SHALL WE GATHER AT THE RIVER?

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

SHALL WE GATHER AT THE RIVER? Celebrating the life and legacy of Paul Sellers, who is probably going to Hell.

There is an old preacher story about the temperance preacher who ended his fiery anti-booze sermon with “If I had my way, I’d throw every drop of liquor in the river.” The congregation rose and sang, “Shall we gather at the river?”

Yesterday Ron Dickinson alerted us to the death of Paul Sellers, at the much-too-early age of 67.

Paul was my last District Superintendent. I had other DSs later, when I did interim pastorates in other conferences, but he was my DS when I retired.

A couple of weeks before that happy day, he said, “If I can just get you retired before anything happens…” I took that as a compliment. It’s nice to have a DS who thinks you are still capable of stirring things up, even in your post-cancer almost-retired dotage.

District Superintendent in Methodism is a curious position. A DS is a fellow pastor in your conference [geographical area] who has quite a bit of power over hisher colleagues, but only for a limited time. After six years, the DS stops being your boss and goes back to being a colleague. It makes for tricky relationships.

Since Methodist pastors are appointed by the bishop, and required to go wherever they are appointed, and churches are required to accept whoever the bishop sends, the bishop has ultimate power, over the whole conference. A DS has limited power, serving a smaller area within the conference, suggesting to the bishop who should be appointed where, and supervising the pastors and churches within that district. Limited, but still power, and that makes DS a difficult and demanding job.

It was not difficult and demanding enough for Paul. He had too much time on his hands, enough time to rename the districts of our conference.

Some folks think he assured his place in hell via that renaming.

When the Central IL Conference, from which I retired, merged with the South IL Conference, half an hour after I retired, a name for the new merged conference needed to include IL, for identification. Since there was still a North IL Conference, the name couldn’t be only directional. So, somehow, the name for the new conference became Illinois Great Rivers.

That could have been enough, but Paul got the idea that the districts should be renamed, too, no longer be known by the major city in the district, such as the Springfield or Champaign districts, but by the “great river” that flowed through that district. Those names are very artful, flowing, incomprehensible. Who knows where the Lamoine River or the Embarrass River flows? Who even knew there was a Lamoine River or an Embarrass River? With a dozen districts to be named, some of those rivers had to be diverted. Little Methodist children in IL are destined to fail their geography tests forever.

That was one of Paul’s strengths, though, to think artfully, outside the usual flow lines, encouraging his pastors and congregations to consider ministry in new ways.

Despite his general nervousness, and anxiety about me in particular, Paul and I were friends, and ran around together, drinking coffee, going to meetings. We even bought his father-in-law’s car when he could no longer drive. It was a white Ford Crown Victoria that looked like a police car. It served us well through three states.

One reason Paul hung out with me, though, was to keep an eye on me. In retirement, I continued to live in his district for a while before we started moving to follow the grandchildren. He thought it wise to keep me busy, so he created an unofficial position of “Assistant DS for Preaching.” I was to visit the churches where there were preachers new to the position, or those Paul just thought needed some help, so I could hear them preach and give them advice. He also assigned me to help those who were not native English speakers with their pronunciation and vocabulary so their congregations could understand them better. I enjoyed it, but I don’t think anyone else did.

“This is an ideal position for you,” he told me. “Nobody preaches like you do.” I took that as a compliment, too, except now… I wonder.

I’ve had many good DSs. Dallas Browning, F.T. Johnson, Otis Collier, Ralph Steele, Jim White, Floy Ekin, Ed Hoffman, Dale Pitcher, John Keller, Wayne Hess, Jack Newsome, and finally, Paul Sellers. I give thanks for them all, but today, I pray especially for Paul, as he stands at the Pearly Gates, and St. Peter says, “I’m sorry, Paul, but considering those rivers…”

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

THE STRANGE CALLING, is sort of a memoir, a collection of stories from my ministry. When I first felt I was being “called” by God to be a preacher, the ministry was known as “the high calling.” In my experience, it seemed more like a strange calling. You can get it from the publisher, Smyth&Helwys, or lots of places on the web, including Amazon, B&N, etc.

HONORING VETS

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

If you read this blog regularly, you’ve already seen the information about my novel, VETS. If you have already bought a copy, read no further. I just received my royalties statement from Black Opal Books, though, and it looks like there are a few folks who have not gotten a copy yet.

Since this is Memorial Day, and since my royalties go to help homeless and handicapped veterans, I’d like to suggest you buy a copy.

Granted, most of my readers don’t like bad words. Neither do I. There are some in the book, though, so as you read, remember that it is the characters who are saying bad words, not the author. A book about soldiers would be “slightly” inauthentic without a few bad words, even the “F” word. [Fooey.] If bad words are just too much for you, buy a copy and give it to someone you don’t like. The royalties will go to the same place, regardless of who does the reading.

I wrote VETS [yes, it’s all capitals when you order it or ask for it] because I became disturbed by the huge number of military suicides, both veterans and active duty. I don’t have the experience or credibility to write non-fiction about the problems of veterans, but I can tell a story about them.

Here is the synopsis for that story:

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 [Veterans Administration Medical Center] 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.

Should you need the ISBN for ordering from an independent store, the print version ISBN is 9781626943131 and ISBN for electronic version is 9781626943124.

If you’d like to write a review for Amazon or Goodreads, etc, that would be nice.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

THANKS FOR TRYING

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

They took me into the emergency room at midnight and cut me open from Los Angeles to Boston. They scooped out a lot of my inside stuff. The pale oncologist said I’d be dead in “a year or two.” The Nazi nurses made me get up and walk when I could barely sit up, yet alone walk. My surgeon forgot I was in the hospital. It was two o’clock in the morning. My roommate was snoring like he was a chainsaw trying to beat a lawn blower in a hearing-loss contest. I felt pretty sorry for myself. Then I realized that even at that unholy hour, there was surely some sleepless somebody who was praying for me. I was miserable, but I was not alone.

I’m not at all sure about the why and how of intercessory prayer, praying for others, especially bending the will of an already-merciful God to be a little more merciful, but I know there is a lot of spiritual energy floating around. No one understands how or why or when it “works,” but sometimes it does.

Strangely, prayer is the only healing tool of which we require perfection. Surgery sometimes doesn’t work, but we keep using it. Chemotherapy doesn’t always work, but we keep using it. Prayer doesn’t work? Then forget it. That old saying applies here: Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Before the hospital, I had done a lot of intercessory prayer, but I had never before really considered, existentially, that other folks prayed for me. When I think about it now, that people have been praying for me for a very long time, it occurs to me that they haven’t done a very good job.

I am a boiling cauldron of ambition and lust and greed and anger and negativity. Well, I used to be. Now I’m just a simmering pot of muttering and ennui and lethargy and inertia, which is all the more reason to expect some help from prayer. I mean, good pray-ers ought to be able to do something about a simmering pot, even if they can’t calm a boiling cauldron. 

If people have really been praying for me, then intercessory prayer must be useless. How come I have made so many mistakes if people have been praying for me?

Then, however, I think about how much worse I would be without those prayers through the years, and it looks like the folks who prayed for me didn’t do all that badly after all.

Thank you.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

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.”

REVISITING IN THE GARDEN

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

My Academy of Parish Clergy buddy, Suzanne Schaefer-Coates, is the pastor of a retirement community. She responded to my column about the hymn, “In the Garden.”

Suz herself is sort of neutral about “In the Garden.” Neither likes it nor dislikes it. Not so with her congregation. She says it is by far the most popular religious song with those old folks.

Part of that popularity is because it was a part of our soundtrack when we were young, recorded by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Perry Como, and even Elvis.

Feelings are much more powerful than ideas. That is why music in general is so powerful. It brings up feelings.

Suz says that even though she carries no water for “In the Garden,” and even though she is about 20 years younger than those in her congregation, she “gets it,” why it is so popular with her people. They aren’t trying to be exclusive, to say “none other” in a way that leaves out everyone else. But in a world where old people are the ones so often left out, it’s comforting to know that someone WANTS to be with them. That’s a powerful feeling.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

THE STRANGE CALLING, is sort of a memoir, a collection of stories from my ministry. When I first felt I was being “called” by God to be a preacher, the ministry was known as “the high calling.” In my experience, it seemed more like a strange calling. You can get it from the publisher, Smyth&Helwys, or lots of places on the web, including Amazon, B&N, etc.

THE DAY THE FUTURE OPENED

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

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was attending the conference of the Center for 18^th Century Studies at IU. I was late getting in, but Professor Rebecca Spang graciously sent me the 357 pages of pre-conference papers on PDF. They were interesting, provocative, and perceptive. The issue basically, stated much too simply, was: Did the Enlightenment open up the future, or did the opening of the future, for other reasons, cause the Enlightenment? As a theoretical and experimental narrativist, whether and how the future is open is a subject of considerable interest to me.

I didn’t stay through the conference, though. It was partly because I have a very slight hearing loss, which I refuse to acknowledge. My wife believes it is more than slight. At least, I think that’s what she said. I’m not sure, because she mumbles a lot. The people at the conference mumbled, too, some of them, Also, in any conference of that sort, a certain number of the responses to the papers are more to show off the responder’s knowledge than to advance the discussion. It didn’t seem like a good use of time, just sitting and listening to folks mumble, when I could do something constructive, like watching the Reds lose.

I could have worked harder at hearing, but even if I had heard everything, I didn’t have anything to do with what I learned. The other folks there were professors and graduate students. They have lectures and papers and dissertations as outlets for their thinking. I don’t. My academic days are over. I am writing a book about preaching, but it’s more of a funny screed than a reasonable approach to communication through preaching. A long time ago I heard some famous preacher say that a good sermon is like a string of beads, not a handful of confetti. My book is like a whole parade of confetti.

So I have no outlet, except this blog, and my readers have a right to expect something written simply enough “that those who run may read it.” [Habakkuk 2:2] Asking you to consider in what ways a closed or open future impacts the interface between historiographical alternatives, theological methodology and communication theory is a bit much.

So I’ll do what I do best, tell you a little story. When daughter Katie graduated from IU and went to U of IL to do doctoral work, she got a late start on housing and ended up in a 22-person house for graduate students that was sponsored by a fundamentalist church. Twenty-one fundamentalists, and Katie, which meant the fundamentalists were badly outnumbered. They didn’t know what to do with her, except to try to convert her from the Methodist heresies she had grown up with. One of her housemates accosted her one day with, “Katie, are you saved?”

“Yes,” she calmly replied

Her housemate was quite surprised.

“When were you saved?” he asked.

“On Good Friday,” she answered.

The church didn’t know it, nor did historians and scientists, for a long, long time, but that day, Good Friday, students, was the day the future opened.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

GIVING GOOD PEOPLE AS A GIFT

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

Today is Ben Paxton’s memorial service. I can’t go. I have commitments today I can’t get out of, and it’s five hours away. I’m sorry I can’t be there. Ben was a friend. He was the director of WGLT radio station at Illinois State University, and when I was Wesley Foundation minister there, he got me to do a late-night talk show on the station. It turned out to be a popular and useful program. I even got an award.

Yes, he was a friend, but there is one thing for which I cannot forgive him: doll houses. As we aged, he accumulated a whole lot of granddaughters. And for each one, he constructed a beautiful and elaborate doll house. I saw them. They were wonderful. I decided I should do one for my granddaughter. It was a disaster. When it came to doll houses, I was no Ben Paxton. He cost me a lot of time, money, and self-confidence.

Mostly, though, I’m sorry I can’t be there for his wife, Anne. She was my secretary for five years, and when I left, she stayed on for another 25 years, maybe 30, maybe 35… It seems she was there forever, the Alpha and Omega of Methodist campus ministry in Normal, IL. Hiring Anne was the best thing I ever did for that Wesley Foundation, even though she was a Presbyterian.

The good people I hired were often the best gifts I gave to the churches I pastored. Those gifts were accidents. I had no particular skill at hiring. I made some awful blunders. But occasionally an Anne Paxton or Mary Putney or Rose Cress or Frances Hunt or Ed Lang or Joan Gregg or Jeanne Piercy or Max White would come along and stay and stay and stay, the Alpha and Omega of that staff. I inherited some good ones, too, but I’m especially pleased to recall those I hired, for they were long-time gifts to people I cared about.

Sometimes, I had help. A few weeks after Max White retired, his wife, Ruth, came to see me. “This church is much too big for you to pastor by yourself,” she said. “Max would make a great minister of visitation. You should hire him.”

“I’d love to, Ruth,” I said, “but we have no money to hire anyone.”

“How much do you need?” she said.

You can get some wonderfully good help if his wife is eager enough to get him out of the house.

Ben is out of the house now, out of the dollhouses, too, but he’s in the house of God, whatever and wherever that may be, and I give thanks for that gift, as I give thanks for the gift Anne was to The Wesley Foundation.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT?

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

Tonight I am talking to the XYZ group at our church. XYZ stands for Xtra Years of Zest, which is a way of saying that we are old and decrepit and deeply into denial, and also have trouble remembering how to spell “Extra.”

I’m going to try to help us look for the hinge moments in our lives, as a way of looking back at the many years we’ve been through, to see if we can live with those past selves.

Every once in a while I see or hear some person who is interviewed at the end of her career. Often he says, “I have no regrets. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

That worries me, for the sake of hisher soul. If you have no regrets, if you would not change anything, you are either insensitive, a sociopath, or perfect. And as the old joke goes, “The only perfect man was my wife’s first husband.”

I think that’s why even his supporters were discombobulated when President George W. Bush was asked, at the end of his first term, what mistakes he had made. He could not think of any. Of course, it’s not politically helpful to admit mistakes, but, as he pondered an answer, he did not seem to be looking for the correct political response. He seemed genuinely befuddled; he just couldn’t think of any mistakes he had made. That is why he ended his first term with the lowest approval rating of any president ever; he could not correct his mistakes because he did not know what they were.

Winter was probably thought of as a time of discontent before Richard III, in which Shakespeare wrote the line, “Now is the winter of our discontent…” but those of us in the winter of our years know the bard was right. Winter can be a time of great discontent. But not necessarily.

Winter is either a time of discontent, because we have unacknowledged and thus unexamined and unforgiven regrets, or a season of contentment because we have come to terms with our regrets, not by denying them, but by examining them and then discarding them in the fire that we need for winter warmth.

Old people do this. We go through the boxes of our memories, and take out the letters and clippings and notes we have saved. We look them over, decide which our children or grandchildren might want, and then throw the others into the fire.

We warm ourselves in winter with the flames of forgiveness, forgiving ourselves and others.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

THE ADVICE THAT IS ALWAYS GOOD

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

Every once in a while, I write some advice to my grandchildren. It would be really helpful to them if they were in their 70s or 80s. Maybe even their 60s. But they are 20 and 17.

The wisdom I have to pass along is the stuff you learn when you’re old. Yes, it could be applied by younger folks… but, no.

I sometimes I have a slight glimmering, flickering memory--like an early black and white movie--of what it is like to be 17 or 20, but I no longer have the wisdom that applies to those ages. I suspect I never did have that particular wisdom. That’s why, in the stories I tell of myself at those ages, I am so much smarter than I really was.

Many grandparents have significant stuff to pass along to their grandchildren—money, property, quilts, recipes, carvings, silver, paintings, 1950S baseball cards, fame. I have none of those. All I have is advice.

Many folks have noted, though—and it’s often attributed to Maya Angelou—that you may not remember anything someone said to you, but you’ll always remember how they made you feel.

So I write advice to my grandchildren, not because it’s good advice, but because I want them to remember: My grandfather loved me enough to give me the only thing he had to give.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

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.”

THE PEONIES VS THE DONALD

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

I can no longer criticize Donald Trump, and it’s all because of the beauty of the peonies.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ll continue to be honest about Trump. I’ll criticize his hypocrisy and his lies and his racism and his misogyny and his false bravado and his entitlement and his sexism and his hypocrisy and his absence of sympathy for those who were not born into rich families, and his narrow-mindedness, and claiming that his time at a military school is equal to, if not better than, serving in the real military, and his tax evasion, and his willful ignorance and his falsehoods, and his meanness, and his hypocrisy. 

But I’ll not criticize his hair, or his hands, or his divorces, or even his affairs. I have friends who have divorces on their resumes, and some with affairs there, too. I don’t have very good hair or hands myself. Everybody makes mistakes. Those are bad mistakes. They tear at the soul and at the fabric of society. But they are personal, and everybody makes mistakes, and they are forgivable.

Jesus talked about forgiveness more than any other subject. It’s easier to forgive someone if they admit their mistakes, and Trump seems to think anything he does is okay if he does it, just because he’s The Donald, so it’s not easy to forgive him, even his hair, but Jesus did not say, “Forgive people as long as they repent of their sins,” but just, “Forgive.”

I need some forgiveness, too, for having already, so often, criticized Trump personally. The fact that he makes it so easy to do so is no excuse. In fact, now I have to ask forgiveness for having just hinted that it’s not so bad since Trump is responsible for getting personal criticism since he makes it easy. That is something Trump would do, blame the victim. I don’t want to be like Trump. I want to be like the peonies.

President Abraham Lincoln needed to make a cabinet appointment. One of his friends made a suggestion. Lincoln said, “No, I don’t like his looks.” “Well, a man is not responsible for his looks,” the advisor said. “He is after age forty,” Lincoln replied.

Trump is way past forty, and looks it, and I think Lincoln is probably right about us being responsible for our looks when we are older, but I still don’t think that gives me reason to criticize Donald personally. Even his hair, and, oh, I so did love those pictures of cats with Trump comb-overs. Not any more, though.

Peonies are one of my favorite flowers, not just because we had them at our wedding, 57 years ago next week, because we got a whole tub full for $2.00. They are old-fashioned flowers. I grew up with them. There aren’t many old-fashioned flowers around anymore. Irises, yes, but not many hollyhocks, or sun flowers. 

I’ll still criticize Trump, the presidential candidate. But I can’t criticize Donald himself and still enjoy the beauty of the peonies.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

This is my pastor’s fault. No, not backing away from criticizing Trump. That’s all on the peonies. But Jimmy Moore told me about the automatic Facebook-posting place to click when I write one of these. He also said that if I clicked on it every day, I was not tooting my own horn but simply making it easier for folks who do want to read CIW to find each new one. So, I apologize if I notify about these too often, but… it’s Jimmy’s fault.

WHEN BAD THEOLOGY IS GOOD THEOLOGY

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

Our pastor, Jimmy Moore, told a Tex Sample story in his sermon last Sunday. I heard Tex tell it a number of years ago, but it’s the sort of story, like most Tex Sample stories, that hits you with a new force every time.

Tex is a Mississippi boy who became a seminary professor. But he never forgot his simple roots. Most of his academic work was studying the religion of what he called “hard living” folks, the ones whose dogs have died and their women have left and their pickup won’t run, so there’s nothing left but to write a song about it.

Their songs, like their living, are simple. They tend to favor church music like “In the Garden.”

Theologians and professors and seminarians tend to look down on songs like “In the Garden,” though, not just because they are simple, but because their theology is often downright misleading. We get more of our theology from the church songs that we sing than we get from the Bible or sermons, so it’s important that they have good theology.

Personally, though, I don’t worry much about the theology of hymns. If you trust and never doubt, he will surely bring you out. That’s not good theology. Nobody is going to get brought out if it depends on never doubting. But Charles A. Tindley’s “Take Your Burden to the Lord” is great fun to sing, and its main point, in the title, is good theology.

Hymn writers are willing to do some really bad theology if they can get a rhyme out of it.

Yes, most of us get most of our beliefs from hymns and Christian songs, singing them in church and camp, and it’s better to sing a Jim Manley song or a Charles Wesley hymn, because their theology, as well as their sound, is sound, but let’s trust the Spirit a little. I think there’s something right about a song that leads us to an experience of joy, even if there is something wrong here and there with what the words say.

But “In the Garden” is just so bad in its isolationist and self-centered theology…the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known… Come on; you’re not the only one Christ ever talked to or walked with.

So one day in class, Tex was making fun of that song, saying how bad it is. I’m no stranger to that. A whole generation of seminarians learned to do that. Tex taught at St. Paul seminary in Kansas City, and I started at Perkins School of Theology, at SMU, in Dallas, but we had similar experiences about the song my favorite prof, H. Grady Hardin, called “Andy.”

He said that it had originally been intended as a popular love song, a tryst song: “And he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own…” But the composer hadn’t been able to make a go of that, so he turned it into a religious song.

So Grady sang it to us as Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me, Andy tells me I am his own…

That turned out to be one of the most fun classes I ever had, because we got to talking, doing improv, really, about all sorts of hymns.

Somehow we got onto “adjusting” Christian hymns for other religions, such as “He’s the Lotus of the Valley” for Buddhism rather than the Christian hymn, “He’s the Lily of the Valley.” And “Buddha loves me, this I know, for the Sutras tell me so.”

I was never too hard on “Andy.” It was my mother’s favorite hymn, and the only one she could almost play on the piano. But I went along with the idea that a song that selfish, that narcissistic, that terrible in its theology, has no place in Christian faith.

That’s what Tex Sample said in his class, too. Afterward, a woman student came up to him.

“My father sexually abused me until I was fourteen,” she said. “And after each time he did it to me, I would go out into the back yard, my garden, and I would sing that song, and remember that regardless of how bad it was, God loves me.”

I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses. And the voice I hear, falling on my ear, the son of God discloses. And he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own, and the joy we share, as we tarry there, none other has ever known.

There are times when that is not bad theology. Sometimes it’s darned good theology.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

THE OLD HOME PLACE

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

Sybil Sanders Niemann died recently. We were both Gibson County kids, but I did not know her, for she went to Patoka High School and I went to Oakland City. I probably saw her, though, for, it was noted in her obituary, she was a Patoka cheer leader. She would have been there when Oakland City played basketball at Patoka, or when they came to our gym. I probably thought she was cute.

She was an accomplished woman, only one of two women in her IU dental school class of 87. She taught dentistry at the University of Arkansas and at the IU School of Dentistry in Indianapolis.

What caught my attention, though, was the phrase in her obituary, “She died at the old home place in rural Patoka.”

“The old home place” is such a wonderful and evocative phrase. We all have an old home place. I can’t go back to mine, literally. It is gone, strip-mined into oblivion. Except in my memory, where it beckons, and where it takes me in, whenever I need to go there.

I’m pleased to know that cute cheer leader got to return to the old home place.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

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.”

INTIMACY IN A TIME OF ISOLATION

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

I was in a tense meeting once where a denominational official asked a colleague, “Were you intimate with that woman?” He answered “No.” The official thought that settled it, so I had the unpleasant task of following up by saying, “But did you have sex with her?” He had to answer “Yes.” He was honest in his answers to both questions. Sex doesn’t automatically mean intimacy; it just means sex.

The psycho-social developmental task of young adults is “intimacy vs isolation.” It starts in the teen years, because of puberty, but as teens our main task has to be “identity vs identity diffusion.” [1]

Nature doesn’t care about intimacy. All nature cares about is sex. It simply wants reproduction, so that the species will survive. Nature knows, however, that reproduction alone is usually not enough to keep the species going. The young have to be cared for until they can fend for themselves, so nurturing instincts are built into the parents. In addition to sex, there can be companionship and caring and feelings of loss in the pairings of other species, but those are not really intimacy.

Sex for the sake of reproduction, though, or even nurturing of the young, is not enough for humans. Humans want and need intimacy. We are not meant to live in isolation. That is why solitary confinement is considered the worst kind of punishment. But intimacy is frightening, because it makes us vulnerable.

Sexuality is the basic urge that pulls us toward intimacy, and also propels us away from it. In our fear of the vulnerability of commitment that comes with intimacy, we often treat sex in a very superficial, non-intimate, way.

Violence, of course, is the ultimate “protection” against intimacy. It is the ultimate isolator.

The urges of both sex and intimacy are so strong in young people that they are overwhelming. Religious young people often try to control those urges by fixating on, ritualizing, a particular belief or action. In belief, some theological doctrine like substitutionary atonement or dating the apocalypse [when the world will end]. In actions, examples are ritualistic Bible reading and praying, or speaking in tongues. [2]

The religious impulse propels us toward intimacy, but fixation on a religious concept or ritual helps to wall us off against intimacy. Intimacy is a fearful thing. We cannot be intimate without being vulnerable.

With young preacher types, the underlying problem is often sexual. Either shehe is trying to deny homosexuality, more to self than to others, or is afraid of the power of sexual urges and thinks that a religious “calling” will replace or control those urges. [Fortunately, denying homosexuality is not as necessary as it once was.]

In religion, we try to escape intimacy and vulnerability by excluding those unlike us, for there is no real intimacy with one’s self, and if we only love those who love us, as someone once said, what reward is there? There is no intimacy in that, and so no depth. We escape intimacy through exclusion and call it righteous, because after all, we claim, it is really God who is doing the excluding and not we ourselves.

Intimacy and isolation are not just internal psychic states that determine, and result from, out interactions with others. They are stances toward the world, open or closed. The Good News of Christ is that intimacy with God, vulnerability to God, is always possible, because God forgives our attempts at isolation, both to God and to others, and even with our own true selves.

In a time of shallow sex and gratuitous violence and the attempt, literally as well as psychologically, to build walls to keep others away, intimacy even with those closest to us is difficult, for it is hard to be intimate personally in a world that says intimacy is too difficult or unnecessary.

Every once in a while, I see the statement, often attributed to Tom Clancy, the late novelist who was in love with military weaponry—and what can be a better wall against intimacy than military weapons—that “Money can’t buy you love, but it can buy you sex, and that’s almost as good.”

No, it isn’t.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

1] I’m using the categories of developmental psychologist Erik H. Erikson.

2] I was aware when I wrote the phrase “dating the apocalypse,” in the May 15 CIW, “Divided Tongues,” that it had a double meaning. Young people fixated on the end times are dating the apocalypse rather than dating a person. Anne Bingham, a writer of YA [Young Adult] novels, picked up on that and said, “Dating the Apocalypse is definitely going to be the title of my next novel.” That should be a good read.

THE HOBBY THAT WON'T GO AWAY

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

What do you do when you have nothing to do? You turn to your hobbies.

Except I don’t have any. I told that to Helen. She said it was not true, that I do have hobbies. And she is, as usual, right. She pointed out that I read, and I do sports, both watching and participating.

I think of a hobby, though, as something you do with your hands, making bird houses or quilts, growing things in a garden, chopping wood, pulling mushrooms, restoring a car or a book. By that definition, I don’t have a hobby.

But I have always assumed that old people are supposed to do hobbies—dip candles, whittle wooden horses, etch the Gettysburg Address on the head of a pin, brew weird beer, quilt, scrapbook, spray graffiti.

I guess my hobby is writing. It’s a hands-on thing, at least for the time being. I have a friend who has a voice-recognition computer. He sends me emails without touching keys. I’m not sure if I wrote that way it could be considered a hobby. “Look, Ma, no hands.”

Bob Hammel, the great sports writer, says that when he wrote a column, he felt like a pianist, with words flowing from the tips of his fingers the way notes flow from the finger tips of a Cliburn or Paderewski on the piano keys.

I guess I have not thought of writing as a hobby because, for a long time, writing was my work. Along the way, I tried many different ways of using words, of writing. I was adequate at most of them, but not really great at any, save one. I can tell simple little stories in simple little ways. I’m pretty good at that.

I recently decided that I was too old even for hobbies, that I needed to spend all my time on my inward self, getting ready to die, instead of doing outward work, writing. I have no particular reason to think I shall die soon, except that I am old, and all old people will die soon.

Some folks can use their outward work, especially something like writing, to look inward, also. That has happened to me at times. I learned important things about myself and for myself by writing something for others. I am, however, a compulsive sort of guy. I have to be all in or all out. So I felt that if I did any writing, it had to be for myself alone.

So far, that has been a bust. I spend all my inward time getting great ideas for things I could write to share rather than to enhance my inward obit.

So, thank you for reading, and for your patience.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

THE LORD IS WILLING BUT THE CREEK DONE RIZ

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

I grew up down in the “pocket” of Indiana, what I call The Mississippi of the North, where my father once belonged to the KKK, where the Wabash and Ohio rivers meet. That’s where I became a hillbilly liberal, because of Forsythe Methodist, the little country church I attended. They had a black evangelist come in to do a revival. They asked for a woman pastor when there were only two in the whole Conference. They thought it was great that this welfare kid came to church, and gave by far the biggest contribution to endow a seminary scholarship with my name on it.

They were just ignorant hillbillies, who believed with kindly militancy that the Gospel and the justice that “rolls down like a mighty stream” are for everyone.

There are a lot of flooding stories down there. In fact, even in Greene County, where I did most of my early preaching, while still a college student, in places with names like Solsberry and Koleen and Mineral and Walker’s Chapel and Greene County Chapel, I was told by folks in most of those churches, “If there is water over the road when you’re coming here, just turn around and go back.” [Of course, that may have been because they had heard me preach and prayed for rain.]

The creek had risen, and the waters were high, and the whole family had retreated to the rooftop. There they watched the waters roll by, not with justice, but with tree limbs and pigs and cows and flotsam jetsam of all sorts. Then they saw an old hat come down with the current. But when it got to the edge of their lot, it turned around and went back upstream, against the current. But when it got to the other end of their property, it turned around and started back again.

One of the boys exclaimed, “I remember now. Grandpa said he was going to mow the yard today come hell or high water, and there he is.”

Put your old hat on. The creek has risen, and it’s time for action.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I really will get around to that Pentecost follow-up column some day, and one about Mary Jensen’s DST song, too.

Some think the original phrase was, “The Lord willing and the Creek don’t rise,” meaning the Creek Indians. That does not fit my needs above, so it must be wrong.

Also, some think the original phrase was “Come hail or high water,” not “Hell or high water.” See the second sentence of the paragraph just above.

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.

I DON'T CARE

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

I know I said Sunday I would explore more why and how people get fixated on a particular point of religion, but then I got sidetracked by Trump’s dream, and now you will have to wait some more to learn about religious fixations, because I feel the need to comment on General Conference, and say, “I don’t care!”

As an old person, there are many things about which I can gladly and legitimately say, “I don’t care about that.” I don’t care if young people have never heard of Ignacy Jan Paderewski or The Chad Mitchell Trio or “The Big Story” radio show. I have heard them, and hear them still, through the miracle of memory. I feel no need to require others to listen to them, or to tell them how superior they are to the dreck young people listen to now. [One reason I don’t care is that I know when I was young, old people thought what I listened to was dreck. That’s the way it always is.]

So there is a way I really mean it when I say that I don’t care about the General Conference or what the folks there decide about anything [except my pension].

The General Conference [GC] is the contentiousness center for The United Methodist Church. Every four years delegates/members from the UMC all over the world gather in the same place to be contentious. [One of the contentions is often what the delegates or members or whatever they are should be called.]

The contentious issues there are the same as always—sex, power, and exclusion. And the folks at GC bring with them not the spirit of God to apply to these issues, but the current cultural consensus of their particular place in the world. That’s okay. The world needs to be brought into the church. The world is where the action is. The world, not the church, is where the Holy Spirit is at work. Albert Outler, the great church historian, used to say, “The church never does the right thing except from the pressure of the world.”

The problem is not bringing the world into the church, into the GC. The problem is that the world brought into the GC is already gone. So I don’t care what the GC does. It will always be behind.

The problem with “the noise of solemn assemblies” in the church is that the folks at GC bring the current cultural consensus into the room with them, not the cultural consensus of tomorrow. They contend about where the Holy Spirit used to work. Tomorrow is where the Holy Spirit is already.

 I care about the how the Holy Spirit is working in the world, not the church. The spirit of God “blows where it will.” The church is always behind, so why care what it does?

Pentecost didn’t happen when a bunch of church people were sitting in a room contending about what to do next. Yes, the tongues of fire and the sound of a mighty wind came then and there, but Pentecost didn’t happen until they followed the Spirit out of the room and into the world.

I go to church for the learning and the fellowship and the singing and the food, not the action. I go to the world for the action, because that’s the home of the Holy Spirit. That’s where the action is. I like to be where the action is.

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. 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. [Yes, it’s all capitals, VETS, when you look for it. otherwise you’ll get veterinarian stuff.]

WHY TRUMP WILL BE OUR NEXT PRESIDENT

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

You know why Donald Trump will be the next president of the US? Because he is just like Martin Luther King, Jr.

I’ve already noted that Trump and Jesus were just alike, each having authority in himself instead of appealing to laws and constitutions and scriptures for authority. [April 6]

Now hear this: Trump and MLK are just alike, too. My pastor, Jimmy Moore, pointed out yesterday [1] that the reason MLK was successful was not because he said, “I have a plan,” but because he said, “I have a dream.”

That is why Trump will best Bernie or Hillary, or both of them together. They have plans. Plans have flaws. They have restrictions. They have points people can pick at and disagree with.

Trump has no plan. He has only a dream. Dreams have no flaws or restrictions. You can’t disagree with a dream. “Make America Great Again.” Who can quibble with that? Oh, yes, some folks say, “America is already great,” but that’s just peeing uphill. The dream is coming downhill full speed, and nobody likes someone who pees on a parade.

There is an old saying among folk tale tellers: “If you’re telling a story about fighting a grizzly, and people don’t believe it, throw in another grizzly.”

Trump is an excellent at folk tales. When people get picky, he just throws in another grizzly.

If anyone expects to beat Trump to the White House, they’d better get a better dream, and throw in a whole bunch of grizzlies.

President Trump? Get used to the sound of it. People don’t want planners. We want dreamers, and right now Trump is the only one who has a dream.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] I think he quoted someone, but I can’t remember whether or who. That’s okay. Preachers should note their sources, even if listeners don’t know or remember who they are. It makes us think they read stuff.

Yes, I know that I promised today would be a follow-up to Sunday’s Pentecost reflection, but that was before my pastor convinced me that Trump will be our next president. Thanks a lot, Jimmy.

I tweet as yooper1721.

DIVIDED TONGUES

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

I’ll call him Alvin, but that was not his name. I dreaded facing his parents. It had been a unanimous vote, so even if I had voted to continue their son in the process toward United Methodist ordination, he would have been dropped. But they were friends, genteel in the best sense of that word, and I knew they would be upset, because to them, their son could do no wrong, and we should make an exception for him, even though there was no way…

I did not agree with them that he could do no wrong, but I did agree that Alvin was an exemplary young man. I would have been glad to have him as a colleague. He had so many gifts and graces for ministry. But there was that thing about speaking in tongues…

Young people in college, or of college age, are often surprised by the force with which religious fervor takes them. The force is so strong, so overwhelming, that to control it, simplify it, they fixate on a particular belief or action. In belief, some theological doctrine like substitutionary atonement or dating the apocalypse [when the world will end]. In actions, examples are ritualistic Bible reading and praying, or speaking in tongues. [1]

Those of us on the District Committee on Ministry didn’t have much experience with glossolalia, but we had experience with inclusion. We didn’t want to keep Alvin out. We all agreed that it was perfectly okay that he speak in tongues himself. But he insisted that no one could really be a Christian if they did not speak in tongues, and he admitted proudly that as a pastor he would try to get everyone in his congregation to tongue speak.

That sort of specific requirement for everyone is just not the Methodist way. As our daughter, Katie, said when her Roman Catholic husband-to-be asked her what you have to do to be a Methodist, “Believe in God and have a 9x13 pan.” Christianity at its best is not specific, but it is inclusive.

The point of the tongue-speaking in the Pentecost story in Acts 2 is not that people spoke in unintelligible babble, but that they spoke the Gospel clearly in ways that people could understand, even when they didn’t know how. It’s a good message about evangelism. As I quoted St. Francis recently, “Spread the Gospel in every way you can. If necessary, use words.” Witness to the Good News, even if you don’t know how, because it is meant for everyone.

As with so many parts of the Bible, our young ministerial candidate had taken an event that was meant to make the Gospel available to everyone and used it to keep the Gospel away from all except those who responded to it as he did.

Just before we voted, I asked Alvin if he did not prefer to preach the Gospel clearly in ways that people could understand. He did not answer. Perhaps my words were not clear enough.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] Young people in other faiths, such as Islam, have similar fixations, but I am not qualified to name either their theologies or their actions, except that in some circles—minor in numbers but major in impact—the action they choose to enter into intimacy with the like-minded but protect from intimacy that makes them vulnerable is violence.

[More tomorrow on why folks get fixated on a single issue.]

I tweet as yooper1721.

My book, THE STRANGE CALLING, is sort of a memoir, a collection of stories from my ministry. When I first felt I was being “called” by God to be a preacher, the ministry was known as “the high calling.” In my experience, it seemed more like a strange calling. You can get it from the publisher, Smyth&Helwys, or lots of places on the web, including Amazon, B&N, etc.

SERIAL SLOW MOMENTS

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

I’m not sure I like the designation of “senior moments” for those lapses in memory that old folks have. I recall Dee Lemkau saying, when she was terribly old, which means several years younger than I am now, that her memory was just as good as ever, but that, like the rest of her, it was slower. So maybe they are just “slow moments,” that have little to do with senioritis. After all, when one of them settles like a halo around my head, Helen says, “I’ve known you since you were twenty, and you’ve always been this way.”

They do become troublesome, though, when they become serial slow moments. Those happen when routine is interrupted. Your coffee can get very cold in the process of a serial slow moment.

Helen was off at H2O aerobics when the AC guy came for the annual inspection, so I had to write him a check, which meant finding the check book, which I don’t use much, so I got into a distracted frame of mind. I had just gotten my mid-morning scone and coffee ready when I remembered that I had moved the boxes in front of the furnace room in the garage to let the AC guy get at it. I had to get them back in place before Helen returned, because condo garages are very short and narrow and I constantly think about buying a Cooper Mini because of that. [You never see a Hummer in our neighborhood.]

I got the boxes back in place and went back to the living room to enjoy my coffee…and couldn’t find it. Or the scone. I looked in all the usual places—kitchen counters, the microwave, the desk in my study, the end tables, the book cases, the dish washer—not to be found…except, of course, they were in the garage, because I had carried them out there when I hurried out to remodel the box mountain.

But then my cell phone rang. It hardly ever rings. I don’t keep the number secret, but few know it just because no one needs to call me. So it had to be family or friends. It was not in my pocket, because I had changed from shorts to long pants when the AC guy came, because it always gets real cold when the AC guy comes, but I did not remember it was in my shorts, so had to dash around, trying to trace it, and grabbed it finally, just in time to get a recorded message from “Lisa” that I had won yet another free trip to the Bahamas.

Which was nice, of course, but after I had hung up on her, I could not find my coffee and scone. I looked in all the usual places…

They are frustrating, those slow senior moments. They get even worse when we see our friends and loved ones having to deal with the memory losses of dementia. “Old age is not for the faint-hearted.” When I have one of those moments, though, even though my coffee is cold, my heart is warm, for I am reminded that although I can’t remember where I put my scone and coffee, God always remembers where He put me.

Where She put me as a child, as a young man, as a father and husband and grandfather and friend, as a follower of Jesus. And now as an old man with cold coffee, and a scone that has a mysterious missing bite. I might forget a whole lot of stuff, but God does not forget me. That is God’s idea of a slow moment.

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.”

True Liberty-a Sockman quote

“True liberty consists not just of being free of something but being free for something.” Ralph W. Sockman

THE OPEN FUTURE

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

I have been attending the conference of the Indiana University Center for 18^th Century Studies. Professors and graduate students from all over the world [at least Germany and Canada in addition to the US] and from many academic disciplines [history, philosophy, French, German, English, music] have gathered to debate whether the Enlightenment caused the future to go from closed to open, or whether the switch to an open future caused the Enlightenment. [My description is a bit too simple, but I’m a simple guy.] We read 357 pages of papers written specifically for this conference as preparation.

The future was “closed” by the church. For Calvinists it was closed by the doctrine of predestination, that God had decided before you were born whether you were going to heaven or hell. No free will, no future. For the Roman Church, it was closed by the apocalyptic end of the world. Jesus was coming, but no one knew when. In the meantime, you’d better do what the church says so you’ll be ready. No free will, no future.

Given that churchly background, I’m surprised that no one at the conference has written or spoken to the point that it was another religious figure, John Wesley, whose life spanned the 18^th century, from 1703 to 1791, who opened the future by starting with the mercy of god rather than the power of god, because of his own experience of acceptance/forgiveness and thus standing against predestination and apocalypticism with his doctrines of free will and going on to perfection.

Actually, the future is closed or open because of the past, specifically where you start.

If you start with the power of God, you get predestination. God is omniscient so knows everything already so knows whether you are going to heaven or hell.

If you start with the mercy of God, you get free will. You are free to act, and it’s okay to act, to try, because if you fail, God will forgive and go on into the future with you.

Put another way, if you start and end with the Bible, you get bibliolatry. If you start and end with experience, you get psychosis. If you start and end with tradition [the church, specifically the RC Church] you get law instead of grace. However, if you put all those together, as the late great Albert Outler, the Wesleyan scholar, and one of my professors a long time ago, points out that Wesley did, you get an open future.

Wesley’s theology is of tremendous importance, not just for history studies, but for politics and psychology. The future is open. Don’t be afraid to go into 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.

Enduring God's Silence=a quote

“God comes as an annihilating silence, a silence we must endure as well as enjoy.” Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss, p. 108

Walk in the Dark-a quote

“If a man wishes to be sure of the road he walks on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark.” St. John of the Cross

END TIME SOUL WORK

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

I’m at that awkward age. But isn’t every age an awkward one? This is the one where you feel fine, except for the usual old-age stuff, but know you’ll die before long, anyway, just because you’re so old.

As one of my docs used to say, “Old age is itself a risk factor.” I really resent that, but it’s true.

Which means I need to prepare for life’s end. In one way, of course, we are always doing that prep, just by trying to live good lives. That, however, can be an excuse for not doing some other things, some inward things, that necessary soul-work as we approach the end of the soul’s earthly journey.

It has occurred to me that I have too often used my writing and preaching—my outreach—to avoid my in-reach, the necessary preparation for the end of life. Well, maybe that’s not quite it. Perhaps I’m not using it to avoid soul-work, but it’s just getting in the way of the soul-work. Either way, I need to change my focus.

There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m not aware that I am at death’s door. I might live another 15 years, although 5 or 10 is more likely. The problem is, at a certain age, it could be 15 years, or it could be 15 minutes. So I need to spend my time doing in-reach.

Some folks might be able to do both in-reach and outreach, but I am not one of them. I have to do one or the other. If I do any reaching out at all [writing, speaking, preaching], I forget about inward learning, the learning and experiencing that allows one to say “Yes” when the question comes, “Is it well with your soul?”

The creative process can be a way of in-reach. Sometimes I don’t know what I believe until I have written it. That has often served me well. Now, though, I need to learn in more inwardly meditative ways.

If I am thinking, “Is this clear enough that someone else can understand it?” or “Is this worth the effort of someone else to understand it?” I do not ask well enough, “Do I understand it?”

I listen to others to get guidance for my inward journey, mostly by reading, but I listen in other ways, too. Often I am gifted with some phrase or thought that I think is worth sharing, so I’ll continue to post most days in Christ In Winter, usually some quote that I find helpful as I do soul work. Occasionally I’ll even tell one of my little stories that reflects on faith in our winter years. I still value having you with me on the journey. It’s just that most of the time I need to “walk this lonesome valley by myself.”

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.

Spreading the Gospel-a St. Francis quote

“Go forth and spread the Gospel by every means possible. If necessary, use words.” 

St. Francis of Assissi

Changing Places, a Carrie Newcomer quote

Nothing is ever truly gone;

It only changes places.

Carrie Newcomer in her poem, “Addition,” in A Permeable Life

The Language of Faith-a quote

“Silence is the language of faith. Action—be it church or charity, politics or poetry—is the translation.” Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss, p. 107

The Use of Memory--a TS Eliot quote

“This is the use of memory:

For liberation—not less of love but expanding

Of love beyond desire, and so liberation

From the future as well as the past.” 

T.S.Eliot, The Dry Salvages