THE WAY THAT KOLEEN DIED [W, 6-30-21]

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

 

Online, I came across the list of United Methodist churches in Indiana that closed this year. On that list was Koleen.

Koleen was one of my first appointments. Just a wide spot on a county road, a few houses, a car repair place, a small general store, and the church building. It was on the Solsberry circuit, which included Mineral, also at that time. Solsberry was 15 miles from my dorm at Indiana University, but Mineral was 25 miles away, and Koleen another few after Mineral. I preached at two churches on Sunday morning and one on Sunday night, with a rotating schedule--since no church wanted evening services all the time--that was so confusing that twice I went to the wrong church. [1]

Koleen was settled by Irish immigrants, and there are two stories of how it got its name. One is that it was named for the valuable kaolin clay deposits in the area. The other is that when they wanted a post office, in 1877, they asked for the name of Colleen. The postmaster general gave them Koleen, instead. I much prefer to think that one of my first churches was named for a pretty Irish girl than for a pile of clay.

Koleen was not the smallest church I ever pastored. That distinction goes to Bloomfield [not the county seat of Greene County], the third church on my first appointment, the Chrisney Circuit, which included one of the many churches in America named Crossroads. Bloomfield had an average attendance of about 12. Koleen’s attendance was twice that.

There was a time when hamlets like Koleen were important, when in a nation of 39 million, in 1877, when Koleen got its post office, over half, 22 million people, lived in the country, on farms, and people got to town or church only in a horse-drawn wagon. The church and store and school were only 3 or 4 miles away but still took an hour or more to reach. Today only 19% live in rural areas and only one % on farms. In the 150 years of Koleen, it just got to the place where there was no one left there to go to church.

Eighty years after Koleen got its misnamed post office, here came this 19 year old college “wise fool” [sophomore] to preach to 25 people who had mostly not even graduated from high school. I did things like quote the Bible and Saul Alinsky together.  “God so loved the world…so if you want to know where the action is, look for the reaction.” Their puzzled looks were kind and indulgent.

They accepted me, though, because even though we lived in different worlds then, I had grown up on a farm without a car and went to town in a horse-drawn wagon, made hay in the summer and chopped a hole in pond ice in the winter so the animals could drink, just as they had. We shared that language. More importantly, we shared the Christian language, reminding one another of what is really important.

The little churches in the open country, like Forsythe, my home church, and in hamlets and villages like Koleen and Mineral and Solsberry and Chrisney and Crossroads, they were just as important as any church named First or Riverside or Saddleback. They tried to live out the Good News of the Gospel in their time and place. That’s all any church can do. The Koleen folks knew that Love by any name is where the action is. They were my kind of people.

John Robert McFarland

1] If you are so desperate for something to do that you want to see the actual schedule, it’s on page 26 of The Strange Calling.

 

 

 

FRAGILE IN THE TRANSITIONS [M. 6-28-21]

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

FRAGILE IN THE TRANSITIONS  [M. 6-28-21]

“We are fragile in the transitions.” That’s what a yoga-type instructor told Helen once. “So be careful when you’re changing from one position to another. Take it slow and easy.”

That’s what I’m doing, as we transition from pandemic isolation to… what? We’re not quite sure yet, are we? Whatever it is, I’m going slow about getting there.

It’s hard to find any book of history that doesn’t start with something like “Things were in flux, ripe for change. The old had passed away but the new had not yet appeared. It was a period of transition…” Because that’s the way human history always is.

It’s like what Adam said to Eve as they exited the Garden of Eden: “My dear, I think we are entering a period of transition.”

Natural history, too, except it takes a million or billion years for a species of plant or animal to make a transition. Then only a couple of years for the human species to wipe it out. Plants and animals aren’t fragile in transitions except when they run into humans. Unless they take up smoking.

 

Smoking is a transition problem for people, too. One of Bob Newhart’s first routines has him, as Sir Walter Raleigh, talking on the phone with the King of England, who is questioning him about this tobacco stuff Walt is sending back from the new world. “You do what with it? Roll it up and put it in your mouth? And then you set it on fire?” [1]

Why in the world would people do that? Because stupid people are even more fragile in transitions than regular people. The problem there is, even the smartest people have areas of stupidity in their lives. None of us is totally smart.

[That is the point of John Calvin’s “total depravity of man” doctrine. He didn’t mean that every person is totally without virtue, as he is usually misinterpreted. He meant that no person is without sin in any PART of life. “Original sin,” the proclivity to seek our own good first regardless of what happens to others, affects and infects our thinking and our emotions and our actions, all of them.]

I think that’s why old people are satisfied with small lives, why we are slow to transition out of the pandemic isolation. We know we’re fragile.

I was in a group of old men recently. None as old as I, but they all qualify for senior discounts. They were talking about the stuff they did before the isolation that they are not going to do as we come out of isolation. We got used to living a small-screen life, a Zoom-sized life. A small life is so much easier to keep control of. We don’t have to worry about fragility if we don’t do transitions.

Back when I was the only minister in a cash-strapped thousand-member church, I got overwhelmed. I told Helen about all the stuff I was going to cut out of my schedule to get a smaller life, to make it more manageable, to do all the jobs by myself that really required a whole staff. She said, “But everything you are cutting is something that feeds you. You’re keeping only the stuff that you feed.”

So here’s the point: As you transition into a small-screen post-pandemic life, don’t go back to the stuff that you feed, go back to the stuff that feeds you.

As my cancer guide and much-loved and much-missed friend, Rose Mary Shepherd, once said, “I need to schedule more serendipity into my life.”

John Robert McFarland

1] My father and three of his brothers were pipe smokers. Uncle Randall thought my father was unnecessarily hoity-toity because he smoked Sir Walter Raleigh tobacco, while Uncle Randall was satisfied with the cheaper Prince Albert. I think at the time Raleigh was 15 cents per packet and Albert was ten cents. Poor Uncle Randall was even more horrified when he found out that I smoked Borkum Riff. [Don’t worry; Helen made me quit when I got cancer.]

The cartoon is, of course, from Gary Larson's "The Far Side."

 

I SEE THE BOYS OF 5G IN THEIR RUIN-Poem [Sa, 6-26-21]

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

I SEE THE BOYS OF 5G IN THEIR RUIN-Poem  [Sa, 6-26-21]

 

I see the boys of 5G

in their ruin

eyes mesmerized

by their tiny screens

of flickering reality

 

They walk in the splendors

of flowering dogwoods

but they see only

the dancing girls of tiktok

the world of warcraft

the dragonbalz of anime

and rovers on the planet Mars

nothing on the street

beneath their unfelt feet

 

In trees above ring out

the joy songs of the bluebirds

the romance of the squirrels

[lady chattering’s lover]

the love songs of cicadas

Farmville of the robins

as they build their nests

 

The boys of 5G walk on

unimpeded

in their sounds

of silence

 

The picture falls apart

The connection cannot hold

They zombie on

Hazed, fazed, amazed

in the being of nothingness

 

John Robert McFarland

With thanks and apologies to Dylan Thomas {I see the boys of summer in their ruin} and Wm. Butler Yeats {The Second Coming} and D.H. Lawrence {Lady Chatterly’s Lover}and Paul Simon {The Sounds of Silence}and Jean Paul Satre {Being and Nothingness}.

LICENSE TO KILL…GOLIATH [R, 6-24-21]

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

LICENSE TO KILL…GOLIATH   [R, 6-24-21]

 

When The Rev. Mary Beth Morgan, one of the pastors at St. Mark’s UMC, asked me to read the scripture for last Sunday’s worship, even though she knows I don’t do that sort of thing anymore, but wanted me to do it because I have been on the support team for Craig Stewart, the recently retired director of Indiana University’s Pervasive Technology Institute [don’t ask!], as he has worked toward certification as a lay preacher, she offered to come over to our house and video me doing the reading and then put it up on the screen during worship, so that both the people who have come back to worship in person and those who still lounge around in their pajamas and worship via livestream, as we have done since the start of the pandemic isolation, could hear the scripture.

Helen and I had decided not to return to in-person worship “til we have faces,” [C. S. Lewis] meaning mask-less, but we took Mary Beth’s invitation as a sign, a sign that we should get up off the sofa and put down the coffee cups, and get out of our pajamas and return to worship with the rest of the vaccinated denizens of St. Mark’s on the Bypass. [We don’t have to “go to the byways to compel them to come in” because we are already on the byway.] {Mt. 22:9-11}

 Then Helen said, “Well, you’ll have to get a haircut, and let out the waist of your suit pants, assuming we can even find your suit, and you’ll have to type up the scripture in big font since you can’t see those little words in the Bible when you’re at arm’s length in the pulpit, and remember to print it before the big storm knocks the power out [She didn’t say that, but power outage became an issue!] and you can’t eat a donut during the sermon…”

 I began to wonder, “Just how much do I like Craig, anyway?” Apparently enough, because I showed up and read the story of David and Goliath, the lectionary scripture for last Sunday.

I was a little bit surprised that Craig decided to use the lectionary. He’s worked on a sermon about Jeremiah for a long time, each reworking making it better. The Jeremiah story, buying something [a field] for the future when it looked like there wouldn’t even be a future, is about hope. I was looking forward to hearing it in person. I like to be reminded about hope. But every story in the Bible, and every opportunity for cancer-survivor Craig, is a story about hope, including David and Goliath.

It certainly looked hopeless for David, going up against Goliath, with all his strength and armor. Good grief, the Philistine was nine feet tall. Mike Woodson, IU’s new basketball coach, would have offered him a scholarship, but being a philistine, Goliath didn’t want a free education, he wanted to make all of Israel into a bunch of slaves. {I Samuel 17}

Craig pointed out that David didn’t try to match Goliath on the warrior’s terms. To him, armor and sword were hindrance, not help. He used the tools he already had and knew how to use—his sling shot and a smooth stone and his faith in God.

I must have done a good job as Craig’s mentor for his license to preach studies; it was a really good sermon, very hope-full.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

SUPER AGERS [T, 6-22-21]

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

SUPER AGERS                      [T, 6-22-21]

 

Helen and I watched a program on PBS about how to age. In it they talked about the difference between just aging and being “super-agers.” I don’t mean to brag, but we are definitely super-agers!

Of course, the bar for super aging is pretty low. Apparently, you just have to be over 80 and be able to find your way home. And not spend too much time wondering about the here-after.

This was hilarious the first time I heard it, and still is, the guy who said, “Now that I’m getting older, I spend a lot of time wondering about the here-after. I walk into a room and wonder what I’m here after.” I can’t remember where or when I first heard it, of course.

Helen and I already do, just sort of as a part of life, all the stuff to be super agers, [except for knowing when to put a hyphen between super and aging, so I just do it whenever I’m in a hyphenating-mood.] To be a super ager, you should exercise, and think good thoughts, eat right, hang around with interesting people, and learn a foreign language.

Why in the world is it always “learn a foreign language?” when they want you to keep your brain active? How often is that necessary? Yes, if you’re younger, and raising children, it can be useful. I recall the story of the mother mouse and her mouselings who were being chased by a cat. Suddenly she turned and faced the cat and said, “Woof! Woof!” The cat turned tail and ran around. “That,” said the mother mouse to her children, “is why you should learn a foreign language.” Yes, that’s the reason, for survival, not because you need it to be a super-ager.

I already speak several foreign languages: Hoosier, Academician-Obscurantist, Farmeristic, Ecclesialism, Babygiggle, Baseballargot, Icanremeberwhenism. Learning a new one would surely be overkill…maybe literally.

So what does it really take to be a super-ager rather than just a plain old ager? It’s the same question with models. Why are some models called super-models? Because they don’t fall off the runway? Apparently, to be a super model, you just put on some new clothes and walk around without falling down. Even I can do that, except for the new clothes part. I’ve got so many clothes already I can’t possibly use them up before I die, so my new clothes days are over. And the falling down part. But I don’t do it unless Jack parked too far away.

That was what the old lady said when I found her lying on the sidewalk outside Jack and Nina’s condo. She explained, “It’s Jack’s fault. I started to lose my balance, and I reached out to steady myself on the fender of Jack’s car, but he had parked too far away.”

Now, that kind of thinking is what makes you a super-ager!

John Robert McFarland

THE MASS APPEAL OF GAVIN MACLEOD [Su, 6-20-21]

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

THE MASS APPEAL OF GAVIN MACLEOD   [Su, 6-20-21]

 

In our house, Gavin MacLeod wasn’t the captain of “The Love Boat.” He was the wistful Murray of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” The news of his death on May 29 brought to mind a conversation I had with him in an alley in Sullivan, IL. Yes, it was in an alley, but no, it wasn’t a gang fight.

I’ve talked with some well-known people in my time—Marcus Borg, Dave Barry, Bob Hammel, Jim Smith, of The Jim Smith Society—but I think MacLeod is the only professional actor with whom I’ve ever had a real conversation.

He was in appearing in the two-man play, “Mass Appeal,” by Bill C. Davis, at the Little Theater in Sullivan, IL, named for its owner, Guy Little, and not for its size.

I was pastoring Wesley UMC in Charleston, IL, about thirty miles from Sullivan. [Twenty? Okay, I looked it up. 27.9 miles.] A pleasant evening’s drive.

That’s not why Maggie Hollowell took Helen and me to the play, though. She was one of my church members, and on the board of the theater. I suspect she thought I needed to learn from both characters in the play. If so, she was right.

The play was about an older, complacent, popular, go-along-to-get-along priest, who was assigned a newly ordained young whipper-snapper as an assistant, a young guy who thought priests, and their parishioners, should act like committed Jesus Christians instead of Rotarians with some religious language added on. Priests were to be moral leaders, not liturgical entertainers.

I guess there wasn’t much backstage area, because after the play was over, Maggie took us to the alley behind the theater to meet MacLeod. He was generally friendly and pleasant, very reminiscent of Mary Tyler Moore’s Murray. But when he learned that I was a clergy, he became quite interested and questioned me about whether he had played the role of the older priest convincingly, and in general about the play’s authenticity

Yes, it was authentic! At that point, I was almost to the age of that older priest, the role MacLeod played, but when I started, I was that young firebrand priest, mounting the barricades to protest the injustices of racism and war, Civil Rights and Viet Nam.

My first appointment after seminary was as campus minister at Indiana State University and Rose Polytechnic Institute [now Rose-Hulman University] in Terre Haute. The Wesley Foundation building was next door to Centenary Methodist Church. In the pattern of that day, since campus ministers were not trusted to go along to get along, the pastor of Centenary Church, Bob, was the Director [top guy] of The Wesley Foundation, and I was just the campus minister [low guy].

My very first day on the job, Bob called me in and said, almost word for word, “Let’s talk about the philosophy of campus ministry. I’ll go first. I believe in staying on top of things at all times to be sure nothing happens.” If anyone could do it…

I, of course, was the young priest in “Mass Appeal,” the one who wanted to be sure something happened, regardless of what it was.

The whole time Bob and I worked together, we did not work together. I’m sure it was as frustrating for him as it was for me. But by grace, I had a Bishop, Richard Raines, and a District Superintendent, Ralph Steele, who understood who Bob was and who I was trying to become. They patiently listened to me and waited for me to figure it out.

From them I learned that pastors can’t be only rabble-rousers. We are also leaders. You can’t lead if you are back behind the action, the way Bob wanted to be, but neither can you lead if you are so far out in front that folks cannot see you anymore. That’s true not just with preachers, but every leader.

I also learned to be patient with young people who challenged me when I became the old guy, for sometimes, as in “Mass Appeal,” young folks and old folks can learn from one another.

John Robert McFarland

 

PSALM 23

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

PSALM 23   [F, 6-18-21]

 

The lord is the park

Maintenance guy

I shall not trip

On that spot in the sidewalk

Where the concrete is buckled up

He didn’t fix it

But he painted it bright

Yellow so I could see it

He lets me lie down

On the playground grass

When I’m tired

And he makes sure

The drinking fountain is on

He returns to me my soul

The one they stole

And rode away on

And abandoned it

Behind the swimming pool

He leads me under the shady oak

Where he carved his initials

Yes, I stumble on that high curb

But I don’t worry

Because others come along

Rodney and Steffi and that bunch

They tell me it will be okay

There’s a picnic table

Across the street

Where the sirens and hoodlums

Hang out

But I’ve got a bullet-proof spirit

And a plate big enough, almost

For all the stuff

On the picnic table

Surely Goodness and Mercy,

His slobbery dogs,

Shall follow me all the way home

Because they know

That when I get there

It will be treat time

 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

THE MYSTERIOUS COMMENTS SECTION [W, 6-16-21]

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

THE MYSTERIOUS COMMENTS SECTION   [W, 6-16-21]

 

I see in the Comments section at the bottom of this column that my Arabic friends are back, after several months of no comments from them. Apparently, they are very concerned about reuniting families, because they always post under the column for T, 7-3-18, entitled “The Family Reuniting.” There will be several-to-many comments in Arabic for several days, and then no Arabic comments for anywhere from a few days to many months. I don’t think it’s a robot. I can’t read Arabic, but the comments are of different lengths with different words. So I assume it’s some terrorist organization, plotting mayhem, figuring it is secret and safe to do so in the comments section of CIW, since no one from CIA or FBI reads CIW.

Someone from FBI should read CIW, since I informed blogspot/Google and the FBI a long time ago, when the Arabic comments first started. Never heard anything from them. I know there are lots of folks who try to avoid reading my stuff, but that’s sort of extreme. I mean, if the Homeland Security people read this column, it might help people avoid disaster.

Or maybe not, because I appealed for Arabic readers in general to look at the comments and see what was being said. They all agreed that the comments had to do with trying to persuade people to buy large, used kitchen appliances, like refrigerators.

But, you know, they aren’t going to get much business that way. I don’t think there are many readers of CIW who understand Arabic and want old washing machines. So, I think I’ll stick with the terrorist theory, where, in Arabic code, “buying a used Whirlpool” means “blowing up Taco Bell.” It’s much more interesting than the idea of some twelve-old Arab boy trying secretly to sell appliances from his kitchen so he can buy an iPod, some kid who thinks CIW readers, and his parents, are that gullible.

But there’s another problem, isn’t there? With my assumptions. I’m automatically assuming that because the words are in Arabic, and I don’t know who the writers are, that they must be up to no good. Maybe instead of terrorists, these writers are refugees from the Taliban who are communicating in a place they are sure their tormenters won’t see, plotting ways to escape to the state of Indiana, which sounds so enlightened and inviting because of this blog. Maybe CIW is providing them a safe space to communicate, where “Do you want a pea-green Maytag?” means “Pick me up at the next full moon.” I have watched enough episodes of the “United States of Al” TV show to know that folks who speak Arabic or Farsi are not all of the same political approach. Maybe CIW is just in the middle of a real episode of “The Scarlet Pimpernel.”

Anyway, be careful what you write in the comments section below. Somebody may come by your house the next day expecting a real deal on your freezer… or wanting to hide out in your basement.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

MY WET HEEL [M, 6-14-21]

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

MY WET HEEL         [M, 6-14-21]

 

So, for a couple of weeks now, when I walk, the inside of my right heel feels wet. At first, I wondered if it were blood. Nope. Then I wondered how I could spill water, only on the inside of my right heel, each time I walked. Happens in all my shoes, so it’s not the shoes, despite what Spike Lee might say.

 I dare not tell Helen, or she will want me to go to the doctor, which I eschew, for I am a McFarland man, and we don’t do things like that, except to make fun of the doctor for not knowing which side the heart is on. We’re always up for something like that.

[You may recall that when Dr. V said she was going to listen to my heart, and put her stethoscope up high on the right side of my chest, I said, “You know it’s on the other side, right?” She was kind enough to smile indulgently, while explaining how you can hear the heart in more than one place. Personally, I think that’s just an excuse doctors use when they forget what they learned in Tony Mescher’s anatomy class.]

For obvious reasons, I didn’t want to go to Dr. V with my wet heel problem, so I emailed my friend, Glenn, because that’s what I do when I have a terminal illness, like the time I slipped and hit my head on the concrete patio and didn’t want to tell Helen but felt someone should know in case I didn’t wake up. Helen knows to email Glenn when I die to find out why. I told him to tell her that this time it was WIRHS. [Wet Inside Right Heel Syndrome].

He suggested that maybe I could research it, so I did. Would you believe it, there really is a WIRHS?!

I Googled “Why is the inside of my right heel wet?” and about a million other people had already asked the same thing, causing about a million doctors to say, “It’s illegal to give medical advice over the internet, but it sounds like you have WIRHS.” Apparently, “liquid heel” is a very popular malady these days.

Of course, the cause is the usual suspect, OTS [Old Timers Spine].

When you’ve lived a long time, your OTS has had to put up with a lot—falling, jarring, twisting, whacking, soft drinks and coffee [bone deterioration], slouching.

Malcolm Gladwell says [Outliers] that you have to put in ten thousand hours to be really good at something, and I’ve put in far more than that in learning to slouch well. Also in drinking coffee. And the jarring of long-distance running. My OTS has endured a lot more than ten thousand abuses.

The spine is full of nerves, and every time one of them gets pinched or pushed or pulled, it sends out a signal to some part of the body saying, “Hurt. Now!” There is a particular nerve that sends a signal to the inside of my right heel that says, “Feel wet!”

Dr. V would probably explain this differently, but she doesn’t even know which side… oh, I’d better shut up about that, since she’s the one who has the drugs in case the WIRHS gets too bad.

Glenn says I’m okay as long as that one nerve doesn’t kick in, the one that says “Feel wet!” to my lap.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

REFLECTIONS ON FAITH & LIFE FOR THE YEARS OF WINTER

ON MY EARLY MORNING LEGS   [SAT, 6-12-21]

[A song using Gordon Lightfoot’s “In the Early Morning Rain” as template and tune. Just because my raspberry-smeared muse requires it.]

 

On my early morning legs

I stagger to and fro

I’m not quite sure where to go

On my early morning legs

 

These old legs don’t let me down

They’re still plenty good to me

I’m on faith’s familiar ground

In the darkness I can see

 

Hear the singing in the dark, hear the praying souls at play

Yes, my legs do know the way now, in the early morning day

 

There the morning legs are strong and the eyes are always full

The song is spreading wide now, on the wings of gentle hope

 

The warmth of friendship was so good

As we shared the bread and wine

I heard the rustle of the spirit

And I knew the road was mine

 

You can’t always walk and run, sometimes it’s only prayer

But my early morning legs are still floating on the air

 

John Robert McFarland

ARE YE ABLE? [R, 6-10-21]

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

ARE YE ABLE?         [R, 6-10-21]

 

“Do you know who that is?” someone at our table in the Garrett Theological Seminary dining room said. “That’s Earl Marlatt.”

Well, I certainly knew who Earl Marlatt was, the composer of the quintessential hymn of 20^th century American Methodism, the best heroic hymn ever [Well, maybe second to Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic”], “Are Ye Able?” [# 530 in The Methodist Hymnal.]

“Are ye able, said the master, to be crucified with me? Yea, the sturdy dreamers answered, to the death we follow thee. Lord, we are able, our spirits are thine. Remold them, make us, like thee, divine. Thy guiding radiance, above us shall be, a beacon to God, to love and loyalty.”

But this slight old man in an even older black suit didn’t look very able, for anything, yet alone following Jesus to the death, especially to this healthy seminary student in his early 20s. But he wrote it in 1926, when he was 38, undoubtedly feeling more able then.

That day when he came up to Garrett, he had been retired for several years, in Winchester, Indiana, a town of fewer than five thousand people. Even though Winchester bills itself as “The Sugar Cream Pie Capital of the World,” there isn’t much to do there, and old people get nostalgic about their glory days, when they were able. So Earl drove up to Evanston, the closest Methodist seminary, to relive his able days, and looked so lost as he tried to find someone, anyone, who would listen to his memories.

Part of his lost look was surely because of his educational pedigree. He had grown up as a Methodist PK in Indiana, and gone to the Methodist “Ivy League of the Midwest,” Greencastle’s Depauw University, where the best and brightest of future Methodist preachers were supposed to study, and then gone on to Boston University School of Theology, which was the prestige seminary in those days, instead of to Garrett, in Evanston, where the lesser preacher boys had to go, close to home, so that they could have a weekend church appointment to pay their bills.

 All that is a long way to get to the story of Prof. Samuel Lauechli of Garrett telling the story of the student who transferred from Garrett to Boston and in doing so raised the level of both institutions. Maybe Marlatt looked wary because he had heard that and knew he was in Lauechli territory.

Anyway, around the cafeteria that day, we who felt we were so able pitied the lost old man who had--in our view, we who were yet to prove our ability, but who wanted so much to be “sturdy dreamers”--only written about being able.

I’m old now, older than Earl Marlatt was then. I think back to Earl’s lonely day and know that I don’t want to be pathetic and pitied, so I stay out of places where that might happen.

I think that’s why old people withdraw from so many places, even though younger people tell us we must not withdraw, because we need “socialization,” whatever that is. We don’t want socialization. We want to be left alone so no one will pity us for being old.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not really anti-people. I would be glad to have someone I love holding my hand when I die, or even a sympathetic stranger, as happened so often with covid19 deaths.

But in the final analysis, in the last moment, there is no socialization. Jesus walked that lonely valley by himself. So must I. So must you. We come into the world with help from strangers, and we exit the same way, but our soul is ours alone, and “soul” is who we really are.

“Are ye able, when the shadows, close around you with the sod, to believe that spirit triumphs, to commend you soul to God? Yes, we are able…”

Thank you, Earl, for continuing to remind us, every time we sing your song.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

GREASE MONKEYS, RED LOBSTERS, & MARRIAGE [T, 6-8-21]

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

GREASE MONKEYS, RED LOBSTERS, & MARRIAGE [T, 6-8-21]

 

One morning last week, in just under an hour, I went to CVS and picked up Helen’s prescript, plus the vitamin C gummies she likes, then went to Grease Monkey and got Joe and Luke to air up the tires and take off the “Change Oil Now or Die a Miserable Death” message on the dash board, and gave them marriage advice [they are 19 and 20], and then drove clear across town to Red Lobster to take Mel the rest of her tip from yesterday. More driving in one day than I did in the just-past pandemic entire year, which is the reason I didn’t need the “Change Oil Now” message. Even 1950 Chevrolets didn’t have to change oil that often.

That was our first family car, that gun-metal gray Chevrolet. We bought it half-way through my junior year in high school. I changed its oil and greased all the lube points, with a hand-held grease gun, even before I became a grease monkey myself at Moe’s, a combination grocery store and service station. I figured I was in grease monkey heaven at Moe’s, for he had a hydraulic lift to put a car up above my head, making it easy to get at the oil pan and lube nipples. On the farm, I just wiggled under the Chevy on the ground in the barn lot and accessed the oil pan and grease nipples from there. You really had to have the wiggle skills of a monkey for that.

That wasn’t where the term “grease monkey” originated, though. My father was one of the first grease monkeys, in Indianapolis, when service stations were just starting. Hydraulic hoists big enough to lift cars were just coming into being. The stations just had a hole in the ground, concrete block sides, and the mechanics drove the cars over the hole, then scrambled like monkeys down into the hole and back up to lube the car and drain the oil for the change. Thus, “grease monkeys.”

The car didn’t need an oil change, but I really needed the tires aired up, before making the long trek to Red Lobster, which was necessary because of the well-vaccinated but still-masked Mel, our waitress at Red Lobster, the day before, when we went into a restaurant to eat for the first time in 15 months, because it was our 62^nd wedding anniversary. When Mel heard that, she blurted out, “How did you stand each other for 62 years?!?” And she doesn’t even know me!

It wasn’t because of that, though, that I gave her only a 25 cent tip. We had to pay at an electronic doo-hickey on our table. We’ve never done that before. It was complicated enough even before we pulled out the gift card daughter Mary Beth gave us. Mel tried to show us how to use it, and she was so nice, and because Helen told me to over-tip her, I tried to give her a 25% tip. Only when we got home did I realize I had given her not a 25 per cent tip, but a 25 cent tip! So, I called the manager and told him to tell Mel I would be in the next day with the rest of the tip, which I ran into the building and handed to the manager and ran out again so I would not have to face Mel. I wanted her to remember me not as the electronics dummkopf, but as the suave guy who knew to marry the right woman… That’s what Helen told her when she asked how we had managed it for 62 years… “Marry the right person.” So that’s what I told Luke and Joe, too.

John Robert McFarland

 

The Last Preacher [poem] [Sun, 6-5-21]

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

The Last Preacher [poem]      [Sun, 6-5-21]

It’s no great loss, really

Nobody remembers

about religion

when there was a sabbath

about a closer walk

or peace in the valley

 

Nobody misses church

potlucks and picnics

organs and choirs

offerings for the needy

baby in the manger

 

The spirituality pills

really are better

As the Bible says

in the new authorized

psychobabble edition

How will they hear

without a pill

 

I sort of miss, though,

getting to shake hands

at the door, after

 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

THE GOAL, THE DESK, THE FEET [F, 6-4-21]

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

THE GOAL, THE DESK, THE FEET   [F, 6-4-21]

 

You know how a particular spot or place triggers the same memory every time? I don’t know why, but there is a specific spot on my morning walk when I remember a certain obit picture. It’s not the usual obit picture. It was in the Indiana U alum magazine, a photo of a woman who died full of years and accolades for her work as editor at big and important newspapers. The photo, though, is not of that mature woman, but of the girl she was in college, editor of The Indiana Daily Student campus newspaper in my own college years. [1] The photo shows her reading the IDS, the results of her work that day.

I suppose that photo has remained in my memory because I came to IU as a journalism major, assuming I would work on the IDS myself, perhaps even rise to editor, as that young woman did. In that photo, she is pretty, wearing a white blouse and shorts, shapely legs. All that is nice, but what really gets my attention is that her feet are up on the desk.

Whenever I have wondered about other professions—being a reporter/editor or teacher or lawyer or doctor or race car driver—in my fantasy about what that would be like, I am not doing the work of that job, but sitting in my work place at the end of the day, with my feet up on the desk.

When I was the editor of the Oak Barks student newspaper at Oakland City High School, our sponsor, Mr. Manfred Morrow, did not allow feet on desks. He didn’t even allow waste paper basketball. In fact, I discovered recently a note from him saying, “John, the editor of Oak Barks does not sit at his desk and throw wadded paper at the trash can.” I liked Mr. Morrow a lot, but I really wanted to put my feet on the desk.

Now that I am old, I don’t have to wait for the end of the day to put my feet up on the desk. Well, not the desk exactly. I don’t sit at my desk much anymore. It takes a lot of energy to sit up in a chair. And everything I can do at a desk, I can do with my computer on my lap. So, I recline on the sofa. The far end of the sofa, my feet up on a pillow, is almost as good as a desk.

When your life’s goal is to put your feet up on the desk, old age is a pretty good time.

John Robert McFarland

1] Despite assiduous attempts at memory and at research, I can’t find her name. The very first female editor of the IDS was Florence Reid Myrick, clear back in 1897, and no, I was not a student at IU then, despite appearances.

 

THE FRIENDSHIP OF THE IGNORED [W. 6-2-21]

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

THE FRIENDSHIP OF THE IGNORED   [W. 6-2-21]

 

The wonderful book of short stories by my writing friend, Elaine Fowler Palencia, had just been published. I went to the Walden Books in Lincoln Square mall to get a copy. Walden Book stores were great. I miss them.

I went to the service desk and said, “I want a Small Caucasian Woman.”

I suddenly realized that the woman working there was a large, non-Caucasian woman. She spread out her arms and said, “Honey, why you want a small Caucasian woman?”

I am not usually speechless, but I sputtered. She took pity on me. “Yes, I know. It’s a book. I’ll get you a Small Caucasian Woman,” she said.

Small Caucasian Woman is the title story in the book, a story about a woman who places a personal ad in the newspaper, one of those types that goes like “Middle-aged man seeks younger woman for pleasant times. No fatties.” In her case, it was “Small Caucasian woman seeks…”

You couldn’t get away with something like “no fatties” on the modern internet dating sites, but before the internet, people depended upon personals in newspapers. It was a cheap way of finding someone who might share your interests. It was even cheaper if you used one of those free “shopper” newspapers, but if you put a free personal in a shopper, you knew you’d get a less desirable category of respondents. The shopper papers didn’t proofread.

Recently I saw a TV ad for an internet dating site for old people, like in their fifties. I don’t think there are any sites that specialize in geezers, but it made me think: What would I put as my profile on a dating site? I know everybody lies on those sites, but that just doesn’t come naturally to me, so all I could come up with was: “Circling the drain. Likes to take naps.”

I wasn’t always old, though. There was a time when I was an Acceptable. At least at the low end of Acceptable.

In high school, there were three categories of dating possibilities: Desirable, Acceptable, and Ignorable. In dating, never the three were to meet. Desirable girls dated only Desirable boys.

Desirable boys were: athletes, cars, bad boys, money, clothes, looks, family, personality [if all else failed].

Desirable girls were: looks, cheerleaders, money, clothes, looks, dancing ability, and personality [if all else failed].

It wasn’t too bad if an Ignorable boy tried for an Acceptable girl. Or maybe even a Desirable girl. It meant only that he was pathetic.  He was an object of sympathy to the whole school.

It was especially embarrassing, though, if some Ignorable girl set her sights on a Desirable boy. Going after an Acceptable boy was bad enough, but she would be a laughing-stock if she went after a Desirable.

Yes, it was a double standard, and it was mean, but it was reality. High school reality is usually mean.

Ignorables later thrived on the anonymity of personal ads. They could go after anyone, without others making fun of them for doing so. I’m sorry I didn’t think of personal ads when I was editor of the school newspaper. Could have doubled my salary.

My insistence as class president on including everybody in all the class activities [See the CIW for 5-26] got me into trouble when it came to dating. I knew I could not date a Desirable, even though I had a prestigious position as president. President made me part of the work structure of the school, not part of the popularity structure. But, even though I was an Acceptable, I figured if an Ignorable asked me for a date, like a Sadie Hawkins Day dance, I had to accept.

Because I felt I couldn’t ignore them, Ignorable girls became some of my best friends. No, they weren’t good-looking, or popular, and they made their own clothes, but they were smart and funny and creative and compassionate. They were the backbone of the work structure. Like Walden Book stores, they’re all gone now. It doesn’t bother them; they’re used to being ignored. I miss them, though.

John Robert McFarland