INEVITABLE DISAPPOINTMENT

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

Helen is joining the church this morning. Actually, she joined up a long time ago. She is just transferring her membership from Trinity UMC in Iron Mountain, MI to St. Mark’s UMC in Bloomington, IN. I’ll stand up with her, but since I am clergy, although retired, my membership is in the Conference, the regional connection of all the UMCs in a geographical area, rather than in a local congregation.

Before Iron Mountain, Helen was a member of United Methodist congregations in Sterling, IL, Mason City, IA, Charleston, IL, Arcola, IL, Hoopeston, IL, Orion, IL, Iowa City, IA, Normal, IL, Terre Haute, IN, Cedar Lake, IN, Dallas, TX, Solsberry, IN, and a Presbyterian church in Gary, IN and a Baptist church in Monon, IN. Every one of them disappointed her.

Not terribly. Not especially. But every church disappoints. Not a one lives up to the promise you hold for it. Sometimes Christians don’t act like Christians, and we think they should, at least in the church. Sometimes, though, they act less Christianly, toward their own Christian sisters and brothers, and pastors, than they do to the outside world.

That is true with every relationship. Parents disappoint children when the kids learn that their parents are not infallible and all-powerful. Children disappoint parents when they grow up and use their own minds. Spouses disappoint each other because they are not perfect. Everyone disappoints everyone else because we get sick and die and leave one another.

So it is best to decide at the time you join the church, or any other relationship, whether you are going to hang in there when the disappointment comes, or whether you’re going to bail out and seek a different, later disappointment.

I’m not sure that bailing out is always the wrong choice. But I am sure that when we join together in relationship, we need to keep loving all the way through, even when the inevitable disappointment comes, even though we can no longer be together in the same ways in which we started.

St. Mark’s has two terrific pastors, and a big bunch of interesting, loving, Christian members. Those pastors, though, are not perfect, and they will retire or be moved to another church. Those Christian members will take jobs in other places or get sick and die. I’m already mad at them for that, but I’m going to love them while I have the chance, before the disappointment comes, and when it comes--by God’s grace, and because Helen is a member and makes me keep going--I’ll love them still.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

BE ATTITUDES

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

When I was trying to survive cancer, I read two seemingly contradictory theories about getting well. One said you had a better chance of getting well if you did things for others. The second study said you had a better chance of getting well if you refused to do things for others. Neither was quite right. You have a better chance of getting well if you do things for others if you really want to and better chance of getting well if you refuse to do things for others if you are doing them only out of a sense of obligation.

A few days ago I said I would post something new every day, even if it were not worth posting, because I did not want to disappoint anyone who came to this blog hoping for something new. I felt the responsibility to provide something new each day. I should understand myself well enough by now to know that was the death knell of every-day blog posts. Sure enough, I promptly missed several days. I can get it done only if I want to, not if I’m doing it out of a sense of obligation.

Now some things we need to do, even if we don’t want to, even if we do them out of obligation. They’ll go better, though, if we decide to like them, or at least put a limit on them.

I heard Bill Schutz, the psychologist, tell of how he had gone to a party because he had to. He hadn’t been there long when he developed a sore throat. Obviously he had picked up a germ and was getting sick. So he agreed with himself that he would stay for only half an hour and then leave and go home and be sick. “Then,” he said, “I started talking to people, knowing I would leave soon. The half an hour was quickly up, but I was having a good time, and my throat stopped being sore, and I stayed the whole party.”

Will Rogers used to say, “A man’s just about as happy as he makes up his mind to be.”

 JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

My book, NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them, is published in two editions by AndrewsMcMeel, in audio by HarperAudio, and in Czech and Japanese translations. It’s incredibly inexpensive at many sites on the web.

The Word at the Bottom of the Page-a poem

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

This is the third time through

This book of poems

I wondered once again

Why they are arranged this way

All this drabness filled with hope

Page after page

Then I saw the word

On the bottom of the page

Snow.

All these poems in this section

Have snow in common

I have read this book twice through

And did not know how it was arranged

Until I saw the words

That were not part of the poem

On the bottom of the page

It makes me wonder

What else I have missed

JRMcF

johnobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

ARITHMETIC

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

I attended a small high school, that started with 8^th grade. I was also a mid-year kid, one of those whose birthdays back then mandated a school start at the beginning of the second semester. I was also in band and orchestra and chorus, which took class periods, so the principal had a difficult time getting me into classes with the rest of my grade. I was one of two boys who took biology with the girls. And I took the second semester of Commercial Arithmetic without benefit of the first semester. I sort of liked having biology with the girls. I especially liked Commercial Arithmetic, because I was a freshman boy with a bunch of older women, aka junior girls.

Many people are afraid of arithmetic, but the political campaign puts the issue of arithmetic--statistics, polls, and averages--into the public consciousness.

When I was spoke at a cancer conference at M.D. Anderson in Houston, I heard Wendy Harpham, a physician and fellow cancer patient, tell this story: Two duck hunters were in a boat. One shot at a duck and missed, ten feet in front of it. The other shot at it and missed, ten feet behind it. On average, the duck was dead.

The message for patients was clear: we have to ignore statistics and keep on fighting.

Dr. Bernie Siegel says that 15% of cancer patients are automatic fighters. They fight everything, so there is no problem getting them to take the challenge of cancer. 15% are automatic dyers. If a doctor tells them they have six months to live, they’ll die in six months to the day. The other 70%, Siegel says, can go either way. They are the ones who need to be persuaded to ignore averages, statistics, arithmetic.

It is a good thing for cancer patients to ignore statistics. It is a bad thing, however, for cancer doctors and researchers to do so. If an oncologist says, “The statistics show that Drug A is 20% better than Drug B, but my gut feeling tells me that Drug B is better,” I don’t want that idiot as my doctor. I have a much better chance in my fight against cancer, in my ignoring of the statistics, if my doctor pays attention to the statistics and gives me the best chemotherapy.

Jesus is coming soon? The statistics don’t support that, not in the sense that most people talk about it, coming to end the world in the last judgment. Since Jesus ascended to heaven, there have been at least two thousand predictions about when he would return and the world would end. They were all correct, in that the world has ended for the folks who made those predictions and believed in them. But the arithmetic was wrong.

Some politicians decide what they believe through arithmetic. They look at what the polls say that people want and claim that’s what they want, too, what they have always wanted. The only thing they always want is to get elected, and they’ll say they believe whatever will accomplish that, regardless of how morally bankrupt and hostile to civilization it might be. Many voters accept their arithmetic without considering not only if the arithmetic is correct, but if the actions it favors are right.

Doing what is right is not about arithmetic, not about polls or averages.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as Yooper 1721.

I Have No Pains Today-a poem

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

I do not mean to overload you with poems. I doubt that my poems are why anyone reads CIW. Sometimes, though, I do not have one of my little story/reflections ready, and since I write a poem-like thing most days, one of them is usually available. I feel like I ought to post something new each day, in case you come looking for something new, so… at least this poem is new, and it is a reflection on faith in winter years… and I always warn you by noting in the title if it’s a poem!

I have no pains today

That is reason enough for celebration

I have other reasons, though, other

Joys to offer up. My loved ones all

Are well, and they choose with care

The slips and disappointments

That they share

I have no meetings of committee

And if some moron at the coffee shop loudly

Proclaims some philosophy with which I disagree

[which, by definition, is erroneous and stupid]

My legs work.

So many of my friends have gone ahead

But they have left a trail of memories

Like breadcrumbs, that bring us back together

Whenever I recall their names and faces

And there are others, still here, who remind me

To keep going

There is, of course, that matter of the skunks

Who dig up the yard, and the woodpecker

That makes holes up high on the house

But I have dug hard in places to feed

My family, as that skunk digs hard

To feed hers. And I have tried to impress

The girls, the way the woodpecker does,

Pointing out the difference between metaphor

And simile, and saying words

Like patripassionism, so who am I to judge?

[Still, I would be willing to live in Costa Rica for the winter]

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

God Bless the Wind--a poem

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

Lord, bless the wind today,

this little wind that slips

so shyly up to my face

to say hello,

like twin fawns stepping lightly

through tall grass.

And bless the big winds.

Take away their anger

at the world that will not bow before them.

Let them slow to blow

the little boats to harbor safe,

and the bigger ships to some place profound.

And all the winds of in-between…

The frosty wind that makes moan

in winter.

The zephyr that blows the light brown hair

of girls named Jennie.

Bless them, Lord, the winds,

and help them to blow the good memories

everywhere…

JRMcF

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

THE POWER OF A SECOND CORD

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

There is a certain generation of women, mostly in their 80s now, whose parents gave them the name of Joan but pronounced it Joann. Helen and I met one of them while taking an after-supper stroll/walk, along with her husband, John. We were going the same direction, so fell in together and started getting acquainted. Joan told us of how they had both been widowed when they met. John had lived alone for fifteen years of so when they married. I observed, more to get the taciturn John to say something than anything else, that after all those years, he might have been a little set in his ways when they married. Joan stopped right there in the middle of the street, turned her face to the sky, and bellowed to the setting sun and anyone within three and one-half miles, “A LITTLE? A LITTLE?” John just gave a wan smile and kept trudging along.

That’s what old people do. We get set in our ways, and we just keep trudging along.

Old people have the reputation of “set in our ways,” but ALL of us are creatures of habit. Old people are not really creatures of habit more than younger folks. It’s just that we’ve been trudging in the same pathways, physically and mentally and emotionally and spiritually, for longer periods of time, so those ways are more ingrained in us.

I realized that recently when I received an extra computer power cord for Christmas. Yes, I asked for it. When you’re old, you’ve got more shirts than you can wear out before you die, so you ask for things you really need, like Chapstick and chocolate pinon coffee. I did not know, though, how much that cord would change my life.

I spend most of my time on my sofa in the living room. When I need to watch a cat video, my iPad is right there. I am also used to having a computer on the desk in my study. That was the only place early computers could fit, and that was where they sat beside the printer. I’ve always had a computer on my desk. When I needed something other than cat videos, I went to my study to use the computer there. It’s now, though, a sleek laptop, not one of those hugeputers.

Sometimes when I wanted to write something long, I would bring my laptop computer in from my study to the sofa, because that’s closer to the coffee, and in front of the fireplace, but I had to bring its cord in, too. It was difficult to get the cord unplugged from the hidden receptacle, and then it was difficult to get it re-plugged behind the elephant in the living room, and if I needed to print something, I had to take it back to the study and re-plug… well, you get the picture. Once it was in the study on the desk, I just left it there.

With a second cord, though, I have to move only the laptop. No unplugging and re-plugging. [How come my sphelczhek says unplugging is okay but replugging is not?] Now I hardly ever use my iPad, because the laptop has cat vids, too, and I never get anything printed. I can sit on my sofa all day.

The second cord worked, but in reverse. The idea was to make it possible to move the laptop computer back and forth easily, but it actually made it possible for me to stay in one place all day. Now I have to rethink my whole life. Is any movement at all necessary?

It’s good to have our routines upset once in a while, so we can get out of our ruts and live in entirely different ways. I think I’ll keep spelling my name John but pronounce it Johann.

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 book, NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them, is published in two editions by AndrewsMcMeel, in audio by HarperAudio, and in Czech and Japanese translations. It’s incredibly inexpensive at many sites on the web.

THE WESTERN STRANGERS

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

I read a lot of mystery-adventure fiction. Most people these days prefer movies or television for stories, but I still like books. I have nothing against movies, but they are limiting. They give me only one way of seeing a scene, a character, a story. A book gives me many options for picturing the story.

A major problem for fiction writers today is technology. It is hard to understand and hard to keep up with, especially communication and information technology, both of which are part of anything we do these days. Neither a villain nor a hero can be secretive about anything, because GPS systems and surveillance cameras and cell phones and computer spies track our every move.

Writers deal with this in three ways. One is to write about the technology directly, like you understand it and know how it works. Only a few can do that, and they are really boring. Readers don’t want to see the intestines; they just want to know if the surgeon got sued.

The second is for the protagonist to have a technology expert friend, a loner who lives in a basement and never does anything but work all day at computers and owes the main character unspecified favors and so works his computer magic, which is never delineated, and tells the hero what she needs to know, without explanation as to how he does it. That’s good. It saves the author a lot of time and effort. It’s also unfair.

The third is to set the story in a situation where there is no technology. That was always the advantage of the setting of Western novels. Even if the hero wanted help, someone had to ride a horse 90 miles to the county seat. In a Western, you’re on your own. A no-technology setting is hard t come by in modern times.

I grew up with Western stories. They were a staple of radio and movies—especially Saturday afternoon serials--and then television. And books. Westerns are still alive and well, but as a narrow niche of readers, mostly old men who grew up with The Lone Ranger and those Saturday afternoon serials.

So when I started writing novels, I naturally did Westerns. I had a whole series in mind, “the lonely man” series. Ha, never saw that coming, did you? Nobody else ever thought of using a lonely man in a Western. I got as far as An Ordinary Man, published by HarperPaperbacks, but my editor there left, and all the editors and publishers wanted me, and every other Western writer, to change our name to Louis Lamour before they would print our stuff.

I am still attracted, though, even in this techno age, perhaps especially now, to that setting where it is just one person, against all odds, with no way to call for help and no reason to expect any. Because that is the way life in faith and spirit is.

One Western I am still working on, even though I know there is no hope of publication, I call The Fourth Stranger. John Dunne, S.J., says we meet three strangers in life—mortality, sexuality, and the world of others—and the quality of our life depends upon whether we can make friends with these strangers. I think we meet a fourth stranger, and the relation with that stranger determines all the others. That stranger is God. It’s each of us, alone, trying to make friends with the strangers, that’s the story.

No computer genius is going to help you make friends of those strangers, but, at any age, that is life’s task.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The great Elmore Leonard started out as a writer of Westerns, and did some of the best, such as Valdez is Coming, which became a movie with Anthony Quinn, and Hombre, featuring Paul Newman in the movie.

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.

Faith like Dew--a quote

Paul Baker introduced me to the new-found, middle-aged, cancer-induced examination of faith by poet Christian Wyman, in Wyman's remarkable book, MY BRIGHT ABYSS. 

Here is a quote, which I also put on Twitter today: Faith steals upon you like dew: some days you awake and it is there. And like dew, it gets burned off in the rising sun of anxieties, ambitions, distractions. 

JRMcF

Patience Is Not a Single Virtue-a poem

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

I usually preface my poems with “I am not a poet.” But that is like saying “I am not a theologian,” and then talking about God. If you are talking or thinking about God, you are a theologian, perhaps not educated or professional, but a theologian, nonetheless. I suspect the same is true with poetry. If you write poems, you’re a poet. So I should refrain from, “I’m not a poet,” but say simply, as warning, “I’m not a very good poet.” I work at it. Not with patience, for I am too impatient for re-writing, editing, improving. Nonetheless, I know that…

Patience is not a single virtue

Standing straight and long in line

Unchanging through the day.

There is the pastel patience

Of the dawning, a yellow rose

With crimson edges

There is the brighter hue of noonday

Blue, a sweating patience,

Yearning to be true

The zenith of the sun

Turns patience bronze and burned

With orange and scarlet stagger

Then comes the darker blue

Of evening, as a net of purple deep

Upon a garden wall, a guitarsy

Hymn of long ago, now a song

Of crickets gone to sleep

And frogs in love with moonglow

There is the deep black patience

Of the midnight, staring back

At eyes that wander walls for hope

Patience is not a single virtue…

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

BROKEN TO BE WHOLE

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

Our pastor decided that each Sunday during Lent, we need to have someone tell a story of how s/he met a faith trial. He asked me to start it off yesterday. He certainly tried my faith, by saying I had only “3 or 4 minutes.” For a preacher, that is agony. But I did it.

I don’t normally write anything down as I prepare to speak, for I figure if I can’t do my prep in my brain, I can’t expect listeners to comprehend with only their brains. I wrote it this time, though, so I could time it.

Here is what I said in worship yesterday:

I never expected to get cancer. My father was one of 7 children and my mother was one of 8. I have a thousand cousins. Never been cancer anywhere in that whole huge family. I lived a healthy lifestyle. Ate right. Ran marathons. Played third base. I was a preacher, for God’s sake. I didn’t get sick. I took care of other people who got sick. But the down-low pain wouldn’t go away, so on my birthday, at midnight, they took me into the operating room, and cut me open from Los Angeles to Boston. They took out a tumor and a third of my colon. Ever since I’ve been trying to learn the rules for how to use a semi-colon.

My first oncologist said I had one to two years. Two years sounded like so much more than one, and I desperately wanted that second year, because I had so much more I had to do.

I worked at it. I did chemo, for a whole year. I read that people who went to support group had a 50% better chance of getting well. I read that people who kept a journal of their feelings had a 50% better chance. I’m no dummy. That’s 100%. So I went to support group and kept a journal.

Annual Conference came, and I was talking to one of my children in the ministry. I have 23 children in the ministry. They say they became preachers because I made it look like fun. They all hate me. But Danny C0x was still talking to me, and when I told him about the cancer and all I was doing to get that second year, he said, “It sounds like you are having in-body experiences.”

I overheard the Gospel.

I realized why I had never been impressed by stories of out-of-body experiences. I was out of my body all the time. I was in the body of Christ, the church, trying to get it well. And in the body of the environment, and in the body politic, and in the body of my congregation, and… trying to heal every body but my own.

Our Gospel story this morning is about the temptations of Jesus. One of Satan’s temptations to Jesus was to be a Methodist. [The Greek is a little fuzzy there.] The quintessential Methodist temptation is to trust in salvation by doing. Jesus resisted that temptation better than I did. I was a good Methodist. I was fine as a human doing, not so good as a human being.

Brother Antoninus, the Dominican poet, says, “Our wounds are the apertures into which God’s grace is poured.” So it was for me. It was the breaking of my body that opened me up so that I could believe for myself what I had been preaching to others all those years, about the grace of God, about God loving us as we are. It was the breaking that made wholeness possible.

I once had a wonderful visitation minister on staff, Max White. When it was Max’s turn to give the pastoral prayer on Sunday morning, he always prayed, “Bless those of us assembled here.” I got goosebumps every time he prayed it, with that wonderful double meaning, not just those of brought together here as a congregation, from diverse lives and places, but those of us who are being put together in ourselves here, who have brought out broken pieces here so we can be reassembled in wholeness.

The issue wasn’t one year or two. The number of years made no difference if I only got a cure. Cure is great, but we all die. There comes a time when there is no cure. But there is never a time when healing is not possible. I realized I could be healed, even if I didn’t get cured.

God uses broken things. The chick can’t get out of the egg until the shell is broken. The atom cannot release its amazing energy until it is split. It is in the breaking of the bread that we can share in the Body of Christ. Whenever God sees brokenness— broken heart, broken spirit, broken mind, broken body—God sees that as an opportunity to help us become human beings instead of human doings.

That was 26 years ago, and under the circumstances, I feel pretty good. I feel broken, and I feel whole.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

If you want the 300 page version of this instead of the 3 minute version, you can read NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them. It is published, in two versions, by AndrewsMcMeel. Audio by HarperAudio. Czech and Japanese translations.

I tweet as yooper1721.

My new mystery/action novel, VETS, about four homeless and handicapped Iraqistan veterans accused of murdering a VAMC doctor, is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. Use my full name when looking for it.

FOLLOW JESUS INTO THE WILDERNESS-a song

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

This first Sunday of Lent, the Gospel story is about the temptations of Jesus while he was in the wilderness by himself, getting soul-ready for the task God had set before him. As I thought about that, this little song bubbled up in me. It’s not really a hymn for worship, but I think it would be a good camp song. I hear a tune for it in my head, but I can’t write music, so I can’t put it down. However, it’s so simple, you’ll probably come up with the same tune, or one like it, so that you can hum along…

Let’s follow Jesus…

Into the wilderness

Into the wilderness

Into the wilderness

Let’s follow Jesus

Into the wilderness

And get our souls healed there

Let’s follow Jesus …

Into the wilderness

Into the wilderness

Into the wilderness

Let’s follow Jesus

Into the wilderness

And face the devil there

Let’s follow Jesus…

Into the wilderness

Into the wilderness

Into the wilderness

Let’s follow Jesus

Into the wilderness

And his temptations share

Let’s follow Jesus…

Into the wilderness

Into the wilderness

Into the wilderness

Let’s follow Jesus

Into the wilderness

And get our souls healed there

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721. [When I signed onto twitter, I was a Yooper, a denizen of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and I thought I was supposed to have a twitter “handle,” and my phone # ended in 1721. Hence, yooper1721. I should change my twitter name to my own name, the way more tweeters do, but I don’t know how.]

Oh, good grief! I just realized that the tune I'm humming for this is Great Green Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts! Well, it works...

WHATEVER KEEPS YOU SANE

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

Bryan Bowers, the great folk singer and Hall of Fame auto-harpist was in town to do a concert and we took him to lunch. Local therapist Deborah joined us at The Runcible Spoon. Whenever some strange or quirky behavior was mentioned, and there are plenty mentioned when Bryan is around, Deborah said, “Whatever keeps you sane.”

That, of course, is her job, keeping people sane.

No one really knows what sanity is. I think it is the ability to choose not to be stupid.

All of us teeter on the brink of insanity, because we walk so closely to the abyss of stupidity. I don’t mean absence of IQ, but absence of awareness. Most of us do stupid things not because we are evil—and there are exceptions, of course—but because we don’t think very long or very well before we act. We just don’t choose well.

In those times when I am sane, it is because I have learned from others how to make good choices.

Sanity is not behaving like everyone else. In fact, it is often the exact opposite, the ability to choose the right way when all around us are running thoughtlessly in the wrong direction.

Whatever keeps you sane… Other people can drive you crazy, but the right ones can keep you sane.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

"I ALWAYS GOT WHAT I WANTED"

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

A number of years ago, a man came to see me at my office. I was not his pastor, but he was lonely, and he wanted someone to talk to. He was lonely because he was thrice divorced. As he talked about his former wives, he said, proudly, “Those marriages didn’t last, but I always got my way. I always got what I wanted.”

“Did you love any of those women?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I loved them all.”

“Then you didn’t get your way, didn’t get what you wanted, did you?” I said.

That’s not good counseling, but I had given up trying to be a good counselor by then. I told people ahead of time that I would listen to them, but they would have to listen to me, too. Sometimes that approach worked.

I wish I could use it on current politicians, although I doubt that it would work. The hypocritical crassness of politicians is overwhelming.

I think about that most recently in terms of the Flint water crisis. The members of Congress who voted against providing any relief for the people of Flint, on the basis that it would cost too much, and that meant higher taxes, have all taken relief funds for their states and districts in time of need, regardless of how much it cost, and to hell with taxes. It’s a simple, “As long as I get mine, I don’t give a damn about you.” And every one of them claims to be a Christian. 

There is always corruption in politics, always compromise, always self-interest. But for any political body to work, there needs to be an awareness that honesty, resoluteness, and good-neighborliness have to be the primary qualities of the politics. Dishonesty has to be seen as an aberration, not the default setting.

These are not just political issues. They are civilization issues, moral issues, and certainly religious issues. The Ten Commandments, for instance, say a lot about honesty. So did Jesus, and more than any other issue except forgiveness, Jesus Christ talked about the misuse of money.

Since money has become the one and only standard of success in our society, however, using politics to gain money for one’s self and one’s group is the only standard of success in politics, especially among those who claim to be Christians. Not good government. Not patriotism. Not morality. Not neighborliness. Just money. And good government, patriotism [like taking care of veterans], morality, and neighborliness get in the way of grabbing money.

Consequently, the hypocritical crassness. Politicians know we know they are lying hypocrites, and they don’t care, for they know as long as they have more money than anyone else, they can use their lies to keep on getting elected. They will repeat their lies with a straight face over and over.

They don’t care if we know they are dishonest, lying, corrupt and hypocritical, because they always get their way, they always get what they want.

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

WHAT "CHRISTIAN NATION" MEANS

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

I think it is quite clear that the USA was founded on Christian principles. That does not mean, though, that the writers of the Constitution intended to create a Christian nation.

When Moses Seixas wrote to George Washington and asked if the First Amendment meant Jews would be tolerated in the new nation, Washington replied, No. Jews would not be tolerated. Tolerance meant that a majority group would put up with a minority group. The First Amendment meant not that Jews would be tolerated, but that they would be free, in the same way any other citizen was free. Any citizen of any religion, or none, had the same rights as any other. [1]

That is a Christian principle. All people have total worth in the eyes of God, and each person is to be treated as a child of God. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Not “Do unto CHRISTIANS…” but “Do unto OTHERS…”

The fact that the US is founded on Christian principles does not mean that we are “a Christian nation.” It means the exact opposite.

Being a Christian nation, as currently defined in political rhetoric means either that all citizens must be Christian, or that Christians are the majority group and may, or may not, put up,  with non-Christians, may or may not “tolerate” them.

Strangely, people who champion the Christian nation idea refer to themselves often as “strict constitutional Constructionists” who believe in “the original intent of the Constitution writers.” They seem to think that they know the intent of the Constitution writers better than George Washington did.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] From Sarah Vowell, LAFAYETTE N THE SOMEWHAT UNITED STATES, p. 266 in the LP edition.

I tweet as yooper1721.

Am I The Only One--a poem

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

As the only scholar in a barbarian

land must feel when the theorem

proves,

     “Am I the only one

       in the world who knows

        this truth?”

and puts aside

the stub of chalk and rubs

away the evidence of thought,

so much distrusted

in that land, I wonder

as I gaze upon my own equation,

if I am the only one who sees

that this punctiliar x

does equal that peculiar y.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721. 

HOLDING WALTER PAYTON'S HAND

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

Bob and I watched the Super Bowl last night. Kathy and Helen talked in another room until the fourth quarter. Whenever I watch the Super Bowl, I think of Walter Payton, and whenever I think of Walter, I remember him holding hands with Helen.

I watched a “30 for 30” show on ESPN yesterday about the 1985 Chicago Bears super bowl team. Walter Payton was disappointed after the game because, even though he led the team in scoring all year, Coach Ditka never called for him to get to score one of their many touchdowns in the Super Bowl win over the Patriots. Ditka knew the Patriots would have to focus on Walter. They did. It made it easy for others, including “The Fridge,” of all people, to score. The Bears won all year because of Walter, and they won the Super Bowl because of Walter, but as a decoy, and he was bitterly disappointed that he was not used in the way he thought fitting for the best running back in the history of football.

So I’m glad he got to hold hands with Helen on Springfield Avenue in front of daughter Mary Beth’s house in Champaign, IL during that Hands Across America event in 1986. Why he came to Champaign for that event, or why he chose West Springfield Ave., of all the places he could have stood, I don’t know. But when we walked out of her house and across the street to join hands for 15 minutes with 6.5 others across the continental US, there was Walter. “Take his hand,” I whispered to Helen. She did. She didn’t know who he was.

So soon after his Super Bowl disappointment, it must have been very healing for Walter to hold hands with Helen. I know it always is for me.

When Walter died so young from a rare liver disease only ten years later, I hoped he remembered that healing hand. We need a hand to hold when we are hurting, and when we are dying. It doesn’t necessarily have to be one right there, though. A hand in memory is good, and even one over the phone.

My colleague Lee’s wife, Theda, took a long time to die. They lived in a small town, a long way from the hospital or doctor. One afternoon Lee realized it was different. He called the doctor and described what was happening. “She’s dying right now,” the doctor said. “What should I do?” Lee asked. “You hold her hand,” the doctor said, “and I’ll stay on the phone with you and hold yours.”

We need a hand when hurting. The good news is that a hand is always there. Sometimes in person. Often in memory. Always in spirit.

In the words of Gene MacLellan’s song that became a hit for Anne Murray and for Ocean. “Put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee…”

 JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

LEARNING TO EXERCISE

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

Helen went to a seminar at the YMCA to learn how to exercise. I didn’t think it was that hard: Put left foot forward, put right foot forward, repeat. The Y thinks it is more complicated.

She did learn, though, at last, how to bend over and to sit down. You don’t use your knees. You stick your behind out instead. Try it, especially if someone else is around; it’s fun to watch.

She also learned that you should not combine exercising for 30 minutes and spending the rest of the day on the sofa. Apparently I have to stop exercising for 30 minutes.

The reason we have trouble getting up and down, she learned, is that connective tissue thickens with age. You have to keep using those connections, like standing up and sitting down, to keep them flexible.

It sounds backwards to me. Thick means strong. Wouldn’t it be a good thing to have stronger connections? But strong and flexible aren’t exactly the same. I learned that as a long-distance runner, especially on uneven terrain. When a runner with strong ankles turned one of those ankles, there was an injury. My ankles were weak, flexible, so they turned without injury.

We need flexibility, and aging works against that, in thinking and relationships as well as in the body. We need to keep exercising those relational connective tissues, too, in other bodies. If the tissues of the family body, or the Body of Christ, or the body of humanity, become too thick, there are tears when there are turns.

JRMcF

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

GETTING READY TO DIE

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

My new year’s resolution is to get ready to die. I have no reason to expect that event is soon, but it’s getting closer, so it’s time to get ready.

Paul Tournier, the Swiss physician, said: “You are never too young or too old to give your life to Christ. After that, what else is there to do to prepare to die?” Well, there is one other thing, choosing the music for your funeral.

I have heard some unusual music at funerals, but some of the songs I would like at my funeral are not really appropriate for a church service, and even if they were, there would not be enough mourners to sing them, or nearly enough time to sing or play them all.

But if there could be singing at the church for my funeral, I would choose: Spirit, Spirit of Gentleness [By my friend, Jim Manley, #2221 in The Faith We Sing]. For All the Saints. When We All Get to Heaven. I’ll Fly Away. I Love To Tell the Story. Are Ye Able. We Shall Overcome. He Keeps Me Singing [There’s Within My Heart a Melody]. The Holy City. Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus. I Shall Not Be Moved. Oh Freedom. Let Us Break Bread Together. [My family should not try to sing this, since they crack up every time they hear it, remembering the time during family devotions that I intoned, “When I fall on my face with my knees to the rising sun…”] Lord of the Dance.

Singing all those would take about a week. The next week, I’d like for everyone to gather outdoors, maybe at the old, restored Crosley Field, and sing the songs that, along with the church songs, make up my soundtrack:

Red River Pirates [A song grandson Joseph and I created to the tune of Red River Valley]. The IU Alma Mater [Come and join in song together…] and Fight Song [Indiana, our Indiana…]. Take Me Out to The Ball Game. The Powdermilk Biscuit Song or the Prairie Home Companion theme song [Oh, hear that old piano…]. Moments to Remember. Halls of Ivy. Love Letters in the Sand. Back Home Again in Indiana. Elgar’s Pomp & Circumstance. The Entertainer. The Great Pretender. Deep Purple [Inexplicably, the song I was listening to when God spoke out of the burning phonograph and said, “No more excuses; you’re going to be a damn preacher!”] 500 Miles Away from Home. Pachabel’s Canon. Stand By Me. Stardust. Try To Remember.

So, when you hear that my funeral is on, hum a bar or two of one of those, will you? That will make it a great funeral.

Okay, now I’m ready.

 John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

 \

WHISPERS OF LOVE=a repeat

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

It’s my cancer anniversary, the day my first oncologist said I’d be dead “in a year or two.” That was 26 years ago. I’m a little reluctant to mention this, because not everyone gets so many bonus years. I’m thankful, though, for my bonus years, and so I share again what I posted on this date 4 years ago. I have updated “22” to “26.”

From I Kings 19:11-13, “…after the fire, a still small voice.”

Some people thought Becky and I were having an affair. It made sense. There were plenty of signs. We spent a lot of time together. She was pretty and I was needy. We acted silly in each other’s presence. When she touched me I trembled.

It’s hard, though, to have an affair with someone who makes you throw up every time you see her.

I trembled when she touched me because she always had an IV needle in her hand.

Becky was the head nurse in the chemo room, before the better anti-nausea meds were developed. When Helen did chemo a dozen years after mine, she sat there with the chemo dripping in and ate lunch. When I did chemo, I lost lunch. Chemo can still cause nausea, even with the modern meds, but in 1990, you “called Ralph on the big white phone” EVERY time. So whenever I walked into the chemo room and saw Becky, I had to run to the rest room and throw up. It’s called “anticipatory nausea.” I knew that when that pretty woman in the white dress touched me, I’d be tossing my cookies, so I just went ahead and got it over with.

The main reason people thought Becky and I had something going on was that we whispered to each other a lot.

Becky and I had a lot to whisper about because I was the cancer center’s hitman. Whenever a patient didn’t cooperate, a doctor or nurse would give me a contract on him or her. They couldn’t do it directly. That would probably be unethical. But they could say in my presence, “Brock hasn’t showed up for his treatments. I wonder where he is…” Or, “There’s an empty chair beside that woman over there. She looks like she needs to talk…” Or “That mother seems to be having a harder time with her son’s cancer than he is…” They knew that sometimes a fellow patient can get through to a cancer person in a way that medical staff can’t. 

All this started 26 years ago today, when the pale oncologist showed up and told me I had “it.” A couple of days before they had taken me into the operating room at midnight and cut me open from Los Angeles to Boston, looking for the source of the pain. Cancer never occurred to me. Nobody in my large extended family had ever had cancer. I ate right. I ran long distances, including 26 miles 385 yards at one time. I was a preacher, for God’s sake! We don’t get sick; we minister to other people who get sick. But cancer it was. My pale oncologist gave me to understand that I would be dead “in a year or two.” That was 26 years ago today, the day after my birthday. Under the circumstances, I feel pretty good.

When Becky asked me to officiate at her wedding, I said, “Don’t wear a white dress.”

After the wedding, we hugged, and cried a little. She thanked me for doing the service. I thanked her for keeping me alive. People were watching, so we whispered.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmajil.com

I wrote more extensively about this in NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them, published in two editions by AndrewsMcMeel, with audio by HarperAudio and in Czech and Japanese translations.

CELEBRATING A DIFFERENT BIRTH DAY

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

It seems a bit odd to celebrate a day

that signifies only that you started,

not what you did.

Perhaps better to celebrate

the day you felt the absence

of a hand upon the two-wheeled

hope, and knew that you were free,

and did not come close even,

perhaps a little,

to the man carrying the watermelon.

Or why not each year celebrate

the first day you rocked the holy

grandchild and decided

it was worth it to raise

those freedom-stealing children

after all.

Maybe you should fete the half-moon

sky that night when your eyes searched

beyond the billion stars

and you felt so little,

and so much at home.

So on this my natal day,

I think I’ll drink my low-fat toast

To “Watermelon Missing

Grandchild Rocking

Half-Moon Day.”

Although the sun is bright,

with hours to go until I see again

into the night-time sky,

I’ll look up far beyond

the billionth star,

and turn my face

toward home.

JRMcF

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

RISKY LOVE

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

I called on an older lady, a bit older than I am now, when I arrived at a new church. It’s important to get to know all your members as soon as possible, and older folks are easier to find, so they are usually the ones we get to know first. She was a recent widow and told me of how helpful her daughter, her only child, had been to her in her newly-widowed period. “But you never know how a child will finally turn out,” she said, shaking her head a bit.

I later learned that the daughter was 53 years old and a professor of English! But her mother wasn’t sure how she would turn out. [I understand that better now that my children are approaching that age.]

God does not practice safe love.

Jesus says, “Be perfect, even as your heavenly father is perfect.” [Mt 5:48] God is not perfect as measured against some outside standard of moral or intellectual perfection. God IS the standard by which perfection is measured. Whatever God is, that is perfection. God is perfect because God is always true to the divine identity.

Perfection is a matter of being true to one’s own identity. We are human beings. We are perfect when we are totally true to that identity. When we are imperfect is when we act like animals, or parasites, or posts [“dumb as a post”], or when we act like God, trying to play God for others or the world or ourselves. As Luther said, “Let God be God.”

Parenthood is risky. God has been raising us up for billions of years, and is not sure how we’ll turn out. God could have taken the safe route, not “wasted” those billions of years of nurturing, of bringing us along, but that’s not true to the divine identity. Risk-taking love is true to the nature of the divine identity.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

I & THOU

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

“While you were busy concentrating on Kylie Jenner turning 18 and getting a tattoo, Malala Yousafzai turned 18 and opened a school for girls.”

That was a post on Facebook not long ago.

How demeaning it is to the wonderful Malala to mention her second. Her inspirational life and her good works stand alone. But it seems that people these days are so negative, so hostile, that they cannot even celebrate something good except by first comparing it to something bad.

Another post I saw not long ago was a picture of Jackie Kennedy with the notation, “This is how a classy first lady looks, Moochelle.” It would be easy to address this first by declaring that Michelle Obama is very classy in her own right, and that calling her a name tells us more about the name-caller than about Mrs. Obama. Also importantly, though, is the terrible insult it is to the equally classy Mrs. Kennedy, to use her as a springboard to insult another first lady, or anyone else.

If you think you are so superior to the Kardashian Jenners and people who follow their exploits, say so. If you think Mrs. Obama is not classy, say so. But do not insult amazing girls like Malala and classy women like Jackie by using them to insult others. That is mean, cowardly, and stupid.

Hostility and anger now are so general and unfocused. We are mad at everybody about everything. That unfocused anger is summed up in the “you” in the statement above. The poster assumes that everyone, no one excluded, was concentrating on Kylie Jenner turning 18. I don’t even know who Kylie Jenner is. I am not part of the “you.”

That unfocused anger is why we fall for any political candidate whose anger is just as unfocused and general as ours is. All he or she has to do is tell us all our problems are because of “them” and we fall for it.

For Christians, this is a Jesus issue. For Christ, each person is a “thou” and only a “thou,” never a “them.” [1] Jesus said, “Let your yes be yes and your no be no.” [Matthew 5:37] If we hide behind someone else to sling our barbs, we are not being Christ-ians.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] English has lost a lot by amalgamating personal pronouns, including the impact of Martin Buber’s great, I AND THOU.

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.

BEING THERE

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

Helen gave me a book of Carrie Newcomer poems for Christmas. This morning I read one called “Being There.” It reminded me of Rob and Susan. [Not their real names.]

A few years ago Rob approached me after an event where I had spoken. We no longer lived in the same town. I had not seen him for several years.

He and his wife had joined our church as young parents in their late 20s then. Neither had previous church experience, but they entered fully into the life of the congregation. As often happens, without the preacher’s knowledge, a problem at home had driven them to the church.

When Rob left Susan, he was the one who told me about it, as he asked me to care for his wife and children emotionally. I think that, unconsciously, he had joined the church to build a support system for them because, unconsciously or not, he knew he would leave. He had done it before.

It’s hard to know why men do the things they do. There was another woman involved, of course. Despite what people tell you, there is always another woman, in the mind if not in the flesh. I remember one couple where the man told his wife he was leaving because he was in love with another woman, whom he named. When the wife confronted “the other woman,” she was genuinely surprised. The husband had made no overtures toward her, and she made it clear that she had no intention of responding to his interest. Sex makes fools of us all sooner or later, men and women alike.

Rob was willing to come back for counseling sessions with Susan. For several difficult, despairing weeks, I listened to Susan cry and watched Rob shrug his shoulders. Then he stopped coming, but Susan did, so I kept on watching her cry.

I was always a poor counselor. I don’t listen well. I see quickly what I think is a good solution and I want others to get to the bottom line solution as quickly as I do. That works well if you’re an army general; not well if you’re a church pastor. With Rob and Susan I was about as ineffective as I’ve ever been.

Then he decided to return. Despite my total lack of helpfulness before, she said, “You’re going to have to counsel us some more. He can’t just waltz back in here like nothing happened, the way he did the first time.” He understood that. We worked on it together for a while, but they quickly dropped me out of those discussions.

They continued to come to church and to be active. They were very pleasant, even affectionate toward me. They seemed to be happy, but who knows? They had seemed happy before, too.

Now, after a lot of years, Rob and Susan came up to greet me after my speech. After she had gone off on some errand, he said, “I just want to tell you that things in our family are great, the best they’ve ever been, and it’s all because of you.”

I’ve been around long enough that I’m not surprised by anything. I’m occasionally shocked, but never surprised. Still, I was surprised. I hadn’t done anything for them except keep them company as they tried to work out their relationship and their identities and what they wanted out of life. I told him so.

“I didn’t do anything. It was you and Susan who made it work,” I said. “Or perhaps you just grew up.”

“Maybe so,” he replied, “but you were there.”

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