Iron Mountain ski jump

Iron Mountain ski jump

Thursday, November 30, 2017

THE SECRET CODE IN THIS BLOG? [R, 11-30-17]

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

I don’t check the “comments” section of this blog very often, because there usually aren’t any. Some folks have said they tried to comment but BlogSpot would not cooperate. Even if BlogSpot were more amenable, there just isn’t much reason to comment. Recently, though, I did check the comments, and found something quite interesting.

It is in the comments section of my CIW for March 15, on having a happy childhood in old age. There are a whole lot of comments in Arabic there. I had Google translate them. They seem to be a number of businesses, at least some in Egypt, trying to convince one another to buy their products.

Doesn’t seem to make any sense on an English language blog with a name like Christ In Winter, unless you are communicating in code [We have refrigerators for sale. What caliber do you want…] in a place on the internet where no one is likely to notice.

Daughter Katie Kennedy has first-name friends in the CIA, because she calls the CIA to ask about how to shoot down an asteroid and how to detonate a remote-controlled rocket and such for her books, in the YA contemporary sci-fi genre. They say they are used to her, but I am reserving every-other-Sunday visiting hours, just in case.

Anyway, she had one of their analysts look at it. Says she doesn’t think it is anything untoward but that I should report it, anyway, just to be careful. So I have. Which probably means that since you read this blog, you are now on a couple of lists, one in Arabic and one in CIA code. You’re welcome.

JRMcF

Katie Kennedy is the rising star in YA lit. 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. Also, check out Learning to Swear In America, about teen-age Russian genius physicist Yuri, who must save Los Angeles from an asteroid strike, while also meeting American hippie girl Dovie, and…

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

It’s neat; in writing circles, Katie is no longer known as my daughter. Now I am known as her father.


Wednesday, November 29, 2017

IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU [W, 11-29-17]


On a popular book site, a reader-reviewer gave Katie Kennedy’s LEARNING TO SWEAR IN AMERICA only one star, although almost every other reader gave it five stars. The one-star reviewer said, “I’m just so tired of contemporary sci-fi.” Well, what you are tired of is not the point. If you want to review your emotional status, go to badmoods.com, not goodreads. On a book review site, the point is the book, not your feelings.

So many folks, though, operate only on the basis of how they feel.

I know a controversial public figure who is often boorish, misogynistic, and rude. [No, not a politician.] He is criticized for that. His supporters, however, say, “You don’t know the real him. He also does a lot of good in secret.”

I do know him. I know that is true. I have seen him do good in secret. Also I have often seen him be boorish and rude and mean-spirited in secret, even to his friends and best supporters.

The problem is: he operates only on the basis of how he feels. He got stuck at a four-year-old mentality.

Four year olds, if they are feeling good, will be nice to anyone they are with. If they feel bad, they will be mean to anyone they are with, even if that person is the one who loves them and takes care of them.

It’s all about how they feel. How the other person feels, or acts, is not in the picture.

That’s normal for a four year old. To be mature, however, as persons or civilizations, we have to grow beyond that, learn to recognize that it, whatever “it” is, is not all about us.

JRMcF
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Katie Kennedy’s latest book is, What Goes Up. It’s published in hardback, paperback, audio, and electronic, from B&N, Amazon, etc. Six stars, out of five.


Tuesday, November 28, 2017

RADICAL HOSPITALITY [T, 11-28-17]

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

It’s getting close to Christmas, which means more newcomers than usual in Sunday morning worship. They need to make a showing now because they want to come to the Christmas eve service and don’t want their friends to make fun of them as “Christmas and Easter” Christians. Sort of an inoculation.

There was a time in the church some years back when we were implored to have programs of “radical hospitality” to take advantage of these “seekers.” That involved identifying people who had come to church for the first time and waking them up from their Sunday afternoon naps to present them with hot baked pies or bread. The “program” people said this would endear us to them and they would want to come back.

I wasn’t much into that. It seemed too much like bribery. Also, I try to practice The Golden Rule, and what I wanted others to do unto me on Sunday afternoon was leave me alone to take my nap. Furthermore, I was busy and didn’t want to bother with that sort of “radical hospitality.” I can give you more reasons if you really need them.

I was satisfied with telephoning those people during the week and telling them we were happy they had come and we would like for them to come back. [This was before the possibility of texts and email and such.] Except that sometimes I got busy and forgot.

Also I don’t like to talk on the phone. I don’t know what to say if I can’t see a person’s face. But it seemed I should call, because a card or letter was impersonal and probably looked like it was churned out on some remote assembly line.

A new family in town came to church. Met them at the door after worship. Nice people. I intended to call them. Every day. Every week. Until it had been so long, and they had not been back, that it was embarrassing. So, to get it off my conscience, and my dog-eared to-do list, I finally called them, told the woman who answered who I was.

“Oh, I’m so glad you called,” she exclaimed. “We’ve decided we want to join your church.” “Really? But you haven’t been back since that first time you came,” I said. “Yes, we’ve been visiting the other churches in town, and they were all so intrusive. Came by the house with pies and all sorts of stuff. You were the only ones who respected us enough to leave us alone to make up our own minds.”

“Yes,” I said, “that’s why we didn’t contact you.”

Actually, I did not say that. I didn’t even think it. What I thought was, “I don’t deserve this. I’ve been neglectful of my duties, and I’m being rewarded for it.”

Or maybe not. For those folks, I did the right thing, even if for the wrong reasons.

I once pastored a church of a thousand members. Shortly after I got there, it was discovered that we had a really big financial hole. The board decided to lay off all the staff except for me and a half-time secretary and a half-time custodian, whose time was mostly taken up with a 65 child day care center that used our facilities. I knew I had to be efficient. I wouldn’t have time even to telephone newcomers, yet along go see them. So anybody who showed up for the first time, at the door after the service, I said, “Would you like to join the church? We have a new member class starting in my office during Sunday School hour next Sunday.”

Actually, we “started” a class every week, including folks who might come several weeks because they hadn’t made up their minds, or just because they had nothing else to do, or had made a bet on how long I could keep this up. And every week, anybody in that class who said they were ready to join, we received them into membership during the following worship service. [1]

Sometimes I got replies like, “Well, yes, but we live in Kansas and are just passing through.” “That’s okay,” I would say. “We have an associate membership…”

We received over a hundred new members that year, none of them from Kansas, the most, I think, in the history of the congregation. All because we didn’t have anybody on staff or anybody in the congregation willing to do a program of “radical hospitality.”

The most radical hospitality possible is inclusion, no questions asked, no baked goods necessary. Just come and be a part of us. We can work out any details later.

JRMcF

1] Church handywoman Joan Gregg sat in on all those classes and took down names and information and later sent off for transfer letters or whatever administrative stuff that needed to be done.

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

I tweet occasionally as yooper1721.

I stopped writing this column for a while, for several reasons. It wasn’t until I had quit, though, that I knew this reason: I did not want to be responsible for wasting your time. If I write for others, I have to think about whether it’s worthwhile for you to read. If I write only for myself, it’s caveat emptor. If you choose to read something I have written, but I have not advertised it, not asked you to read it, and it’s poorly constructed navel-gazing drivel, well, it’s your own fault. Still, I apologize if you have to ask yourself, “Why did I waste time reading this?”

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.

Monday, November 27, 2017

THE YEARNING PLACE [M, 11-27-17]

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

My whole life, at least from age 22, when I moved away from Bloomington, after four years as an undergrad at IU, I yearned to be in Bloomington. Finally, after sojourning more than 65 years in foreign lands, like TX and IL and IA and the UP of MI, my yearning was fulfilled. We moved back to Bloomington. Now I’m sort of sorry.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m delighted to be here. Bloomington is great. Music, theater, basketball, autumn leaves, friends, churches, Carrie Newcomer, libraries, Buddhist monasteries, lectures, fried chicken, humidity, redbud and dogwood and magnolia trees, green beans, skies, bittersweet, persimmon pudding, hills—all great. But now I am without my yearning spot. For 65 years, whenever I did not like where I was, I could say, “It’s great in Bloomington, and some day I’ll live there again.”

That “some day” has come. Now, when I don’t like where I am--and those times come even in the nicest spots, because all places have people, and people can get on your nerves—I have no other place to yearn to be.

Maybe that’s why heaven is always described in such heavenly ways, so we’ll always have a yearning spot.

JRMcF

“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” Robert Browning.

I tweet occasionally as yooper1721.

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.] I did a lot of yearning there. 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.

Sunday, November 26, 2017

THE HANGING OF THE GREENS [Sun, 11-26-17]

We are doing “the hanging of the greens” at church this evening.

It reminds me of the time we were getting ready to move back to IL, following the grandchildren. Our son-in-law was becoming the Dean of Liberal Arts at Sauk Valley Community College, located between Dixon and Sterling. We looked at houses to buy in both towns.

While we were in Dixon one weekend, looking for a house, we went to church at First Methodist. Dixon is the hometown of Ronald Reagan, but he went to the Christian [Disciples] Church, so I think of Dixon as the hometown of Austin Ritterspach, our friend from undergrad days at IU. First UMC was his home church. [1]

Going to Sunday morning worship in a church for the first time can be a dangerous and difficult adventure, especially deciding where to sit. That morning, by unhappy accident we got into the section known as Little Old Ladies Who Can’t Hear and Constantly Ask One Another, “Can You Hear?”

So it wasn’t really a surprise when the pastor announced the hanging of the greens for that evening and a little old lady in the row behind us whispered loudly, “I don’t know the Greens, but that seems a bit extreme.”

JRMcF


1] Dixon First UMC got Austin off to a good start, which led him to a PhD in Old Testament at the Graduate Theological Union in San Francisco and a distinguished career as a scholar.

Saturday, November 25, 2017

FLASH MOBS [Sat 11-25-17]

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

‘Tis the season for… flash mobs.

I’ve never been part of a flash mob, although I’ve always wanted to be. But they involve singing—like people popping up in a mall food court to do the “Hallelujah Chorus”—or musical instruments, like the viola flash mob the IU School of Music did at the Bloomington farmers’ market a few years ago. We didn’t live here then, so I didn’t see it live, but I have watched it on YouTube. There are very few places where there are enough violists that you can have a whole flash mob of them—or dancing. Unfortunately, I don’t qualify for any of those kinds of flash mobs. [Those are the same disabilities that keep me from being a backup dancer in a music video, another unfulfilled wish. Yes, I have regrets.]

I guess I could be part of a preaching flash mob, but that would be too much like Rev. Jeb and Sister Cindy, who travel around to college campuses and convert students by calling them sluts and whore-mongers.

So I’ll just go to malls and hope for the best, which means a flash mob of Christmas carolers rather than some NRA-sponsored cretin with an automatic weapon killing us all.

I guess it is no surprise that flash mobs happen mostly in the Advent season, that season of hopeful waiting, getting ready for Christmas, for the first flash mob was when the angels appeared to the shepherds to announce the birth of Jesus. “Fear not…”

JRMcF

I tweet occasionally as yooper1721.

Still looking for a Christmas gift for someone who reads, or ought to read, YA literature? 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.


I stopped writing this column for a while, for several reasons. It wasn’t until I had quit, though, that I knew this reason: I did not want to be responsible for wasting your time. If I write for others, I have to think about whether it’s worthwhile for you to read. If I write only for myself, it’s caveat emptor. If you choose to read something I have written, but I have not advertised it, not asked you to read it, and it’s poorly constructed navel-gazing drivel, well, it’s your own fault. Still, I apologize if you have to ask yourself, “Why did I waste time reading this?” 

Friday, November 24, 2017

MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS-a Black Friday Reflection [F, 11-23-17]


“Sumptuary laws” have existed in many ages in many countries. They were especially prevalent in Elizabethan England, to keep people in their places. They were often tied to income. For instance, you had to prove that your income was above a certain level or you were not allowed to wear purple or satin. Even that law was stratified. For instance, if your income was $40,000 per year [I’m using modern American sums, not the English pound sums of that day], you could wear satin sleeves but not satin britches. If your income was $80,000 per year, you could wear the satin britches but not a feather in your hat. The laws were extremely detailed, so that when you walked down the street, everyone knew exactly where you were in the social order.

This was necessary because all English people were the same color. To discriminate, there must be physical differences, so you know who is privileged and who is not, and just exactly how privileged or unprivileged they are. In a society without sumptuary laws, to dictate how you can dress, you need skin color or other racial markers to be able to discriminate. If there are not enough obvious natural racial markers, you make persons of a certain race wear created marks, as the Nazis made Jews wear yellow stars.

The American experiment says that all people are equal, that no one is privileged over anyone else. But our “original sin,” our desire by nature to put self ahead of others, makes us want special privilege for ourselves and our kind, regardless. The presence of people with different skin colors in America has made discrimination easier. Segregation laws were our form of sumptuary laws.

The most obvious form of Christianity in America today, “Evangelical,” is a religion of privilege, and privilege, in its very definition, is not equality. Privilege means power, and power isn’t power unless it is exercised against those unlike ourselves.

Many will jump in immediately to say that equality is a myth, that there is no such thing. For instance, I do not have the same opportunity to be an NFL football player as some 22 year old 300 pound man who spends most of his time in the weight room. We are not equal.

That, of course, is a red herring. Apples and oranges. “Equality” in the American experiment has never meant sameness. It is “equality before the law.” No one is above or beyond the law.

Some of us are allowed to wear cream and crimson while others are required to wear black and gold. If you choose to wear those inferior colors, that is on you. [Tomorrow is the annual battle for The Old Oaken Bucket between the football teams of Indiana and Purdue.]

The Constitution also provides equality of opportunity. Again, not equality of sameness. Obviously someone with a great voice has a better opportunity to make it in show business than someone who is mute. [1] But in America, at least as it is supposed to be, the only barrier is ability, not opportunity. You can’t tell blacks or women or gays or rednecks or Irish they are not allowed even to try to sing. [3]

Enter so-called “Evangelical” Christianity, which is a code word for privilege. Strangely, “evangelicals” are not evangelistic. Evangelism is the process of bringing people into the church, the Body of Christ. Evangelicals are concerned not with inviting people into the church but being sure certain types of people are kept out of the church. Privilege is always about keeping people out. [2]

The American dream has been of a nation where all are equal. George Orwell warned us a long time ago in Animal Farm that when we are told “all are equal but some are more equal than others,” that the dream and the American experiment would be over. It’s over.

There is one remaining question. I suspect it can be answered only by people who believe that a time in the tomb of death can lead to resurrection.

JRMcF
johnrobertmcfarlan@gmail.com

1] Although Beware the Brindlebeast, a musical by my friend, Anita Riggio, wife of my former student, Roland Axelson, will be on Broadway soon, and its songs are all done in American Sign Language as well as English, by hearing and non-hearing actors.

2] The Greek word, evangelos, means Gospel, Good News. It is difficult to understand how anyone can conceive of “evangelical” as meaning good news only for the privileged.

3] Although perhaps Florence Foster Jenkins should not have been allowed.


Thursday, November 23, 2017

THANKFUL FOR THE DAY [R, 11-23-17]

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

This is the first Thanksgiving Day [TD] that Helen and I have spent alone in 59 years of marriage. We are thankful for that, both to spend the day alone, together, and for all those TDs we spent with family and friends.

Until our daughters were grown, of course, TD was at our house-often with my parents and my brother and his wife-or at one of the grandparent houses. After they married, Katie and her family have always gone to her husband’s family on TD, and since we always lived where they lived, once grandchildren were available, nobody was home for TD with us, so we usually spent TD with older daughter, Mary Beth, either at our house or hers, in Chicago, usually in the company of her friends.

Sometimes, though, MB would be at the Cleveland home of old friend Chris Rander, who is a marvelous TD cook and often came to Chicago to cook TD dinner for her and us. On her Cleveland TDs we would work community Thanksgiving meals for the hungry and homeless, usually delivering meals to shut-ins, because we were good at finding obscure places. Now anybody can find an obscure place, because of the GPS voice in the dashboard, but navigation was a skill then.

We weren’t alone, together, on those community meal TDs. We were in the midst of a bustling bunch of do-gooders, with whom we would finally sit down in a church basement or hospital cafeteria and eat the food we had not delivered or served up earlier. Helen would talk recipes with the women. I would talk football with the teen-age boys.

When I was a student at Perkins School of Theology at SMU, it was too far to go home for TD, so we hosted the other misplaced students from IN, and their children, at Rankin, the community center that we directed, in a Dallas barrio. Merle and Judy Lehman and little daughter, Debbie, Jack and Cora Divine, Doug and Helen Gatton, Bob Parsons. We were a long way from home, but we were not alone.

All those were good TDs, days for which to be thankful, to be with family or friends. This is a different sort of day. No bustling, because Helen has done most of the cooking ahead of time. No little dog to sit patiently for hours in the middle of the kitchen, watching through the oven’s steamy glass window as the turkey cooks. No one with whom to bend over the new jigsaw puzzle-one of our TD traditions-until we can’t straighten up. No grandchildren with red cheeks and happy faces.

A different sort of day, for which I am thankful.

JRMcF

I tweet occasionally as yooper1721.


Wednesday, November 22, 2017

TO LIKE OR NOT TO LIKE [W, 11-22-17]

 I worry these days about saying I “like” something, because I no longer know what “like” means.

There is a lot of football coming up, so football commentators are predicting which team will win by saying they “like” the team. “I like Alabama.” None of them ever says she likes Indiana, which is too bad, because I think IU is quite likeable. Apparently, though, football commentators just don’t like you if they think you can’t win.

At least in football, “liking” is linked to effectiveness. In other areas of life, “liking” is not tantamount to competence. I have noticed that often when people say, “We like our pastor,” it means the pastor is not very good at her job, but they like him anyway.

I accompanied granddaughter Brigid to her high school freshman orientation gathering and picnic since her parents were both working at the time. Many of her classmates went out of their way to speak to her. I said, “They must really like you.” “No,” she said, “they respect me.”

She was right. There is a difference between liking and respect. For instance, I like Sarah Palin.

When she was running for vice-president, I heard many people say, “I’m going to vote for her because I like her.” I said, “I like her, too, but liking a person is not enough reason to vote for her.” Much more important than likability is ability.

I blame it on Facebook. There “liking” does not necessarily mean liking. It’s just phatic communication, an acknowledgement that a fellow Facebooker has seen that stupid cat video you posted. [Although, I do like cat videos.]

But I like you, for being kind and patient enough to read what I write.

JRMcF

I tweet occasionally as yooper1721.


Tuesday, November 21, 2017

UGLY BABY [T, 11-21-17]

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

I just made a connection between two statements that were ten years apart.

The first was my mother telling me what an ugly baby I was, when I was 54. The second was my father telling me that I was not really his child, when I was 64.

My father inherited colon cancer from me. I had it, with the attendant surgery and chemotherapy, when I was 51. My father got it a year later, when he was 82, with the attendant surgery and chemotherapy. The difference was that he had a colostomy.

No surgeon near where they lived would attempt a temporary colostomy. They said the tumor was too near his anus. The surgery could not be reversed. He would always have to have a colostomy bag. But the young surgeon in the little town where I lived said “No sweat. I can reverse it in 3 months.” Which he did.

My parents lived with Helen and me for three months, getting my father ready for surgery, having the surgery, recovering. They had never gotten along with each other. There may have been two or three pleasant days in the 69 and ½ years of their marriage, but if so, I was not around to witness them, including the three months they lived with us. Living in the same room together in our house, with the added stress of cancer, did nothing to improve their relationship. It did a lot for my marriage, though. Helen and I would lie in bed together at night and hug each other and cry.

Things were different during the days my father was in the hospital, but not better, for being in our house without Daddy to fuss at allowed Mother’s weirdness to come out in other ways. For instance, she was afraid of cats. One day she saw one walking on the street as she was coming back from downtown, so she stopped at the funeral director’s house and asked him to bring her home in his car. He did. We lived next door.

The time came for Daddy to come home from the hospital. Or so the hospital informed me the morning they wanted to discharge him. “But first,” they said, “someone will have to come here to take colostomy training.” Normally that sort of thing fell to poor Helen, but she was thoughtlessly off teaching school. It had to be me, the least likely candidate in the world to learn how to care for a colostomy. Least likely except for Mother, who would not spit on Daddy if he were on fire, and who was phobic about all body fluids, and plenty of other things.

I had just recovered from cancer myself, almost, and was not sure how long I had to live. I was pastoring a recalcitrant church that was giving me a hard time. My mother had been driving me crazy for three months. I was very close to crying. Colostomy training was the last straw, or so I thought. I was going out the back door to get into the car when my mother said, “Did I ever tell you what an ugly baby you were?”

Now I have put the two together, my father’s statement that I was not his child, and my mother’s that I was an ugly baby. If she had given birth to me by some other man, who was not her husband, that would be an ugly outcome for her. And it would make sense that all those years later Daddy would finally tell me I wasn’t really his child.

I was a darned good son. I was the one who took care of our parents for years while my siblings lived at ease in tropical climes. [I don’t blame them; just envy them.] Yeah, maybe I was a bastard, but I draw the line at that ugly baby thing. I’ve seen pictures. I was adorable.

JRMcF

I am finally at peace, and uneasy about it.


Monday, November 20, 2017

NEAL FISHER: A MODEL FOR AGING GRACEFULLY [11-20-17]

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

I admire Neal Fisher for a number of reasons. Most important for “faith in the winter years” is how seamlessly he moved from a large stage to a small one without losing his focus or his identity.

Neal is a theologian by profession and spent most of his career as a leader in theological education, especially as President of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, at Northwestern U. He presided over G-ETS during turbulent years and held together a faculty and student body that ran the theological alphabet from Anselm to Zwingli, from aggressive liberals to absolutist conservatives. I’m not sure anyone else could have done that with the success and sense of joy and wholeness that Neal brought to it. All this time he also cared for his wife, Ila, whose suffering from Parkinson’s disease for 24 years steadily progressed from manageable to impossible. Toward the end of his G-ETS presidency, cancer hit Neal himself, but it barely slowed him.

As president of G-ETS, Neal was a “player”—nationally known, nationally recognized, nationally sought. Neal retired, and he and Ila moved to Vermont, to be near their daughter, Bryn, who was a floor-mate of our daughter, Katie, at Indiana University.

Neal got the usual invitations in the first couple of years of retirement—teach a little here, preach a little there. Like most of us in the first years of retirement, he thought he should try to answer those calls. After all, it is an honor that those still in the harness ask us to help pull the load. And also, we’re not sure who we are if we’re not helping with that load. That’s what we’ve always done.

That’s especially true if you’ve been on a big stage, especially difficult to move to a small stage. Neal did that, though, as seamlessly as anyone I know, keeping the same focus he used  as president of G-ETS, but now “just” in the congregation of which he is a member, keeping  the same focus he used on faculty and students at G-ETS, but shining that light on Ila and other members of his family who struggled with illness.

When we are young, we have heroes who inspire us to do great things. When we are old, if we are fortunate, we have models who show us how to move from doing great things to doing small things with the same grace.

JRMcF

During the time Neal was president at G-ETS, the seminary decided to endow a scholarship in our name, The John Robert and Helen Karr McFarland Scholarship. It is awarded each year to a student from the Illinois Great Rivers Conference of the UMC, the conference in which I spent most of my career. Neal came to Arcola, where I was pastoring at the time, to preach at the service announcing the scholarship. Fittingly, the first recipient was Jennie Edwards Bertrand, from that Arcola congregation, who went on to become the Director of The Wesley Foundation at ILSU, where I spent the early and best years of my career.



Sunday, November 19, 2017

THE ABYSS, a poem [Sun, 11-19-17]


Faith discovered Christian Wiman
as he stared into the cancer.
He calls it his “bright abyss.”

I look down often
into an abyss
that is not bright.

I wonder at the absence
of the light. My abyss
is dark and deep and lost
in space and time and fear.

My bright hope
is to dive so deep
I pop out
on the other side.

JRMcF

Christian Wiman was a secular poet who discovered Christ when he got cancer and writes about that beautifully in My Bright Abyss. 



Saturday, November 18, 2017

MUSE OF TRUTH AND BEAUTY, a poem {Sat 11-18-17}

At the breaking of the dawn
My muse appears
Riding on a misty cloud
Of caffeine
A tiny smear of jelly
Raspberry
On her flawless cheek
And says, “Write something
True and beautiful”

Although she holds a basket full
Of pre-warmed words
And rhymes
I cannot do both.

JRMcF

Friday, November 17, 2017

A STAYED MIND, a poem [F, 11-17-17]


Is it a lie
to sing, “Woke up this morning
with my mind
stayed on Jesus,”
if you really woke up
with your mind stayed
on coffee
and the trash and recycling
the faces of grandchildren
the pink tinge where sky
and tree tops meet…
But that song about Jesus
and being stayed on him
has such a nice lilt
as you drag to the curb
all sorts of garbage

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail,com

Thursday, November 16, 2017

OBIT PICS [R, 11-16-17]

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

I look at the obits in several newspapers each day, because it is in the obits where news of my friends is most likely to show up. I appreciate the obits that include a photo, even if I don’t know the person. But does it have to be, so often, that the person has oxygen buds stuck in hisher nose? Is that the only picture you have of grandpa or mother? Did they never have a photo taken in an earlier time, when they did not look haggard?

I have preached at a whole lot of funerals. When it was an old person who had declined greatly at the end, I tried to remind the mourners that the last month or year was but a tiny fraction of that person’s life.

I appreciate the trend of the last 20 years or so of including at a funeral a slide show or photo display of the decedent’s life. When my grade school friend, Phyllis Graham Parr, died, her husband hung her t-shirts and sweat shirts on the wall of the hall where the funeral reception was held. They were in chronological order—schools, bands, awards, events. It was a wonderful way of recalling her life.

You don’t have to do any fancy remembrance for me, but I have taken a lot of good breaths in my time, so please don’t picture me with oxygen tubes in my nose.

JRMcF

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.] 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.


Wednesday, November 15, 2017

MY SCHEDULE, a poem [W, 11-15-17]

What do you have scheduled?
She asked me

The scattering of my ashes
In that special place of dappled light

The occasion where my two
Remaining friends limp forward
To say nice things
To summarize in nine minutes
A life that took nine decades
To complete

My last breath
Closing my eyes
Hearing a baby giggle
Taking your hand

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

THE SOUND OF MEMORY [T, 11-14-17] [REPEATED FROM 11-18-11]


We picked up Grandson Joe from school yesterday. He was grinning as he got into our Inferno Red PT Cruiser. [1] He is in 6th grade and has just become a member of the band. He got his new clarinet yesterday. He already plays mandolin and ukulele, but those are not band instruments, even though he thinks they should be. He says he chose the clarinet for band just because he likes the sound, which is a very sound reason for choosing an instrument. [2]

When we got to his house, I helped him assemble the clarinet. I knew how to do it, for I, too, was a 6th grade clarinetist. We heard the first sound he made on it. We liked the sound.

I’m not sure I even knew what a clarinet sounded like when I was in 6th grade. I just knew I wanted to be in the band; I wanted to belong. Also, there was something in me that wanted to be a part of making music with others.

I could sing, and did, especially with my older sister, Mary Virginia, as we washed the dishes together. Down in the Valley was a favorite. But I wanted to be in the band, too.

We lived on a farm and did not have a car. Starting in 7th grade, I walked and hitch-hiked back and forth to town, but in 6th grade I couldn’t do anything that required staying after school. Transportation was school bus in and school bus out. But band had its own period in the school day. I could be in the band and still ride the bus home and do evening chores. I could be a part of something, like the other kids. I could make music.

But my parents said no band. They were reluctant to say it, but they had no choice. We didn’t have money for an instrument. I can remember standing out in our back yard, trying to hold back tears. I knew that we lived in poverty, but that was the first time I really understood that my life would be limited by it.

Mary V. came out to talk with me, as she always did when I was unhappy, from the time I was five and she was nine and she talked me out of running away from home. “Let’s see what we can figure out,” she said.

I had a war bond, a gift from Grandma Mac, I suspect, that I could cash in for $20, and a nickel and a dime at a time, we came up with another $5. I became a clarinetist not by choice but simply because it was the only instrument available for $25. One of our teachers, Mr. Grubb, was selling the one his now-graduated daughter had used. It was metal.

It was the only silver-colored clarinet in the band. All the others were black, wood or ebonite. My metal clarinet stuck out, not only for its looks but for its sound.

Thousands of metal clarinets were produced in the first third of the 20th century. They had two good qualities: 1] They were not damaged by weather and so could be used outdoors in marching bands. 2] They could be easily and cheaply mass produced.

The second quality was their downfall. Professional quality metal clarinets had as good a sound as wooden instruments, but the market was flooded with cheap clarinets designed primarily for students. Those did not produce a very good sound, so metal clarinets in general developed a bad reputation. As soon as World War II was over, metal clarinets were over, too. Except for mine.

Together we produced some very strange sounds, that metal clarinet and I. After a year or so, the band director said the clarinet needed a makeover, new pads and such, or it could not remain in the band. It just didn’t sound right. The makeover would cost more than we had paid for it.

But, he said, we need a second bassoonist.

Bassoons and tubas were so expensive that no one could buy one personally. [3] The school furnished them. I could play bassoon and the only cost would be the double reeds, available at Troutman’s Drug Store. I became a bassoonist. Because I was the poorest kid in the band, I played the most expensive instrument.

I like the notes that come from Joe’s new black clarinet, but to this day, when I hear a band or orchestra, I listen for the bassoons. I like that sound.

JRMcF
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] Joe is now a HS senior in Marshalltown, Iowa. When he got his driver’s license a couple of years ago he borrowed that Inferno Red PT Cruiser and we haven’t seen him or it since! It is rumored that he drives it to school every day.

2] In 8th grade he switched from clarinet to tenor sax, which he plays in marching, jazz, and concert bands, and in a saxophone ensemble for state contests.

3] Wikipedia says current prices are $8,000 to $25,000.

Saturday, November 11, 2017

VETS [Sat, 11-11-17]

I am not a military veteran. I am a veteran of the wars on racism and homophobia and sexism and ageism, but those are different. Not as much as most people think, though, since the point of American military service is to make freedom available to all citizens, equally.

My father was blind when WWII broke out, but five of my uncles served in the military—army, navy, and marines, in the South Pacific and in Europe.

I heard them say that Ernie Pyle, the war correspondent, told the truth about the war. Since I wanted to be a newspaper reporter, I decided I would be the next Ernie Pyle, and tell the truth. I even went to the Ernie Pyle School of Journalism at IU, where he went to college.

All IU frosh men were required to take ROTC in those days. Unlike almost all my classmates, I liked it. I was IU’s “Distinguished Freshman Military Student,” in my first year, which meant simply that I had the most points on all the tests put together. With my dorm friend, Jon Stroble, I even joined the Pershing Rifles, and was part of the honor guard for the queen of the military ball. I decided I would switch over from being a war correspondent to being a war participant.

That summer, though, a call to ministry intervened. The Cadre [ROTC instructors] were very disappointed when I told them I was not going to go beyond the required two years.

I have always had a great deal of respect for military veterans. When I learned of the extreme rates of homelessness and suicide among current veterans, I decided I had to do something. In addition to contributing money to organizations that help veterans directly, and writing letters to Congressmen asking for better support for veterans, I decided to write a book that would call attention to their needs. Since I am not a veteran and have no credentials in that field, I did what I do best, wrote a story, a novel. All my proceeds from it go to supporting veterans.

That’s really the only support that matters. Bumper stickers don’t matter. “Thank you for your service” is an insult if you don’t follow it up with action that requires Congress to take care of veterans for real instead of offering them “thoughts and prayers,” as the current Congress has done for several years.

Veterans Day is a hollow holiday if all we do is support veterans by going to a parade or waving a flag. It’s an insult to real VETS.

JRMcF
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

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.


Friday, November 10, 2017

BROKERING [F, 11-10-17]

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

Today, we ran into an old friend we hadn’t seen in 50 years. In those years he has become a wealthy and hugely successful real estate developer. He said, “I’ll never forget how you asked me to fill in preaching at that little church for two weeks, and it turned out to be two years. Those were the best years of my life.” I remembered it after he said it, but I had forgotten about it all these years.

Recently a retired man said, “I want to thank you for helping me get into graduate school. I was on academic probation, and no one would even consider admitting me, but you got me in.” He went on to a very successful career. I had followed his career with appreciation, but had forgotten about helping to get it started.

A year or so ago, the grandson of a friend, Gary, was trying to get a football scholarship. “I’ll see if I can get him a trial with IU,” I said. Gary started gently to scoff. “Pay attention,” mutual friend Paul said. “He’s been doing that sort of thing his whole life.”

Paul didn’t know me until we were in college, so for him my “whole life” of brokering started then. He was accurate on both counts, though. In many ways, my life started in college, and I have been brokering all along. And forgetting about it.

My kind of brokering is just putting together someone with a need and someone who can meet that need.

I was especially aware of doing that when I was in the cancer community, as a patient and writer and speaker and counselor. Then I put long-term survivors together with new patients. There’s no one quite as helpful to a newly diagnosed patient as someone who can say, “Hey, I’ve been there, and I’m still here.” I did a lot of that. I have forgotten almost all of it.

I’m not being humble. I’m willing to take credit for brokering. I’d like to remember more of those occasions. The truth is, though, that it just comes naturally, and it’s so regular that I can’t keep track of the occasions. I don’t try to keep a count of these deeds; they are just part of life.

You see, I don’t have many skills of my own. I am not very good at helping people directly. I can recognize helpful skills in others, though, and so I usually have a shelf somewhere in my brokering storeroom that contains someone who can help you. You need to know how to deal with a flatulent rhino? I know the gal who knows how.

The best thing to do if you’re not very good at anything is to be the guy or gal who is good at everything--a broker. I know someone who can tell you how… unless he’s forgotten…

JRMcF
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

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.] 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.


Thursday, November 9, 2017

NICKELED AND DIMED TO LIFE [R, 11-9-17]

Last Saturday was “Bedlam,” as the annual football game between the U of OK and OK State U is called. It made me think of Jimmie Franklin, for he is a committed OK football fan, because that was where he earned his PhD.

When I knew Jimmie, he was a professor of history at Eastern Illinois University. He later became a distinguished professor at Vanderbilt and, in the process of historical research, became a friend of George Wallace. That was not surprising to me, because I had been Jimmie’s pastor, and I knew what kind of man he is. It was remarkable, though, because Jimmie is a black man from Mississippi, and George was the leader of the racist and segregationist forces during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. George did a complete about-face on race. Jimmie helped.

Jimmie grew up in a small town in Mississippi, where chances for advancement for black kids were few. But he was a basketball player, and he got a scholarship to play at Jackson State. When the day came for him to get on the bus, the rear of the bus, with his one suitcase, to go to Jackson, he did not have the 35 cents for the fare. So his pastor went around town, borrowing nickels and dimes, until he had enough for the fare that would take Jimmie to a whole new life.

That is kind of what my life is now, nickels and dimes worth of energy and concern. Sometimes I’m the one asking for those nickels and dimes, to help someone get on the bus. Sometimes I’m the one loaning them. They don’t seem like much, as I look at the total needs of the world, but that one nickel, that one dime, might make all the difference for someone.

When I was growing up, a lot of folks talked about being “nickeled and dimed to death.” It meant being bedeviled by a lot of little bothers until they added up to a big bother. Sometimes we can be nickeled and dimed to life.

JRMcF

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


I stopped writing this column for a while, for several reasons. It wasn’t until I had quit, though, that I knew this reason: I did not want to be responsible for wasting your time. If I write for others, I have to think about whether it’s worthwhile for you to read. If I write only for myself, it’s caveat emptor. If you choose to read something I have written, but I have not advertised it, not asked you to read it, and it’s poorly constructed navel-gazing drivel, well, it’s your own fault. Still, I apologize if you have to ask yourself, “Why did I waste time reading this?” 

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

EAR WORMS AND MEMORIES [W, 11-8-17]

Don Survant and I were close friends as school boys. I hate to say “best” friends, because I was also close with Darrel Guimond and Mike Dickey. I could easily describe each of those as “best,” except each of them would point out my lack of grammatical accuracy—you can’t have more than one “best.” That was the kind of friends they were. [1]

They have all gone on to their reward, now, but a couple of years before he died, Don introduced me to “ear worms.” I’d had then for a long time; I just didn’t know what to call them before he explained them.

They are those songs that get stuck in your ears, not with iPod buds, but just on their own, out of your brain, like “There Will Be a Hot Time In the Old Town Tonight,” the story of what Mrs. O’Leary’s cow said when she kicked over the lantern.

Don and I bonded even more back when we were boys than I had realized, because just about the time he told me he had “Hot Time” as his ear worm, I had exactly the same song. And we lived a thousand miles apart and had not seen each other in person for 55 years.

Interestingly, the great Chicago fire of 1871 got out of hand quickly in part because the firefighters were tired from a big blaze the day before, and because they were first sent to the wrong section of town.

Our daughter, Katie Kennedy, is a highly acclaimed history professor as well as a highly acclaimed YA author. [2] When she lived in Mason City, Iowa, she taught a college history class in the fire station, so the fire fighters could work on their degrees while they were on the job. She said that when the alarm rang, she was alone in the class room within five seconds, but that an hour or two later the guys [they just happened to be all guys in that class] would be back in their seats, ready to learn some more history.

Mason City is one of those places that has street names followed by NSW and WSE and such. It’s hard to find your way around. One night when the guys came back they apologized for taking too much time, because they had gone to NE instead of SW on 21st Place Avenue Drive Street. [A slight exaggeration, but it really was hard to figure out.] The captain overheard and was quite upset. Apparently that is the first thing their fire fighters were supposed to learn. Fortunately, it was a minor fire that had been put out by the time they got there, so no damage done, but that did not calm the captain down much.

Anyway, now that song about the cow and the lantern are worming in my ear again, which is okay, because it makes me think about Don and remember the hot times we used to have tooling around in his father’s 1937 Dodge in the old town at night. Well, maybe not “hot,” but definitely fun. That’s when a song is at its best—an earworm that reminds us of something good.

JRMcF
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] I was “best man” for both Darrel and Don, and would have been for Mike, except that his girlfriend found someone else while he was in the army, and he went off to AZ to lick his wounds, and there he met someone else, too. I was surprised that marriage lasted--fifty years before Mike died--since I was not the best man.

2] Katie Kennedy is the rising star in YA lit. 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.


Tuesday, November 7, 2017

26TH AMENDMENT REMEDIES [T, 11-7-17]

Some people just like aggression and violence. They applaud when a comedian or politician talks about spanking children or letting people die because they don’t have health insurance. They think that protecting kids from bullies is wussy; you should teach kids to stand up for themselves and fight back.

They justify their love of violence by saying that it is the way of the world, that people are going to be violent anyway, and all you can do is protect yourself.

There is some truth in that. There is violence in all of us. St. Augustine was right—there is a God-shaped void in our soul. But there is also a fist-shaped snarl in our brain. I’m not a pacifist. I’m a Niebuhrian realist. Maybe an Amos Wilson realist. Amos is a Presbyterian pastor who served almost his whole career as a prison chaplain. “There are some really bad people in there,” he says, “and they need to be kept there.”

I suspect that 95% of terrorists, as distinct from regular soldiers or people fighting for their homeland against outside invasion, would find a reason to keep on terrorizing even if all their demands were met. That gives credence to those who say, “The only thing they understand is force.” But even terrorists have people who love them and who share their narrative. You can’t eliminate them by force, for every time you do, you create a martyr whose family and friends want to avenge him.

Sharon Angle, former US Senate candidate in Nevada, talked about “Second Amendment remedies.” Since the 2nd Amendment, which to most of its supporters is the whole of the Constitution, is about the right “to bear arms,” there is no question what she is talking about, despite how much she tried to wriggle as the election approached. Lee Harvey Oswald used a 2nd Amendment remedy on John F. Kennedy. John Hinckley tried to use a 2nd Amendment remedy on Ronald Reagan.

The whole point of the entire Constitution, including the 2nd Amendment, is avoiding violence. If all citizens have the same rights, and the political system treats all those rights the same, there is no need for violence.

At the present time, the aggression lovers see their opportunity, and they are trying to take it, to subvert the constitution, so that rights are not equal, but that the powerful and “true believers” have “rights” to abuse those who are weak and believe differently. It is possible that the American experiment is over, and that it has failed.

At least, that is what a majority of voters in the last election said, and they applaud that failure. Our only hope now is 26th Amendment solutions.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Monday, November 6, 2017

THE HOLY WAVE [1] [M, 11-6-17]

Our pastor, Jimmy Moore, was sick with a cold recently. I was hoping the “fall back” scenario would occur, [see the CIW post for 11-5-17] but no, he’s tough. He preached anyway. However, he said he did not want to pass germs along, so he would not shake hands as folks came by him at the door afterward, but would just greet people with “a holy wave.”

One of the incredibly neat new traditions in college football is the wave from the fans at University of Iowa football games to the kids at the new Stead addition to Children’s Hospital, which is right next door and was built to overlook the field. [2]

Between the first and second quarters of each game, the fans--almost 90 thousand of them--and players stand and wave to the children who are watching from the windows up above. It was so neat at the Ohio State game to see even OSU coach Urban Meyer waving at the children.

I know what it’s like to be in that hospital before the Steads added several floors that overlook the stadium. I spent a lot of time there with grandson Joe when he was not yet even two years old. When Joe was a patient there, I could see the traffic as I walked to the hospital from the Ronald McDonald House, and we could hear the roars of the crowd during the game, but we didn’t get to see much. [3]

Now, in that beautiful, high up, new addition, the kids sit at the windows, some in wheelchairs, some in their beds, even, and wave back. It makes me cry every time, as I wave at the TV, knowing what it means to those kids to feel like they are a part of something normal, something fun, to know that all those people care about them.

That is a wave that is truly holy.

JRMcF
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] Not to be confused with the Austin, TX band by that name.

2] The Steads for whom the hospital is named, because they gave the money, are also president of the trustees at Garrett-Evangelical School of Theology, at Northwestern U.

3] Grandson Joe is now a high school senior and was just admitted to the University of Iowa. There, he’ll be in the student section at the games, waving at the kids in the hospital. He is planning to be an MD.



Sunday, November 5, 2017

THE FALL BACK POSITION [Sunday, 11-5-17]

One of my recurring fantasies is the emergency scenario, in which I am safely nestled into the pew, even now, in my dotage, and the head usher hurries up beside me and whispers, “The preacher isn’t here. You have to take over.”

This happened once, when I was fairly new in the ministry, and I have never recovered. I have never since settled into a pew on Sunday morning without thinking, “If that usher shows up this morning, what do I have?”

We were on vacation in Vermont when I was doing graduate work at Boston University. Our daughters were pre-schoolers. It came time for worship to start. I saw the ushers talking among themselves at the rear of the sanctuary. I heard enough to know that the regular preacher was himself on vacation, and his substitute had not shown up. I said to my wife, ‘Hold my beer; I’ve got this.”

Well, I didn’t say that, since Methodist churches did not serve beer during worship in those days, and I don’t drink beer anyway, but I went to the ushers and told them I was a Methodist preacher and I would be willing to fill in. They were pleased, but for a small town in Vermont, that was a rather formal church, and I was wearing vacation clothes, so they took me to the office and got me dressed in a pulpit robe with the correctly colored stole for that season of the church year. I was walking out to preach when the substitute showed up! You guessed it; it was time change Sunday. He was an hour off.

I was summarily defrocked and sent back to the pew, where I continued to work in my mind on the emergency sermon I would not deliver even while I should have been listening to the guy who had actually prepared.

I was prepared, though. George Buttrick, in his retirement from Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in NYC, was my preaching professor at Garrett Theological Seminary, at Northwestern U, and he told us that it was more important to prepare the preacher than to prepare the sermon. In that sense, I was prepared, for I have never been a preacher. I am a story teller. Anybody has a story to tell.

John Wesley, the founder of the movement called Methodism, said that he required only three things of his preachers: to be ready to preach, pray, or die at any moment.

I’ve always done pretty well with the first two. As I grow older, I think more about the last one, and I have this recurring fantasy, in which I’m settled into the pew, but it’s at a funeral, not a Sunday worship service, and the usher hurries up and whispers, “The guy in the casket didn’t show up; you’ve got to fill in.”

I reply, “Give me time for another sip of this beer.”

JRMcF


When the big birthday came, I realized I had been a professional Christian, not a real Christian, all my life, from the age of fourteen. Everything I did and thought was forwarded to help others grow in relationship to God, not to help me grow in relationship to God. A more cynical way to look at it was that everything I did and thought was used to advance my professional career in the church. Either way, I have always been a professional Xn. [The abbreviation religion scholars use in making notes, for speed.]

I decided on a year-long professional fast. I would not think, read, listen, or write professionally, as a preacher, as a theologian. I knew the 40 days of Lent, the usual time for such fasts, was not nearly long to counter 66 years.

I thought I could continue to write CIW, in a non-professional way. That was a no-go. Writing CIW was mostly a temptation to break the fast. So on March 21, 2017, I wrote in this blog that I would “write no more forever.” It was time to give up my professional life, the life that had defined me since I was only fourteen years old, when I told God if “He” would save my sister’s life, I would be a preacher. By June 1, less than three months on the wagon, I realized that I could not stop writing.

But I still needed to see if I could be a real Christian, not just a professional Xn. So I decided I would write CIW only for myself. I would tell no one that I was writing CIW again, for to do so was to invite them to read what I wrote, and that meant I had to consider what they might think, how they would respond. That would be professional.

Previously I wrote Christ In Winter as a professional, for others. I kept a careful index so I would not bore readers with repeats. Now I just write whatever comes to mind, and if I repeat, I apologize. I also apologize to former faithful readers of CIW for not informing them that I am writing CIW again, but telling people I am writing is asking them to read my thoughts, and that is professional. I have told no one, not even my wife, that I am writing again. So if you stumble onto CIW, new reader or old, welcome. I’m glad you’re here. But you’re reading an amateur, not a professional. Well, maybe I don’t need to point that out…








Saturday, November 4, 2017

A NOTHING DAY-a poem {Sat 11-4-17}



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

It is a nothing day
my favorite kind of day
nothing scheduled
nothing required
and so I sit on the sofa
recline, really
although the doctor
says I must sit up straight
but doctors do not belong
in a nothing day
and listen to Darrel Guimond
play Gospel on his trumpet
and listen to Susan Boyle sing
about dreaming a dream
as I sit on the sofa
and drink my coffee
and dream a dream
of long ago
when I listened to Darrel
play

JRMcF
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Today is the Celebration of Life for my school classmate, Donna Miller Huff, so I am thinking about now-gone friends from my home town, so different now from what it was then. Darrel Guimond was my first friend there, riding the school bus together, when my family moved to a tiny hardscrabble farm when I was ten years old. I was his best man ten years later. He was an engineer by profession, but music was his love, and he was so very good at it, playing any brass instrument with lilt and precision.

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

I tweet once in a while as yooper1721.

I stopped writing this column for a while, for several reasons. It wasn’t until I had quit, though, that I knew this reason: I did not want to be responsible for wasting your time. If I write for others, I have to think about whether it’s worthwhile for you to read. If I write only for myself, it’s caveat emptor. If you choose to read something I have written, but I have not advertised it, not asked you to read it, and it’s poorly constructed navel-gazing drivel, well, it’s your own fault. Still, I apologize if you have to ask yourself, “Why did I waste time reading this?”