The Last Mile...again

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

Not many couples any more will celebrate an anniversary under the sign of the double nickel. People get married later in life and don’t stay married as long. Helen and I are blessed to be in the last generation where 50 years of marriage is an expectation. Today marks 55 years for us. [I’m sure she would like for me to point out that she was a child bride.] It seems a good time to repost the lyrics to a song I wrote…

I’LL WALK THE LAST MILE WITH YOU

On the bright white floral morning

When we could see forever

And the path was paved with blossoms for our feet

We clasped our hands together

And this is what I whispered

I’ll walk the last mile with you

I’ll walk the last mile with you

          Wherever this road takes us

In sunshine or in rain

In gladness or in pain

I’ll walk the last mile with you

On those chill still rainy mid-days

When storm clouds gathered o’er us

And the way was only mud beneath our feet

We linked our arms together

And this is what I stammered

I’ll walk the last mile with you

I’ll walk the last mile with you

          Wherever this road takes us

In sunshine or in rain

In gladness or in pain

I’ll walk the last mile with you

On this low slow lingering evening

When the light is growing dimmer

And the road is long behind our weary feet

We shall press our lips together

And with our fading breath say

I’ll walk the last mile with you.

I’ll walk the last mile with you

          Wherever this road takes us

In sunshine or in rain

In gladness or in pain

I’ll walk the last mile with you

John Robert McFarland

Old friends Pat and Lyndon Dean asked for permission to print this on the bulletins for their funeral services.

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 have also started an author blog, about writing, in preparation for the publication, by Black Opal Books, of my novel, VETS, in late 2014 or early 2015. For some reason it does not appear when Googled, even though it’s a Google blog. http://johnrobertmcfarland-author.blogspot.com/

I tweet as yooper1721.

Yes, I Am Happy For Her-a poem

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

You don’t need to tell me that I should be happy

for her, I am,

the little ingrate, going off

to college, to live her own

life, without me, the one

who has let her hug me anytime,

as much as she wanted, the one

who trusts her for information

about the current age, in which I live,

but which does not live in me,

I, who have let her fix my computer

whenever it has descended

into digital hell, in HD, yet,

I who have never dropped

a telephone into the toilet,

for it is only her generation

that drops phones into the toilet

from the hip pockets of their jeans,

I who screamed only once, maybe twice,

but not really all that loudly,

even though people in Norway

complained, as she practiced

driving in my new car,

so stop telling me, dammit,

that I should be happy

for her.

I am.

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, a word in the new Merriam-Webster dictionary, 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 have also started an author blog, about writing, in preparation for the publication, by Black Opal Books, of my novel, VETS, in late 2014 or early 2015. For some reason it does not appear when Googled, even though it’s a Google blog. http://johnrobertmcfarland-author.blogspot.com/

I tweet as yooper1721.

Graduation & Weeds

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

I went to see a man who was undergoing chemo. It was about mid-afternoon. He said, “I’ve been thinking for several hours about taking a shower.” That’s one of the worst things about chemotherapy, the fatigue. Thinking about doing something is about as far as you can get on most days.

So it was with me. I was about six months into the 13 months of my chemotherapy. I was able to do one thing a day. I never chose pulling weeds as my one thing.

So a lady from church was sitting on the walkway to our house, pulling the weeds from the flower beds along the walk. She was good at it. She was about seventy, so she’d had lots of experiences with weeds. I decided my one thing for the day would be to get up and go out to thank her.

I had another motive to talk with her. I knew that her grandson, in his early twenties, had moved in with her and her husband, come from another state to do so. He was deep into drug addiction and had been disowned by his parents and every rehab facility in several states. What do you do when no one else will have you? You go to Grandma’s.

“Everybody says we’re crazy,” she said. “Nobody else has been able to help him. Why could we? We’re old. But that’s the point. I don’t have much to look forward to, but I have a lot to look back at. I remember him when I held him in my arms, when I rocked him when he cried, when we played in the sand box, when I taught him how to ride a bike. I can’t give up on all those memories.”

I was glad my one thing that day was listening to her memories, and rejoicing in her commitment.  

I understood what she was saying, but not really. I didn’t have grandchildren yet.

Now, though, I understand. Last night my first grandchild graduated from high school. She is beautiful. Last month she was prom queen. Last night she was awarded honors and scholarships. I watched her every move with love and pride, with rejoicing for what she will become, but mostly with memories of what we have shared in the past.

But I also scanned up and down the rows of the other graduates, looking for that kid who is not beautiful, who received no honors or awards or scholarships, the one who will be tempted to make wrong decisions and take wrong turns. I prayed for him, that he will have a grandma who knows how to pull weeds…

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 have also started an author blog, about writing, in preparation for the publication, by Black Opal Books, of my novel, VETS, in late 2014 or early 2015. http://johnrobertmcfarland-author.blogspot.com/

I tweet as yooper1721.

The Humility of Chasing Technology

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

At Oakland City High School, I was class president three years. I was principal bassoonist in the band and orchestra. I was editor of the newspaper, Oak Barks. I was a cleanup-hitting first baseman. I took a pretty girl to the prom. I was elected Most Likely to Succeed. I set the all-time record on comprehensive exams [1]. I set the all-time record on the entrance exam at the Potter & Brumfield factory. [2] I rolled my jeans cuffs up two inches.

All my high school classmates remember, though, is that I once tried to catch a run-away typewriter.

It must have been our freshman year, in typing class, with Mr. [Manfred] Morrow. I had never experienced a typewriter before. These were manual Royals, with a very strong reflex. The first time I hit the “return” button, the carriage raced from left to right with great alacrity. I dove for it, ending up on the floor, and I was not just trying to get a better look at Linda Luttrull’s legs, although that was the view I had once down there.

Despite my best effort, I did not catch the carriage, since it, of course, had not come off. How was a farm boy, unused to advanced technology, who even plowed with horses instead of a tractor [3], to know about such things? In my world, if something flew fast from left to right, it came off and needed to be caught. [Remember that I played first base.]

When the class of 1955 has gathered, the class Miss Grace Robb said was more closely involved with one another emotionally than any she ever saw in her many years of teaching, that is the only story they tell, of the skinny farm boy and the run-away typewriter.

Whenever I have been tempted to think of myself too highly [4], I remember Mike and Don and Marietta and Nancy and Bob and Shirley and Hovey and Kenny and Bill and Sharon and Wally and “Rowdy Russ,” who, of course, was not rowdy at all, and the rest of my 61 classmates. One of the best things about old friends is that they keep you humble.

And when my farm-boy brain gets frustrated with my computer, and my iPad, and my dumb phone, I give thanks that at least I no longer have to chase runaway typewriters.

John Robert McFarland

jmcfarland1721@charter.net

1] Comprehensive exams took all of one day, covering the material of all four years of high school. My all-time record stood until James Burch turned his exam in thirty minutes later.

2] I missed only one question on the Potter & Brumfield test. That record stood until James Burch took the exam the next day. I love James Burch. He was always willing to take the pressure off me by beating any record I set. We called him “Wally,” after the Mr. Peepers character of Wally Cox.

3] We later had an old tractor, an orange Case, for which I got a “Tractor Maintenance” certificate in 4H. I keep a model of it on my book case.

4] Romans 12:3.

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where people are Yoopers, a word just now included in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, 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.

THE STORYNESS OF THE LONG-DISTANCE RUNNER

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

I once memorized the Gospel of Mark.

It’s not as great a feat as it might sound. At one time candidates for the ministry in the Church of Scotland had to memorize the Psalms, all of them. I tried that. I couldn’t do it.  They were too much alike. I could memorize Mark because it had movement, a story, a beginning and a middle and an end, and another beginning…

I memorized the King James Version, because I read that British actor Alec McCowen had memorized the KJV of Mark and was performing it on stage. I did a little acting at the time, in community theater, and I thought that would be a neat thing to do, to perform Mark.

I was also a long distance runner in those days, and the long miles on back roads got lonely and boring at times. I thought memorizing Mark would give me something good to do as I ran. I bought a dozen little paperbacks of Mark, so that when one got sweated through from being carried in the waistband of my running shorts, I would always have another in reserve.

I chose Mark and the KJV for the same reasons McCowen did, because it is the shortest, and the KJV is the most dramatic, most stage-worthy version. I also chose it because Mark is the template for the other Gospels.

I did perform Mark a few times, but that turned out to be just a byproduct of the memorization. The real payoff was seeing the Gospel story as a whole.

Hans Frei has said that our current misuse of the Bible comes from “the eclipse of biblical narrative.” [The title of his book.] One of the reasons for that eclipse is that we look at the Gospel, and the Bible in general, only one pericope, one story, one saying, one passage at a time. [1] When we hear the Bible read in church, it is usually without any context. We have no idea where those words from Lamentations or Matthew or Revelation fit in the total biblical story. Thus the Bible becomes not the narrative of God’s relation to the world, but an anthology of generic observations.

In the winter of my years, I can’t memorize a grocery list of three things, like bread, bread, and bread. But because I memorized Mark, I know that the Bible is not just God’s grocery list of unconnected items, helpful hints for pious living, but God’s STORY of salvation. That story includes me. And you. And everybody. That’s really all I need to remember.

John Robert McFarland

1] The MSW sphelczhek is not very knowledgeable about biblical and theological language. It changed pericope to periscope. It also changes pastored to pastured.

NO REGRETS ABOUT RAYDEAN

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

I have no regrets about Raydean. If he were conscious at all when the massive stroke felled him yesterday afternoon, I’m sure he was comforted by the rude remark I made to him the day before on Facebook. That’s the kind of relationship Raydean had with most of his friends.

We have kept in touch all these years, even though we’ve lived hundreds of miles apart for the last 20. We always told folks that we were table tennis majors at Garrett Theological Seminary. At lunch time, we would take on James Cone, who became the famous Black theologian, and Malcolm MacArthur, from New Zealand. We lost regularly, but through the years, whenever we were together and a Ping-Pong table was also present, we teamed up and challenged younger people. We usually won, because in earlier years, we had been beaten by the best.

It is said that a person isn’t really dead until the last person who remembers him is also dead. I would expand that a bit, and say that person isn’t dead until the stories about him or her are no longer told. People are going to be telling Raydean stories for a long time.

It’s hard to know just where to start with the stories, though. He was a loving husband and father and grandfather, a stalwart friend, a committed minister of the Gospel. Those things can be said of many of us, but there was something more with Raydean. He was a character.

Raydean Davis was an iconic figure in Illinois Methodism. All you had to do was say “Raydean,” and everyone would nod sagely. We knew that in Raydean we shared something unique. We just didn’t know what it was.

Now he has “been transferred from the church militant to the church triumphant.” When the stories are told of this character, though, he will still be part of “the goodly fellowship of the prophets.”

Yes, I have no regrets about Raydean, but this will be my last post in CIW until about May 15. I need to go find some old friends, to share some stories and make some rude remarks to them, and thus assure them that I love them.

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

Uncle Randall Does Church Work

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

            I was surprised when Uncle Randall told me he was on a committee at church. He wasn’t a committee kind of guy. That’s not surprising—no McFarland is. We can trace the family occupation tree back to about 1840, and no McFarland man, and very few McFarland women, has ever worked under direct supervision. We’ve had a lot of farmers, a few entrepreneurs, and no small number of bums. DNA, for us, means Do Not Associate.

            Following WW II until his retirement, Uncle Randall had a job in a factory that made automobile bodies. Factory work usually means direct supervision, but he was in quality control. He just walked around all day, a coffee cup in one hand and his pipe in the other, on those rare occasions when he took it out of his mouth. [1] When he retired, everyone in the factory knew him, but no one was quite sure what he did or who he did it for.

            Occasionally he would call Detroit for a conversation like this:

            “The new doors leak.”

            “Are they Buick or Chevy doors?”

            “Chevy.”

            “Oh, don’t worry about it then.”

            I asked him what church committee he was on.

            “Membership. I thought it was to get new members, but it’s to get rid of old ones who don’t come anymore. We’re supposed to call them up and say, ‘Why the hell aren’t you in church?’ so then the board can say, ‘We tried to get ‘em to come back, you know,’ in case anybody complains when we drop them.”

            “Sounds like a fun job,” I said.

            “Yeah. I was about to quit when I came across the name of a girl who had been in confirmation class with Kae. [His daughter] She was such a cute little thing, always bright and cheerful. Hadn’t seen her in ten years. Forgot all about her, to tell the truth. Church didn’t have a telephone number or address for her. I started tracing her. Took a long time. [This was before the internet.] Finally got an address. I was sure it was wrong—really bad part of town, but I went. Had to walk up three flights in a really crummy old building. Didn’t even recognize her at first. Good grief, was she ever fat. Had two little kids and no husband, no money, no job. All she did was eat and cry.”

            “What did you do?”

            “I said, ‘Good grief, are you ever fat! And this place is a dump.”

“That probably helped.”

            “Well, not at first.” He sounded surprised. “All she did was cry some more. But then she said, What should I do? Lose weight, I said. Get a job. Get out of this crummy apartment. Go to college. Get your fat behind off that sofa.”

            “That’s more work than a pastor usually expects out of the membership committee. What happened?” I asked.

He looked at me like I was a dunce.

“I dragged her fat behind into the car, like to broke the doors off. I can’t afford a Buick, you know. Took her down to the college. She lost weight. She got a job. She got a good apartment. People stop coming to church for a reason. She didn’t want people to see her like that. She just needed somebody to come looking for her.”

            “What did the Membership Committee do?” I asked.

            “Oh, for Pete’s sake.” He hit himself on the forehead with his pipe bowl. “I forgot all about that. I suppose they dropped her from the rolls. You know I’m no good at church work.”

John Robert McFarland

jmcfarland1721@charter.net

1] [He thought my father was a “fancy” pipe smoker for puffing “Sir Walter Raleigh.” “Prince Albert” was good enough, and cheap enough, for Uncle Randall.]

Randall Forrest McFarland was my primary playmate, and sometimes my primary care giver, until I was four, during years my family, along with a lot of other uncles and aunts and cousins, lived with my grandparents. It was the time of The Great Depression. My father and his younger brothers, Bob and Randall and Mike, in their late teens and early twenties, could not get jobs. Bob went to a CCC camp, and when WW II started, they all served in the army. Randall was a junior officer in the South Pacific and there got the malaria that dogged him in later life.

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