REMEMBERING THE STORY [R, 9-27-18]

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

This will be my last column for a while, since we will be tied up for the next several days in daughter Mary Beth’s wedding to Bill Napolillo. Added significance for me, since it’s my final clergy act.

We’ll be seeing old friends and meeting new ones, so I’ve been thinking about names, particularly, remembering them.

Last Sunday morning, eating breakfast at church with Bryan Walters [our church serves a really good breakfast each Sunday], he asked me what techniques or mnemonic devices I had used through the years, since I had to learn so many names. I have used mnemonic devices only rarely, because most names don’t lend themselves to them very readily.

I have always tried at the moment I met someone to learn not just their name but some of their story. My early years were in campus ministry, and I had to learn the names of a couple hundred new students every year. I found that if I asked them for their home town and their major when I met them, they were not just a name, but a story.

Your name is just a shortened form of your story, and a story is easier to remember. If you’re Ron Wetzell, the poly sci major from Tampico, you’re much easier to remember than just Ron Wetzell.

So this weekend I’ll be with Chris Rander, the chemist who saves basset hounds from mean masters, and Jennifer Jackson, the Gospel singing MIT engineer who fights with broad swords and runs races up the stairs of sky scrapers, and Diane Jeffers, who directs summer camps for space cadets, and Sheila King, who does public relations for the city of Chicago, and Randy Estes who…is Randy. I’m looking forward to learning more of each of those stories, because they’re really interesting. That’s one of the good things about having interesting children; they have interesting friends.

John Robert McFarland

A problem with this business of how to remember is that I am old. As I wrote, I could not remember Bryan’s last name. I knew he was Dawn’s husband and Owen and Graham’s father and a great guitar player, but Walters simply eluded me. I knew the story, but could not remember the name. However, it’s more important to know the story than to remember all the title.

THE REASON HAIRS ARE NUMBERED [T, 9-25-18]

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

After a certain age, a woman should not be allowed to change her hairstyle. Like high school graduation. Yes, I’m all for women being in charge of their own bodies, but hair is different, because it’s not exactly part of the body, and because that’s the way we identify a woman, the way we can tell one of them from the others.

The same should be true with men changing, also, but with height instead of hair. I remember the first class reunion Jack Drury attended. Who was this tall guy? When we graduated, Jack was about five-six. This man was 6 feet tall. He had grown over half a foot after high school! How are people to deal with something like that? Yes, he was wearing a name tag, but we were all looking for that name tag six inches too low.

If a man grows more than one inch taller after high school, he should be required to change his name and move to a foreign country, like Texas. At class reunions, we’d say: “What ever happened to Jack?” “I don’t know, but I remember him well… five-six.”

Now at class reunions we say: “Who are all these old ladies?” It’s not because their backs are bent and they’re wearing sensible shoes. We liked their straight backs and their high heels fine, but we didn’t identify them by those. Our confusion is because they all have the same white-bonnet hair-do, even the ones who are supposed to have the kinky brown curls, or the flowing red tresses, or the black flip-dos over their ears.

Yes, sometimes women lose hair because of cancer, but wigs can be made to replicate the lost hair. What’s more important, a fancy wig or being recognized at the reunion for who you really are?

The rules for old age are few, but important: Stay in the moment. Do the right thing. Start at the end. Don’t mess with your hair style. There is a reason why the hairs of your head are numbered. [Mt 10:30, Lk 12:7]

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 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.] 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.

HINGE BOOKS- THE IMMENSE JOURNEY [M, 9-24-18]

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… THE IMMENSE JOURNEY by Loren Eiseley

In my campus ministry days, I read a lot of books, including things like The Hobbit, by Tolkein, because the students were reading them for their classes, and I wanted to understand what they were talking about. That was the only reason I started skimming through a copy of The Immense Journey that some sophomore had left in the lounge. Wow!

First, I had no idea that a scientist could write so well and so interestingly. I was scared to death of science in high school, mostly because you really had to study it, rather than just get by on writing ability, and also I was bored by it, probably because our physics text book was written by the aptly but unfortunately named Charles E. Dull. The edition we used was published in 1922, already 30 years out of date. Science was just a bunch of facts and theorems—no stories. Eiseley showed me how wrong I was about that! The Immense Journey read like a novel.

Second, I got my first introduction to the theory of story, which would become the center of my own academic work, from Eiseley, a scientist, and not from theologians. [1] Eiseley said: We live in story, not in facts and theories. The story is just there. It doesn’t have to have a point or purpose.

As I began to write narrative theology I began to say: Let the story tell itself. Leave it open so that people can find their place in it. Don’t tell them what it means, because you don’t know. It will mean something different for each person. If they want to know what it means, God will tell them.

Third, I began to see God as the great story-teller, the one not so much creating the great story, from outside, but living the immense journey, creating—telling the story--from within, living/telling it with us.

I don’t think Eiseley intended my third point, but that’s okay. By opening my eyes to the wonder and immenseness of the universe, he helped me better see God, and the job of any scientist is to help us see farther, deeper, and better. Eisley did that for me.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] I did, of course, profit from the work of many theologians, also, as I worked on narrative theology, especially folks like Hans Frei in The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative.

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

LOVE, MEDICINE, AND MIRACLES by Bernie Siegel

JESUS, A NEW VISION by Marcus Borg

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.

SEPTEMBER LIGHT-poem [Sat 9-22-18]

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

September days are cooler

I walk in the woods

while luncheon dishes

wait

In summer I walk as early

as my body and the day allow

for then the days are wet with

sweat

I puff and wheeze

I grow weak and am not steady

Summer days say that I am

old

In autumn I can wait

to walk below tall pines

until the sun is

slanting

Thru yellowing birches

neither sharp nor mottled.

I move smoothly

tacking

only slightly

from side to side

to keep the world from

tilting.

John Robert McFarland

CLOSING THE NORMAL CIRCLE [F, 9-21-18]

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

In the CIW column for August 29, I wrote about my old friend, Wally Mead, who was a political science prof at ILSU when I was campus minister there, and how he did not get married until he was 80. Last Saturday, we went to his memorial service. Things were mentioned there that I failed to write about in that August 29 column.

I did tell about his dog, Kleid, and how she accompanied Wally to class each day. Bob Hunt, Wally’s poly sci faculty mate, added to the tale of Kleid Saturday, noting that Kleid had enough credits for a degree, but she kept taking the same classes over and over. Also, he reminded us that she used to clean the blackboard at the end of class. And he confessed that since he and Wally looked a lot alike, and people often got them confused, they would sometimes wear each other’s name tags at functions just to bedevil folks.

Jim Bortell, who was Wally’s pastor and friend for many years, said “Wally was the kind of person who made it easier for others to believe in God.” What a nice thing to have as your legacy.

He also reminded us of Wally’s close relationship with Michael Polyani, and how they both insisted, against logical positivism and general scientific atheistic/agnostic skepticism, that all knowledge has a personal element for which each of us is responsible.

Once when Wally went to visit Polyani in London, the famed chemist/philosopher was recovering from a car accident. His defense when hauled before the magistrate was that it happened because “I forgot that I was driving.” Now, there is a guy who thinks deep thoughts!

When I was appointed as minister to The Wesley Foundation [the Methodist campus ministry] in Normal, Illinois State Teachers College was becoming Illinois State University. The school had originally been called Illinois State Normal College, “Normal” meaning teachers college, and hence the name of the town, since the college was there first, simply an outpost train stop from Bloomington. In the 1960s, ILSU was still a premier teacher training institution, but to accomplish the change to a full academic enterprise, that move from teachers college to university, a lot of bright young professors with newly-minted PhDs were brought in. It changed not only the college but the whole of Normal-Bloomington.

Those young professors and the campus ministers—also young and new—formed a progressive cohort, advocating for civil rights and social justice, modern and inclusive ways of teaching and learning, thinking and doing, in this new academic and civic atmosphere. We challenged one another at the same time that we supported one another.

They are all gone now. Wally was the last one. So being there, at Wally’s memorial service, was a closing of the circle.

I don’t need to get back to Normal anymore now. That union of like-minded souls no longer exists. But what a great gift it was, to be part of it. I hope you have or have had a group like that.

John Robert McFarland

I’m eternally grateful to Bill White and Jameson Jones and Don Ruthenberg for persuading me to take the Wesley Foundation position at Normal.

MY SECRET LOVES, [R, 9-20-18]

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

One way to keep a marriage growing is to keep some loves hidden, even for 60 years.

In this column for 9-12-18, I wrote about one of my hinge books, Jesus of Nazareth, by Gunther Borkamm. He pointed out that the New Testament was written by and in a community of followers of Jesus, people of “the way,” for whom Jesus was a present reality. It was an inclusive community. That book was the reason I worked so hard to learn names all the years I was a pastor. “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.” If the pastor calls you by your name, you feel like you belong. I want everybody to feel included in the community of “the way.” So I love knowing everybody’s name, even in our current congregation, where I am just a member, not a pastor. Helen said, “All these years, calling everybody by name, I just thought you were showing off, because you could do something that is hard for everybody else.”

So, there are two things that I really love—in addition to my wife, my children, my grandchildren, babies, little kids, puppy dogs, mincemeat pie, coffee… knowing names, and Twinkies.

Our older daughter, Mary Beth, telephones us a lot--because she likes us, and we’re old and she wants to check up on us, and because she has a wedding coming up. That means, of course, that she wants to talk to her mother, mostly. However, sometimes Helen is off at water aerobics or at the grocery store when MB calls, and then I get to talk to her.

Recently Helen got back from Lucky’s with the ingredients for taco salad [it’s been a long, hot summer] while I was talking with MB and overheard me say, “I love Twinkies.”

She later told MB, “You think you know somebody… I’ve been married to your father for 60 years and I never knew he liked Twinkies. I’ve never seen him eat a Twinkie. It must be some secret addiction.”

Well, not exactly. I love Twinkies, but I never eat them, because they are not good for me, or anybody else. They aren’t even food. They are “a food-like substance.” That makes them really good. That’s why I love them.

Or maybe it’s because they were such a surprising first love. At the age of ten, I became a brown-bag kid. When we lived in Indianapolis, I walked home for lunch each day. When we moved to the country, I rode a school bus and so had to take my lunch to school. No school cafeteria, and we couldn’t have afforded school lunches even if there had been one. We couldn’t afford a lunch box, either, so I took my lunch in a brown paper bag, or, if we didn’t have one of those, the long wax-paper sleeve that a loaf of bread comes in. I did have a thermos for milk, which I just carried along with the lunch bag.

It was a pitiful lunch—chicken legs, or pork chops, or ham, home-grown tomatoes, home-baked biscuits, real food, because we couldn’t afford “store-bought” food-like substances. One day, as I gnawed on a pork chop, feeling sorry for myself because the other kids had sandwiches of bologna on white bread, Bobby Joe pulled out of his lunch box a Twinkie! I had never seen such a wonder. [Before the days of TV ads]. It was in cellophane. It was bright yellow. Well, “it” wasn’t just an “it.” “It” was a two. Two short yellow sponge cakes. He gave me one. I bit into it. It wasn’t just sponge cake. Inside was a filling that was sort of like the ice cream we had at “socials” in the church basement. It was sweet and soft and creamy and sugary and… different. I was in love.

To make it even better, at the same time I saw a cartoon about Twinkies in a comic book. [I love old-time comic books, too, but Helen already knows that.] Automation was the new, big thing at the time, and “untouched by human hands” was the way you said something was really up to date. In the comic book, we saw the Twinkies factory, with “Untouched by Human Hands” under the Twinkies name. And inside the factory, in the next panel of the comic, the Twinkies were being made by… monkeys! It was the perfect joke for any ten-year-old boy, but especially for one who had just fallen in love with Twinkies.

Do I have still more secret loves that, unlike Doris Day, I did not “…shout it from the highest hills, even told the golden daffodils?” Well, like every other boy my age, there is Doris day…

John Robert McFarland

The music for “My Secret Love” is by Sammy Fain, with lyrics by Paul Francis Webster for the 1953 movie, “Calamity Jane,” starring the beautiful, lyrical, and slightly-challenged dramatically former Doris Van Kapplehof.

BEING MORTAL [W, 9-19-18]

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

I am reading Atul Gewande’s Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. I picked it up on the way out the door to take the car to the tire place, because it is a fairly small paperback—easy to carry and to read in a cramped and noisy waiting room that features 10W-30 coffee.

Why that book was in the stacks on the main level of the china cabinet in the living room I have no idea. That is where we keep current to-read books. We mark in a book who gave it to us—gifting being the source of almost all our books—but there is no such indication. It has the look of a used book, but we have avoided the temptations of used-book emporia and library sales for years, just because addicts must avoid the occasions in which their addictions can be fed. Books at our house just sort of hatch on their own and then, fledging-like, take flight until they land where we will pick them up because of their physical properties, like small enough to carry out into the world of tire repairs.

As I worked through the book--trying to avoid the voices of the two women and the tire guy who were arguing about who said what about price before the repair was done, each of the three totally misunderstanding what each of the others was saying—I realized that what I was reading sounded quite familiar, as in having read it in the pages of “The New Yorker” when Gewande had speculated on being mortal before he put it into book form. But I was younger then, like five years, and I have become much more mortal in those five years, so “being mortal” has taken on new urgency.

What really frosts me in the years of winter is how we old folks are told to do the exact opposite of what we have worked our whole lives to avoid. Well, maybe it’s just me, but that’s still frost-worthy.

I have wanted—nay, desired—my whole life to be able just to sit down and do nothing. No, no, the experts say; you must stay active.

I have wanted—nay desired—my whole life to have people leave me alone. No, no, the experts say; you must remain social and engaged.

I have wanted—nay, desired—my whole life to devote my days to eating ice cream and peanuts while watching sports on TV. No, no, he experts say; you must eat vegetables and turmeric and avoid blue screens.

Gewande writes beautifully, and insightfully, and usefully, and I recommend Being Mortal to you. But be prepared to get frosted.

John Robert McFarland

Speaking of writing, my most recent book, VETS, about four homeless and handicapped Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BOKO, Powell’s, etc. It’s published by Black Opal Books and is available for a limited period of time for 99 cents.

HINGE BOOKS-IDENTITY AND THE LIFE CYCLE [R, 9-18-18]

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… IDENTITY AND THE LIFE CYCLE by Erik H. Erkison

The first book by Erikson that I read was Young Man Luther, which Prof. Carroll Wise had us read in our pastoral psychology/counseling course at Garrett Theological Seminary. From there we went on to Erikson’s 8 stages of psycho-social adjustment.

I have used those stages to understand what is happening to me, and to almost everybody else, just about every day for the last 60 years. I am especially fond, of course, of the 8^th stage, because it has provided the title for a novel I am writing, and also given me an excuse to spend endless hours in fun memories. Here they are, in short form, the primary task for each age stage…

Trust vs Mistrust-birth to maybe two years

Autonomy vs Shame and Doubt-two to four

Initiative vs Guilt-three to five

Industry vs Inferiority [tools, broadly understood]-six to twelve

Identity vs Identity Diffusion-thirteen to nineteen

Intimacy vs Isolation-twenty to forty

Generativity vs Stagnation-forty to sixty

Final Integrity vs Despair-sixty to whenever

Erikson and others have tweaked these along the way, but they remain an excellent analysis of what we have to accomplish at each stage for maximum wholeness as human beings. It has been immensely useful to me as a pastor, especially as a pastoral counselor to children and young people.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

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 9-18-18

THE IMMENSE JOURNEY by Loren Eiseley

GUILT, ANGER, AND GOD by C. Fitzsimmons Allison

PROFESSION: MINISTER by James Glasse

LOVE, MEDICINE, AND MIRACLES by Bernie Siegel

JESUS, A NEW VISION by Marcus Borg

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.

THE WIND JUST WANTS TO GO HOME [Sun, 9-16-18]

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

“Nature abhors a vacuum,” it is said, and so does our grand-dog, Ernie, whenever he has done something on the rug that requires the use of the vacuum. Or maybe those are different vacuums.

Nature doesn’t just abhor a vacuum. It abhors change. It wants stasis. Especially air. Air wants to stay right where it is. As Yosemite Sam might say, “That’s a fact, boy.” Wind is air’s way of trying to get back to where it belongs.

Rock & Roll songs are about leaving home and finding your place in the world. Country & Western songs are about trying to get back home after you found your place and it wasn’t all that great. Wind is just air’s way of trying to get back home, make air stable again. That’s why all the songs about wind are of the country-western genre.

Come to think of it, though, there aren’t many songs about air getting disillusioned about traveling all around trying to find some excitement and failing and so being ready to go back home, so…

Here comes the wind again, oh, yes, here comes the wind again, trying to get home, air wants no more to roam, oh, yes, here comes the blowing wind again… Can’t you just hear Willie Nelson singing that?

Of course, the air probably started moving with Rock and Roll songs, going out looking for fun… One, two, three o’clock, blow, ten, eleven, twelve o’clock blow, we’re gonna blow around the globe tonight, gonna blow around til broad daylight, gonna blow blow blow around the globe tonight. Ah, yes, Bill Halley’s Comet and “The Cyclones.”

Well, maybe the air doesn’t need a song after all. It has its own ways, according to Jesus. “The wind blows where it wishes. You hear the sound of it, but you can’t tell where it’s coming from or where it’s going.” Then he adds, “So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” [John 3:8]

John Robert McFarland

HINGE BOOKS-MAN’S NEED AND GOD’S ACTION [F, 9-14-18]

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

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… MAN’S NEED AND GOD’S ACTION by Reuel Howe

I was very surprised about five years ago, when I re-read this book, to learn that it was the source of all my relational theology/psychology, all of which I thought I had come to on my own. But all the stuff I said and preached about all these years was almost word for word out of Reuel Howe. I was disappointed that I was not nearly as clever as I thought, but mostly grateful to Reuel.

Except for the outdated use of “man” by Howe, of course. I have been using inclusive pronouns, as best I can, for a long time. That’s not the only language in this book that is outmoded and too formal. After all, it’s a 1953 book, so what can you expect? But Howe’s insights about our relationships to God and to one another are so full that we should definitely not quibble about language.

I got the privilege of being part of a week’s continuing education event with Howe at Garrett Theological Seminary about 35 years ago. There were a dozen of us in the group, including some Roman Catholic nuns. Almost all of us had been helped so much by reading his book that we had come just to touch him, regardless of what the workshop was supposed to cover.

During our time together, he told this story. I think it explains and summarizes that hinge book from 1953.

When he was a young teen, his father decided to homestead in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Father, mother, Reuel, and younger siblings walked into the forest, carrying their tents and supplies. Before they could even get settled, a fire wiped out everything they had. Reuel and his father had to walk back out to get more equipment and supplies.

When they returned, they found that Reuel’s mother had discovered an old tin can, picked some wild flowers to put in it, placed it on a stump, and was playing “ring around” with the little children.

Reuel said, “She had taken a very bad situation and recycled it, to make it good.”

That pretty well sums up Man’s Need and God’s Action.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

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 9-14-18

IDENTITY & THE LIFE CYCLE by Erik H. Erikson

THE IMMENSE JOURNEY by Loren Eiseley

GUILT, ANGER, AND GOD by C. Fitzsimmons Allison

PROFESSION: MINISTER by James Glasse

LOVE, MEDICINE, AND MIRACLES by Bernie Siegel

JESUS, A NEW VISION by Marcus Borg

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.

HINGE BOOKS-JESUS OF NAZARETH [W, 9-12-18]

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

[Repeated intro paragraph] 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 OF NAZARETH by Gunther Bornkamm.

This was our basic New Testament book at Garrett Theological Seminary. It opened me to Jesus in a new way. I had thought of Jesus as an historical reality, and—through the resurrection—a spiritual reality. And as a prophet, a preacher, a teacher, a sage. All good.

But Bornkamm pointed out that the NT was written by people who had experienced and were still experiencing Jesus as a leader and companion on “the way,” which was the first designation of the following of Jesus. It wasn’t a theology, or doctrines, or beliefs, or an organization. It was just people walking in the way of Jesus, with Jesus, the way those disciples had literally walked with Jesus on the way to Emmaus. [Luke 24:13-23.]

That’s why I practiced the church entry progression of Belong, Believe, Become long before it was a named program of evangelism. I didn’t just ask people to come to church; the first thing I did was ask them to join. We gave people information, if they wanted it, before they joined [The youth group meets Thursday, the coffee is “fair trade,” etc.] but we didn’t give them “instruction” [Christians believe in…].

Bornkamm’s book influenced everything I did as the leader of a congregation. The one question I asked myself, and others, at every juncture of church life, was: Who’s being left out?

That’s why I worked so hard at learning names in church [and other places, too], and still do. Your name is a short form, a summary, of your whole story. If the pastor, or someone else in the congregation, calls you by name, it is saying that you belong, with your story. Your story is part of the story of the Jesus community. You are in The Way.

An important question, perhaps the only question, as The United Methodist Church considers “the way forward” is: Who’s being left out?

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I write this column in honor of my friend since seminary days, Fritz Mutti, now retired as a bishop of the UMC, whose kind and compassionate voice always reminds us, especially as the UMC considers “the way forward,”  not to leave anybody out.

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

THE IMMENSE JOURNEY by Loren Eiseley

GUILT, ANGER, AND GOD by C. Fitzsimmons Allison

PROFESSION: MINISTER by James Glasse

LOVE, MEDICINE, AND MIRACLES by Bernie Siegel

JESUS, A NEW VISION by Marcus Borg

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.

HINGE BOOKS-THE PREACHER AND HIS AUDIENCE [T, 9-11-18]

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

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…

Here are my hinge books:

TRAMP, THE SHEEP DOG by Don Lang, pictures by Kurt Wiese.

THE PREACHER AND HIS AUDIENCE, By Webb Garrison

JESUS OF NAZARETH by Gunther Bornkamm.

MAN’S NEED AND GOD’S ACTION by Reuel Howe

IDENTITY & THE LIFE CYCLE by Erik H. Erikson

THE IMMENSE JOURNEY by Loren Eiseley

GUILT, ANGER, AND GOD by C. Fitzsimmons Allison

PROFESSION: MINISTER by James Glasse

LOVE, MEDICINE, AND MIRACLES by Bernie Siegel

JESUS, A NEW VISION by Marcus Borg

BIOGRAPHY AS THEOLOGY by Wm. McCutcheon

That is too long a list to explore at one time, so I’m going to do only one book per column. I talked about Tramp, The Sheep Dog in the column of M, 9-10-18.

Today’s hinge book is… THE PREACHER AND HIS AUDIENCE, By Webb Garrison

My first continuing education experience as a preacher was The School of the Prophets, for Indiana Methodist ministers, at Depauw University, in 1957. Actually, it was a continuing ed experience only for the other 200 or so in attendance. It was my very first experience at preacher education. I had been appointed to three little churches during my sophomore year at IU, without any education or experience or credentials to qualify me for such a responsibility. To say I was eager and ready to absorb anything I could learn at The School of the Prophets is an understatement!

In addition to plenary sessions and other activities, I had a workshop on preaching with Webb Garrison. I was delighted. He told me to preach exactly the way I already was—tell lots of stories and don’t try to tell people what they mean. That’s what I was doing, simply because I didn’t know what the stories meant, anyway. That’s what Jesus did, Dr. Garrison said—tell stories and ask questions. This was great news. I was already preaching like Jesus!

So I bought Garrison’s book, which was really just an expansion of what I learned in 2 or 3 hours in his workshop, with some extra stories thrown in. I’m not sure I ever read it completely through, but I have read many other books on preaching, many of them quite good, but none like that first one, my hinge book.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

HINGE BOOKS-Tramp, the Sheep Dog [M, 9-10-18]

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

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…

Here are my hinge books:

TRAMP, THE SHEEP DOG by Don Lang, pictures by Kurt Wiese.

THE PREACHER AND HIS AUDIENCE, By Webb Garrison

JESUS OF NAZARETH by Gunther Bornkamm.

MAN’S NEED AND GOD’S ACTION by Reuel Howe

IDENTITY & THE LIFE CYCLE by Erik H. Erikson

THE IMMENSE JOURNEY by Loren Eiseley

GUILT, ANGER, AND GOD by C. Fitzsimmons Allison

PROFESSION: MINISTER by James Glasse

LOVE, MEDICINE, AND MIRACLES by Bernie Siegel

JESUS, A NEW VISION by Marcus Borg

BIOGRAPHY AS THEOLOGY by Wm. McCutcheon

That is too long a list to explore at one time, so I’m going to do only one book per column. Today it is… TRAMP, THE SHEEP DOG by Don Lang, pictures by Kurt Wiese.

Animals are good story stand-ins for children, and dogs were especially good stand-ins for me when I was a child. I think almost all my childhood tears were shed for courageous dogs that sacrificed themselves for others.

I still remember the terrific, and losing effort, I made when I saw Lassie’s bloody footprints on the rocks in “Lassie, Come Home,” at the Tacoma Theater on Washington St. in Indianapolis when I was about six.

[I suspect that movie was the occasion of my appreciation of older women, via Elizabeth Taylor, who was about ten then, but she was soon replaced in my fantasies by the more age-appropriate Margaret O’Brien. That, though, is a different story.]

Tramp and Lassie set the context for the sacrificial theology and psychology that I practiced most of my life. I not only understood Jesus as a sacrifice for salvation, so that others could live, but I experienced that sacrifice. I had lived sacrifice, through Don Lang’s evocation of the noble Tramp, who was misunderstood and disrespected and actively despised by the very people he was trying to save. Tramp was “…despised and rejected by men… acquainted with sorrow… We esteemed him not…” [Isaiah 53:3] That theology became the template not only for my theology but for my own personal psychology.

In these, my latter years, I have a lot of questions and doubts about the relevance and even necessity of substitutionary atonement, but I have no doubt about the importance of Tramp to those sheep he saved, and to me.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Ralph Sockman famously said about hinges: “The hinge of history is on a stable door in Bethlehem.”

THREE THINGS I PRAY [Su, 9-9-18]

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

Along about 1200, Richard of Chichester wrote a prayer that was popularized in our time in the musical, “Godspell.” In it he prays for three things…

TO SEE THEE MORE CLEARLY: Christian theology has always said that the way we see God more clearly is by looking at Jesus. “Turn your eyes upon Jesus,” as Helen Lemmel wrote, “…and the things of earth with grow strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace.”

That is why the Bible is important to Christians: in it we see Jesus. That is why any part of the Bible that contradicts Jesus or does not reflect the way of Jesus is not a way to or word about God.

A little girl drew a picture in Sunday School. Her teacher asked her who it was. “God,” she said. “But no one has ever seen God,” the teacher said. “They will now,” the girl replied. I’m not sure how that fits in here, but I like it.

TO LOVE THEE MORE DEARLY: To love God more dearly is to commit to the first commandment—to have no other Gods.

That is not religious exclusivism, because loving God is not about worshipping God or praising God. [Which is one reason I am no fan of “praise” songs—they usually stop at praise rather than leading us beyond praise.]

Loving God isn’t saying, “Oh, God, you’re so neat.” It’s doing whatever the hell God wants us to do.

Marcus Borg says that we see what God loves in what Jesus loves.

Loving God means to love what God loves, and learning what God loves comes, as already noted, not from the Bible, but from Jesus.

TO FOLLOW THEE MORE NEARLY: No mystery here. Walk in the ways of Jesus.

That’s what Christianity was originally called, “The Way.” It had nothing to do with “belief,” that darkness that comes from the Enlightenment, that makes us think we are Christians if we “believe” in the existence of God, or in the historical reality of Jesus.

Thirty or so years ago, a young man told me he was leaving our church because we did not believe in the substitutionary atonement. That was news to me, but I had to admit that I just sort of assumed it without preaching about it directly, since I was not a “doctrinal” preacher, anyway. He was quite pleased with his new-found doctrine, and was also pleased that anyone who did not “believe” in it was going to hell. I asked him if that included Kathy.

Kathy was a member of our congregation. She came to church every Sunday with her mother, who wasn’t really her mother. She came to Doris as a four year old in a marriage that, when it ended, left Doris, not Kathy’s father, with a girl who would always have the mental ability of a four year old, even when she was twenty-eight, as she was then.

Kathy loved her mother and she loved the church. She loved to sing the hymns, although she often sang other words. She loved reciting the Lord’s Prayer with everyone, although she was often a line or two behind.

Kathy couldn’t even say “substitutionary atonement,” yet along “believe” in it. Steve acknowledged, with only slight reluctance, that yes, Kathy would go to hell because she could not “believe” correctly.

“Conversion” in the Greek originally had to do with turning around and going the other way. We are not converted to Christ until we are converted to his way of living in the world, until we go the other way.

When we are old, and energy is flickering and feeble, we have to find new ways of following in the Way. [Please let me know when you find out how to do this.]

Oh, dear Lord, three things I pray…

John Robert McFarland

AS ONE WHO KNOWS THE WAY-poem [Sa, 9-8-18]

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

When it is time

I want to go

As one who knows the way

John Robert McFarland

Bonus Unrelated but Useful Observation for the Current Times: Myth is a good word, but it is often used to mean a commonly accepted untruth, like “the myth of male superiority.” But myth really means a truth that is expressed in non-factual ways, like the myth involving the ugly duckling of Swan Lake, which gets across a truth that is not literally accurate. But some myths—like the master race--really are lies, so I’m going to start calling them lyths. It’s a word I thought I invented until I cranked up the Google machine and found that it is already in the urban dictionary

LISTEN FOR THE STORY-JIM HEADY’S [W, 9-5-18]

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

After church a couple of Sundays ago, Scott Shrode asked me if I had known Jim Heady. Yes, I had not heard his name for a long time, but I did know him, though not well. We were both preachers in the Indiana Conference of the Methodist Church when I first started in ministry, but he was a generation ahead of me. Then I transferred to the Central IL Conference and lost touch with most of the Indiana preachers.

His full name was James Truman Heady, and he had been a soldier in WWII.

When I was just starting out in the ministry, in the mid 1950s, we had quite a few clergy members who had served in the military in WWII. They didn’t talk much about it, but sometimes you knew, because they were missing limbs, or walked funny. Dick Thistle of City Church in Gary could walk only with difficulty, with braces. He had been a Flying Fortress pilot and had been shot down.

I had never known Jim Heady’s story until Scott told me Sunday. Jim had been a German prisoner of war. He was in an especially bad concentration camp. He was a tall man, who had been starved down to a little over a hundred pounds and was often beaten and humiliated. He grew to hate his sadistic captors, the Nazis, Adolf Hitler, all Germans. Except “hate” was too mild a word. He hated them with a rage he couldn’t even express.

As the war became more and more desperate, the German guards began to retreat, with the prisoners, away from the Russians, whom they feared more than the Allies. They had to go fast, and Jim couldn’t. So they just left him in the road, to die.

A family found him. A husband and wife, with three daughters. The war had raged around them, they had nothing, but they took him in and nursed him back to life. In his dazed condition, he thought he was with them only three days. It was much, much longer.

When they were able to turn him over to the Allies, he realized that all his hate was gone. The Nazis were still the Nazis, the Germans still the Germans, war was still hell, he had still suffered so much. None of that was deniable. But he saw life in a different way, because of the compassion, against difficult odds, of that family that saved him.

At first I didn’t want to stop to listen to Scott. I had promised to give a a new woman in the church a ride to Panera’s, because her car had broken down. She is new to town as well as to the church, and doesn’t know very many people, at least none as manipulatable as me, and she’s quite a handful to deal with, and I wanted to make the trip to Panera as quickly and efficiently as possible, so I could get home to watch the Reds on TV, but as I listened to Scott tell the story of Jim, I learned once again: when you get a chance to hear a story, listen.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

“Any sorrow can be borne if a story can be told about it.” Izak Dinesen [Karen Blixen]

HAVE SOME BREAD [T, 9-4-18]

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

I’ve told you about this before, but Helen and I were one of the stations for communion at our church Sunday, and it reminded me of Kathryn.

We have a big sanctuary, so there are five couples stationed with bread and juice around the room, plus a roving couple--that goes to people who need to take the elements at their seats--and a solitary woman who stands hopefully by herself with gluten-free bread. Helen and I were one of the stationary couples.

It reminded me of a time that we served communion in Iron Mountain. A new family had joined our church, partly because of us. They had been long-time members of another church, but when the Director of Christian Ed there told the children that Jesus had named the animals on the ark, they decided they’d better go to a church with a less fanciful approach. Our pastor decided it would make them feel included if he had them help serve communion one Sunday.

It is a smaller church than our current one, so there were only two serving stations, on opposite sides of the chancel. Helen and I served on one side and Bruce and Kathryn on the other. Helen was mumbling the appropriate words as people took the bread from her, and I noticed with appreciation that Kathryn was doing the same on the other side.

It was only afterward that we learned that no one had told her what to say. She had seen Helen but could not hear her, so she realized she was supposed to say something, so as each person stepped up to the loaf she extended, she said, “I don’t know what I’m doing; have some bread.” 

Are not those the perfect words to serve the Eucharist? It’s true for us all. We have no idea what we’re doing in this life, so let’s just share our daily bread.

JRMcF

John Robert McFarland

A LIFE IN SHIRTS [M, 9-3-18]

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

As old people must--or should—Helen and I keep going through our stuff, trying to get rid of anything we don’t need. It’s really quite satisfying to give stuff we don’t use anymore to the Shalom Center for the homeless, or the Mountain Mission truck, or Opportunity House. I’m having trouble, though, getting rid of t-shirts that I don’t use or need.

I have 53 t-shirts. That does not count the 3 white sleeveless “wife beater” shirts and the 5 white V-neck and 4 white crew-neck t-shirts I wear as undershirts. Those 53 are real t-shirts, with emblems and slogans and pictures and colors and words. And I didn’t buy a single one of them.

Mostly they are gifts from family and friends, although some are from cancer survivor events at which I spoke, or victory shirts from my days as a long-distance runner. How do you get rid of a shirt that is a gift, or a celebration of life, or a hard-won prize?

It is customary anymore at a funeral to display artifacts of the deceased. When George Paterson died, the table at the front of First UMC in Iowa City displayed not only the urn with his ashes but his Bible, his ordination stole, and his trombone, It was a display that summarized his life and brought up so many good memories, for he was famous as a leader of jazz worship services, as well as the chaplain at the University of Iowa Hospital and a professor of pastoral psychology at the university.

When my high school friend, Phyllis Graham Parr, died, the fellowship hall at the UU Church in Bloomington, IL was lined with her sweat-shirts, each one indicating some aspect of her life as a wife and mother, a mathematician, a musician, a citizen.

So I thought for my funeral, a time-line of my t-shirts would be a way of reminding folks who I am. It’s really irrelevant, though, since I am in the process of outliving anyone who might have reason to attend my funeral. So I’ll just tell you about them… they say that I am a cancer survivor, a long-distance runner, a Reds, IU, and Prairie Home Companion fan, a pickle ball player, a lover of puns and bad jokes, a Yooper, an historian, a TV personality, a Methodist, a preacher, an advocate for justice, a constituent of many universities, a speaker at many kinds of conferences, a contributor to good causes, a citizen of many different places, and a grandfather.

Mostly, though, my t-shirts say that my children have been to many colleges, museums, and battle fields, and have weird senses of humor.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Hey, the paperback version of my novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless veterans, who travel around in an old school bus, and are accused of murdering at VA doctor, is, for a yet undetermined length of time, on sale for only 99 cents. Published by Black Opal Books, and available directly from them or from Barnes and Noble, Amazon, etc.

WAKING UP ANGRY EVERY MORNING [Su, 9-2-18]

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

James 1:17-27, today’s Lectionary reading, is a treasure trove of sermon possibilities. Here is my pastoral prayer for this morning, based on the passage about anger…

A friend from another town recently dropped by to see us. As we chatted about current conditions, he said, “I wake up angry every morning.”

The Lord be with you.

And also with you

Let us pray…

And why, O Lord, should we not wake up angry every morning? Angry at the sneering incivility, the overweening greed, the brutal violence, the nasty cruelty, the sheer meanness, the blatant hypocrisy of it all?

We are not ashamed of our anger. You are the one who should be ashamed, for the way you ignore the greed and injustice of your world. Why are YOU not angry? Where is the fire of righteousness, kindled against the sins of this world of your creation?

On this Labor Sunday, when we honor those who have worked so hard with hands and hearts to create a successful economy, who have sacrificed their time and sweat and even their lives, that all may be free of want and fear, we see greedy overlords take away their jobs and their dignity, laugh at them behind their backs, treat them as fools and use them as dupes. How can we not be angry?

Yes, we are angry at the powerful who have no compassion for the powerless, at those who chant for punishment for others while reveling in their own misdeeds, but most of all we are angry with you, for you should be angry along with us, and you are not.

You tell us in the scriptures that we are to stay unstained from the world, but the world throws all sorts of slop at us. How do you expect us to dodge that stuff every time?

Your preachers tell us that love never ends, but that’s because it never begins.

But even in the heat of our anger, we feel a cool breeze from somewhere, a whispering breeze from a broken cross in an unholy land, a whisper that tells us that our anger has filled our eyes and stopped our ears to a greater reality, that somehow, somewhere, even in our rage, you are already present.

Here, pulling us with grace instead of pushing us with anger, we behold the table of unity, the body of Christ broken not just for the righteous but for the unrighteous

So, with reluctant will, we relinquish our anger, virtuous as we hold it to be, and turn it over to you, to beat it into the plowshares that prepare the earth for a new planting of love.

If you will not join us in our anger, O Lord, then let us join you in your mercy. Let us join you in prayer in place of wrath, supplications for the hurting, the homeless, the helpless, the hungry, the hopeless. Most of all, let us join you in prayer for those who have no one else to pray for them.

Help us, O Lord, to awaken each morning refreshed by the love that never ends because it is always beginning.

Hear us now, we pray, as we come before you, one by one, to ask for mercy for the whole damned world…

John Robert McFarland