WISDOM AND STORIES

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

I pray for all my preaching friends each Sunday morning, wishing I had words of wisdom to share with them. They don’t need my words of wisdom, but I feel uneasy if I’m not sharing words of wisdom, since I seem to have so many, and younger preachers seem to have so few.

That’s not true, of course, on either count. I don’t have wisdom just because I am old, and younger people don’t lack it just because they are young. One of the frustrations of old age, though, is wanting to share what wisdom we do have and finding that no one wants it.

I recall an older man in one of my churches. I’ll call him “Harry.” He thought he was the elder statesman and that whenever he spoke, that was the end of the discussion. I sometimes did not think his word was adequate as the last word, and so I would keep the discussion going. This bothered Harry, enough that he began to give me those “distant” signals that church people give, meaning he would not talk with me about his dis-ease with me, but he told other people in the church, and each year he led a movement to deny me a salary raise.

At one of those “no salary” church conferences, Harry was especially distraught because one of the younger men in the church, in his 30s, had openly opposed him. The next morning Harry was in my living room, bemoaning the lack of respect that younger people had for their elders, and presumably betters.

One fascinating part of that scene was that he still thought of me as his pastor. Even though he disliked me and my unwillingness to acknowledge him as the only wise person in the church, and just the night before had tried to deny me a salary raise, when he wanted to complain about others who not adequately respect his wisdom, he came to me, a younger man, and expected me to sympathize.

I did sympathize with him, of course, in part just because I was his pastor, but also because I could anticipate that time when I would be in his chair, in his years, wanting to share wisdom and not finding many takers.

The task of old age is not delivering wisdom but telling stories. I tell me stories to those who want to listen, or feel they have to, and if there is any wisdom there, they can find it on their own.

A woman recently said to me, “You’re so full of stories.” That was gratifying, mostly because “You’re so full of…” is not always followed by “…of stories.”

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

My youthful ambition was to be a journalist, and write a column for a newspaper. So I think of this blog as an online column. I started it several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, ”Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!” [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] We no longer live in “the place of winter.” The grandchildren grew 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 continue to work at understanding what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter…

I tweet as yooper1721.

The Way & The End & The Way... A poem

Jesus was all about the way

Not the end

The way is narrow

The way is steep

And yet his burden

On the way is light

Following Jesus is about the way

Not the end of what was done

That sounds right

But Of course, it is not true

That Jesus was all about the way,

Narrow or not

The truth is this

Jesus was all about the end

On the cross

Except that was not the end…

In the end was his beginning

Which is all about the way,

Not the end…

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

IN PRAISE OF RITUAL

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

We did not understand a single word that was said in that worship service, yet Helen and I agree that it was one of the most powerful and moving worship experiences we’ve ever had. No, not our worship at St. Mark’s UMC last Sunday, or today. That’s good worship, powerful and moving, but I do understand the words.

The time I did not understand the words was in Budapest, Hungary, before the end of the Cold War. It was a big old Catholic cathedral. Most of the other people there were “security,” sullen men in cheap suits who stood and slouched against the pillars and tried to look menacing. They were there mostly for intimidation, to try to make people afraid to worship at all. It didn’t work, not against the priest, nor against the small group of Hungarians gathered for worship, nor against us.

We did not understand a single word, but we worshipped. We understood the meaning of the words even though we did not understand the words.

Methodism is a direct descendent of Anglicanism, which is Roman Catholicism without the Pope. John Wesley, the originator of Methodism, was a priest of England. He did not change the ritual of the worship, just made it available for poor people, and put a greater emphasis upon preaching. So for Helen and me, that Budapest worship, in the dark shadow of Communist malevolence, was “our” worship. We knew the ritual even though we did not know the language.

That is one of the values of ritual.

Nadia Bolz-Weber, the founder and pastor of the Lutheran House for All Sinners and Saints, says that what her congregation likes most is that they don’t have a praise band. Almost her entire congregation is people not welcome in traditional churches, junkies and drunks and transvestites and parolees and gays and homeless, some of them all those things. Their lives are chaotic. When they come to church, they want something that they can count on, something the same from week to week, the Lutheran ritual straight out of the Lutheran hymnal.

Most of us have less chaotic lives than the folks at House for All, but we need ritual. When the sermon misses the mark, when the hymn melodies are unsingable or their theology untenable, we can count on the words of the ritual to recount God’s action in the world in a way that pulls us toward the altar as a magnet pulls iron filings.

C.S. Lewis said the purpose of ritual is to set our minds free so the Holy Spirit can work in them.

I like new stuff in worship. I like praise bands and praise songs, if they do good music and have good theology. I like drama and liturgical dance and impromptu dance and all the other stuff. But there are days when none of that speaks to me. Then the ritual is a gift. “Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I started this blog several years ago, when we lived in the “place of winter” in the title, Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] May 18, 2015 we started moving “home,” to Bloomington, IN.

I tweet as yooper1721.

MY ONE REGRET

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

I don’t have many regrets, but I am sorry I did not play softball that late afternoon in the autumn of 1972.

I was walking between the union building and the library on the U of Iowa campus. There was an open field beside the union. Some guys had a softball game going. One of them yelled at me, “Hey, John, come and play.”

It sounded like he knew me, but I didn’t know him. I assumed he was yelling at some other John.

It’s a common name, so common that when I go to one of those restaurants that asks for your name so they can call it when they finally have your food ready, I say that my name is either Ambrose or Oscar, according to whether I’m in a theological or cinematic mood. If I tell them it’s John, when they yell that out, half the old men in the place jump up and try to get my food.

I looked around for another John. Nobody else around. He called again, waved his arm. Yes, they definitely wanted me to play.

I love to play ball. All kinds. Always have. Don’t know why. I think it’s a sickness. I play pickleball even now, and I’m twice as old as creaky ancient players who can barely stand up. Yes, a sickness, which is why I regret missing that opportunity so long ago.

But I was working on a doctorate. I had only one year of free ride via a Danforth grant. I had children in grade school. I needed to get my terminal degree out of the way so I could go back to work and make money to send my kids to college. I had made a careful schedule for my days, using every minute so that I could get all my course requirements and both language exams done the first year. The schedule had no room for softball.

So I waved back, and thanked them for the invitation, and stayed on schedule.

Now, that is among my regrets. I suspect that playing ball would have done me more good than reading the theologies of Karl Rahner or Hans Kung, or even George Forrell.

I don’t want any more regrets. I play ball first, and read theology later.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I’m going to be away from the computer for a couple of days. Probably won’t post again until Sunday.

I became disturbed by the huge number of military suicides, both veterans and active duty, so I wrote VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans accused of murdering a VA doctor. It’s a darn good tootin’ adventure mystery story. My royalties go to helping prevent veteran suicides. You can buy it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. Both print and ebook.

I tweet as yooper1721.

COTTAGE LESSONS

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

The idea was ridiculous, but we inquired about the price. The price was ridiculous, but we bought the cottage anyway. It was priceless.

Waggs and I would drive over to the cottage on Friday afternoon. Helen would come after school. We would eat frozen burritos and read until we fell asleep. The next morning Waggs would get us up to wander the shore looking for fish-heads. On Saturday afternoon we would reluctantly drive back to the land of work. But that weekly overnight in the cottage made it possible for us to stay alive by being ourselves.

Then I took a sabbatical. Helen continued to teach. The cottage wasn’t big enough to live in, so we moved to a town ten miles away, so that I would not be in the way of the new pastor. The cottage became a burden. Rather than a retreat, it was just a place where we had to go to mow the lawn and do other maintenance, just like our house. We didn’t need a cottage because we had nothing to get away from.

Old age is like a cottage. It can be a hideaway, where you get to be yourself at last, or a burden because it’s just more of the same old you. I’ve paid a lot for this present priceless opportunity. I intend to make the most of it.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

My youthful ambition was to be a journalist, and write a column for a newspaper. So I think of this blog as an online column. I started it several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, ”Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!” [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] We no longer live in “the place of winter.” The grandchildren grew 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 continue to work at understanding what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter…

I tweet as yooper1721.

A PERFECT DAY-NO SCHEDULE

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

I had to go to the oral surgeon yesterday. I was dreading it. Angry about it, even. I knew that everyone there would be nice to me. I knew Dr. Devitt wouldn’t hurt me, even though I told my daughter on the phone that in case I died, I wanted her to know I love her. [It’s good to remind your children that they should be nice to you while they have the chance.] But I didn’t want to go, because it meant I had to be a certain place at a certain time.

I never want to go any place at any time when the place and time are on a schedule. I’ve always been that way to a certain extent, but in my winter years, I really rebel against schedule. You’d think it would be easy to keep a schedule now, when I have so little in it, but the less schedule there is, the more I resent it.

My last week of chemo was like that. I had gotten through 13 months of chemo, going to the cancer center every day for a week, three weeks off, back for another week of infusions, ad infinitum. After thirteen months, I was sick, in every possible way, of that schedule. I had to be bribed to go to that last week. Helen went to the chemo nurses ahead of time and gave them some gift to give me each of the five days of that last week when I came in.

I think the one I liked best was the candy-laden floor walker, a heart-shaped helium balloon with a big smile and crepe paper legs and arms and a bag of chocolates. I could take its hand and walk it around the chemo room so it could offer chocolates to the other folks getting treatments.

My idea of a perfect day is one in which nothing at all is scheduled. That doesn’t mean I won’t do stuff; I just don’t want to do it at a predetermined time and place.

Not every old person is the same, although we tend to lump all people in a certain age together. I knew an old man who liked to have something scheduled each day, like a haircut, to organize the day around. That’s okay to be like that, and I don’t like to be unorganized, but I do want to be non-organized.

When I was young, I enjoyed a hectic schedule, from high school on through about age 45. I loved having too much to do, because it gave me so much satisfaction when I got it done.

Once I pastored in a small town fifteen miles outside a large metro complex. We had no hospital in our town, but there were many in the cities, and my church members were scattered among them. Once I made calls in seven different hospitals in seven different cities. It took the whole day, but I felt very satisfied.

To live that sort of life, I needed a schedule and I had to stick to it. Now I need a different sort of schedule, one that gives me time to recover from one adventure before the next one comes.

Grudgingly, I kept my appointment. Dr. Devitt did a nice job. The best thing he did was give me an excuse. “Sorry, I can’t commit to anything right now. I’m still trying to recover from my trip to the oral surgeon. When will I be ready? Oh, maybe next year…”

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. Naturally I’d rather you bought it, but apparently you can download it for free on Free-Ebooks.net, It says “Download 2048.”

I AM WHO I AM

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

God is no longer the only one who can say “I am who I am.” [Exodus 3:14.] Now I’m saying it, too.

When I first retired, and we started following the grandchildren, I tried to keep my super-hero status a secret, because that is what super-heroes do. Well, it wasn’t so much “super-hero” as “old preacher” status I didn’t want people to find out about. When folks find out you are a super-hero or a preacher, they make certain assumptions, and super-heroes and preachers alike want to be accepted for who we are. We don’t want to have to live up to assumptions about jumping tall buildings or dampening the party.

So in my new venues, towns where I was known only as Brigid’s and Joe’s grandfather, in groups of community theater and softball and pickleball and folk music, where I was not known at all, I was vague if people asked what I had done to earn my way in days gone by.

It wasn’t that I was ashamed either of being a Christian or a preacher.

Being a Christian is a hoot. It’s really neat to get to live a life of wholeness, without having to drag a load of shame and hate around. Unfortunately, in our culture, Christians are usually seen as those who put the load of shame and hate on others instead of living without it and helping to remove it from others. I did not want to deal with that cultural identity of Christians. I just wanted to sing and act and play ball, have a good time. That’s what you are supposed to do if you are a follower of Jesus. After all, it was Jesus who said, “I’m here; let’s party.” [John 10:10.]

Being a pastor is a joy, too. Getting to walk with people on their journeys, being with them at their highest and lowest points, that’s a great gift to anyone. Preachers get to do that every day. Sure, you have to put up with some disagreeable people, but who doesn’t? Again, however, unfortunately, preachers are seen in our culture as grim and narrow-minded joy-killers, not as the pied piper of fun. You don’t want people you’ve just met to start avoiding you because they find out what you did before you picked a peck of pickle paddles.

Pickleball, though, is how this came up. One of my fellow pickleball buddies is Connie Shakalis, a cabaret and musicals singer before she semi-retired. [“Semi” is the operative word here. That woman can still sing!] In some conversation with Stella and Tom and the rest of the gang on the sidelines the other day, my former life came up. Connie said, “You’re a preacher? Pardon my incredulity.”

I thought, “How neat, both that she finds it unbelievable, and that she knows. I get to show everybody that you can smash a forehand and have a jolly good time doing it, as an old preacher of the very good news that life is good.”

I was never ashamed, of either my faith or my profession, even when I was trying to hide them under a bushel. I just wanted the chance to be myself before folks assumed I was somebody else. But Christian and preacher, those are who I am, and I am who I am. Maybe that’s the best good news of all.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I am also a writer, so when I became disturbed by the huge number of military suicides, both veterans and active duty, I wrote VETS, [all CAPS] about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans accused of murdering a VA doctor. It’s a darn good tootin’ adventure mystery story. My royalties go to helping prevent veteran suicides. You can buy it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. Reader alert: There are bad words in the book. Being a preacher, I, of course, would not use such words, but the characters in the book do.

I tweet as yooper1721.

SONG OF THE APOSTLE

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

“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle…” [Romans 1:1]

“And to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me, to keep me from being too elated.” [II Corinthians 12:7]

SONG OF THE APOSTLE

I thank, Thee, most gracious God,

for this terrible affliction,

in my flesh, in my eyes,

in my bones, in my brain,

this sand-paper for the scraggly soul,

this severe mercy that gives

me no jot or tittle of time

to think or feel or wonder,

but makes me plumb the line

between far heaven and close hell

This charity so spare and lean

that it is so plumbly full

of torment and harassment

and love and grace

in unequal measure

I have asked you so often, so often,

to remove this thorn from me,

pull it as from a lion’s paw

that I might follow Thee better,

closer, straighter, fuller,

white and pure as a fuller makes

a heavenly robe to shine

For do not all of Thine children have robes?

Am I the only one, called to be Thine apostle,

even, who is denied the robe of purity?

But sufficient for the day is the evil

and the grace thereof, Thou hast said,

and sufficient, thus, even for an apostle,

that in the pain of my affliction

is my salvation

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

My youthful ambition was to be a journalist, and write a column for a newspaper. So I think of this blog as an online column. I started it several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, ”Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!” [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] We no longer live in “the place of winter.” The grandchildren grew 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 continue to work at understanding what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter…

THE SATURDAY MORNING FRIENDS OF NATURE SOCIETY

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

THE SATURDAY MORNING FRIENDS OF NATURE SOCIETY

We have a meeting this morning.

Well, yes, we are environmentalists. We recycle. We turn down the thermostat. We turn off the lights [some of us]. Those are reasons we are friends of nature, but they don’t get you membership in the SMFON Society. You become a member by vacuuming the house on Saturday morning.

You see, nature abhors a vacuum, and so do we, because it is then that we vacuum the house, Art and Maury because they are single, Bob and I because we are married.

It’s sort of like intercessory prayer. We vacuum alone, but we are together in our abhoration as we do it.

Back when I did pre-marriage counseling, I made sure the couple discussed, and came to some agreement on, five things: religion, in-laws, children [whether, how many, and how to raise], sex, and money, not necessarily in that order. When I did warranty checks a few months after the wedding, I would ask what issue we should have discussed more. They invariably said “money.”

But I started doing weddings back in the day when men went to work each day and women stayed home and took care of the kids and the house.

I was so into that culture that when Helen’s father said, when we married at the end of her junior year of college, “We have money set aside for Helen’s senior year, so we’ll be glad to pay for it,” I said, “No, she’s my wife now. It’s my responsibility to support her in all ways.” Stupidest thing I ever did. There were many times I thought about asking Earl if he still wanted to give us that money. I’m sorry I didn’t get to tell him that I finally understood how stupid I was, but I think he knew, anyway.

But society changed, and when women started working outside the home as much as their husbands, I had to add a sixth area of concern to my list for pre-marriage counseling: Who does the housework? Women seemed to think that since they shared the burden of working to provide money for the marriage, their husbands should share the burden of caring for children and doing the housework. When I did warranty checks on couples I married in that new era, that was the area they, or at least one of them, said we should have spent more time on.

This is a major area of concern not only for newly married couples, but for those married forty years, too, those married back when the wife did all the vacuuming, and has probably continued to do all of it. Now she has a husband at home to take care of, too, and she thinks he should do more than watch her do housework.

Women have a lot to say about men in retirement: “I married George forever, but not for lunch.” “More husband, less money.”

One day not long after her husband, my friend, retired, his wife telephoned me. “If you don’t come up here and get him out of this house right now” she said, “I’m going to kill him.” I hung up, called back, she answered, loudly sounded surprised to hear from me, called her husband to the phone, and he happily agreed to have lunch with me. I jumped in the car, drove fifty miles, took him to lunch, to book stores, to the mall, to a shoe store, got lost driving around, kept him out of the house as long as I could. He’s still alive. Now he belongs to the SMFON Society.

It’s a good group. I recommend it. {That’s all the counseling I’m going to do.}

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Living Big

Even if you live a small life in a small place, you can live for something big, and “life is just too much trouble unless you can live for something big.”

JRMcF

WHY I STILL GO TO CHURCH

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

I go to church. I don’t have to. I’m retired. They can’t take my pension away if I don’t go to church. I don’t owe the church anything; it’s a small pension, and I earned every shekel of it.

More than half of the retired clergy I know don’t go to church, and many of those who do attend at a church of a different denomination, usually a more liturgical church, to escape praise bands, since we are old and stodgy.

But I still go, primarily to experience the spiritual presence of God, and because there are people there who are nice to me, and to help patch the roof.

A clergy friend of mine was impressed by a young woman who started attending his church. She was so excited. She loved everything about it. The music was great. The people were so welcoming. They ate all the time. Sometimes they even had pancakes. What’s not to like? She thought it was great. She felt the presence of God and the affirmation of other church members.

So he invited her to be a member of the board. The first board meeting she looked perplexed. The second one, she exploded. “I thought this was a church,” she yelled. “I thought this would be a spiritual experience. But all you do is talk about patching the roof.”

First, of course, my friend should have known better. Board meetings should be done in a secret room in the lower basement. Only those who have lost all hope, but not all caffeine, should be allowed in. Preferably vice-presidents who have recently realized they will never make president. Such people think that arguing about patching the roof IS a spiritual experience. Putting a newbie into that setting is, in more enlightened countries, a crime, punishable by having to watch endlessly looped videos of presidential candidate speeches, with the sound turned way up.

You don’t have to go to church to experience the presence of God, especially the mystical presence of God. I am sympathetic to folks who say you get that best in nature or from music or some other out-of-church experience. I have such mystical experiences myself.

There is a spiritual presence of God, though, that is not necessarily mystical. It comes through people who help you to be your best self. As Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

I go to church because there are people there [not everyone, but most] who love me as I am, but don’t let me get away with thinking I am better than I am. They encourage me to be a better person. There are a whole lot of places and groups in this world that encourage me to be a worser person.

I feel sorry for my retired clergy friends who don’t go to church. They lost their way, I think, because they spent too much time with the vice-presidents in the lower basement, and thus forgot how much fun it is to be with people who encourage you to be better.

Okay, so I sort of lied when I said I go to church to help patch the roof. I know the damn thing has to be patched, but I’m too weak and weary to go back down to that lower basement. So I help pay for the patching, and I stand at the foot of the ladder and yell, “Don’t look down.”

That’s being Christian isn’t it, sort of?

See you in church, but not in that secret room in the lower basement. There are worse things than a leaky roof.

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.

EULOGIZING DONALD TRUMP

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

I had a quite disturbing dream. I was called upon to do the eulogy at Donald Trump’s funeral. Of course, I should have just demurred, but somehow I could not get out of it. That’s the nature of dreams, or nightmares, or the ministry.

I remembered the preacher who was asked to do the funeral of the nastiest man in town. He refused, but the family offered him a million dollars for his church’s building fund. So he agreed, as long as he did not have to say anything untrue. He struggled and struggled with how to eulogize, and finally came up with, “Well, at least he wasn’t as bad as his brother.”

Donald Trump has a brother, two in fact, but they are not known to be worse than their brother. So I was stuck, without even an offer for the non-existent building fund of my non-existent church.

In his book, The Road to Character, David Brooks makes the distinction between “resume values” and “eulogy values.” Looking for a job, you want all your success virtues listed on your resume. Those, however, may not be at all the ones you pointed out at your funeral. Resume values are for personal success. Eulogy values are for personal character.

[That “resume” is rays-oo-may, not resume as in starting up again, but I don’t know how to get those accent marks on the “r” and “e,” Yes, I’m old and have not gone beyond the Smith-Corona era; sue me.]

As I prepared to eulogize him, I looked at Trump’s resume. Impressive. But not much there that his family would want mentioned in a eulogy. Resume virtues are usually not eulogy virtues.

Some eulogies are easy. They write themselves. This last summer I did eulogies for Bill White, my best friend from campus ministry days, and Mike Dickey, my best friend from grade school days. They both had impressive resumes, but their eulogy values were far more impressive. Their eulogies wrote themselves. They were personally kind, they were socially kind, they were intellectually kind. Howard Daughenbaugh said that my eulogy to our mutual friend, Bill, was “eulogy as art.” It is simple to paint a good picture if the subject is full of light.

Other eulogies are difficult. The one eulogized had a sorrow-full life, or died too young. Some churches and ministers avoid the hard ones by not eulogizing. They use a funeral service that speaks only of God and how God deals with us, not about the deceased. Talk about the deceased is confined to before the funeral, perhaps at a wake or visitation, or at an after-graveyard gathering.

I have not avoided eulogies at hard funerals—suicides, murders, children, sudden deaths of good people, unnecessary accidents. I figure those are the times I can do the most good. My eulogies in those difficult funerals are usually well accepted, because I do not avoid the hard truths. I tell the truth, but as it is within the scope of God’s resume, not just our resumes.

But Trump? I remembered the story of the preacher who was asked to do the funeral of a cat. In high dudgeon, he refused to sully his ordination with such drivel. But the cat owner offered him a thousand dollars. “You did say this cat is a Baptist, didn’t you?”

Then I woke up.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper 1721.

I became disturbed by the huge number of military suicides, both veterans and active duty, so I wrote VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans accused of murdering a VA doctor. It’s a darn good tootin’ adventure mystery story. My royalties go to helping prevent veteran suicides. You can buy it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.

CHUCK WITTE & THE DAYS OF RAGE

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

It was one of those nights I was shuttling back and forth between groups on campus, trying to quell rumors, head off conflicts. Chuck sometimes shuttled with me, but usually he had to stay in the student government office, which we used as a command post, in case something flared up somewhere.

I got back from assuring the white guys, the ones who might be called “skinheads” today, that the black students were not intending to try to run a Viet Cong flag up the campus flag pole, despite what they had heard. That mollified them for the moment.

It was the time of “the days of rage” on the campus at Illinois State University, and almost every other campus in the country, following the murders of students at Kent State University, in the midst of the great divide over American involvement in Viet Nam.

I was tired. So was Chuck Witte. We had both been up all night for a long time, trying to keep our campus safe, he as the student body president, I as a campus minister. Sometimes we plotted strategy in his apartment on the top floor of one of the dorms, where his wife, Donna, was the director. Usually we were in the student government office.

We didn’t know each other well yet. We had been thrown together by necessity and had been busy ever since. I told him about the Viet Cong flag rumor.

“I don’t think anyone on this campus would even know what a Viet Cong flag looks like,” I said.

“I think I would recognize one,” he said, “but the ones I saw always had blood all over them.”

I’m not sure Chuck was even old enough to drink legally yet, but he was a Viet Nam vet. He was the perfect example of an oxymoron, in this case, “Army Intelligence.” He had been a lieutenant in that service branch. When I asked him what he did, he said, “I crawled out into the bush and located the Viet Cong and then called down air strikes on my own map coordinates.”

Chuck was the perfect student body president for that chaotic time on campus. He was a local boy whose father was a business man. He himself was a Business major. He was a Viet Nam vet, an officer. He had an intelligent and beautiful and professional wife. He was smart and articulate and mature. He had recognized the futility of the war. No one, of any persuasion about the war, old or young, could dismiss Chuck Witte.

Chuck was the perfect student body president complement to university president, Sam Braden. Together they kept ISU sane and safe, far more than any other state campus in IL, and most campuses elsewhere, despite fusillades of vitriol and hate from people [i.e, state legislators] who should have been supporting them instead of defying them. Chuck was more of a war hero for what he did after he returned from war than what he did in it.

He went to law school. He became a father and grandfather. He became a judge in his home town. For 20 years he taught about the criminal justice system to 6^th graders in his court room, a program he initiated that was copied elsewhere. He was active in his church. He did well in all those roles. Both his daughters have “Dr.” in front of their name. He died yesterday at the age of 74.

After Chuck graduated and I had been moved to other ministries by my bishop, we had only one time of contact, when my daughter, who shares ISU alum status with Chuck, applied to be the judge’s secretary. “I would love to hire you, just because of who you are,” he said, “remembering your father, and what we went through together, but I’m legally and ethically bound to hire the most qualified applicant…”

That was Chuck Witte. He always did the right thing.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

WHAT'S WRONG WITH ILLUSIONS?

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

“The problem with middle-aged people,” Don Lemkau said to me, “is that they think they’ll never get old. But everybody gets old.”

I was 42. He was 72. I believed him. I knew I would get old. Still, even though I believed, I didn’t understand. Believing and understanding are two different things.

Now, though, now that I’m older than Don was then, I don’t just believe, I understand. I’m still sort of mad at him, though.

Don was officially retired when I was appointed as the Directing Pastor at Wesley UMC in Charleston, IL. He was on our staff part-time as a Minister of Visitation. I’m still mad at him for disillusioning me about getting old. At 42, I thought I was plenty old enough.

On his 74^th birthday, I used Don as the object lesson for the kids time in worship. Don was sitting in the chancel, pastoral liturgist for the day, looking very dignified, as he always did. I told the kids to take a good look at him and explained that some day they would be as old as he. It was my way of getting back at him for disillusioning me, and my opportunity to disillusion them. When I asked them if they could ever get that old, they all agreed it was not possible. That’s the great thing about kids; hard to disillusion.

Don was right. I didn’t think I’d get old; not really. Even now, I don’t think I’ll get any older, in the sense of getting any more decrepit than I am now. I’m slow enough; surely I can’t get any slower.

When my father was about 94, we were trying to help him out of the restaurant where we had taken him for supper. There was just one little step, but he couldn’t make it. He said, “I just didn’t know anybody could get this bad and still be alive.”

Yes, I’ll get older and punier. My children will have to drag me out of restaurants and baseball stadia and basketball arenas and off the pickleball court. [Although I’ll tell my pastor that I’m too stove up to come to church.] But I can’t do anything about it by worrying about it now. “Sufficient for the day is the puniness thereof.” [Matthew 6:34. As usual, my rendering from the Greek might be a little questionable.]

I’ve never understood the people who want to disillusion younger people about what will happen to them. I am especially irritated at older people who tell children how bad it will be “in the real world.” Okay, they’re correct, but why destroy the present with knowledge of the future?

What’s wrong with an illusion? I intend to go out in a blaze of glory, facing down the terrorists who have invaded the coffee shop where I am receiving the Nobel Prize Peace Prize for the advances I have made to quantum field theory--applying gravitational truth vibes to the speech of politicians so that whatever comes out of their mouths is automatically converted to the truth before it reaches the ears of citizens--convincing the terrorists to give up their extremist ways simply by the power of the stories I tell them. [Sort of like Scheherazade.]  If you don’t think that’s realistic, keep it to yourself.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

THERE IS ENOUGH FOR ALL, EXCEPT CUBS & SOX FANS

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

Preachers will go to any lengths to raise money for a good cause. And to humiliate someone they love. Which is the nature of sports.

Yesterday was pay-off Sunday at our church. To raise money for the recent mission trip, our pastors had placed two jars, with their names, where people could drop money in. The loser, the one who raised the lesser amount of money, had to pay a penalty. The winner got to enjoy the public humiliation of the other. To make it more interesting, they are married to each other! Apparently love of team comes way before love of spouse!

Both Jimmy and Mary Beth are die-hard Cubs fans, Mary Beth because she is a Chicago girl with generations of forebears who were Cubs fans, and Jimmy because… well, how do you know why a Mississippi boy does anything, except that 108 years of losing comes naturally. [1]

Years of losing served him well yesterday, because he was the loser of the “jar wars” competition. His punishment was having to preach wearing a White Sox shirt! Oh, the humanity! Or lack of it! What could be more embarrassing for a Cubs fan?

You cannot be both a Cubs fan and a White Sox fan. [2] Mary Beth said that as she was growing up, she was taught that if the Cubs won and the Sox lost on the same day, the Cubs had won twice.

Why should that be? The Cubs and Sox are in different leagues. They did not play each other for 100 years. It’s only been in the recent few years of inter-league play that they have met on the same field, and that seems actually to have dampened the intensity of their rivalry a bit. They inhabit the same city, suffer from the same corrupt politicians. Their fans go to the same schools, shop at the same stores. [“The Jewels”] Sometimes they are even members of the same family. Why should they not only enjoy the victories of their own team but enjoy the losses of the other, sometimes even more than their own victories?

It’s like the Jews and Arabs in The Unholy Land, or Catholics and Protestants in North Ireland. They are the same people. They have the same heritage. They look alike. The only way you can tell them apart is by whether they wear Cubs or Sox jerseys.

Not everyone is a baseball fanatic, but we all seem to want competition, the chance to cheer for someone over someone else. I know a couple of guys who don’t know a curve from a Chevy but can almost come to fisticuffs over which opera diva is better in which role.

Fortunately, we have social science to explain this to us. Even better, we have L. Jon Wertheim and Sam Sommers to summarize that research for us in their excellent book, This Is Your Brain on Sports. The only problem is that the research proves both sides of every rationale for our sports competition fanaticism.

It’s not really that much of a mystery. The reason is “original sin,” that tendency in each of us to say, “There is not enough to go around, and so I must get mine at the expense of others.” For every winner there is a loser, and I hate being a loser even more than I like being a winner.

The antidote to original sin is Christ, the one who feeds five thousand on one fish sandwich, who says, “If you just give thanks for what you have, and share it, there is enough to go around.”

Theology and sports are very much alike. God gives them to us for fun. It’s when we begin to take them seriously that we get into trouble.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] Elaine Palencia, the poet, and her friend, Vanda, once went to Oxford, MS on a Faulkner pilgrimage tour. They were looking at the Confederate monument when an old codger came up and said, “You know what that is?” They thought they knew but declined to speculate. He spat on the ground and said, “That’s a trophy for second place.”

2] That is the reason Barack Obama has been so pilloried and obstructed by so many in Congress and elsewhere. They are all Cubs fans. Or maybe it’s really not because he is a White Sox fan…

One of the strangest baseball games ever must have been Labor Day in 1926 when the Ku Klux Klan beat the Hebrew Stars 4-0.

I tweet as yooper1721.

A BIG SONG IN A SMALL TOWN

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

One was earth, the other fire, one amateur, one professional, each completely authentic.

They were the soloists at the funeral of 108 year old Ophia Miller, the mother of my high school friend, Donna. I wrote previously about Donna and her mother and Ophia’s funeral in the columns for April 2-4.

The first was angular. Spring-blossom white, tall, thin, frill-less, rawhide. She simply stepped to the lectern, closed her eyes, and began to sing. No accompaniment of any kind. A simple song of how and when the world will end, a song of strange joy, when “the saints of every nation will lose their gravitation” and ascend into the heavenly sky. A clear, “high lonesome” voice. I shivered as I heard the sound of my Scots ancestors.

The second was full. Full brown, full smile, full figure, full color, full voice. She stepped to the lectern, pulled us in with her full smile, waited for a full orchestra on tape to give her an introduction, and then let her full voice soar like the angels telling about the heaven in which Ophia now fully resided. I shivered as I heard the voice of those who refuse slavery of the spirit even if they must endure slavery of the body.

A newspaper columnist said that Ophia was proof that you don’t have to live a small life just because you live in a small town. I heard that message in two very different voices that, despite their differences, were singing the same song.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

DON'T WORRY, BE HOPI

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

“Don’t worry; be Hopi.” That is Ed Kabotie’s riff on Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t worry; be happy.”

The First Nations Educational & Cultural Center, and The Archives of Traditional Music, both at Indiana University, brought Kabotie from his regular haunts in AZ and NM to IU for singing and teaching. He excels at both. Kabotie sings and speaks in the Hopi and Tewa languages as well as English, and plays multiple instruments, including guitar and Native American flute.

The word Hopi is a combination of the words for an arrow and a woman’s breast, combining the masculine and feminine attributes. If you are hopi, you are in harmony.

I used to strive for balance, and read books like Karl Menninger’s excellent The Vital Balance, to try to get me balanced personally, and to use professionally. But books don’t teach as well as music does, and balance sounds rather static, like a boulder on a pin-point mountain, perfect until some small shift sends it tumbling.

I like better the concept of Hopi harmony. It’s as though each of us is an orchestra. Some of the instruments tend to the feminine virtues, some to the masculine. One, the bassoon, is a perfect balance of both. [Can you guess which instrument I played?] When each instrument is playing its part, there is perfect harmony.

If you’re not in harmony, you may need a new conductor.

Don’t worry; be Hopi.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

My youthful ambition was to be a journalist, and write a column for a newspaper. So I think of this blog as an online column. I started it several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, ”Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!” [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] We no longer live in “the place of winter.” The grandchildren grew 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 continue to work at understanding 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. VETS is vailable 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.

Restless Legs Syndrome-a poem

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

Perhaps in time to come

I’ll be a fish and, as those who

went before us on this terrestrial

ball, who learned to breathe

and walk on land.

They could not know

how they would change the world

by choosing that time when,

washed in upon the beach.

they turned forward

to the land instead of backward

to the sea. Perhaps I’ll be

the one on that new frightful

edge between the worlds

to make the choice to breathe

in a different way, and walk

on legs that just now start

to move. Perhaps I’ll be

that one…

Will I choose the unknown land

and start the human race again

or will I slip back, into the sea,

and let it be…

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

HELPING THE STUCK

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

Our grandson, Joe, turned seventeen in January. There was a time we just hoped for two.

That was when he was in the University of Iowa hospital, being treated for liver cancer.

He spent most of a year in hospital. When he was able to come home to Mason City, IA, in between treatments, to his father and sister, he often spiked a fever and had to be in the Mason City hospital until he returned to Iowa City. Regardless of where he was, his mother was always with him. His father had to stay home to work, and his sister was only four, so she spent a lot of days and nights with us. Whenever possible, I spent days in the U of Iowa hospital with Katie and Joe, some nights in the hospital and some in the Ronald McDonald house.

I did not go to the Ron House until late in the day, though. One night I took a break from the children’s cancer ward and went up to the top floor, where the library and coffee shop were, hoping there might be some coffee still available. There wasn’t. The coffee shop was closed. The place was deserted. Except not quite…

I heard cussing from a distance. I went to investigate. I followed the sound to the men’s room. I assumed it was a janitor, disgruntled because of… well, for obvious reasons. But it was not. It was a patient. A man, probably in his early 60s. He had only one leg. The other had just been amputated. He had gotten out of his wheelchair and onto the toilet but now could not get back into the wheelchair. For him, it was like being on a desert island, alone.

I got him back into his chair, not without some difficulty and some laughter and some more cussing, took the handles of the chair and asked him for his room number.

“Oh, I don’t want to go back there. Wheel me out to the walkway between the hospital and parking garage so I can smoke.”

“But what if you get stuck out there?” I asked.

“It’s better than being stuck on a toilet, and besides, you came along, didn’t you?”

Apparently someone else came along. The next morning, when I went to the parking garage, he was not in sight. That was almost sixteen years ago.

Joe does not remember his year in the hospital, not in conscious memory, but even then, and more so now, he’s the type who will come along and help when someone is stuck. I hope the stuckee is on the walkway, though, instead of on the toilet.

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, which contains Joe’s story, as well as mine and Joe’s grandmother and aunt, 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.

JESUS & TRUMP-Twins Separated at Birth?

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

Jesus of Nazareth and Donald Trump, so similar they might be twins separated at birth.

Each wants us to follow him, not politically, although the following is translated into politics, but personally. Each acts as though he needs no justification for his leading position from outside himself, such as scripture or constitution. As it was written about Jesus, “He teaches as one having authority [in himself] and not as the scribes and Pharisees.” {Matthew 7:29, Mark 1:22.}

The scribes [Law teachers] and Pharisees did not claim authority in themselves. They thought they could tell folks what to do by appealing to the authority of scripture, the Law, the Torah, basically the first five books of the “Old Testament.”

Jesus and Trump both say, “I know the law, but I am beyond the law. I AM the law, in myself. What I say and do automatically supersedes the old law.”

Of course, those who act with authority in themselves--and those who want a personal authority figure to lead-- appeal to the tradition, usually a written tradition, either to justify or explain their authority. Jesus often quoted what most Christians call The Old Testament, what he knew as The Law. Trump quotes, in his own way, from the Bible and from the US Constitution.

Jesus and Trump, Trump and Jesus, exactly alike, except…

There is a saying that “all politics is local.” But it goes deeper than that. Politics is always personal. We never vote for a candidate; we always vote for ourselves.

Politics is simply a way of organizing ourselves to live together. We want things organized in such a way that we benefit. “Original sin” is the part of each of us that wants the political organization to provide what I want regardless of what happens to others. In fact, original sin often includes making sure others do NOT get what they want or need, because if they are weak, it makes us feel strong.

Civilization is the process of helping people understand that no one can get everything s/he wants but that everyone needs to get some of what they need for themselves and allow others to do the same. Civilization is the process of overcoming “original sin,” the desire to have everything I want, including dominating others. Original sin is never eradicated, but it can be controlled. That is the point of scriptures and constitutions.

Someone who has “authority in himself” appeals to us because we believe he can get us what we want without those irritating restraints of civilization. [2]

For Trump, making politics personal is not a strategy, it’s who he is. With him, everything is personal because everything is about him.

When Donald Trump says disrespectful and often untrue things about people he does not like, others who feel the same way about those people feel that it gives them permission to be just as un-respectful and untrue. It’s not political, it’s personal. When people say, “I like Trump because he tells it like it is,” they mean, “I like him because I am just as mean-spirited as he is but don’t have the courage to say those things myself.”

I heard David Brooks, the conservative columnist, say recently that the most consistent thing about Trump’s politics is that he will always come down against the weak, those least able to push back, those who have few who will stand up for them against him. [1]

That is where Jesus and Trump, the twins, take different paths. Each claims authority in himself, but one claims that authority in order to oppress the weak, the other claims that authority in order to protect the weak.

The reason we call Jesus the Christ is not because he has authority in himself. Anyone can claim that, especially if he has inherited enough money. Jesus is the Christ because he uses his authority to do the will of God, not just his own will.

One of the most fascinating themes of fiction, and occasionally reality, is the notion of “the evil twin.” Jesus and Trump, each has a twin.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] I recommend Brooks’ book, The Road to Character.

2] Supporters of Barack Obama have often been disappointed because he has not acted “as one having authority in himself,” although his opponents claim that such is the reason they oppose him. But Obama is a scribe. That should not be surprising. He was known as “No Drama Obama.” That is the exact opposite of a Jesus or a Trump, who are always in the center of the drama. Obama was a lawyer, a scribe, a professor of Constitutional Law, even. You can’t get more scribe-like than that.

To his opponents, it makes no difference how good a scribe he is, how well Obama interprets the Law, the US Constitution. They oppose him because they don’t like him. The reason they don’t like him is glaringly obvious to everyone but themselves.

It is no surprise that his opponents have claimed that Obama is the exact opposite, that he claims authority in himself when actually he is a scribe. It started with Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” and has been perfected by political operatives like Roger Aisles and Karl Rove. Claim that your opponent’s main strength is actually his greatest weakness, and claim that your candidate’s greatest weakness is really his main strength. For instance, if your candidate was never a soldier, claim he is a hawk. If your opponent is a war hero, claim he’s a dove. Raise enough money to say it often enough, without any nuances or explanations, and a majority of voters will believe it and vote accordingly, regardless of the facts. Voting in the US is rarely a fact-based activity.

I tweet as yooper1721.

Seeds of Peace-a quote

“We cannot separate one part of our existence from another…for there is a seed of peace in the most savage clamor.” Christian Wiman, MY BRIGHT ABYSS, p 99

JRMcF

STORY TELLING-AS SIMPLE AS ABC, and D

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

Continuing the story of 108 year-old Ophia Miller’s funeral:

Dr. Douglas Low’s funeral sermon for Donna’s mother was a great example of ABCD preaching. Good short story writers and good preachers automatically use ABCD, even if they don’t know it.

Dr. Low [pronounced like Loud without the “d”] took an episode from each quarter century or so of Ophia’s life and examined that episode, on the theory that she had learned much in her many years and had truths to teach us.

One of those points: Ophia lived through The Great Depression, the era of hoboes. [1] Many people feared them and had nothing to do with them, turned them away. Ophia raised chickens, so she had eggs, and she made egg sandwiches for them. “They’re not bad people,” she said. “They’re just trying to get to where they need to be.”

Dr. Low [2] noted that his mother made him come into the house when she fed hoboes, and Helen’s mother did the same. That is just smart. Jesus had something to say about that. “Be as gentle as doves but as wise as serpents.” [Matthew 10:16.] In fact, after Ophia had moved to town, she acknowledged to her family that she had been afraid out in the country near the railroad tracks, a widow by herself. She did not let her fear, however, make all her decisions for her.

In telling a story well, A is for Action, B is for Background—and in preaching, that B usually stands for Bible—C is for Conflict, and D is for Denouement [unrolling] or, in preaching, Decision.

You don’t start with introduction, or information. You start with action. That is literally “where the action is.” Dr. Low took the A of feeding the hoboes…

…gave the B [Bible] of Gospel [what Jesus says about kindness to strangers, referring that to refugees, since they are the hoboes of our era] and B of Background, the Great Depression…

…examined the C between fearing and helping…

…and the D of decision to overcome fear with kindness, helping people who were trying to get to where they need to be, including new life after death. [Ophelia died on Easter morning.]

Writing, or preaching, or just telling a story to your friends, is as simple as ABC, and D.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] Hobo was originally HoBo, short for Homeward Bound, applied to soldiers trying to get home anyway they could after the Civil War. During the Great Depression, it was applied to any man trying to find a job, or just leaving home so there would be one less mouth there to feed there.

2] Douglas Low is both pastor of Good Shepherd United Methodist Church in Oakland City, IN and Professor of New Testament in the Chapman Seminary of Oakland City University.

My youthful ambition was to be a journalist, and write a column for a newspaper. So I think of this blog as an online column. I started it several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, ”Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!” [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] We no longer live in “the place of winter.” The grandchildren grew 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 continue to work at understanding 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.