WHO’S AT THE DOOR? 10-31-16

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

 A family bought an old house. They found that it had “settled” a bit, as old things do, and was a little out of line, as old things get. That meant the front door stuck. The only way they could get it open was to pry it with the blade of a hatchet. So they just used the door that was to the side and out of sight.

New to the town, they went to church the first Sunday. The pastor, true to his vocation, went to call on them. He knocked at the logical door, the one in front, and heard someone inside yell, “It’s the preacher. Get the hatchet.”

We had a big celebration in church this yesterday. Our evening custodian, Jeff, and his wife, Carla, were approved for a Habitat home several months ago. They are raising two granddaughters, and have been for 3 years. Got them when one was four years old and the other just 5 months. Now the house is finished and almost ready to move in. We had a housewarming for them after church, with gifts and gift cards, for places where they can get things to use in their new home, and lots of money to get air-conditioning installed. You end up with “lots” of money when many people each gives a little.

The house was built in ten days, on a flat-bed, in the parking lot of the Indiana University football stadium, so IU students could work on it. Over 400 did so. And Jeff and Carla put in 500 hours of owner equity, too. Church people and community people worked on it, also. When it was finished, they just hooked up a semi-tractor to the flat bed and pulled it to the lot where they will live. [1]

We saw a lot of pictures of the process of construction. I loved the one that showed about 30 people of all ages and sizes pushing together to raise a long side wall up into place.

Our church has a big building, including a pre-school, so we have 3 custodians. Jeff’s role in the evening is important, because St. Mark’s lets any non-profit use our building free. It’s part of our ministry. Scouts, AA, etc. take advantage of that policy. In fact, we host over 40 such groups.

In worship before the housewarming, Mary Beth Morgan [2] preached on the story of Zacchaeus and Jesus, in which Jesus said to the wee little man, [as he has been celebrated in Sunday school songs for years] “I’m coming to your house today.” How do we respond when someone says that to us? Somebody like… Jesus?

Helen and I live in a signed community. That’s the poor people’s version of a gated community. We have signs that say, “No Soliciting.” That’s okay, I think. But I grew up in a county that once had “No Niggers” [3] signs at its borders. What about signs, physical or otherwise, that say: No Gays, No Refugees, No Mexicans, No Muslims, No Homeless?

I spent the whole house-warming lunch yesterday playing with 10 month old Cayenne, who always giggles at me like I’m the best thing since strained peas. Please don’t ever make me live in one of those places for old people that has a “No Children” sign.

Jeff & Carla’s little granddaughters wanted a reading nook in their new home, so our Sunday School kids made book boxes, full of books, for them. They squealed with delight. As we left, they had taken their books to Ellie O’Connor, a little old lady who moved here from Virginia a couple of years ago to be near her daughter, and she was reading to them. It was a sweet moment that caught the best of what a church, and the world, can be.

Yes, get the damned hatchet. Use it to pry the door open.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1]Normally they could have just lived in the stadium parking lot since nobody goes to the games, but IU football is getting better, and when we beat Michigan in a couple of weeks…

2] Helen says I can no longer refer to Mary Beth as “the best preacher at St. Mark’s” because Jimmy Moore, her husband and our other preacher, might get his feelings hurt. Sheesh!

3] I know that is a word we don’t use, except some did and do, and if we don’t face reality, “warts and all,” we enable those who want to warp the perception of reality so that we don’t have to change it.

BTW, Happy All Saints. “For all the saints, who from their labors rest…”

The problem with writing a blog for old people is an ever-diminishing population, of people who cannot remember to go to the blog site.

MODERN TRANSLATIONS 10-30-16

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

I hate those modern versions of the Bible

I think God should subject them to the laws of libel.

They pander to the shallow rabble

By translating Hebrew with psychobabble.

They try to grab the GenY gang

Translating Greek in GenX slang.

They try to hit the modern spot

By having Paul speak polyglot.

No, it’s not the worst of crimes

To match the Bible to modern times

But still it is a sin most massive

To take Bible action and make it passive.

We no longer say gents and dames

And so we really don’t need old King James

But is it such a noxious task

Is it really too much to ask

To let God’s story tell itself

Without being draped in the pelf

Of shallow adjectives and adverbs

Too many passives and not enough verbs

Not enough verily and too much very

Translated by Moe, and Curly, and Larry.

We’re smart enough to get the drift

Without a translierative shift

Where goats become some genre queer

And shepherds have angst instead of fear.

Yes, we need some words that aren’t old and gray

To use some new ones is okay

But what’s new today will soon be hoary

So please, let the Bible tell its own story.

The Bible story is true as is

No need to add, “By, golly, gee whiz!”

The Bible story is true and great

Just let Word and words tell it straight.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

With apologies to all Bible translators, plus Ogden Nash and Calvin Trillin.

The problem with writing a blog for old people, CHRIST IN WINTER, is an ever-diminishing population, of people who cannot remember to go to the blog site.

I tweet as yooper1721, because when I started, I thought you were supposed to have a “handle,” like CB radio, instead of a name. I was a Yooper, resident of MI’s UP [Upper Peninsula], and my phone ended in 1721, so…

Here I come to save the day! No, not Mighty Mouse. Yuri Strelnikov, the boy genius of Katie McFarland Kennedy’s delightful Learning to Swear in America. Buy it or borrow it, but read this book! [What do you mean, you’re not old enough to remember Mighty Mouse?”

***

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 Helen and I 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 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOOD PEOPLE & BAD PEOPLE 10-29-16

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

I watch too many true-crime shows on TV. Sometimes, though, my eyes are too tired to read, and true-crime is the only thing on the tube that has an actual story line.

I don’t like the gory shows, with the re-enactments of gruesome murders, always poorly directed and acted. But I enjoy matching wits with the perps and with the detectives.

That doesn’t work out well all the time, though. Just as I have realized who it has to be, from the clues I have, they say something like “All this time the detectives have also been working on this suspect we haven’t mentioned yet and they got a DNA match on him and so the case was solved.” Very unfair to the armchair detectives, withholding vital information from us.

Then when the narrator interviews the perp in jail, often she or he says, “I’m not really a bad person. Yes, I murdered those people or I abused those children or I swindled those old people out of their pensions, but I’m a good person.”

No, you aren’t. If you aren’t a bad person, then who is? Well, nobody, as it turns out.

I have not heard a prayer of confession in church in years, unless I was leading the service. We don’t have anything to confess; we’re not bad people.

Talk about “enablement.” The church enables every bad person, meaning everybody, to keep being addicted to badness because we don’t call it what it is: sin. That bad stuff we do is just a temporary interruption of our basic goodness.

Who was it who said, “The well have no need of a physician?” Oh, yes, that was the one we call “The Savior.” Except you don’t need saving if you’re already a good person.

You know the way to tell the difference between a good person and a bad person? Good people don’t do bad things.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

FAMILY LIFE SUPPORT 10-26-16

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

They are taking Toni off life-support on Saturday. I’ll try to be there, but it is 8:00 in the morning, and an hour away, and I have to be up 3 or 4 hours before my semi-colon will let me leave the house…

She won’t be alone, even without me. Shayne, her niece from Phoenix, will be there, with her husband, Efrain.

Toni is the little sister of Mike Dickey, my best friend from when we moved to Oakland City, when I was ten. I did Mike’s funeral in Prescott, AZ a summer ago. I had seen Toni off and on for fifty years, but Mike’s funeral allowed me to connect more deeply. I’m glad for that.

Mike and I were about twelve when Toni was born. Their father died soon thereafter. So Toni was always in search of a family, especially a father. She often said that she felt like she was raised by Mike’s high school class, especially the football team, where Mike was the star center. They often had to chase the pre-school Toni out of the locker room so the guys could get dressed. She wasn’t particularly interested in seeing sweaty naked boys, but she didn’t like being “out.”

She became an art teacher, married a rockabilly singer. They had no children, and he died young. The school district retired her. Her brother, who was her hero, and as close to a father as she had, was in Arizona, along with her niece and nephew and their families. She was alone.

Being an artist, she loved artistic things of all sorts, and bought a big old declining Victorian house in a whole historic district of such. There, since she had no family, she set about creating one, although I’m not sure she knew that was what she was doing. Ostensibly, she took in roomers. Some were only roomers. Most, though, became family. We’ve met most of them, Jessica and Mike and Paul and… Each has a story, of why they had no other family to live with, and how Toni took them in. Toni was eccentric, opinionated, demanding, needy, addicted, generous, resilient. She was a benign queen bee. She put up with her roomer family, and they put up with her. They also loved her, and she loved them.

I think one of the most fun meals I’ve ever had was a dozen of us around Toni’s artistically decorated dining room table, eating and laughing. It was a family meal. I think it must have been a bit like the first communion. I know it was communion for me. I hope it was for Toni.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

JUST DESSERTS 10-26-16

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

From time to time, I see the phrase, “You deserve to be happy.” It’s often in an ad for some product or seminar or event that will replace your tears with smiles.

When I was speaking often at gatherings of cancer patients, it was not unusual for someone to say, “When I told my husband I had been diagnosed with cancer, he said, ‘I can’t deal with this. I deserve to be happy,’ and he left.”

“Happiness” is often a code word for “selfishness.”

I’m not sure about deserving. Why does anyone deserve anything?

So often we settle for happiness when we could have joy. There’s nothing wrong with happiness. It’s a good thing. But if you think you deserve it, that’s a chimera, and it leads you into the long weeds. But if you know that happiness is a gift, that opens the door to joy.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

CREATION-a poem 10-22-16

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

My parents, in their chaotic love,

created me, as God, in love,

created the process

of creation. So when I felt

a pang this morning

in the garage, a flash

of sadness as I crushed

the little cardboard box beneath

my foot and placed it gently

in the bin where stuff must go

to be recycled, an unseen

critic sneered

and said, “How stupid. No soul

in that box. One of millions

just like it.”

Exactly, I replied.

Just like me.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The problem with writing a blog for old people, CHRIST IN WINTER, is an ever-diminishing population, of people who cannot remember to go to the blog site.

I tweet as yooper1721, because when I started, I thought you were supposed to have a “handle,” like CB radio, instead of a name. I was a Yooper, resident of MI’s UP [Upper Peninsula], and my phone ended in 1721, so…

Here I come to save the day! No, not Mighty Mouse. Yuri Strelnikov, the boy genius of Katie McFarland Kennedy’s delightful Learning to Swear in America. Buy it or borrow it, but read this book! [What do you mean, you’re not old enough to remember Mighty Mouse?”

PARENTS TO THE WORLD, FOREVER

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

Daughter Katie’s novel LEARNING TO SWEAR IN AMERICA, is YA, but it’s also science fiction. Some people don’t seem to understand what science is. Several folks have given her only 4 stars instead of 5 in reviews because, they say, “The science sounds made up.” They don’t give any examples. It’s just a “feel.”

A statement that “The science sounds made up” is very unscientific. How can you criticize someone for not being scientific when you are just going by “sound” or “feel?” That’s not scientific. If you’re too lazy to check it out yourself, it would be best not to display your ignorance.

And some folks seem not to understand what fiction is. Why criticize made-up science in a FICTION book anyway? Fiction is ALL made up. That’s what it is! MADE UP. A novel is not a science text book.

Katie, however, is an assiduous researcher. If she has a character eating in a restaurant in NYC, she goes on line or calls them and checks the menu for the day the character ate there to be sure they served that day what she had her character eat. She even called The Johnson Space Center to discuss how they run their cafeterias for that scene in her 2017 novel, WHAT GOES UP. Although she says she did make up flying through XD space in What Goes Up, because it’s FICTION!

So what, you say. Isn’t this a blog about old people and how they can still do good faith stuff? Yes, and the first thing you have to know about old people is that we never stop being parents, regardless of how old our kids get!

I think that is the task of old people, even those who have not raised children in their own homes, to be loving parents to all the children of the world.

When my older sister’s husband, Dick Lindquist died, much too young, people noted that “he loved children, anybody’s children, any age.”

What better legacy to leave?

BTW, since you know that Katie is an assiduous researcher, you know she did not make up the science in Learning to Swear in America. She says, “Tell the chief scientist for Homeland Security that it’s made-up science. He’s the one who told me how to do it.” [1]

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] Also the FBI knows her by name, which sort of makes me glad we don’t have the same name anymore.

*****

Russian boy genius Yuri Strelnikov is a 17 year old with a PhD in Physics. The Americans recruit him when they discover an asteroid is blazing toward earth on a collision course with Los Angeles, where NASA has assembled the best and brightest to figure a way out of this deadly impact. Yuri has only a few days to work the math, find a solution, and then convince those much older to accept his anti-matter plan. He meets the quirky teen girl, Dovie, and her equally quirky family, and finds there are more reasons to save the earth than just winning a Nobel Prize.

So goes Katie Kennedy’s marvelous Learning to Swear in America, published by Bloomsbury, which also publishes lesser authors, like JK Rowling. It has received a rare star review from Publisher’s Weekly and another star review from BCCB [Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books]. It’s on B&N’s, Bustle’s, and PopCrush’s “Most Anticipated” list, and Goodreads “Best New for the Month” list. An IndieNext pick. Listed by American Book Sellers as one of their Top Ten new releases. Available in print, audio, and e-book, from your friendly independent book store, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, etc.

THE LAST SERMON [10-18-16]

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

I have preached my last sermon.

There are certain unnamed people who will laugh when they read this. They have heard it before, and it wasn’t quite true. That was because it was I who had decided that I would preach no more forever. This time, it is the world that has decided I shall preach no more. That’s different.

Preaching has been a major part of my identity since I was nineteen. It felt right, because I was pretty good at it. It made me use all my abilities, to interpret the Gospel in a way that people could not only understand but feel, in a way that opened the door for folks to come into the presence of God and to live in the way of Christ. That was satisfying.

Of course, being retired, I haven’t preached on an every-Sunday basis for a long time. I have done interims, from a month to a year, but most of my preaching was a Sunday here or there, when the real preacher needed a break.

One of those occasionals was not a Sunday morning, but a Thursday night. A couple of weeks ago, Joan Tuttle Smoke, the first of my “children in the ministry,” was installed as the new priest at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Bedford, IN. She’s officially retired, but serves part-time so that the small but active St. John’s congregation can have a pastor in residence. It was a great honor to preach at her installation.

It also is a nice closing of the circle of my preaching, from when I graduated seminary and became the campus minister at Indiana State University, where Joan was a student, to now.

It feels strange to think that I am no longer a preacher, but the world does not clamber for old preachers. Nor should it. There are plenty of young preachers who speak the language of this generation in a way that old preachers cannot. It’s okay for old preachers to sit down and listen for a change. Besides, Helen sat by herself in church for fifty years. She deserves to have someone to help her hold the hymnal.  

As I think about giving up preaching, though, I realize this giving-up has been the story of my life. I have given up many things that were important to my identity but had lived out their proper time. Degrees, for instance. I have ten years of higher education. I loved taking classes and working on degrees. Yes, I have done lots of “continuing education,” but all the schools in the world got together and said I could have no more degrees. Sports. I loved being an athlete, but I had to give up basketball and golf and long distance running and softball and pickle ball. I loved them all, but each in turn became impossible. Music. I have always thought of myself as a musician, but I have not picked up an instrument for many years.  

I suspect your life story is the same, with different particulars. It’s the way of life, and each time we have to give up some activity from which we get our identity, it reminds us that the one true lasting identity is simply that of human being, God’s child. Eventually, all doing comes to an end, but being remains. That’s good news.

I’ll see you in the pew. I’ll be holding a hymnal with a good-looking woman.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmai.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 GREENBRIER FIX [10-17-16]

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

On the way to church yesterday, Helen and I crossed Greenbriar Ave., which made me think of the Greenbrier van that ate my comb.

As I thought about it, I could not remember: was the Greenbrier made by Chevrolet or some different car maker? So I fired up the Google machine to find out. Yes, it was a Chevy, one of those long passenger vans.

That’s the way we old people think, “firing up the Google machine,” even if we don’t talk like that, for fear they’ll put us in “the home," because we grew up and spent most of our lives in a mechanical age, before everything was electronic, digital, computerized.

The Greenbrier was definitely not electronic. It wasn’t even very mechanical. It was a denizen of DePauw University, in Greencastle, IN, and Sam Kirk, the chaplain at DePauw, and I, the campus minister at Indiana State U and Rose Polytechnic in Terre Haute, were taking a Greenbrier load of students to a Methodist Student Movement conference in Cleveland.

Not very fast, though, because the transmission stopped working. We pulled off at a rest stop. A student crawled under the Greenbrier and found that a little link, like a cotter pin, had gone missing, so that the drive train was disconnected. The gear shift could not get its messages through to the back axle. We looked through everything in the van to find a replacement for that little link. The only thing that fit was a tooth from my comb.

I didn’t really need a comb. I still had hair, but this was 1965, when all guys, except violinists, had crewcuts. But I carried a lot of stuff in my pockets, just in case. Like an extra handkerchief. I started carrying it in high school, because the girls I dated cried a lot. So I had a comb. It’s a good thing, too, because those comb teeth weren’t very strong, and every few miles, the linkage would come undone again. We would pull over, and that poor boy would crawl under the van and break off another tooth from my comb and insert it into the cotter pin hole. It’s a good thing I didn’t play the violin.

Teenage grandson Joe said a couple of years ago, “I wish I lived in an age when a guy could fix his own stuff.”

I’m sorry he did not get that chance, because it was a good age. I used to rotate the tires on my cars, and lubricate them, and change the transmission fluid and engine oil and filters and fan belts. I even removed the engine and ground the valves, with my father, on a 1950 Chevy. It was cheaper, and it was satisfying.

I think the change from machine to computer is producing and requiring a spiritual change we have not even begun to recognize or understand. I think the task for each of us is to connect those two, and I hope I still have a few teeth left in my comb.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

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

OPEN DOORS 10-16-16

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

I was up late last night, because we went to a Carrie Newcomer concert. So I got up late this morning, too late to get ready to go to church, because it takes my surgically altered semi-colon a long time to get ready to go some place. But I’m going anyway, even though it’s risky, because I need to “enter his gates with praise,” and because my church has open doors, to the restroom as well as to the sanctuary.

Carrie said that when she tells people she’s a Hoosier, it opens doors. The banjo player questioned, because banjo players are like that, if the doors that were opened to her when folks learned she was a Hoosier were so she could come in or so that she would leave. This obviously had not been rehearsed, and the usually unflappable Carrie was flapped. She had no answer. She is a Quaker, and assumes the best in people, and apparently had not considered that people might be opening the doors to her in both directions.

We went to the concert with folks who have been pleased, although a bit embarrassed at their pleasure, because a certain woman in their open-door church finally used the open church doors to leave.

There is almost always someone in a church who claims God speaks directly to them [Yes, I know, the singular “they” grates on me, too.] and so they know what the whole church must do, about anything and everything, even if everyone else in the church thinks differently. God finally got disgusted with her congregation’s refusal to acknowledge her direct line and told her leave. It appears that she is becoming Pentecostal, which is probably a good choice, because Pentecostals know how to handle folks like that better than Methodists do.

I think it was Lyle Schaller I heard say that at any given time, there are some folks who are just in the wrong church. If you are in the wrong church, it’s no sin to leave.

I once pastored a large church with open doors. It was in a town that had a large number of meat-grinder churches. When you walk through their doors, they put you through their grinder until you look and think exactly like everyone else. That works with some, but some get badly damaged in the grinding. That was when they came through our doors to find healing.

Sooner or later, though, they would rather shame-facedly say to me, “We appreciate so much that your doors were open when we were hurting. But your doors are too open. We are okay now, and we feel more comfortable in a church where the doors are not so wide, so we’re using the open doors to leave.”

That always hurt me, because we had become friends, and because it was a little bit hypocritical, and because pastors hate to “lose” people for our own selfish reasons, but it always pleased me, too. Doors are open to come in OR to go out.

This morning, I’ll use the open doors of our church to enter for healing for my distracted soul, and then I’ll use them to go out to “work for the night is coming.”

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

FIRE IN THE BELLY 10-15-16

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

Art Poovey was the grayest man I ever knew. Every day, he wore a gray suit, gray shirt, gray tie, gray sox, gray shoes. He was a Lutheran theology professor at Wartburg Seminary.

We were at the same lunch table one day, chili day. On the table was a rather large bowl of chili powder. Art took the spoon out of the communal bowl of chili powder and upended said bowl over his own bowl of chili, until the chili was covered by a mound of chili powder.

He saw the rest of us staring at him.

“Oh, this is nothing,” he said. “I pastored a church in San Anotnio when I was young and learned to eat it this way.”

Never assume that just because a man is old and gray, that there is no fire in his belly.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

WORD WITHOUT WORDS

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

Yesterday I mentioned that one spiritual growth thing I am trying to do is to grow closer to God, experience God, without writing about it.

There is nothing wrong with writing about encounters with God. I myself have profited much by reading the musings of others on this topic. I remember especially how important it was to me to read Rudolph Otto’s The Idea of the Holy in philosophy class in college, how it opened up my mind as well as my spirit to possibilities of the divine, of “the other,” that I would not have otherwise considered.

For some folks, writing itself is the process of opening to God.

I find, though, that when I am meditating, trying to be open to God, experience the numinous, if I am thinking about how I might write about it, how to express it so others might understand, I forget about God and concentrate on the writing.

Of course, it’s possible to write only for one’s own understanding, but I have been writing for others for so long that it just seems impossible for me to write without wanting to do it in a way that communicates to others.

One of the tasks of old age is finally to understand ourselves. That’s a point of self-understanding for me, that I need to learn to experience God without writing about it.

So, I’m sorry to say it, but, too bad. Don’t expect any help from me. When it comes to experiencing God, you’re on your own. Except, of course, for God.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

NEARER MY GOD, TO THEE… OR NOT

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

I am trying to do two spiritual growth things as I age. One is to learn to come into the presence of God, experience God, without writing about it. The other is to learn to use interruptions as a way of experiencing God, even interruptions in my spiritual growth time.

Early is a good spiritual growth time, a time to work on experiencing God, before interruptions from the world, and I’m up early, before anyone else in the whole world, except the garbage guys.

Just as I was “getting in sync with the universe,” something I try to do as I lie in bed in that interregnum between sleeping and waking, I noticed some red numerals staring at me from the table beside the bed, trying to notify me that I had stayed up too late last night and so was in bed almost two hours later than usual and that it was time for the garbage guys. Way before the universe was in harmony, I had to jump up, get dressed, not even taking the time to mismatch my plaids, and take the bag of garbage and the five containers of recycling, neatly separated by category, out to the curb. I did not get closer to God in that process, even though it’s in the early morning hours that I try to get closer to God, and I am working on using the interruptions for spiritual growth, because interruptions… well, they are interruptive.

So, after repeated visits to the curb, on an unseasonably chilly morning, I did last night’s dishes as I perked coffee and mixed a bowl of cereal and fruit and folk medicines [turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, flax seed, locally-grown honey]. Not closer to God.

Finally, I am ensconced on my sofa, with my breakfast, and I have to go to the bathroom…

…and then I have a sneezing fit…

…and then there is a strange noise in the wall…

…and then I get a text ding…

…and I figure, “I can write about this,” about how I am using the interruptions to come closer to God, except I am not, and then remember that I am supposed to be using this time to come closer to God without writing about it…

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

A PRAYER FOR RUNNERS

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

Bless, O God, we pray, those who run this day.

Bless those who run for fun, bless those who run because they must.

Bless those who run in races, bless those who run the bases.

Bless those who run for office.

Bless those who run from home   Bless those who run back to home.

Bless those who run long distances in loneliness.

Bless those who run off… at the mouth.

Bless those who run around. Especially Sue. [1]

Bless those who run silent and run deep. [2]

Bless those who run wild. Bless those who run in circles. Bless those who run “like a chicken with its head cut off.” [3]

Bless those who run so fast, who make such good time as they run, but who have no idea of where their running will take them.

Bless those who run from war.  Bless those who run from danger. Bless those who run toward danger. Bless those who run from bullies. Bless those who run to help  

Bless those who run from temptation and addiction. Bless those who run from happiness. 

Bless those who cannot run with legs, but run in hope and memory

Especially bless those of us who run from you. Post, we pray, someone along the way, with a sign, a sign written so large and well that those who run may read it [4], a sign that says, TURN AROUND AND RETURN TO WHERE YOU BELONG. Give us eyes to see the sign, and feet to make the turn. And someone to cheer for us as we go.

Bless, O God, we pray, those who run this day.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Occasionally I am asked to do the pastoral prayer at St. Mark’s UMC, where we live now, in Bloomington, IN. I wrote this originally for that purpose, but it’s the kind of prayer, I’m afraid, that makes folks wander instead of wonder, so it’s more appropriate here.

1] Dion and the Belmonts

2] Edward L. Beach, Jr.

3] Grandma “Maggie May” Pond

4] Habakkuk 2:2.

SOME OF US WRITE-a poem

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

Some of us write to scare

away the unknown things

with the glowing eyes

in the darkness

just outside our reach,

as though a scribble

on a page can be a wall

a wolf can’t jump,

an avalanche can’t top.

Some of us write.

Some simply pray.

JRMcF

FORGIVING THE ACCEPTABLE

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

Forgiveness is the most difficult task for humans, and thus it is the thing Jesus talked about more than anything else, except for money. I think he talked about money so much because most of us especially need a lot of forgiveness for the way we relate to money.

Forgiveness is hard, and we don’t want to do it, so, in order to avoid having to forgive people, we choose their unforgivable qualities to discriminate against them.

For instance, if Donald Trump asks forgiveness for lying, for hypocrisy, for greed, for cheating, for fraud, for sexual promiscuity, for divorce, for meanness, for chicanery, for being a bad citizen, for refusing to pay his share of the taxes for the common good, for demeaning the poor and handicapped, for willful ignorance, for duplicity, for taking advantage of the poor and gullible while claiming to be a Christian, for taking bankruptcies so he would not have to pay the small business owners to whom he owed money while claiming to be extremely rich, for disrespecting all who disagree with him—any or all of those--I have a responsibility as a Christian to forgive him. After all, Jesus taught me to pray, “Forgive me my sins as I forgive those who sin against me,” and I pray such every day.

I cannot forgive Trump, however, for his parents, for his place of birth, for being white and old and straight and male, just as Hillary Clinton cannot be forgiven for her parents or her place of birth, for being white and old and straight and female, because they have no control over those attributes. There is nothing to forgive. They are unforgivable.

Something about which we have no choice cannot be a sin, and thus cannot be forgiven. It can only be accepted, and Jesus only put into that prayer about forgiving the forgivable, not accepting the unacceptable [Unless maybe you count Thy kingdom come and Thy will be done and lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil and Thine is the power].

It’s a clever arrangement, in order to avoid having to obey God and forgive—be against only those qualities which cannot be forgiven. Once again, God, who is remarkably naive at times about these things, underestimated our human ability to find a way to be unkind to one another.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The problem with writing a blog for old people, CHRIST IN WINTER, is an ever-diminishing population, of people who cannot remember to go to the blog site.

I tweet as yooper1721.

Here I come to save the day! No, not Mighty Mouse. Yuri Strelnikov, the boy genius of Katie McFarland Kennedy’s delightful Learning to Swear in America. Buy it or borrow it, but read this book! [What do you mean, you’re not old enough to remember Mighty Mouse?”