CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith and Life from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter…
It was a day like today in
Evanston, IL, fifty years ago. Two degrees below zero, facing into a stiff
breeze off Lake Michigan as I walked from the El, on Dempster St., to Garrett
Theological Seminary, at Northwestern University. My forehead was so cold my
brain was going numb. I wasn’t quite sure who I was or where I was. I wasn’t at
all sure I could make it all the way to the seminary. I have been cold at other
times, especially the 8 years we lived in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, but never
that cold. It was John F. Kennedy’s fault.
During my three years at
Garrett-now half of the united Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, but in
the same location-I was appointed as pastor at the Cedar Lake and Creston
Methodist Churches, about 20 miles south of Gary, IN. I commuted daily, a total
of about sixty miles each way.
The first year I drove
each day to Hammond, IN [also where our daughters were born, in St. Margaret’s
Hospital], caught the South Shore train to the Loop in Chicago, and rode the El
from there to Evanston, then walked the rest of the way. It was several blocks
of walking. That day it seemed like several miles, in part because I was not
wearing a hat.
I was not wearing a hat
because John F. Kennedy did not wear a hat. He got into considerable trouble
with the hat manufacturers for going bareheaded, for they were losing business
fast, since young guys such as I figured we didn’t need hats, either. President
is a very powerful position. If the president doesn’t wear hats, we figure it’s
okay to walk bareheaded. If the president doesn’t tell the truth, we figure it’s
okay to lie barefaced.
Just as Kennedy got into
trouble with people who preferred hats, Trump is in trouble with people who
believe in telling the truth, as “the Bible says,” as in the Ten Commandments,
not to mention the teachings of Jesus and a whole lot of other places in “The
Holy Book.”
Of course he is not in
trouble with people who claim they believe in telling the truth and the
Ten Commandments but are lying about that. They actually believe in power, not in
the truth or in The Ten. If it takes lying, even about the Bible, to get power, they’re willing and
eager to lie.
Most folks lie because
they get something by doing so-power, sex, money, prestige, freedom from jail. After
a while they lie just because it’s part of who they are. I once knew a man
about whom it was said, “He lied even when it was to his advantage to tell the
truth.”
If someone in a car had
driven by me that day in Evanston and asked me if I needed a ride, I would have
said “No.” Was it a lie? Sort of, because it was not true. I did need a ride.
But I was not gaining anything by refusing the ride. I just didn’t want anyone
to think I couldn’t make it on my own. I can’t blame JFK for that.
I am now old and bald. I
have a collection of some two dozen caps, all the way from white sun hats to a
real Russian Cossack fur hat. I never go outside without a hat. That’s the
truth.
So what’s the point of
this reflection? Durned if I know. I started out to talk about how cold I got
once, because it’s very cold where I am right now, and it seemed like I should
reflect on the cold. Then I got to thinking about people who don’t tell the
truth, and religious hypocrites, and people who are examples, for good or for
ill. That slid off into self-reliance.
Recently an entity called
iAuthor on Twitter said to all of us who follow, “Pick up the book closest to
you. The first full sentence on page 27 will tell you what your life will be
like in 2018.” My old friend, Dr. John Wilkey, sent me a book of his writings
for Christmas. It was closest. The first full sentence on p. 27 says, “You and
I must decide the ending ourselves.”
JRMcF
I tweet occasionally as
yooper1721.
We no longer live in the
land of winter, the UP--the “place of winter” mentioned in the title line, 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.]--but it feels like the land of winter right here in Bloomington,
IN, where we met and married while at IU.
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