other students took. A prof would give us on the last day of the week what it had taken the English Bible students all week to learn, after the three of us had done aleph-beth-gimel and alpha-beta-gamma all week ourselves.

It has just now occurred to me as I listen to Mike Kobluk do the solo on “Four Strong Winds” that you don’t need to have a good ear to learn biblical Greek and Hebrew. No one speaks them. We were learning in order to do scholarship and translation. My ear didn’t do me a bit of good. I had a wife and a full-time job in addition to seminary. What I needed was another good 20 or 30 hours per week, not a good ear. They should have given us a perseverance test.

Through the years I have asked many people this question: “If you could speak all the languages of the world, or play all the musical instruments of the world, which would you choose?”

There are exceptions, but most of the time, younger people choose languages, and older people choose music. In the winter of our years, we need a different kind of ear, not to understand the words of this world, but to hear the simple harmonies of the universe.

A music critic once said of Johnny Cash: “He does make an honest attempt to hit every note.” I think Johnny was loved as much for the notes he didn’t hit, the imperfections, as for those he hit. We knew he was trying.

You don’t have to have such a good ear that you hit every note. But you do need to try to hit them all. I think that summarizes what Jesus said pretty well.

Wait…there’s Johnny on my station now. He’s doing “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” I have an ear for the harmony on this one, so I have to sing along. I’d also better change my ways so I don’t have to chase those damn cows forever.

John Robert McFarland

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

THE DONKEY IS NOT THE WORD

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

As we move from Palm Sunday toward Easter, I recall what Karl Barth said about the donkey Jesus rode on his way into Jerusalem.

Barth was a great Bible-believer. He was the foremost voice in the Neo-Orthodox movement of the mid 20^th century, and wrote about ten thousand pages of closely-reasoned systematic theology to support that biblically based new orthodoxy. Indeed, when asked to summarize those ten thousand pages, he said, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

I was never a Barthian. I was a Personalist of the Borden Parker Bowne school, quite possibly the only Personalist of the second half of the 20^th century. But I did read about ten percent of Barth’s theology, and I studied one summer under his son, Marcus. I’ve always respected Barth’s theological endeavors. Being a narrativist, though, what I remember are the stories.

According to Barth, as Jesus rode into Jerusalem, the donkey said, “Look at how the people adore me, shouting Hosannas at me, putting palms and their garments down in the street so my hooves don’t even touch the dirty ground.” The Bible is like the donkey, necessary for getting Jesus into the city, but not the object of praise and adoration.

The Bible is there not to be venerated itself but so that Jesus can ride into our hearts and lives. It is Christ who is the Word of God. If we say that the Bible is the Word of God, we are worshipping the donkey, not the Christ.

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! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

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

LOVE LETTERS IN THE SAND

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

My bishop once appointed me to The Investigation Comm. The job of the committee was to investigate ministers charged with inappropriate behavior. I protested the appointment. I told the bishop I wouldn’t be any good at it. He said, “I want you on the committee because every sinner should have at least one friend.” He knew I could identify with sinners because I’ve had so much experience at it.

            If Jesus had been more directly available, I’m sure Bishop Hodapp would have appointed him to the committee. Jesus was infamous for being a friend to sinners.

            Remember that time when the woman was caught in adultery? The people dragged her before Jesus, as sort of a test case. “The Bible says we should stone her to death,” they said. “What do you say? Are you for the Bible or against it?”

            Jesus didn’t answer. Instead he bent down and wrote in the sand with his finger. But they kept at him. “Come on. You claim to know everything. Give us an answer. Are you going to be a Bible-believer or not?”

            He straightened up and said, “Let whoever is without sin cast the first stone.” Too often we stop the story there, but after the mob members had slunk off, he said to the woman, “Go, and sin no more.”

            I think this is the only story in the Gospels where Jesus writes, and we don’t know what he wrote. I suspect he was writing love letters in the sand, love letters for that poor woman, and for the people who despised her, too. Maybe it wasn’t words he wrote. Maybe he just drew a circle. The mob was drawing a line in the sand to keep the woman out. Jesus drew a circle to take her in.

            Sand writing is very temporary. As the song says, “How you laughed when I cried, each time I saw the tide, take our love letters from the sand.” [1] As soon as the tide changes or the wind comes up, the words written on the sand are gone. That’s why Jesus told the woman to go and sin no more. Each sin—each time we break a relationship with God or the world or another person or with our own true self—requires a new act of forgiveness. His love letter in the sand was impermanent, good only until wiped away by the next sin.

            Love is so impermanent, yet it is the only thing that lasts. “Love is the only rational act.” [2]

            Jesus wrote love letters in the sand twice in this story. The first was to save the woman from condemnation and humiliation and death, and to save her accusers from their hatred and fear. The second time was to save her from sin. The reminder to sin no more is as loving as the refusal to condemn.

            When I told my family I was on the Investigation Committee, teen daughter Katie said, “What if you have to investigate one of your good friends, like Jack?” That was a good question. Could I really do it? The next time we were with Jack and Joan, I asked Katie’s question. “Don’t worry about an investigation,” Joan said. “Just tell me and I’ll take care of it.”

            That method works, too.

John Robert McFarland

1] 1931. Lyrics by J. Fred Coots and music by Nick Kenny and Charles Kenny.

2] Morrie Schwartz, of Tuesdays with Morrie.

 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! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

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

YOU SMASH 'EM, WE FIX 'EM

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

People in their winter years often complain that younger people won’t listen to us. We have trouble getting the attention of generations far down the alphabet. Not Helen. She just says, “I once shut a garage door on my head.” Everybody wants to hear that story.

I was doing doctoral work at U of IA. I had a Danforth Fellowship for the first year, and I was assistant to the Director of the School of Religion, Jim Spalding, the second year. Helen was teaching part-time in the Home Ec Dept at the U. Those were decent jobs for graduate work, but with two daughters in school and considered out-of-state by the U, even though we owned a house and paid taxes in IA, we didn’t have any extra money.

But cars have to be serviced, so I took our Aztec Bronze 1966 Chevrolet Impala, the first car we ever had with air conditioning, an add-on model that basically froze the feet of the people in the front seat and didn’t do much for the rest of the car, to the Standard service station, because it was convenient. I could drop it off on the way to class, walk to campus, and walk back to pick it up. No interruption in school transportation for the girls or for Helen’s teaching.

When I walked up to the station, I saw that they were apparently finished with the servicing of our car, since it was parked outside, but it was parked at an odd angle. It took the space of three or four cars, a strange approach for a land-locked service station with little space.

I went in and paid for the lube and oil change. I mentioned the strange parking angle. “Oh, yes,” the owner said, “I didn’t want you to be upset when you walked up and saw the side of your car. Somebody backed our tow truck into it.” What he meant was, “I didn’t want you to see it until you had paid.”

“But don’t worry,” he went on. “We’ve arranged for it to be fixed, no expense to you.” I knew when he told me the name of the “no expense to me” auto body repair shop that no good would come from this: YOU SMASH ‘EM, WE FIX ‘EM. Yes, that was the name.

Each day I called YOU SMASH ‘EM to see if the car were ready. Each day there was some excuse why it was not. Each day Helen and the girls and I had to ride buses. The bus company didn’t know that this experience was to be at no expense to us.

Days later YOU SMASH ‘EM announced that the car was ready. I went to get it. The fender and doors that had been tow-trucked were now filled out nicely. The problem was that they were not the same color as the rest of the car. I pointed this out to the owner of YOU SMASH ‘EM. “Oh, hell,” he said. “Our paint guy is color-blind.” “You hired a color-blind guy to do your painting?” “Yeah, but it’s no problem. He just goes by the id numbers on the paint. He must have gotten the numbers mixed up. We’ll paint it again, no cost to you.” I thought that his idea of “no problem” was a problem.

Of course, they didn’t have Aztec Bronze in stock, and had to special order it, and we drove it for several days looking like fugitives from a junk yard. Then we had to give it back for the re-painting, no cost to us.

That was when Helen closed the garage door on her head. This sounds somewhere between difficult and impossible, but you need to understand the situation. The garage door was one piece of heavy wood. Helen was not tall enough, even with a jump, to get hold of the handle when the door was open. So she started it down from the inside and then ducked under it to get outside before it came all the way down. [Those old garages didn’t have service doors.] In the ducking-under process, the inside handle of the door whacked her on the top of her head. She reached up and felt blood. She also felt woozy. She knew she needed to go to the hospital. [No cell phones by which you could summon husbands regardless of where they were in those days; besides, she knew her husband didn’t have a car.] She walked to the bus stop, and in her woozy condition, got on the bus going the wrong way, rode to the end of the line, and rode back until she finally reached the hospital.

The point of life is to have a good time. Not a false good time, which is pleasure only, but a true good time, which goes beyond pleasure to joy. One way to have a good time is to make a bad experience into a good story. Helen has always gone for what makes the best story.

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!

I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.

PRAYER & LONELINESS

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

They took me in to the operating room at midnight, on my birthday, and cut me open from Los Angeles to Boston. They found a tumor in my colon. They said I’d be dead in a year or two. I could barely move. Everything hurt. I was groggy from anesthesia. My room-mate had a chainsaw in bed with him. He kept trying to start it, without success, so he would try again. [The modern version of sawing logs.] I couldn’t sleep. It was two in the morning. And I felt strangely comforted, for I knew I was not alone. “As many people as I know, in so many time zones,” I said to myself, and to the balky chainsaw, “I’m sure there is someone praying for me even right now, in the wee hours of the morning.” I was not alone.

That’s the purpose of prayer, intercessory prayer, at least one of its purposes. It’s not so much to try to change the mind of God, perhaps not even to put “the stubborn ounces of my weight” [1] against the forces of dis-ease in the spiritual realm so that they can be felt in the physical realm. It’s not so much to cure dis-ease as it is to cure loneliness.

I have a friend who was raped repeatedly by a huge man, 6 feet 7 inches, 300 lbs. All the time he was raping her, he kept telling her that when he was through with her, he would kill her. She prayed within herself, “Lord, I know I’m going to die, and that’s okay, if you just don’t leave me. I’m ready to die if you are with me.” She heard her prayer answered. She knew she was not alone. That got her through. [2]

It’s the same as kissing a boo-boo. The kiss doesn’t take away the pain; it takes away the loneliness. Pain is a given of life. Loneliness doesn’t have to be, not as long as we pray for one another.

I lie awake for an hour each night at 2 a.m. I don’t want to. I want to sleep. But I think God has given that hour to me as my “watch in the night,” my prayer watch, my time to be sure that not one of those I love, and many I don’t even know, are without a prayer companion, even in that dark hour of the night and of the soul. If you are awake then, struggling with pain or temptation or addiction or evil, you are not alone.

John Robert McFarland

jmcfarland1721@charter.net

1] Bonaro Overstreet

2] The man was stopped by the police before he could carry his threat to kill her.

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 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.

DUMB SABBATH

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

            Yesterday I experienced another “dumb Sabbath.”

            It is a phrase of early American Methodist Francis Asbury, one I learned of only recently from Dr. John Wilkey, who himself enjoyed years of dumb Sabbaths in retirement until moving to TX and appointed to pastor part-time at Laws Chapel. It must be strange and interesting to preach Gospel grace at a place called Laws.

            When one who is called to preach is unable to do so, that is a dumb Sabbath. In Asbury’s day, it came about only because of illness, physical inability to mount up and preach. There was no retirement plan. You preached until you died, which was usually at a rather young age. The life of an itinerant preacher on the frontier was dangerous--illness, accidents, wild animals, flooded rivers, hunger, hostiles.

            John Wesley, Methodism’s founder, said he required only three things of his ministers, that they be ready to preach, pray, or die at any moment. I have usually been more ready for the first two.

            Now, most preachers experience dumb Sabbaths through retirement. We sit in the pews and think about how much better we could preach the sermon we are enduring.

Or we don’t. I am struck by the number of retired preachers I know who do not go to church at all, unless they are on the church staff, as a part-time minister of visitation or similar position.

            Our minister, Pastor Paul, is retiring. The bishop is appointing Pastor Jeraldine to replace him. As the only retired preacher in our congregation, I have a lot of work ahead of me. Pastor Jeri is only 59, so she will need a lot of instruction to learn how to do it right, which is to say, the way I did it in days gone by in a church that no longer exists.

            Or maybe, just as I was once called to preach “hot truth let loose,” God is still calling me, to dumb Sabbaths.

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.

MEMORY PROBLEMS-A poem

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

Old people worry

about their memories,

the ability to recall

where they put their glasses

or what was on the grocery list.

As I grow old,

“Puny and Feeble,”

as old folks were labeled

in the membership book

of the Solsberry Methodists,

a good name for a rock band

at the senior center,

I have this nagging feeling

of something left undone…

World peace

Global warming

Justice

Equality

Hunger

Poverty

Damn!

I knew there was something else

I meant to do…

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! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

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.

EINSTEIN SPINNING-a poem

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

“One day at a time”

is a nice idea

It sounds so simple

So elegant

So profound

So easy

But sometimes a day

drags on forever

Minute after minute

An endless parade

without a clown or band

Sometimes a whole life

is much shorter than one day

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! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

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 REFUGE TRUCK

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

There has been an ad in the employment classifieds in our local newspaper for several days: Deliver locally manufactured refuge trucks.

A refuge truck! Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?!?

One of my Chad Mitchell Trio favorites is “City of Refuge.” “Oh, sinner man, where you gonna run to…. Run to the city of refuge. You better run, run, run…”

In ancient Israel and Judah, there were cities of refuge. If you committed a crime, specifically, manslaughter, you could go to one of those cities and no one could take vengeance against you.

It’s a great idea, but not always useful, especially if you’re old and can’t run, run, run very fast anymore. Satchel Paige was right about not looking back “…because they might be gaining on you,” but if you are slow and they are fast, they’re going to catch you, whether you’re looking back or not.

And you’d better believe it, greed and hate and fear and prejudice are always faster than you are. They’re gonna catch up to you.

I thought about it, delivering the trucks, but I don’t want just to deliver refuge trucks; I want to drive one. I want to do curbside pickup.

Imagine being able to take your greed and hatred and prejudice and fear and put them in a big green plastic can and leave them out in front of your house so the refuge truck can pick them up and take them to the sin dump.

You want a job? We need lots of refuge truck drivers.

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! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.

LOOKING GOOD

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

In the Upper Peninsula in winter, which comprises 13 months each year, you can’t tell who is good-looking and who is not, because everyone looks the same in boots, Duluth Fire Hose pants [stronger than a giant angry beaver], a parka, and a ski mask.

So the UP is a great place for old people to live. Our bodies are no saggier or lumpy-looking than those of young people, and gray hair and wrinkles just look like they’re part of a plaid muffler.

You would think, thus, that all old people would move to the UP, since declining pulchritude is a concern for the aging, as teeth go yellow, skin goes gray, and hair goes blue—not a good color combination. Nonetheless, most senior citizens continue to live places where they have to worry about whether they can go out in public without frightening children and other small beasts. It’s a very embarrassing walk back to your Desoto when a Wal-Mart greeter turns you away at the door after you failed the “You must be this pretty to enter” test, which involves standing next to a composite photo that includes Donald Trump’s hair, Chris Christie’s body, and Phyllis Diller’s face.

One of the advantages, though, of being so old that no amount of money can make you look good, is that you learn that looking good isn’t a matter of being good looking.

We worry about that when we’re younger. My first theological mentor, D. J. Bowden, the Director of The Indiana School of Religion at IU, used to call me “Handsome,” as in “Hi, Handsome.” Since I definitely did not think of myself as handsome, I thought maybe he was making some cruel joke. But he was never unkind to me or anyone else, in any way, so I had to wonder what he meant.

Many years ago I read a novel by Lin Yutang called A LEAF IN THE STORM. It included a young woman who was very concerned with her beauty. Her world was turned upside down, from riches to poverty, to being a leaf in the storm, as China went through a revolution. As she fled from trouble, blown from one place to another, she passed a peasant woman working in a sloping field. The woman was not good looking. Her feet were in mud. Her unshapely legs strained as she toiled. “There is beauty,” she said. “Those muddy ugly legs are doing what they have to do. It’s not what they look like that makes the beauty. It’s what they do.” [This is a memory, not a direct quote.]

When our granddaughter was small, she stroked her grandmother’s face one day and said, “I love your wrinkles.” “Why would you love wrinkles?” asked Grandma. “Because they’re on you,” said Brigid.

Being old gives us a chance to understand what beauty really is. When I was a runner, when we met another runner on the road, we called out “Lookin’ good,” as a word of encouragement. We were not good looking, though. We were sweaty and smelly. But we were doing what we had to do to get to the finish line. I think D. J. Bowden was giving me a word of encouragement when he called me Handsome. He was acknowledging that even though I wasn’t very pretty, I was doing what I was called to do.

I don’t worry much anymore about whether I’m good looking. I understand beauty in a different way. When I see Jesus’ broken body on the cross, I call out, “Lookin’ good.”

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!

I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.

THE DREAM EDITOR

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

Kathy Roberts [aka Mrs. Bob Butts, or maybe he’s Mr. Kathy Roberts, I get confused by these things] is famous for many things, most recently her poetry, her authority to declare new holidays, her technological acuity, and her dealings with The Dream Editor.

First point of fame, declaring holidays: After the first half of our winter here in the UP, from November through March, I declared I would have no more of it, that when April 2 came, I was dressing for spring—no more fur-lined underwear, no more ear-muffs at breakfast. [I did not choose April 1 because people would think my new tropical attire was some sort of cruel April Fool’s joke.]

So this morning I received from Kathy her declaration that April 2 was now a holiday. I’ll let her explain it…

Second point of fame, poetry:

2^nd of Spring

John Mac declared it,

Let it be so,

April Two’s

The end of snow!

No more winter,

No more sleet,

No more wool socks

On our feet.

Bring on khaki

Hello, cotton

Flannel? Fleece?

All forgotten.

Put on t-shirts

Dare a thong?

This darn winter

Was way too long.

Call on Hallmark

To do their thing

It’s a new holiday

…McFarland Spring!!

Third point of fame, technological acuity: Using pic-collage, she also included beautiful photos of daffodils and pussy willows and a spring wreath, but I am not technologically acute enough to do so here. However, I do not trust wal-mart not to steal her poem and my holiday, so I declare all above to be…darn, I’m not even acute enough to remember how to make that copyright symbol… [The one after the title comes from a cut-and-paste I did a long time ago.]

Fourth point of fame, the Dream Editor. We were visiting at their house on Thunder Ridge in Brown County, Indiana, when Kathy told us of her dream. It was going along pretty well, but then the Dream Editor appeared and told her she was dreaming wrong and would have to start over.

Writers mostly wish editors would just accept our stuff and tell us it’s great and then leave us alone, but I sort of wish I’d had a dream editor along the way, because I often dreamed of the wrong things—wealth and fame and cookies—all things I already had, although I didn’t know it. The dream editor could have told me to stop dreaming about the future and accept the gift of the present. The dream editor could have made me start over, appreciate what I already had, the wealth in friends, the fame in family, the cookies of memory…and oatmeal.

So on this new holiday, the 2^nd of April, McFarland Spring, I shall accept the suggestions of the Dream Editor, and be thankful for what I have, including friends who are famous for many things, and Spring! [Even if the thermometer, that does not understand yet about the new holiday, claims it is only 16 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 people are Yoopers [UPers] and life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

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.

BASEBALL & COURAGE

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

[I wrote this on Feb. 4 but forgot to post it then, so I suppose April Fool’s Day is an appropriate time to catch up.]

My theological alma mater, Garrett-Evangelical, at Northwestern University, has been taking nominations for “160 Alumni Who Changed the World” to celebrate its 160^th anniversary. My long-time friend, Bill White, emeritus chaplain and professor of religion at Illinois Wesleyan University, nominated me. [1] So G-ETS ran an article about me on its site [Jan. 23] titled “Pastor, Author, and Baseball Enthusiast.”

At first I was surprised at the emphasis upon baseball. Sure, I’ve played a lot of baseball, and written a lot about it, but in my writing for Scribners reference works, you would think a school of theology might be more interested in the article I wrote on Protestantism in the DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN HISTORY than in the biography of Reds Hall of Fame center fielder, Edd Roush, in AMERICAN LIVES, even though Edd and I do share the home town of Oakland City, IN.

G-ETS got it right, though. Mine is a baseball life. First Base: It’s my birthday. Second Base: It’s the 24^th anniversary of the pale oncologist telling me I had but “one to two years” to live. Third Base: It’s the day pitchers and catchers, the canaries of baseball, start reporting for spring training. Those three have me on my way to Home Plate.

Cancer was a huge surprise, like a kick in the gut. Actually, a cut in the gut, that revealed colon cancer. At the time, there was no cancer history in my large extended family. I lived a healthy life style. So how did this happen when I was only 53?

Someone has said that “Without courage, no other virtue is possible.” I thought I was fairly brave, but as I lay there in the hospital bed, I realized that my courage was only for living, not for dying. I knew that because it was the year of the baseball lockout. Management and players could not come to an agreement. Spring training was going to be canceled. And I didn’t care! [2]

I was going to die, maybe even before the baseball season was over. I had to get ready for dying, not baseball. But when my Cincinnati Reds won their first game, I saw another possibility. The Reds were the first professional baseball club. In honor of that, they always got to have their opening game at home. Some bureaucrat decided in 1990, though, that they should open on the road, they only time they have done so. I decided if the Reds could suffer that insult and win, maybe I could suffer the insult to my body and win. The Reds won. That year, without spring training, from start to finish, all the way through the World Series, they were never out of first place. “We” won.

Courage has never come naturally to me. My first reaction to anything is fear. I think it’s the fault of baseball. I could knock the hide off a fastball, but curve balls scared me. They looked like they were coming at my head. I ducked out of the way, only to see the ball swerve over the plate and be called a strike.

That’s been a problem my whole career, my whole life, the courage to face the curves. It’s especially bad when they’re splitters or spit balls or knucklers… or screwballs.

I’ve always had to talk myself into courage. Through the years, I’ve told myself that I wasn’t afraid, that ducking out of the way would hurt more than if I stood in there and got hit by the pitch, that if I did stand in and swing I might knock one out of the park. Sometimes that worked.

After his heart attack, David Letterman said: “If you don’t have courage, fake it. That’s almost as good.”

How do I survive winter in the UP? By looking forward to spring training. How do I survive the winter of my years? By faking courage, telling myself that I’m ready for any pitch that comes.

John Robert McFarland

1] It should have been the other way around, with me nominating Bill, not only for his university pastoring and teaching but his work on C.S. Lewis, and his pastoring of me when I had cancer. He’s in “The Touching Time” reflection in NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE.

2] It would not have bothered Edd Roush, whose twin brother, Fred, was one of my baseball coaches. Edd didn’t like spring training, refused to go. It interfered with his hunting and fishing. I admired Edd, but at thirteen I couldn’t understand why anyone would not want to leave winter in Oakland City for a free trip to play baseball in Florida. Forty years later, I didn’t care.

After I told the story above in NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE, Marge Schott, then the owner of the Reds, sent me an honorary contract.

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.