THE IRREPRESSIBLE FRED SKAGGS [F, 12-7-18]

No, I’m not really writing again, but I am thinking about Fred Skaggs this morning, as I sit in my living room, drinking coffee, looking at our little Christmas tree, and…

Fred is a clergy colleague and Virginia Gentleman. He called a few days ago, not exactly upset that I am no longer writing, but disappointed, so much so that he gave me several ideas of things I should ruminate on in print. That’s the way Fred is—he looks for solutions.

The solution to my “problem,” though, I think, is not writing, but not-writing. I suspect that I have used words all my life to avoid The Word. Ironically, the words are a gift from The Word.

I have always learned what I was thinking, and sometimes what The Word was telling me, by reading my words, reading what I wrote. I think that the challenge for me in my last days is to learn to hear The Word without processing it into words.

Fred is already at that point. He hears The Word, regardless. Maybe, perhaps after Christmas, I shall be closer to that point, and feel comfortable about writing again. If not, I know that Fred’s got my back, which is a gift in itself. Thanks, Fred, and Merry Christmas… and to anyone who has stumbled across this site again, may the peace of Christ and Christmas be with you.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

If you don’t know where you’re going, you might wind up some place else. Yogi Berra

JOHN ROBERT MCFARLAND HAS GONE DOWN THAT SKI JUMP FOR THE LAST TIME.

Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter…

The “jump,” of course, refers to the Iron Mountain ski jump in the picture above, “the highest man-made ski jump in the world,” as folks in Iron Mountain always say, the same way IU people always say that the IU union building is “the biggest university union building in the world.”

I always said about Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Iron Mountain in particular that winter there was thirteen months long, that March was just February under an assumed name, and that life there was defined by winter, even in the summer.

By that last phrase, I mean that summer is so late and so short in Iron Mountain that people take advantage of every minute of it. Even on the hottest day of summer, you’re aware that winter is breathing, with frosty wind making moan, right over your shoulder.

It was in that environment, so strange to a boy who grew up in southern Indiana, the part I always called “the Mississippi of the North,” that I wondered how to go about being a follower of Christ in such a cold and shivery atmosphere. Since I find out what I think and believe by reading what I write, I started writing Christ In Winter to learn how to be a follower of Christ, a pilgrim on The Way, when the way is covered by snow and ice.

The ski jump above symbolizes Christ In Winter, where being a follower does not mean a “leap” of faith so much as a “ski jump” of faith.

But John Robert McFarland, the author of Christ In Winter, is no more.

That name was my persona for a long time. A persona is not a bad thing. Each of us has one. It’s our interface with the world. It is always partially real/true and partially unreal/false.

For instance, as John Robert McFarland, if I were tired at the end of the day, and could not stand the thought of one more person with a problem, and just wanted to go home and put up my feet and watch TV, if someone bopped into my office and said, “Do you have time to talk?” I never replied, “Yes, I do, but I don’t want to, so I’m just going to go home and watch the Reds lose.” I said something along the lines either of “Yes,” or, if I felt really guilty about not wanting to do it, “Sure, always time for you, come on in…”

False? Yes, but true, too. It was not truly my immediate personal reality, but it was truly my ultimate personal reality. In that situation, it was better for both of us for me to call upon my persona. I liked my persona. It served me, and others, well.

But I don’t need my persona, John Robert McFarland, anymore. It was my reality for pastoring and writing and speaking and administering. The only thing left of any of those is writing this blog, and the blog is no longer necessary, for I have no more stories, at least not that are worth your time to read.

That’s what I have tried to do in this blog—tell stories. That’s what I always have tried to do, both as John Robert McFarland and as just plain John—tell stories. I often tried to pull a broader application out of a story in Christ In Winter, but the story was both starting point and ending point, for we live in stories, not in propositions or theories.

It is time to go down that long ski slope one more time… and just keep flying. Thank you for reading. You have been kind, patient, and faithful to John Robert McFarland. He is grateful.

John

“Persona” originally meant the literal mask an actor wore in a play. It was cheaper to have a few actors and a lot of masks. That’s helpful in understanding the origin of the doctrine of the Trinity—God being one actor wearing three different masks, according the role played at the moment: Creator [Father], Savior [Son] or Sustainer [Holy Spirit].

LEARNING TO FIGHT FOR HEALING [W, 10-24-18]

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

An addendum to yesterday…

A third thing I learned from Bernie Siegel is that fighting, both for cure and for healing, can be learned.

[I’m hoping I remember these percentages correctly.]

He says that about twenty percent of people are automatic fighters. They will immediately take arms against their disease.

Twenty percent are automatic dyers. If the doctor says they will die in a year, they will die in a year, to the day! There is not much you can do about them.

The sixty percent in the middle can be fighters if they are taught.

That was my group. At first, I thought, “Well, I’ll just sit here and die. There’s nothing I can do against cancer.” But my wife and daughters and friends would have none of that. “Learn to fight,” they said, in various ways. So I did.

As we age, fighting for a cure to whatever ails us is less and less necessary. Everybody dies, and the older we are, the better the chances of that death coming soon. But we are never too old to learn to fight for healing, for wholeness in the soul. If nobody else tells you to learn to fight, tell youself.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

“All we ask [in old age] is to be allowed to remain the authors of our own story.” Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p. 140.

HINGE BOOKS- LOVE, MEDICINE, AND MIRACLES by Bernie Siegel [T, 10-23-18]

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

[Repeated intro]I have been thinking about the “hinge” books in my life, those books that open a door in a unique way. There are hinge occasions that are not books, of course—people, events, places, movies. Books have a special niche of hinge importance, though--especially to people of my generation, who did not have access to more modern forms of input when we were in our hinge years--because they take time. If a book has hinge importance, you don’t just glimpse it, you ingest it. And you may go back to it time and again…

The whole list of my hinge books is at the bottom. That is too long a list to explore at one time, so I’m going to do only one book per column. Today’s hinge book is… LOVE, MEDICINE, AND MIRACLES by Bernie Siegel

I was lying in the hospital bed, in a sort of stupor I had never known before. I had just heard the pale oncologist say that I had but a year, or two, to live. I had just turned 53, quite literally, because the surgery was on my birthday, at midnight, in the emergency room. I had not walked my daughters down the aisle. I had not played trotty-horse with my grandchildren. I was not prepared to die.

Then Judith Unger brought me a copy of Bernie Siegel’s book. I was in no mood to read, but I trusted Judith. I had met her when she was a first year student at IU, Judy McCaffrey then, when I was a junior. She had married my friend and colleague, Paul Unger. We had been friends ever since, raised our daughters together. She was a social worker with a master’s from the U of Chicago. She knew what she was doing.

So I read Bernie. The whole book became my wellness manual, but two things he said were especially important.

First, he asked, “What did you do to cause this cancer?” We tend to think of ourselves as victims, not actors, when we get a disease, especially cancer. It jarred me out of my stupor. Did I do something to cause this?

Some people protest that they did nothing to cause their cancer. Like my late friend, Rosemary Shepherd, some of them are correct. They themselves did nothing to cause the cancer. It’s just the luck of the draw, or something others did, like polluting the air and water.

Some causes are obvious. If you smoke a pack a day and get lung cancer, you know what you did. But some causes are well hidden in our unconscious lives. I could not think of anything right away that I had done to cause the cancer, but I have an “action bias.” I want to do something… about anything and everything.

So in addition to chemotherapy and meditation and journaling and support group, I wanted to determine whatever it might have been that I did to cause the cancer, so I could reverse the process. I never discovered anything in particular, but the process of examining my whole life, to try to get each element into rhythm and balance with every other element--the process of healing that is called wholeness--that process was a hinge for me.

The other thing Bernie said was, “Not everyone can be cured, but everyone can be healed.” That resonated with me. I talked about that in the paragraph just above, but that was then. This is now, and Bernie’s “healing is the important thing” mantra has stayed with me not just during that one to two years. It’s been with me for 29 years come February.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

You can read more about this in NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them, published in two editions by AndrewsMcMeel. The second edition was written following the family cancers subsequent to my own—wife, daughter, grandson. Available in hardback, paperback, audio, electronic, Japanese, and Czech.

The hinge books:

TRAMP, THE SHEEP DOG by Don Lang, pictures by Kurt Wiese. 9-10-18

THE PREACHER AND HIS AUDIENCE, By Webb Garrison 9-11-18

JESUS OF NAZARETH by Gunther Bornkamm. 9-12-18

MAN’S NEED AND GOD’S ACTION by Reuel Howe 9-13-18

IDENTITY & THE LIFE CYCLE by Erik H. Erikson 9-14-18

THE IMMENSE JOURNEY by Loren Eiseley 9-24-18

GUILT, ANGER, AND GOD by C. Fitzsimmons Allison

PROFESSION: MINISTER by James Glasse 10-15-18

LOVE, MEDICINE, AND MIRACLES by Bernie Siegel 10-23-18

JESUS, A NEW VISION by Marcus Borg 10-19-18

BIOGRAPHY AS THEOLOGY by Wm. McCutcheon

 

WHO’S TO BLAME [M, 10-22-18]

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

The garage door wouldn’t work. I immediately, silently, asked, accusingly, Who messed up the garage door?

That is always my first reaction when something goes wrong: Who messed this up? Who’s to blame?

I am never in the first list of suspects. As the list grows shorter, though, my name appears. It turns out, almost always, that I was the one who messed up.

If anyone messed up at all. Sometimes garage doors just get tired of working. Especially if it’s 15 below zero [F]. So I guess I could get some satisfaction by saying it was the garage door that messed up, or the cold air, but, no, that doesn’t work. Even at my least rational, I don’t assume that air and doors have free will.

Somebody’s got to be blamed, though, right? Otherwise, how do we keep the world in balance? It’s Newton’s Third Law: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Except people don’t operate on the laws of physics.

Somebody has to be blamed, and when I can’t find anyone else, I blame myself. Often with great justification.

The First Law of Messups is SEITB: Somebody Else Is To Blame. I learned this from my mother. Her regular saying when she messed up was, “Look at what you made me do.” Even when it was clear that she was the one who had messed up, she still wasn’t to blame, for someone else made her do it.

So I know now why it is that I always want to blame someone else, even when I’m the one who messed up, or when no one at all messed up. That knowledge doesn’t change a thing about my first reaction, because reactions are emotional. That remains the same: Who [else] is to blame?

Knowledge is the booby prize. Knowledge alone doesn’t change anything.

The knowledge is a door, though. Now I know what is behind that door. Yes, I’ll go ahead and first try to blame someone else. Then I’ll blame myself. But then I’ll final go through the door marked “forgiveness.” Blame doesn’t have to last forever.

You see, you don’t have to change your first reaction to get to forgiveness. Just be patient, with yourself and others, and eventually that door will open.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

“All we ask [in old age] is to be allowed to remain the authors of our own story.” Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p. 140.

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.

AVOIDING SALVATION THRU INCLUSION [Su, 10-21-18]

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

The church we attend is really inclusive. Not as much as we would like. We have a few people of color, but not many, a few single young adults, but not many, a few conservatives… well, not really. Unless you include anti-violence, anti-racism, pro-gay, pro-choice, anti-nastiness conservatives.

A young adult or person of color might not feel immediately comfortable when walking into our church building on Sunday morning, though, for two reasons. First, they won’t see many of their own kind, at least not right away. Secondly, they will be swarmed by mobs of inclusive-minded well-meaning old white people who want to make them feel welcome.

Each week our preachers and other worship leaders do a wonderful job of encouraging us to be Christianly inclusive. Problem. How could that be a problem? It’s a problem because we are already inclusive, as individuals and as a congregation.

It’s actually easy to be inclusive. You just include everybody. And thus we think we are being Christian. But I have atheist and agnostic friends who are just as inclusive, just as anti-racist, just as pro-everyone as we are at church. Being inclusive is not exclusive.

All Christians are inclusive [except those who are Christian by self-identification but not by deed], but not all includers are Christian.

I’m not opposed to being reminded that I need to be inclusive. Any of the good stuff we do, we need reminders once in a while. But I also need to be reminded that I am a sinner who needs to be saved, that I can be in a cell of bondage to myself at the same time I am advocating and working for freedom for others.

The Gospel, the Good News, really is about personal salvation as well as social salvation, personal holiness as well as social holiness. Sometimes we hide our sins, our needs for forgiveness and restoration, by concentrating on the sins suffered by others. People of color, and gays, and young adults—they need more than inclusion, they need salvation, just like the rest of us.

I am not saved by my acts of mercy toward others. I am saved by God’s acts of mercy toward everybody.

John Robert McFarland

“Faith is not believing without proof; it is trusting without reservation.” Wm. Sloane Coffin

“All we ask [in old age] is to be allowed to remain the authors of our own story.” Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p. 140.

A SPECKLED EGG-poem [Sa, 10-20-18]

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

If my mind cuts loose

and wanders on its own

without instruction or direction

it slips off to forgotten

weed-grown pathways

where only snakes and toads

and other slippery creatures

dare now to go

But sometimes it finds

a light-blue speckled egg

wind-blown from out

a worried mother’s nest

I pick it up

and put it back

where it belongs

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

“I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.” Wm. Stafford

HINGE BOOKS- JESUS, A NEW VISION: Spirit, Culture, and the Life of Discipleship, by Marcus Borg [F, 10-19-18]

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

[Repeated intro]I have been thinking about the “hinge” books in my life, those books that open a door in a unique way. There are hinge occasions that are not books, of course—people, events, places, movies. Books have a special niche of hinge importance, though--especially to people of my generation, who did not have access to more modern forms of input when we were in our hinge years--because they take time. If a book has hinge importance, you don’t just glimpse it, you ingest it. And you may go back to it time and again. The whole list of my hinge books is at the bottom. That is too long a list to explore at one time, so I’m going to do only one book per column.

Today’s hinge book is… JESUS, A NEW VISION: Spirit, Culture, and the Life of Discipleship, by Marcus Borg

Published in 1991, I think this was the first of Marcus’ books. I know it was the first one I read, and it opened up the whole world of Jesus to me in ways I had never known before. Marcus followed this book with two decades of scholarship and writing that deepened and expanded his insights in A New Vision. I read them all, as well as attending lectures and conferences with him, and along the way we had the good fortune to become friends. He even offered to have Helen revise The Heart of Christianity for confirmation classes for young teens, with the two of them sharing the author credits. Unfortunately, that never got completed.

Even though his thought in the books subsequent to A New Vision was more developed, this will always be my favorite because of its hinge status for me. I have enjoyed and appreciated so many books in my lifetime. This was one of the few that actually excited me. I couldn’t read it fast enough.

I was no novice in Jesus scholarship, of course. I had read Reimarus and Strauss and Schweitzer’s The Quest of the Historical Jesus and all the other standards, and some not so standard. In an earlier post, I listed Bornkamm’s Jesus of Nazareth was a hinge book. Bornkamm opened up the historical Jesus of the early church to me. Borg opened up the historical Jesus of the spiritual world and the political world, which to Jesus were the same.

As Philp Yancey [1] and Rachel Held Evans [2] point out, in the constant arguments about the nature of Christianity, the real, historical Jesus is often ignored. Marcus Borg just won’t let that happen.

Wherever I go, when Marcus’ name comes up, there is always someone who says, “Marcus Borg made it possible for me to be a Christian.” That’s a pretty neat legacy.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

“Christians believe in the Word made flesh, not in the Word made words.” Wm. Sloane Coffin

1] The Jesus I Never Knew

2] Faith Unraveled. The original title was Evolving in Monkey Town, which I think is much better.

TRAMP, THE SHEEP DOG by Don Lang, pictures by Kurt Wiese. 9-10-18

THE PREACHER AND HIS AUDIENCE, By Webb Garrison 9-11-18

JESUS OF NAZARETH by Gunther Bornkamm. 9-12-18

MAN’S NEED AND GOD’S ACTION by Reuel Howe 9-13-18

IDENTITY & THE LIFE CYCLE by Erik H. Erikson 9-14-18

THE IMMENSE JOURNEY by Loren Eiseley 9-19-18

GUILT, ANGER, AND GOD by C. Fitzsimmons Allison

PROFESSION: MINISTER by James Glasse [10-15-18]

LOVE, MEDICINE, AND MIRACLES by Bernie Siegel

JESUS, A NEW VISION by Marcus Borg [F, 10-19-18]

BIOGRAPHY AS THEOLOGY by Wm. McCutcheon

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans, who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will never be on anybody’s hinge list, but, for a limited time, it’s only 99 cents, so what have you got to lose? It’s published by Black Opal Books and is available from the publisher as well as the usual suspects--Barnes and Noble, Amazon, BOKU, Powell’s, Books on First, etc.

“All we ask [in old age] is to be allowed to remain the authors of our own story.” Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p. 140.

FOR THE LOVE OF BASEBALL [R, 10-18-18]

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

This is the time of year when even people who don’t understand or care about baseball begin to follow it, at least a little bit. I’m not one of them. I have been engrossed in baseball since the start of the “hot stove” season, --which stretches from two days after the World Series to the start of spring training. Every year over the last seventy.

I have often wondered why I love baseball so much. Sports in general, but especially baseball. I’ve even written about it before. But recently I have come to understand that the reason is quite simple: Uncle Johnny.

Ron and Cindy Wetzell, like all people who get old enough, and are smart enough, are moving to smaller quarters. That gets tricky, because you have to get rid of stuff. Often LOTS of stuff. But not baseball stuff.

Ron was a baseball coach. Even wrote a book about how to play the sport. He has dozens of practice balls, expensive state of the art batting Ts, gloves, bats, etc. He wants to give the equipment to some youth league, preferably one for disadvantaged kids. But they have the same problem he has—storage space. He says that he will not part with that equipment until he can find a worthy recipient, meaning—at least in part—one with storage space, even if Cindy makes him sleep in the yard because the baseballs are in their bedroom.

I understand that. Moving into a small condo, we have gotten rid of whole rooms of furniture, thousands of books, all kinds of hobby equipment, but I have kept the bats Uncle Johnny gave me when I was ten years old.

John Hubert Pond was my mother’s youngest brother. Even though my father’s name is also John, Mother always said she named me for her brother, not her husband. At age 26, out of the Marines after WWII, he was just starting his hardware and lumber business in Francisco, IN, when we moved from Indianapolis to our hardscrabble farm, five miles from Francisco. He was a bachelor in a small town with few eligible women. He was lonely. He knew I was lonely, too, out there on the farm, with no car, no bicycle, no playmates.

In the evenings, after a long day of literally constructing his business buildings with his own hands, he would drive up to our house and hit flies to me in the field we called “the orchard,” because it had a few apple and peach trees. It was mostly pasture that sloped up on either end and down into the middle. I would dash up and down the slopes, in the long grasses, Uncle Johnny’s small old-fashioned fielder’s glove on my left hand, tracking the flight of the ball, feeling an uncommon satisfaction whenever the ball would thwack into that glove.

At first Uncle Johnny brought his glove and ball and two bats with him each time he came. It wasn’t long before he said, “Here. These are yours now.” He wasn’t just my first sports playmate, he was my best friend. He was the best man at my wedding.

There is really no mystery to my love of baseball. Uncle Johnny taught me to love it, just by playing it with me. We love whatever is shared with the people who love us.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

“Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.” Yogi Berra

“All we ask [in old age] is to be allowed to remain the authors of our own story.” Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p. 140.

A fuller exposition of how baseball encouraged me through cancer is on pp 32-22 of 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.

You can find my poem about Robert Frost pitching to Babe Ruth in an epic game at many places on the internet. Just do a search for “Frosty and the Babe.” It was featured at the conference at Hofstra University celebrating the 100^th birthday of Babe Ruth.

ENDING WHERE WE START [W, 10-17-18]

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

Where you start determines where you end.

If you start with the omnipotence of God, you end with predestination. God knows everything, so God knows if you’ll go to heaven or hell. If you start with the mercy of God, you end with universal salvation. If you start with the love of God, you end with free will, because love that is forced is not love but rape.

In politics, historically, in America, conservatives start with the individual and liberals start with society.

Traditional conservatives believe in original sin, that we are born with a tendency to selfishness. So to have a good society, individuals must learn to rein in their selfishness. That takes personal character, learning to resist greed and lust. Growing individuals into moral responsibility will make society good. You can’t have a moral society without moral individuals. Society, via government, cannot create citizens with good character, for character comes from within. I believe that. That’s why I am a conservative.

Traditional liberals believe in original sin, that we are born with a tendency to selfishness. Some individuals will learn to overcome their greed and lust, but others will not. So a civil society is required, with laws that require people to consider the needs of others as well as their own, regulations that keep the strong from exploiting the weak. I believe that. That’s why I am a liberal.

I start with Christ, who believes that the Kingdom of God, where God reigns, is possible on earth, as it is in heaven. That’s why I am a Christian.

Old people usually think that we are past the starting point, almost past the expiration date.

But: “It’s only too late if you don’t start now.” Barbara Sher

And: “You’re never too young or too old to give your life to Christ. After that, what else is there to do to get ready to die?” Paul Tournier

It’s never too late to get to the start, if the starting line is love.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

“All we ask [in old age] is to be allowed to remain the authors of our own story.” Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p. 140.

WINNER: THE WORST FIRST DATE EVER CONTEST [T, 10-16-18]

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

Harley Woolridge almost destroyed my marriage before it started. It was my first date with Helen, if you can call it a date, and it’s surprising there was a second.

Harley was the pastor at Worthington, IN, but was preaching a two-week revival at Garrison Chapel, 10 miles or so outside Bloomington, worship each night. I was the preacher at Solsberry, Koleen, and Mineral, even though I was just an IU undergrad, so Harley and I knew each other a little, through District programs and clergy meetings.

Harley was an old-fashioned preacher, doing an old-fashioned thing, preaching a revival in a little country church. I thought it would be good for my fellow student city friends in The Wesley Foundation [Methodist Campus Ministry] to experience something so foreign to their sophisticated urban church experiences. Also, I wanted to get better acquainted with the quite cute Norma Sullivan, and I figured she would fall for something like that.

She did, and she got three or four other students to agree to go along, or at least she said she did. By the appointed evening for us to drive out to Garrison Chapel, everybody had backed out, so Norma told me, for one reason or another, except for Norma and her roommate, Helen Karr. Helen was getting ready when she noticed that Norma was sitting on her bed in her pajamas. “Shouldn’t you be changing your clothes?” “Oh, I can’t go. I have a big test to study for.” So poor Helen had to come out to my old green Chevy and say, to a boy she barely knew, that she was the only one going.

I was disappointed by Norma’s absence, and Helen, who was from Gary--about as urban as it was possible to get--was ill at ease having to go out into the country, to an experience she knew about only from hearing about its excesses, with a guy she barely knew. But we made the best of it, and were having an okay time, sitting in the back row, singing along with the revival hymns, until good old Harley spied us.

“Let’s have this young preacher and his wife come up here and sing a duet,” he shouted.

That sort of free-wheeling was typical of what happened at a revival, so Helen got what was promised, but neither of us had ever been so shocked. There in the back row, we were isolated from the rest of the whole world, with only each other to share our embarrassment.

I’ll always be grateful to Norma and Harley. Norma realized I was interested in her, but she didn’t return that interest. She wanted Austin Ritterspach. [And she got him.] But she set things up so that she could not only deflect my attention but so that Helen and I could discover each other. And Harley Woolridge started us out with an experience no one else could share.

But we still have not sung a duet in church.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

“All we ask [in old age] is to be allowed to remain the authors of our own story.” Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p. 140.

“If a story is not willing to tell itself, it probably should not be told.” [Should you use quote marks if you’re quoting yourself?]

HINGE BOOKS- PROFESSION: MINISTER by James Glasse [M, 10-15-18]

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

[Repeated intro]I have been thinking about the “hinge” books in my life, those books that open a door in a unique way. There are hinge occasions that are not books, of course—people, events, places, movies. Books have a special niche of hinge importance, though--especially to people of my generation, who did not have access to more modern forms of input when we were in our hinge years--because they take time. If a book has hinge importance, you don’t just glimpse it, you ingest it. And you may go back to it time and again. The whole list of my hinge books is at the bottom. That is too long a list to explore at one time, so I’m going to do only one book per column.

Today’s hinge book is… PROFESSION: MINISTER by James Glasse

I returned to parish ministry after ten years in campus ministry and graduate study. Fortunately, Glasse’s book had appeared only a few years before. It was a hinge book not just for me, but for the whole calling/profession of clergy work.

When Glasse, the Dean of Lancaster Theological Seminary, asked his father, a distinguished pastor in their denomination, what he thought of his new book, he learned that his father had not read it.

 “They tell me it’s a pretty good book, if you like that kind of book, but Son, I don’t like that kind of book.”

Those of us who are old enough can sympathize with Glasse’s father. For him, the ministry was not a profession. You didn’t choose it just for the high status and big bucks and low hours. The ministry was a vocation, a calling, not a profession. You didn’t choose it, it chose you. You were called--by God, no less.

I wasn’t sure that I had been called. I had told God I would be a preacher if “He” would save my sister’s life. She lived. Was that a call? But how could I not live up to a deal like that?  [1]

So I tried it out. After ten years, I still was not sure my deal with God was a “call,” but I knew that I had the “gifts and graces” to be a good minister. I wanted to make a positive contribution to the church and to the world. Glasse assured me, and all the others in the clergy ranks, that in this modern world, the combination of gifts and intentions was a call. You didn’t need to see GPC in the sky. [2]

Ministers were not amateur freelancers, entrepreneurs, operating on emotion or religious fervor. We had to be educated and continue that education, abide by ethical and social standards, react with reason and justice rather than personal emotion and defense when problems arose. We were professionals.

Through the years I have learned that being a professional clergy person is not exactly the same as being a professional in medicine or law, etc, but by emphasizing the professional view of my vocation, Glasse helped me see the ministry in a fuller way, in a productive and satisfying way.

So I suggest that we see our pastors as both called and professional. Led by God, and equipped by the church and the world for a difficult job in a confusing time. Folks we can count on for spiritual leadership, both because they work themselves at being in touch with what William James called “the more,” and also can count on for earthly leadership as those who know the way because they have been trained to see it. We’ll get good help from our clergy if we see them as spiritual professionals.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] I tell about this more fully in The Strange Calling.

2] Old preacher joke. At the end of his career, a preacher tells of his call. He was a farmer, out working in the field, when he saw GPC spelled out by clouds in the sky, and knew it meant Go Preach Christ. Considering the absence of his gifts and graces for ministry, someone said that obviously it meant Go Plow Corn.

My “hinge” books and the dates of the columns when I wrote about them:

TRAMP, THE SHEEP DOG by Don Lang, pictures by Kurt Wiese. 9-10-18

THE PREACHER AND HIS AUDIENCE, By Webb Garrison 9-11-18

JESUS OF NAZARETH by Gunther Bornkamm. 9-12-18

MAN’S NEED AND GOD’S ACTION by Reuel Howe 9-13-18

IDENTITY & THE LIFE CYCLE by Erik H. Erikson 9-14-18

THE IMMENSE JOURNEY by Loren Eiseley 9-24-18

GUILT, ANGER, AND GOD by C. Fitzsimmons Allison

PROFESSION: MINISTER by James Glasse 10-15-18

LOVE, MEDICINE, AND MIRACLES by Bernie Siegel

JESUS, A NEW VISION by Marcus Borg

BIOGRAPHY AS THEOLOGY by Wm. McCutcheon

PRAYING FOR MARY JANE [Sun, 10-14-18]

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

I pray a lot for Mary Jane these days. And nights. She’s in hospice care. She did such a good job of taking care of her husband as he declined that she just never recovered.

As I pray for her, I remember one morning when I had breakfast with Mary Jane and Ron at church, before worship. We had a friend about whom we were both concerned and started talking about intercessory prayer. I said, “The only thing I know for sure about intercessory prayer is that I have to do it.” Mary Jane, usually a clam and self-possessed woman, blurted out excitedly, “That’s just the way I am, too.”

What are my prayers for Mary Jane “doing?” I don’t know. But I know I must pray them, asking God to bless her with mercy and the sure knowledge of the divine presence.

Prayer is not magic. The most insidious problem of intercessory prayer is thinking it is magic, like that athlete I saw on TV who claimed he was saved from death in an auto accident because he called out the name of Jesus when it happened, and the people who died had not called the name of Jesus.

Poor Jesus would be confounded at that. Sympathetic and forgiving, but still confounded. Look at the prayer he taught us, the one we call the Lord’s Prayer. Nothing magical about it at all. No getting what you want by saying the right words.

Mary Jane is going to die. No amount of praying is going to change that. But as Dr. Rachel Remen reminds us, we kiss the booboo not because the kiss takes away the pain, but because it takes away the loneliness. [1] Often, taking away the loneliness also takes away the pain.

Because Mary Jane and I had that conversation about intercessory prayer, understanding that we must do it, I am sure that she knows I am praying for her. I’m sure she knows many others are, too. She has to die alone, but she is not lonely.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

“All we ask [in old age] is to be allowed to remain the authors of our own story.” Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p. 140.

1] Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom

Each day I read a paragraph in a book by my late, great friend, Bill White. [2] It makes me feel close to Bill, reading words he wrote, seeing those words on a page. Today he noted that in regard to intercessory prayer, C.S. Lewis says that God uses the works of people to accomplish the divine will all the time—in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, assuaging the loneliness of the sick and imprisoned, etc. If God is willing to use the hands and hearts of people, why would God be unwilling to use the prayers of people?

2] Wm. Luther White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis

I talk more about prayer in 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.

NEEDING MORE AT NEEDMORE [Sat, 10-13-18]

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

Place names usually tell us quite a bit about the geography of an area. A low-lying city like Cleveland, down by the lake, is surrounded by a whole ring of suburbs that have “Heights” in their name, because they are higher than the main city. On a flat prairie or plain, a place is often named for an unusual feature—Lone Tree, or Funk’s Grove. Sub-divisions or shopping complexes are named for what the developers destroyed by building it—the Riverview is now obscured by all the mcmansions, or all the Tall Oaks were chopped down to make room for the mall.

When I was new in the ministry, on a map of TN I came across a cluster of towns with names like Despair, Destruction, and Defeat. [Yes, I could look at the map to be sure I got the names accurate, but the atlas is in the car, and I’m not.] Those names indicate the original residents didn’t have much hope. In those days young pastors were often appointed to a circuit of three churches. I wondered how one would be able to preach if appointed to the Despair, Destruction, & Defeat Circuit.

Or Needmore. Now there is a place that tells you a lot about how the first settlers felt about it. Or maybe not. I go to the Needmore Coffee House. There one day I wrote this poem:

Today I remembered

my pad and my pen, but I forgot

to bring an idea, an image, a hope

So I sit here bereft

a poet in a coffee house

with coffee but no poem

It seems quite fitting

that the name of this place

where I sit on a blue sofa

is Needmore Coffee

but it might as well be

Needmore Poems

Yes, Needmore Coffee is not named that because of the absence of coffee or the addiction to it of denizens like myself. It is named for the hamlet outside of town where the owner lives, the owner who actually goes to Central America to buy direct from farmers so that she’ll know they are getting a fair deal. The village was named for folks who felt they didn’t have enough, but now there is at least one resident who works to be sure that those in need get enough. Except for poems.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

“All we ask [in old age] is to be allowed to remain the authors of our own story.” Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p. 140.

WIGGLETAILS IN YOUR CELL PHONE? [F, 10-12-18]

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

Yesterday Helen said that since I had drunk juice out of a particular glass, it had to be washed before I could drink water from it because there would be… I’m not sure what… organisms…  yech… wiggletails!

That’s what we called them back in the days of water buckets—wiggletails, because you could actually see them swimming in the water in the bucket we drank from, their little tails propelling them forward to… get into our gullets and… yech….

Except we didn’t worry about them over much. Wiggletails were part of life. You did know, though, that when you could actually see them, the water had been standing in the bucket too long. It was time to dump the water onto the bean plants in the garden and pump another bucket of drinking water from the well. Not that we washed that bucket, but we did fill it with clean water.

It reminds me of one of the earliest preacher stories I picked up. A man got up in worship to give his testimony. People did that back then, sort of like “Joys and Concerns” time now. He said, “Forty years ago, the Lord filled my cup to the brim, and He hasn’t taken anything out or put anything in since.”

A kid sitting nearby said, “It must have wiggletails in by now.”

It was a story I told several times, in different congregations in my early years. I expected people to understand, and they did. They were rural people who had drunk out of communal water buckets and seen wiggletails because the bucket was never poured out and refilled.

When I grew up on the farm, we had no plumbing in the house. We had two buckets, one enamel and one zinc, that we kept on the kitchen counter. The enamel bucket we filled from the well. It had a dipper. If you needed water for drinking or cooking, you dipped into that bucket. The zinc bucket was filled from the cistern. It contained water drained from the roof gutters. If we needed water for washing or cleaning, we used that less palatable roof water.

Because churches and some other public buildings, including schools, did not have indoor plumbing, they had water buckets, too. After WWII, when we moved to the farm, folks had become more germ conscious, and so communal dippers were rarely used. Before that, though, and all the folks I preached to remembered this, families and school children and lodge members and church members, when they got thirsty, they went to the bucket, dipped the dipper, drank from the dipper, and put it back in the bucket. Kind of like Episcopal communion, everybody drinking out of the same cup.

So many images that I used when I started preaching at the age of 19... anyone hearing them today would have no idea what they’re about. Wiggletails? Water buckets? Water dippers? Now the preacher stories are about accidentally dropping cell phones into the toilet, and getting hacked or ghosted on Facebook, and forgetting to turn off the cordless microphone at inappropriate times, and… It’s best that we have young preachers now, who grew up with current technology, but I do miss the old stories.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

“All we ask [in old age] is to be allowed to remain the authors of our own story.” Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p. 140.

Speaking of more current stories, my novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless veterans accused of murdering a VA doctor, is now only 99 cents from the publisher Black Opal Books. It’s available from Amazon, B&N, etc, too, but they may still be charging the original prices.

GLAD TO BE HUMAN [R, 10-11-18]

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

We had supper with Paul and Judith Unger on our way to the memorial service for Wally Mead. It was Paul who shocked me a couple of years ago when he said, “Community doesn’t last.”

I have always thought about community in transcendent terms, “the great cloud of witnesses,” “for all the saints.” So the idea of community “not lasting” bothered me. That spiritual community does last, but it is a spiritual, not a physical community. Paul is right, though, about physical community, community in this world. It does not last.

Wally Mead is proof of that. He was the last of the great coterie of young professors with their new PhDs who came to Illinois State Teachers College in the 1960s to turn it into Illinois State University. At the same time, a line of bright you new seminary graduates came to pastor in Normal. The ILSU teachers and the Normal preachers were a community of ideas and challenge and progress. Wally was the last one left of that once-full community. His memorial service closed the circle. It was a wonderful community, but like all human communities, it could not last.

It is not just community that does not last. Also fast disappears the habitats where those communities dwelt. Gone entirely are the hospital where I was born; the farm where I grew up, house and all the buildings strip-mined; almost all the commercial buildings on both sides of the two blocks of Main Street in my home town; my university dorm; the parsonage where we lived when first married; five of the church buildings where I preached… if I had to show you a trail of my habitats to prove my identity, you would have to conclude that I do not exist.

Yet, here I am. It will be but a few years before I “age out,” and then, like all community and habitat, I’ll be gone. That is the way of the world. But—and here I am going to say something you may not have ever heard before: I am glad I got to be a human being in this transient world, that humans were my community.

All life is born, and lives, and then dies. Red geraniums and dandelions and army ants and baboons and algae and evergreens and swans and Presbyterians are all the same, in that way of transiency. We are also all the same in not knowing why this world exists at all, or why we are all destined to die. But even with all the problems and stupidities and pains to which humans are prone, I think being a human is a good thing. I’m sure that being a sea horse or a dragonfly or a Shetland pony is a good thing, too, but—all in all—I’d rather be a human.

When we come to the end, we either ignore death, or we rage against it, or try to avoid it, or we resign ourselves to it… or we accept it. Acceptance of death, acceptance of the mystery, is best, and that is something humans can do better, if we’re willing, than toads and sassafras can. Or even owls.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

“All we ask [in old age] is to be allowed to remain the authors of our own story.” Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p. 140.

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?”

HOW WE LAUGH [W, 10-10-18]

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

About two hours into the six hour drive home, after the four days in Chicago culminating in Mary Beth’s and Bill’s wedding, I made some clever remark to Helen. She laughed and laughed. It wasn’t really that funny. I can’t even remember what I said now. Maybe she laughed so much just because we were tired from all the festivities--even though it was a delightful time with family and friends--and relieved to be going home. You laugh harder when you’re punchy.

Regardless of the reason, it wasn’t the sort of fake excess laughter that you do to show someone you are paying attention, or to ingratiate yourself. After 60 years of marriage, we’re way past that.

Helen has often said that we don’t remember what people say, but we remember how they make us feel. What I remember most about anyone is the way they laughed.

I can’t remember what I said to Helen on the way home, but I remember her laughter. Isn’t that what life is all about, bringing laughter to those you love?

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

“God’s forgiveness is more than a blessing; it’s a challenge.” Wm. Sloane Coffin

I started this blog several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] The grandchildren, though, are grown up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the life cycle, so I am still trying to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter…

My new 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, BOKO, Books-A-Million, Black Opal Books, and almost any place else that sells books. It’s regularly $12.99 for paperback, and $3.99 for ebook, but only 99 cents for a limited time nw. Free if you can get your library to buy one.

THE RADICAL PRAYER [T, 10-9-18]

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

Holy Spirit, if this is right for me, let if become more firmly rooted and established in my life. If this is wrong for me, let it become less important to me, and let it become increasingly removed from my life.

Flora Slosson Wuellner calls this “the radical prayer.” [1]

When I first read it, I thought, “Well, that’s not radical.” In fact, it’s rather prosaic. It certainly does not have the beauty of Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer” or St. Francis of Assisi’s “Instrument of Peace” prayer.

Wuellner means it mostly for addicts, and it seems incredibly insipid for an addict. I mean, if you are praying about an addiction, to say “If this is right for me…” Well, you already know it’s not right for you. Why give God the option of getting it more firmly rooted in your life when it is already too firmly rooted?

Because the first and last job of life—the same job for the first and last stages of human development--is trust. If we don’t learn to trust at first, in the womb and in infancy, we’ll have a hard problem trusting all the way through life. But then at the end, whether because we have “aged out” or been given a terminal diagnosis, trust becomes a factor again. Can we trust God for what will come?

That doesn’t mean “believing” certain things, like what “heaven” is like, or who we’ll see there, etc. Trust and belief are very different.

Wuellner’s “radical” prayer really is, because trust is the most radical thing we can ever do. “Radical” comes from the Latin word for “root.” Trust is the root; it goes all the way down into the soul. Wuellner’s prayer is saying to God: I trust in You. So…

Holy Spirit, if this is right for me, let if become more firmly rooted and established in my life. If this is wrong for me, let it become less important to me, and let it become increasingly removed from my life.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] P. 78,   PRAYER, STRESS, AND OUR INNER WOUNDS [1985, The Upper Room]

“All we ask [in old age] is to be allowed to remain the authors of our own story.” Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p. 140.

“Evil is a soul hiding from itself.” Wm. Sloane Coffin

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.

MARTY CLOSES THE CIRCLE [M, 10-8-18]

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

Fittingly, Marty Pattin died in Charleston, Illinois. It wasn’t designed that way. He was just visiting, from Lawrence, Kansas, where he had lived since he had become the coach of the U of Kansas baseball team.

Before that, though, from the time he was born, he had always lived in Charleston, IL, through his college years at Eastern IL U, and even throughout his thirteen year career pitching in the major leagues.

He pitched for five different teams, including the CA Angels, Seattle Pilots, Milwaukee Brewers, and Boston Red Sox. He made the All Star team as a Brewer--and pitched in the game when Reggie Jackson famously hit the lights above the outfield stands with a towering home run--but he is remembered as a member of the Kansas City Royals, for whom he pitched the last seven years of his career. His final appearance in a major league baseball uniform came when he pitched a perfect 7^th inning, with two strike outs, in the 1980 World Series to help the Royals clinch the title against the Phillies.

In 2016, the baseball field at EIU was named for him.

For a small town with a small university, Charleston-EIU produced a whole lot of professional athletes, including Kevin Seitzer, also a Royal [I baptized the Seitzer’s baby], and Stan Royer, in baseball, and Jeff Gossett, Tony Romo, Sean Payton, Mike Shanahan, and others in football.

Marty was a member of Wesley United Methodist Church in Charleston during the time I was the pastor there. He and his wife came to one of the neighborhood coffees the church sponsored to help folks get acquainted with their new pastor. It was the only time in many such coffees in three different churches that anyone did a Donald Duck impersonation to welcome us.  

Other than getting to point out that I knew a relatively famous person, and I love baseball, why should I write about Marty Pattin in a blog for old people? After all, Marty was only 75 when he died.

Well, because the task of old people is to close the circle. Marty did that, starting in Charleston and ending in Charleston. Not all circle closings will be that obvious or geographical, but, if we are fortunate, we get to circle back, seeing all that happened on the way out.

When I was a long distance runner, I hated out-and-back courses, because while I was still going out, the younger and faster gals and guys were on the way back in. They were working hard, sweating and gasping, looking bad, so to encourage them, those of us still on the way out would call “Lookin’ good” to them as they streaked by.

Now, though, I’m one of those on the way back in. I’m still slow, and tired, and as I meet those on the way out, I call to them, “Lookin’ good,” because they’re going to need all the encouragement they can get to close the circle.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

“All we ask [in old age] is to be allowed to remain the authors of our own story.” Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p. 140.

COME OUT THE WILDERNESS-poem [Su, 10-7-18]

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

The boredom of the bleak

gray morning drapes

its stole around my shoulders

and says, Preach. The congregation

of the ancient sins, and slow

to answer, waits with hairless

ears, to hear, with sleep-

slunk answers before deep drunk

questions, and Is this not why

you came out the wilderness?

John Robert McFarland

His disciples could not really see Jesus until he was gone. [A quote, but I have forgotten from whom]

CHORES & ERRANDS-a poem [Sat, 10-6-18]

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

Chores and errands

These keep me sane

When winds are high

And the boat is swamped

I walk serenely into the gale

Holding firmly my mop and pail

As winds fly high

And waves meet sky

I swab the decks

Until they’re dry

When the night is dark

And the lamps gone out

And every good intent is dead

I go to the store to buy some bread

When the world’s deceit

Has gobbled the meat

I use my feet

So all can eat

Chores and errands…

John Robert McFarland

“Uncertainty is the mind’s greatest need, and no one thinks to thank God for it.” Emily Dickinson