HOW TO BE A CHRISTIAN WITHOUT BEING HUMAN [F, 7-31-20]

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

 

HOW TO BE A CHRISTIAN WITHOUT BEING HUMAN     [F, 7-31-20]

 

Early in my career, Charles Merrill Smith, one of my preacher colleagues in Bloomington-Normal, IL, had a big hit with a book entitled How to Become a Bishop Without Being Religious. It was a spoof, or parody, or some such, of course, but I was a campus minister and not “a real preacher,” and as I thought about that concept—being religious without being religious—I latched onto the idea, as though it were my own--as ideas always seem to be when we are new to them--that God did not send Christ to make us Christians, to make us religious, but to make us human. I’m certainly not the first person who ever thought of that, but, apparently I was the first one who had preached it from the pulpit of First Methodist in Normal, IL…

 

…the ethic of Jesus was not confined to Christians but good for everyone, in any society. Do unto others… Turn the other cheek… Go the second mile… Don’t store up where moth and rust corrupt…

 

…you didn’t have to be a Christian to do the Jesus lifestyle. It was the quintessentially and necessary human lifestyle.

 

It seemed to me to be a bedrock idea of Christian faith, but quite a few church members were upset by it. At one point, it was reported to me that one of them had said, “The trouble with McFarland, he keeps talking about love, but he’s forgotten about Christianity.”

 

I thought that was both tragically sad and hysterically funny. I was too naïve to see it then, of course, but they were right to be upset. Yes, they were upset for wrong reasons, but for some good ones, too.

 

When we lived in Sterling, IL, our pastor was Joe Snider. His wife, Paula, was Jewish. Joe and Paula had been married for 40 years. They met at Bethel College, in TN. Paula was a NYC girl, and wanted to go to NYU, but couldn’t get in. Her parents saw an ad in the newspaper [remember them?] for Bethel College, and thought it was Jewish, Beth El. She was a frosh, in a history class, discussing WWII, in the 1950s, when the professor spoke of how the Nazis made lamp shades out of the skin of Jews and the only problem was that they hadn’t done more of it.

Can you imagine how that must have made her feel, an 18 year old girl from the big city, already feeling out of place in McKenzie, TN?

 

Joe, a pre-theological student who had grown up in the Cumberland Presbyterian denomination, Bethel’s denomination, met her as she sat crying on the steps in front of the classroom building after that class.

 

When we met them, they’d been married for 40 years. Paula was supportive of Joe’s ministry. She brought dishes to the potlucks. She dressed up for Trunk or Treat for Halloween. But she was still Jewish. She once told Helen, “Good grief, I’ve been to church three weeks in a row. I’ve got to skip one or people will think I’ve converted.”

 

But as a Christian preacher, Joe used more Christ language than anyone I’ve ever known. If he mentioned Jesus, even casually, it was almost always the full load, “Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.”

 

I asked him about that. He said, “He is OUR Lord and Savior, we who profess Christ.”

 

It’s possible to be a human without being part of the Christian story, but you have to be part of some story that is human. I’m not sure I understand this theologically in my old age, the way I thought I did in my younger days, but I feel that it is true—the Jesus story is the human story, but not everyone must claim the Jesus story as their own in order to be human. But everyone needs to be human.

 

John Robert McFarland

UNSTICKING TOGETHER [W, 7-29-20]

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

UNSTICKING TOGETHER    [W, 7-29-20] 

Two days ago, I mentioned that nobody says “We’ll get through this together” anymore. But…

There was a local [Indianapolis] news item this week that reminded me of one of my favorite sermon vignettes. It seems a woman was on a pontoon boat on Geist Reservoir when her $20,000 prosthetic leg fell into the water. It just so happened that fire department crews were finishing a training exercise there, led by Battalion Chief Rita Reith. They promptly jumped into their diving equipment and the DNR boat and went looking for the leg. They found it an hour later, after finding an anchor and sunglasses, etc.

So now I shall update the sermon story: This woman fell off a pontoon boat at the reservoir. The fire department people jumped into the water to save her. Chief Rita grabbed her sunbonnet, but it came off. So chief Rita grabbed her hair, but she was wearing a wig, and it just came off in her hand, too. A diver went down and grabbed her by the leg, but it was a prosthetic leg, and it came off, too. Chief Rita blurted out, “How can we save you if you won’t stick together?”

Frankly, I think Chief Rita is going to be disappointed. I used to tell that story with the idea that if we understood that our salvation depended on sticking together, we’d be smart enough to do it. As a church, and as a nation. The United Methodist Church and the current Republican administration have proved me wrong. They don’t want everyone to be saved, not if it means they have to stick together with undesirables. They’d rather drown than take off the money belt around their waists. [Another old sermon vignette.]

Barack Obama proved that. My continuing grievance with him is that he squandered a chance to get things done, while he tried to get people to stick together when they were determined not to do so.

I apply this now to myself. There are parts of me that just don’t want to stick together with the others. Not just my faltering memory and eyes and legs, all of which play tricks on one another, but my hopes, my fears, my desires, my intentions. Some of them just will not stick together with the others to make a harmonious whole. So I’m accepting them as they are. The outliers will just have to stay there, sneering at the others in their arrogance and selfishness, but getting no rewards. The rest of us in me will go ahead and “go on to perfection.” 

I think we’re going to have to do that socially and politically, too. We should not be mean or vindictive to those who won’t stick together for the good of the whole, but we just have to move on without them. In the meantime, I understand that some folks make a lot of money from retrieving golf balls from ponds. It sounds like dragging the pond for artificial legs might have an even bigger payoff.

John Robert McFarland

LOOKING FORWARD TO POSSUM REHAB [M, 7-27-20]

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

LOOKING FORWARD TO POSSUM REHAB          [M, 7-27-20]

We know a woman… well, actually we know her husband…who is an opossum rehabilitator.

Not drugs or gambling or booze rehab. Opossums are fairly careful when it comes to that sort of stuff. Physical rehab, because they get into accidents with cars and into tussles with predators.

Ever since the man told us of his wife’s work, I’ve wondered why. I mean, I don’t doubt that opossums are cherished by their friends and families, but they are not very cuddly as pets. It would be like having a perpetual teenager, sleeping all day and running around getting into scrapes all night. And their life spans are so short, usually no more than two years. I mean, if your main defense against predators is playing possum, you can expect a fairly short life span. If they are in captivity, meaning they are protected from Chryslers and coyotes, still, their maximum life span is only four years. Why bother with rehab?

But, she has something to look forward to. I mean, opossums get into rehab situations all the time. If you’re not an opossum rehabilitater, these days, there isn’t much to look forward to.

Oh, if we mean, is there stuff that’s going to happen, sure… more of the same old same old. By “looking forward to,” I mean, looking forward to going out to eat, or to a Willie Nelson concert [Is he still alive, or did he get run over because he was playing on the road again?], or a Halloween party, or seeing the Reds beat the Cubs at The Great American Ball Park, or watching the Hoosiers beat The Little Sisters of The Poor at Memorial Stadium, or Thanksgiving at Aunt Bertha’s, or Christmas at The Grandma House.

I was meeting with the Crumble Bums at Glenn’s garage this week. There are five of us, but it’s a really big and clean and neat garage. The rest of us are a little uneasy with clean and neat, but we do require big in this pandemic age, and Glenn’s garage is large enough that we can sit more than six feet apart from one another. We wear masks until we get settled. Then we talk quietly, without spewing. We each bring our own coffee. It’s a really decrepit-looking bunch, and I look forward so much to seeing them.

This week, Ron asked if we had noticed a different atmosphere in the social air recently. Yes, we had. A sense of unhappy complacency. No more “we’ll get through this together.” [Have you noticed how nobody says that anymore?] Right, it’s a sense of “this is the new abnormal.” There’s nothing to look forward to.

Makes us understand better why heaven’s been such an intriguing idea for so long, doesn’t it? It’s not much fun to have nothing to look forward to.

However, in the short run, short of heaven, you might consider being an opossum rehabilitatur.

John Robert McFarland

I tried spelling the name for the person who rehabilitates 3 different ways, and sphelczhek claims they are all wrong.

THE GIFT OF DISRUPTION [Sa, 7-25-20]

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

THE GIFT OF DISRUPTION    [Sa, 7-25-20]

Almost time for worship again from St. Mark’s on the Live Stream. Reminds me that several weeks ago, Suzanne said after live stream that it was the best kids’ sermon at St. Mark’s in a long time, because of the gift of disruption.

Like many churches in this pandemic time, St. Mark’s on the Bypass is doing livestream worship. It’s very well done, in great part because it’s exactly like Sunday morning worship has always been, except there is no congregation. But our pastors and musicians do the service just like always, even an offering time, complete with offertory and doxology and dedication prayer, even though there is no one to pass the plates to, and a children’s time, even though there are no children.

While our pastors, Jimmy and Mary Beth, have been doing kids’ times without any kids in the sanctuary, everything has gone so smoothly. That’s not what we want. The only reason we older people go to church is to see James and his ilk get Jimmy discombobulated. When it comes to kids’ time, we don’t want smooth. [Mary Beth is less discombobulateable, and also the kids are nicer to her because she’s short, and they think she’s one of them.]

But a couple of weeks ago, Jimmy himself made a comment that disrupted the flow, and got him to laughing. He was trying not to--because the accidental comment was ever-so-slightly off color--so that his face turned red, which made it even funnier. It was almost like having James and the rest of the jolly ranchers there to disrupt the flow. The disruption of the smooth was why Suzanne, and the rest of us, thought it was so great.

That’s a great gift, the gift of disruption. When everything goes smoothly, we don’t even have to think about it. When the flow is disrupted, we’re irritated, yes, sometimes, and frustrated, and unhappy, but we have to think, have to find different ways of getting things going right again.

As our grandson says, “It’s not an adventure unless something goes wrong.”

Sometimes we don’t want an adventure. That’s okay. But when one comes, embrace the moment, for that’s when we might learn something new, something we would never have seen otherwise, something important. Or at least get a laugh, and we can always use one of those.

John Robert McFarland

ZOOM, ZOOM, ZOOMING ALONG [R, 7-23-20]

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

ZOOM, ZOOM, ZOOMING ALONG             [R, 7-23-20]

On Facebook recently, a preacher advertised for a “pulpit supply” for a coming Sunday, leading Zoom worship for her church, while she’s off on vacation, or rehab, or something. I thought about it. The pay was pretty good. Better than what I’m making now, anyway. There were a couple of problems, though.

First, she wanted a copy of the sermon about a week before the designated Sunday. Helen immediately thought that was so she could check out what I might say before anybody in the congregation was subjected to it. That makes sense from Helen’s perspective, because she has heard me preach.

But that preacher woman doesn’t know me, so I assumed it was so she could email copies of the sermon to congregants before the service because, especially for old people, or folks for whom Zoom is difficult—and there are a lot of reasons for that—it would be easier for them to follow along.

That would be a problem for me, of course, not because I can’t write, but because I don’t like to be fenced in. [1]

I remember Arthur Duncan, the great tap dancer on the Lawrence Welk Show, saying that Welk made him do his routine for that week ahead of time for audio, because he didn’t think the taps were loud enough in real time. Arthur said that meant he couldn’t vary his routine on the real show, because he was “tap-syncing” his moves.

Well, I don’t like to lip-sync my sermons, any more than Arthur did his taps. I like to “trust in the Spirit,” which is also known as “saying whatever comes into your mind.”

The second problem was that the church is in Pennsylvania, and I live in Indiana. By the time I figured out that with Zoom that is not a problem, some other needy vulture had swept in and grabbed that honorarium.

But it has given me an idea about how to deal with my financial needs. I think I’ll hire out to be an actor who plays other people for Zoom meetings.

I have been to a few Zoom events, and in the process have learned that most people hire actors to portray them on Zoom, while they do more interesting things.

It doesn’t seem to be too hard. Most of the actors don’t do a very good job of replicating the person they are supposed to be, anyway. Their voices are different. Their clothes are indifferent. Their eyes have a deer-in-the-headlights quality. And whatever they put on their heads is definitely not the hair of the real people they are portraying.

So, if you need someone to “go” to a Zoom meeting for you, even if it’s in Pennsylvania…

John Robert McFarland

1] Perhaps my most humiliating experience in church was the time, when I was about 11, that Donald Gene Taylor talked me into doing a duet, singing “Don’t Fence Me In,” for the talent show of one of Forsythe Church’s monthly ice cream “socials.” We were supposed to dress accordingly. Donald Gene had a whole cowboy outfit, but the best I could do was blue jeans and a straw hat. He loaned me one of his spurs, so I’d look authentic. The Forsythe folk were wonderfully supportive of their young people, but when I saw them looking at me, I realized that I was an imposter, both Westernly and musically, so Donald Gene basically sang a solo. I never did another duet, although I did go to a lot of ice cream socials.

YOU’RE BETTER THAN THAT [T, 7-21-20]

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

YOU’RE BETTER THAN THAT                     [T, 7-21-20]

Our pastor, Jimmy Moore, told this story. A white supremacist went into a restaurant. He had a swastika tattooed on his hand and proudly displayed it with his hands on his table. A waitress put her hand on his and said, “You’re better than that.”

He suddenly realized that he was defining himself not by who he was but by who he hated. He didn’t have to do that. He was better than that. He was damaged, and that made him hate, but he could be healed, because he was better than that.

We are always tempted to tell others: Stop hating! Be loving! Be good! Don’t be bad!

Doesn’t do much good, does it? What it really takes, if it’s going to work at all, is “You’re better than that.”

It won’t get through every time. It’s quite possible that someone had told that Nazi a dozen times that he was better than that, before that waitress saw that swastika, before it got through to him. But we need to be faithful to that task, no matter how many times it takes, to remind others, and ourselves: You’re better than that.

We are all damaged, one way or another. So we take out our doubt and fear and confusion from that damage on other people, and on society, and on the environment, and in doing that, on ourselves. But we don’t have to. The damage will remain, as a part of who we are, but we do not have to be defined by it. We can be healed. Whatever that damage is, we are better than that.

John Robert McFarland

WE SHALL OVERCOME [Su, 7-19-20]

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

WE SHALL OVERCOME       [Su, 7-19-20]

Congressman and Civil Rights titan, John Lewis, died Friday, July 16, at age 80. Although less well known, he may have been more important in the civil rights struggle even than MLK, Jr. Especially since he got to continue his respectful, kindly, Christ-like, non-violent but persistent advocacy as part of that struggle for equality for so long. In his years as an elected Congressman, he was often called “the conscience of Congress.”

When he spoke at Michigan State U, when our granddaughter was a student there, she stood in line to get his signature on his new book. As he signed, she told him that her grandfather had been part of the march from Selma into Montgomery in 1965.

He said, “Tell him ‘thank you’ for me.” I think it was the nicest thank-you I’ve ever had, all the more important because it came through my granddaughter. Her father, Patrick, posted a picture of her with Lewis on Facebook

Brigid has carried on the tradition, of advocating for equality and inclusion, a tradition that was carried on by her mother and…

…well, anyone who has chosen the side of equality, the side of non-violence, the side of persistence, the side of inclusion. Not all of us have been able to march, or serve in Congress, or write books. But we’ve all been able to choose which side we’re on.

That’s the first and last thing we do in life, simply choosing which side we’re on. I can’t march anymore. I don’t have a pulpit. I’m basically not even allowed out of the house. But I can choose which side I’m on, and I think that matters to God. I know it does to me.

We shall overcome some day…

John Robert McFarland

THE FALLEN WOMAN [F, 7-17-20]

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

THE FALLEN WOMAN         [F, 7-17-20]

When I quit writing this column, because nothing ever happened--except in the worlds of society and nature, and there are many people who can and do, tell those stories better than I--and thus I had no stories to tell, I said that if, however, anything ever did happen…

Helen opined a couple of weeks ago that we should have masks with us when we walked, in case we encountered some old person who had fallen and could not get up. We don’t need masks just for walking, since we can always cross the street if we see someone coming. But if we saw a person who had fallen, we couldn’t just leave them there, so we’d need a mask while helping them up.

I’ve walked this neighborhood every day for five years and never seen an old person lying in a heap, but having a mask at all times, even while walking, is a good idea, so I started sticking one into my shirt pocket. Until two days ago.

And, two days ago was the one day I forgot, and the day when I saw the old lady on the sidewalk in a heap in front of Jack and Nina’s. [NEE-nah] Perhaps 90, not a skinny lady, sitting in that position some women do when they’re pulling weeds, beside the AC unit, so maybe she was okay, but I thought I’d better check.

“Are you sitting there because you want to?” I asked.

“Yes, for the moment,” she said. “I’ll get up after I’ve figured out how.”

“Would you like some help?”

“No, I live alone. I need to learn how to get up by myself when I fall.”

“Is it okay if I stand here while you figure it out?”

“Yes, that will be fine.”

A lady came by, walking a dog. “Do you need help?”

The dog woman looked strong, so I said, “She wants to figure it out on her own, but why don’t you stick around for a while.” She did.

Then a man from across the street came and watched. I was glad to see him. He didn’t say anything, but he looked strong, so I was glad he was there, too.

Then Nina came out her door. She was quite surprised. “I was just going to get coffee,” she said. “I didn’t know there was a party.”

“It’s Jack’s fault,” the fallen lady said, since we old people always need to blame someone else when we have a mishap, so “they” won’t send us to “the home,” especially since “the home” is a really bad place for an old person to be right now. “I had finished my mile, and was just going to my house, when I began to fall. I reached out for the fender of Jack’s car to steady myself, but he had parked too far away.”

Nina’s been married to Jack long enough that she was not surprised that it was his fault, even though he was still in bed.

All this time the fallen woman was calculating angles and cane and hand placements. She managed to get up to one knee. Then, with a hand on Jack’s fender, all the way. We all applauded.

As it turned out, I didn’t need a mask. All four of us “helpers” stood correctly distanced from the fallen woman and from one another. But if she hadn’t figured out how to do it on her own…

I now have situated masks in several more spots around the house, so that as I go out the door, there is a greater chance I’ll be reminded to take one. But if I don’t, I’m sure it will be Jack’s fault.

John Robert McFarland

“IT’S NOT TOO LATE UNLESS YOU DON’T START NOW.” [W, 7-15-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL-Listening for the Spirit

“IT’S NOT TOO LATE UNLESS YOU DON’T START NOW.”  [W, 7-15-20]

We used to have an in-law family which was known for interesting characters, who made interesting statements, like describing an altercation between their dog and cat by saying, “They were fighting like animals!”

The best one, though, was the night one woman called another and said, “Start worrying. I’ll give you the details later,” and hung up.

I feel like I’ve been in that “worrying now” phase for about four months. Occasionally I get some details, but they just lead to another round of worrying in general, without knowing exactly what the details of the need for worry will be.

That makes praying difficult. When I pray, it helps if I have details. A general prayer, like “God, bless everybody, and keep everybody safe,” is sort of like spinning a Tibetan prayer wheel, a rather lazy approach to prayer. The more I know, the better I pray.

Yes, I don’t know if my prayers affect anyone else or not, but I know they affect me, and the better I pray, the greater the solace for my soul.

However, if we don’t have the details, better to spark a prayer of generalities into the darkness, than to let that darkness stand with no light at all.

So, start praying. I’ll give you the details later.

JRMcF

I got the title statement from Barbara Sher.

The psychologists say that the task of old age is to make peace with one’s past. I’ve made peace with my past; that’s no problem. It’s with my present that I’m having trouble making peace!

THE JOY OF THINKING [M, 7-13-20]

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

THE JOY OF THINKING                   [M, 7-13-20]

I have always been a bit of a problem for agnostics, and especially for atheists. It is not true that I seek them out just to make them discomfited, although that is sort of a side benefit when I do happen to encounter one.

Apparently, they don’t run into many religious people who are also rational. Probably not surprising. Religious folk and non-religious folk don’t run in the same circles. Except when religious people are writers who would rather hang out with secular authors than those who write Christian drivel. You’ll never catch me at a gathering of “Christian” writers!

I don’t take a lot of credit for being a thinker. I suspect it’s just the way my brain is set up. I enjoy thinking. I do it just for fun. Also, it’s helpful sometimes, but it’s always fun.

I was in a discussion group at a clergy conference. One of the others in the group shook his head in wonderment and said, “You see what’s behind what’s behind.” I was surprised. I thought everybody did.

You’d think that such rationality would have translated into being good at games like chess, but not so. I may be rational, but I’m not patient.

Helen recently said that one of the things that impressed her most about me when we first met was that I had already thought about things. Whatever came up, I had already considered it, rationally. It wasn’t just that I had an opinion ready; that’s easy enough to do without thinking. But I could “show my work,” tell the steps I had taken in logic or planning to get to where I ended up. In fact, I proposed by explaining all the steps that had convinced me we should wed. She married me, anyway.

It’s one of the things I’ve been criticized for in my career in the ministry. “You think too much,” or some variation of that.

There are plenty of times when I’d like to be thoughtless. It would make life much easier.

Easier maybe even with atheists. They can understand why thoughtless people are religious. But not thinking people. At a writers conference, I met a man who shook his head in disgust instead of wonderment and said, “I just can’t believe that someone who thinks as well as you do can believe that religious crap.”

Actually, I don’t believe that religious crap. There’s plenty of that around, and it defies logic. I do believe, though, that there is a whole lot more going on in this vast universe than we can comprehend with our thinking. That’s only logical.

That’s usually where agnostics and atheists get hung up. If they can’t get their minds around something, they think it can’t be true. That limits the truth so much. I’m logical enough to know, with Blaise Pascal, that “The heart has its reasons, which reason cannot know.” I say that as one who has thought about it.

John Robert McFarland

FILLING THE PLACES IN BETWEEN [Sa, 7-11-20]

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

FILLING THE PLACES IN BETWEEN      [Sa, 7-11-20]

I fill the places in between

with song

a scrap of melody will do

a song from camp or hymn

from church, the opening

of a Sousa march

or just the stinger

at the end

between great thoughts

when washing up the dishes

from the night before

or taking out the trash

or on my way to heaven

I fill the places in between

the thoughts and memories

with song

John Robert McFarland

DISTRACTED DRIVING, & THINKING [R, 7-9-20]

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

DISTRACTED DRIVING, & THINKING   [R, 7-9-20]

[Okay, take note: It seemed good to reflect on distracted driving, because of Indiana’s new driving while phoning law. So that’s how I started. Then I got onto wedding planning, and bag phones, and I ended up throwing anti-glitter on all principals because of the actions of one. To make things worse, I felt I should add some sort of moral or helpful conclusion, so there’s a quite lame paragraph at the end. If, at the conclusion, you say, “Why in the world did I waste my time on this?” remember that you were warned.]

As of July 1, it became illegal to drive in Indiana while holding a cell phone. We’re catching up. We are the twenty-first state to have such a law.

The first time I encountered a car phone—as we called them, for that was the only place they were used, because they had to be plugged in to the “cigarette lighter”-- was when the Presbyterian girl from Michigan was planning her wedding for my town in Illinois, because her grandparents lived there. It had to be on a particular date, and that conflicted with the Presbyterian preacher’s vacation plans, so he asked me to fill in for him. I agreed. He was a friend. I knew he needed a vacation. And I thought it meant only that I would have to show up at the Presbyterian church one Saturday afternoon, for half an hour, and say the wedding ritual I knew by heart, and smile and pray and go home to watch baseball on TV.

I did not at all understand that it involved talking every day, for months, with a young woman, as she planned her wedding, on her car phone. I didn’t even know that car phones existed.

She was a sales woman for… I think it was farm herbicides. So, she explained to me, she had lots of time in her car as she drove from place to place, so she had invested in a car phone so she could have something to do while driving, like plan her wedding.

I was surprised. I thought driving was a thing in itself, not something you did to accompany your other pursuits.

Those conversations were never easy. It was a new technology. Her voice came and went, according to where the then infrequent phone cell towers were located, and there was much honking from other drivers, who did not understand that she needed the whole road as she checked her lists of things for me to do, since I was right on site and could negotiate more easily with organists, soloists, janitors, florists, etc.

We got a car phone ourselves, though, after we ended up in the ditch one night while driving thirty miles to attend a cancer support group. It was because I swerved to miss a 200 pound possum in the road. [That’s the way I saw it, and that’s the way I tell it.] We sat there, headlights on so someone would see us and stop to help, while car after car sped right by us. At least one good thing I got from the Presbyterian from Michigan was the awareness of car phones. Sitting there in that ditch, we decided we needed one.

There weren’t cell phones in those days, just car phones. They were in big bags. Must have weighed 20 pounds. Helen was commuting 50 miles round-trip in those days and so took it along in case she ended up in the ditch again.

Also, she had to take it into the school building with her, because the principal had taken all the phones out of the offices of the teachers. Seems that some of the teachers had been using the phones to place bets for Pete Rose, and talk long-distance with girlfriends, using the school phones so their wives wouldn’t find out about it, and so, rather than confronting the guilty parties and telling them to cut it out, he used the normal principal principle to solve a problem, punish everyone for the misdeeds of the few. Just as school shootings were ramping up, and teachers really needed a way to call for help.

It is okay to focus on the task at hand. Multitasking really doesn’t exist. It’s just multi distracting. Sometimes you have to try to do lots of things at one time, especially if you have little kids to deal with. But anytime we can, do that one thing. It’s better for the brain, and for the spirit.

John Robert McFarland

BTW, FYI: The time noted for when I post a column is on California time, since that is where blogspot is located. I get up early, but not THAT early!

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE THIN BLUE LINE, [T, 7-7-20]

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

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE THIN BLUE LINE, IT’S ABOUT THE STRONG HIGH STANDARD [T, 7-7-20]

The current disconcerts over police misconduct remind me of the day our semi-son, Len, graduated from the IL State Police Academy. The speaker was an obscure IL state senator with the unlikely name of Barack Obama. I wondered why they had chosen him.

Well, it was clear that the top officers of the IL State Police liked him a lot. They were effusive in their praise of him in his introduction. He gave a serviceable speech, but it was nothing spectacular. I hoped he didn’t have designs on higher office, since he didn’t seem to have much going for him. Especially that name. And those ears. And that skin.

I asked Len at lunch why the top brass of the troopers gave him such praise.

“He’s our top advocate in the legislature,” he said. “He fights for more money for us. I guess we all like that. But the tradeoff is that we had to support his legislation that makes us keep records about the race of people we stop. The guys can’t hassle black people anymore and get away with it by just not reporting it. They don’t like that. They claim it’s just because they don’t like more paper work, and there’s a lot to that. Nobody wants more paper work. But for some, it’s really about not being able to get away with stopping people for DWB, driving while black.”

I’ve known troopers from three different states. Known them well. They are totally honorable men who would not intentionally do injustice to anyone. It pains me that they are being tarred with the same brush that their racist colleagues are wielding.

One of them said recently that it pains him, too, that all police are being judged by the actions of a few, and that in the past he had paid a price with his colleagues for reporting “dirty cops,” but that he would do it again.

That’s the only way you can go in any profession and have any respect, especially self-respect. Clergy and teachers and youth leaders and police are rightly held to a higher standard, because we are in positions of authority and power and trust.

The Roman Catholic church has proved very well that closing ranks and protecting the guilty creates ever-worsening circles of misery and mistrust. MSU and the gymnastics associations, and the Penn State football program have proved that, too. You must face the fact of misconduct head-on.

We can’t condone it with “Well, she has a hard job.” Of course, she does. But no one is required to be a teacher or preacher or cop. If you can’t do the job right, or if you are in the job in order to do it wrong—and there are always some of those—then either get out or get booted out.

No, as we chant Black Lives Matter, it is not a denigration of police. It indicates how highly we prize the police, precisely because we know that they can live by that higher standard.

John Robert McFarland

MY KIND OF PEOPLE [SU, 7-5-20]

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

MY KIND OF PEOPLE          [SU, 7-5-20]

I heard of a man who was new in town. He visited church after church, without finding one where he felt quite right. Until he went to First Presbyterian. He got in a little late, right after the opening hymn, and heard the congregation intoning the prayer of confession: “We have done those things we ought not to do, and we have not done those things we ought to do.”

He sighed with satisfaction. “My kind of people at last,” he said.

Those words of the prayer of confession are from the lectionary Epistle reading for today, from Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, Romans 7:15-25.

Paul had a life-long theological and personal struggle with how grace and works go together. He was constantly saying that since we are saved by Christ, we are no longer sinful, but we sin anyway, so we need to cut it out, but we are not saved by our stopping our bad behavior and doing good stuff, because…

To a Bible student, this is confusing. I confessed this one day to George Paterson. George was just about the smartest and kindest and most Christian man I ever knew. He was one of the professors in the School of Religion at The University of Iowa when I was a doctoral student there, and later he was one of our best friends, as he and Ida Belle served as surrogate parents for daughter Katie and her husband, Patrick, while their one-year-old son was in Children’s Hospital in Iowa City, defeating cancer, and they were surrogate grandparents to Joe. And often hosts to us when we were in Iowa City.

In later years, when we lived far enough away that it was difficult to get to Iowa City, we would meet them half-way, usually at Wisconsin Dells, to spend weekends together, eating and talking and driving around to see the loons. My semi-colon, leftover from my colon cancer surgery, gets me up early in the morning. In a motel, so as not to wake Helen, I leave our room and go to the lounge. So one morning, in WI Dells, I was sitting there reading Romans as my morning devotions when George came in. We started talking about Paul’s theology. That’s when I confessed this secret I kept through a whole career of preaching.

“I don’t understand what Paul is saying,” I said.

George sighed. “Thank goodness,” he said. “I never understood what he’s saying, either.”

We concluded that Paul was speaking a great truth, but neither Paul nor George nor I could find the right words, and put them in the right order, so that we, and others, might understand that truth.

We have friends who were Methodists for a while, and liked it, but went back to the Presbyterians, anyway. “We miss the prayer of confession,” they said.

Through my years of ministry, I generally followed the standard order of worship: praise, confession, word, and response. Methodists skip right over the confession anymore, it seems. We go directly to the affirmation of faith. After all, the past is past. We need to be reminded of what we believe/do NOW. As Lutheran music prof Lorraine Bruehl said, “The quintessential Methodist song is not so much ‘O, For a Thousand Tongues to Sing,’ or ‘Amazing Grace,’ but ‘Are Ye Able?’”

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, said that the goal of the Christian life is “to go on to perfection,” to become perfect, in love. But you can’t go on to perfection unless you first confess that you are not perfect, that you do what you shouldn’t and don’t do what you should.

I miss the congregational prayer of confession in Sunday morning worship, too, so I add it in for myself. Confession is good for the soul, so I’ve heard. It doesn’t seem to help all that much, though, in trying to understand Paul. It’s nice to know, though, that when I’m confessing, that I do what I don’t want to, and I don’t do what I would, that Paul and I are confessing together.

John Robert McFarland

GRACE NOTES [F, 7-3-20]

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

GRACE NOTES                      [F, 7-3-20]

One good morning

Is enough to blot out

All the bad mornings

If that morning is today

A cup of kindness

Warming mottled hands

As the slow dawn

Spreads across

The ridgeline

Of the past

A distant melody

Drifts through the walls

Of memory and calls

Forth an answering

Rhythm in the soul

Grace notes

John Robert McFarland

IS LOVE REALLY A VERB? [W, 7-1-20]

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

IS LOVE REALLY A VERB?  [W, 7-1-20]

It is 8 o’clock and I have finished everything on my list for today. 8 o’clock in the morning!

I did last night’s dishes. I made coffee, and drank it. I prayed and read the Bible and sang my morning songs. I wrote a poem. I did the garbage and recycling. I walked an hour, in only 45 minutes. I stretched. I read the newspaper, on line, and checked email, and checked Facebook, to see if I had any offers from Giant Equipment to buy Humvees and tanks. [I did.]

I grew up on a farm. I felt relieved if all the stuff on my list was done by 8 o’clock. 8 o’clock at night. Our house had no plumbing or central heating, so there was water to carry in, and out, and kindling to split, and coal to carry in, and ashes out. There were chickens to feed and eggs to gather. There were beans to hoe and black berries to pick. It was all day, every day.

Then I became a preacher. Again, I was relieved if all the stuff on my list was done by 8 o’clock. At night. There were sermons to prepare, letters to answer, telephone calls, visits to make in homes and hospitals and nursing homes, meetings, funerals, weddings, lots of people who needed to tell someone about their problems. It was all day, every day.

But, now, what do I do all day? I’m not just buttoned down, I’m locked down. No meetings to attend. No coffee houses open. Plenty of demonstrations, but I can’t go to them—I can’t stand up long enough, and I can’t take a chance on getting the virus. I live in a condo. No grass to mow. No gutters to clean. No children to chase off the lawn.

Granted, I could get up later, so the stuff on my list would last later into the day,  but my semi-colon wants me up at 5:00, and, besides, if I got up at 7:00, I wouldn’t be able to go to bed until 11:22 instead of my current 9:22, so the problem would remain—still 13 hours and 22 minutes to fill with… what?

Just two days ago I “preached” about how the purpose of each day is to love. [CIW for M, 6-29, A Quilt Named Love] What does that mean, though, when your day, each day, is done by 8 in the morning?

For years, I preached that love is a verb. Really? If love is what you do, how do you love when you have nothing to do?

Well, there are a couple of things, and also a different view.

First, I am trying to love by staying healthy. It would be hard on my family and friends if I get sick in this time when they can’t even come to see me. It would be hard on the already over-stressed health care system. Just staying healthy is a loving thing. I don’t go out in public much, but when I do, wearing a mask and physically distancing are loving things.

Extra time is an excellent opportunity for extra prayers for others. Yes, that brings up the whole discussion about the efficacy of intercessory prayer, but the one thing I know for sure about intercessory prayer is that I have to do it. It’s hard, though, at least for me, to stay focused in prayer for 13 hours and 22 minutes each day.

Here’s another way to see love. Maybe it’s more than just a verb. It’s always a verb, but maybe it’s also a conjunction?

Well, I’m over my word limit. I’ll let you figure that out.

John Robert McFarland