Iron Mountain ski jump

Iron Mountain ski jump

Monday, December 21, 2015

Religion and Faith

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

It is possible to wonder, as some do, if this blog is “religious” enough to qualify as… well, religious.

But note that the title says this blog reflects on faith, not on religion. Religion is part of faith, but faith is more than religion.

Now it is time for a Christmas break. The Lord willing, there will be more opportunities to reflect on faith in the new year.

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I started this blog several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] We don’t live in the place of winter anymore, but we are still in the years of winter.

I tweet as yooper1721.


Sunday, December 20, 2015

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL

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

{For many years I wrote a new Christmas story each year to use as a Christmas eve sermon. This is the most well-known, and most-often published. Feel free to use it yourself if you have need.]

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL--1926


Before the green hills had become the spoil banks of the strip mines, when United States highways were graveled ribbons and mules still pulled the plows, where the Wabash meets the Ohio, my father "rode the mail." 

            It was not a regular job.  The people in the hills read slowly and wrote only when they had something important to say.  A postage penny was a lot of money.

            Once each week or two, however, the letters and circulars for the folks in the hills mounded up until they filled a leather mail-pouch.  When the papers peeked over the bag top, my father unhitched the mules with which he had been grading the roads since he was twelve, saddled up his horse, and clucked a "giddyap" out toward the cabins where no roads dared to go. 

            The trackless hills, where the woods are deep, are cool and pleasant in the haze of summer. When the autumn comes, though, the heavy rains dump the soggy maple leaves down upon your head.  The water sneaks in between your hat and the collar of your coat. Then the hills hunker down and close in and say, "Beware."

            It was on such a day that Father lost his way.  So when he crossed a clearing and saw a cabin, it was both relief and fear that ran with the rain down along his backbone.  From underneath his dripping hat he hailed the gray, unpainted shack. 

            "Helloooo, the cabin," he called.

            No answer.  The owner must be in on such a day, he thought, or else the cabin was deserted.

            His right foot had left the stirrup and was half-way over the horse's rump when he saw the shotgun.  Only one barrel, but it was big, and it looked straight out at him from where the door had cracked open.  Off the saddle, he waited.

            "What do y' want?" a thin voice from behind the shotgun demanded.

            Father thought fast. 

            "I'v brot your mail," he called.

            "And I need a place to git dry," he added.

            The shotgun held its place, and so did Father.  Finally, however, the muzzle lowered toward the rough boards of the porch, and Father lowered himself to the ground.

            "Come," the cabin called, and Father went.

            Inside the door he met the oldest, frailest-looking woman he had ever seen.  A hound dog that must have shared her birthday lay in front of the fireplace.  A table, a ladder-back chair, a bed, the shotgun, a shaker chest, and a stool were the cabin's only other occupants.

            The woman was still wary. 

            "I don't git no mail," she said.

            Father fished into the pouch and hooked an old circular.  He pushed it out across the gap between them.  A thin, veined hand took it and held it close to two slow eyes.  The eyes were satisfied.  The hand pointed to the chair. 

            "Sit," she said. 

            Father sat.  He wondered a little at how the old woman had read the circular while holding it upside down.

            She brewed some tea. They sipped and sat before the fire until the silence of the roof reported that the rain had gone. They did not talk--just sat and sipped together--the very young man who was only beginning, the very old woman whose life was ending. 

            Father said, "I'll be goin' now.  I thank you for the shelter and the tea." 

            The frail old hands picked up the circular as he left.

            From then on when Father rode the mail, he put into the pouch an old sale bill, or a circular, and he took it to the little cabin in the clearing in the woods.  Each time the young man and the old woman sat and sipped in silence.  Each time Father noted that the "mail" of his last trip had been tacked up on the wall.

            When the winter comes, the rains stop, but the sky is gray as slate sometimes, and the wind sneaks past the button sentries.  In those cold days, Father was especially glad for the cabin and the fire and the tea and the silence.

            A week before Christmas, Father put an old catalog into his pouch, along with all the cards for others on the way, and set out to ride the mail.  He took the catalog to the cabin.  There they sat, the silent young man and the quiet old woman.  As Father rose to leave, the old woman spoke into the silence.

            "It was good of y' to leave your own family and come out to see me on Christmas day," she said.

            Father looked at the walls around him.  There was no calendar, only the circulars and sale bills winking back at him in the firelight.

            Father did not ever talk very much, but many, many years later, when he told this story to his children and grandchildren, he said, "I guess she never did know it wasn't really Christmas day."

            Perhaps he never knew it really was.

John Robert McFarland

When my Christmas stories were compiled in a book, I was going to title it THE YEARS OF CHRISTMAS, since each story is set in a different past year. WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL… was so popular, though, that publisher people thought that should be the title of the book. You can order a copy at lulu.com. I think you can order just using the book title or my name, but the ISBN is 978-1-300-38566-0.

Saturday, December 19, 2015

PANSIES

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

It is almost the heart of winter. Two more days is the winter solstice. It will be the shortest day of the year. The fewest hours of daylight for any day all year. The pansies don’t care. “Bring it on,” they say, turning their pretty faces into the frosty wind.

The pansies are in a wooden pot on the glass table on our patio. Helen hasn’t watered them for weeks. Or tended them in any other way. They don’t care. They keep on being their own jolly multi-colored selves. Against all odds, without any help, they survive.

Wait a minute, though. These are pansies. Their very name means weak-hearted, fearful, running-away at the thought of danger. When Frank Barone, on that TV sitcom about everybody loving Raymond, wanted to ridicule his sons, he called them pansies. We did that on the playground when I was growing up. You pansy!

We discovered while living in the UP, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a totally pansy-unfriendly place, where winters are 13 months long, that pansies lasted longest, and most colorfully. Who wouldathunk?

So why is it that they have such a reputation for weakness? Because they once ran for president. Those who manage political campaigns learned about 30 years ago that the way you win is to attack your opponent at hisher strongest point and claim it is hisher weakest, and reverse the process with your own candidate. “That war hero guy is actually a pansy and our guy who got three deferments is the one who is the really tough guy who will defeat our enemies.”

All you need is enough money to say it about a ten thousand times on TV, and the vast majority of voters will pay no attention, but they’ll overhear it as part of the general sounds in the air until when election day comes, they’ll say, “Oh, yeah, that gal who served two tours in Afghanistan is the pansy. I’ll not vote for her. I’ll vote for the CEO who laid off her father so he could get a big bonus. He knows how to deal with those kinds of people, whoever they are.”

So, pansies, don’t run for office. Just keep smiling out there on the patio, looking in at the rest of us, snug and warm in our houses. Keep smiling at us in the storm as you make the world a better place just by being pansies.

As for the rest of us, we need to be very careful about disrespecting pansies.

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

GETTING OUT OF THE HOUSE


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

I’m the only person in our family who actually knows how to get out of the house.

When all the good-byes have been said, and the coats and boots are on, that’s the time to bring out the doll house or go pick tomatoes to send with us, or argue about who should take how much of some left-over food in the refrigerator, or discuss at whose house the gathering for the next holiday will be, and who will bring what.

It’s not just getting out the door. It’s any transition time. When it is time to go to bed, I think one should get into bed, but I’m wrong. That’s when one is supposed to pull the sheets tighter and beat the hell out of the pillows, which is called fluffing the pillows.

It’s not much better when we get going. I recall one auto trip with our young daughters and my parents and several other relatives. The car had no people, only bladders, all on different schedules.

We took my father home after he had lived with us for a while to have an operation. We found Mother on the floor, where she had been for several hours. She did not want to go to the hospital.

Helen grabbed the phone to call 911 anyway. “If you call 911, I’ll never speak to you again,” Mother said. I’ve never seen a woman dial a phone so fast.

When the ambulance guys got there, really nice and personable young man, Mother tried to talk them into stopping for supper at the Hilltop restaurant, her favorite, and only a few miles in the wrong direction, on the way to the hospital for supper. “I’ll pay,” she said.

Everybody in my family wants to delay the trip, for whatever reason, but not me. I have always been eager to get on the road, to “make good time,” to see what comes next, which is one reason I’ve never feared death.

However, when Charon, the ferryman on the river Styx, comes to collect me, I suspect I’ll say, “Why don’t we stop at Hilltop first? I’ll pay.”

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I started this blog several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] The grandchildren, though, are grown up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the life cycle, so I am still trying to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter…

I tweet as yooper1721.

My new novel is VETS, about four homeless Iraqistan veterans accused of murdering a VA doctor, is available from your local independent book store, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BOKO, Books-A-Million, Black Opal Books, and almost any place else that sells books. $8.49 or $12.99 for paperback, according to which site you look at, and $3.99 for Kindle. Free if you can get your library to buy one.

Sunday, December 13, 2015

SUNDAY MORNING ADVICE

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

Will Barrett, Walker Percy’s protagonist in The Last Gentleman, says that one need not listen to a good preacher, for good preachers know how to eliminate the objectionable. A dumb preacher, however, a stupid preacher, a poor preacher, will almost always something by accident that you need to hear.


johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

MAGIC MOMENTS

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

The TV said that a marriage should have magic moments. It suggested that this could be accomplished if a man gave his wife a diamond something or other. I do not have any diamonds. I asked my wife if our marriage still had magic moments. She laughed. It was a magic moment.


johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Saturday, December 12, 2015

TAKING THE BIBLE LITERALLY, LITERALLY

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

It is strange that people say they take the Bible literally when the Bible does not say that it should be taken literally.

It is strange that people say that the Bible is the Word of God. The Bible says that Christ is the Word of God. Christ does not say that the Bible is the Word of God. So if you take the Bible literally, it is not the Word of God, so you can’t take it literally.

The real reason for saying we take the Bible literally is to pick out some verse that will justify excluding some group that is unlike my group, and then ignore all the rest of the Bible.

It is hard to take the Bible literally even if we have good intentions for doing so unless we know Greek and Hebrew. There is very little of either of those languages that can be treated as an algebraic equation for translating into English.

For instance, we now accept the word atonement as Biblical. It is not. It is not even atonement. It should be pronounced at-one-ment. A bible translator made it up to express a Biblical sentiment—being at one with-- for which there is no direct English equivalent word. You cannot take atonement literally because there is no such thing.

Who was that translator? Tyndale? Wycliffe? I forget. I’d like to say it was Wycliffe, because for a short time in the 1950s, I was the first English-speaking pastor of the Wycliffe Methodist Church in the Pilsen area of Chicago.

Not long before that, Pilsen was the largest Czech settlement in the world, outside of Prague.

Now that I think about it, I wonder why a Czech speaking Methodist church was named for one famous for translating the Bible into English. I guess they were not taking the Bible literally.


johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Friday, December 11, 2015

GOD STAYS AND PLAYS, AGAIN

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

I share this each year, because… Well, it’s a grandchild story!

When granddaughter Brigid was about four, as Christmas approached, she said to her mother…

“You know, Santa and Grandpa are a lot alike. Santa has a white beard, and Grandpa has a white beard. Santa has a bald head, and Grandpa has a bald head. Santa brings toys, and Grandpa brings toys…

But Grandpa is better, because he stays and plays.”

That’s the message of Christmas, I think. God is not just some Santa making a quick stop on the roof, throwing some goodies down the chimney, and then hurrying on. In Jesus, the Christ, God stays and plays.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Monday, December 7, 2015

What Is Missing in the Talk of Old Age--a poem

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

The constant weakened
Beat of sagging drums
Sounds mournful
In my saddened ears
As friends from years long
Past speak only
Of their aches and pains
And imagined plots
Injustice, old and new
With never even one loud
Cymbal clash
Of joy

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com


Friday, December 4, 2015

IT ALL STARTED... SOME PLACE

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

As I walked this morning, about 32, nippy, frosty, it reminded me of so many mornings like it when I walked to class at IU, Indiana University, and I was very thankful to be back here, in Bloomington, to close the circle, to be “where my life began.”
            I really think of it that way. Mostly because it was at IU that I met Helen, and none of the rest of my life would have been possible without her, but the whole IU experience opened the world to me. Those were a marvelous four years. Yes, there was the usual heartbreak of romantic rejections, before I met Helen, and the uncertainty about what I was supposed to do with my life, all the usual stuff of that stage of life, but it was like being put into the basket of a trebuchet and then flung out into space--uncertain where you’ll land, but exhilarating.
            At the same time, I feel a little embarrassed at saying my life started at IU, because Oakland City, IN was so good to me. Moving there in the middle of the first semester of 5th grade, a poor country kid, without decent clothes, who had to ride on a horse-drawn wagon with his father to go into town, those OC kids were so accepting of me anyway. They had a high regard for education and intelligence. As soon as I started getting the best grades in class, [matched by James Burch], they were even nicer to me. They thought that was great, quite unlike the anti-intellectual tenor of our current times.
            The good grades were a surprise to me. We did not have letter grades at Lucretia Mott Public School # 3 in Indianapolis. Each grading period the teacher wrote something like “Johnny isn’t too awful.” I already knew that.
            Oakland City was old-fashioned. We had quizzes in spelling and arithmetic and all the other subjects almost every day. No concern for privacy--we passed them to the kid across the aisle to grade. Quickly everybody knew that I got all the answers right.
            On top of that, Uncle Ted, my mother’s oldest brother, who once served in the Indiana Legislature, lived only 5 miles away now, and had no children, so he became a sort of grandfather. He promised me a dime for each A and a nickel for each B. I was rich.
            I wasn’t really competitive. I didn’t try to out-shine the other kids. I was glad if they got good grades, too. But I wanted their respect, and I wanted dimes.
            Strangely, I think a lot of my dimes were the result of Lucretia Mott School, so I guess maybe I should say that my life started in Indianapolis. The state board of education, or whoever made those decisions in those days, decided that PS 3 would be an ideal place to try out new ways of educating. It was a poor but respectable section of the city. Educators were not afraid to come into our part of town, which was probably the main reason we were chosen. All the kids were white. Our parents were uneducated and compliant, so they would not complain if the experiments went wrong.
            A lot of the experiments did not work. I was afraid for years to sing. I still can’t draw. I could not learn to read by having whole phrases flashed onto a screen by a slide projector. [Part of experimentation was using new technology.]
            But the Hawthorne effect worked.
The AT&T labor engineers experimented at the Hawthorne, IL plant. They gave the employees longer lunch breaks, and productivity went up. They brought in snack machines, and productivity went up. They gave folks nice stools instead of making them stand up to work the assembly lines, and productivity went up.
The message was pretty clear. But then one of the engineers got a bright idea.
He shortened lunch breaks, and productivity went up. He took away snack machines, and productivity went up. He took away the nice stools and made people stand up to work at the assembly lines, and productivity went up.
            Productivity was the result of getting attention! The attention mattered. The employees felt that they were respected, that not just what they did mattered but that they themselves mattered.
So, I think I got dimes at Oakland City in part because I got a lot of attention at School # 3 in Indianapolis. Also because of Saturday afternoon matinees at the Tacoma Theater, where I learned not to trust guys in black hats.
Well, my life started some place, and I give thanks for all the folks who helped me along the way.

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

Saturday, November 28, 2015

Pride In All The Wrong Places

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

I think one of the most discouraging things about self-professed American Christians today, from presidential candidates on up, is the number who are actually proud of being selfish and unkind to those who are not exactly like themselves, the number who are proud of rejecting The Golden Rule of Christ.

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

PRAYER AS SEEING THE UNSEEN

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

I’m always surprised at people who do not pray. You need not believe in a God, or be an adherent of an organized, or unorganized religion, to pray.

Even insensitive people recognize that there is reality beyond what we experience with our bodily and earthly senses. Prayer is entering into that reality.

It has nothing to do with whether we “feel” something or not. I enter into many worlds each day, through sight and sound and touch, without “feeling,” without any special awareness.

I often do not get the results I want from those worlds of sight and sound and taste and touch, either. I don’t stop using those senses, though, just because they don’t provide me the views and tastes I want.

I continue to be part of the sense world through senses, and the un-sense world through prayer, because that is what it means to be human.


johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Monday, November 23, 2015

THE COMFORT OF IRRELEVANCY

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter

As I worried about growing irrelevant in old age, my YGLF [Young Gal Lutheran Friend], Rebecca, comforted me by saying [only slightly paraphrased], “You’ve always been irrelevant. You just haven’t realized it until now.”

Yes, that is comforting. I’m the same person I’ve always been. Old age has not diminished my essential being.


John Robert McFarland

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

SITTING IN LYNN'S CHAIR

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

“I want to be sitting in Lynn’s chair,” I said, “telling her story.”

It was the summer of 1990. Helen and I were enrolled in a class at Iliff Theological Seminary, in Denver, on “Empowering the Cancer Patient.” It was five months after my surgery and four months into my twelve months of chemotherapy. I was still under the sentence of my first oncologist, “…a year or two.”

Most of the class members were Iliff students who were learning how to pastor cancer patients. A few class members were survivors, but I was the only one who was still a patient. The class coordinator was John Anduri, a cancer survivor himself, and the main teachers, both in knowledge and inspiration, were Lynn Hamilton and Paul K. Hamilton, Jr.

Twenty years before, Paul had been Lynn’s oncologist. She was barely into her twenties when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, at a time when the survival rate for that cancer was 1 [one] %. Before they had any idea that she would be in that 1%, Paul was so impressed with the poise and determination of his tall and beautiful and composed young patient that he began what was then a brand new idea, using patients to help other patients. When Lynn would walk into a hospital room, her first line was, “I’m a patient, too.” It became the title of a book. [1] Together Paul and Lynn founded CanSurmount, which became the official patient to patient support program of American Cancer Society. [2]

John Anduri asked each of us, “Where do you want to be in 25 years?” I said, “I want to be sitting in Lynn’s chair, telling her story.”

Thanks for keeping the chair warm for me, Lynn.

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] The book is by Albert Fay Hill. about Lynn and Paul and their program.

2] [CanSurmount is active in Canada but has now been absorbed into other programs of the ACS in the US.] 

I tweet as yooper1721.


Monday, November 2, 2015

DON'T WORRY; YOUR NAME IS THERE

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

Larry Berry always starts the announcements period at church with a story about Bob. No one knows who Bob is, but the first word of the story is always, “Bob…” with a little pause. Helen says she starts to laugh right then, just from the way Larry says, “Bob…”

Yesterday, it was “Bob… was a farmer. One day he lost his Bible. He looked all over the farm for his Bible, in the fields in the barn, everywhere, but he could not find it. He was bereft. Then a deer showed up at his door with the Bible in its mouth. Bob grabbed the Bible and shouted, “It’s a miracle.” The deer shrugged and said, “It was easy. Your name’s on the front cover.”

I have written before about my first Sunday School teacher, Mrs. Darringer. I don’t think she had a first name. Even her husband called her “Mrs. Darringer.” When I was about eight years old, she gave me a New Testament for Christmas, King James Version, red letter edition, one of those fat little books about two inches wide and three inches high and four inches thick. In it she wrote, “Johney McFarland, from Mrs. Darringer.”

My name was in the book, in the Bible story! Witnessed and testified by the name of the one person I knew who had the authority to put it there and keep it there.

Whenever I’m lost, I don’t have to worry, because I know whoever finds me can return me to where I belong, in God’s story, because my name is in the book, along with Mrs. Darringer’s.

Don’t worry if you’re lost. You’ll be found. Your name is in the story.

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I started this blog several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] The grandchildren, though, are grown up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the life cycle, so I am still trying to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter…

I tweet as yooper1721.

My new novel is VETS, about four homeless Iraqistan veterans accused of murdering a VA doctor, is available from your local independent book store, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BOKO, Books-A-Million, Black Opal Books, and almost any place else that sells books. $8.49 or $12.99 for paperback, according to which site you look at, and $3.99 for Kindle. Free if you can get your library to buy one.



Sunday, November 1, 2015

TWO THOUGHTS FOR ALL SAINTS DAY

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

Two thoughts for All Saints Day…

My YGLF, Young Gal Lutheran Friend, Rebecca Ninke, who pastors at Brooklyn, WI, has taught her children to tithe their Halloween candy. What a great idea. Surely others do it, too, but I’ve never heard of it or thought of it.

I once preached the memorial service at our annual conference, remembering the clergy and their spouses who had died during the previous year. I told stories about them, and extolled them as those who had told the story. That is always how I think of the saints who are now in that great cloud of witnesses. They were the ones who helped me know I am in the story, by telling me the story, in stories.

A lot of people live by bumper slogans. Guns, Guts, and God-What Made American Great. Guns Save Lives. God said it, I believe it, that settles it. This is the first day of the rest of your life. Remember the Alamo.

Not all the slogans are bad, or wrong, but they are all inadequate. Sometimes a slogan is useful, but anything that tries to reduce the story to a sentence, or a word, leads us astray. Yes, telling the story takes longer, and it is harder work, and it requires us to listen as well as talk, but on this All Saints Day, I give thanks for those saints who took the trouble to tell me the story, and listen as I tried to tell it.

I am filling the pulpit for three months at a tiny church twenty miles away. There is a maximum of 17 people, counting Helen and me. We have no one who plays piano, so we use CDs to accompany our singing. Last night I learned by email that our CD does not have “For all the saints,” even though it is in our hymnal, so I’ll have to lead it acapella. In former days, that would have terrified me. I love to sing, but I have a very limited range. Now, though, I am close enough to being part of that great cloud of witnesses myself that not much scares me, and I’m delighted to have the chance to remind us all that those saints “who from their labors rest” are the ones who told us the story.

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.



Saturday, October 31, 2015

A TALE OF TWO SELFIES

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

I passed John Mellenkamp on Kirkwood Avenue yesterday. A skinny blond was mauling him in order to get a selfie with him, much to the annoyance of the skinny blond who was actually with him, who, I am told, is Christie Brinkley, super model, his current squeeze, in lingo I think is cool and current and so must be hopelessly out of date. The “Small Town” boy, though, was being remarkably kind and accommodating, while giving me one of those man-to-man looks that say, “What can you do?”

He obviously recognized me as a guy who is used to being mauled by skinny blonds for selfies. That is because it happened at the Willie Nelson concert last week.

Willie is sort of the connection for this story. Not long ago he and Mellenkamp were on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” talking about Farm Aid. They also performed, “Night Life Ain’t No Good Life, but It’s My Life.”

For the occasion they should have “adjusted” it to be “Farm Life Ain’t No Good Life but It’s My Life,” but Willie, despite being a guitar virtuoso, a unique phraser, and an excellent writer/composer, is not an adjuster. How else can you account for the fact that I have now heard him twice do concerts in Hoagy Carmichael’s home town, with a statue of Hoagy right outside where Willie’s bus was parked, and yet not do “Stardust” as part of his set, which he obviously knows since he had a big hit with it? Once his play list is set, he can’t adjust.

I, on the other hand, being an accomplished lyrics adjustor, immediately began to do “Church life ain’t no good life but it’s my life,” but it didn’t work very well, because church life is a good life more often that it ain’t. I still have work to do on that one, although I’m almost finished with “Mommas, don’t let your babies grow up to be preachers. Don’t let ‘em read Bibles and go to prayer groups, make em’ be lawyers and financial dupes…” Well, yes, there’s more work to do on it.

Anyway, soon after I saw Willie and Cougar on The Late Show, both of them came to town, Willie to do a concert with Merle Haggard, and Mellenkamp because he lives here, out in the country, with Christie Brinkley, or Meg Ryan, or whatever skinny blond has his attention at the moment.

It was at the Willie concert that I got mauled by a skinny blond who wanted a selfie. She did not want me in the selfie. She wanted it with sports columnist supreme Bob Hammel, who is more famous in Bloomington even than Mellenkamp, but I was on the aisle, and Bob was in the seat next to me, and she had to climb over me to get to Bob, and, not satisfied with that, dragged him over me bodily to get him out into the aisle so she could get more and better selfies.

On the surface, these two men don’t have much in common. A generation apart, one is a rocker, the other is definitely not. One is a staunch Presbyterian, the other is definitely not. One is a smoker, the other is definitely not. One has a series of tall skinny blonds. One has been with the same short brunette for more than 50 years.

However, they are both small town boys. They both write and love music of all sorts. They both love sports. Most of all, they are both kind, publicly and personally. Maybe that is what defines anyone as “small town boy,” regardless of gender or size of city, that ethos of kindness.

Do be careful, though, if you are with one of them, and you see a skinny blond coming with a camera.

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

They called them heroes. They said, “Thank you for your service.” Then forgot about them. Joe Kirk lost a leg. Lonnie Blifield lost his eyes. Victoria Roundtree lost her skin. “Zan” Zander lost his mind. Four homeless and hopeless Iraqistan VETS who accidentally end up living together on an old school bus. With nowhere to go, and nothing else to do, they lurch from one VAMC to another, getting no help because, like the thousands of other Iraqistan VETS who are homeless, unemployed, and suicidal, they do not trust the system and refuse to “come inside.” After another fruitless stop, at the VAMC in Iron Mountain, Michigan, a doctor is found dead, and the VETS are accused of his murder. Distrustful, strangers to America, to each other, and even to themselves, they must become a unit to learn who really murdered the doctor, so that they can be free. In doing so, they uncover far more, about themselves and about their country, than they dared even to imagine. Available from your local independent book store, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BOKO, Books-A-Million, Black Opal Books, and almost any place else that sells books. $8.49 or $12.99 for paperback, according to which site you look at, and $3.99 for Kindle. Free if you can get your library to buy one.

Friday, October 30, 2015

THE REAL WORLD

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

When I was in college, and in campus ministry, and I suspect even now, old people would talk about college students, and how they “did nothing but party,” and say, “Wait until you’re in the real world…”

By “real world,” of course, they meant whatever world they were in at the moment. A lot of folks can’t accept any world as real but their own.

There are a lot of real worlds. Whatever world you are in at the moment is your real world. Yes, you won’t be in it forever. There will be other worlds. The only way you are not in the real world is if you fail to live in the present, waiting for some other world.

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.


Tuesday, October 27, 2015

THE IMMIGRANTS BECOME THE LINCHPINS

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

[A reprint from 10-26-10, because immigration is such an issue right now for American presidential campaigns, and for the world as Syrians flee Isis.]

In the posts of Sept. 30 and Oct. 24, I referred to Helen as “Grandma Mac,” as she is to Brigid and Joe. “Grandma Mac” is not just a title. It is a position. A “Grandma Mac” is the linchpin of the family, the one that holds it all together, the bearer of all knowledge, the hearer of all woes, the remover of all spots, the wiper of all spills.

The first Grandma Mac was Henrietta Ann Smith McFarland, my grandmother, the wife of Arthur Harrison McFarland. Even now, many years after her death, whenever anyone in our family says “Grandma Mac,” we know that they mean “Retta,” not any of her successors.

She was five feet tall, in heels, which she wore into her 90s, five feet of dynamite and fun. There was nothing she couldn’t do, including having seven children without ever seeing the inside of a hospital. Indeed, she was never in a hospital until she was dying at age 96. There was no one she couldn’t beat at Chinese Checkers. She was a great fan of her grandchildren and the Cincinnati Reds. She made work into fun. She was the quintessential grandma—laughs and cookies.

Grandma Mac was the linchpin of the family, the switchboard, the one through whom we all communicated, the one who kept track of eight children [she also raised a niece] and 22 grandchildren.

There are other Grandma Macs now. Aunt Gertrude, Aunt Rosemary, Aunt Edna—they are in the next generation of Grandma Macs after Retta. But my wife, Helen, is a Grandma Mac, too, in the next generation after the aunts, and so are Evonne and Carol and Jackie. So was Sandy.

They are the linchpins for their families. They are the ones who keep the clan going, who give it that distinctive family identity.

It’s strange, isn’t it, that these Grandma Macs, who give the clan its identity, were not originally Macs? They weren’t McFarlands until they married one.

Be kind to the immigrants in the family. They will become the linchpins.

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

My new novel is VETS, about four homeless Iraqistan veterans accused of murdering a VA doctor, is available from your local independent book store, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BOKO, Books-A-Million, Black Opal Books, and almost any place else that sells books. $8.49 or $12.99 for paperback, according to which site you look at, and $3.99 for Kindle. Free if you can get your library to buy one.


Monday, October 26, 2015

TAKING CLAYTON HOME

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

Our conference leader, I’ll call him Bob, told us about what happened following another conference he had led. It was several hundred miles from his home, but it had been more convenient to drive than to work out flights. When an old friend learned that on his way home that Bob would be passing near the town where the friend pastored a church, on the day of the men’s prayer group, he asked him to speak to the group.

Bob did not want to do it. He was tired. He wanted to get home. To make it worse, there was an old farmer who prayed so long about one Clayton Barnes [not real name] that Bob didn’t even have much time to speak.

“Oh, Lord, you know Clayton Barnes is a good man, but Clayton Barnes has fallen on hard times, and I’m afraid Clayton Barnes’ll leave his wife and little children, because Clayton Barnes can’t get a job, and Oh, Lord, if you could just do something for Clayton Barnes, because Clayton Barnes can make it if Clayton Barnes is just patient…” and on and on. Bob said he was totally sick of the name of Clayton Barnes by the time he got back onto the road and headed for home.

Several miles along the way he saw a hitch-hiker. It was a blue highway, not much traffic, not many ride possibilities, and the guy looked okay, so Bob picked him up. They chatted the way strangers do, and the young hitch-hiker began to tell him about his troubles.

Bob did a U turn.

“What are you doing?” the hitch-hiker said.

“You’re Clayton Barnes.”

The young man shrank against his door.

“How do you know who I am?”

Bob sighed and said, “The Lord sent me to take you back to where you belong.”

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I started this blog several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] The grandchildren, though, are grown up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the life cycle, so I am still trying to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter…

I tweet as yooper1721.

Sunday, October 25, 2015

GOD'S FAVORITE

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

I still think a lot about my friend, Mike Dickey, who died suddenly this summer. We were friends from when we first met, at age ten. Helen and I flew to AZ so I could conduct his memorial service.

There was a sharing time during the service, when any friend or family member could talk about Mike. Teri has a large family, and many of them spoke. Each started by stating his or her name, and saying, “I was Mike’s favorite… niece or brother-in-law or…”

It was done in fun, of course, but it was also true. Mike was one of those people who makes you feel like the favorite. Nothing false about it; it was just who he was.

So I hope you will understand when I say, I am God’s favorite.

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I started this blog several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] The grandchildren, though, are grown up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the life cycle, so I am still trying to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter…

I tweet as yooper1721.

Friday, October 23, 2015

REMEMBERING EARL REITAN

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

The obituary for Earl Reitan is in the Bloomington, IL Pantagraph today. He was 90.

Earl was chair of the History Department at Illinois State University when I was the United Methodist campus minister there. Those were the years of civil rights and Viet Nam unrest on campuses, and Earl was one of the most important, even though understated, voices on our campus.

He spoke against the Viet Nam war with such credibility because he knew history and because he was a World War II veteran, a teen-aged rifleman, with a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. But he spoke so thoughtfully, with respect for everyone, that his was one of the voices that kept our campus, unlike every other state campus in IL at that time, free of violence.

He would not have been in that position, though, had it not been for our willingness to care for veterans after WW II, especially with the GI Bill. Earl was a child of the poverty of the Great Depression. He liked the army; he got enough to eat there. But after his army days, he was able to go to college, and get a PhD at the U. of Illinois because of the GI Bill.

I think of all the absent Earls, Earls we need now, and will need in the future, veterans of our current wars, whose experience and wisdom we shall not be able to use because our greedy politicians are willing to ignore them in order to feather the nests of their financial contributors.

I have some Christian friends who agree with those politicians because they claim that not only should the government not help anyone in need but that individuals should not help them either, because people must learn to “stand on their own two feet” and earn their own way. It is hard to claim that is Christian thinking. Everything Jesus said would seem to contradict it. He was in favor of helping anyone in need, just because they were in need. Even if you take do that extreme “own two feet” libertarian position, though, it is hard to claim that military veterans have not earned their way. Many cannot “stand on their own two feet” anymore because they no longer have two feet.

Greed, which is the real reason for ignoring the needs of others, is not Christian, regardless of how many wordy philosophies we wrap it in.

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

They called them heroes. They said, “Thank you for your service.” Then forgot about them. Joe Kirk lost a leg. Lonnie Blifield lost his eyes. Victoria Roundtree lost her skin. “Zan” Zander lost his mind. Four homeless and hopeless Iraqistan VETS who accidentally end up living together on an old school bus. With nowhere to go, and nothing else to do, they lurch from one VAMC to another, getting no help because, like the thousands of other Iraqistan VETS who are homeless, unemployed, and suicidal, they do not trust the system and refuse to “come inside.” After another fruitless stop, at the VAMC in Iron Mountain, Michigan, a doctor is found dead, and the VETS are accused of his murder. Distrustful, strangers to America, to each other, and even to themselves, they must become a unit to learn who really murdered the doctor, so that they can be free. In doing so, they uncover far more, about themselves and about their country, than they dared even to imagine. Available from your local independent book store, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BOKO, Books-A-Million, Black Opal Books, and almost any place else that sells books. $8.49 or $12.99 for paperback, according to which site you look at, and $3.99 for Kindle. Free if you can get your library to buy one.

Monday, October 19, 2015

Comfort In the Words-a poem

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

Even when I have wandered
Into dark deep woods
Without a compass, so far lost
Not even moss to be a guide
On North or any other side
So lost I cannot grasp
The horns of sanctuary
In the Word
I still find comfort in the words
A rhyme perched bird-like on a branch
A hymn in stanzas of the leaves
A story writ on fallen bark of birch
Or writer’s oak
A story writ from end to start

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

They called them heroes. They said, “Thank you for your service.” Then forgot about them. Joe Kirk lost a leg. Lonnie Blifield lost his eyes. Victoria Roundtree lost her skin. “Zan” Zander lost his mind. Four homeless and hopeless Iraqistan VETS who accidentally end up living together on an old school bus. With nowhere to go, and nothing else to do, they lurch from one VAMC to another, getting no help because, like the thousands of other Iraqistan VETS who are homeless, unemployed, and suicidal, they do not trust the system and refuse to “come inside.” After another fruitless stop, at the VAMC in Iron Mountain, Michigan, a doctor is found dead, and the VETS are accused of his murder. Distrustful, strangers to America, to each other, and even to themselves, they must become a unit to learn who really murdered the doctor, so that they can be free. In doing so, they uncover far more, about themselves and about their country, than they dared even to imagine. Available from your local independent book store, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BOKO, Books-A-Million, Black Opal Books, and almost any place else that sells books. $8.49 or $12.99 for paperback, according to which site you look at, and $3.99 for Kindle or other ebook. Free if you can get your library to buy one.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

We Ought To Have a PIcture-a poem

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

“We outa hab a pictu a dis.”
She could barely say the words
but she wanted a picture
We called her
The Phototerrorist
the one who could not feel
the world but through a lens
I take pictures now,
seeing the world
that way
The days are short and few
I want to feel each moment
twice

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I started this blog several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] The grandchildren, though, are grown up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the life cycle, so I am still trying to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter…

I tweet as yooper1721.


Thursday, October 15, 2015

SPIRIT OF GENTLENESS

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

I have to arise early, usually no later than 5:00, and often earlier, for medical reasons. I have always found that my day starts best with music, but Helen is still asleep, so I have to be quiet. However, I have discovered YouTube, which is better than ear phones because if I call up “Swing Low” or “Morning Has Broken,” I can see the hymn as well as hear it. I sit on the living room sofa with my coffee, turn my iPad down low, so that only I can hear it, and start my day with the classic hymns of faith and hope.

One of my favorites to start the day is by my old friend, Jim Manley. Don’t look him up on YouTube by that name, or you’ll get the trumpet player. Even James K. Manley won’t work. But you can put “Spirit of Gentleness” into the YouTube search box and you’ll get this delightful way to start the day, with Jim’s gentle, beautiful tune as the perfect setting for the lyrics:

Spirit, spirit of gentleness
Blow through the wilderness
Calling and free
Spirit, Spirit of restlessness
Stir me from placidness
Wind, Wind on the sea

You moved on the waters, you called from the deep,
Then you coaxed up the mountains from the valleys of sleep,
And over the eons you called to each thing,
Awake from your slumbers and rise on your wings.

Spirit, spirit of gentleness
Blow through the wilderness
Calling and free
Spirit, Spirit of restlessness
Stir me from placidness
Wind, Wind on the sea

You swept through the desert,
You stung with the sand,
You goaded your people with a law and a land,
And when they were blinded with their idols and lies,
You spoke through your prophets to open their eyes.

Spirit, spirit of gentleness
Blow through the wilderness
Calling and free
Spirit, Spirit of restlessness
Stir me from placidness
Wind, Wind on the sea

You sang in a stable, you cried from a hill,
You whispered in silenced when the whole world was still,
And down in the city you called once again,
When you blew through your people on the rush of the wind.

Spirit, spirit of gentleness
Blow through the wilderness
Calling and free
Spirit, Spirit of restlessness
Stir me from placidness
Wind, Wind on the sea

You call from tomorrow, you break ancient schemes,
From the bondage of sorrow the captives dream dreams,
Our women see visions, our men clear their eyes,
With bold new decisions your people arise.

Spirit, spirit of gentleness
Blow through the wilderness
Calling and free
Spirit, Spirit of restlessness
Stir me from placidness
Wind, Wind on the sea

[James K. Manley, 1978. Tune: Spirit]

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

My new novel is VETS, about four homeless Iraqistan veterans accused of murdering a VA doctor, is available from your local independent book store, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, KOBO, Books-A-Million, Black Opal Books, and almost any place else that sells books. $8.49 or $12.99 for paperback, according to which site you look at, and $3.99 for Kindle. Free if you can get your library to buy one.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

FREE EBOOK, ANYONE? IT COSTS ONLY YOUR SOUL, MAYBE

I’m not exactly sure what I’ve gotten into. I have agreed with “aspiring overlord” Rainy of The Dark to participate in an ebook give-away raffle, featuring my new novel VETS. Part of the deal is that I have to share the event or whatever it is, on my blog.

I doubt that it will satisfy her overlordness, but here is the link to her blog, as an advance on whatever it is I’m supposed to do to participate. http://www.rainyofthedark.com/

At the end of the event, in which readers who want to get a free ebook must perform chores for the authors, such as following them on blog or FB or hearting their tweets, or something, Ms. Rainy Kaye selects a winner of said free ebook.

Anyway, if you’re interested, go to the site above.


JRMcF

A BRUSH WITH FAME

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


I’ll call them Stan and Stella, but those are not their real names. We were friends for a long time. I admired them both—smart, spiritual, sensitive, funny people. When Stella died, Stan sent us a copy of her obituary and also the worship bulletin from her funeral. In both pieces, the times of her life that featured most prominently were her brushes with celebrity, one a brush, quite literally. She was so pleased when a famous man, an entertainer, once accidentally brushed her cheek. In the other, she had once danced with another famous entertainer for a few bars. 

I was flummoxed by that. I know we live in a celebrity-focused culture. It seems so sad, though, that this smart, spiritual woman—an educated wife, mother, grandmother among other things—would see as the highlights of her life such minor brushes with celebrity.

I’m not immune to celebrity interest myself. I’ve met a few famous people, exchanged a few words. My celebrities are more in the categories of thinkers than entertainers, but I’m glad to tell the stories of my brushes with them, gain a little celebrity for myself by osmosis.

We went to hear Congressman John Lewis recently. He is the last of “The Big Six” of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. The comic book, “March,” was written/drawn to tell the story of his life during the movement. A comic book [now called graphic novel] is an especially good way to teach history to young people. He told of how a nine-year-old who read the book asked him, “Why are you so awesome?” He said, “I had no answer.”

Why are we so in awe of fame? Well, there are obvious answers. Famous people are important, and a brush with one makes us seem more important than we are. Etc.

I think, though, of a woman who had a literal brush with fame, as Stella did, but this woman just brushed the hem of the robe that famous person was wearing, and in so doing, she was healed.

It’s not the importance of celebrity that we really want. What we really want is healing, to be made whole. We need just a brush with the most famous one of all to be healed, to be made whole. Our problem is equating famous with awesome. By reaching for celebrity, we are settling for fame when we could have awe.

Those who have led me to Christ were not famous, but they were awesome.

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I started this blog several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] The grandchildren, though, are grown up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the life cycle, so I am still trying to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter…

I tweet as yooper1721.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

BORN AGAIN IS NOT ENOUGH

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

One of the problems of Christianity today is the unchurched fundamentalist, folks who have been born again, and think that is enough, and so are prey to any charlatan, religious or political, who gives them a shallow cup from which to drink some kool-aid.

Of course, churched fundamentalists are a problem, too, if the church is shallow, and in the service of charlatans, religious or political, and so only enforces the prejudices of those who wish to exclude all but the “true believers.” It used to be that fundamentalist Christians despised non-fundamentalist Christians the most, but in these latter times, fundamentalists despise fundamentalists from other churches most because true believers cannot stand other true believers who disagree with them.

And the unchurched fundamentalists just rattle around.

I saw a documentary on Billy Graham recently. I have come to appreciate him in more ways than I used to, but his biggest flaw remains. He gave the impression that conversion was all that was necessary. He gave lip-service to church, saying that people ought to be part of a church, to be able to continue to grow in faith, but he did almost nothing about it.

Learning to be a trapeze artist, or a lion tamer, or even a clown, takes a lot of work. If someone tells us that just going into the big top and watching is enough, we are more than glad to accept the idea that there is nothing more to the circus than sitting on the bleachers and clapping.

John Wesley had something to say about this, in his Journal of R, Aug. 25, 1763, he says:

“I was more convinced than ever, that the preaching like an apostle, without joining together those that are awakened, and training them up in the ways of God, is only begetting children for the murderer. How much preaching has there been for these twenty years all over Pembrokeshire! But no regular societies, no discipline, no order or connection; and the consequence is, that nine in ten of the once-awakened are now faster asleep than ever.”

Yes, you can be a good person without being a Christian, and you can be a Christian without belonging to a church, but you can’t be a Christian without being part of the Body of Christ, however that is expressed, and we’ll be better people if we learn to put up with one another as we work together toward fuller citizenship in God’s world.

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.


My new novel is VETS, about four homeless Iraqistan veterans accused of murdering a VA doctor, is available from your local independent book store, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, KOBO, Books-A-Million, Black Opal Books, and almost any place else that sells books. $8.49 or $12.99 for paperback, according to which site you look at, and $3.99 for Kindle. Free if you can get your library to buy one.