A QUILT NAMED LOVE [M, 6-29-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for These Pandemic Days

A QUILT NAMED LOVE       [M, 6-29-20]

Marsha came to our house last week, to help Helen with a quilt she is making. Marsha is an industrial-strength quilter.

She is the first person in our house since March 14, when she was the last person in our house. Obviously, we are careful who we let in. Better not to ask for admission, unless you’re a really good quilter.

That quilt is 40 years old and still not done. Helen figured if she is ever going to get “grandmother’s flower garden” finished, it was worth taking a chance on Marsha. Besides, Marsha is careful, too, and she’s short, so there isn’t much room for the virus to get onto her.

I was a little surprised. Not that Helen was willing to let Marsha into the house. She likes Marsha. In fact, I suspect the quilting help was just an excuse to have someone besides me to talk to, because Helen is very patient with sewing projects.

When we got engaged, she started knitting me a pair of sox, because that’s what engaged women, and wives, did back then. But she was still a college student, and that’s a fulltime occupation, so the sox were not a high priority. Thus, one of them is two years older than the other. They are great sox, though. Wool. I wear them every winter. One of them is looking sort of tired, though.

This pandemic seems to be a good opportunity for old people to complete projects that kept getting put onto the back burner. There aren’t excuses to put them off, anymore. Young people, they have plenty of excuses for putting off everything, especially if they have children at home all the time. That’s a never-ending “first things first and forget about the rest” life. But not old people. We can’t even go and take care of the kids to provide relief to parents.

But some things are never done, regardless of how much time is available now. Because love is a never-ending, never-completed task, and it’s the one that is primary for us all, old or young. The job of loving is never completed, never totally done. Unless, maybe, there is a quilt named “love.”

John Robert McFarland

HERE’S TO NOON IN SUMMER [Sa, 6-27-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Days of Winter in Summer

HERE’S TO NOON IN SUMMER      [Sa, 6-27-20]

It is hard to write

a poem in the heat

of the day. The chaos,

the hurry, the worry.

Minds and pens are dry

in the madness

of the noon day sun.

For poets, noon is never

now, only in anticipation

as the sun begins

its rise. In memory

as the sun begins

its fall.

So here’s to noon

in summer, with all

its heat and drag.

Also, I hope,

with lemonade.

John Robert McFarland

CHASED BY THE DEVIL [R, 6-25-20]

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

CHASED BY THE DEVIL      [R, 6-25-20]

One of my earliest memories is of being chased by the devil—pitchfork, red tail, and all. Down the upstairs hallway of our duplex in Indianapolis. I was four years old. For some reason, I had wanted to go down the stairs at the back of the hall, perhaps just because I was alone upstairs. The devil was waiting for me in the stairwell. I turned and ran as fast as I could for the front bedroom--the location of my pink blanket, the refuge I hid under whenever necessary-- with the devil hot on my tail.

I made the mistake Satchel Paige warned us about, but I did not know then that Satch had said, “Don’t look back; they might be gaining on you.” I looked back. The devil was, indeed, gaining. So, I used the only weapons at hand, or at foot. I threw my little blue house slippers at him. It worked. He seemed surprised by the flying house slippers. He disappeared. I woke up.

I’m not sure I really understood about dreams then, but I knew that the devil who chased me wasn’t real.

Which is better than Helen did with her first remembered dream. She was quite insistent at breakfast that she wanted to ride the pink pig again, like she had been doing. Her mother was mystified, until she finally figured out that Helen had been dreaming.

Well, Helen may not have understood the nature of dreams as early as I did, but riding a pink pig is a hell of a lot better than being chased by the devil. [I use “hell” here in a theological way, of course.] And the difference in those early dreams tells you a lot about our respective approaches to life.

Despite that early experience, I never really believed in a personal devil. I knew there was evil, and I knew that it was people who did bad things, and I knew that Jesus wanted me to stand up against those people and do good things. Somehow, though, I never really thought about those people as evil. They just did bad things.

Jesus certainly believed in a personal devil. Had a lot of tussles with “old scratch,” as my Grandma Pond called the devil. And I was a follower of Jesus. So why didn’t I believe in a personal devil, especially since I had encountered that devil so early in my life?

I think it was a fashion problem. I’m not sure where my unconscious got the red tail and the pitchfork idea, but it has been around for a long time. However, it wasn’t really convincing. It didn’t take long for me to drop that image of the devil. I mean, red tail and pitchfork? Really! Who would believe in a being like that? Once out of uniform, the devil just didn’t seem real anymore.

Evil, yes. That existed. But not actually in real people, like in a real devil. A highly logical, theologically astute, thoroughly educated person like myself just doesn’t believe in such flannel graph religion. I am afraid I got educated out of the truth about evil.

Also, if I admitted that devils were real, people, I would have to confront them, personally. It was more comfortable to believe in the non-personal, evil.

I heard someone say recently that the corona virus has no legs. The only way it can go someplace is if a real person takes it there. I have readjusted my thinking about the devil in the same way. Evil has no legs. The only way it gets some place is in a real person.

Theologically, thus, I have concluded that it is important to maintain the traditional concept of a personal devil. It reminds us that evil resides in real people, including you and me. Yes, we have to confront the devil, in whatever gender or fashion he appears, personally. In doing so, I recommend wearing heavy-wright house slippers.

John Robert McFarland

SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE… [W. 6-23-20]

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

SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE…  [W. 6-23-20]

It is hard these days to escape discussions about racism. That’s a good thing. We need to get clear about racism. I did, sort of, when one of my best friends… well… I’ll start at the beginning.

Because of my mother, I grew up thinking everyone should be treated equally, on their own merits. I knew “Negroes” were not treated justly, and in my own negligent way opposed bad treatment of them, or anyone else. I didn’t tell or laugh at racist jokes, but neither did I tell my friends they shouldn’t.

I never had any real contact with black folks, though, until I went to college, and then very little. There were 3 black guys in my dorm. We were all friendly with one another, but it was a work-for-a-scholarship dorm. We had to maintain a high GPA [1] and work at least 10 hours per week at a campus job, like bussing in a dining hall, and do our own maid and janitorial work. So, all we did was work and study. We didn’t pay much attention to one another, black or white.

There were two black students, plus one black faculty member, at my theological school.

When I graduated seminary and was appointed as the campus minister in Terre Haute, serving both Indiana State U and Rose Polytechnic Institute [Rose-Hulman University, now], there was one brand new black faculty member who came to INSU at the same time, in sociology. Andre’ Hammonds was the first black person to get a PhD at the U of TN. He and Dorcas were Methodists, and lived right next door to The Wesley Foundation building, and it was natural for us to become friends.

They were wonderful people, wonderful friends. Our friendship  continued for 40 years, until Andre’s death. Actually, it continued after Andres’ death, for we continued to visit Dorcas until distance and health made that impossible.

We were just regular friends, doing friend things--going out to eat, visiting in each other’s homes, staying overnight in each other’s homes, after we moved from Terre Haute. When Andre’ and Helen would get off on some tangent they shared—they were into comparing fragrances—Dorcas and I would just hold hands and roll our eyes at each other. I think she was the only wife of a friend with whom I ever held hands, just to hold hands. In my declining years, I sometimes hold hands with Kathy or Allyson as we come and go from the car to a restaurant [Remember going to restaurants with friends?], but, even as nice as their hands are, such activity is only to keep from falling over. Besides, Helen is holding Bob’s or Glenn’s arm for the same reason, so it evens out.

But for all the real friendship, there was in me an unconscious racism with Andre’. I realized it only when he and I were reorganizing the board of the Hyte Community Center in Terre Haute.

Hyte was in the black ghetto. A scrufty little place. A nothing club house, that the old lady who ran the place usually didn’t let the kids use anyway. She would show up after school, unlock the door, throw some worn-out balls onto the dusty, grassless dirty play-yard, and sit in her chair and ignore the kids. The few old white people who served on the board were content with that.

I developed a tutoring program for INSU students, to go to Hyte to help the kids study, so many tutors we almost ran out of students. It changed the expectations people in the neighborhood began to have about Hyte. 

Andre’ and I decided to meet those expectations head-on. We got rid of the old board members and reformed the board, half black and half white this time. We were quite clear about that. We had to have half and half.

We got some really solid folks, from both the black and white communities, to agree to be on the board—professional and business leaders, the folks we would need to build the new building and have a real community center. At our first meeting, as Andre’ conducted it, I sat and silently counted black and whites to be sure we had half and half.

We didn’t! Despite our careful planning, every time I counted, we had one more white person than black. About the fourth counting, I  realized… I was counting Andre’ as white. And he wasn’t at all. In color, he was quite dark.

There was something in me that had to make Andre’ white to be acceptable. Black might be beautiful in theory, but not in my southern Indiana heart.

We were friends, anyway. That’s the main point, I think. Throughout our 40 years together, I was always aware Andre’ was black when we went places together. I was always aware that Dorcas was black when we held hands. So what? That’s part of who we are. I assume they were aware Helen and I are white. There would always be a racial difference between us. There would always be a part of our identity we could not share with the other.

But that didn’t keep us from inviting them over for supper. That’s what true friendship is all about. We just make allowance for the racism in our hearts and treat one another with respect and love, anyway. Especially if there is something big and heavy to move after supper.

John Robert McFarland

1] I think our required GPA was C+, but it might have been B. The cumulative GPA for all 60 of us was always around 3.3 on a 4.0 scale, so the minimum was basically irrelevant. 

I’M NOT OLD YET [Su, 6-21-20]

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

I’M NOT OLD YET                [Su, 6-21-20]

I’m always surprised when someone my age is referred to as “old.” I shouldn’t be, so why am I?

Apparently, I’m not old yet, despite what my birth certificate, and the cradle roll at the Oxford, OH Methodist Church, would have you believe.

It’s not because I believe that nonsense about “you’re only as old as you feel,” and “age is just a state of mind.” In the first place, of the 26 known states of mind, 22 of them are stupid, so being a state of mind is no guarantee.

But sometimes I see a story about someone my age who is wise and calm and given to inspirational sayings. Such people have everything in perspective. They no longer worry about things they can’t control, which is everything. They don’t sweat the small stuff. They know this is the first day of the rest of their lives. They go through life as a gentle presence, no anxiety or angst.

I am none of those things. In fact, I am less calm and wise than ever, and instead of inspirational bromides, I say, as my brother-in-law, John Decker, says of the sayings on church sign boards, “Who writes this shit?” I have nothing in perspective. I worry about everything. I sweat all the small stuff. This isn’t the first day of the rest of my life; this is the last day of most of my life. I go through my final days as an anxious presence, riddled with existential angst. [At least I have achieved one thing on my bucket list, from my college days, when I first heard the phrase—riddled with existential angst.]

Yes, I’ve lived through wars, too—S. Pacific, Europe, Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan. I’ve lived through social upheavals—segregation and lynchings and Civil Rights and Kent State and ERA and Title IX and Black Lives Matter and homophobia and the New York Mets of 1962’s “Can’t anybody here play this game?” I’ve lived through financial depressions and incredibly stupid and greedy politicians. I’ve lived through climate change and Flint water and floods and tornadoes and Jim Jones. They haven’t made me calm. They’ve made me scared.

In those stories of meeting the wise one, the teller of the story is so pleased to have made the acquaintance of this “old” person, this person of my own age. They have themselves been calmed by the presence and sagacity of this “old” person. That’s how I know I’m not old yet.

John Robert McFarland

THE GIFT OF THE PRESENT [F, 6-19-20]

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

THE GIFT OF THE PRESENT          [F, 6-19-20]

As I walked this morning, I thought of another story I could share. I’m sure I’ve written it before in this blog, but most of the CIW readers are old enough that you’ve probably forgotten, so…

It started with seeing a dandelion and thinking of Ray Bradbury’s semi-memoir, Dandelion Wine. One of the stories concerns an old lady and her neighbor children. I can’t remember her name in the book, so I’ll call her Mrs. Smith.

On hot summer afternoons, the children would gather on her front porch, and she would give them lemonade and tell them stories of her childhood. But they did not believe her! To them, she had always been old. She protested. No, she really had been a little girl and wore pretty frilly dresses and had heavy-head dolls and people called her “Missy.” No, they objected. That could not be. She had always been old. She always wore old-lady dresses and lace-up shoes. She didn’t have a cute little nickname. She didn’t even have a first name. She was Mrs. Smith, and always had been.

Day after day this went on, until finally, one day, they said, “What is your name?” “Mrs. Smith,” she said. “Did you ever live in a different house?” “No, I have always lived here.” “Were you ever young?” “No, I have always been old.”

There are so many immediate responses that rise up to that story, but today, mine was to understand why I called her Mrs. Smith. That was my Grandma Mac’s maiden name. Henrietta Ann Smith. To her friends she was Retta. To her 22 grandchildren, and 37 great-grands, she was always and only, Grandma Mac.

On a good day, she was five feet tall. Never had an ounce of fat. Worked it all off. Lived to be 96 and was in the hospital only on the last day of her life. Had seven children, at home, and raised from age four, as though her own child, the daughter of a brother whose new wife did not want little Genevieve.

While raising those children, in a house with no electricity and no plumbing, she worked fulltime, Oakland City, Indiana, doing the farming, including plowing with a one-share plow behind a horse, while Grandpa worked as a stationary engineer in a coalmine, and she also worked as a cook in a café and for a threshing crew.

Later, in Oxford, OH, she worked fulltime as a maid and salad cook at Western College for Women, now part of Miami U, while Grandpa worked as a stationary engineer in a factory. Those were depression years, and while working fulltime she ran a household that included three bachelor sons who couldn’t marry because they couldn’t get jobs, and also, on a random basis, three other children, and their children, including her first grandson, who moved in whenever they did not have jobs.

We grandchildren set up a “store” in the barn and filled it with things we took from her room and made her buy them back when she got home from work. She laughed and laughed. To her, we were wonderfully creative. Laughter was her most common response to anything.

I cannot remember her ever reminiscing about the past. She was always in the present. She played Monopoly with us kids, and beat all comers at Chinese Checkers. She rode the bus down to Cincinnati on Ladies Day to see the Reds play, and listened to them on the radio the rest of the time. She would gladly tell stories of her children when they were little, which involved naming all eight of them before she got the right one, but only if you asked.

In her 90s, she fixed her hair in a French roll and wore nice dresses, and high heels. Around the house. Not frilly dresses, or stupidly high heels, but she wanted to look nice. Not the way she used to look, but it was important to look nice right now.

Perhaps one reason she didn’t tell stories of the past was that she didn’t need to. With that many children, there was always someone else telling a story about a sibling, like how Uncle Bob didn’t like to get a bath, and so on Saturday night would run from the tub crying, “Dry me first,” or how my father chased Aunt Helen around the house with a butcher knife. [Neither one could ever remember why.]

The real reason, though, was that for Grandma Mac, all time was present. She was a Presbyterian, but no predestinarian. She believed you earned your reward right now, by working and laughing and loving. She didn’t deny the past, but she didn’t need it. She lived in “the eternal now.”

At a family reunion, when her children were in their 70s, our daughter, Mary Beth, interviewed them on camera. They had a good time, talking about their childhood, growing up on the farm and going to the one-room White Oak School near Oakland City, and later living in the big house my mother dubbed “Cedar Crest” in Oxford, never sure how many people would be there for supper or to spend the night. Uncle Mike summed it all up by saying, “You can’t understand our family until you know that we had an amazing mother.”

So, think again your reaction to that story of Mrs. Smith in Dandelion Wine. Those children were not unkind to her by refusing her stories of the past. They gave her a great gift, the gift of the present. Grandma Mac reversed the story; she gave that gift to others.

John Robert McFarland

LISTENING TO STRANGERS [M, 6-14-20]

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

LISTENING TO STRANGERS    [M, 6-14-20]

Our pastor, Jimmy Moore, preached a sermon yesterday, about attitudes about inclusion, race and such, that was as close to perfect as a sermon can get—construction, theology, delivery, usefulness. Unfortunately, he also quoted research from one of our mutual colleagues that shows sermons are irrelevant in getting people to change their opinions. So much for a useful sermon.

However, he had crowd-sourced the sermon on Facebook, asking all and sundry how they go about trying to converse with people whose viewpoints are different/opposite.

There were many quite helpful responses. The one that intrigues me most, though, was from Erin James Predmore, who said that she asks “…what would they need to see, hear, or experience to consider my viewpoint valid?”

So, I thought: if that is useful in one direction, it has to be useful in the other also.

Obviously, one cannot have a conversation at all with the irrational fringe, folks who say things like George Floyd was a menace to society and the police did us a favor by killing him, the way a young man here in Bloomington did a couple of days ago. There’s no point in trying. There is nothing I could see, hear, or experience that would cause me to consider that viewpoint valid.

But 40% or so, maybe more, according to which poll when, approves of the Donald Trump presidency. They can’t be dismissed as irrational fringe. So, I asked of myself: what would I need to see, hear, or experience to consider that Donald Trump should be reelected?

So far, it hasn’t worked. I would have to see, hear, and experience Donald Trump’s conversion from being Donald Trump. If I saw him march in a rally protesting racism, if I heard him apologize to people he has belittled, if I experienced a moment when he put on a mask and went to the hospital and prayed for people with Covid19…

I’m not sure there is any hope for reconciliation of viewpoints on such matters, for they are not differences of opinion, but differences of morality. So, despite my statement above about Jimmy’s sermon being useful—probably not.

When I told Helen about the uselessness of Jimmy’s sermon, though, despite its excellence, she demurred. She said, “Sermons are like those warning sounds cars give you when you stray from your correct lane.”

Helen has always been the best theologian in the family.

John Robert McFarland

Well, I SAID in yesterday’s column, when I vowed to write no more, forever, that if, however, a new story showed up… I just didn’t expect it to happen so soon.

THE LAST ONE… ? [Su, 6-14-21]

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

THE LAST ONE… ? [Su, 6-14-21]

At a conference on pastoral counseling, I heard Prof. Wayne Oates mention people who “chew more than they bit off.” I’m afraid I am at that point. I’m out of material. There is nothing more to bite off.

I refuse to bore you, being Rev. Obvious, writing bromides like: It’s better to be kind than to be mean, or insipid columns that go nowhere. Many folks do that. We don’t need me to, also.

I feel comfortable telling a story, and then, mostly, letting you make of it what you will. But I’m out of stories. I’ve simply used them all up.

New stories used to appear in my life once in a while. But now I do nothing and hear nothing and see nothing. There aren’t any stories in nothing.

I don’t really mind a life of nothing. It fits my current brain well. But it does not provide any reflections on faith and life for the years of winter. Nor for a “Daily” Devotional.

I’ll probably write a CIW once in a while, because sometimes I hear, or live, a new story that is worth telling, and occasionally I write a poem I want to share, or, unfortunately, a friend dies, and I want to honor them by telling their story. But, spoiler alert, it won’t be every day.

Thank you for being one of the 127,961 readers of this blog over its dozen or so years. That’s a statistic from Blogspot. Of course, it’s possible that 127,961 people have each read the blog one time, or that one person has read it 127,961 times. Blogspot doesn’t differentiate. Anyway, thank you for past reading. And if you come back some time to see if I’ve heard another story worth sharing, thank you for returning, too. Until then, a poem…

It is good

To have the chance

To say farewell

Unless all those

To whom you wish

To say that word

Have slipped from view

Then you stand alone

In the middle

Of the field

No one close

To hear that last

Wistful exclamation

That you now know

The truth

John Robert McFarland

THE DAY OF ACCEPTANCE [Sa, 6-13-20]

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

THE DAY OF ACCEPTANCE   [Sa, 6-13-20]

I have washed up

the dishes from last

night’s loving supper

most recent of almost

five thousand meals

prepared by those worn

hands, so, indeed, “Bless

the hands that prepared it.”

I taste the coffee

from the cup

my friend, Gary, made

many years ago

Thou art the potter

I am the sipper

And I am already tired

Not the fatigue

of spirit or of soul

but a reminder

from my body

that I am old

for this is the way

of old bodies

weary at the start of day

That is okay

for I know

that in age

as in youth

I am accepted

The sun’s first forays

at the horizon proclaim

it, as do the birds

with their songs

and the leaves

with their waving

even the rocks

beneath my feet

that have sometimes

caused the stumbling

They proclaim it

far better

than any theologian

can; This is the day

of acceptance.

John Robert McFarland

TIME TO WAKE UP [F, 6-12-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL: Listening for the Spirit

TIME TO WAKE UP              [F, 6-12-20]

Dale Pitcher, a clergy colleague in IL, was one of my mentors. I heard this story from him.

Joe and Leroy were a long-haul truck-driving team. When one was driving, the other would sleep in that little cabin behind the driver. Occasionally they were called in for a refresher course on driver safety. As the more veteran driver, Joe was called in first by the examiner.

“Now you are going down a long hill, and your brakes have failed, and another semi is coming down a long hill opposite you, and his brakes have failed, and at the bottom of the hills is a one-lane bridge. What will you do?”

“Well, first,” said Joe, “I’d wake up Leroy.”

“Good grief, man, why would you take the time to wake up Leroy?”

“Well, he hasn’t been driving very long, and he’s never seen a really big wreck.”

There’s a really big wreck coming, and everybody—I mean everybody—needs to be awake and ready. It’s time to wake up Leroy.

John Robert McFarland

When our grandson, Joe, was about three years old, this was one of his favorite stories. When we’d start down a hill, he’d pipe up from the back seat, “Time to wake up Yewoy.”

TWENTY DOLLARS FOR YOUR THOUGHTS [R, 6-11-20]

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

TWENTY DOLLARS FOR YOUR THOUGHTS                                 [R, 6-11-20]

$20 apparently is the inflationary amount of the old penny, the one that people used to offer for your thoughts.

The lab at IU that studies old people was giving out gift cards, worth $20, to old people who would endure an hour’s telephone interview about how we are coping with the isolation of the pandemic. So I pretended to be an old person so I could get the gift card, which I realize is not strictly honest, but Kroger was claiming Helen was a scam artist and wouldn’t let her order groceries, and we needed the card. [I did ask if they had gift cards for Big Red Liquors, but the young man interviewing me said, quite morosely, that such were not available.]

They had the names of all the people I told them--in an interview several months ago--were the friends I hang out with. [I think they were studying memory in old people then, but I’m not sure.] And they asked me if I were now discussing my problems with those friends during the pandemic. They asked specifically about each one, by name. They had taken down only first names last fall, except for Mary Beth, because there are two of them in my life. They gave the 2^nd MB I mentioned the sobriquet of Mary Beth Mo... So the interviewer said, “How about Mary Beth Mo…? Do you talk with her about problems?” I said, “Of course not. The church parking lot is closed.”

I think that confused them a bit, but, you see, it just works out that every time we encounter Mary Beth Mo… in the church parking lot, we start talking about problems. If the weather is good, it can take a long time. She just has a “let’s talk about problems in the parking lot” aura about her.

Our friend, Kathy, has an aura that says to people, “Tell me weird things.” She says it works primarily at highway rest stops. With taxidermists. Who have pictures. Some auras are specialized.

I think it’s important in these pandemic times, even though the parking lot or the rest stop is off limits, to chat with people about problems—theirs or yours, probably both--even if you can’t see their aura. Even if you don’t get a gift card for it. If you don’t know anyone else to talk to, maybe Mary Beth Mo… or Kathy might be available, since I’m not taking up any of their time these days. But, whoever it is, or how isolated and remote they might be, remember that old technology like the telephone still works. Except at my house. I talk about problems only in specific parking lots.

John Robert McFarland

WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? [W, 6-9-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL: Watching for the Spirit

WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?    [W, 6-9-20]

I’m fed up. There are people who think they have the right to walk in our neighborhood at the same time I am. All the time [meaning once or twice during my daily 48 minutes], I have to go a different direction, or cross the street, to avoid some virus-laden human. Granted, I walk by time rather than distance, so it makes no difference which direction I go, but it’s the principal of the thing—they are making me change how I want to do stuff. I like to think great thoughts as I walk, but I never get around to great thoughts because of those people making me think about how everybody is making me go down the side streets.

I am fed up. What’s wrong with you people? You think I don’t have a hard life, too? Sure, I’m tall and male and white and straight and have a good-looking wife, but that doesn’t give me a free ride. Like, there’s no baseball to watch this summer. If you don’t think that’s bad, you don’t realize what agony it is to have a team that was predicted to win its division this year and then have to watch police beating up on old men like me and stuff like that on TV instead of baseball.

Why can’t you just leave it alone? We’ve always gotten through stuff before. Everybody is assuring us that “we’ll get through this together,” so we don’t need politics and race and all that stuff getting in the way, when we’ve already got a virus all over the place, and can’t even get a haircut.

What we really need is God, doing God’s will, getting right with Jesus, following his way… oh, wait… never mind…

JRMcF

THE LIBRARY OF LOVE [T, 6-9-20]

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

THE LIBRARY OF LOVE                   [T, 6-9-20]

John Wesley taught that the goal of Christian life is perfection in love. I believe that. Not perfection in belief or morality or civility or knowledge. Those kinds of perfection are not available to humans.  But, I believe, perfection in love is, if not possible, at least…

I shall say it again:

Perfection in love

is not just the goal

but the method

each moment a stone

either of stumbling

or of creation

building up the library

of love, shelves bulging

with volumes

to be shared

John Robert McFarland

I read in Susan Orlean’s The Library Book that there is a tribe—I can’t remember where—that says, when one of its members dies: His library has burned.

THE REAL MOTHER OF INVENTION [M, 6-8-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL-Waiting for the Spirit

THE REAL MOTHER OF INVENTION         [M, 6-8-20]

Helen was very proud of herself yesterday morning. She had fixed her breakfast, situated it on her tray, and gotten settled into a reclining position on the sofa, with the tray on her lap. There was a boiled egg, with butter and salt, and a pot of tea, and a slice of toast. But no silverware.

I was out walking, so she couldn’t ask me to get her some eatin’ arns [eating irons, for you uninitiated], as they called silverware in Monon, Indiana, when she was growing up, and she didn’t want to make the long reach to put the tray over on her sofa-side table, and struggle up off the sofa, and trudge all the way to the kitchen, and then return to redo the getting settled routine, so she contemplated her dilemma… and came up with a solution, as we often do if we are patient and thoughtful.

She explained to me that she ate the big parts of the egg with her fingers, then swamped up the little, elusive parts with her toast. The tea required no creativity. And, she joyously proclaimed, since she knew I would be pleased, because I am the dishwasher, “I saved a fork from getting dirty.”

Whoever said that necessity is the mother of invention was not quite correct. The real mother of invention is laziness. Or old-age lassitude, which is sort of a laziness, but more an absence of ambition, just not wanting to bother.

A lot of life, even before old age, is figuring out work-arounds. Some work-arounds have already been thought out for us, though. They’re already accessible. Like working around hate and anger and revenge. There is a work-around called “forgiveness.” It might not save a fork from getting dirty, but it’s always available.

JRMcF

THE DESOTO WAY [Su, 6-7-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL—Listening to the Spirit

THE DESOTO WAY    [Su, 6-7-20]

Sometime before 1961, I read a statement from the CEO of the DeSoto Division of Chrysler Automobiles. He said, “If we have a new job to do, we give it to the laziest guy in the plant, because he’ll find the quickest and easiest way to do it.”

As someone who had worked in a factory, with time management people coming around to observe and try to figure out how jobs could be done quicker, it sounded like a brilliant strategy.

As I said, though, it was before 1961, because that is the year DeSoto went out of business. Maybe their manufacturing strategies were not so great after all. The laziest guy and the CEO both lost their jobs.

Of course, it probably had a lot more to do with marketing strategies, and changing public tastes than it did with manufacturing processes, but still…

Perhaps the quickest and easiest way is not the best way, if you want something that will endure.

JRMcF

ADVICE FOR BRIDGING [Sa, 6-6-20]

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

ADVICE FOR BRIDGING     [Sa, 6-6-20]

When Mike Dickey, my closest and long-time friend from school days, died, we went to Prescott, AZ to do his funeral. I met his grandsons, the children of his son, Zane, and their mother, Vanessa, but they were in the early years of schooling then. Now, they are entering 8^th and 9^th grades, and Zane asked me to tell them what they need to know. Here is my letter to them. It’s twice as long as the usual CIW, but remember, there are two of them.

Dear Zee and Teo,

Congratulations and best wishes to you as you enter “the bridge years’--the end of junior high and the start of high school. Your grandfather and I entered the bridge years, together, together.

I’m sure if your grandfather could give you any advice at this point, it would be “Try to be like Johney McFarland was in the bridge years, because he was so cool.” So, it is necessary to tell you what that was like…

For your grandfather and me, our first “together” was 8^th grade and high school. In Oakland City, Indiana, in our days, 8^th grade was the first year of high school, so 8^th grade and high school were together. Of course, when we went over to the high school building from “the departmental” [junior high], all the older kids called us “those little 8^th graders.” If they paid attention to us at all, it was to remind us that we didn’t count.

So, you may find that the biggest generation gap is not between teens and “adults” but between new teens, those in the bridge years, and older teens. It’s important as you move into and through the teen years to fit in with your generation, but the ones in your generation are also the ones who are going to give you the most grief. Sometimes your best allies against the upper-class students will be old people. Yes, they won’t know about Instagram or how to Zoom, but they are not competing with you, either, for girls or grades or a place on the Quidditch team. Don’t neglect old people as friends. Unlike many of your peers, who want to see you fail so they’ll look better, old people want you to see you succeed.

The second “together” was that your grandfather and I started the bridge years at the same time, together. We had been doing stuff together since I moved to Oakland City in 5^th grade. The same stuff. But in the bridge years, we had choices that took us in different directions. He wanted to play football. I didn’t. I wanted to play basketball. He didn’t. It was easy to be friends when we were doing all the same stuff together all day. Now we had to learn how to be friends while going in different directions.

It wasn’t really that hard. We didn’t look at what took us apart from each other, but what held us together. That was our values.

We both valued…

… LEARNING. We knew the more stuff we knew, the better we could live. But stuff was harder to learn in the bridge years. For instance, algebra. Your grandfather just wasn’t getting it. Mr. Cato, math teacher and basketball coach, said to him, “Mike, you can get this. Just take it one step at a time. I know you can do this.” He did get it, because Mr. Cato believed in him. Find somebody to believe in you. If no one else will, believe in yourself. You can do this.

…HARD WORK. Sticking to it. Your grandfather had allergies and asthma so bad in football season. Southern Indiana is full of rag weed and other pollen producers in the fall. And he played center, so someone was always pushing his face down into the grass. He could barely breathe, but he refused to quit. That served him well in the army when they “volunteered” him for ranger training. “There were days when I was sure I couldn’t make it,” he told me, fifteen years ago, at one of our class reunions, “but then I remembered I had made it before, on that football field.”

 ---HONESTY. Truth matters. It’s important to support your teammates, but it’s more important to support your values. If someone on our football or basketball team tried to cheat, we didn’t let them get away with it.

…RESPECT. Respect for all people, regardless of our outward differences, like race or sex. When a football teammate, who was about twice the size of your grandfather, said disrespectful things about girls, your grandfather told him to stop it. And he did, because Mike had earned respect, himself, by being respectful to others, by being honest, by working hard instead of cutting corners.

…COURAGE. Your grandfather really was willing to fight that big guy if necessary. I’m glad it did not come to that, because I was supposed to have his back, and I wasn’t nearly as brave as he. There are many forms of courage, though, and standing up for respect and truth physically is only one of them. Oh, and you don’t have to be fearless to have courage. You can be scared to death and still be brave.

Values don’t change, whether your learning takes place in a classroom or online, whether it’s in Africa or Phoenix. So, here’s my advice: pick friends, of all ages, who have the values that make life worthwhile.

There will be plenty of times that the selfish, arrogant, greedy assholes look like they’re getting all the good stuff. But it’s like eating a turnip taco—it’s not going to satisfy you for very long.

Don’t look just at what people say, or even what they do. Look for why they are doing it, how they go about doing it. Look at their values. That’s what your grandfather would say. “Oh, and be like Johney McFarland; he was the coolest kid in school.” I’m sure he would say that, too.

Well, no, he wouldn’t say that, because, remember, he was honest. It was really he who was the coolest kid in school, and I was the least cool. But we were best friends, anyway. That probably tells you all you need to know about getting through the bridge years.

John Robert McFarland

Mike is in the upper middle of the photo above, wearing glasses, with tape on his nose. It was our junior year, the first Pocket Athletic Conference 8-man football championship season of the Oakland City Acorns.

WHAT TIME MEANS [F, 6-5-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL-Listening for the Spirit

WHAT TIME MEANS     [F, 6-5-20]

A newcomer asked a Nebraska farmer how he managed to get his hogs so fat.

“We pole them.”

“What’s that?”

“We tie a hog to a long pole and hold it up to an oak tree so it can eat the acorns.”

“Doesn’t that take a lot of time?”

“Hell, time don’t mean nothin’ to a hog.”

Time don’t mean nothin’ to most anybody these days. It just seems like we’re in one long day that has no name. Most of us have to consult a calendar even to know what day of the week it is. But, you know…

…time don’t mean nothin’ to God, either.

“A thousand ages in thy sight is like an evening gone…” “When we’ve been ten thousand years…we’ve no less time to sing God’s praise than when we first begun.”

We construct clocks and calendars in order to get control of our days. Right now, God is reminding us that our control of time is fleeting. The only control that matters is that of God. Time don’t mean nothin’ if it is not used for love.”

JRMcF

THE BURNISHED OBIT [R, 6-4-20]

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

THE BURNISHED OBIT  [R, 6-4-20]

Our pastor, Jimmy Moore, recently told this story in a sermon. Guiseppi Verdi, the great composer, hated the organ grinders who, along with their monkeys, cluttered the streets of Milan with their raucous sounds and coarse ways. They were dirty and rude, and their monkeys were even worse. It is said that when he died, they found 300 street organs in his basement, units he had bought just to get them off the streets.

One day he was passing a particularly dirty pair--grinder and monkey--and the grinder was especially languorous. Verdi couldn’t stand it. “Tempo, man, tempo,” he cried as he passed.

The next day he saw that pair again. They were bathed, and the grinder was wearing a tuxedo. Beside his donation box was a sign that read, “Master Musician. Studied Under Verdi.”

I once pointed out to our grandchildren that we lie for two reasons. Half our lies are to keep out of trouble. Half are to make us look better than we are. As we “mature,” there are other reasons, like trying to take advantage of others for our own ends, but for a discussion with kids, that was good enough. Certainly, we continue to lie for those two reasons throughout our lives. Sometimes right up to the end.

We saw the obit for a long-time friend. It was clear she had written it herself, for we recognized her style, and it included minutiae that not many others would know. Minutiae that made her look as good as possible. Irrelevant minutiae, burnished to a false shine. It was sad.

She was a highly intelligent and accomplished woman. If she had just stuck to the facts, instead of burnishing them on every side, it would have been so much better. She wanted so much to be remembered as better than she was. She wanted to justify her faults and minimize her failures. To those who knew her best, the ones who really cared about her, all she did was call attention to them, reminding us of her faults and failures. If she had let us remember without the burnishing, we would have remembered her virtues and successes. She would have looked so much better.

If I look better in my obit than you remember me being, rest assured I did not write it. The one I’m writing starts, “After a lot of kicks and misses, he finally connected with the bucket…”

John Robert McFarland

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

LEARNING ABOUT HUMOR AT BOYS STATE [W, 6-3-20]

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

LEARNING ABOUT HUMOR AT BOYS STATE   [W, 6-3-20]

 Today I am doing a Zoom adult continuing education event for St. Mark’s UMC on the Bypass, about story telling as prayer, including humor in prayer-telling. Charlie Matson, the church’s coordinator of adult education special events, thinks it would be good for us to laugh together, even if only virtually, in this pandemic time.

So, I’ve been thinking about what makes something funny. It made me remember Boys State, that American Legion sponsored week for high school students, after their junior year, to learn politics.

Helen went to Girls State, at IU. The girls lived in the Men’s Quad but most of their activities took place in the Auditorium. Helen made a nominating speech for some office candidate on the Auditorium stage, and also sang there with her group on talent night, so she claims, correctly, that she has both spoken on and sung from the stage of the Auditorium.

My Boys State, a summer earlier, was similar to Helen’s experience, but Boys State was held at the School for the Deaf in Indianapolis. I suppose because it was cheap and had always been held there. [2]

I was in Savage City. There was a bright, charismatic kid in Savage who wanted to run for governor. I knew I did not have the savvy to run for governor, so I was pleased to be tapped as his campaign manager. I proved early on, as a high school junior, that I had very little political know-how. I couldn’t even get all the Savage guys to support him. He didn’t get enough votes to qualify for a second round so I switched my support to Primus Johnson, the eventual winner.

Primus was from East Chicago. He may have been the only black kid at Boys State. If not, he was one of a very few. He was definitely the first black governor of Indiana.

At talent night, each city performed a drama or sang a song. It was mostly songs, since that was easier. They were especially better than the feeble attempts some guys made at humor.

Nonetheless, one of the funniest things I ever saw happened at talent night. Some other city came out to sing a song, “Dry Bones.” There were about 40 guys in a city, if I recall correctly, so it was a big group on the stage, in three rows of risers.

The very last guy out was a Jon Lovitz, the actor, type. There’s just an aura about Lovitz that makes you start smiling, and then chuckling, and then laughing, just when you see him. He doesn’t have to do funny, he is funny.

The kid on stage was slightly shorter than average, slightly chubbier than average, but otherwise just average. He didn’t look different, for the uniform was white t-shirts and jeans. But he was holding a white, porcelain water jug under his arm.

We in the audience, of course, assumed the jug would be used somehow, and that it would be funny, just because of the kid’s Lovitz aura. Dry bones? Maybe he’d pour water on them or something. But he just stood there and sang, like everyone else, the jug tucked into his arm like a football. When the song was over, he just filed out with everyone else.

Nothing had happened, but it was hilarious… precisely because nothing happened. It was our anticipation, and the consequent opposite reality, that made the humor, that made it an event that I remember to this day, 65 years later.

In retrospect, my guess is that, being at the end of the line, as they marched in, he passed the pitcher on a table and grabbed it as he went by and held it through the song and just let people wonder. He thought it would be funny. It was.

I didn’t learn much about politics that summer, except that I wasn’t very good at it, but I did learn something important about humor. And about life.

Sometimes nothing is something. And funny.

John Robert McFarland

1] I think it’s called Wright Quad now.

2] the Hoosier Boys State web site says that the first year, 1937, it was held at Butler University, then at the Indiana State Fairgrounds from 1938-1941, and then at Indiana School for the Deaf until 1955, when it switched to IU. I was in the last year at the Deaf School.

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL: Waiting for the Spirit [T, 6-2-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL: Waiting for the Spirit

 HOW WILL I GET HOME  [T, 6-2-20]

At Crumble Bums, Glenn told about how his wife, Allyson, got a ticket at a traffic round-about. Personally, I hate those things, at least the ones with multiple lanes. If it’s just one lane around, I can handle that, but with multiple lanes, I never know which one to be in, and those signs that use Akkadian chicken scratch cuneiforms to “help” you figure it out should be sent straight to Hades. There’s one in the middle of Bloomington that I avoid by driving I-69 up to the west side of Indianapolis and use the I-465 beltway to get to I-65 to come back down on the east side on Bloomington’s east side. It’s only 120 miles, and well worth it.

So it was no surprise to me that Allyson got confused at one of those round-abouts in Carmel, that prides itself on being the city with more profanity than any other in the world, because it has more traffic round-abouts than any place short of Hades.

Paying the exorbitant ticket for an infraction that should never have been facilitated was bad enough, but to make it worse, four-year-old granddaughter Madelyn was in her car seat behind Allyson. She thought her grandmother was being arrested and would be taken to jail. [Must have seen that sort of thing in a Richard Scarry “Busy Day” video.]

 “How will I get home?” she wailed. “I don’t know where I live.”

That’s the problem when you get on the round-abouts. To get home, you’ve got to use the straight and narrow way. [Mt. 7:13-14]

JRMcF

CHRIST IN WINTER

LATER THAN IT’S EVER BEEN BEFORE   {M, 6-1-20]

An old preacher story tells of the elderly mountain woman who woke up in the middle of the night and heard the clock strike thirteen times. “Wake up, Paw,” she said. “It’s later than it’s ever been before.”

Right now, it’s later than it’s ever been before.

Yet, we’ve been here before. The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the subsequent protests against police violence and the eruptions of violence in general, around the whole country, is only the latest in a long series of violent episodes in American history, as some people demand a share in the American dream and others try to deny it to them.

When Leroy Hodapp was the UM bishop in IL, a facilitator was working with him and the conference cabinet [the District Superintendents] on communicating. The consultant asked the bishop in what situations he felt most comfortable. “Conflict,” Leroy replied.

That astounded everyone there, of course. Nobody likes conflict. Certainly, nobody is comfortable with conflict. But Leroy really was. “Because,” he said, “that’s the time when real change can take place.”

In Christianity, we’ve long understood that in terms of “conversion.” A person is “under conviction,” in other words, uncomfortable, before experiencing conversion. You’ve got to be dissatisfied enough with your fragmented life to accept conversion to a life of wholeness.

Change is never forever. I used to think it was. When the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s secured the right to vote and other rights for black citizens, I thought we had made progress that could not be turned back. But there are always people who feel threatened by equality for others, who push back against it, who want special treatment and claim that they are victims if they don’t get it.

Also, it’s important to note that just because change happens, it is not necessarily change for the better, for that very same reason I stated in the paragraph just above. Some people want change, but only so that they can have more while others get less.

But this is another period when change is happening, and will happen, whether we want it or not, whether or not we are comfortable with it. It’s later than it’s ever been before, again. “The times, they are a’changing.” The only question for us is: Which side are you on?

John Robert McFarland