GOD IN OLD AGE [Su, 3-28-21]

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

GOD IN OLD AGE    [Su, 3-28-21]

 

You are so old now, God.

Do you wonder how

The eons have flown by

So quickly?

Do you have that nagging

Feeling that you left

Something undone,

Or some part of creating

You’d like to do over?

That’s how I feel,

And I’m not nearly as old as you

 

Did the big bang make you jump?

Did you go outside to see what it was?

Did you say whatinthehell was that?

Did your dog bark at it, thinking it was the doorbell?

 

When you are nostalgic,

What are the good memories?

Is it the day you made bananas?

Or the time you put giggle

Fits into babies?

I’ll bet that made you laugh

 

Do you miss the dinosaurs,

Or the wooly mammoths?

How about the Neanderthals,

Or the dodo birds?

 

Do you have regrets?

Are you sorry you told

The water and the air

They could flow and blow

Wherever they wanted?

 

Are you unhappy

About your nick names,

Like goddammit

Or goodgodalmighty?

 

Are you weary with being compared

To Three In One oil on Trinity Sunday?

 

Are you tired of praise songs?

Are you fed up with “The Bible Says”?

 

Are you tired of petitions and confessions?

Are prayers getting monotonous, all sounding the same?

Do you wish someone could come up with an original sin?

Did you notice my joke there? Did you get it?

 

Are you sorry you created average,

So that so many people are always below it?

 

Do you ever wonder why you chose the Jews? They do

 

We’re getting old, you and I, heading toward the end

Have you given any thought to speeding evolution up a bit?

 

I know it must be nice

Hanging out in heaven

But do you ever wonder

What became of me?

 

John Robert McFarland

IT’S HARD TO GIVE UP HATE [F, 3-26-21]

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

IT’S HARD TO GIVE UP HATE   [F, 3-26-21]

 

In one town where I pastored, I had a love-hate relationship with one of the funeral directors. I’ll call him FD. Well, love-hate is probably too strong. More like-dislike. To complicate matters further, he wasn’t just a major funeral director that I could not escape working with, he had important official positions in my church.

No one was quite sure why he disliked me. Even his partner, who went to a different church, once told me that he had asked FD about it and got no response.

To his credit, in church meetings and at funerals, he did not go out of his way to create problems for me. He wasn’t cordial, but he was professional.

That was especially important, because I had to do some—a lot, actually—of really difficult funerals with him. Suicides, children, car accidents, murders… my pastorate there seemed twice as long as it was because of the agonies my people had to go through, that I went through with them. FD was not the only funeral director who had those funerals, but he had the bulk of them. They would have been much worse if he had been difficult to work with.

As time went on, I learned that he had been told something about me, before I ever arrived, that was not true. Someone had blamed something on me to cover up their own mistake. I confronted FD about it, and told him it was not true. He acknowledged that he understood, but it didn’t change his opinion about me.

I knew that he didn’t change his opinion because occasionally someone would tell me when he had bad-mouthed me. Again, to his credit, not in a funeral setting, or at church, but in other situations. One young father, for whom I had done one of those difficult funerals, for his child, told me that he had been in a personal setting when FD began to express his dislikes for me. “I had to tell him,” he said, “you might as well stop right now, because I will not listen to one bad word about that man.”

That was so strange. FD was a funeral director, a position that requires sensitivity. You would think that he would know that a father would appreciate the minister who pastored him when his child was murdered, who did the funeral. Of all people, why would FD think it was okay to badmouth me to that young father?

I think that here is a clue to Donald Trump’s appeal, why people support him and make excuses for him against all good sense: Some people hate to give up their hates, because it means they were wrong, not just about information, but about emotions, about relationships, about love, and that is the hardest thing of all about which to admit that we made a mistake.

Especially for people who say, “I’m a good judge of character.” They aren’t, because no one is, but they hate to admit it… so they don’t.

Except…

Shortly after I had left that church to take another appointment, one of those difficult funerals came up. A young man committed suicide. His parents felt especially close to me. I had spent a lot of time trying to help their son get his life together. They did not really know the new pastor because he had been there such a short time. They asked the new pastor if he would let me to do their son’s funeral, and he, very graciously, did so. It was at FD’s funeral home. We both knew it was the last funeral we would do together.

After, when everyone else was gone, FD said to me: “When there is a funeral at my place instead of the church, once it gets started, I leave one of our staff out there in case someone needs something, but I go catch up on office work. I have the audio on, but I don’t really listen. They’re all alike. I’ve heard the same thing every day for years. Except for you. You’re the only one I’ve always listened to.”

John Robert McFarland 

 

 

 

HOW DO YOU MOURN A LONG-LOST FRIEND? [W, 3-24-21]

 

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

HOW DO YOU MOURN A LONG-LOST FRIEND? [W, 3-24-21]

 

I long wondered what became of Max. We were such good friends in college. Then he disappeared. I looked for him from time to time, especially once the internet got going, but never found him. Most of us don’t do anything worthy of an internet appearance until we die. Obits, however, always show up. That’s how I found Max, after 60 years.

We were both on the Residence Scholarship Plan at IU. It was for promising kids who could not go to college without help. In my class, there were three guys who were more than just promising. They were A+ students—my roommate, Tom Cone, plus Jim McKnight, and Max. [The photo above is Linden Hall, the leftover WWII BOQ that was our dorm.]

Max was very smart, but not a handsome guy. Quite the opposite. So he depended on his intellect to provide him a place to belong. He was also religious, but not in an obvious way. When we were sophomores, he went to a national conference for students of his denomination. There he met a pretty girl from Texas. She was the first pretty girl who had ever paid attention to him. He was immediately in love.

Max should have been a college professor. That’s where he belonged. That’s what he and Jim both planned on. Jim made it, because he didn’t get married, until later in life. Max didn’t realize how difficult it would be to go to grad school with a wife… and child. Yes, before he graduated even, they had a little girl. 

Max and I were used to running around together, so when he and Cecile married, naturally Helen and I ran around with them, even though we weren’t married yet. We had good times. It was great to see Max so happy. When I went to a jewelry shop downtown to pick out a surprise engagement ring for Helen, I took Max along, for advice, and support.

I don’t think Max gave up his dream of grad school right away, but with a wife and child, he had to get a job. After he got his bachelor’s degree, they moved to Indianapolis, got a job and an apartment. We kept in touch enough to know where each other lived. So it wasn’t exactly a surprise when Max showed up at our parsonage door in Cedar Lake one night, even though it was a long way from Indy.

He was holding a paper sack with a few household items in it. He also had a purple blanket. He asked us to keep those for him until…

Turns out that Cecile had a calendar of goals for Max to achieve. A certain sort of job by a particular date, a certain level of salary by another, a promotion by another. The problem was, Max didn’t know about the calendar. He had no idea there were any goals or deadlines. But when he missed one, Cecile called her father in Texas. He came up with a truck and while Max was at work, loaded up Cecile and the baby and all their possessions and took them away. All Max found when he got home was that blanket and that sack and that calendar.

He dropped out of sight. Said he would give us a new address, but he never did. At first, I was worried. Later I figured that we, and the items he gave us for safekeeping, were reminders of times he didn’t want to relive. I understood why we were not included as he created a new life. But I missed him.

Now, I’ve found him. In his obit. It doesn’t say anything about those intervening years. No list of survivors. No photo. It only gives his birth & death dates. Nothing for me to think about as I grieve for him, as I pray for his soul.

How do you mourn a friend you haven’t seen in 60 years? I thought about Max often in those years, but always just as a memory. Some are sad memories, like a paper sack of memories, handed over to others for safekeeping. But some are good memories, talking and singing in dorm rooms, going to movies, walking back and forth to classes, hearing Max and Jim argue the way really smart guys do.

I do what I can. I pray for him, and commend his soul to God.

John Robert McFarland

 

ODDS & ENDS-Including house plants & bluetits [M, 3-22-20]

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

ODDS & ENDS-Including house plants & bluetits    [M, 3-22-20]

 

There is a story about the psychiatrist and proctologist who went into practice together and put up a sign on their office that said “Odds and Ends.” An alternate sign was “Rears and Queers,” but it’s the odds and the ends that interest me here. From time to time some little memory arises, or some small event happens, that is intriguing, but not long enough to write a whole column about it. So…

Like the time Judith Unger sat up in bed, completely asleep, and announced, “It was the Discipleship Committee,” and laid back down. She could remember nothing about it the next day, especially what the Discipleship Committee was guilty of, but her proclamation in the night has the feeling of Emile Zola’s “J’Accuse” or Nathan the prophet’s “Thou are the man.”

I recently wrote about how I tell cashiers and waiters that Helen and I qualify for the good-looks discount. Daughter Katie learned her lesson well, and when she and Patrick were buying a car, she told the salesman he should give them a $200 good looks discount. He looked perplexed and said he’d have to run it by the sales manager. He returned and said they could have a $100 discount. They’ve been arguing ever since about which one lost them $100 on that deal.

IU history prof, Rebecca Spang, says that she’s had an increasingly antagonistic relationship with her house plants as the pandemic has worn on. They were just always there. Then she realized that she was the one who had changed. They were just doing what they had always done, being where they had always been. She was the one who had changed, from the one who went away once in a while and then returned, to another one—like the house plants—who was always there.

Speaking of history profs: “He had all the illuminations of wisdom and none of its pedantry.” A statement in the obituary of Keith Hitchens, one of daughter Katie’s doctoral profs at the U of IL. What a wonderful way to be remembered. He was the world’s foremost historian of Eastern Europe. Katie once asked him how many languages he spoke. “Fifteen, if you count Mandarin and ancient Greek, but I need a dictionary for those two,” he said.

When my little sister, Margaret Ann, named for our Grandma Pond, was dying of cancer, her minister called on her often. Margey loved all nature, especially birds, and one day her minister told her that when he was a boy in Africa, the teacher told the class to draw a bluetit, which he did, and was quickly expelled from school. Margey’s daughter, Nicole, says that Margey always looked forward to his visits, because he always made her laugh. Now that’s a good pastor!

As baseball season is upon us, good advice to remember: “The secret to managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the ones who are undecided.” Casey Stengel

Freud had his talking cure. Jesus has his walking cure: “Follow me.”

John Robert McFarland

 

GOD ON ZOOM [Sa, 3-20-21]

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

GOD ON ZOOM    [Sa, 3-20-21]

 

Helen saw real people last week. It befuddled her.

Helen is really into celebrating the birthdays of friends. Ever since she found out that she and two friends have birthdays on consecutive days, she planned to have a group birthday party. All three are either in The Crumble Bums or the CBBHA [Crumble Bums Better Half Auxiliary], so she planned to have a group CB/Aux birthday party. Then the pandemic isolation got in the way. But all our friends are in the “two shots plus two weeks” group now, so she decided it was time.

Allyson, one of the three, baked a cake, and Helen went to her house to divide it into fifths and then deliver it to the homes of the other three. In each case, it was the Crumble Bum of the house who came to the door.

She said, “There was something so strange. Eventually, I realized it was because they were so tall. Yes, they were up a step higher, since they were standing in the doorway and we were on the porch, but still… I did not remember Ron and Charlie and Tony were so tall. Then I figured it out: for a year, I’ve seen them only in a tiny Zoom box on a computer screen. They are so much bigger in person!”

That’s the way it is with God, too. J.B. Phillips had it right a long time ago when he wrote Your God Is Too Small. Or as theologian Paul Tillich put it, “As soon as you say God, you’ve lost God.”

We have so many little boxes in which to view God that we forget the immensity of the divine presence. The most prevalent little box in which we keep God in recent times is the bible.

People who say “I believe in the Bible” are saying “I don’t believe in God,” for—as I heard recently and wish I could give credit to the originator of the phrase—“God didn’t stop speaking when the book got published.”

The bible is a route to go to God, but it is not God. When it is a little zoom box to keep God in, it leads us away from God.

Another little zoom box for God is prayer.

One of my friends preached a sermon entitled “I Don’t Believe in Prayer.” He went on to say: I believe in God, and I believe God can use my prayers, but saying I believe in prayer is saying I have the power to change things. No, I don’t. God does, though.”

We can’t start with the bible or prayer or any of our other little zoom boxes or God will always be too small.

Use the bible. Use prayer. Use nature. Use science. Use theology. Those little zoom boxes are good things. They keep us in touch with reality and truth—yes, with God-- when we can’t see face to face. But let’s remember that God is a mystery to live in, not a little zoom box to be stored in. God is much bigger in person.

John Robert McFarland

And happy Spring to you. May it be renewal for us all.

 

 

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

ADDICTIONS & ENABLERS-Hypergraphia Edition  [R, 3-18-21]

 

I have been trying to train myself to think about something without writing about it. Obviously, that’s not going very well.

For years, I didn’t have to write about the stuff that happened, because I preached about it. All week long I would examine any moment with the question, “Can this go into a sermon?” What about the child on the bike? The dog in the park? The article in the newspaper about the woman who killed her husband because his rocking chair creaked? Surely each of those related to a story of Jesus, or a prophet, or Paul, and so could be useful in a sermon. If not this week, maybe next.

I did not realize that it was becoming an addiction, until it became full-blown. Now I can’t even think about what Helen’s fixing for supper without wanting to write about it. Grilled cheese? Tomato soup? Surely people would be interested in my words about their universality in their peculiarity.

And it’s only getting worse. Addictions often get worse in old age. I suppose because we’ve been honing the dependency for so long. But now I don’t have sermons as an outlet for all my incidents and anecdotes. They’ve got to go somewhere. Or do they?

That’s what I’ve been saying to myself. No, you can think about something without writing about it. Like the David Sedaris story I just read about his sister’s suicide. Wouldn’t a normal person just think about that and let it go at that?

I can’t read for very long, even a novel, without closing the book and thinking about it for a while. Why did the perp choose that method of killing his victims? Why did the vicar choose that moment to confront the bishop? Why does Nels Ferre call the church an umbrella? Why does Gerald May define “love” that way? Why does someone want to get out of your family so much that they are willing to take their own life?

That’s how Sedaris saw his sister’s suicide. Even though his family of six kids and two parents was chaotic in the best of times, it was “…the only club I ever wanted to belong to.” So why did Tiffany want out so badly?

Sedaris processed that by writing about it. Now I feel that I have to process my thinking about it by writing about his writing about it. Why can’t I just think about it, and let that be enough?

It’s not that I don’t like you, dear reader, [as authors used to address us]. I’m not trying to punish you by involving you in my confusion. I realize this is not your problem, and you have no reason to be interested in it. I like you. Why should you have to deal with this at all? Don’t you have enough stuff of your own to think about?

Of course, people in addiction always have enablers, and you, dear reader, are enabling me…

John Robert McFarland

 

AN ARTICLE CALLED “STAFF MEETINGS ARE A WASTE OF TIME” IS A WASTE OF TIME [T, 3-16-21]

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

AN ARTICLE CALLED “STAFF MEETINGS ARE A WASTE OF TIME” IS A WASTE OF TIME   [T, 3-16-21]

 

I received a lot of positive response to the article, responses sent directly to me, via USPS since we didn’t have computers and email in the early 1980s. I even got a few phone calls. I was feeling pretty good about it. I had expected negative response, but it was all positive. And then Duane Hulse, a minister in Clearwater, FL, wrote to me to tell me what a good article it was. “But,” he went on, “I read it to my wife and said, in the next issue, they’re going to nail that poor man’s hide to the wall.”

He was right. The editor used two pages in the next issue for the responses to the article--more space that they usually allocated for all letters to the editor--and still didn’t have enough room for all who wanted to have a say on the issue. Apparently if we want to praise an article, person-to-person makes sense. If we want to criticize an article, we do it publicly so everyone else can get in on it.

I understand that. I haven’t made a count, but I suspect I have sent more disagreement letters to editors than praise letters myself.

The criticism didn’t bother me much. It would have bothered me if the article had been about racial justice, or world peace, if the article had been in “Newsweek” and entitled “Feeding the Poor Is a Waste of Food.” No, the article was in a magazine for clergy, and it was entitled “Staff Meetings Are a Waste of Time.”

Big deal, right? I mean, who cares? Either you like meetings or you don’t, and either way, you develop a total philosophy that allows you to claim your likes/dislikes are the correct ones. Helen says teachers are like that, that each one she knew claimed that the way they preferred to teach was the correct pedagogy for all. I know preachers are like that. “The correct theological and biblical way to do church is the way I feel most comfortable.”

From the responses to the article, you would have thought the entire purpose of the church depended on the presence of staff meetings. Of course, all those responses were from the senior ministers who got to call and preside over those staff meetings. None of the “underlings” complained about their possible demise.

One minister wrote to me after that second issue to say that he did not have staff meetings because “…my music director, organist, and pianist would cut each other to pieces—note by note. I do not need their animosity transmitted to the rest of the staff.” I hadn’t even thought of that in the reasons for eschewing staff meetings!

Later in my ministry, I was asked to do grief work with the congregation of a large church where the pastor had died suddenly. I went to the staff meeting. About half-way through I had to throw up my hands and say, “This is the most dysfunctional staff I have ever seen!” No one stuck to the agenda, no one listened, they all talked at once, they were all trying to promote separate causes… it was chaos. “I realize that you are acting out your own grief, but you have to be the adults here. You are creating grief for the whole congregation rather than helping with healing,” I told them. “I have no authority over you, of course, but I think the best thing you can do for this church is stop meeting.”

They decided to stop meeting during the grief period, but they sulked. After the grieving period, a new senior pastor was appointed. He thanked me.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

NICKNAMES FOR JESUS [Su, 3-14-21]

 

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

[Just in case you are reading this early on Sunday morning, and you have not yet sprung your clocks forward one hour, I’ll remind you to do it.]

NICKNAMES FOR JESUS  [Su, 3-14-21]

 

Until eighth grade, I was pretty sure I was the smartest kid in our mid-year class, the one that started in January because we had winter birthdays, about 35 kids.

The other kids were smart, but I was always the first one to turn my test in. First-in with your test was the standard for “smartest.”

When we were in 8^th grade, the school board decided to end January starts to school. My mid-year class was folded back into the semester behind us to make a full year’s worth of students. I was suddenly in the same class as James Burch and Russell Riddle. I definitely was no longer the smartest kid in the class.

They not only got better grades than I, they even had better nicknames. James was “Wally,” for Wally Cox, who played “Mr. Peepers” on TV. With his burr haircut and big glasses, James looked a lot like Mr. Peepers. Russell was “Rowdy Russ,” or just “Rowdy,” precisely because he was the least rowdy kid in school, including the girls.

It was important to have a nickname, and I didn’t. Even during the phase when we started calling one another by the names of our fathers. [Who knows?] Darrel was Linus, and Bob was Kitty [yes, his father went by Kitty], and Jim was Curt, and the other Russell was Embry, and Don was Luther, on down the roll. I lost out on nicknames even in that phase. They might have called me by my father’s name, but I didn’t notice, for his name was John.

Now, you must remember that we were teen boys when I tell you that Darrel’s father’s name, Linus, was pronounced Lee-nus, which produced hallway questions of “Hey, Linus, how’s your male organ?” and, to Russell Green, “Hey, Greenie, how’s your hotdog?” Not exact quotes. The exact quotes rhymed.

Rhymes ran out on that organ fairly quickly, so we tried other organs. “Hey, Gene, how’s your spleen?” The whole thing faltered when nobody’s name rhymed with pancreas.

So, I was no longer the smartest, and I didn’t even have a nickname.

Nonetheless, Wally and Rowdy and I were the best of friends. I lost touch with them after high school, though. They went off to college to become engineers, Wally to Purdue and Rowdy to Evansville. They didn’t come to our every-five-years class reunions. No one knew where they were. Until Russell finally showed up, from New Mexico, at our 55-year reunion.

I greeted him with “Rowdy Russ!” His wife did not know about our nicknames. She asked, a bit angrily, “Why do you call him that?” Before I could explain, Russell, looking puzzled, said, rather piously, “In high school, I was so busy with studying and helping in my parents’ grocery, I didn’t have time to be rowdy.” It was one of the saddest times of my life. My good friend, and he had such a neat nickname, and he didn’t remember it.

We have nicknames because one name just isn’t enough to show us all the uniqueness that is each person. But we get into trouble when we turn a nickname into the only name, when we turn it into theology. [Or a body part.]

That’s when the nicknames for Jesus go wrong. They are great, as long as we remember they are just nicknames. Yes, Jesus is the lily of the valley, the sun of righteousness, the fairest of ten thousand, king of kings, alpha and omega, bread of life, good shepherd, and on and on. [1]

When you turn one nickname into a whole theological system, though, like “the sacrificial lamb,” and insist that it can make explicit the totality of the mystery which is Christ, “saved by the blood of the lamb,” [2] that’s a dead end, a primrose path, a blind alley, a cul-de-sac, a… well, you get the idea, the premise, the plan, the scheme, the…

John Robert McFarland

1] Bibleresoures.org lists 106 nicknames for Jesus from the KJV.

2] A man left one of my early churches because I did not say “the blood of the lamb” often enough in my preaching.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REACHING OUT TO JUDGE YOU [F 3-12-21]

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

REACHING OUT TO JUDGE YOU   [F 3-12-21]

 

Going through old files, I am reminded that my “reviews” for my writing weren’t always good. One person wrote to tell me personally that my article on the theology of the video game, Pac-Man, was “…typical of Methodist preaching—creative, cute, comfortable, and moralistic.” I didn’t even know it was a sermon!

He probably meant, though, that it was typical of Methodist theology, not just preaching, in the 1980s, when “The Christian Century” published the article. And I was so proud of that, too. It made the cover! To make the cover of “The Christian Century” for a small-town preacher was like a back-up 3^rd baseman from the Three-I League making the cover of “Sports Illustrated.” How could anyone criticize an achievement like that?

Well, creative, cute, and comfortable, I can live with, pretty much, but “moralistic?” I don’t think so.

Well, maybe.

I always claimed that I just told stories and let people find their own way to God in and through them. Then, if any changing were done in that sermon hearer, it was God who did it. I always quoted my late friend and colleague, Herb Beuoy: “It’s our business to love people, and God’s business to change them.”

That claim that I just told non-judgmental stories in my preaching might actually be true. It was my intention.  But I do know that I am moralistic personally, even if not theologically and homiletically, and it is probably hard not to let that show through, despite one’s best anti-moralistic efforts.

I’m not so much moralistic anymore. It’s hard to be moralistic about stuff if you don’t even know what’s going on, and in these days of getting older, ignorance is my super-power.

It’s also hard to be moralistic when “judgy” is the worst epithet people, especially young people, can hurl at you. “Don’t judge me!”

The problem is, the word “judge” is used for any sort of evaluation or differentiation. “I think Big Macs are better than Whoppers.” Don’t be judgmental. Jesus said, “Judge not, lest ye be judged”

But judgment theologically, for Jesus, was for eternity, the final judgment, whether you were going to hell or heaven. We were not to damn someone to hell; that was judgment. If Peter said to Andrew, “This piece of fish isn’t good,” Jesus would not have said, “Don’t be judgmental.” Not every evaluation is a judgment, even though the “less-judgmental that thou” folks seem to think it is.

It’s like “reaching out.” Can’t anyone just make a contact or say “hello” anymore? Must it always be “reaching out?”

Oops, there I go. Being moralistic and judgy. But at least I’m creative and cute. Well, sort of…

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

GETTING TO GLAD [T 3-9-21]

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

GETTING TO GLAD   [T 3-9-21]

 

That would be a great title for a book or movie, Getting to Glad, about a prodigal daughter who grew up in the town of Glad [sounds like a place in Arkansas or Indiana, both of which have towns named Hope], and is trying to work her way back home. An expectable plot, but always a good one, especially with a country music background, since country music is always about trying to get home, while rock & roll is always about trying to get away from home.

I mean glad, though, in the sense of “glad I knew you.” I have thought about my friend, Bob Butts, a whole lot since he died in September, but especially at Super Bowl time, for Bob was the quintessential football fan. He had played football in high school and college in Mississippi, but, he once said, “Apparently I just didn’t get enough of it then.” He loved all football, especially MS State U football. But regardless of who was playing, he would watch all day, all night, all week, the huge TV he bought just for that purpose.

If MS State made it to a bowl game, he grabbed Kathy by the hair and off they went, and at least once a season, they went to a game in Starkville. Actually, he didn’t require Kathy to go, but she is always up for an adventure. Turns out now, though, that football games—in person or watching—were not the adventures she would have chosen first on her own.

It turns out I’m not as much of a football fan as I thought I was, either. I like it okay, especially IU football, and I’m delighted when William & Mary can beat the likes of the Michigan Wolverines, especially if William couldn’t play, because he was studying for a calculus test, but I realize now that a lot of my watching of football was just so I could do it with Bob.

I watched the Super Bowl, of course, something Bob and I used to do together, and I got to glad so much earlier than I had before. Usually when I think about one of my friends who has moved on, I stay in sad for a while before I get to glad. But this year, as I watched the Super Bowl, I realized I wasn’t sad. I was already glad. I was glad I got to know Bob, glad he was my friend, glad we got to have adventures together, even though some of them were just in recliners in front of the TV.

I don’t know if it’s Bob’s influence, but I find myself all the time now, when I think of a gone friend, going directly to glad. Thank you, Bob; it’s a great adventure, getting to glad.

John Robert McFarland

 

A DEER SKULL SET ON A HILL… [Su, 3-7-21]

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

A DEER SKULL SET ON A HILL…    [Su, 3-7-21]

 My old friend, Jim Bortell, is a master naturalist. He loves outdoor stuff. Recently, on a nature walk, he found the skull—no other skeleton parts—of a whitetail deer. [I personally can id a whitetail deer only if I can see the white tail, but that’s a different problem.] He debated about taking it home. He would have as a kid. Maybe he would have when his own kids and grands were little. But now?

He’d have to hide it from Roberta, for she is a woman of dignity, rationality, and aplomb, who would not care to have it on the mantle with the spring flowers. Of course, neither would she relish suddenly find it staring at her when she picked up a new towel from the stack in the bathroom closet, which is where it would likely be if Jim tried to hide it, for, as with many of us, they live in drastically downsized quarters. So downsized they might be called dimes or nickels.

Even if you still live in a big house when old, you end up using only a little bit of your living space—bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, TV room. Too much trouble to sweep and dust all those unnecessary rooms. There would be lots of hiding places for a deer skull, but then you’d also forget where it was… until you heard a shriek…

Jim decided that leaving the skull where it laid was better than making an attempt to hide it at home. He tried to portray it as a decision in harmony with nature and nature’s way of life and death. Actually, I’m sure it was to keep from having his own skull whacked upside and left outside for someone to find and wonder at. Not physically whacked; Roberta’s not that kind of woman. But there are other ways to deal with your husband when he brings something home and tries to hide it.

Jim probably has one of those hollowed-out Bibles, but it's too small for a deer skull. It’s hard to hide stuff in small quarters, regardless of how enticing it is to keep that stuff, be it physical or emotional.

Be especially careful about trying to hide something “under a bushel.” I have it on good authority that’s the first place they’ll look.

John Robert McFarland

I learned about the skull Jim didn’t take home from his email blog, Green Thoughts. If you’d like, I’m sure he’d put you on the mailing list. jmbortell@gmail.com

 

 

 

BIRTHDAY REMINDERS [F, 3-5-21]

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

BIRTHDAY REMINDERS  [F, 3-5-21]

I wonder now why I was so in love with Margaret O’Brien when I was in grade school. I saw a current picture of her on-line. I mean, she looks like an old woman.

She is only 20 days older than I, the same as the late Joe Frazier, of The Chad Mitchell Trio, the best folk-singing group of the 1960s. You wouldn’t think that 20 days would make her look so much older than I, but...

I was talking on the phone with Joe one day and asked him if he remembered that he was so much older than I. “How can I forget it when you remind me all the time?” he said. I probably wouldn’t say anything to Margaret about her being so much older, being in love with her for so long, and all.

I really fell in love with Margaret when we were in 5^th grade. I saw a photo of her in one of those little newspapers for kids they gave out at school. She was holding the same 5^th grade textbook that my class used. That sealed it. The same book! How much more in common could we have? It was destiny, I was sure, that we should meet and….

I wasn’t quite sure what would happen once we met, but if I had known then that she was making more money than Judy Garland for “Meet Me in St. Louis,” I would have tried a lot harder to get acquainted. In fact, she was at age six one of the highest paid stars in Hollywood. That’s a good quality in a girlfriend.

It’s surely best for Margaret that she doesn’t know what she missed out on, but it’s just as well that Margaret and I went our separate ways, for I ended up marrying a younger woman. Her birthday is tomorrow. Helen is fourteen months younger than Margaret and me. How can I forget it, when she keeps reminding me?

John Robert McFarland

 

IT’S GENE’S FAULT [W, 3-3-21]

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

IT’S GENE’S FAULT            [W, 3-3-21]

I have always enjoyed starting conversations with strangers as though we have a history. I’m not sure why I do it. I enjoy their responses. Especially the quick and clever ones. But it’s possible to get into trouble that way, which probably means that I have the Dirty 4 gene. That’s what they call the DRD4 gene, the one that causes its owner to take risks, with not much consideration for the consequences.

Once when grandson Joe was in Children’s Hospital at The U of IA, I was riding the elevator down to the cafeteria. An elderly, dignified black man got on. He was wearing jeans and flannel shirt, so clean and pressed that the creases showed. He didn’t look like the type, so we just nodded and said hello.

But then a young white woman got on. I could tell she was the type. There’s just something, that je ne sais quoi. So I said, “It’s about time you got here.”

She turned to face both me and the other man and with a baleful stare, then snarled, “It’s your own fault. I’ve been riding up and down in this thing all day, saying ‘Where in the hell are those guys?’”

My companion slunk into the corner of the elevator. The woman flounced out at the next floor. I said, “Don’t worry. She’ll come back. They always do.” He jumped to get the door before it closed.

I never saw either of them again.

When our grand-daughter was quite small, she was enthralled with “Black sheep, black sheep, have you any wool.” I decided to buy her a black sheep to play with. I asked at a gift store, “Do you have any black sheep?” The woman reflected for a moment, then said, “Well, my sister is coming on Monday.”

Speaking of days of the week, I told the cashier at True Value that I qualified for the good looks discount. She didn’t even look up. “That’s only on Tuesday,” she said.

Often when I tell a waiter or cashier that I qualify for that discount, they say, “I already figured that in.”

A waitress asked if I wanted more coffee. “5/8,” I said. She looked perplexed. “Pay him no mind,” Helen said, “He’s only trying to confuse you.” She turned to me and said, “Good job!”

At a state park inn, the young woman at the front desk, when I presented her with our breakfast bill, said, “Do you want that charged to your room?” “No,” I said. “Charge it to the room of the richest looking guy here.” Her face fell. “Oh,” she exclaimed. “You’re the richest looking person here, so I’ve been letting people charge their meals to your room.”

I think she was kidding, but our tally for the stay was higher than usual.

Bob Hammel recently referred in an email to “…your only-John-McFarland humor.” I was taken aback. He is a huge talent in the writing field. More writing awards than all the others in his genre put together. An awesome wordsmith. When I’m with him, or writing to him, I try to play it straight, no split infinitives, no words like “angry” when “bellicose” will do. But apparently if you have an “only you” type of humor, it shows up even if you don’t intend for it to do so. 

Actually, I’m glad I have that Dirty 4 gene. I have gotten to enjoy a lot of really clever people because I don’t know when to keep my mouth shut. I can’t help it. It’s the gene’s fault.

John Robert McFarland

 

WHEN FRIENDS GO BAD [M, 3-1-21]

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

WHEN FRIENDS GO BAD   [M, 3-1-21]

In this column for Saturday, February 27, I talked about how friends are routes to Jesus. But what if an old friend goes bad? What if an old friend seems to be mediating the devil instead of Jesus?

In college, Helen and I were part of a Methodist student group, along with a couple I’ll call Millie and Dean. They were a dating couple when we met them, but have been married for over 60 years now. They were two years ahead of us in school, but dating couples tended to hang around together.

There was also a guy in the group I’ll call Marvin. I knew who Marvin was, but that was all. He was close friends with Millie and Dean, though. They maintained their friendship with him for 60 years.

They have maintained their friendship with us for those 60 years, too. We have often lived several states away from one another, as we do now, but we’ve kept in touch, and whenever we’ve been traveling through each other’s territory, we have gotten together. Those sorts of friendships are fun. Except…

The last time we were with Millie and Dean, they showed us a letter they had received from Marvin. It was a long and convoluted screed against gay folks. Marvin is clergy, so feels the need to bolster his stances with biblical references. We are used to anti-gay folks twisting mightily the few verses in the Bible that might be considered anti-gay, but Marvin was more creative. He quoted a lot from the Old Testament, like passages where Yahweh is threatening to kick Israel’s ass unless they kill more Philistines, the way He told them to. Marvin said this was clear. By Philistines, God means gays, and we shall be the ones who feel God’s boot unless we get rid of them. That was the kinder and more rational part of his letter.

“We don’t know what’s happened to him,” Millie said. “He’s been our friend for so long. And we’ve stayed in touch all this time, and enjoyed seeing one another. But now, we don’t want to read hateful stuff. We’re old and want to spend our time with friends who help us remember good times and help us be kind to others instead of cruel to them. But it seems wrong to stop relating to him, we’ve been friends so long…”

Most of us can relate. Either we have a friend personally who’s been out in the sun too long and gone bad, or we know of situations like that. Another friend, in a similar situation, said, “I thought these were supposed to be the golden years, but they’ve turned to lead.”

Yes. We’re old. We don’t have a lot of time left. Shouldn’t we be able to shed friends who turn gold to lead instead of having to stick it out with them just because we have put in a lot of years together?

But doesn’t friendship mean you hang on and support one another even though it’s not comfortable? And right, you’re old, so you really don’t have anything better or more important to do than sit and stand with your friends as they try to work out their own last years, do you?

I don’t know. I’m not smart enough to answer that for anyone else. But be careful what you write to me. I’m a tolerant sort of guy. I may just exercise my tolerance and say you have the right to go to hell in your own way and keep on drinking my coffee and reading my book. Or maybe I’ll come find you and whack you upside the head until it’s back on straight again.

John Robert McFarland