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
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
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