Iron Mountain ski jump

Iron Mountain ski jump

Wednesday, January 1, 2020

WORDS FOR A NEW YEAR [W, 1-1-20]


In the post for Christmas day, I told how my school days friend, Phyllis Graham, as a newly minted PhD math prof at INSU, came to hear me preach, when I was a newly ordained minister, Methodist campus minister at INSU.

She waited until everyone else had left, then grabbed a handful of my pulpit robe and pulled me down to her face level and said, a bit fiercely, “You don’t know it yet, but when you’re in that pulpit, you’re something special, and people will believe what you say just because of the way you say it. So you make damn sure that what you say is true.”

I told that story at her funeral, and ended by saying…”and so, friend Phyllis, for you, I shall tell the truth one more time. You loved, and you are loved, and death does not end love.”

Those are good words to hear as we start this new year.

John Robert McFarland

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