[TOO] SMART TV [F, 7-30-21]

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

The TV guy came, to install our new “smart” TV. We’ve needed a new TV set for some time, at least that’s what Helen has said for some time. We couldn’t get one, though, because we couldn’t let potential covid19 carriers into the house. The TV guy is the first outsider in our house for over a year.

Some people just go to a store and buy a TV and bring it home and read the instruction manual, and hook it up themselves. Not us. We couldn’t just buy one ourselves and plug it in, because the TV is smarter than we are. It is compatible with stuff we don’t understand, like variable microbeabouts and occasional weimaraners. At least, I think that’s what the TV guy said.

Helen said we need a new TV because ours was not “smart,” and did not allow for “streaming” and other nautical possibilities. I think the real reason was that she was getting tired of climbing up on the roof, wearing a tinfoil hat, to turn the antenna 30 degrees so that it lined up with the transmitter in Paducah, whenever we wanted to watch “Hee Haw.”

That’s the way it used to be, the first time I saw TV, the 1949 World Series between the Dodgers and Yankees. Uncle Johnny and I wanted to see our home boy, Gil Hodges, in the Series.

The World Series, between the same two teams, was first broadcast in 1947, but only in the general New York area. TV expanded rapidly in the next two years, though, even to the 600 people of Francisco, Indiana… sort of.

My mother’s youngest brother, John Hubert Pond, had returned home from the Marines at the end of WWII and built, with his own hands, the store and lumber shed for Francisco Hardware and Lumber. At the same time, my family had moved from Indianapolis to a tiny hard-scrabble farm outside Oakland City, five miles from Mother’s home town of Francisco.

I was ten years old, a lonely boy, displaced from a bustling city to an isolated farm. Uncle Johnny understood what it was like to be a lonely boy. He had been ten when his father was killed in a coal mine cave-in. For all my youth, he was my best friend, and the best man at my wedding.

So, whenever he was able, he included me in stuff that was interesting, including watching the World Series on the first TV set in Francisco, in the hardware store. “Watching” may be stretching it a bit.

The “local” TV station was in Evansville, 30 miles away. To get the signal, Uncle Johnny had mounted an antenna on the roof. To get the signal just right, he had to climb up on the roof and turn the antenna slowly while I yelled from below when he got it situated just right, which was never. We saw some shadowy forms through the “snow” on the tiny screen [13 inches, I believe], and the garbled voices of the announcers, Mel Allen and Red Barber. [1]

Later, when there were several Evansville stations, Uncle Johnny mounted an antenna crank on the side of the store, so that he could turn the antenna toward a different transmitter when we wanted to watch a different channel without having to climb up onto the roof.

I think we’d be better off if that were as far as TV went. I mean, who needs more than “off the roof?” “Smart” TVs? I don’t think I want a TV that is smarter than I am.

John Robert McFarland

[1] The internet says they did only radio, not TV, but they are the iconic and remembered baseball voices of my youth. Jim Britt was the TV announcer.

THE AUTHORITY TO ABSOLVE [W, 7-28-21]

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

Quite a few years ago, I had the funeral of a ten-year-old boy, an only child, who was struck by an automobile and killed. His family was very loosely connected to the church I pastored, meaning his grandparents were members but never came. I barely knew them. His mother, though, had grown up in our town, been confirmed in our church. I had never met her. She and her husband and son lived in a city fifty miles away. Since she and her husband did not go to church anywhere, I was the closest thing to a pastor those folks had.

When I heard about the boy’s death, I went to visit the grandparents. The boy’s mother and father were there. The mother was understandably distraught. She had seen her son killed. She was waiting in her car, to pick him up after school. When he saw her, he dashed out into the street and was hit by another parent who was driving perfectly legally and safely but just couldn’t avoid the boy because he had appeared so suddenly.

That mother had never met me, but she latched onto me immediately. Her whole demeanor changed when I announced who I was. To her, when I walked into the house where she had grown up, I brought the presence of God with me. She did not pose any of the unanswerable questions people ask in their grief. She did not express any hostility, to God, or the driver of the car, or at her son for running into the street. She just held on to me and talked about how wonderful it was that I had come. This went on every time we were together.

But there was the undercurrent of her own guilt. She was there. She was the mother. She should have protected her child.

She never articulated that, but I could feel it in her bright-eyed, almost frenetic attachment to me. She needed absolution, and I was the only person who might have the authority to grant it. So I did.

That’s one of the neat things about being a pastor. You have some authority. But you can’t use it too quickly. Absolution doesn’t work just with an upraised hand and some pretty words.

The absolution I was able to pronounce upon that suffering mother, without ever actually pronouncing it, came over a long time. I knew she had accepted it when she stopped telling me how wonderful I was, what a magnificent job I had done with her son’s funeral, how lucky my congregation was to have me, when she stopped clutching my arm when we talked.

One day she gave me none of the usual plaudits or grasps. She just smiled and said hello. I raised my hand and said, “You’re welcome.” She laughed. A sadder but wiser laugh, but a real laugh. She understood.

John Robert McFarland

“Each of us wears a shadow.” Mary Oliver

 

 

BETRAYING BETRAYAL [An entry in my poetry journal] [M, 7-26-21]

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

BETRAYING BETRAYAL [An entry in my poetry journal] [M, 7-26-21]

 

In a world and life

Of betrayals

Long lived and short

The ultimate betrayal

Of life

Is death

 

Which is why Christ

Died to vanquish Sin

Not those little daily

Sins of betrayal

That we foist and joust

Upon one another

Anger and greed and lust

Always original, always mundane

Nothing takes those away

But the Sin that betrays

Us into death while living

 

Now that I am old enough

To know betrayal’s true

Length and breadth

When my legs and eyes

Hands and yes, especially,

Memory

When these betray me

I know that my Sin is gone

That Christ was born

To betray betrayal

For Christ died

 

Not in my place

As the theologians claim

Too much learning for their own good

Their own little legalisms

Betraying their own hopes

 

But to keep the way open

Into Life

To stand at the door

Of eternity

To suffer himself

For God

As well as you and me

To bring us together

To take on even death

That ultimate betrayer

Of life

 

The only way

To roll away

The stone of betrayal

 

John Robert McFarland

“Being good is better than being bad, but being Christian is about the transformation of the will, not the execution of the will.” Marcus Borg

 

PATRIARCH OF THE CLAN [Sat, 7-24-21]

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

I have been the patriarch of the McFarland clan for several years, even though I didn’t know it. Now, though, I’ve been looking at the calendar, the one our granddaughter made, on our coffee table, the one my father made.

The calendar is a spiral-top stand-up, with a different family photo for each month. Each day for almost the entire month of July I have seen a quite large group of McFarlands gathered for reunion six years ago at Spring Mill State Park. The park is in Indiana, but the people in the photo came from three of the US coasts—California, Florida, and Canada—and many of the states in between. There I am, in the front row, seated, as is the wont with old people at family reunions. Yes, I am not only the oldest male in the photo, I am the oldest male in our family, anywhere. I am the patriarch.

Or maybe not. Can you be a clan patriarch if you are a bastard? [I’m talking lineage, not behavior. Lots of patriarchs have behaved badly, but they were still patriarchs.]

When I was 65, my father told me that I was the one of his four children who was not really his. My first reaction was chagrin: how come the bastard is the one taking care of you in your old age while your legitimate kids horse around having good times in far-away places? I didn’t say that to him, of course, for this was on the telephone, and he started crying and had to hang up. I assumed he’d get back to me on it, but he never did.

I’ve never worried much about it. I look like a McFarland—my father, my brother, my uncles, my cousins. And even if John F. McFarland were not my father biologically, he certainly was in all the ways that counted. Except…

…what if one of my male cousins challenges my claim to clan patriarch, because I’m not legitimate? Jerry David and Arthur are dead, but the others are a gnarly and suspicious lot. What about Paul? Or Don… Phil… Pat… Tim… Michael… Or my brother, Jim? Yeah, Jim would probably be the one. Except his wife, Milicent, wouldn’t let him, so I’m okay there. And my cousins are all too smart to want to be clan leader, with all the work thereof, and the traditions to uphold.

The McFarland clan in Scotland, MacFarlane back then, was the brigand clan. We lived on the western and southern shores of Loch Lomond and, by the light of the full moon, which to this day is known as MacFarlane’s Lantern, would go down to the lowlands and pillage, which apparently amounted to stealing pigs and women.

We were at a banquet in Scotland once, and when the folk singer/entertainer saw my name tag, she became quite frightened, and sang a song in Gaelic which was translated for us as: “Grab your spears and grab your wife and run for your life because the McFarlands are coming.”

That’s a lot to live up to as clan patriarch. I like bacon, but I would not want to deal with all those stolen women.

John Robert McFarland

NATURE’S TIME MACHINE-Poem [R, 7-22-21]

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

[From my poetry journal of 6-1-21]

 

I know now why

the old men walk

so slowly

with random steps and halts

 

The years of speed

left behind so long ago

the smell of lilacs

coo of mourning doves

the sight of boing-boing

bunnies bouncing

in long grass

 

Now the past

so long neglected

is catching up

via nature’s time machine

 

Perhaps the then and the now

will come out even

if I can only walk

a little slower

 

John Robert McFarland

 

KNOWING WHEN TO ABANDON SHIP [T, 7-20-21]

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

 

The retired pirate grandfather is back, at the Sherwood Green swimming pool, this year teaching four preschoolers the ways of pirate survivorship, whereas last year there were only two. Apparently pirating is becoming an increasingly attractive profession among the toddler set.

They take their place on the edge of the pool and wait for his order. They jump in only when he cries out, “Abandon ship!”

Part of what I overheard him say as I walked by this morning was something to the effect that if IU’s own gold medal Olympian Lilly King can do it, so could they. I had no idea that Lily is a pirate in her off-time, but she does have that in-your-face approach that would make her good at pirating as well as swimming.

I’m not sure the ex-pirate grandfather was totally accurate about that, though, for Lily does not wear an eye patch. I learned recently, from the sweet and delicate third-grader, Sophia with a blond ponytail, that pirates wear an eye patch so that when they go below on a captured ship to grab maidens and treasures that might be hidden there, they can flip up the patch and see where the maidens and gold are, because that eye is already accustomed to the dark. In the hold of a captured galleon, time is of the essence, because the durn thing is probably on fire, so the one-eyed pirate is king.

There is one other part of the pirate grandfather’s approach that worries me greatly, for I have personal experience with standing too long on a burning deck, metaphorically speaking, the way the boy did in Felicia Hemans’ poem, “Casabianca.” I was much taken with that poem when I first read it as a youngster, for the boy was so heroic, and I so much wanted to be a hero some way. The boy was also incredibly stupid, and although I did not fulfill the hero part of that meme, I did manage the stupid part.

“The boy stood on the burning deck, whence all but he had fled…” And he kept standing there until he burned up, because he was waiting for his father to call “abandon ship,” and his father was dead, which should have been obvious to him, since he was the only one left alive on the ship, and there comes a time when you need to use your head and go on and get off the damn deck and abandon ship without waiting for an order. Obstinate is not heroic. Stupid is not heroic. Smart is heroic.

So, the pirate grandfather is right about that. He’s teaching the kids that the FIRST thing you need to learn is to abandon ship when the time comes. You can learn about maidens and treasures later. So instead of Felicia Hemans, I prefer the poetry of Don Schlitz, who wrote, “You gotta know when to hold em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, and when to run…” That’s heroic.

That’s how I’m thinking as I get ready for the final voyage. Chemo? Feeding tube? Radiation? Code Blue? Nurse Ratched? Shady Pines? They all sound like burning decks to me.

In the meantime, though, I do intend to get an eye patch. It only takes a moment to be a hero, but stupid is good for a whole lifetime.

John Robert McFarland

“It is a blessing for a man to have a hand in determining his own fate.” Blackbeard

WHEN MEMORY GOES TO THE DOGS [Su, 7-18-21]

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

 

[I didn’t intend to write a series, but it turns out that this is the 3^rd in what is so far a 3 part series on memory, following up on the columns of 7-16 and 7-14…]

“Keota” in the Native American language of eastern Iowa means “the fire has gone out,” which is highly appropriate, for the fire has gone out in my memory about Keota. I don’t have even a glimmer of memory about Keota, or its Presbyterian Church, even though I apparently preached there almost every Sunday for three months in 1972, when I was a PhD student at the U of Iowa.

I know this because I have been going through files—many, many files—of old stuff I have saved through the years, recycling most of it so that my children will not have to mess with it when I’m gone. One of those files is full of Sunday morning worship bulletins from the Keota Presbyterian Church, bulletins that list my name beside “Sermon.” Not only my name is listed beside “Sermon,” but there is a title each week, too. They sound a lot like my sermons, every title has “story” in it!

I was a Presbyterian preacher during my U of Iowa days because the Director of the University School of Religion was James Spalding, an ordained Presbyterian himself, and the de facto “bishop” of Presbyterianism in eastern Iowa. Whenever a church was between or without a preacher, it would call up Jim and ask him to send out somebody to fill the pulpit. I was technically Jim’s Teaching Asst, but neither of us did much teaching. I was more of an assistant director, doing whatever he assigned me, which was often going to meetings of the trustees or potential donors, since he didn’t like meetings. I didn’t, either, but I needed the money, both from being Jim’s assistant, and from filling at little churches where he sent me. Including Keota. I guess.

The next year, I pastored, not just preached, part-time, at two Presbyterian Churches, Red Oak Grove and Stanwood, about the same distance northeast from Iowa City that Keota is southeast from there. I remember almost everything about them. So why don’t I remember Keota from the year before? Who knows?

Forgetfulness is one of the main complaints of old people. Recently one of my former colleagues was very helpful to Helen as she negotiated some tricky insurance paper work. When she thanked him, he said, “Oh, I owed you. Your husband gave me the best advice I ever got.” Now I’m trying to remember what I told him. I could use some good advice. But…nothing!

I recently figured up that I have known almost ten thousand people by first and last names. In sorting through old files, I have found notes from many of them. I don’t recognize most of the names, or if I recognize the name, I have no memory of the person who goes with it. That’s probably not surprising. Most of us can’t relate to more than a few dozen people at a time, keeping them sorted out in our minds. That’s for a good reason. It would be overwhelming to me to remember ten thousand people. My brain protects me by dropping out those that seem least important right now.

However, I can name ALL the dogs in our neighborhood: Jack, Gypsy Rose, Frankie, Bo, Bear, Teddy, Wrigley, CiCi, Daisy, Eddie, Betty Jane, Mobley, Angie. And I don’t know the names of any of their servants, the people who hold the leash. My memory for the important stuff seems to be getting better in old age…

 

John Robert McFarland

“No day is over if it makes a memory.”

 

WHEAT & TARES IN MEMORY [F, 7-16-21]

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

[Sort of following up on the column of 7-16 on Bad Thoughts and Good Thoughts…]

Old age is understandably a time of worry about memory. Our brains become less retentive, especially in the short term, and we have so much in our brains that we are bound to forget some of it. The bigger problem is that there is a lot we’d like to forget and can’t. There are things we have seen, as the saying goes, that “we can’t un-see.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could forget only the bad stuff? That’s not the way it works.

Jesus talked about this in his observations on “the wheat and the tares.” We don’t usually say “tares” anymore, and we don’t usually interpret his words on this as a saying about memory, but I think it applies very nicely. The wheat and the tares, the good memories and the bad, are planted in our brains together. Sometimes the tares get yanked out, as in various dementias, but the wheat gets yanked out, too. It’s best, Jesus says, to let them be as they are, until the harvest.

In modern translations, “tares” is usually translated as “weeds,” which is good enough to get the main idea across. But Jesus used tares intentionally. He wasn’t talking about just any old weed.

Tares are bearded darnels, Lolium temulentum, a species of rye. The seeds are a strong soporific poison. Tares look like regular wheat, until the ear appears. Only then is the difference noticed. So if “the enemy” wants to mess up your crop of wheat, tares are the ideal seeds to sow while the farm hands aren’t paying attention, because they won’t suspect anything is wrong until it’s too late to uproot them without causing damage to the crop you want.

So here is Matthew 13:24-30: The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who sowed good thoughts in his brain. But while he was being careless with his brain, and not paying attention, his enemy came and sowed bad thoughts. Then when he started paying attention, and he wanted to remember the good thoughts, the bad thoughts came up, too. The doctors said, “We can give you a lobotomy. Then you won’t remember the bad thoughts.” His friends said “Let’s get drunk or high so you can’t remember the bad stuff.” He said, “No, a lobotomy will take away all my memories, and booze and dope will just make it worse. I’ll just have to deal with them together until I die. Then the bad thoughts will go to hell, but the good thoughts will remain, for death does not conquer love.”

That’s not exactly the way Jesus told it, and you probably should refresh your brain about the way he did say it by reading it in the RSV or NIV or KJV or some such translation, instead of the MRV [McFarland Reversed Vision], but it’s the way it goes when we are thinking about individual brains instead of societies and cultures, which was the Jesus’ context.

Bad thoughts and good thoughts don’t always look a lot different from one another. The bad ones want to make us think that they will bring us satisfaction and enjoyment. It’s only when they’ve tripped us up and humiliated us and drenched us in sadness that we realize how we’ve been duped, the way the tares duped the field hands in Jesus’ story.

There are so many times of anxiety and fear and embarrassment and loss and stupidity and pain that I would like to forget. They are stuck there, though, in my brain, along with the times of pleasure and joy and satisfaction and appreciation and thanks. I can’t get rid of some without getting rid of all. I can, though, decide which I shall honor. When a bad memory arises, I offer it to God for repentance and repair. When a good memory arises, I offer it to God in thanksgiving and hope.

John Robert McFarland

“If we accept heaven, we shall not be able to retain even the smallest souvenir of hell.” CS Lewis

 

 

BAD THOUGHTS & GOOD THOUGHTS [W, 7-14-21]

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

As I walked this morning, the birds were singing, the trees were waving, the sun was shining, kids were playing in the park, the dogs were… doing what dogs do. It was such a nice day that I started thinking good thoughts.

But immediately I said, “No, I don’t deserve to think good thoughts, because I have been thinking bad thoughts, about corrupt politicians and anti-vaccers and sports gamblers and drunk drivers and computer hackers and racist cops and Cincinnati Reds relief pitchers, and self-destructive people, and how I hope bad things will happen to them, like getting covid 19--not enough to kill them, but enough to make them miserable and cause them to straighten up and fly right. No, a person who thinks such evil thoughts should not get to enjoy the day by thinking good thoughts.”

Talk about self-destructive! The last thing a bad-thought-thinker needs is to be punished by not getting to think good thoughts. Just thinking bad thoughts is punishment enough, because they poison not only your brain and your mind and your spirit, but your body as well. What a bad-thought-thinker needs most is good thoughts, and plenty of them!

I have spent a life-time trying not to think bad thoughts. If anything, I’m worse now than I’ve ever been. In part, that’s because there are so many more bad thoughts available now than ever before. Well, maybe. Probably not. Bad thoughts are with us always. Sufficient for the day are the bad thoughts thereof. Still, there are so many reasons now to think bad thoughts.

So I try to start the day by thinking good thoughts. If you’re already thinking good thoughts, about laughing babies and gamboling puppies and three-point shots going into the basket, it’s harder for bad thoughts to get into the queue. Although queue is not quite the right word. My bad thoughts don’t come just in straight lines, but scattered all over the brain, like puzzle pieces on a table. A table with lemonade spilled on it and some of the puzzle pieces chewed by a cat.

It’s hard to maintain a pattern of good-thoughts-only. You glance at Facebook for just an instant, and some stupid idiot has posted…. Oh, wait. Better go back to laughing babies.

The internet of life always has both the stupid Facebook posts and the laughing babies. Even if you search with great care, you are going to see some of both.

The main thing is this: don’t punish yourself when you are into bad-thought mode by staying there, by saying you are so bad that you aren’t allowed to enjoy good thoughts. Get thee over into good-thoughts land as quickly as possible. And enjoy.

John Robert McFarland

“Trust the moment.” Phil Jackson

 

TELLING GOD WHAT TO TEACH [M, 7-12-21]

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

I have never understood prayers—public or private—that go “O God, teach us that…” I mean, do we really think we are qualified to be instructing God that way, what to teach us?

This arises now because I am using as part of my own “daily devotions” the 1973 edition of The Upper Room Disciplines. I discovered it in a drawer of stuff I should have recycled a long time ago. I saved it because I had written a week’s worth of the material. It wasn’t the only year for which I was asked to write, but it’s the only one I have now.

I remember that I was very impressed with myself, to be invited to write for the URD. It wasn’t just the regular Upper Room, the daily devotional guide for just anybody and everybody, the spiritual hoi polloi. The URD was to be written a step above the UR. It was designed for ministers and other more theologically advanced folks. I was just a lowly campus minister back then, but several of my sermons had been published in national periodicals, and I had developed a reputation as a rabble-rouser and out-of-the-box theological thinker, applying my narrative theology--although nobody called it that then--to issues of segregation and war and abortion.

I also used it in my writing for URD.

So I was appearing in the URD along with such luminaries as Georgia Harkness and Massey H. Shepherd, Jr, and Webb Garrison. I won’t mention some of the other writers of august reputation, for they are the ones guilty of being so impressed with their high-flown insights, far above the simple readers of the regular UR, that they thought it reasonable for them to instruct God in what to teach us.

Now, it wasn’t as though they were asking God to teach us bad stuff, like how to keep black folks in their place, or trivial stuff, like to cheer for SMU whenever it met Notre Dame in football. Those kinds of prayers were prayed in those days, but not in the precincts of the upper room. No, it was good stuff, like teaching us to be nice and to spread the Word and to share with those less fortunate. But wouldn’t God know already that we needed to be taught those things? I mean, there was/is plenty of evidence that we need that instruction.

There is a story of the long-winded preacher who was invited to do the chapel service at Boston University School of Theology. The Dean, giving the pastoral prayer just before the sermon, prayed, “O God, teach us that this service must end promptly at 11:00…” That’s an exception to the rule about not instructing God through prayer. Personally, I feel it is okay to instruct God if it gets us out of church on time.

As I read the 1973 URD now, though, I realize that the one thing I can be really proud of in those devotions was how humble I was. [Yes, it’s intentional.] Most everybody else closed their day’s worth of words with a prayer of instruction to God. I just did a “prayer suggestion,” like “that we might be open to love” or “that peace may be real on earth.” I didn’t try to tell God how to do stuff. You know me well enough to realize that takes a lot of teeth-gritting.

The URD is still published each year, but they haven’t invited me to write for quite a long time. Methinks they’ve gotten smarter editors.

John Robert McFarland

“Humor is a prelude to faith, and laughter is the beginning of prayer.” Reinhold Niebuhr

 

BETWEEN THE LINES [Sat, 7-10-21]

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

 

I go to church in person now primarily to bedevil our pastors, who are Cubs fans. Last Sunday I wore not only my Reds tie [one of two] but my Reds socks [two of many], because the Reds had just swept a series with the Cubs. The very first professional baseball team, my team, the Cincinnati Reds team, was winning! One of the greeters at church asked me why I was a Reds fan, as though there were something wrong with that. “Because my Grandma was a Reds fan,” I said. That always ends any argument. How can you fault a man for following his grandmother’s team? My spirits soared!

Then my Reds went and lost a game to the lowly Kansas City Royals, a game they had been winning six to one! My spirits took a nose dive! How could they do that?

I am embarrassed by the amount of time I spend on sports, and how my spirits soar and dive according to the fortunes of my teams. Well, no, I’m not really embarrassed, but I should be, because it borders on obsession.

When we lived in Iron Mountain, MI, I had a dentist who is a MI State U fan. Chris Selden is as sports-obsessed as I. We talked about it. We concluded that there is something wrong with us. His hygienist, Kyra Scott, agrees. When I apologized one day for refusing to let her start scraping on my teeth because Chris and I were talking sports, she sighed and said, “It’s okay. I schedule extra time when I know you are coming in.”

I once cancelled a TV service because it did not have the Big Ten Network. When I was nominated as a “distinguished alum” at Garrett Theological Seminary, my love of baseball was mentioned before my love of theology. I have an honorary contract with The Cincinnati Reds; I didn’t ask for it, Marge Schott, their owner, just sent it because she had heard of my devotion.

When daughter Katie and her husband taught history at Auburn U, and granddaughter Brigid was born there, Perry & Sue Biddle were gracious enough to let us spend the night with them in Nashville on our way from IL to AL. They usually had a party for us, inviting old friends we met in Scotland, Amos & Etta Wilson, with other folks they thought we might enjoy. One man, as he left one night, said, either with admiration or bewilderment, “I’ve never before met a minister who knew so much about sports.”

I don’t know why I have this obsession. I don’t come from an athletic family. I hardly knew sports existed until we moved to Oakland City, IN, when I was 10.

Maybe it was the isolation of the farm. We didn’t have a car. From the last day of school in May until the first day in September, I didn’t have any playmates unless my Uncle Johnny [John H. Pond, my mother’s youngest brother, 15 years older than I] drove over from Francisco, five miles away, after he had closed his hardware store, and hit flies to me. He was single and lived with his mother in a town of 600. There wasn’t much for him to do in the evenings. I so looked forward to those moments with him. He was the best friend of my childhood and the best man at our wedding. To this day, when I am at loose ends, in my mind I go to that field and chase those fly balls through tall weeds.

I could justify my obsession, at least in my own mind, by participating in sports. It’s good exercise. It keeps one healthy. But my sports activity came to a screeching halt, unless you count walking as a sport, when I was 70 and we moved to Iron Mt and there was no softball league for old people, and where the only sport is strapping a couple of sticks to your feet and sliding down a long slope and then hanging in the air, buffeted by blizzard winds, until crashing into the tops of red pines several miles away.

Now, though, I just watch. It’s hard to justify sitting in front of the TV several hours a day, watching field hockey and water polo if there is no football or basketball or baseball, relieved only by Big Bang Theory re-runs, and claim that’s good for one’s health

I think I love baseball because each of us needs a spot “between the lines.” Especially In this time of political turmoil.

When you are “between the lines” on a baseball field, you have to concentrate so hard on the game that you can’t think about anything else. In the chaos of family life as a child, and puberty as an adolescent, and stupidity [mine as well as that of others] as an adult, sports has allowed me to drop all concern except the next pitch, the next snap, the next shot.

Everybody needs a spot “between the lines.” It doesn’t have to be sports, but each of us needs that oasis. You’re never too old to find a spot between the lines. If you don’t have one, the Reds can always use another fan. They’ll break your heart, but you’ll never have time to worry about politics or the virus or the environment. Just sayin’.

John Robert McFarland

To follow up on the column about renaming Jordan Ave in Bloomington, Johnson County, Iowa, home of the U of Iowa, just declared that it is no longer named for former VP and slave owner Richard Mentor Johnson but is now named for Lulu Merle Johnson, the first black woman to get a PhD at the U of Iowa.

 

 

RENAMING EUGENICS AVENUE [R, 7-8-21]

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

RENAMING EUGENICS AVENUE   [R, 7-8-21]

 

Glenda Murray, the Monroe County Historian, is a friend from church, and on the city/campus committee tasked with renaming Jordan Ave. I’ve been giving her suggestions. She still speaks to me anyway. That may be, though, because she is an usher, and part of the church usher contract is they have to speak to everybody. The Bible says so.

There is a lot of controversy right now in Bloomington, Indiana over re-naming Jordan Avenue. It runs through both Bloomington and the Indiana University campus, so the university trustees and the city council have to agree on what a new name should be.

Of course, it would be perfectly normal for you to ask, “Why would you change the name of a street that is named for Michael Jordan?” Yes, we are rightly lauding Kobe Bryant now, because of his early and tragic demise, made even more poignant because his thirteen-year-old daughter, Gianna, was killed in the plane crash with him. Still, Michael is the basketball GOAT, Greatest Of All Time.

The problem is that the street is named not for Michael Jordan but for David Starr Jordan, president of IU from 1884-1891. His reputation has taken an understandable hit lately because it has come to light that he was an advocate of “eugenics,” which essentially is a pseudo-scientific way of justifying racism, “proving scientifically” that black folks are inferior, because of the shape of their heads or something. Where I come from, “eugenics” was called “mongrelizing the races.”

IU has already taken that former president’s name off the Jordan River, a tiny stream that runs through campus, and the life sciences building, and—worst cut of all—a parking garage. Only that street remains.

When I was an IU student, I always thought the Jordan River was named after the one in “The Holy Land,” where John baptized Jesus. Which proves that Jesus was a Methodist, because you certainly could not dunk somebody in that trickle. Some seasons just getting enough water for a sprinkling baptism would be a stretch.

Which reminds me of the old guy who lived near here who was asked if he believed in sprinkling baptism. “Believe in it?” he said. “Why, I’ve seen it done.”

Which is part of the problem. David Starr Jordan believed in eugenics, not because he had seen it done, because he had seen it work, but because his heart was full of unacknowledged racism and elitism, an “original sin” problem that remains today. Everybody knows racial superiority is a crock, so we have to think up fancy names to justify it. Maybe Jordan Ave. should be renamed “Wake Up to Your Own Blindness” Street. 

Maybe it’s best just to announce the street is no longer named for the former IU president and let people assume it is named for any Jordan they favor. Named for Michael? Why not? Barbara Jordan? Now there’s a name worthy of a street!

There are a lot of street names that don’t have to specify someone or something in particular. Elm Street. No particular Elm in mind. Besides, the elm from which it might have gotten its name in the first place was probably destroyed by Dutch Elm disease long ago and been replaced by signs for Taco Bell and Tasteless Tattoo.

Glenda told me last Sunday at church—yes, we go there in person now—that they “are getting close” to having the street renamed, so I’d better get a batch of new name possibilities to her, names that remind us of important events. Like… Cicada Way… Global Warming Ave… Wear Your Damn Mask Street… Terrorist Uprising Boulevard… White Supremacy Cul de Sac… oh, wait, that’s what got us into this mess in the first place.  

John Robert McFarland

“Answers that begin by explaining far too much always end by explaining far too little.” Wm Sloane Coffin

 

 

SLEEPING ALL THE WAY [T, 7-6-21]

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

SLEEPING ALL THE WAY   [T, 7-6-21]

 

Old people spend a lot of time in waiting rooms, and those are good places for overhearing, even in this twilight of the pandemic isolation, when there are not as many people in waiting rooms. So I heard a couple of men discussing sleep patterns. “I slept only three hours last night,” one of them said. “If I sleep too much at night, I can’t sleep after work.” I do not understand what that means. It sounds like a very strange sleeping pattern

Most of us, during our working years, have to get up at a certain time, either to get to the job or school on time, or to get others to jobs or school on time. We set an alarm clock, or we are so used to it that we automatically get up at the right time.

Helen was so used to getting up at five a.m. when she was a teacher that she woke up at that early hour for several years after she retired. It really griped her. She finally had the chance to sleep in, and she couldn’t. Eventually, though, her brain adjusted. Now she can sleep until eight if her body needs extra rest.

I don’t have a job pattern anymore, a time when I have to sleep, so that I can get up at a certain time, so my body can fall into its natural rhythm. In retirement, no regular alarm clock is necessary. I don’t have to be any place at a certain time. I just sleep until I wake up. Then I get up, and wash last night’s dishes while the coffee is perking.

Occasionally, though, I have a required rising time. Because so much of my inside was removed by surgery, I have to hang close to the bathroom the first four hours after I get up. If I must be some place by nine, I have to get up at five. When I have one of those alarm clock mornings, it is harder for me to fall asleep and stay that way.

Some old people don’t need much sleep. My late friend, Bill White, slept only a few hours each night. I think he had a clear conscience.

It is hard to sleep if you are looking forward to something, either with joy or with dread. It is hard to sleep if you are angry or in pain or worried or guilty or excited. Good sleep requires a clear conscience or a dead one.

The “aging right” people tell us that sleep is very important for old people. That means that we need to clear up our consciences.

Purpose of sleep is regeneration. Dreaming is part of that. It’s part of the rhythm of the body and the brain. Perhaps death, which we often liken to sleep, is just part of the rhythm.

That is part of Christian faith, that death is sleep, part of the rhythm. We fall asleep in death, but the day of resurrection will come, when we shall be awakened by the alarm clock of God, those trumpeting angels.

Maybe that is why so many old people have trouble sleeping out the night. Our consciences are not all that bad, but we’re excited about what the morning will bring.

John Robert McFarland

“The gods have given us death lest we weary of life.”

 

 

FREE WILL IN A PINBALL MACHINE [Sun, 7-4-21-]

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

FREE WILL IN A PINBALL MACHINE [Sun, 7-4-21-]

A thought about freedom on this Independence Day: Democracy makes no sense without free will…

As things open up after the pandemic, we get to see vaccinated friends in person. So Quentin and Sue Ryder stopped by to visit us on their way home from a trip. Quentin was daughter Katie’s cross-country coach in high school, back in the 1970s, when there were no sports teams for girls. She was his first girl runner, the only girl on a 22 member team. He said, “I made the announcement for the first meeting, for kids to come out. There was Katie. I didn’t know what to do, but I thought, ‘Why not?’” She won a letter jacket.

That was in an era when Katherine Switzer tried to run the Boston Marathon and was literally, physically pulled off the course. “For her own safety,” they said, “for women’s bodies can’t take the rigors of long-distance running.”

All the coaches in Katie’s high school were men. They had coached only boys. Katie happened to get the one who did not say “No,” the only one who said, “Why not?”

It was a totally random meeting. Katie just happened to be at the right school, because the bishop had moved me there the previous year. Quentin just happened to be the coach of the sport she wanted to play.

It was also an act of total free will, both by Katie and Quentin.

People get so worked up about the randomness of life, how if we’d been a minute or two sooner, a town or two farther along, things would be different. Novelists like Kate Atkinson just can’t get over the randomness of life. [1] There is no free will, these people say. We are just round marbles in a pinball machine. Of course we are, but…

…that is not what free will is about, folks! Of course events are random. Yes, life is all chance. Up to a point…up to the point where we have to make decisions. Then we are controlled not by fate or God or biology or circumstances or political and economic forces, although they all put pressure on us, and shape us, in different ways. At that point, though, we have a choice, and at that juncture, like Robert Frost taking the road less traveled, that choice makes all the difference.

John Robert McFarland

“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” Jean Paul Sartre

1] Atkinson writes so well, and is well worth reading, but, come on, Kate. You made the “choice” to write about it.

 

HOW TO WRITE A COUNTRY SONG: [F, 7-2-21]

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

HOW TO WRITE A COUNTRY SONG: Just in Case You Were Wondering…and Because I Like It…  [F, 7-2-21]

 

Old trucks, old dogs, and weary women

Summer’s here and the days are gittin’ long

Dirt roads, fishin’ poles, & holes for swimmin’

That’s how you start a country song

 

Somebody done somebody wrong

That’s why you write a country song

 

There’s a burning and a yearning in the pocket and the soul

That’s how the singing and the living move along

There is doping and there’s hoping to try to make things whole

That’s how you live a country song

 

In stony lonesome the days are long

That’s why you write a country song

 

A little solo by the fiddle in the middle

As the tempo slides on down from quick to slow

Corn grits on the table and hot cakes on the griddle

And the singer’s trembly voice gets soft and low

 

Men are weak so women must be strong

That’s why you write a country song

 

There’s the home place on the hillside, just beyond the light

As the day is getting dark with shadows long

There’s the family, in a circle, just barely out of sight

That’s how you end a country song

 

Thank you, Jesus, to you we all belong

That’s how you end a country song

 

John Robert McFarland

“When you’re happy, you enjoy the music. When you’re sad, you understand the lyrics.” George Jones