TALKER’S REMORSE [R, 9-30-21]

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

I shall probably regret writing this, because I am increasingly beset by “talker’s remorse,” and a lot of my talking these days is done by writing.

I have mentioned before my difficulty with phatic communication. If I meet some other walker on the street, I’m okay if he just says “Good morning.” I can repeat that. But if he adds “How are you?” I am befuddled. Should I tell the truth? But if I do the standard “Fine, how are you?” by the time I get that out, we’ll be past each other. If he actually answers, I probably can’t hear what he says. Did he say something that requires yet another comment from me? But if I just say “Fine,” without inquiring about the state of his health also, it sounds very selfish. I’ll worry about it all day.

Questions are the worst. If he leads with, “Nice day, isn’t it?” what should I say? This is a sort of improv conversation, and I know that the rule with improv actors is that you always say “Yes,” so I am sure I should agree, but to what extent. If I just do the minimal affirmative, “Yes,” it sounds like I’m blowing him off. If I get too affirmative, and say, “Yes, it’s perfect,” what if he comes back with, “Well, I wouldn’t say it’s perfect?” [I’ve had this actually happen.] Then we’re back to the already-past-you problems of talking.

It’s not just phatic conversation, though, that induces my talker’s remorse. If I’m in a group, including Zoom, and any subject comes up, I have a dozen stories that fit that subject, and I want to tell them all! Because I don’t get to tell stories very much anymore. Not in person. When I was a preacher, I had a captive audience every week, and they couldn’t talk back, taking time to tell their stories. [Well, Vic and Hazel and Lillie and “the lady from California” did, but that’s a different story.] [1] My stories are all so interesting still. To me. Because I’ve had a fabulously interesting life.

That’s not a brag or boast. It’s just the result of knowing so many interesting people. It comes with the territory of being a preacher. I have lived many places, known thousands of people, heard their stories. Those stories are worth sharing. [Not the private ones, although they are usually quite attention-grabbing.] My story is interesting not so much in itself but because I have been blessed with hearing the stories of others. Often being a part of those stories.

The problem is, even though they may not have as many interesting stories, the other people in the group want to tell their stories, too. So I realize on the way home, or when we’ve left the Zoom boxes, that I talked too much. I told too many stories. They took the time other people could have used. Yes, my stories were interesting, but that is not the sole determinant of how and how much to speak. I’m back into talker’s remorse.

I’m probably going to regret writing this…

John Robert McFarland

1] One of my favorite talk-back stories comes from when John Trefzger was pastor at First Christian in Bloomington, IL. As he preached, he asked—rhetorically, he thought—“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? A little boy responded automatically, “The Shadow knows.”

 

THE HELP MENU [T, 9-28-21]

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

 I am a master clicker of the remote control for the TV. I don’t know how we got along without that thing. We couldn’t now, because neither of us can get up off the sofa to walk across the room to turn the dial to change the channel. Helen, being the perfect wife [and this is the definition of “the perfect wife”], has always let me be the one to control the control, to hold it in my hands, folded in the prayer position, and never demurs regardless of how much I run up and down the channels, scanning for something worth watching.

She just holds her computer on her lap and works crossword puzzles or plays “Grand Theft Recipes” or throws sheep at people on Farmville. [Are we the only ones who remember “Farmville?”] Sometimes it takes a very long time, scrolling up to channel 3389 and back down again to channel 2 & 1/2,, and up again, and down again, and then I finally click on “Off,” for seldom is there anything worth watching, even on PBS, since we’ve already seen all the “Clifford, the Big Red Dog” episodes. Also, “Brooklyn 99” is over.

But--and as one of our pastors once said in a sermon, “I’ve got a really big but here,” which was true, and which caused the entire congregation to go comatose in an attempt to avoid chortling--we got a smart TV, because our daughters insisted that we get Netflix so we could watch reruns of Brooklyn 99, and because Helen got dizzy when she looked at the blinky suits of the commentators on the sports shows on the old unsmart TV.

Despite the new TV’s intelligence level, we were frustrated again the other night, because we were eating supper, and Netflix wouldn’t let us watch Call the Midwife. There’s nothing quite as good for the digestion as watching births and Caesarian section surgeries while eating spaghetti. We know the new smart TV is smarter than we, but this blanking of Netflix had happened before. We were so disconcerted that we would have paid big bucks to get some geek to come hold our hands, but it was Sunday night, and even geeks have other hands to hold on Sunday night.

Then I noticed that in the vertical menu on the left side of the screen, there is a menu called Help. I had seen it before, of course, but what good could come from clicking on a word like “Help?” Nonetheless, in the manner of a master clicker, I clicked on it.

Of course, on one of those infernal electronic contraptions, whenever you click on a menu, it gives you anther menu. So, I kept clicking, menu after menu, and eventually came to “Reset Netflix.” Clicking on it restored our normal calm demeanors, since we were immediately back in the East End of London in the early 1960s.

It reminded me of the time that Pastor Ingqvist of Lake Wobegon Lutheran was hosting all the Lutheran pastors in the area—and this being Minnesota, there were many—on a flat boat on the lake. The owner of the boat decided to grill something for them, on a regular yard grill. Someone knocked it over. All the pastors ran to the other side. The boat tilted and began to sink. Disaster was imminent, for, being pastors, none of them knew how to call for help. Fortunately, as I recall it, they were saved because the lake just wasn’t very deep on that side of the boat.

God has a Help menu, and it’s okay to click on it. Inside that menu are lots of click possibilities—Friend, Prayer, Song, Cookie, Book, Nature, Coffee, Walk, Bible, Tea, Meditation, Reset Your Brain… Netflix…

If you can’t see what you want to see, click on Help.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

THE UNBROKEN PREACHER [Su, 9-26-21]

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

It’s Sunday morning, and I’m thinking about preaching as I go through files of old worship bulletins, recycling those that are no longer important to me, and will not be meaningful to my children when they go through them after I die. Might as well save them some time.

Some of those bulletins/programs are disturbing, for there are a lot of events—commencements, conferences, etc.—where I am listed as the preacher or speaker that I don’t even remember. Have I gone past the first sin of remembrance [simple forgetfulness] on to number 7 already? [Don’t ask; I don’t remember.] [1]

There is also a whole file about when I applied, sort of, to be professor of preaching at a seminary. “Sort of” means that, unlike the events in the paragraph just above, I sort of remember it, now that the file has reminded me, and also, judging from the correspondence, I was only “sort of” interested.

That’s strange, because in my memory, I always wanted to be a seminary preaching professor and never got to, not even as close as applying. In this file, though, is a letter from a seminary dean, a theologian, telling me how much my narrative theology had changed his own theological approach, and saying that they have a preaching professor position open, and asking me to apply.

So I began to remember more. When your brain doesn’t remember, your emotions do.

I wasn’t at all sure that I should apply. It was not a good time to move my children, and I had just started in a new congregation.

Nonetheless, I applied, including asking various folks for recommendations. One of those was a woman I’ll call Mirjana, because it’s her real name, and it’s too intriguing a name to obscure it with some lawsuit-safe pseudonym. She was the editor of Selected Sermons, published by The Episcopal Church’s Seabury Press.

That was a weekly series, tied to the Episcopal church calendar and lectionary of Bible readings, designed for Episcopal lay readers, folks filling in where the priest was absent, or in a church that did not have a priest, to take into the pulpit and read just as they were, word for word.

Mirjana had read my sermons in other periodicals and thought I could be a good contributor to Selected Sermons, so she called and asked me to write for them. It was a long and fruitful relationship, until Seabury Press was sold, and Selected Sermons was no more. I don’t know what the lay readers have been doing since.

Selected Sermons had certain necessary restrictions, since lay readers would use them exactly as they were. For one, the writer couldn’t use any first-person illustrations, which was hard for a personal story-teller like I. Nonetheless, I learned how to produce what was useful.

In fact, Mirjana told the seminary in her recommendation letter that of the 100 sermon writers they used for Selected Sermons, I was at least in the top 5. She added that they never had to do any editing on my sermons, which is probably why she rated me so highly; editors don’t like to work anymore than other people. Then, however, she added a caveat. “At first,” she said, “he was too fond of cutesy plays on words, but we broke him of that.”

Well, Mirjana, as much as I like you, for your nice name and your nice words about me, you’re wrong. I still love that cutesy stuff. If I get to preach your funeral, I’ll title it something, like “The Grim Reaper & Selected Editors.” I cannot be broken!

John Robert McFarland

1] Daniel L. Schachter, The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers

 

ODDS & ENDS VII [F, 9-24-21 ] Ox Pickers, Lady Coal Miners, Being Mortal, and IDK What Else

 I DON'T KNOW WHY THIS BIG BLANK AREA TO START, BUT THEY WON'T LET ME CHANGE IT

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

In a recent column, Glenn McDonald told of an experience of Walter Wangerin in Africa, where he discovered “oxpeckers.” These are birds that look to be nasty. They pick at the wounds of large animals. Adding insult to injury? No, what they are doing is therapeutic. They pick out the maggots and other disease carriers. They save the lives of lots of animals by being scavengers in the least desirable places. Nature is a strange and remarkable world.

Anne Lamott says that Large Print books are “literary Depends.”

In his Spiritual Autobiography of 1975, popular Bible scholar Wm. Barclay says, in support of religious radio and TV broadcasting, “A church of the air is not an impossible dream.” We’ve had a lot of “religion” on air, but it’s more “televangelism” than actual church. With the livestreaming that has become necessary because of the covid19 pandemic, Barclay’s possible dream of a “church of the air” is an interesting possibility.

I’ve always enjoyed feeling like a scholar. That happened when I had to search through the stacks at a library and then had lots of books open and spread around on my desk, writing for Scribner’s’ reference books or Selected Sermons or the Abingdon preaching annuals. What makes a person feel like a scholar now? I look up lots of stuff on the Google, and it’s neat and easy, but it’s not the same.

Going through old correspondence files--getting ready to jettison my last two four-drawer metal file cabinets, which are really hard to get rid of now, since no one has a use for them—I’m struck with how complete typed or hand-written letters were compared to the quick notes that comprise most of email. Apparently, because email is so easy, it makes us think that it must also be quick and short.

I think it was from the excellent Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, MD, that I learned that as we age, the inside of the mouth changes position, without it being obvious to us. It tips toward the back. That is one of the reasons old people have trouble swallowing. We swallow better if, counter-intuitively, we tip our chins down as we swallow, for that puts out mouth back into normal position.

I figure I’ll probably get old some day so I’m practicing walking like an old man so I’ll know how when I need to.

The obit for Jo Ann Deffendall, age 89, was in my home county newspaper this week. It notes that “She was the first lady coal miner for the Old Ben Coal Company.” A “lady” coal miner. How quaint. How oxymoronic. How Gibson Countyish.

There are so many abbreviations for whole sentences anymore. It’s hard for an old guy to keep up. But I have just learned what DIY means, Do It Yourself. I like that. Most of us practice DIY religion. That’s okay. Unfortunately, a whole lot of people practice DIY history and science. That doesn’t turn out well. Instead of DIY they should try IDK.

Something recently reminded me of my great-aunt Nellie [Ella Blaine McFarland]. She and Grandma [Henrietta Ann Smith McFarland] were shopping together one day. Grandma needed a handkerchief and didn’t have one. Aunt Nellie said, “Not to worry. I always carry an extra.” She reached into the bosom of her dress, which was where ladies kept their hankies in those days, but couldn’t find it. Reaching all around, she said, a little too loudly for Grandma’s comfort, “I know I had two when I came in here!”

John Robert McFarland

“Heaven encourages more variety than hell.” CS Lewis

 

 

 

 

 

GETTING KIDS READY FOR LIFE [W, 9-22-21]

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

Most of my life was spent with church people, but I also got to be part of other communities--theater, cancer, writing, folk music, higher education, social justice, coffee house, pickleball, and long distance running. In those other communities, I made some interesting friends who would never have showed up in church.

I especially enjoyed my running companions. Sweating and panting are great equalizers. In the running community, I wasn’t “the preacher,” someone to avoid because he might “judge” you. I was just another guy struggling to survive.

Dick and I lived in the same neighborhood, so often ended up in a group of three or four men who encountered one another on the streets as we started for the back roads and then ran together.

One day I mentioned that I had to quit early so I could go to daughter Katie’s cross-country meet. I said, rather proudly, I admit, that it had been difficult to manage, but in 12 years of having children in school, I had never missed a school event of either one of them—academics, band, drama, sports, etc. I knew that Dick’s daughter ran on the cross-country team, so I asked him if he were going to the meet, too.

He rather self-righteously, or so it seemed to me, pronounced that he had never seen his daughter in any school event. That was her world, not his, he said. She needed to learn how to negotiate in her world by herself.

The meaning was clear: he was a better parent than I, because he neglected his children. That’s the way I heard it, and it both angered and confused me.

It reminded me of the family one of my professors, David Belgum, told us about in Clinical Pastoral Education. It was during the Great Depression. A farm family in Minnesota. Like most farm families in those days, they went to town on Saturday night. The mother would line up the children—seven of them, if I remember the story correctly—before they left, and she would give one of them a nickel to spend in town. The nickel was totally random. It might go to the kid who slacked off on his chores. It might go to the same kid three weeks in a row. If anyone proclaimed that this was not fair, she told them, “Life isn’t fair. This is the way it’s going to be forever, so get used to it.”

I’m she sure she thought she was a good mother. I think my running colleague, Dick, thought he was a good father.

When I got home, showering and changing quickly to get to Katie’s cross-country meet, I worried about what Dick had said. Was I doing wrong by our girls, messing in their lives, thinking I was being a good father while actually setting them up for failure? I told Helen what Dick had said. She replied…

“You don’t get a kid ready for a famine by starving them.”

She’s always been the best theologian in the family.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

ORIENTATION TO LIFE [M, 9-20-21]

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

66 years ago today, I started classes at Indiana University, following a week of orientation. [Yes, we started late in those days!]

In many ways, that day concluded the best week of my life. That’s a dangerous thing to say. What about the week I got married, the weeks when my children and grandchildren were born, the week I was ordained? I didn’t say that it was the most important week, just the best! Because I felt freer than I ever had before. During orientation week, I was free of all other responsibilities.

Oh, yes, I had to go to meetings, and register for classes, and walk over to the Rogers Center dining room to work as a bus boy, but those were all new, and fun. I did not have to try to make my parents happy, or meet the expectations of people who had known me before. I was a new and free character--a college man. I could be whoever I wanted to be. That orientation week marked the time when I came out of a cocoon and learned that I had wings.

Recently someone, probably Charlie Nelms on Twitter, pointed out that black people use a huge amount of energy trying to keep white folks from feeling uncomfortable. When white people are uncomfortable with black folks, we act out, trying to get back to a comfort level, in ways that are not good for black people.

It reminded me of how I did that with my parents. Throughout their lives, really, but especially when I was a kid living at home. I used so much energy trying to keep them from being uncomfortable, trying to make them happy. I even dropped out of high school to go to work in a factory to make money for our nonexistent budget.

I didn’t think of it then as particularly onerous. It was just life, the way I had always known it. A lot of black folks are like that, too. It’s just more comfortable for them to keep white people comfortable. Uncle Tom.

Then, one day in mid-July, I ran into classmate Jim Shaw, who said, “Let’s drive up to IU and see if they’ll let us in.” It sounded like something to do.

So there I was, standing in lines in the field house to register for classes, picking up my ROTC            uniform, borassing [1] in Linden Hall with my roommate, Tom Cone, and Max Eubanks and Jon Stroble and Jim McKnight, going to a mixer with the girls at Cedar Hall, buying books at The Nathan Hale Store, walking downtown with my new friends to the Princess Theater to see “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing…”

It was a week that would change my life, orientate me to a whole new world. It’s a world with more questions than answers, more problems than solutions, but it’s a world where I am free to look for the answers and to work on the solutions.

The key word there is “free.” Freedom is scary, but it is what finally makes us comfortable.

John Robert McFarland

1] Borassing is a term much-studied by linguists. It simply means sitting around talking. No one knows its provenance nor the reason for its persistence. Strangely, it is confined almost entirely to Indiana University.

[The Tom Atkins column is the next one down.]

ONE IF IT’S A CHINA WOMAN, TWO IF IT’S A POLISH ARAB WOMAN [Sat, 9-18-21]

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

That’s the way the anti-immigrant people will have to signal Paul Revere this time around. In the race for mayor of Boston, it’s two immigrants, women yet, who are the last candidates left. Michelle Wu’s parents immigrated from Taiwan, and Annissa Essabiai George is a “first generation Arab Polish American.”

It would not be strange to have two members of the city council running against each other for mayor, but a China woman and a Polish Arab are already members of the council? And they’re women! How did that happen?

I can remember when Tom Atkins was trying to be the first Boston city council member of color [black in his case], and he had the advantage, at least, of being a man.

Of course, it’s possible that even today, a Chinese woman and a Polish Arab woman might not be as scary to white voters as an extremely smart black man.

If you have read this column for very long, you have already heard about Tom, but let me review…

He came to Indiana University on the Residence Scholarship Plan, from Elkhart, so we were dorm mates. His father was a Pentecostal minister and his mother was a maid. He became the first black student body president of his high school, and the first black student body president at a Big 10 University. He went to Harvard for law school, and was the first black to run for city council. The white folks of Boston were not pleased, to say the least.

I was beginning doctoral work at Boston University School of Theology during his run. One night, Helen and I got a babysitter for our pre-school daughters and had supper with Tom and Sharon, who, to complicate matters a bit more, was white. I knew her, too, for we were history majors at IU, and so were in many classes together. After supper, Tom said, “I have to go to a voter rally, but Helen and Sharon can chat while you go to the rally with me, John.”

It wasn’t exactly a rally. It was a meeting of the radical black power guys of Boston. They were not sure they wanted to back Tom because he might just be an “Uncle” Tom. He had to convince them. Bringing a white guy to the meeting did not help his credentials. Didn’t help my heart, either. It was a tough venue for this redneck hillbilly liberal from Gibson County, “The Mississippi of the North,” in which to experience his first time as the only white guy!

I survived, and Tom got elected. Now there is a Thomas I. Atkins Living Learning Center at IU. I assume there will soon be a Michelle Wu or Annissa George LLC at Harvard. Or perhaps not. Maybe voting for a China woman or a Polish Arab woman is just run-of-the-mill stuff for Boston folks now. If so, they owe it to Tom Atkins.

John Robert McFarland

Yes, I know that “China woman” is antiquated and somewhat racist. That’s the way I mean it. It’s really hard to find something that matches the eye-popping level of “Polish Arab woman.”

 

PANDEMIC FUNERALS [R, 9-16-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith and Live for the Years of Winter

A friend my age said recently that the pandemic has showed that we don’t need funerals/memorial services. “At our age, we usually go to a lot of funerals, but there haven’t been any funerals because of the virus pandemic, and we’ve gotten along without them just fine.”

I admire and respect her, but I don’t agree. Yes, I’ve gotten along without memorial services because I’ve had to. I’ve done that with a lot of public stuff—church, eating out, traveling, clubs, etc—because I’ve had to, but that doesn’t mean I’m just as well off. I think my life would be better if I could do those things. Especially memorial services.

Helen said that when the pandemic was over, we’d spend a year doing nothing but going to funerals because so many had been put of “until an appropriate time.” I can think of three right now that I’m looking forward to. All of them have been scheduled and postponed and scheduled again. Will they ever happen? I don’t know, but if they do, I want to be there.

I once visited with an old railroad man when I was doing “special preaching,” what we used to call “revivals,” at his church. His job had been to water the locomotives. He had taken the job when he got married, because a house went with it. He had to live beside the water tank, because there were many locomotives each day, from dawn to dusk, and each one had to stop just long enough for him to put that big water boom over the engine and pour the water in so that it could create steam to run on. It was a 7 day a week, 12 hours a day job. He said, “When my wife died, they gave me one hour for her funeral and told me if I got back late, they’d fire me. Forty years I’d been coming out of the house and swinging that boom over the engines… forty years she put up with that… and they gave me one hour...” Only one hour, but I don’t think he would have gotten through without it.

In the old correspondence I’ve been winnowing is a letter from at woman who said…

“Thank you for doing the funeral for my step-father. My mother and I agreed that you said just the right things in just the right way, which is remarkable, since she loved him dearly, and I couldn’t stand him. But you let her remember her love, and you allowed me to let go of my bitterness.”

I do not remember the man, or his funeral, or his wife, or his step-daughter. But I’m glad I did that funeral, because I don’t think that woman could have gotten peace about her relationship with the man her mother loved without it.

I’ve always liked funerals, even those necessary because of tragedy. They give us a chance to gather up the loose ends. It’s okay if you feel like you can get along without them now, but it’s also okay, I hope, to look forward to gathering once again in remembrance and hope for those who have moved on.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

REPORTING IN ILL TIMES [T, 9-14-21]

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

Still going through old folders, this one full of articles I wrote for the Illinois Times newspaper of Springfield, in the late 1980s. There was a note from Gayle Worland, the young asst. editor. She said they were determined to have me write more for them, because they were getting more letters in response to my articles than to anything else in the paper. That was probably better for their circulation than it was for mine.

The editor, Bud Farrar, was married to a minister of The Brethren Church. She had read my articles in “The Christian Century” and other religious periodicals and told him that I had a particular style that would go well in Ill Times. I was on sabbatical then, so I had time to write, and Helen and I enjoyed running around the state, writing about interesting places and events. I had always wanted to be a newspaper reporter, and here was my chance.

I did occasional columns, in my usual sideways manner, and articles about social matters, like the “County Fair of County Fairs.” That was when the heads of county fairs from all over IL came to Springfield to look at acts they might book for entertainment—clowns, acrobats, race cars and horses, bands, singers, lawyers… well, lawyers were not booked as lawyers. One of the interesting things I learned was that many lawyers moonlighted on the fair circuit to supplement their incomes, mostly as clowns. That was quite fascinating.

What got responses, though, were articles that hit at the points where people had their emotions invested, three in particular…

1] A Sandi Patty concert. She claimed as she went along that it was a worship service, and that it was all about God. It was clear, at least to me, that it was not a worship service. How could it be? It was a concert, presented no differently from a Pink Floyd concert, for several thousand people in an arena, with no religious symbols. Also, it was clear that it was all about Sandi Patty rather than God. For a guy who likes to be liked, those were not good points to mention! Sandi has a very rabid following, which has not been diminished much by the revelation that during the time of that concert, she was having an affair. Religious entertainers know how to play the forgiveness card very effectively.

2] A meeting of women pastors of all denominations in the central IL area. Women preachers were fairly new then and sensitive to being accepted. Several women in that meeting declared that women pastors would be the salvation of the church because they were naturally better equipped to be pastors than men, more sensitive and such. I opined that women are probably not any less beset by original sin than men, so just having women clergy wasn’t going to change things much. I thought I could get away with it because I had a reputation as being the most pro women-in-the-ministry of all the men in the state. Didn’t help. Some of those women were sensitive, for sure, but not in a way that was good for the church, or for me.

3] I know there was a third, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what it was, and I’ve already put the contents of that file into the recycling. It might have been the one about Chief Illiniwek, the sports mascot for the U of Ill "Fighting Illini." Even though considered offensive by real Illini native Americans, fans of the chief are quite passionate. I suggested that the name should be changed to The Fighting Polish, since that is the largest ethnic group in IL, even an Illinois state holiday in that era honoring Casimir Pulaski, the Polish hero of American independence, and since that might help the U of IL actually win some football games, because Notre Dame U has done quite well with the similarly named Fighting Irish. As I’m sure you know, “The Fighting Polish” didn’t catch on.

“The Illinois Times” is still going strong, even without me stimulating readers to write angry letters to the editor. Maybe I could write an article about vaccinations for them… that ought to be good for a few letters…

John Robert McFarland

PSALMS OF HEALING [Su, 9-12-21]

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

One of Craig Stewart’s assignments, as he worked to become a UMC Certified Lay Speaker, was to develop a year-long plan to use the Psalms in worship. It reminded me of something I had not thought about for almost 25 years. 

The granddaughter of a woman in the church I pastored back in the 1990s--about seven or eight years old, if I remember correctly--was badly hurt in a car accident. Head trauma. Coma. In a hospital in St. Louis.

Vic Stenger, A man in our congregation said, “Let’s do a Psalms vigil for her recovery.” I had been a part of prayer vigils, but not for healing. Plus, Vic had a well-earned reputation for being a little off-center. Also, a lot of the psalms are not about healing but destruction, some quite vicious in their desire to obliterate enemies and the like.

Over several years, though, I had come to appreciate Vic. His differentness often allowed him to think in ways the rest of us couldn’t. Sometimes that gave us significant new opportunities. And, after all, at the very least, getting together to share scripture is a good thing. So, we decided to do it.

We started right after Sunday morning worship, with anyone in the congregation who was willing taking a shift reading Psalms, and almost everyone was willing. 15 minutes at a time. As others read, people came and went to listen. Just someone standing at the lectern and reading from the big Bible there. Psalm 1 thru Psalm 150.

Vic started and ended the vigil, and just as he finished Psalm 150, the phone in the church office rang. “She just sat up,” her mother said. “She’s fine. She’s smiling and laughing. She says that she felt something going on, and she wanted to find out what it was.”

Now, medical folks sometime refer to this sort of thing as “spontaneous healing.” That’s a good designation. It avoids having to think about other possibilities.

Some others would piggy-back on “spontaneous healing” and say, “Your Psalms reading had nothing to do with her recovery. It’s just coincidence that she got okay right then.” That’s a perfectly reasonable response. I won’t argue with it.

Of course, it raises the whole question of intercessory prayer. Does God do something good for me because “he” forgot about me and your prayer reminded “him” that I need some help? Do you have the power, in prayer, to change the mind of God about me? If God is so loving, why doesn’t “she” just go ahead and help; why is prayer necessary?

I have no answers for any of those questions. But I have had personal experiences when I knew that God was present and at work in my own life, or someone else’s life.

When I hear people talk about those sorts of experiences, they often describe it in terms of “feeling,” as the little girl did in feeling that something was going on as we read Psalms. With me, those experiences were more a “knowing” rather than a “feeling.” I didn’t feel any different from usual in those moments, but I knew there was something going on that I couldn’t understand, but was real, nonetheless.

I don’t think it makes any difference whether you “feel” or “know.” But it is an experience that we should not dismiss because we can’t understand it. It has helped me to understand that God relates to us primarily through presence with us, not activity for us.

As Sister Julienne said recently in an episode of Call the Midwife, “ God is not present in the actions but in the results.” I’m not sure I understand that exactly, but it resonates with my soul.

I retired shortly after our Psalms vigil. My friend, Vic, is dead. I don’t know anything about the little girl. But I think that this pandemic time—pandemic not just of virus, but of racism and greed and violence-- might be a good time for a Psalms vigil. For the healing of the world.

John Robert McFarland

THE DISAPPOINTING JESUS [F, 9-10-21]

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

I was once disappointed by my closest friend. We were in a meeting. I was under fire. Another person there later said to me, “I felt so sorry for you. I know how close you two are. He had the opportunity and authority to support you, but he didn’t. That must have been so disappointing for you.”

Well, yes, it was, but I assumed there was a good reason for his silence. Maybe he wanted to be supportive but didn’t know how. Perhaps he felt he might make things worse. Maybe he just didn’t understand the situation.

Reason or no reason, it was disappointing, but that did not change the way I felt about him, my love for him, my appreciation for him, because I know that if we stay friends only with those who never disappoint us, we’ll have no friends at all.

Sooner or later, disappointment comes with every person, including Jesus. “What a friend we have in Jesus?” Yes, except for the disappointments. Or, more accurately, including the disappointments.

During the “days of rage” on campus, following the killings at Kent State U in 1970, I was so disappointed in my fellow campus ministers. University President Sam Braden, Student Body President and Viet Nam veteran Chuck Witte, Dean of Students Dick Hulet and his staff, and I—we were the only ones working the streets at night, literally pushing students away from police, trying to prevent violence and destruction, trying to keep people safe.

Shortly after those days and nights, at the monthly meeting of the campus ministers, about half a dozen, the others talked about why they had been missing in action. They had lame excuses, and were a bit embarrassed by using them. Except for Fred, the campus minister for a quite large denomination, who wasn’t embarrassed at all. He said he had gone fishing, adding, quite self-righteously, “I just got out of town. I wasn’t about to have anything to do with something like that.”

Isn’t that what Jesus said about the cross: “I’m not about to have anything to do with something like that.”

There has been plenty of reason for disappointment during these pandemic times—people who refuse to wear masks or get vaccinated, who see it as an opportunity to wrest power away and gain control politically rather than an opportunity to come together to keep everyone safe, who care more about the economy than the lives of people.

Disappointment is part of life. Even Jesus was disappointing to his followers. They thought he had political power, that he would be a king, restore Israel to prominence, make them all celebrities, holding up papyrus fingers proclaiming “We’re Number 1!”

Instead he let himself get put to death on a cross, without calling down a legion of angels or any of the stuff they thought he could and should do.

Jesus is still quite disappointing, at least to me. He refuses to use his power to smite stupid people, even though they deserve it. He won’t even help my teams win games against the unworthy teams. He just says, “Wherever you go, even into the door marked ‘Death,’ I’ll go with you.” Who needs that? [No, don’t put your hand up; it’s rhetorical!]

It’s not the actions of our friends that are most important; it is their presence. A friend is with you, even though their actions, or inactions, sometimes disappoint us. Just as importantly, even though our actions sometimes disappoint them. I disappoint Jesus so often I don’t even want to think about it. Still, “what a friend we have in Jesus.”

John Robert McFarland

“Hold fast to Christ, and for the rest, remain totally uncommitted.” Hebert Butterfield

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE RHYMES OF LOVE [W, 9-8-21]

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

I love sunflowers and hollyhocks

Raspberry jam and tick-tock clocks

Tiny chicks in bright yellow flocks

Ripened wheat all ready in shocks

 

I love little girls in bright summer frocks

Gray-haired grannies in old patterned smocks

Teen-aged lassies with red curly locks

Who blush when they hear the whistles of jocks

 

I love baseball players with red flashing socks

Friends who keep a key to my locks

Cats that sleep in big yellow crocks

Stores with root beer always in stock

 

I love chefs who make hot food in a wok

All the music composed by that Bach

Birds that sing from the trees and mock

The greedy seagulls that hock on the dock

 

I love cute puppies in a big brown box

Bagels with cream cheese and brined salmon lox

Chickens that outsmart a wily old fox

Alphabet letters on big wooden blocks

 

Beware the words

That come now and then

When an old man loves rhyming

And has a full fountain pen

 

John Robert McFarland

I have lived with words so long that I have my own built-in rhyming dictionary now, but I was a young man once, and I love Bruce Springsteen’s statement that “A young man with a guitar and a rhyming dictionary is dangerous.”

 

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

THE HAMILTON BROTHERS & WHAT THE CHURCH IS FOR  [M, 9-6-21]

 

The recent memorial service for The Rev. Richard E. Hamilton brought to mind a two-part PBS TV documentary from a couple of years ago, interviewing Indiana’s famous Hamilton brothers, Dick and Lee.

Dick was one of Indiana’s leading clergy persons for the last half of the 20^th century—liked, loved, respected, and appreciated by all who knew him, as a leader in the church and as a person.

He had the added distinction of being the pastor who officiated at our wedding, at St. Mark’s in Bloomington, a brand-new church at the time, of which he was the founding pastor. We were the first couple married there, and after many years in foreign places, like Illinois, we attend worship there now.

His brother, Lee, became a lawyer, probably because their father, Frank, was a distinguished pastor in Indiana, and his brother was carving out a leading role in that profession, too. You don’t really want to be the third wheel on a bicycle.

Besides, all the way through high school and college, Lee’s only interest was basketball. His family moved to Evansville from TN when he was about ten, for his father to accept a pastoral appointment in Methodism’s Indiana Conference. He discovered basketball! He grew tall, he had some natural talent, he loved it. It was his only interest, so much so that he won the 1948 Trester Award for Mental Attitude, which carried some weight in Indiana that it might not anywhere else.

In fact, it may have been more impressive back then than the Mr. Basketball award for the state’s best player. [1] Mr. Basketball can be fairly easily established by which kid scores the most points and wins the most games. Mental attitude is not quantifiable, and a whole lot of people have to take note of a whole lot of mental attitudes before they can declare that yours is better than everybody else’s.

It probably helped Lee a whole lot when he discovered, as a partner in a firm in Columbus, that practicing law is really boring, and so decided to run for Congress from Indiana’s 9^th District, which might well be the most conservative district in a most conservative state. Being a basketball star undoubtedly helped him win his first election, and every other election for the next 34 years, even though he was a liberal Democrat. His mental attitude, for which he was already known, helped him earn the respect not only of the 9^th District voters but of all his colleagues and the other folks he had to deal with as a congressman, such as reporters and academics. He earned that respect because he gave respect, to everyone. He never assumed anyone was unworthy of respect, or even of likeability, regardless of their politics.

He learned that respect-full attitude as a PK, preacher’s kid, and also as a PB, preacher’s brother. He watched the way his parents and brother treated people from the time he was little.

When the interviewer asked him about the problems that might come from being a PK, his father the pastor of a large church, so that there were many people watching him to see if he lived up to the standards expected of a parsonage family, he said that he never thought it was a bad thing to have all those people watching him. Instead, it gave him a feeling of security, that there were so many folks watching and wanting him to do well, to be good.

I think that’s always what a church is for. What a family is for. What a world is for.

John Robert McFarland

Happy Labor Day

1] Strangely, the first Mr. Basketball award, in 1939, was to George Crowe, a black boy. [We called boys and girls back then, regardless of race, boys and girls, not men and women.] I say it was strange because Indiana has always been and still is the most racist state in the North. But high school sports, especially basketball in Indiana, especially back when every little hamlet [like Milan, the inspiration for the town of Hickory in the movie, “Hoosiers,”] had its own high school, is a different world. There are always some people who want to be racist about high school students, too, especially where dating is involved, but when it comes to beating your brother-in-law, who lives in the next town over, you don’t care what the skin colors of your players are if they can win bragging rights for you.

ODDS & ENDS VI: Songs, Dasia Taylor, Daily Control, Nicknames [SA, 9-4-21]

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

ODDS & ENDS VI: Songs, Dasia Taylor, Daily Control, Nicknames  [SA, 9-4-21]

 

When Dasia Taylor was still in high school—West High School, in Iowa City, Iowa—she invented color-changing sutures. Now she is a freshman at the U of IA, studying political science. She says, “I’m not really a science person.” Right, she just invents stuff that generations of scientists have never thought of, as a sideline to her social justice advocacy. Even in the most anti-science of states, there are people doing good science work. And people who care about social justice.

A study showed that people generally judge that they have about 80% control of their day. It’s actually 3 to 7 %. I doubt that old people get up to the 80%, but I think it’s a lot more than 7%. Maybe 50%. That’s one of the perks of being old. Your days are freer from the schedules others put into them. Unless you do stupid stuff with that 50% you control, then maybe it’s not a good perk to have so much control.

When our daughter, Katie, ran track and cross-country in high school, on the boys’ team, there was a boy whose last name was Piercy. His friends called him Pierce. There was another boy whose last name was Pierce. His friends called him Piercy. You can’t really have a team unless you have nicknames.

“I’d like to know if God gives us points for showing up or just marks us present.” Ann Lamott

Once at the Second Sunday Folk dance at Fortune Lake in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, when we lived in Iron Mountain, one of that month’s guest singers noted, as a song intro, that he had a sister named Sue who lived in Sioux City. He went on, of course, to sing “Sioux City Sue.” I always liked that song—nice melody, and an especially poignant lyric: “Your hair is red, your eyes are blue, I’d swap my hoss and dog for you.” I mean, hearing that as a ten-year-old wannabe cowboy, I figured that was real love! Except Sue did not remain the lovely creature that the singing cowboy first met. Homer and Jethro refrained on that, “Your hair is green, your teeth are black, I want my hoss and doggie back!”

Reminds me of when folk music was first starting a come-back when I was in college. We thought it was so clever to sing, “Black, black, black is the color of my love’s true hair.”

When our grandson was around first grade, maybe kindergarten, his favorite song was “Red River Valley.” He and I were much into playing pirates in those days, and we sang a version of the song as Red River Pirates: “From this pirate ship they say you are leaving, do not hasten to bid me ahoy…” One day we were on our pirate ship [the sofa in their living room] when I brandished my sword and announced that I was the captain of the ship. “Are you the first mate?” I asked. “Well, I don’t see anybody else here,” he observed, quite dryly. He is definitely his sarcastic mother’s son.

When sports people want to explain why a player is getting better, they say “the game is slowing down for him.” I must be getting really good!

Is it well with your soul? Attitude follows action. “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul…” [1]

John Robert McFarland

[1] Horatio Spafford and Philip Paul Bliss

 

WHAT I LEARNED IN THE HOSPITAL [R, 9-2-21]

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

I sorted through and discarded my old sermon notes a long time ago. Now I’m doing the same with the files from other speaking and writing. One of my first “talks” after my hospital cancer surgery was What I Learned in the Hospital. I wasn’t yet at the point of Now That I Have Cancer I Am Whole. What I learned there follows nicely the column of two days ago about intercessory prayer.

The surgery was a surprise, so I had no chance to prepare. But I am loathe to let any experience go by without getting a story or three out of it, and this looked like a gold mine of stories, so I immediately started working on a list of what I was learning. Here is the list:

Whatever nurses are paid, it’s not enough.

You can go much longer without washing your hair than you think. 

The hospital is no place to get a rest.

Major surgery should be upgraded to at least Colonel, maybe Admiral.

There are better ways to lose weight.

Prevention is better than cure.

The switchboard operator in a Catholic hospital will put a call through to your room even if she’s been told not to if the caller identifies himself as a bishop.

Five A.M. is apparently the proper time to get out of bed to  get weighed.

We exist in each moment by the grace of God.

Prayer helps.

Knowing others are praying for you helps.

Prayer comes in many different shapes and sizes.

The single most important experiences for me were when people prayed with me and for me.

There is great pleasure in simple things.

Pain is a prison.

You gotta walk that lonesome valley by yourself.

Here is one that requires a bit of explanation. Perry Biddle was a clergy friend who tried to commit suicide by automobile and was almost successful but said his first thought, as the EMTs stood over him and thought he was dead, “Yes, but also I’m still alive, and I’m glad.” So in the hospital I wrote: Perry Biddle and I belong to the pre-victorious. We have seen the enemy, and the enemy ain’t got nothin’. We have already died and gone to be with Christ. [1]

All the grace you need is what you have at the moment.

I dictated those observations into a cassette recorder while I was in the hospital and wrote them out later. I think they’re all still accurate. Except that it gets easier to go without washing your hair when you have less of it.

John Robert McFarland

[1] I like that phrase, pre-victorious. Did I come up with that on my own?