IOWA CAUCUSES EXPLAINED, AND BESEECHED

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

Today close-minded old white people will go to church and give thanks that God has rightly anointed them to choose the next president of the US, a choice that will have great impact on the other 4 billion people in the world as well as the 318 million in the US.

Well, not just all closed-minded old white people. In fact, only about 122 thousand of us. That is how many folks will go to the Iowa caucuses tomorrow night. I used to be one of them.

They will be white because all people in Iowa are white. They will be old because it is only old people who have the leisure to leave home at supper time, when younger people are either at work or feeding their children. Old people don’t have to find and pay a baby-sitter.

They are all close-minded, for those are the rules of the caucuses. You have to be registered as a Republican to participate in a Republican caucus. The same for Democrats. Caucus-goers are determined to vote for their candidate in the general election, even if their candidate is an incompetent scumbag and the other party’s candidate is honorable and multi-talented. That’s why only 25% of registered Republicans and Democrats in Iowa come to the caucuses. Even though registered, they are still somewhat open-minded. Also they have all gone to FL for the winter.

So these 122 K people will show up around 6 pm and stay as long as it takes. It won’t take long, though, because they want to get home before the blizzard hits, or, especially, so they can see themselves on the ten o-clock news shows, being interviewed as they left the caucus by shivering TV network commentators who will explain to them why they voted as they did.

They will assemble in school buildings and libraries and mosques [Bazinga!] and armories and gas stations. Yes, gas stations, if that is the only place the officials could find in the precinct, or if the official’s brother-in-law owns the station. The Republicans and Democrats will be segregated into different rooms, or lube racks, and told who their candidates are, and required to line up on different walls according to which candidate they support. You literally have to “stand by your man.” [Oh, don’t be picky—yes, Carly and Hillary are included. Although, as the song says, “Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman…”]

Then those who, like the cheese, stand alone are harangued by those on the multi-peopled walls-- people they know, their neighbors, people they have to face every day, no secrecy here—and told that obviously their candidate does not stand a chance so unless they want to be labeled forever as a loser, they need to cross over the grease pit, or slip around the teacher’s desk, and join the majority. Once those individuals cave, the bigger groups start haranguing at the walls with only two people. That goes on until there is a wall with 16 people and one with 9 and one with 3 irascible curmudgeons who are going to support their candidate come hell or high water, and who also have the leisure and money to attend the state party convention in Des Moines later to vote for their candidate there. That’s right; the process does not end with the caucuses, even though the candidates and the cameras are gone by midnight, not to return to the Hawkeye state for another four years.

On TV, the candidate who got three votes in that precinct will proclaim that third place is actually a great spot to be, for he spent only two million dollars for each vote, where as those folks who finished first and second paid five million per vote, so he has lots of money to go on to New Hampshire, and also a mandate from the people, three old extremist white people per precinct, to carry on.

I would not worry so much about this process were I not a close-minded old white man who lives in the midst of a close-minded old white people, aka as a condo complex. I know just how closed these minds are. I know how little we understand the world, how easily we are persuaded by those who have the most money to barrage us with the most vitriol, and promises of senior citizen discounts.

So I shall go to church today to pray, as are my contemporaries in Iowa. I shall pray for them, that they will be open to the Holy Spirit to be led to stand at the wall where it is written, “God so loved the world…”

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

VOWS OVER TROUBLED WATER

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

It was a hundred years ago. They wanted to get married. On Christmas eve. They started for the parsonage, the minister’s home, in town, on horseback. But when they got to the stream, it had become a river. Sudden and sustained rains had swollen it to several times its normal width. There was no bridge. There was no ford. There was no way they could get married, except…

We were sitting around a long table in the Knights of St. John Hall after the lunch following Aunt Rosemary’s funeral. I had heard Aunt Gertrude tell the story of how her parents got married, but was a little fuzzy on the details, and I wanted Helen and others to hear it, too. So I asked her to tell it again.

Gertrude Robbins and Rosemary Navarra had both lived in Greensburg, Indiana their whole lives but did not meet until 8^th grade, because Gertrude went to public school and Rosemary to St. Mary’s School. That was 1936. They became life-long friends. After Gertrude and my uncle, Randall, the number six child in my father’s family, got married, she introduced her friend to Uncle Bob, the brother just above Randall in the birth order. Now we were saying good-bye to Rosemary in Greensburg, and telling Greensburg stories. Aunt Gertrude continued.

…the minister came to the other side of the stream that had become a river. The young couple stood on their side, The minister stood on his side. They shouted back and forth. “Do you take this woman…” “I do…” “Will you love, honor…” “I will.” “Repeat after me…” “With this ring…” “I now pronounce…” “You may kiss…”  

There are gaps in the story. Did they have witnesses? How did the minister know to come to the river? Did they have a license? When and how did they get it signed? We’ll never know the answers to those questions, and it doesn’t matter. What matter is this: Love found a way to start, and love found a way to stay, for well over half a century, “…’til death do us part.”

I regret the final farewell of a funeral, but I love to hear the stories.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

THE TREE OF FAMILY

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

Aunt Rosemary’s funeral is tomorrow. Today is “visitation.”

My father was one of seven children. Eight, really, since Grandma and Grandpa raised Genevieve, too. Grandma’s brother’s wife had died and his new wife did not want the four-year-old Genevieve. Uncle Bob didn’t want her, either. He and Genevieve were the same age, and natural rivals. Bob, from whom I get my middle name, said they already had too many children in the family.

Genevieve must have laughed when Bob married Rosemary, at ages 35 and 26, respectively, and produced nine children!

My mother was one of eight children, too. I was always surrounded by aunts and uncles and cousins. I took so much of my identity from them. They were always so supportive and affirmative of achievement, not just public achievement, like being the first person in the family to go to college, but private achievement, too, like working hard and being kind. I learned from them that individual stories are always a part of larger stories. 

Through marriage, those sixteen aunts and uncles became thirty-one. Those aunts and uncles were a spreading tree, a family tree of many branches, providing shade and a place to hide from the rain, a place to sit and hear the stories. It never occurred to me that they would not be there forever, that great tree of protection and affirmation and love. Now there are only two limbs left.

Soon that tree will be gone. But there is a new tree that has been quietly taking root and spreading out, the tree that the next generation of nieces and nephews must sit under when it rains and when the sun burns hot and when they want to hear our story. I am a branch on that tree. Our tree knows how to protect from the sun and rain, how to provide shelter as the stories are told beneath our branches, for we have learned from “the greatest generation.”

Thank you, Aunt Rosemary, for being a limb on that tree.

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.

HOLDING THE NAIL

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

In Sarah Vowell’s delightful, LAFAYETTE IN THE SOMEWHAT UNITED STATES [and nobody writes history like Sarah Vowell!], Thomas Jefferson remarks on the cooperation the USA was able to get from France during and after the war of independence, because of Lafayette, “In truth, I only held the nail. He drove it in.”

It reminds me of our friends, David and Marcia. They needed to repair their deck, but he was blind and she had a bad case of the Parkinson’s shakes. You don’t want to hold the nail if a blind man’s got the hammer, but you don’t want to hold the nail if a woman with the shakes has the hammer, either.

That, I think, is probably why Jefferson was the greatest of “the founding fathers.” He was willing to hold the nail.

David and Marcia took turns, and the deck got repaired.

Politicians these days, and presidential candidates in particular, all want to wield the hammer. But nothing gets built if no one is willing to take a turn holding the nail.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

REMEMBERING PANTS

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

Ron Wetzell, with wife Cindy, raised boys. He says that when boys are seventeen, you just hope they remember to wear pants when they leave the house.

Grandson Joe is 17 today. I’m not worried about him remembering pants. I’m a little worried that he might take mine.

There was a time we just hoped Joe would get to two. Starting at fifteen months, he survived three surgeries and a year of chemotherapy, but the doctors said he would not make it without a liver transplant and a double lung transplant. Joe did not like the sound of that so just decided to put on his pants and get out of there.

He was only 15 months old when his hepatoblastoma, liver cancer, was discovered. When our old friends and Iowa City residents, George and Ida Belle Paterson, came to Children’s Hospital at U of Iowa to visit him, he could not really talk yet, but he made it clear that he was not going to receive visitors in a diaper. He insisted that his mother put pants on him.

Throughout his year of chemo, he and I would sometimes walk down the hospital halls together, me pushing an IV pole with a line attached to a catheter in his chest. He didn’t have a belt, so he insisted on mine before we took off on our adventures. He swaggered down the hallways, my belt wrapped several times around him, a total chick magnet, with me running behind, pushing his IV pole with one hand and holding up my pants with the other.

Old friend Rose Mary Shepherd said that image sustained her through her own chemo days. “Whenever I felt really bad, I’d think about little Joe, wearing his pants, striding down the hall, and you running behind, and I’d laugh. That got me through.”

Boys the age Joe is now and men the age I am now have a lot in common. We both have to be reminded to put on pants before we leave the house. But we are alive. Life is a gift, and a miracle, with or without pants.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

My book, NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life & Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them tells Joe’s whole story of healing. [AndrewsMcMeel. Audio by HarperAudio. Czech and Japanese translations. Ebook, too.]

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. $12.99 for paperback, and $3.99 for ebook. Free if you can get your library to buy one.

GOOD GRIEF

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

People were milling around in the expansive narthex of the church building, as Ann and her family greeted mourners before Bill’s memorial service. I had slipped into the sanctuary to listen to the band rehearse “When the Saints Go Marching In” for the postlude.

As I stood there, Jenifer came in through the door behind me, came up beside me, and without a word, put her arm around my waist. When the band had finished, without a word, she went back to the narthex.

I knew Jenifer least well of Bill’s five children and step-children. She had been close to grown up and out on her own when Bill and Ann married, a second marriage for each.

Even though we did not know each other well, Jenifer understood something I had not, that I was not there only as a leader, the one to deliver the eulogy for her step-father, but I was there as a mourner, too. I had lost a dear friend, one of my oldest friends, one with whom I had been through many trials. It was important for me to grieve.

At the time of a death, there will be grief. The only question is whether it will be good grief or bad grief, grief that leads to wholeness or grief that leads to division, both within a mourner and among the mourners. The purpose of a pastor is to help mourners grieve well rather than poorly.

I have usually done well at helping people step into good grief because I have taken the grief seriously but lightly. It is said that the reason angels can fly is because they take themselves so lightly. I have tried to bring a light touch to the time of death, not silly or frivolous, but light.

With her simple act of light and silent touching, Jenifer reminded me that I was not just a pastor but a mourner, that it was okay to feel the loss of my friend as well as to eulogize him.

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.

GETTING INTO THE RIGHT GROUP FOR JUDGMENT

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

I have mentioned George Paterson several times over the years in this blog, because I learned so much from him, about pastoring, about friendship, about living, about dying.

Helen and I met George and Ida Belle when we moved to Iowa City so I could pursue a PhD at the U of Iowa. We had a lot in common. Their Lisa and our Katie were in the same grade at school. We were both former Wesley Foundation ministers, and we were Methodist clergy without a congregation, and George himself had gotten his PhD at U IA. George had two jobs, as chaplain at University Hospital and as a professor of pastoral psychology in the School of Religion.

There were three pivotal moments in our relationship:

1] I was doing a quarter of Clinical Pastoral Education under David Belgum, professor of pastoral counseling. One day he brought to class a woman in her forties, who was struggling with cancer. She told us of how George had walked into her room…

“I knew him. He was the trombone player in jazz groups that played in seedy places I frequented. I thought, what is he doing here? Then he explained that his real job was hospital chaplain. He made all the difference for me. He had just the right combination of strength and availability.”

I have spoken to many clergy since then, in various settings—conferences, retreats, classes, periodicals. I have always told them: Be like George Paterson. You’re no good if you’re only strength, because people can’t receive you if you’re only strength. You’re no good if you’re only availability. They can get into you, but there’s nothing there. Be that combination, like George.

2] George flunked my PhD qualifying exam in psychology. He put it as nicely as he could: “You have such a creative mind,” he said. “You use so many ideas and stories from so many different fields, and so many parenthetical expressions to explain them, I can’t tell what you’re saying.”

When I began to write in earnest—stories, essays, reference works, professional articles, Western novels, books for cancer patients—in my mind I always put at the top of the every page: Write this so that George Paterson can understand it or you will fail!

3] When the grandchildren moved to Mason City, IA, 175 miles northwest of Iowa City, we retired and moved there, too. George and Ida Belle had relatives in Mason City, so they stopped in to see us whenever they were there. We went through Iowa City on our way to IN to see my father, so we’d meet for lunch on our way through. We had just begun to get really acquainted again when fifteen-month old grandson Joe was diagnosed with liver cancer one Thursday afternoon. By Thursday evening Katie and Patrick were at Children’s Hospital in Iowa City with him. George and Ida Belle were there, too, and they remained. For the next year, Katie was often there alone with Joe. Patrick had to work to keep insurance in force. Helen and I had to care for four-year-old Brigid. But Katie wasn’t alone. George and Ida Belle were there, surrogate parents and grandparents, and with a bed and a meal and a hug for the rest of us when we could be there, too—a storm home, all the way through. Joe is now an extremely handsome young man of 17, with an easy mix of strength and availability. Along with their own grandchildren, his picture is on the Paterson’s refrigerator, as is Brigid’s.

As George was dying, I learned from Father Guido Sarducci that things are so backed up in heaven that when we die we are judged in groups of ten thousand, to expedite things. I told George about this and said. “Wait around for me when you get there. I figure my chances are a lot better if I can be in the same group with you.”

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.

SWEET QUOTES

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

Apparently Leonard Sweet quoted me in his book, GIVING BLOOD: A Fresh Paradigm for Preaching. It’s always surprising to find out I have been quoted, but also gratifying. Apparently I said something worthwhile.

It’s in the chapter on Narraphors, a word he coins to combine narrative and metaphor. It certainly sounds like me, a narrative preacher and writer and theologian.

There are only snippits from his book online, but enough for me to know what I said that he quoted: One was, “The illustration is [the point]” and another was, “The Bible is not God’s theology book…it is God’s story book.”

Yep, sounds like me.

I hope he also quoted, “God gave us theology for fun. When we take it seriously is when we get into trouble,” and “The Bible is not only God’s theology book, it’s not God’s science book or God’s how-to-get-rich book or God’s helpful-hints-for-easy living book or God’s bumper slogan book. It is God’s story book.”

Feel free to quote me.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

WHEN YOU ARE NOT ON THE LIST

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

They listed rabbi, but not minister, or pastor, or preacher, or priest, or padre, or clergy.

I was on a site where I had to give my profession. My profession was not among their options.

They listed poet, song writer, golfer, both football player and coach, meteorologist, stunt man, interior designer, judge, fitness instructor, guitarist, drummer, race car driver, poet, and photographer, all with fewer practitioners than clergy

The reason is obvious: “Don’t want no preachers ‘round here.” Or, more likely, computer site designers don’t know that clergy exist. A lot of people don’t.

A lot of people do, though, and are not enthralled. Clergy in media are portrayed as hapless, although sometimes winsome, dimwits, i.e, Father Mulcahy on M*A*S*H. Or as hypocritical one-dimensional extremist money-grubbing power-mad demagogues. Those are both accurate. Those clergy exist.

They are not the only clergy, however. There are also the open-minded, kind, well-meaning, helpful types who work long hours for low pay and constantly wonder if they are doing any good.

For a long time, after I retired and wanted people to think I was a writer, I tried to keep my clergy identity in the closet, for fear folks would think I was one of the dimwit hypocrites. Now, though, I just own up to it. I tried to be that third type, the ones who try to help people figure out how to live good lives, find better ways of dealing with their problems. I always thought of myself as a broker, getting fragmented people into touch with the people and resources that could help them get put back together, become whole.

For Christmas, Helen gave me a book of poems by Carrie Newcomer, the Quaker singer/song-writer. In one of them she uses the phrase, “intentional wholeness.” I like that. I’m glad I had so many opportunities in my professional role to help people become intentional about wholeness.

But isn’t that the role of any of us? Unfortunately, that site does not list “human,” either…

 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.

CALLING IT BY ITS TRUE NAME

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

I almost missed tea at St. Andrew’s University that afternoon. I was studying there, in Scotland, that summer, as part of my doctoral work, listening to lectures by William Barclay, the acclaimed Bible scholar, and others. I was not much of a golfer, but when you are at the home course of golf, The Ancient & Royal in St. Andrews, you need to play a round just so you can say you did it.

I can also almost say that I played with Bing Crosby since he was coming off the course just as I was going onto it, but that would be a stretch. He, however, had the good fortune to miss the rain.

A fellow student and I had rented clubs and headed out. About half-way through our round, the heavens opened in a serious attempt to wash St. Andrews into the Firth of Forth. The water got so deep that when we putted, the ball would just run across the top of the cup because it was full of water. We finally gave up and walked in. I was wearing a rain coat, but I was so soaked that even the money in my billfold had to be hung up to dry.

Helen got me into dry clothes and, knowing I needed it to get warmed up, down to tea time just before it ended. She then returned to our room to work on drying my  golf clothes. Not many people were still as tea, but Gretchen was. She was the wife of the senior priest of a big Episcopal Church in Florida. He was also in classes that summer, and I had gotten to know him, and like him, and so I was glad for a chance to get to know his wife as we sipped tea and ate scones.

As I did so, I thought, as always, of how much I had compared to so many in the world. “It makes me feel guilty,” I said to Gretchen, “to sit here, warm and dry, eating so well, when so many people have so little.”

She looked quite puzzled. “If God chooses to give me good things and to withhold them from others, that’s no concern of mine,” she said.

I was so flabbergasted I could think of nothing to say. Here was an educated intelligent woman… and surely Christian… although I know some wives of preachers who aren’t Christian… the one I know best, though, is Jewish and acts more Christianly than most Christians… but how could…

It’s terribly convenient, isn’t it, to be able to blame one’s selfishness and self-centeredness and greed on God? We are hearing a lot of that now, in this political season, and it is important that we call it by its true name, sin.

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.

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.  $12.99 for paperback, a\and $3.99 for Kindle. Free if you can get your library to buy one.

TREES IN WINTER

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

I think that I shall never see

            A poem lovely as a tree…

Joyce Kilmer’s Trees was one of the first poems I ever memorized, partly because we sang it at Lucretia Mott Public School # 3 in Indianapolis, partly because it was short and simple, mostly because it rang true to me.

I learned the incorrect version, of course, since we sang it. Kilmer closed it with: Poems are written by fools like me, but only God can make a tree. The song version says: Poems are made by fools like me…

           

I knew more about poems than trees, though, living in the inner city of Indianapolis. It was only when we moved to a farm near Oakland City, Indiana that I really began to understand trees, and to appreciate them.

           

My father was a good shade-tree botanist. He was an outdoorsman. He knew animals and plants. He could name trees.

           

On the farm, I learned to love trees and plants, except for the ones I had to hoe in the garden, but I rarely learned their names. I learned the ones everyone knew--maples, oaks, willows, fruit trees in their ripe seasons. I never learned to tell a hickory from an ash, though. All that was really important, it seemed to me, was the shade.

           

The summers in southern Indiana were long and hot and humid. Life was physical and sweaty. We carried water and fire wood in and out. We heated water on a wood stove and washed clothes in a wringer washer and hung them on a line. We hoed and canned vegetables. We had no air conditioning. We did have electricity, but only one old-fashioned slow-moving table fan.

           

In our front yard, we had shade trees—big maples. The front yard was open on all sides except for the house. There was almost always a breeze. When the heat became too much, I would flop down on the grass in the front yard, in the shade of those leafy maples, and feel the breeze.

           

Trees are beautiful in spring and summer and autumn, yes, and their shade is welcome, but in winter, we get to see the trunk and the limbs, those supporters and nurturers of the leaves and flowers. Those “bare ruined choirs” [1] have their own beauty. In winter, we see the beauty of what is below.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] From Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73.

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.

THE SILENCE UNTIL THE WIND IS READY-a poem

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

I’m not a poet, but most mornings I write a poem-like piece, in ink, in a small notebook, and leave it, no editing, just as it is. This is the birthday of one of my longest-tenured friends, Bob Wilson, who knew me before I was edited, so this is for him…

I like the silence even more

as winter days run slowly

by my window.

Not the silence of the tree

when birds have fled the wind,

but the silence of knowing

they are there, and watching.

in the stillness after storm.

their wings closed down

upon their sides, their feet

relaxed yet ready

to push them up and out

when the wind is ready…

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

YOU ARE THE CHOCOATE PINON OF THE EARTH

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

We like to shop locally, especially now that we live in Bloomington, IN, where we have a world-famous farmer’s market, with 60 stalls of flowers and vegetables and meat, and groups of dancers, and strolling musicians of all ages and instruments, and stand-up comedians, and dogs and babies that entertain just by being there. Sometimes there are flash mobs, like twenty violas. There aren’t many places you can see a twenty-viola flash mob. Best of all, coffee, and baked everything. If you can’t find it at our farmer’s market, it’s not worth having.

Except for chocolate pinon coffee. It’s not at the farmer’s market. It’s not at Blooming Foods. It’s not at Lucky’s Market. It’s only available from Santa Fe Roasters. No, they aren’t in Santa Fe. My brother’s wife, Millie, who lives in Santa Fe, was quite discombobulated to learn that Santa Fe Roasters are actually in Little Chute, WI.

Coffee is just so much better if you add a scoop of chocolate pinon to the pot. It takes so little, and the change is not earth-shattering, but it makes so much difference in the taste.

The world is a coffee pot, and just a little Mother Teresa or Mahatma Gandhi or Jonas Salk makes the taste so much better. Today, we should remember Martin Luther King, Jr. as part of that list.

I suspect if Jesus were teaching here, today, he would say, to each and all of us who try to follow him, “You are the chocolate pinon of the earth…” [Matthew 5:13]

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.

ACTORS, REACTORS, & HISTORY'S ARC

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

Anna Gerau of the “Indiana Daily Student” at Indiana University wrote an excellent article in the Jan. 15 edition of that newspaper about the great but forgotten Negro Leagues baseball player, George Shively, and the efforts of famed sports writer, Bob Hammel, and local business people Kathy and Steve Headley, and stone carver Casey Winningham, and IU employee Sally Gaskill, to try to right wrongs of more than a century ago. [1]

Shively grew up in Bloomington. When he was ten, members of the KKK, “white cappers,” in the wee hours where cowards lurk, hauled several members of his family, men and women, out of their home and beat them with barbed wire. The police were called but left when the KKK told them to do so. [1]

Shively had a great baseball career but was forgotten, even in his home town, buried, along with the others of his family, in unmarked graves. Until Hammel, whose memory and sense of justice are legendary, got into the act, and with Gaskill raised money for a stone. Casey Winningham did the carving gratis.

[Anna Gerau tells this story better than I do. Here is the link to the article: http://www.idsnews.com/

“If you want to know where the action is, look for the reaction.” Saul Alinsky

Most of the money for the stone came from Steve & Kathy Headley. Kathy’s grandfather was one of those white-cappers. She held hands with Shively’s descendants at the gravestone unveiling and said, “I hope my grandfather is turning over in his grave.”

It took a century, but people of justice try to right injustice regardless of its timing. It is said that the arc of history bends toward justice. I hope that is true. I think that Kathy Headley, and the others in this story, providing the “reaction” of Alinsky’s statement, are evidence of that.

So as the world becomes more polarized-politically, religiously, racially, economically-I don’t worry as much as I would, for the actions of political and religious extremists contain the seeds for their own destruction. They are calling forth reactions from others who realize that they must react in order to make that arc of history bend toward justice, who are beginning to understand that it is not enough to put band-aids on the wounds caused by the extremists, but that it is necessary to keep them from hurting and wounding in the first place.

Extremists destroy their own causes, for in their self-righteous arrogance, they always go too far. In doing so, they awake the slumbering giant of justice.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] A hero, more or less, of this story is then-governor Winfield Durbin, who was disgusted by the lack of police action and suggested that the absence of justice in Bloomington might make him pull IU out of Bloomington. Under the threat of economic sanctions, the culprits were finally arrested.

I hope I have not misled by using the image of history’s arc. The arc of history does not bend toward justice by itself. We can’t sit back and say, “Oh, we’re okay. The arc of history is bending in the right direction.” Reactors have to push against the extremist actors to make that arc bend. Matthew 25:31-46.

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, and almost any place else that sells books. $12.99 for paperback, and $3.99 for ebooks, including Kindle. Free if you can get your library to buy one.

JOYFULLY SUBVERSIVE

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

I posted this originally on January 26, 2011, five years ago. Joe Frazier has now heard the well-deserved, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Joe Kennedy doesn’t need a grandfather to teach him to drive because he has his license now. I think about them both every day, because in the years of winter, that is the way we stay warm.

JOYFULLY SUBVERSIVE

I have a friend named Joe and a grandson named Joe. The friend is Joe Frazier—“Singin’ Joe,” the baritone, not “Smokin’ Joe,” the boxer, although I’m sure “Smokin’ Joe” would be a good friend, too.

The grandson is Joseph Patrick Kennedy, who is 12 years old today. Both Joes are “joyfully subversive,” a phrase someone applied to Joe Frazier when we were on a cruise in September with The Chad Mitchell Trio, the best folk group of the 1960s, in which Joe sings baritone. Joe is also the vicar/priest of St. Columba’s Episcopal Mission in Big Bear Lake, CA.

The following hymn I wrote in honor of their birthdays. Actually Joe Frazier’s birthday was Jan. 14, and that was the day I started writing this, so today, on grandson Joe’s birthday, I finished it.

I sing it to the tune of R. Kelso Carter’s “Standing on the Promises,” a hymn perhaps unknown to Episcopalians like Joe Frazier, since they are better known for “sitting on the premises.” [Old preacher joke. I can resist any temptation except a bad joke.] Since it is traditional to note the biblical foundations for hymns, I have done so, line by line.

Happy birthdays, you joyfully subversive Joes.

JOYFULLY SUBVERSIVE

Joyfully subversive as we laugh and sing                        [Judges 5:21.]

To the work of God divine our gifts we bring                 [John 9:4.]

Carried to the righteous fray upon God’s wing               [Isaiah 40:31.]

Joyfully subverting as we go.                                         [Romans 12:2.]

CHORUS

Joyful! Subversive!

Let us join our voices in God’s loving song                    [I John 4:8.]

Subversive! Joyful!

Standing firm against injustice we are strong                   [I Cors. 16:13.]

VERSE 2

Subverting hate and prejudice with love divine               [Romans 8:38-39.]

Offering to each hopeful mouth the bread and wine        [Luke 22:19.]

With god’s children everywhere we shall dine                [Mark 2:16.]

Joyfully subverting as we go                                          [Romans 12:2.]

CHORUS

Joyful! Subversive!

Let us join our voices in God’s loving song                    [I John 4:8.]

Subversive! Joyful!

Standing firm against injustice we are strong                   [I Cors. 16:13.]

VERSE 3

Joyfully subversive we stand with the poor                     [Matthew 25:31-46.]

And beat our fists against oppression’s heavy door        [Galatians 3:1.]

We’ll sing and work until injustice is no more                 [Isaiah 11:6. Amos 5:24.]

Joyfully subverting as we go                                          [Romans 12:1.]

CHORUS

Joyful! Subversive!

Let us join our voices in God’s loving song                    [I John 4:8.]

Subversive! Joyful!

Standing firm against injustice we are strong                   [I Cors. 16:13.]

VERSE 4

When they draw a circle tight to hide within                   [Galatians 3:23.]

When they say we can’t come in because we’re sin       [Galatians 3:28-29.]

We shall draw a circle that will take them in                   [Acts 10:28.]

Joyfully subverting as we go                                          [Romans 12:1.]

CHORUS

Joyful! Subversive!

Let us join our voices in God’s loving song                    [I John 4:8.]

Subversive! Joyful!

Standing firm against injustice we are strong                   [I Cors. 16:13.]

VERSE 5

When our days of marching here will be no more           [Matthew 25:23.]

We’ll keep singing as we land on heaven’s shore.          [Luke 6:20.]

While those we served and loved shall open up the door            [Revelation 21:25.]

Joyfully subverting as we go.                                         [Romans 12:1.]

CHORUS

Joyful! Subversive!

Let us join our voices in God’s loving song                    [I John 4:8.]

Subversive! Joyful!

Standing firm against injustice we are strong                   [I Cors. 16:13.]

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

IT'S NICE TO HAVE SOMEONE WHO GETS EXCITED...

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

From the day Ernie came to live with our daughter and her family, he has always liked me best. Part of it, of course, is that he can manipulate me into anything he wants. He is small and black, half shi-poo and half poodle. When I walk in, he just gets excited. We used to live only a mile away from each other and saw each other often, but he got excited every time. Then we moved away. Eight months later we returned for a visit. Ernie went crazy when he saw me. But that was nothing compared to when we came back the next day. He was literally walking on air when he saw me. “He came back! He came back!” It was just almost more than his little heart could take.

When I’m around he ignores the people who actually do all the work of caring for him. It’s almost embarrassing. I enjoy it, anyway. It’s nice to have someone who gets excited when you show up.

When grandson Joe was in kindergarten, he went to a Saturday program at the public library. When Joe showed up one afternoon, the librarian was working with the kids who had already arrived. She later told our daughter that one little girl lit up when she saw him and said, “Here comes Joe Kennedy. Things are looking up.” It’s nice to have someone who gets excited when you show up.

Our granddaughter, Brigid, and Bill Verrette have been thick as thieves ever since they worked together in Vacation Bible School when Brigid was in 8^th grade. Bill is an extremely successful businessman and very classy elderly gentleman. Neither of those keep him from doing trench work at church, like teaching the pre-school class at VBS, as long as he has someone with younger legs, like Brigid, to chase down wayward pre-school scholars.

Brigid is off at college now. Bill and I were chatting before the Christmas eve service. Suddenly, his face lit up, and he said, “Here comes trouble.” Brigid was coming through the door. Bill literally pushed me aside to go hug her. It’s nice to have someone who gets excited when you show up.

I think maybe that is why God created humans. It’s nice to have someone who gets excited when you show up.

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.

A JOHN BY ANY OTHER NAME...

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

I like my name. It’s classic, and means, “God is good,” or “the grace of God,” which is the same thing, since it is God’s grace that makes God good. If you go to one of those churches that starts worship with “God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good,” you could save time, and get out in time to see the start of the Packers game, if you just said “John, all the time. All the time, John.”

 Also, it’s my father’s name, and my uncle’s name, and my cousin’s name, and my nephew’s name. I am happy to share it with them.

However, it’s not only men in our family who are the grace of God. There have been some famous Johns. In religion there are John the Baptist, and John the Methodist, aka John Wesley. In politics there are John Kennedy and John Kerry. In crime there are John Wesley Hardin, the Western gun-slinger, and John Dillinger.

John is such a common name that it is used for categories. A man who visits prostitutes is called a john. Toilets are called johns. Long underwear is called long johns. An unknown dead body is a John Doe. I am not as happy to share my name in those ways.

So in public, like at a restaurant, when they ask for a name, so they can call you when your food is ready, I tell them my name is Ambrose. It’s a good name for two reasons. First, Ambrose was a good man, the early bishop of Rome. Augustine, the church’s most important theologian, was converted from his dissolute playboy ways when he heard Ambrose preach. Second, when the food prep people call out “Ambrose,” nobody else jumps up and tries to get my food.

I’m not trying to be deceptive, just protective, and I have a good reason.

I once went to the x-ray department at the hospital for an x-ray of my elbow. A nurse came out and called for John. No one else responded, so I got up and went with her. They made me undress and put on a backless gown. That should have been a clue, but I was young, in my 40s, and assumed medical people knew what they were doing. They had me lie down on a big table and explained that they would shove a needle into my groin and that the dye would…

At that point, I said, “Isn’t that a bit much for an elbow x-ray?” They said, “You’re not here for an elbow.” I said, “Yes, I am.”

I looked at the chart. The first name was John, the same as mine, but the last name was not mine. “Why did you come in when we called?” they asked, clearly indicating it was my fault.

“Because you called for John, and my name is John, and nobody else answered.”

Turns out the other John was in the john at the time and did not hear the call. If I had told them my name was Ambrose, none of that would have happened.

I think that episode at a different hospital in a different state is the reason when I went to the doctor yesterday that first the nurse, and then the doctor, and then the lab technician, every one, asked me to state my name, and spell it, and give my date of birth. The entire health system learned something important from my experience looking at that big needle.

So Ambrose is the name I give now at restaurants. If I give “John,” when they call out my name, every old man in the place jumps up and tries to get my food. Nobody else is named Ambrose.

I told this whole thing to my nurse yesterday when she asked me for my name, because nurses live to hear the irrelevant stories of old men. Later, as I was leaving, she said, “By the way, my father’s name is Ambrose.”

Now I can’t go out to eat in our new town because some other old Ambrose will jump up and try to get my food.

I’m still in the grace of God, though, and I’ll bet you are, too, even if you’re not a John.

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.

THE GENIE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE

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

Bob Butts and Kathy Roberts [married to each other, despite the different last names] took us to a concert by Carrie Newcomer, the delightful Quaker folk singer. During one of her songs, I suddenly got an image of a gravel road I walked as a boy. In the image, I saw a blue glass bottle under some sumac in the ditch beside the road. I went down into the ditch and picked up the bottle, to look inside it, for bottles often contain messages. Indeed, there was a message inside, on a crumpled and dirty scrap of paper. It said, “The genie doesn’t live here anymore.”

So I wrote this song…

The genie doesn’t live here anymore

No, the genie doesn’t live here anymore

You can ask a hundred times

You can rhyme a hundred rhymes

But the genie doesn’t live here anymore

I was going down the road, on my back, a heavy load

I was wishing for a friend to lend a hand

I sent my wish up to the sky, and there came a quick reply

The genie doesn’t live here anymore

My feet were blocks of lead, the sun was hot upon my head

I was wishing for a way to turn around

My life was feeling tragic, all I needed was some magic

But the genie doesn’t live here anymore

Wishes are like breezes, they have no hands to help along

As soon as you can make them they are gone

I’ll have to put my faith in God, and put my hand in yours

For the genie doesn’t live here anymore

           

The genie doesn’t live here anymore

No, the genie doesn’t live here anymore

You can make a hundred wishes

You can make them all delicious

But the genie doesn’t live here anymore

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

LEARNING FROM RATS

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

Bob Doherty is a Jesuit spiritual director and teacher in Massachusetts. I got to meet him, and got him to do a program for some Midwestern Methodists, several years ago. From him I learned three things:

1] PEOPLE CAN HEAR YOU, EVEN IN THE DARK. His mother was growing old and a bit out of touch. One night he took her to a get-together at the home of friends. The friends decided to show slides of their vacation. In her old age, getting one sense confused with another, his mother had decided that people could not hear what she said in the dark, so she announced quite loudly, “This is SO boring!” [I’ve always wondered if she were only claiming old age dementia as an excuse.]

2] YOU CAN’T STUDY IN NATURE. Nature overpowers, Bob said. If you go out on a pretty day and sit under a tree and try to read, you’ll end up reading the day, not the book. Especially in these days when we experience so little of nature, our souls yearn for it. If they get the chance, our souls and bodies will just take nature and forget the rest of what we think we are supposed to accomplish.

3] RATS CAN COOPERATE, SO WHY CAN’T WE? He spent a period with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, picking up dead bodies from the streets in the morning. At night, he slept on the floor with others in his group. One of the men had some hard candies, which he put on top of a metal cabinet so the rats could not get them. Bob and the others were awakened by a thumping sound at the cabinet. Sure enough, the rats were trying to get the candy. They had a system. The first rat jumped as high as it could and rammed its head into the cabinet, making a dent. The second rat used the body of the first as a springboard to leap even higher and ram its head to make a higher dent. Eventually they had a whole team of woozy rats but a whole series of increasingly higher dents that the final rat on the team could use as footholds to climb all the way to the top to get the candy and throw it down to the others.

           

Scientists use rats for experiments because their body systems are similar to humans. Except most humans are not willing to sacrifice their heads for the good of the group. Well, except for football players…

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.

In This Doorway--a poem

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

As we huddle in this doorway,

while in the street the battle

rages on, flames and bullets

and fountain pens making gutters

run red wild.

I think of all the days

we strode upon this very street

toward ballot boxes and seats of power,

waving hope and placards

high above our heads.

Now as the bricks around us fall,

I see it all as windmill tilting.

Greed and violence

laugh at us now, as they always did,

and trumpet out their triumph,

creating nothing out of something.

But we are still together,

huddled in this doorway,

and in the eyes of God,

who called us not to victory

but to faith.

That is enough

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.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE A BIBLE SCHOLAR

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

After the Messiah sing-along, Helen and I were having milk shakes at Five Guys with Bob and Kathy, as they ate burgers, because they had missed lunch. [1] Kathy had missed lunch because she was returning from a grand-child run, and Bob missed lunch because Kathy wasn’t home to cook. [2]

Kathy had listened to Bible lectures by Amy Jill Levine as she drove to and from the grandkids. She was quite excited. Amy Jill is an excellent scholar and lecturer. Kathy said, “It almost makes me want to be a Bible scholar.”

I, of course, having been a biblical scholar, sort of, said something dismissive. Certainly not because Kathy is incapable of being a biblical scholar; she’s one of the smartest people I know. But because I was a theology scholar for 50 years, concentrating on Bible for about 20 of those, and I am now old and don’t want to do anything at all, and being a scholar just sounds like so much work, because I know from experience that it is, and if I’m too tired for it, then everybody else is, too!

That is one of the curses of old age. Everything we see is either been there-done that, or sounds like too much work, so we dismiss it for everybody, not just ourselves.

So, let me say to Kathy, and to you: Yes, be a Bible scholar, regardless of how young or how old you are.

The first thing to do to be a Bible scholar is to read the Bible. I recall a Peanuts cartoon strip in which one of the characters says, “I have begun to unravel the mysteries of the Old Testament; I have begun to read it.”

If that’s as far as you get, good enough. You’re a scholar.

The problem, though, is that it is so easy to read into the Bible what we already believe. Good scholarship requires good teachers, people who know more than we do about the subject, who can take us beyond our own experiences and prejudices. When Stuart Varney or Larry Kudlow declares on Fox News that Jesus is a free-market capitalist, they apparently have not read the Bible for themselves, at least not the direct words of Jesus in Matthew 6:24. So they need a teacher to help them expand their knowledge, maybe somebody like another Jew, in addition to Amy Jill Levine, like Jon Stewart.

I have had good Bible teachers in person, Victor Furnish and Ernest Saunders and James Flemming and Marcus Borg. I’ve had good teachers through books, by Albert Schweitzer and C.H. Dodd and Gunther Bornkamm and N.T. Wright.

No one has to be a biblical illiterate. You can be a Bible scholar. First, read the Bible. And get a good teacher. They are available in print and in voice, even if not in person.

The best Bible teacher of all, though, is Jesus. His words and actions are the prisms through with Christians read all the rest of the Bible. His words and actions trump Leviticus and Paul. After all, the Bible does not say that the Bible is God’s Word; the Bible says that Christ is God’s Word.

The main reason to study the Bible is so the Bible can study you.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] The sign under the milk shake menu at Five Guys says “You can add bacon to any shake.” This bacon thing has gotten totally out of hand!

2] That is totally unfair to Bob. He is himself an excellent cook, especially if biscuits and okra are involved. But what are friends for, if not to misuse to make a point or get a laugh?

I tweet as yooper1721