I HATE YOUR WIFE [Sun, 5-31-20]

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

I HATE YOUR WIFE   [Sun, 5-31-20]

I know I have told this story before, so I apologize. Sort of. I’m not sure why we apologize for re-telling a story. No preacher ever says, “There was a man who had two sons, and the younger one took his inheritance…now stop me if you’ve heard this one.” No, we need to hear that story over and over. Granted, some stories are not as interesting. When families and friends gather, though, it is important to tell the stories that everyone already knows, as well as the new ones, because it means that we who are many are one. So, I take back my apology. However, since I mentioned gatherings of friends…

Wherever we lived during the years of ministry, we tried to build community among the preachers, along with their families, because being a preacher, or a preacher’s wife, or a PK, can be lonely. So from time to time we would invite the preachers—all of them, from all denominations, although some would not associate with us—and their wives [it became necessary to say spouses instead of wives only in the last years of my career] to our house for a pitch-in supper.

One night I had taken a bunch of dirty plates to the kitchen after supper, and Barbara followed me. She was the wife of Dirk, the Lutheran pastor. Despite being Lutheran, Dirk and Barbara were extremely classy. They were young, and dressed expensively and hiply, and were really good looking, like a movie couple. Dirk was dark and chiseled, a Montgomery Clift type, and Barbara was a tall, elegant model type.

So, I was considerably disconcerted when Barbara wiped her eyes and sniffed and said, “I hate your wife.”

Nobody hates Helen. It’s impossible to hate Helen. It’s not unreasonable to be jealous or envious of her, but nobody hates Helen.

But Barbara went on. “She makes being a preacher’s wife look so easy, and it’s not!”

All I could tell her was, “Barbara, she makes being a preacher’s wife look easy because she doesn’t try to be a preacher’s wife. She just tries to be my wife. She’s just tries to be herself.”

I hope that Barbara learned how to do that for herself. I don’t know. But I do know that Helen has been herself, and made it look easy, for the sixty-one years, come 2:30 today, that she has been the wife of this preacher.

John Robert McFarland

KNOWING WHO OUR FATHER IS [Sat, 5-30-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL-Growing in the Spirit

KNOWING WHO OUR FATHER IS    [Sat, 5-30-20]

Pepper Rodgers died last week. He was a highly successful but much traveled football coach, in both college and professional ranks. Despite all his accomplishments, this is the story I remember about him…

When he became coach at UCLA, his little boy was very proud, and went around their new Westwood neighborhood in Los Angeles bragging to all the other kids, “My dad is the new football coach at UCLA!”

His mother was embarrassed. “You’ve got to stop telling people that,” she said.

Then the Rodgers family went to church. Shaking hands at the door after the service, the preacher leaned down and asked the boy, “And who is your father?” He replied, “Well, I thought it was Pepper Rodgers, the new football coach at UCLA, but my mother says it isn’t.”

There are times—and this is one of them--when there is a lot of confusion about our family relationships. I think that’s why Jesus told us to start our prayers with “Our father…” Reminds us, every one, Republican or Democrat, black or white, male or female, that we all have the same family. Never any confusion about who “our father” is.

JRMcF

BORING EXPLANATION YOU’VE PROBABLY READ BEFORE: As we began to “shelter in place,” some folks spoke of the need in this pandemic time for an online “daily devotional,” some spark to light the spirit. [“It only takes a spark to get a fire going…” One of the favorite camp songs of the teens in my church in the 1990s.]

 So, in addition to writing a 500 word column two or three times a week for Christ In Winter, I started writing a short, 200 word, “devotional” on the in-between days. Nothing fancy, just words to try to help us hear the Word in these strange and frightening times.

INCARNATION PEOPLE… AND BUILDINGS… [F, 5-29-20]

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

INCARNATION PEOPLE… AND BUILDINGS…  [F, 5-29-20]

As we drove home, our daughters, ages 12 and 10, were somewhat bemused as they told us what happened at Red Oak Grove Sunday School that day. “We were doing these work sheets,” they said.

I knew what they were talking about—David C. Cook materials. Preachers mainly cringed at the theology in Cook’s Sunday School materials, but Sunday School teachers in little churches loved them, because they were so easy to use.

“One of the questions was: Is the church the building or the people? We said it was the people. Marie looked embarrassed, and the other kids sort of looked down at the table, and she called on one of the other kids, and said, ‘What’s the right answer?’ and all the other kids said, ‘The building,” and we went on to the next question. They were all embarrassed that the preacher’s kids didn’t know something so simple.”

I don’t think that was David C. Cook’s mistake. I suspect had Marie looked at the answer sheet, she would have found that good ol’ DCC said that the church is the people. But she didn’t need to look, for she already knew. It was simple. And she was right. Partially. 

Christians should not have so much trouble with this. We are incarnation people. In this world, nothing is spiritual alone. There is always a physical body that contains… no, “contains” is not the right world… that accompanies, that is intertwined with, the spirit.

There was a time I always said “church building” instead of “church,” if I were talking about the building, especially to my late, great friend, The Rev. Dr. Kim Egolf-Fox, since he would call me on it. “The church is the people,” he always reminded me. “The building is the building.”

He was right, of course, but every spiritual reality—in this world, in this life—has a physical reality, or it is not here. Incarnate means “in the flesh.” It also means in the bricks, the mortar, the roof, the air, the broken bread, the wine, the baptismal water…

John Robert McFarland

RETURNING TO OKAY [R, 5-28-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL: Working with the Spirit

RETURNING TO OKAY     [R, 5-28-20]

[Be warned—this is advice about spiritual resetting by someone who is not very good at it, and who should not give advice about anything. I’d much rather tell a story and let you take from it what you will. So, you’re warned…]

As I was getting ready to walk yesterday, I heard a piece of news that made me angry, frustrated, spastic, made me not-okay.

There are two things I need to do at a time like that. The first is to do what I can to make the wrong thing right. So often, though, there is nothing that can be done. Oh, yes, eventually, through a contribution or a letter or a vote, but that doesn’t help me get okay with my anger and frustration now.

So, I do the second thing—I return to my most recent okay spot.

Yesterday, that was Zooming with the Crumble Bums, four—retired but not nearly as old as I—old men, smart, thoughtful, funny. We are called the Crumble Bums because in the BV era, we met at the Crumble Bakery on W mornings for coffee and conversation.

I was really okay when I was with them, so when I got not-okay because of the news I heard, in my mind, I went back to be with my friends.

Your most recent okay place need not be anything dramatic or major. As I walked, I saw the little blond year-old boy being pushed in his stroller by his mother. He smiled and waved to me, from a safe distance. That became my new most recent okay spot.

The advantage of returning to your most recent okay spot is that it is so accessible. If you try to use your most grand experience as a spiritual reset button, you have to think about it a bit. Which was my best experience? What would be the best reset? Where in the world is my happy place, anyway?

But it need not be that complicated, and the psychologists say you really have only 9 seconds to reset before your brain rots. So, when you get not-okay—angry, frustrated, confused--go to your most recent okay spot, no matter how minor. It will be good for your soul.

If that doesn’t work, Google “laughing babies” and turn your sound up.

John Robert McFarland

BORING EXPLANATION YOU’VE PROBABLY READ BEFORE: As we began to “shelter in place,” some folks spoke of the need in this pandemic time for an online “daily devotional,” some spark to light the spirit. [“It only takes a spark to get a fire going…” One of the favorite camp songs of the teens in my church in the 1990s.]

 So, in addition to writing a 500 word column two or three times a week for Christ In Winter, I started writing a short, 200 word, “devotional” on the in-between days. Nothing fancy, just words to try to help us hear the Word in these strange and frightening times.

GOT YOUR BACK, JACK [W, 5-27-20]

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

GOT YOUR BACK, JACK   [W, 5-27-20]

Yesterday was Jack Newsome’s birthday. Joan, his wife, called us Saturday, May 23, to say he died that morning. He was 3 days short of 88.

There were a lot of bright young ministers in the Central IL Conference of the Methodist Church in 1966, when Jack and I first met. We were drawn to each other because we were odd balls. He was from Georgia. I was from southern Indiana. We had funny accents. We didn’t sound like we belonged on the flat Illinois prairie. And we weren’t “real” ministers. He was an associate minister, and I was a campus minister, so we were outsiders. Other ministers would ask us, in all seriousness, “When are you going to return to the ministry?”

Our colleagues were nice to us, though, and I was pleased to have so many smart, new friends. Jack, though, was different from all the others.

I would go to some friend with a problem. If I got worked up and jumped up and down on the table and yelled “That damned bishop,” since we’d all had Pastoral Counseling 101, they would fold their hands on their crossed knees and say, “Would you like to talk about it”?

If I went to Jack, though, he would get up on the table with me and jump up and down and yell, “That damned bishop,” having no idea why said bishop should be sent to Hades, but trusting me enough to know there was a good reason.

That kind of unquestioning support drew us to each other, and we entered into an unspoken pact of guarding each other’s back, for 54 years.

About 30 years ago, Bishop Leroy Hodapp named me to our conference’s Investigation Committee. I told the bishop that I thought it was a bad move. “I’ll be too sympathetic to whoever we’re investigating,” I said. “That’s why I want you on the committee,” he replied. “Every sinner should have one friend.”

At supper, I told Helen and our teen-aged daughters about my new committee assignment. Katie said, “What if Jack Newsome is accused of something, and you have to investigate? How will you handle that?” It was a good question, and I didn’t know how to answer.

The next time Jack and Joan and Helen and I were out together, I mentioned what Katie had said. “Don’t worry about it, John,” Joan said. “Just tell me, and I’ll take care of it.” That must have scared Jack as much as it did me, because I never had to investigate him.

Jack and I spent a lot of time together. Mostly it was sitting together at district or conference meetings, or just having lunch or coffee-- although Jack always had Pepsi since he didn’t drink coffee--or taking our wives to supper. We also went to continuing ed conferences together, all the way from Dubuque to Lake Junaluska. We went to the Holy Land together, including early morning runs through Amman and Tel Aviv, since we were both runners back then. There was never enough time, though, to get all our talking done.

When Jack became my District Superintendent, I was pastoring at Arcola, IL. We were trying to start a “Children’s Church,” because we had a whole lot of kids in worship, which was great, but they were understandably bored, and made a lot of noise, and many people were saying, “They really need their own church experience.” There was pushback, though, since some people would have to miss “adult” church to work with the children.

So Helen and I volunteered to be the children’s church leaders the first Sunday we had it. I conducted the first part of the service and called for the children to follow us to children’s church. “But, oh, I forgot. There’s nobody to preach. Who will volunteer to preach?” Well, you can imagine the shrinking down into the pews. “But,” I said, “there’s a stranger here. Stranger, can you preach?” “Well, I could give it a try,” said Jack Newsome.

No one knew who he was. It was his first Sunday in the District. So Helen and I had a great time with the kids, and the congregation marveled that there just happened to be someone that day who could preach.

He was only in his 60s when Jack got a disease of the Parkinson’s variety. It progressed. In the last few years, he couldn’t even get out of bed, and it was difficult to find the right words. He was in a long-term care facility in St. Louis, to be near his children.

There was a sweet quality of innocence about Jack. Because of geographical distance, the last time we saw the Newsomes in person was about five years ago. We went to Red Lobster for supper. Jack was in a wheelchair. When we left, as I pushed him through the aisles, he cheerily smiled and did a royal wave at the other folks we passed.

Since Jack had trouble talking on the phone, I tried to write to him each week. I imagine my birthday letter arrived the day he died.

Jack had his arguments with the church, and occasionally with God, but he always knew that it was God who really had his back, and he faced each declining day with his soft Georgia drawl and his sweet Georgia disposition.

Like any other pastor, husband, father, person, Jack had his disappointments, his depressed times and sad times and morose times, but in the midst of all that, he was always fun, always thoughtful, always helpful, always willing to jump and down on the table with me.

John Robert McFarland

THE DOGS OF THE DEAD-END GANG [T, 5-26-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL-Watching for the Spirit

THE DOGS OF THE DEAD-END GANG   [T, 5-26-20] 

I know the names of five dogs in our neighborhood—Jack, Angie, Mobley, Betty Jean, and Eddie. It’s the anonymous dogs that get me caught in dead ends. I know where the named dogs come from and where they are going. The routes of the anonymous dogs are unpredictable.

As I walk, I try to take routes that are without dogs. I like the dogs, but in our neighborhood, a dog is always accompanied by a person, and in this pandemic time, it’s important to avoid people. It’s not too bad if there are walks on both sides of the street. If I see someone coming, I just cross the street. We wave, and maybe even say “Hello,” but there are 30 feet between us. Good enough.

But if I have taken one of the side streets, the ones that have no walks, that have dead ends, it’s easy now to get trapped. The only way out brings me too close to the other person. The other day a man was walking THREE anonymous dogs at once. They stopped at the junction of dead-end Regency and main Westminster, because all three dogs had to poop. They were not efficient, although polite. Each one waited to do their business until the one ahead of them had done theirs. And the man had to get out a plastic bag each time to pick it up. It took forever. I couldn’t get out until all the poop was picked up.

My brain is much like that these days, prone to go down dead-end streets and then get stuck while the poop process goes on. I’m especially bad about remembering some wrong that is now totally irrelevant, because I’m the only person left alive who even remembers it, and rehearsing all the evils of all the other people in that episode. How useless; I can’t even go yell at them. It’s totally dead end. But in this quarantined time, it’s so easy to go down mental dead ends.

What’s the remedy? The apostle, Paul, said it: Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. [Philippians 4:8, NRSV]

JRMcF

THE WAY THE LIGHT IS FORMED [M, 5-25-20]

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

THE WAY THE LIGHT IS FORMED    [M, 5-25-20]

I wondered why

the little bird

began its song so early

in the dark beyond

the pane, each note

a question mark

until I heard

the dew upon the ground

answer with a nod

that said, yes,

it is time, and slowly

rose above the trees

in prayer

to meet the clouds

and form the light

to start the day

So does my soul

prepare for light

beyond this life

John Robert McFarland

THE SIMPLEST WAY TO GET RID OF A VIRUS [Su, 5-24-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL-Listening for the Spirit

THE SIMPLEST WAY TO GET RID OF A VIRUS   [Su, 5-24-20]

In one of my early churches, there was a very classy woman, who was married to a very un-classy man. He wasn’t a bad man but… it was just that they were such an unlikely couple. They lived in separate ends of their house, used different doors and driveways, in which they kept their separate cars. I knew her fairly well, because she was a regular at church. He did not come to church, but I had met him. He was nice enough, but not highly couth. I just couldn’t understand why she had married him in the first place.

I was young then, and not totally couth myself, so I just plain right out asked her, something I would have been more circumspect about when I was more experienced: Why did you marry him?

“It was the only way I could get rid of him,” she said.

This virus just won’t leave us alone. It keeps bugging us, wanting to live with us. Really, the only way we have to get rid of it—until the real scientists develop a vaccine or a cure—is to marry it. Then we can ignore it.

How? We don’t whine. We don’t protest. We don’t use it as cover to take advantage. We do the simple things—stay home, wear a mask, wash our hands, cooperate with the people who are trying to keep us safe, not those who are trying to exploit us for their own power gains.

The spirit is always in the simple things. Sometimes in the big, complicated things, too, but always in the simple things. The virus is in our house. So what?  Don’t give it the time of day. Live the life of Christ, just as we are called to do in any other time, viral or not.

JRMcF

BORING EXPLANATION YOU’VE PROBABLY READ BEFORE: As we began to “shelter in place,” some folks spoke of the need in this pandemic time for an online “daily devotional,” some spark to light the spirit. [“It only takes a spark to get a fire going…” One of the favorite camp songs of the teens in my church in the 1990s.]

 So, in addition to writing a 500 word column two or three times a week for Christ In Winter, I started writing a short, 200 word, “devotional” on the in-between days. Nothing fancy, just words to try to help us hear the Word in these strange and frightening times.

GRIEVING WITHOUT GATHERING [Sat, 5-23-20]

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

GRIEVING WITHOUT GATHERING   [Sat, 5-23-20]

Death completes the story. That is why so many movies open with a cemetery funeral scene. We know the story now, at the funereal end, so we can tell it in its fullness.

Good movie directors tell you up front, in that first scene, what the story will be like. If there is rain, or snow, or wind, the story bodes ill. If there is sunshine, and bird song in the trees, and summer dresses, well, that’s different.

Either way, there is completeness, and that is what I hope for those who are gathered at my funeral, gathered together and gathered into themselves, be the day sunny or cloudy. Gathered, before they go out once again into a fragmented world, to pick up pieces of themselves to prepare for their own final moment of completeness.

These days, we don’t get that final scene. The story hangs there, in the air, unfinished, untold. Zoom is not a very satisfactory way to bring the story to completion.

I am a great believer in the healing power of grieving, in the healing power of funerals. I am always saddened when an obituary says, “There will be no funeral, at the request of the deceased.” How much they must hate the people who are left behind, or how much they must hate their own story, to deny that final opportunity for wholeness, to spite those who remain, by denying them the comfort of grieving together.

So what shall we do when we cannot gather to grieve? I only know what I do. I tell that person’s story. I tell it to God. I am a writer by inclination, so I write the story, but stories have been told since the beginning of time without writing them on stone or parchment or paper or a screen.

It’s okay to ask your pastor to send you a copy of the funeral service from The Book of Worship. Read it for yourself, in trust that the Holy Spirit will be with you in it. At the proper place in the service, tell the story of the one you grieve, in whatever way seems best to you. Tell it to God. God wants to hear it.

John Robert McFarland

STICKING IT OUT [F, 5-22-20]

“DAILY DEVOTIONAL-Learning to Listen for the Spirit

STICKING IT OUT     [F, 5-22-20]

 I heard about a little boy [or girl, the way most old preacher jokes start] who told his teacher he had a stomach ache. She sent him to see the principal. In a little while, he came back, walking with his head thrown back, sticking his little belly out in front of him as far as he could. [Better if you can see it, so try it yourself in front of the mirror.]

The teacher said, “Why are you walking that way?”

He replied, “The principal said if I could stick it out ‘til recess, he’d take me home.”

Yes, there will be a recess. We don’t know when, but we need to stick it out ‘til then. This is no time for letting down our guard. Stick it out. That’s not only the way we’ll survive, but the way we’ll learn to listen for the Sprit regardless of what the world brings us.

JRMcF

I heard this story from Webb Garrison, a southern gentleman, who told it as, “The principal said… he’d carry me home.” I grew up in a southern culture down in the pocket of Indiana, but I had never heard “carry” used in that way, so I wasn’t sure for some time what the point of the story was. Did it have something to do with carrying a child?

Grandson Joe had a similar experience, in 2^nd grade.  The principal didn’t take him home; they called his mother to do that.

Then she called her mother. “Joe insists that I tell you that he got sick at school and vomited twice, once through his nose.” Joe knew that Grandma was the only person who would provide total sympathy and also understand the horror of that experience.

When Uncle Mike, the last of my father’s brothers, was in 2^nd grade, along about 1918--in the rural, one-room White Oak School, near Oakland City, IN--a boy told a story about throwing up. The teacher thought “throwing up” was a bit vulgar, so said, “Mike, what should he have said?” Uncle Mike replied, “I woulda said puke.”

BE LIKE RATS? YES, IT WOULD BE AN IMPROVEMENT [R, 5-21-20]

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

BE LIKE RATS?         YES, IT WOULD BE AN IMPROVEMENT [R, 5-21-20]

Bob Doherty came through Charleston, IL once when I was pastoring there. I can’t remember why. He was a Jesuit from Boston, and a specialist in spirituality. We usually don’t do spirituality very well in Methodism, and I wanted to take advantage of his presence so had him give a presentation at our church. In the process, he said…

…you should never try to read or write while sitting under a tree, because nature is so spiritual that it takes away your ability to do practical stuff. I think that’s true. If you’re in nature in your body, it’s hard to be anywhere else in your head.

…don’t take your aging mother to see a neighbor’s slides. Bob did that. His mother was beginning to lose her wits a bit. They sat in the darkness, watching the slides of the neighbor’s vacation trip, when she blurted out, “Oh, this is so boring.” She had gotten the senses confused and was under the impression people could not hear her in the dark.

…don’t underestimate rats. He had gone, with a group from the states, to Calcutta, to work for a week with Mother Theresa, mostly picking up dead bodies on the streets before dawn and giving those folks last rites. One of their group had a sack of hard candies, which he put up on top of a metal wardrobe when they went to bed in their dorm-like room.

In the middle of the night, they heard a thud against the metal. Someone turned on a flashlight. A rat had run hard and jumped as high as it could into the cabinet and made a dent in the metal.  Stupid rat. Thought it could jump high enough to get those candies. But then…

…another rat ran over the first one and used it as a spring board to jump higher and use its head to make a higher dent in the metal. This they kept doing until there were enough dents up the metal for a rat to use them as footholds to climb all the way to the top and throw the sack down.

I don’t know how they chose which rats got to get the migraines, and which one got to be the hero and go all the way to the top, but Bob said he had never seen a better example of self-sacrifice for the common good. Apparently even the rats were influenced by the example of Mother Theresa.

Really, I’m not sure just how spiritual it is to bang your head against the hard places, but I’ve done a lot of that, and I hope it’s been useful to my fellow candy-hopefuls, even though it’s left me with a bit of a headache.

John Robert McFarland

WHEN THERE IS NO CHOICE, JUMP HIGHER [W, 5-20-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL-Ready for the Leading of the Spirit

WHEN THERE IS NO CHOICE, JUMP HIGHER    [W, 5-20-20]

I heard the story of a frog who got stuck in a deep rut in the road. He jumped and jumped but couldn’t get out. A friend frog came along and asked why he was still in the rut. “I can’t jump high enough to get out,” he said. “Well, jump higher,” his friend helpfully said.” It’s time to go to coffee.” He tried and tried. Still no luck. So his friend went on down to the coffee ship without him.

In a little while, the frog showed up at the coffee shop. His friend said, “How did you get out of that rut? I thought you couldn’t jump high enough.”

“I thought so, too,” said the frog, “but a truck came along in that rut and I didn’t have any choice.”

A big pandemic truck has come along. No choice, folks, but to get out of our ruts. No, those ruts won’t be there later, so no chance to go back to “normal,” and that’s okay. Let’s start telling the stories right now that we’ll share when we meet later at the froggy coffee shop.

JRMcF

PANDEMIC AUTHORS [T, 5-19-20]

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

PANDEMIC AUTHORS   [T, 5-19-20]

When daughter Katie Kennedy, the author and historian, was a grad student at UIL, one of her housemates was from Chicago. She had grown up in the same neighborhood where Saul Bellow lived.

Bellow was one of the great writers of the 20^th century. I thought John Updike was better, and when I pastored in Charleston, IL, I used to have delightful arguments with a young English prof at EIU, defending Updike against his argument that Bellow was better. The deluded young prof was wrong, but there was no doubt that Bellow was great.

One of my criteria for a good writer is that I can leave a book for any period of time, and when I return to it, I know exactly where the story is and who the characters are. I read Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift over a period of ten years and never had to wonder once about story or character each time I returned to it. [Don’t ask.]

Anyway, when Katie’s housemate was in 8^th grade, she had an English assignment in school that stumped her. So as she walked from home, she went up to the front door of one of the greatest writers of the century and rang the bell. A rumpled man answered. She explained her dilemma to him. He invited her in so they could discuss the issue.

Now, that is a wonderful story. The great man humbling himself to help a young girl who didn’t really understand the social distance that greatness demands. But any writer hears that story with a different ear. We know Bellow was just trying to avoid sitting down at his desk to write. Writers will take any opportunity to avoid actually writing. As Dorothy Parker said—the motto for every author since—“I hate writing. I love having written.”

First we make coffee. Then we sharpen pencils. Nobody uses a pencil anymore, but it seems right that the pencils be sharp. Then we adjust the blinds. Then we adjust the chair height. Then we wipe the screen. By then the coffee is cold, so… If our MC [main character], or even an MC[minor character, yes this is confusing when reading one’s notes] would reveal something about where this story should go… or if non-fiction, if I could just find a way to explain double predestination that does not make the reader prefer to go to hell just to escape the explanation…

These days, nobody rings our bell. Except the UPS driver, who immediately runs away after doing so. I have no excuse. I could sit down and write. And so should you. The folks at historical museums and university archives want people to keep journals during this pandemic, so people in the future, when we have not returned to normal, can learn what normal was, and how we departed from it.

It’s easy if you start with a story. Like the one about Maltbie Babcock, the famous late 19^th century preacher, who, among other things, wrote “This Is My Father’s World.” He was walking through the posh Boston neighborhood where he pastored and saw a little boy trying to ring a doorbell. He strained and strained, but it was too high. He could not reach it. The gracious Rev. Babcock went up to help and rang it for him. “Now, Mister,” said the boy, “run like hell.” I’ll bet he grew up to be a UPS driver.

John Robert McFarland

TELLING STORIES TO GOD [M, 5-18-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONS-Leaning on the Spirit

TELLING STORIES TO GOD            [M, 5-18-20]

I got up this morning, determined to use the dark and dawning hours to prepare my soul for the end of this life and for the start of the next. That is what a person my age should do.

Instead I got to thinking about a colleague named George who died suddenly, many years ago, from a heart attack. And a choir director who used to be a Catholic. And rolling down a hill in a park. And a little girl who played fast peek-a-boo. And walking to the…

In a way, I was pleased, for usually I spend any waking moment, that is not scheduled in some other way, in getting mad at greedy and selfish politicians who are ruining the world. Thinking about walking to the outhouse to empty the chamber pot in the morning is much nicer.

Still, I was not preparing my soul for ends and for beginnings. I was just telling a story to God, a story about an old man who wants to remember people and places that he loved. Or, even if he didn’t love them, that were important to him.

But wait a minute. Isn’t story-telling a form of prayer? And if it is, what stories do we need to be telling God in this pandemic time?

JRMcF

As we began to “shelter in place,” some folks spoke of the need in this pandemic time for an online “daily devotional,” some spark to light the spirit. [“It only takes a spark to get a fire going…” One of the favorite camp songs of the teens in my church in the 1990s.]

 So, in addition to writing a 500 word column two or three times a week for Christ In Winter, I started writing a short, 200 word, “devotional” on the in-between days. Nothing fancy, just words to try to help us hear the Word in these strange and frightening times.

CALL THE SOCIAL WORKER-But the Answer is No [Su, 5-17-20]

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

CALL THE SOCIAL WORKER-But the Answer is No [Su, 5-17-20]

Helen says I have been quarantined too long, for I am now a fan of a soap opera. I don’t think of “Call the Midwife,” on PBS, as a soap opera, although I guess it is. And watching babies being born is not my favorite activity. But the answer is yes: I’m a soap fan.

Birthing babies is no problem to Helen. She’s been there, done that. When she learned that Alan Hatfield, my oncologist, was going to implant a Groshong catheter in my chest, she told the nurses that she was going to come along to watch. They said, doubtfully, “Are you a nurse?” “No,” said Helen, “but I’m a home ec teacher and show birth films in my class.” “Oh,” nurse Olivia said, “if you can watch birth films, you can watch anything. Come ahead.” [To be honest, Helen later said, “At the point that Olivia looked away, I figured if she didn’t want to see it, I didn’t, either.”]

Helen used to watch those medical shows while we ate supper, the ones that show abdominal surgery while you’re eating spaghetti. She learned a lot of medical stuff. I learned that it’s possible to eat spaghetti with eyes closed.

We no longer get that channel. I felt that we had to change providers, one that did not have The Gory Operation Channel, in order to get more baseball games. More baseball didn’t work out, but at least we don’t see any more surgeries.

I watch “Midwife” because the early 1960s neighborhood of Poplar in London is almost an exact replica of the late 1950s neighborhood of Pilsen, in Chicago, where I worked, and Nonnatus House, where the “Midwife” nuns and nurses live, is a replica of Howell House, where I lived, except the Nonnatus folks are Catholic nurses, and the Howell folks were Presbyterian social workers.

Like Poplar, Pilsen back then was mostly white--remnants of the earlier Bohemian [Czech] immigrants, newly arriving Appalachians—with a few blacks and Hispanics. Like Nonnatus, the Howell staff was white, except for Carolyn Williams, who was black, like the one black nurse at Nonnatus, Lucille Anderson. The male medical interns at Nonnatus have the role that we college student interns—including two from Germany who already had their degrees-- had at Howell, learning the ropes, and exasperating the older, professional social workers. For us interns, Rev. Don Nead, the pastor of Howell Presbyterian Church, a part of Howell House, and Sid Denham, head social worker, were the equivalent of Dr. Patrick Turner and Sister Julienne, of Nonnatus.

Also, I’m in love with Nurse Valerie Dyer, because that hair-do reminds me of all the girls who lived at Howell House then. I was in love with them, too.

So much so that I would “cook” for them on Sunday, trying to impress them. I would arise early, preach at Wycliffe Methodist, the first English-speaking preacher at that old Bohemian church, and then preach at the Halstead Street Institutional Methodist Church, which was a combination church and settlement house, like Howell, except much bigger, wonderful facilities, but it had been cut off from its neighborhood by the new interstate, so only a few worshippers left. [1]

Then I would hurry home to heat up lunch. We had a cook, but she had weekends off. She would whip up lots of stuff on Friday and leave it for us to manage on the weekends. A different shelf in the fridge for each meal. For Sunday, it was usually good stuff, like pot roast.

It was really easy for my colleagues to go to church, but they didn’t. I was the only Methodist, so I didn’t expect them to go to church with me. But all they had to do was walk down from the third floor to the first, where Howell Presbyterian Church worshipped in the big room with the stage. In those days, though, you had to clean up and put on church clothes to go to church, and that was just too much. They were all still in bed when I got back and started “cooking.” [No microwaves or toaster ovens.]

When Marian and Nancy and Barbara and Shirley and Connie and Carolyn and Sigrid and Karel and Randy and Dan smelled the food heating up, they would wander down the halls in various stages of dishevelment and plop down at our long dining room table and dig in. My attempt to impress them worked, to the extent that all the girls, and guys, said they appreciated it.

It worked in another way, too. I was trying to answer two questions then. One was: Could I be an inner-city pastor? The answer was “No.” I thought that because I had grown up poor on a farm, I could relate to poor people in the city, but rural poverty is very different from urban poverty. The other question: Could I fall in love with somebody besides Helen? The answer to that was also “No.” I could be “in love” with all the girls, but love only that one.

Sometimes the best answer is “No.”

“Midwife” is on tonight. If you call and say, “Do you have time to talk?” the answer is “No.”

John Robert McFarland

1] I don’t know for sure, but I was probably the last preacher at both those churches. The District Superintendent would have closed them already, except that this gullible preacher boy from the hills of Indiana came along and was willing to give it a try. The DS figured he didn’t have much to lose.

WOULD JESUS WEAR A MULLET? [Sa, 5-16-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTION—Waiting For the Spirit

WOULD JESUS WEAR A MULLET?  [Sa, 5-16-20]

I am worried about my hair. Yes, I am bald, but I do have hair, on the sides and back of my head, nice pretty white hair. And they are numbered, Jesus assures me. I’m sure, however, that whichever angel is assigned to counting my hairs feels it lucked out. I’m worried, though, since my hair is getting long, because, like everyone else in this pandemic time, I’ve not had a haircut in two months.

Wait a minute! My wife cuts my hair. Has for 60 years. If there is anybody who can get a haircut these days, I’m the guy!

It just seems wrong, though, to look spiffy--especially in my Zoom meetings with The Crumble Bums and The RAPSOGIE [Royal & Philosophical Society of Guys In Exile]--while my friends are being forced into ponytails and mullets.

It’s why I hobble around when I walk, and act like I’m about to fall over, and run into furniture. I see other old people doing those things, and I don’t want them to think I’m unsympathetic to their plight. So, I do them, too. Yes, so that I’ll fit in, the same way we wanted to fit in when we were teens, by acting like all the cool teens. Now I try to act like all the cool old people.

Also, though, I do it as an act of solidarity. I don’t have to groan when I get up off the sofa, but I do it to say, “I’m with you.” Also to warn bystanders to get out of the way, because I’m heading for the bathroom.

Of course, these days, since I’m never in public and nobody comes into our house, there aren’t many people to notice those acts of solidarity. Yet I wear a mask, and wash my hands, the way I know others must. Those are acts of solidarity. That is not just physical solidarity, it is spiritual solidarity.  It’s the answer to WWJD?

JRMcF

FINDING A POEM COPIED IN A COLLEGE NOTEBOOK [F, 5-15-20]

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

FINDING A POEM COPIED IN A COLLEGE NOTEBOOK [F, 5-15-20]

The words so trite

a poem barely doggerel

I cringe now to think

those words ever spoke to me

But I was so young

no words of my own

The words were cheap, yes,

the dear ones yet to find

The truth behind the words

was deep; that’s what I heard

That’s what I meant to copy

on the page now yellowed

Words now sounding trite

and shallow but they served

A door so I could enter

and find more

John Robert McFarland

ALL THE LIGHT WE DO NOT NEED [R, 5-14-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL-Opening to the Spirit

ALL THE LIGHT WE DO NOT NEED    [R, 5-14-20]

I’m thinking that a non-funeral because of the corona virus pandemic isn’t necessarily a bad thing, for then people have less opportunity to say untoward things about the deceased, like this story that daughter Katie has threatened to use at my funeral…

A man is in his bed, dying. “Is my loving wife here with me?” he asks. “Yes.” “Are my loving children here with me?” “Yes.” “Are all my friends here with me?” “Yes.”

“Then why is the light on in the kitchen?”

Well, I grew up in a time and place and family where every kilowatt cost some unit of money we didn’t have. If we wanted to have necessary light tomorrow—to see to cook or study—we had to be sure we didn’t use any unnecessary light today.

Isn’t that the care of the earth? The care of our children and grandchildren? Every kilowatt I don’t use today is one they might have for tomorrow.

Our local energy company had a column in the newspaper recently about how they are working during this pandemic to keep the lights on. I’m trying to help them keep the lights on by keeping the lights off.

We need to keep one another close, in prayer if we can’t gather in more personal ways, and in the dark, when we don’t really need the light.

JRMcF

Another argument against funerals is the story of the old man dying in his bed upstairs and smelling cookies baking. He crawled out of bed, down the stairs, across the kitchen floor, and reached up for a cookie, only to receive a whack on the hand with a wooden spoon. “No! Those are for after the funeral!”

DYING ALONE?

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

DYING ALONE?                     [W, 5-13-20]

My Academy of Parish Clergy friend, Suzanne Schaefer-Coates, knew an old lady who told her about how she had been a nurse during the great flu pandemic of 1918. Well, only a student nurse, really, but so many people were sick, and they needed nurses so badly, she was pressed into service. One night she was put in charge of a whole ward, by herself. She told Suzanne, “By the morning, every patient in my care was dead.”

What would that be like, a girl not yet twenty… how would you deal with that? All alone.

I think now of the nurses, trying so hard to take care of patients--perhaps not the only nurse present on the floor, but still alone in dealing with each patient--and losing them. And I think of their patients, alone, perhaps without even the rubber-gloved hand of a face behind a mask to hold on to as they struggle for breath and die.

It made me think of how the obituaries in the newspapers might change now. So often they said something like, “He died surrounded by his family.”  Now they’ll say, “He died alone, because the only nurse left had to go try to take care of someone else.”

That is heart-wrenching. But perhaps it is not the whole picture.

I heard a young woman tell the following story in a public worship service, so it’s not confidential: She was grabbed in the parking garage of the office building where she worked, and raped. Repeatedly. By a huge man. Six-feet and seven inches tall, 300 pounds.

Each time he raped her he told her that when he was through with her, he would kill her. She knew he was serious. She knew she was going to die. So she prayed. Not to be saved from her assailant, but to be saved from dying alone. “Just don’t leave me,” she prayed to God. “I know I’m going to die, and that’s okay, as long as you stay with me.”

I don’t mean this in a shallow way, but in the ways of faith and hope: None of us has to die alone. None of us does die alone.

John Robert McFarland

FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE [T, 5-12-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL-Trying to Grow in the Spirit

FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE               [T, 5-12-20]

According to Wikipedia, Superman’s “fortress of solitude” appeared first in 1949. I was reading Superman then, when I could, but I don’t recall knowing about his FOS. I preferred Captain Marvel, anyway, so if I had a nickel to spend on a comic book, it usually went to the Captain. I didn’t have many nickels, though, so I usually got my Super Man stories from the radio. Those were free, if you could pay the electric bill.

If I had known about Super Man’s FOS, though, I would have been much in favor of it. I always wanted a space of my own, away from other people [OP], but that was impossible in our farm house. My little brother and I slept together on a pull-out bed in the living room. My clothes shifted around to wherever there was space for them. Every summer, I would get the idea of making a room for myself in the attic. I would have the attic cleaned up very nicely when the first 90 degree 90 humidity day came along, and then I realized how foolhardy that idea was.

           

I never really got that FOS. There were so many OP. I went to college, had a roommate, got married, had a permanent roommate, then children. I didn’t live with church members, but there were a lot of them in my fortress, some as honey bees, some as murder hornets, but either way, it wasn’t solitary.

           

I am only now realizing how important it is to stay away from OP. When the quarantine started, I had several physical pains and problems—back, colon, ears, eyes, skin, big toe, etc. Now that I have been in my own FOS for almost two months, all those problems have disappeared. I thought it was only my mental problems that were caused by OP. Now I realize that it was all my physical problems, too. As long as I stay in my FOS, I’ve got no problems at all.

           

Except for TOP, The Other Person, the other one in my FOS. She keeps talking about how great it will be when we can see OP again.

So I’m falling back to Plan G.

Plan G has always worked. God has always been my real FOS, and a good thing it is, for God is an always available FOS, whether OP are totally absent or all over the place. “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.”

JRMcF

As we began to “shelter in place,” some folks spoke of the need in this pandemic time for an online “daily devotional,” some spark to light the spirit. [“It only takes a spark to get a fire going…” One of the favorite camp songs of the teens in my church in the 1990s.]

 So, in addition to writing a 500 word column two or three times a week for Christ In Winter, I started writing a short, 200 word, “devotional” on the in-between days. Nothing fancy, just words to try to help us hear the Word in these strange and frightening times.

THE COST OF BEING AN ANGEL [M, 5-11-20]

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

THE COST OF BEING AN ANGEL   [M, 5-11-20]

[I apologize. This CIW is twice as long as usual, and if you are a long-time reader, you have read part of it before. But the length is necessary to tell the story correctly.]

We just received a letter from Chandler Park Academy, in Detroit, that Tony Shipley, my old seminary classmate, died last month. When we were at Garrett Theological Seminary, at Northwestern U, in the early 1960s, Tony was one of only two black students. The other was James Cone, who became the famous theologian of black liberation.

After seminary, Tony pastored, and then had a distinguished career as a denominational administrator. Eventually, he felt he’d had enough of bureaucracy, and returned to Detroit, where he asked the bishop to appoint him to pastor the church in the worst part of that decaying city. Appropriately, it was named Christ.

At our forty-year class reunion at Garrett, Tony told us about his work in Detroit. If there were a need of any kind, and there were plenty, Christ UMC had started a program to meet it. The one that impressed me most was a dual-need remedy, abandoned houses and single mothers, for they had plenty of both. Christ bought abandoned houses and helped single mothers get a place to live. But they also gave them two years of training on house care and family management. And Tony had started a charter school, Chandler Park Academy. Just a kindergarten class that first year, but hoping to add a new class each year. The area was so poor that 90% of the school children qualified for free lunches.

I had met Tony’s wife, Barbara, only a few times during seminary days. I commuted, and she worked. By the time of our class reunion, she had become one of those elegant women who walks with a cane but glides into a room like an ocean liner. She told how she was working at an insurance company in Evanston, putting Tony through seminary, and felt intimidated by the other wives because she had only a high school education. She decided to take a course at the community college. Her supervisor told her, “Barbara, even if you get a college education, you’ll still be inferior.”

She said, “I decided, if I’m going to be inferior anyway, I’ll be inferior with a college education!” So, she went to college for years, and got lots of degrees, and eventually became the head of language education for the whole city of Detroit.

Fast forward to 2014.

We gave each of our grandkids an 8^th grade graduation present of an experience to prepare them for college. Brigid went to a Science Olympiad at IU. Joe we signed up for a discovery camp at the Henry Ford Museum, with lots of activities like building a Model A Ford. Then we found out it was a day camp. No suppers or overnights. So we rented a motel room and took Joe out to a different place each night for supper, including the Five Guys in E. Lansing and the Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor, so he could see what those college towns were like.

We lived in Iron Mountain, MI then. Very few ethnics. I remembered Tony was in Detroit. I wanted Joe to meet him. I called him up and invited him to supper. If GPS existed, we didn’t know about it, and we drove all over the Sherwood Forest part of Detroit looking for Tony, while he was wandering the streets looking for us, while he and Helen talked on the phone, giving directions neither of them could follow. He told us that such events were not uncommon. Sherwood Forest was so convoluted that once after he had moved there, he had to call the police to help him find his own home!

But once in our car, he found the 1912 Bistro very nicely, where Helen and Joe and I were the only white folks, and where a strikingly beautiful, elegant bald Zulu warrior lady waited on us. I was wondering why Tony did not bring Barbara. I thought my invitation was a general one, for both of them.

As we chatted, I told him how I had followed his career after seminary and wanted Joe to meet him. Then he told us how their daughter, their only child, had gotten married the year before, and left after the wedding for South Africa on her honeymoon, and the next morning Barbara had died! We were stunned. A woman like Barbara just didn’t keel over and die.

You do a lot of mumbling at that point, and then try to find normal stuff to talk about. As we talked, at one point, Tony said to Helen and me, politely but firmly, “I want you to be quiet now, because I want to talk to Joe.” He drew Joe out, asking about his interests and plans and told him about all the ways and places where you could get money for college. Ever after, whenever he called me, he would ask about Joe.

As the meal and the talk wound down, Tony Said: “I have been so depressed since Barbara died. I’m retired from pastoring, but Chandler Park Academy still needs me. Each year we added another kindergarten class as the class ahead moved up. This year we graduated our first class. Every one of those kids is going to college this fall on scholarship. I need to be raising money for the school, but I just couldn’t, I was so depressed. But it seems to me that you must be angels sent from heaven. To know that you followed my career, and wanted Joe to meet me, and talking to him, it has just given me new life. I can get back to doing what I’m supposed to do. How would you like to contribute to Chandler Park Academy?”

So that’s how we got the news of Tony’s death, in a thank-you letter for our considerable, monthly contribution to the Chandler Park Academy.

It can be costly to be an angel sent from heaven!

RIP, Tony, old friend, good and faithful servant.

John Robert McFarland

HELPING BY NOT HELPING [Su, 5-10-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter-Mothers Day Edition

HELPING BY NOT HELPING        [Su, 5-10-20]

In thinking back through my years, to come to “final integrity” instead of “despair,” what Erik Erikson said is the task of old age, it has been useful to divide my life into four score [20 year period].

The first score I call “the learning years.” That’s fairly obvious. The second score is “the adult years,” getting established in family and job. Third is “the mature years,” when we share what we have built up, and fourth is “the grand years,” which for me mainly means grandchildren, but can also be grand because we have more time for our own interests. It’s harvest time.

 Since I am into my fifth score, although I am not yet at the “four score and seven” of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Helen asked me what I am going to name these years from 80 to 100. I didn’t have any ideas, so she suggested “the wisdom years.”

I like that. I hope it is true. But I recall that Augustine said that the so-called innocence of children is more a matter of weakness of limb than purity of heart. I have always felt the parallel of that in old age is that the so-called wisdom of age is more a matter of decline of brain than clarity of vision.

In her later years, we became friends with Mary McDermott Shideler, the theologian. She read an article I wrote for “The Christian Century,” and responded to it. We struck up a correspondence friendship, and later, when I was speaking at a cancer conference in Denver, we got to drive up the mountain to her home near Boulder. Well, we didn’t do the driving. Cancer friend and mentor Lynn Ringer did the driving, since she lived there and knew how to drive the mountains.

The four of us had a great afternoon, playing with the Great Pyrenees dogs for which Mary was a rehab rescuer, and talking theology and mystery books, and telling stories.

One of Mary’s stories was about a little boy who was born without arms. One day when he was about two, a friend was visiting his mother. The little boy was trying so hard to put on a t-shirt. Can you imagine trying to put on a t-shirt without arms? He struggled and struggled, without success. Finally, the friend said to his mother, in exasperation, “Why don’t you help him?” With tears in her eyes, the mother replied, “I AM helping him.”

She knew that she would not always be there to help, that he had to learn to live without arms in an armed world, and that he had to do that for himself.

Old people, in our wisdom years, need to remember that often we help those who are younger not by helping but just by being there as they learn.

John Robert McFarland

THE CRUMBS OF HEALING [Sa, 4-25-20]

Christ In Winter-Reflections on Faith & Life for the Times of Winter

THE CRUMBS OF HEALING  [Sa, 4-25-20]

I should conserve

the scattered little

crumbs of healing

energy that remain

to me in case

I must fight

the virus

While I sit at the table

reserved for those

whose fronts are

spattered with the years

of dropping crumbs

to find one’s way

into the past

I should sweep them off, the crumbs,

off the table into my hand

as from the remains

of a round loaf

dill bread

drop them

into my shirt pocket

my good plaid shirt

have them ready

for the day

of the covid

but then comes

that desperate mother

foreign in dress and tongue

begging Jesus

to ignore the laws

of race and purity

just this once for the sake

of her little girl

let her be like a dog

under the table

licking up the crumbs

of healing

so I sweep them down

the crumbs not

into my own hand

but to that mother

holding her child

so close

below this table

of the nearly dead

I know what it is

to yearn for healing

for a child

John Robert McFarland

Mt. 15:21-28.