CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter…
I have often extolled my
old friend, Walt Wagener, as one who is expert at “blooming where he’s
planted.” Once when I did so, Helen said, “I want to bloom BEFORE I’m planted.”
So I started writing a book of meditations for old people, sort of like my book
for cancer patients. I called it BLOOM BEFORE YOU’RE PLANTED. I was never able
to get an agent or publisher to be interested in the idea, though, so I’m now
using some of the “chapters” for that book in this blog.
I wrote this when we lived
in the Upper Peninsula of MI, where winter is 13 months long each year, and so
life is defined by winter, even in the summer.
THE LONG UNDERWEAR OF THE SOUL [M, 4-2-18]
Helen and I took off our long
underwear April 2. No, I should say that differently: we stopped wearing long
underwear April 2. Saying we took it off then indicates that we had not taken
it off at all since we put it on last Dec. Helen would be mortified to have
people think we did not change underwear all winter, because she did.
Long underwear is supposed to
be donned on Dec. 1 and doffed on April 1. We did not change on April 1 because
we had a big snowfall that day. We put it on last Dec. 2 because we did not
have a big snowfall Dec. 1.
Helen’s father,
Tank Karr, always said that spring starts March 1. In the UP there is no such
thing as spring; we simply think in terms of short underwear season.
Sometimes the weather fools
the underwear. We had to put our long underwear back on. In addition to our big
April Fool’s snow, we had another 7 inches April 9 and another two on April 11.
UP here, April may yet turn out to be not only the cruelest month but the
snowiest. Helen is at Trinity UMC, sewing comforters for the poor and homeless.
Yes, it is still that season. And I am wearing not only my long underwear but
my heaviest Land’s End wool pullover and my lumberjack plaid Filson vest and my
35-below sox from L.L. Bean.
We learned about long
underwear season from Arch Davidson of the Stanwood, IA Presbyterian Church. [1]
It was the first Sunday in December, which meant communion. It also, that year,
meant a record high temperature of around eighty degrees. Arch was dressed in
his gray three-piece church suit. As we sang the final hymn, he wavered and
began to pass out. He was too hot. Under his church suit was his union suit. Arch
was a man of conviction and predestination. It was Dec. 1, and by hokies, that
meant long underwear.
Cold is a particular concern
of old people. As a pastor, I have visited in the homes of many old people in
the winter. I did not wear long underwear then, but I had winter-weight stuff
on. I often had to cut the visit short and get out because the thermostat was
cranked up to eighty degrees. I never felt the need to go to Florida in the
winter; I could just go to Maple Adams’ house.
Many old people go in the
wintertime to where the air is hot. I think long underwear is a better
solution, for when you are old, you have less tolerance for hot air as well as
less tolerance for cold.
The cold does not seem to
affect young people as much. I cannot remember being young myself, but I
observe young people. Our granddaughter, Brigid, goes around in short sleeves
and bare feet during long underwear season.
There is also an emotional
coldness that comes with age. Neither cranking up the thermostat or fleeing to
Florida helps that much. I recall talking with a man whose wife had died
suddenly. “I just feel cold,” he said. His emotional long underwear had been
removed.
That happens each time
someone we love is taken from us. That person who kept us warm with love and
laughter, who held us close when we shivered at the ways of the world, is gone.
We are without the long underwear on which we counted.
I am told that the last test
for soldiers in training for arctic duty is to be dropped alone into the arctic
wilderness, in regular fatigues, clutching their arctic pack. They will not
survive unless they strip completely naked, in brutal temperatures, and don the
survival pack.
We do not survive in this
cold world without the right long underwear. I am tempted from time to time to
try to get along without it. Then some layer of my long underwear is taken
away, and I realize how cold I am without it. I give thanks for Filson and L.L.
Bean. I save my greatest thanks, however, for those who wrap me in the warmth
of love, even though now that warmth comes, from many of them, not in presence,
but in memory and in hope.
JRMcF
1] I pastored there while
doing doctoral work at the U of IA.
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…
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