THE END ZONE—a poem R, 8-31-17

This last day of summer is also the first day of football season, with ESPN’s Game Day crew in town to broadcast IU’s victory over Ohio State. It seems a logical day for this poem…

THE END ZONE—a poem      R, 8-31-17

It is a curse

to be good at everything

but not good enough

at anything

to receive a high five

from the best

who huddle close together

showing us their butts

as we who are but

good cock an ear

to catch a phrase

we might use

to call a play

at some far time

on a field of ragged grass

to gain the end zone

no one knows is there

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

USE IT UP W, 8-30-17

They say we use the first half of our lives building up and the last half using up. That’s certainly true about how we accumulate stuff, at least the first part. Usually we don’t start the last half, using up, until we have to, way past when we should have.

When the parents of my friend Paul moved from their huge two story plus a basement farm house to a small apartment in town, he took so many loads of stuff to St. Vincent DePaul and Salvation Army that they barred him from ever coming again. He said, “I never bring anything into the house anymore without thinking first, how will I get rid of this?”

That’s probably a good mantra for any of us. I personally, in these using-up years, take the attitude of “One in, two out,” whether it’s a sheet of paper or a book or a t-shirt or an overnight sleeper. [The last one gets sort of tricky; some folks seem to think they belong here.]

It’s sort of pathetic, how much stuff we have, so much that our biggest problem is how to get rid of it. We need to start using up much sooner than we do.

When Helen and I got married, at the end of college, everything we owned, the two of us together, fit into Bill C. Brown’s big 1958 Chevy. We drove a tiny lemon yellow English Ford, slightly larger than a Smart car or a Cooper Mini, but not big enough for our stuff. Bill graciously traded cars with us whenever we needed to move. When we moved to a condo, 56 years later, we had to get rid of a whole Habitat for Humanity Restore truck full of stuff just to fit into a moving truck that would hold six or seven 1958 Chevys.

We have friends who have huge houses crammed with stuff. They are old, too old now, at least they think, to do the work of getting rid of stuff. “We’ll just let the kids do it,” they say. That’s really unfair to the kids.

Also, there are certain kinds of stuff you’ve been lugging around that the kids cannot get rid of for you. There is a lot of stuff you don’t need. Emotional and religious and relational stuff as well as physical stuff. Get rid of it!

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Katie Kennedy is the rising star in YA lit. [She is also our daughter.] She is published by Bloomsbury, which also publishes lesser authors, like JK Rowling. Her latest book is, What Goes Up. It’s published in hardback, paperback, audio, and electronic, from B&N, Amazon, etc.

Speaking of writing, my most recent book, VETS, about four homeless and handicapped Iraqistan veterans, is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BOKO, Powell’s, etc. It’s published by Black Opal Books.

ALWAYS THE DUMB ONE 8-29-17

“This farm isn’t big enough to support you and your brothers, too. You’re the dumb one, so you’ll have to go to college.” That was what Walter Khlem’s father told him as he graduated high school.

Walter was born in 1900. He grew up on a farm in Iowa, with several brothers. It was a time when sons got married and built a house on “the home place” and went to farming with their fathers. Even with buying some more acreage, or renting some, and with the more labor-intensive farming of the day, a farm needed only so many hands. Walter’s hands were not included.

So he went to college. Studied agriculture. And industrial arts. Taught them. Got a PhD. Taught those subjects in college. Became the Dean of the College of Applied Technology at Eastern IL U. In retirement he owned a bunch of apartment buildings. Did all the maintenance on them himself.

In his last year of life, he told me that story. “I did okay, by going to college,” he said, “but everyone back home always thought I was the dumb one.”

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

NO REGERTS 7-28-17

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

  

At first I thought the Snickers advertisement was a big mistake. It seemed backwards, negative, likely to accomplish the opposite of what it was trying to do.

The kinky-looking tattoo girl is working on the biceps of a big mean-looking biker type while eating a candy bar. When she is done, he looks at his arm with incredulity, because she has written on his arm, in permanent ink, NO REGERTS.

            “Sorry,” she shrugs. “I was eating a Snickers.”

            THAT is an adequate excuse for permanently disfiguring someone? Isn’t that an argument against eating the candy bar?

            Well, yes, to the first question, and well, no to the second one, because the only thing that really matters is my pleasure in the moment, and eating a candy bar is a pleasurable moment.

            Advertisers are often way ahead of the rest of us in understanding, and creating, the ethos of the time. The ethos of our time is: My immediate emotional satisfaction is all that matters—in family, sex, relationships, religion, politics, business, money, power… We relate and vote and buy on that one theme: what will satisfy me emotionally right now? Not what will be good for me in the long run, or what is good for others, or what is good for society or the environment, but what will pleasure me, right now.

            So NO REGERTS is a brilliant advertisement.

To someone like me, to almost anyone at the rational level, it looks like it’s negative and will drive people away. Who wants to be part of a mistake? Well, it’s not a mistake if it makes me feel good, regardless of what happens to someone else. That is the message that comes across at the emotional level, at the level of the ethos of our time.

            But it’s even more clever than that. It’s also saying that it’s okay to feel like that, to have momentary pleasure as life’s goal, because life should be without regrets. Subtly, although it’s misspelled, we’re told that we should have no regrets.

            If you have no regrets, you are dead or a sociopath. You have done things you should regret, hurt people you should not have hurt.

            According to Snickers, though, you get over that not by asking forgiveness or making amends but by getting the pleasure a candy bar provides.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] Having met and married while at IU in Bloomington, IN, we became Bloomarangs in May of 2015, moving back to where we started, closing the circle. We no longer live in the land of winter, but I am in the winter of my years, and so I am still trying to understand Christ in winter.

LOOKING THROUGH THE CENTRAL LENS 8-27-17

I have a 5 foot 3 friend who was repeatedly raped by a 6 foot 7 man who told her over and over that when he was done with her, he would kill her. Others intervened and she was saved. The police detective who “saved” her then used her as his sex slave. She became pregnant. She privately had an abortion. She is a devout woman, and was in church the day her elderly, rosy-cheeked priest, a man she adored, preached strongly against abortion. She said to him at the door, “But women who need abortions will go to the back alleys if abortion is illegal, and some will die.” “As well they should,” her beloved priest told her. [I heard her tell this story in a public setting.]

I thought about this when the Susan G. Komen Foundation [SGK] made the decision to stop its funding for Planned Parenthood’s [PP] breast cancer program. Supporters of PP said the defunding was a political decision because PP also provides abortion services. When backlash caused SGK to put PP back into its budget, people against PP said it was a political decision. It WAS a political decision. Both times.

Komen made the mistake of losing its central vision. Komen is about one thing, breast cancer. When it began to look through the lens of abortion and politics and fund raising and “investigations,” it lost its focus.

It had pressures, of course. Folks who see only through one lens want everyone else to look through that exclusive lens, too. “Pro-life” forces saw the chance to defund PP abortion programs by getting SGK to stop funding PP’s breast cancer programs. “Pro-choice” advocates pushed back.

Abortion is an important issue. It needs to be debated and discussed. There are appropriate venues for doing that. Breast cancer is not one of them.

“Now that I have cancer…” that was the way I started every sentence after my 53^rd birthday, because everything was different. Cancer was the hinge that closed the door on my former life and opened a door into a very scary future. Cancer gave me a new lens for looking at life, and that new lens gave me a chance to get back into myself, to see myself whole, to recapture my central vision.

People who look through a single lens see everything through that lens. That is okay. That may be their central vision. But because I look at life through a specific lens doesn’t mean you have to.

Not everything can best be viewed through the lens of abortion rights, or gun rights, or gay rights. Not everything is about taxes or national security.

I’m a cancer survivor. I’m the father and brother-in-law of breast cancer survivors. I’m the son and brother of cancer victims. I’m the brother and grandfather and husband of cancer survivors. I don’t want the vision of folks whose primary mission, who look through the lens of cancer cure, to have their vision distorted. But that does not need to be the vision lens for everyone.

Sen. John Kyl famously stated on the Senate floor that abortion “…is well over 90% of what Planned Parenthood does.” PP says abortion is about 3% of its services. Independent estimates put it at between 3 and 10%. Kyl later said his statement “…was not meant to be factual.”

When Donald Trump weighed in on abortion while a presidential candidate, he was excoriated for being unprepared. He said that women who get abortions should be punished. The pro-birth forces have always said publicly that the goal is to make abortion criminal, to criminalize only abortion providers, not abortion recipients, while fully intending to get to the point that abortion recipients would be criminalized, too. The Donald did not understand that political forces don’t want some goals revealed publicly.

Which lens you use makes all the difference. Pro-birth folks start by saying abortion is murder. Pro-choice folk start by saying women have a right to control their own bodies. Theologically, if you start with the power of

God, you get predestination. If you start with the love of God, you get grace.

When Christians consider a matter such as abortion, it is important to look through the central lens—God—and not through some more narrow, secondary lens stuck in front of our eyes by some political force.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I’m not at all satisfied with this little essay. I have not said what needs to be said very clearly at all, but it’s the best I can do. Sorry.

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 by AndrewsMcmeel. It is available in paperback, ebook, audio, Czech, and Japanese.

THE FINAL FURLONG-a poem 8-26-17

So eager to start the doing

race horse in morning’s chute

a boy gone gray

with vague dreams

of races run

and won

Anxious more than eager

full knowing time is short

and legs are weak and eyes

are dim and the finish line

is a dicey whim

The jockey’s fat

and whails the whip

like a disco

dervish dandy

The old gray horse is ready

Crowd noises fade away

The final furlong…

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

THANK YOU TOO MUCH 8-25-17

That’s what my father would say when someone was being too helpful: “Thank you TOO much.”

He brought it on himself, that problem of people who are TOO helpful, by being blind. He looked like he needed help. Often, he did. But he was the world’s most independent man. He would rather walk off the edge into the abyss than have someone lead him away.

Now it’s happening to me, and I bring it on myself, too. I’m not blind, but I do look like I need help. There isn’t much I can do about that.

So when I was wandering through the Indiana University Union Building yesterday, the middle-aged book store manager decided he would help me. It was a good thought on his part. I looked out of place. You don’t get many people my age in there, especially one who staggers while he wanders.

But I have been wandering in there for 62 years, longer than he’s been alive. Sure, I can never remember which floor the Tudor Room or the Starbucks is on, but it makes no difference. There are escalators and stairways. I enjoy wandering until I find the right place, enjoy watching the hurrying students, remembering when I could hurry, and had to.

He asked if he could help. I said I was just going to the Tudor Room. He decided to direct me. I patiently listened and thanked him. But I wasn’t going there to eat, just to check their hours. So he saw me again, later, in another hall and decided I was lost so wanted to give me Tudor Room directions again. I said, “No, now I’m on my way to Starbucks.” So he gave me directions to Starbucks.

I actually went down to the basement and out the back door and walked clear around that whole big building so I would not encounter him again. That was fun.

None of this was a problem. I had time. Sometimes, though, you don’t have time. The people who are TOO helpful, who give you help not only when you don’t need it but when you don’t want it, just get in your way and slow you down.

But, you know, they are still better than the ones who get in your way and slow you down on purpose, who want to make life miserable for you, because you are the wrong color or gender or nationality or religion, who not only want to give you directions to hell but want to lead you there.

So, hurrah for those who give too much help. Thank you TOO much.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Yes, I know I promised to stop writing for a year while I try to be a real Christian instead of just a professional Xn. But this isn’t very professional, is it?

I tweet as yooper1721.

Katie Kennedy is the rising star in YA lit. [She is also our daughter.] She is published by Bloomsbury, which also publishes lesser authors, like JK Rowling. Her new book is What Goes Up. It’s published in paper, audio, and electronic, and available from B&N, Amazon, etc.

Speaking of writing, my most recent book, VETS, about four homeless and handicapped Iraqistan veterans, is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BOKO, Powell’s, etc. It’s published by Black Opal Books.

FIRST RESPONDERS 8-24-17

I am reluctant to use the title above, because your first response is likely to be that it is about police and EMTs and firefighters. Since it is about their opposites, your second response is to be mad at me for “pulling a fast one” on you. That’s okay, but please hear me out.

I was having lunch with my friend. I’ll call him Jerry. I had just gotten the news that the bishop was appointing me as Directing Minister in a large and prestigious church. I wanted to tell somebody in person, but that was forbidden, because the appointment had not yet been announced either in the congregation I was presently serving or the one to which I was going. I really wanted to tell someone, though, and I knew Jerry would keep his mouth shut.

In a restaurant’s back booth in the city where he was an associate pastor, over slightly droopy Italian beef sandwiches, I whispered to him my good news. His face fell. He put his sandwich down on his plate with two hands. “Why doesn’t anything good ever happen to me?” he asked the sandwich, in a voice not unlike Eeyore’s.   

He was a good friend. Still is. He’s still a person I would go to first with good news, were we still geographically close. I trust him. But his life had been difficult for several years. His first response was not to think that something good was happening for his friend, but that good things did not happen for him. When he finally did recognize that he was there with me and not just his sorry sandwich, he was genuinely happy for me. But it took a while.

That’s true with most of us most of the time. Our first response to anything is how it affects me, what it means to me, not to the person to whom it is actually happening. That’s why we laugh so hard at Sheldon Cooper of “The Big Bang Theory” on TV. His constant me-first first response is out there for all to see, and we recognize it. It’s funny because, unlike Sheldon, the rest of us pretend we aren’t like that.

I learned from that lunch with Jerry. I recognized something universal. It allowed me to make a step forward in understanding that it’s not all about me, that if it is happening to someone else, my first response needs to be not how I feel about it, or how it affects me, but how she feels about it, how it affects her.

That’s called maturity. As a group, a nation, a world, it’s called civilization. It’s possible to grow, from being totally self-centered to being only partially self-centered.

So many folks these days say that since it is natural—a part of our nature—to be selfishly self-centered, to respond first to and for ourselves, that is the way of the world and there is nothing that can be done about it so be yourself and let the most ruthless win as we go about our first responding, because if you don’t get yours first… and on and on…

They are right. It is natural. It is what Christians call “original sin.” Original because it is from the beginning of our lives. Christians also talk about redemption and salvation, that we can grow and mature beyond original sin into creatures who, although it may take a while, can do like the real first responders, the police and fire firefighters and EMTs, and go first to those who are in need to care for them.

Sure, we are never going to outgrow self-centeredness entirely. But a family or church or nation or world where our first response is to be kind and sensitive to one another part of the time is much better than one where our first response is never kind and sensitive to others. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

THE CHOICE, a poem 8-23-17

I have learned too late

that I always had a choice

but now that it is made

knees are stiff

and arms are short.

Yet the breeze still blows

   where it will

and the birds still sing

   for they are happy and free

and the rain still falls

   on the just and the unjust.

The choice still has a chance.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

TELL ME, JESUS- A poem 8-22-17

Tell me, Jesus, tell me

how, you found the courage

for the cross, but more

than just the cross

for it was a mere moment.

Tell me, Jesus, tell me

how you found the courage

for resurrection

knowing you had to go on

forever, listening

to us call your name.

A magic phrase,

that’s what you are now.

Did you know that was what

you would become forevermore?

How did you get the courage?

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

MISPLACED BLAME-a poem 8-14-17

When I get irritated

frustrated, downright angry

with myself

I take it out on others

That old man coming toward me

I don’t know him

but I am sure he voted for Trump

That young girl in the yellow

t-shirt I have never seen before—

the girl; I have seen yellow

t-shirts before—

is frivolous, I am sure

That dog peeing on the lawn…

…well, dogs are okay…

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

LOOKING BACK FOR GOD 8-13-17

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

O Father of light and leading,

            From the top of each rising hill

Let me cast my eye on the road gone by

            To mark the steps of thy will;

For the clouds that surround the present

            Shall leave this heart resigned,

When the joy appears in the path of tears

            That led through the days behind.

George Matheson, Devotional Selections from George Matheson, Andrew Kosten, Editor [Abingdon, New York and Nashville, 1962] Page 51.

It’s a fascinating take on the past-this poem-that we should use the vantage point of each hill not to look forward, but to look back, in order to see where God has been with us.

It is part of Matheson’s meditation on Matt. 11:28, “Come to me, you who are labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” He says that up to this point, Jesus was working out of pity, and so his work wearied him. But when the people, even as masses, became his friends, then there was rest, not fatigue, both for him and for them.

We almost always think of the high points as places from which to look forward. They are. That was the view of Moses on Mt. Nebo. But they are also vantage points for looking back, in order to see God at work.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

I have often extolled my old friend, Walt Wagener, as one who is expert at “blooming where he’s planted.” Once when I did so, Helen said, “I want to bloom BEFORE I’m planted.” So I started writing a book of meditations for old people, sort of like my book for cancer patients. I called it BLOOM BEFORE YOU’RE PLANTED. I was never able to get an agent or publisher interested in the idea, though, so I’m now using some of the “chapters” for that book in this blog.

A LINE ON THE LINES-a poem 8-12-17

I listened on the party line

Read between the lines

Colored outside the lines

Learned the symmetry of lines

Defined congruent lines

Drove beside the lines

Played between the lines

Stood at attention in a line

Waited in a line

Tried my best lines

Heard the lineman still on the line

Learned and ran my lines

In pleasant places fell the lines

In the sand I drew a line

And finally wrote these lines

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

LIVING TWO LIVES-a poem 8-11-17

I lived two lives, he said

One open to the world, and useful

One known only to God and me

But maybe it was not I who lived two lives

But two different souls within my body

One eager to be part of the world

The other in a world of nothing

Then he walked away

I was not sure which life

Went with him

And which remained

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

AGAINSTERS 8-10-17

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

Bob Butts drove in from Brown County yesterday to have lunch. The cleaning lady was at their house, and he needed an escape. We went to the Clover Leaf. He’s not a big baseball fan but listened politely as I complained about the Reds’ pitching. Then we got down to the serious business of deciding which teams to be against in the football season.

It didn’t take us long to decide. We’re faithful; we don’t change our againstness much. Bob is from Mississippi and is a Mississippi State fan and is always against Notre Dame and Ol Miss. I’m from Indiana and an IU grad and always against Alabama and Purdue. Sometimes we have to make an adjustment, like if ND were to play Ol Miss, or Alabama were to play Purdue. But the main thing is to know who you’re against.

Againsters can watch any game and have a team to cheer for. No, being “for,” we have only one team to support, Mississippi State for Bob and IU for me. As many bumper stickers in my state say, “My two favorite teams are Indiana and whoever is playing Purdue.”

It’s just fun as football fans, but a whole lot of folks are againsters in all of life, be it politics or gender or religion or race or music or books or shopping or cars or… Being “for” is not satisfying for them. They don’t get their satisfaction by seeing something or someone win; they get their satisfaction by seeing something or someone lose.

It’s fun on a Saturday afternoon with nothing on the line. It’s a disaster all the rest of the time with the world on the line.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Yes, I know I promised to stop writing for a year while I try to be a real Christian instead of just a professional Xn. But this isn’t very professional, is it?

THE CHOICE IS CLEAR 8-9-17

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

That was what Alice said at the end of our counseling session: “The choice is clear, isn’t it?” I agreed with her.

I thought I was a good counselor in those days, and I was sure I had done a good job with Alice. She had come to see me because she could not choose between Charlie and Ted, each of whom wanted her to marry him. I carefully led her through the good and bad qualities of each.

Charlie was kind, thoughtful, intelligent, industrious, and caring. Ted was negligent, sloppy, unaware, undependable, care-free.

“The choice is clear, isn’t it? It has to be Ted.”

Alice had her mind made up before she ever came to see me. Her brain told her she should marry Charlie, but her heart wanted Ted, for whatever reasons. She needed to justify her choice, though, by seeing the locally well-known counselor so that she would have cover for what would look to her parents and all her friends like a bad choice.

People usually know when they are making a bad choice, but they want to do it anyway, because it satisfies their emotions even though it contradicts their brains. So they seek out some sort of cover—a person, a theory, something someone else did, a statistic, an anecdote—so that they can argue that they have a rational reason, when they really just want to make the choice that makes them feel good.

William James said, “Where the will and the imagination are in conflict, the imagination always wins.”

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

Spoiler alert: If you have read this column in the last 3 months, all that follows is old news:

Following the critical and marketing success of her first Young Adult novel, daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America, is What Goes Up, a July 18, 2017 release. She is published by Bloomsbury, which also publishes lesser known but promising young authors, like JK Rowling.

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 by AndrewsMcMeel. It is available from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, etc. in hardback, paperback, audio, Japanese, and Czech.

HOSTILE TO LIFE 8-8-17

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

 The default position for many people is hostility. Their immediate reaction to anything is hostility.

Where does hostility come from? Theologians point to “original sin.” Other’s just say “nature.” Either way, it’s part of our makeup. Some, though, claim that we are born innocent and that hostility is learned, through being mistreated when we are young or taught to despise those who are different. Regardless of its source, so many people are hostile in all they do and think.

There is a difference between paranoia and hostility, just as there is between competition and hostility.

Paranoids are not primarily hostile; primarily they are afraid.

You don’t have to be hostile to compete. Some folks can compete, quite successfully, without being hostile either to the other competitors or to themselves. Many cannot compete without being hostile, because they are always hostile.

There is a difference between aggressive and passive hostiles. Passives are afraid to express their hostilities, for fear of reprisal. They assume that since they are hostile they will be met with hostility. They don’t want to deal with “blowback,” so want others to fight battles for them, to express their hostility for them.

I encounter this often among cancer patients. Normally it is a good thing if a cancer patient is a “fighter.” I meet many patients, though, who are hostile but not fighters. They want others to fight cancer for them—doctors, nurses, “prayer warriors,” medicines, chemo, radiation. They do not want to pray or meditate or be positive or go to support groups or have a decent attitude. They don’t want to do anything except sit back and scowl and say to others, “It’s your job to make me well.”

These are the folks who vote for hostile leaders--the politicians who are hostile to the world, to other political parties, to other nations, to the environment, to other races and religions. Passive hostile citizens are afraid to step up and confront their foes with hostility, in part because they are afraid of retaliation but in part because they know it’s wrong. Either way, they want someone else to be hostile for them.

It’s like when I say, “We won,” about the IU basketball team. “We” did not win. “They” won. The players won, not I. I bask in their glory, though, because I identify with them. So it is with passive hostiles who glory in the hostility of their leaders.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] We no longer live in the land of perpetual winter, but I am in the winter of my years, so I think it’s okay to use that phrase. I don’t know why I put that © on; it’s hardly necessary.

Katie Kennedy is the rising star in YA lit. [She is also our daughter.] She is published by Bloomsbury, which also publishes lesser authors, like JK Rowling. Her new book, What Goes Up, comes out July 18. It’s published in paper, audio, and electronic, and available for pre-order even now, from B&N, Amazon, Powell’s, etc.

BETWEEN THE LINES 8-2-17

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

Our church’s parking lot has new lines. Not just lines, but everything is new—the blacktop and the base, too.

It’s a big parking lot. It took a lot of money and ten days’ time to renew it.

Our parking lot gets a lot of use. Non-profits use our facilities for free. That’s our church policy. Every day in our building there are support groups of all types, social service groups, Scouts, ecumenical groups studying one thing or another or working on some project, even Bible study groups from other churches where their facilities are too small. It’s actually hard for us to schedule our own groups from time to time. That’s a good problem to have.

It had been 25 years since the parking lot had been resurfaced. It had gotten so much use. It was in bad shape. It got so bad that the trustees began to name the pot holes after the 7 Deadly Sins, plus names like Lucifer and Hades.

We gave a lot of extra money, because it’s hard to work extra projects like that into the regular budget. It wasn’t enough, because once they started resurfacing, they found out that the bed was bad, too, so it had to be redone. More time, more money. More lines.

Well, probably not more lines, but you can actually see the lines now. We usually got into lined spaces before, but the old yellow lines were so faded and crumbling that we got between them, far enough from other cars that we didn’t bang doors, from memory. Now the lines are bright and white.

There was one Sunday when the lot was paved but there were no lines yet. In worship our pastor blurted out, “You people are terrible at parking without lines.”

It was true. There were cars all over the place, pointing in all directions. It was a mess.

Yes, lines can be a nuisance. They can stifle creativity. But there are times when they are really necessary and helpful. Sometimes it is necessary to live between the lines. I give thanks for good lines.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

Spoiler Alert: If you have read this column in the last 3 months, all that follows is old news:

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] We no longer live in the land of perpetual winter, but I am in the winter of my years, so I think it’s okay to use that phrase. I don’t know why I put that © on; it’s hardly necessary.

Katie Kennedy is the rising star in YA lit. [She is also our daughter.] She is published by Bloomsbury, which also publishes lesser authors, like JK Rowling. Her new book, What Goes Up, comes out July 18. It’s published in paper, audio, and electronic, and available for pre-order even now, from B&N, Amazon, Powell’s, etc.

My most recent novel is VETS, about four homeless Iraqistan veterans accused of murdering a VA doctor, is available from your local independent book store, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, KOBO, Books-A-Million, Black Opal Books, and almost any place else that sells books. $8.49 or $12.99 for paperback, according to which site you look at, and $3.99 for Kindle. Free if you can get your library to buy one.

AUGUST GRASS, a poem 8-1-17

I love this August grass

Just the way it is

Short and dry

Tied up with the baling twine

Of memory

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

When I post a poem, I always put “a poem” in the title as a warning for those who would rather skip reading my first-of-the-morning musings.

August grass where I live doesn’t really get “short and dry” until later in the month, but I thought an August poem was an appropriate way to start the month.