SOMEONE'S WALKING ON THE WATER TOWARD YOU NOW

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

 

[Pick any tune you wish, but "Take Your Burden to the Lord and Leave It There" works pretty well. Almost...] 

I was washed off by a fierce and evil wave

I was sure the ocean deep would be my grave

Without a single friend, I knew it was the end

Then I heard a voice shout full against the wind

 

Don’t give up. Keep holding on.

Until the darkness ends and night is gone

The current is so fast, you think you cannot last

But someone’s walking on the water toward you now

 

Two arms full of nothing was all that I could grasp

A gurgling cry for help was all that I could gasp

Then a hand within the darkness pulled me to a drifting mast

and I heard a voice call in the storm so vast…

 

Don’t give up. Keep holding on.

Until the darkness ends and night is gone

The current is so fast, you think you cannot last

But someone’s walking on the water toward you now

 

When light came with the dawning and the darkness was all past

I looked on every side to see who had pulled me to the mast

There was no one close at hand but in the distance I could see

Someone walking toward a sailor just like me

And I called…

 

Don’t give up. Keep holding on.

Until the darkness ends and night is gone

The current is so fast, you think you cannot last

But someone’s walking on the water toward you now

 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

ODDS & ENDS XII: Ronnie’s Obit, Stewardship Stories, Heroes [F, 10-29-21]

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

“Life is known only by those who have found a way to be comfortable with change and the unknown. Given the nature of life, there may be no security, but only adventure.” Rachel Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom, page 67.

RONNIE’S OBIT

Ronnie’s obit was in the [online] newspaper. He had turned fifteen three months before I started preaching at the church where his parents were mainstays. I was still short of twenty. His parents often invited me to dinner, hoping that my youthful churchiness might rub off on him, seating us beside each other so we could chat. Ronnie wasn’t a bad kid, but he wasn’t much interested in church.

I had a lot of good meals at their house, but Ronnie usually gobbled quickly and ran off to hang out with his “hoodlum friends.” I preached there for almost three years. I never had the impression that it did much good, at least as far as Ronnie was concerned.

But in his obit, it said that “…he enjoyed praising the Lord and praying for others.” He wanted memorials to go to that church that we shared when we were both so young.

STORIES FOR STEWARDSHIP SEASON

It's stewardship season in churches, so our pastor, Jimmy Moore, told these stories in worship…

A frail little old lady went to the strong man show [probably at the county fair.] The strong man squeezed a lemon until it was dry and then he said he’d give $200 to anyone who could get even a single drop of juice out of it. The little old lady went up and squeezed out three more table spoons of juice. “How did you do that?” “Oh, that was nothing. I’ve been the stewardship chair in our church for 42 years.”

The Sunday School teacher said, “And where do children go who don’t put their offering in the plate?” A boy answered, “To the movies?”

IS EVERYBODY A HERO?

I was in the Dollar Tree Store, buying candy for Trunk or Treat at church. I feel fairly safe there--folks wearing masks. And they take credit cards now, so no cash to handle.

Like everyone else, they are hiring. Their sign said, “Dollar Tree Hiring Essential Heroes.” Really? Heroes?

I get the “essential.” That’s a term we have learned well during this pandemic. Many of the essential workers are the folks who make minimum wage in mundane jobs, but if they don’t do them, we’ll not have stuff to eat, or soap to wash the virus off our hands.

But an “essential worker” isn’t automatically a “hero.” We use the term “hero” so casually these days. People are called heroes not because they do anything heroic, but just because they put on the uniform, from police blue to soldier tan to Home Depot orange. What then can we call a person who actually does something heroic?

            Well, maybe I’m too picky. With all the anti-maskers and anti-vaccers spewing on you while you check them out, maybe just showing up for work is heroic.

John Robert McFarland

“The greatest part of faith is patience.”

 

 

SENIORS TALKING TO SENIORS {About Why We Came Back} [W, 10-27-21]

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

 

That’s how our pastor, Mary Beth Morgan, referred to our Zooming session with Arianna. Helen and I are among the most senior members of St. Mark’s UMC, worshipping here even before we were the first couple married here. I was an unpaid assistant pastor to Dick Hamilton, the founding pastor, during my final semester at IU. After 56 years of going where the bishop sent us and following the grandkids, we returned “home,” to Bloomington, and to St. Mark’s.

Arianna is a college senior, Indiana University, and came to church here as a kid, then moved away with her family, but decided she wanted to be baptized into the Christian faith--which wasn’t automatic, since her mother is a Persian Moslem--and she knew she had to come back to St. Mark’s for that ritual. She started college at St. Mary’s at Notre Dame, but after a year transferred to Indiana University, and so returned to St. Mark’s once again. She is an IU senior and helps out with the Sunday School and youth group. [She was going to help the teens carve Halloween pumpkins after we zoomed.]

So, it being stewardship season, and Rev. Morgan scrounging for a sermon approach to appealing for folks to pony up bucks and hours on behalf of the church, she wanted to ask us seniors why it is that we keep coming back to St. Mark’s. What in the past 65 years of St. Mark’s keeps drawing us back, and what do we think SMUMC needs to do in the next 65 to be so appealing that folks keep wanting to return?

It was such a delightful conversation that we decided we want to do it again, without even needing to produce a sermon for Mary Beth! [Although she did mention that we need more trunks for the Halloween Trunk or Treat at church, so Helen and I are now signed up to provide a trunk full of candy for the masked and masquerading children, and have promised to save a Reese’s for Arianna.]

We decided that one thing that will make us a desirable church, one to which people want to return, is an inter-generational approach. I am always so energized by meeting a young person like Arianna, and young folks appreciate it when older people will listen to them. Mary Beth pointed out, without telling her age exactly, that just in our four zoom boxes, we had three generations. That made our conversation so much more fun than if were only young people telling other young people how far behind we are on our studies, or middle-aged people telling other middle-aged people how worrisome our aging parents are, or old people telling other old people how decrepit our bodies are.

Now we’re thinking about how we can make this inter-generational fun available for others.

Zoom makes intergenerational sharing possible even in a pandemic, or for old people who are home-bound even when there is no pandemic. Vulnerable-though-vaccinated old people like us can talk with young people who are out in the world, because we are safely in our own homes. Yes, Zoom is not ideal, but, once you learn not to talk over one another, it goes just fine.

I feel so much more positive when I’ve talked with some Arianna, or some Aaron or Brianna or Rodney or Joe or Levi or… I suggest that if you want to feel better about the world, and even yourself, go inter-generational. If you have a minimal Zoom IQ, like mine, you know somebody who knows how to Zoom… well, it’s just fun to talk to folks in other walks of life.

John Robert McFarland

 

ODDS & ENDS X: There is Enough, Praying, Dieting [M, 10-25-21]

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

THE REASON FOR ODDS & ENDS

I just realized I posted O&E XI before O&E X. It’s no problem. They can come in any order. That’s how odds and ends work.

I stated doing ODDS & ENDS columns of necessity. I had various bits and pieces that I thought were worth sharing, but not enough for a whole column by itself. As I have been doing them, though, I realized that they might be valuable just in themselves, not of necessity, because of something then-teen daughter, Mary Beth, said. In worship services, I always tried to get every part of the service—sermon, hymns, scriptures, prayers, liturgy—to fit the theme for that day: forgiveness, witness, gratitude, etc. She said, “The problem is, sometimes that theme is not where my life is at all, and so there is nothing in that service for me.” Thus I began to do Odds & Ends worship services, without calling them that, trying to have at least one element of the service that would be a way to open to God for each person there, regardless of life circumstance.

THERE IS ENOUGH

Friends tell me that when I am frustrated or depressed or bored, I should could my blessings. But sometimes I have used up all my blessings, all my good memories and thoughts, and I get bored, so then I have to settle for bad memories and bad thoughts—disappointments and grudges and losses and regrets and anxieties and awfulizing about stuff that might happen.

Except… if I am patient, I find that there is enough to go around, enough blessings, enough good memories, to fill up all my available time and spiritual space.

The Gospel writers talked about that when they told the story of how Jesus fed several thousand people with just a couple of fish and a little bread. He said a word of thanks for the blessing of what they had, and then he had the ushers begin to share the stuff around, and not only did everybody get filled, but there was plenty left over.

If you say a word of thanks for what blessings you have, even if they seem puny and feeble, and then start spreading them around in all your memories and thoughts, there is enough. In fact, at the end of the day, you’ll probably even have some good thoughts left over that you didn’t get a chance to use.

PRAYER CHANGES THINGS… REALLY?

I don’t discount “the power of prayer.” I have experience with it. I know that prayers are sometimes involved, somehow, in changing things, in bringing about healing, especially the healing of forgiveness. Someties, yes,, the healing of the physical. But I don’t pray primarily to change God’s approach to you, or to change you. I pray to change me. The deeper I pray, the better person I become—more sensitive, more accepting, more hopeful. The better I become as a person, the better friend I am to you, and so that changes your situation for the better. Prayer changes that, at least.

HOW NOT TO DIET

            A woman in the lab waiting room was reading a book by that title. I told her I was way ahead, because I already know how not to diet. From what she told me, it sounds like a pretty good book, but there really is no mystery. We all already know that diet health is just eating the right stuff in the right amounts, plus adequate and correct exercise. Piece of cake… oh, maybe not.

John Robert McFarland

“It seems to be a spiritual law that sooner or later we treat others as we treat our own inner selves.” Flora Slosson Wuellner, Prayer, Stress, and Our Inner Wounds

 

 

ODDS & ENDS XI: [Sa, 10-23-21] Privacy, Psychology, Mystery

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

ARE WE CARRYING PRIVACY TOO FAR?

I was at the doctor’s office recently, because that is how old people get to have a social life. After cheerful nurse Olivia had me stand on the scales, she perkily asked a new question, “Do you want to know your weight today?” What?

I asked Dr. V. “Is that a necessary question? Are there actually people who don’t want to know their weight?” She sighed a bit as she said, “Yes, there are.”

Isn’t that carrying this new penchant for privacy a bit far, keeping stuff private from ourselves, lest someone—like me?—misuses it? No wonder 40% of the US population is obese, if we are that far into denial. [No, of course I don’t mean you!]

WHILE WE ARE ON THE SUBJECT OF BODIES…

In my part of the Christian tradition, because Methodists are “doers of the word, and not hearers only,” [James 1:22] and sometimes doers only without bothering to hear, it is popular to quote Theresa of Avila--even though she was not exactly a Methodist, but she was methodistic--about “Christ has no hands but your hands, no feet but your feet, etc.” We tend to interpret that as “mine are the only hands Christ has, so I’d better get busy.” I have come to think not so much that I am the hands of the Body of Christ as I am one lowly cell in the Body of Christ. All the cells of a body are important, but only as part of the body, not all by themselves. I prefer to think that I am a cell in the hands, but if I’m only a cell in the colon, well, that’s necessary, too.

ELEVATOR SUPERIORITY

Recently someone told me, maybe in a book, about a psychologist and a psychiatrist having an argument. It went like… “You’re being passive-aggressive.” “No, you’re being passive aggressive.” It would have been fun to be there.

A friend told of us of her husband’s experience when he was doing a post-doc in psychology at a major university hospital. There were other psych post-docs, and also post-docs in psychiatry. Psychiatrists always look down on psychologists, of course, because psychiatrists are also MDs and can prescribe medicines. All psychologists can do is say, “Do you want to talk about it?” In this hospital, though, the psychiatrists expressed their superiority by disdaining the psychologists because they used the elevators. The psychiatrists were much too busy and important to wait for an elevator; they ran up and down the stairs.

MYSTERY, NOT MASTERY

In his Foreword to Rachel Remen’s Kitchen Table Wisdom, Dean Ornish says that “Most books try to lead you out of mystery into mastery.” That is not Remen’s way.

That’s one thing I can claim for CIW: this column is not about mastery, about some number of effective habits or steps to wisdom or helpful hints for human harmony. I do believe there is life and healing just in sharing stories, in the telling and in the hearing. So please forgive me on those occasions when I try to do more than tell a story to which we can listen together. Or when I try to explain the story instead of letting it tell itself.

TOO MANY WORDS

Sometimes a good story is just a single sentence.

Our pastor, Mary Beth Morgan, told of “having a talk” with one of her sons when he was young. At the end, as the professional educator she once was, she said, “So what did I say?” “I don’t know,” he replied. “There were too many words.”

ON THE OTHER HAND

“We think because we have words, not the other way around.” Madeline L’Engle

John Robert McFarland

 

NAMING THE DECADES, CONTINUED [R, 10-21-21]

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

In the last column, I gave basic names to each of my decades. Here is a fuller look at what I mean, with the hope that it might be useful to you in naming the chapters of your own life. [If I were a young person, I’d probably use periods of four years—I don’t know what they’d be called—for it is in four-year episodes, such as school, that mark a young person’s journey.]

The Kingdom Years [ages 0-10] because Jesus says one must be like a child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The stages of social development in these years include trust vs mistrust, autonomy vs shame/doubt, integrity vs guilt, and industry vs inferiority. A lot of work for a child! I think I “failed” them all. The good news, even for we who fail the work of this decade, is that each time we enter a new development stage [decade?], we have a chance to redo the former stages.

The Yearning Years [ages 10-20], longing for a place to belong. Most of us try on several personae in these years, looking for one that fits us. I knew I loved stories and so assumed I should be a journalist. Then I made the deal with God to become a preacher in exchange for my sister’s life. As the first-grade son of daughter Katie’s friend learned when she told him that girls fart, too, “This changes everything!”

The Learning Years [20-30], learning to be a father and husband and preacher. I revisited the stages of my first decade as my daughters went through the same stages. I was able to learn for myself as I watched them learn, As they grew up, I did, too.

The Adult Years [30-40]. For me, as a campus minister, this decade was years of chaos, with desegregation and Civil Rights and Viet Nam and Kent State and abortion rights. I kept looking around for the adults, waiting for them to bring order to chaos. “Where are the adults when you really need them?” Then I realized that “they” was “us.”

The Running Years [40-50], running faster and longer as a professional as well as a road runner. I first called this decade The Professional Years, for in these years I was in my fullest as a minister and writer. But it was running that kept me sane in these hectic and busy years, so they get the title.

The Cancer Years [50-60]. It started with me. I’m talking about cancer in my family, but Paul Unger blames me for all the dis-ease of our generation. “Everything was going great,” he said, “and then you got cancer, and everything started going sideways.”

            The great thing, though, was we got to live so intensely. We made so many friends in the cancer community. I wrote the book [1], which brought invitations to speak and lead all over the country.

The Family Years [60-80] care-giver for parents, wife, grandchildren, etc. I continued some cancer ministry, and I did several significant interim pastorates, but the real focus was family health. Grandson Joe got cancer. So did Helen. So did both my parents and my brother and younger sister and our older daughter [three times!].

The Soul Years [80…] preparing to die. Life comes full-circle here. Just as the first thing we must learn as children is trust, so the last thing we must learn in order to die successfully is trust. Many people find it helpful in this state to start or renew the disciplines of meditation, contemplation. I have often found it useful to pray and meditate, but I have always been more able to listen for the Holy Spirit in the daily events of life.

Even if you have only a few decades, and the contents of your decades aren’t at all like mine, it might be useful for you to name them. Naming them helps us to understand them and thus accept them as acceptable. As time goes by, you might rename them, realize a particular decade’s work was different than what you thought. I think that naming the decades can be part of soul work, part of listening for the Spirit, at any age.

John Robert McFarland

1] NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Faith and Life for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them. [AndrewsMcMeel, plus Czech, Japanese, and audio editions.]

NAMING THE DECADES [W, 10-19-21]

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

Beware. This column is a self-indulgent look at the years of my own life. My justification is that it might serve as a model or motive for you in understanding your own years. Besides, it’s Helen’s fault.

Our IU Wesley Foundation and SMU theology school friend, Bob Parsons, recently asked for a recommendation for a book on the Holy Spirit [HS], because someone else had asked him for one. There are not a lot of books specifically on the HS, so we recommended to her volume 3 of Paul Tillich’s Systematic Theology.

 Helen, who is famous as the creator and chief practitioner of “Home Ec Theology,” asked me to summarize the 1500 or so pages of Tillich’s systematic theology “in a sentence or two.” So, I did: God is the ground of being. We are accepted, even though we are unacceptable, because we are a part of that ground.

Which got me to thinking about the ways of the HS in the different volumes of my life…

When I was in college and campus ministry, Tillich was having a renaissance, especially because of his book of sermons, The Shaking of the Foundations, especially because of the sermon there entitled simply “You Are Accepted.” For college students, yearning to be accepted but sure they were unacceptable, that was truly a word of grace.

There were other religious thinkers who had a significant impact on us in those years. Martin Buber’s I and Thou was a work we all read, or tried to, or claimed we did. Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning was just as important and easier to read, because it was more narrative and heart-grabbing. Reinhold Niebuhr’s Leaves from the Notebooks of a Tamed Cynic was forty years old, which to students is an eon, but out in a new paperback, and his critiques of church and society were as accurate then [and now, in 2021] as they were in the 1910s, when he was a young, single pastor of the German Evangelical Denomination, in the newly burgeoning industrial city of Detroit. C.S. Lewis pulled us in with The Screwtape Letters and the Narnia series and then led us to Mere Christianity and Surprised by Joy.  

Well, I’m at 400 words, and I try not to go over 500, so I’ll just give a brief look at the life stages and then fill them out more completely in the next column…

The Kingdom Years [ages 0-10] because Jesus says one must be like a child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The Yearning Years [ages 10-20], longing for a place to belong. The Learning Years [20-30], learning to be a father and husband and preacher. The Adult Years [30-40] Leaning to be an adult while a campus minister and grad student. The Running/Professional Years [40-50], running faster and longer as a professional as well as a road runner. The Cancer Years [50-60]. The Family Years [60-80] care-giver for parents, wife, grandchildren, etc. The Soul Years [80…] soul work, preparing to die.

Each decade is not clearly defined, sometimes starting early or spilling over late by a year or two. But what name would you give to each of your decades?

John Robert McFarland

“To grow old is to pass from passion to compassion.” Albert Camus

 

 

ODDS & ENDS IX: Feeding the Lake, Donation Blues, Writing Mistakes [Sun, 10-17-21]

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

I use Roman numerals to number these Odds & Ends columns because they are the Super Bowl of CIW…

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE LAKE, OR MAYBE THE STORE HOUSE

In Walking On Water, Madeline L’Engle cites Jean Rhys [British novelist, 1890-1979], who compared life to a huge lake of stories. It must be fed, by tributaries, or it will go dry, from evaporation and leakage. Some tributaries are big rivers, like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Others are just streams, or trickles, like herself, Rhys said. But it’s the lake that is important. The lake must be fed, so there will always be enough water that everyone can drink.

I like that image, but we need food as well as drink. I also think of life as a big store house of love. We each get to eat from it, and we each do our own form of gardening to add to it. Some of those who add are master gardeners, like Mohandas Gandhi and Jane Addams and Oskar Schindler. Others are just folks like you and me, who grow a tomato or two. But keeping the storehouse full, so that everyone can come and eat, that’s our job. All of us.

THE DONATION BLUES

Considering the section just above, I should be writing “Adding to the Store House of Love” march, but I went to Opportunity House with donations last week, and I’m thinking about how old men need to get rid of stuff but have a hard time doing it, at least old men of my profession, because for years we wore suits and dress shirts and carried briefcases, stuff nobody uses anymore, at least those who shop in thrift shops, where the donations go. So I wrote a blues song about it. More or less to the tune of “He’s in the jail house now.” Feel free to add your own verses…

I would be glad to donate

so it don’t go to probate

but nobody wants

a gray suit anymore

I gave a neatly folded

shirt of white

Goodwill tossed it

out at night

Nobody wants

a neck tie anymore

I got those nobody

wants a brief case

anymore blues…

TODAY [AS I POST] IS SUNDAY, SO…

In Marilynne Robinson’s Jack, a story of interracial romance in 1950, the most recent novel in her Gilead saga, Jack thinks about the sabbath and decides that it is a very good thing “to close the world once a week.” That’s a delightful phrase.

I think that a lot of our problems are because nobody anymore gets to have a day when the world is closed.

DEALING WITH MISTAKES

Going through old papers and found a thank-you note from the school--where daughter Mary Beth was a teacher--for being the writer-in-residence for their writing fair. I sat in a big room and each period another class would come in and talk with me about writing. The teacher in charge said, “The children loved talking to you,” which warms my heart to remember. It reminded me of the sweetest little first grade girl who asked me, “Do you ever make mistakes when you write a book?” I assured her that did happen. “Well, it would be a good idea then,” she said, “to write them in pencil, wouldn’t it?”

John Robert McFarland

“A myth is a story about the way things never were but always are.” Marcus Borg quoting Thomas Mann

 

 

CAN I MAKE IT THROUGH THE WINTER? [F, 10-15-21]

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

 Over the years, I have worked with many funeral directors. Some were very simple in their approaches, boring really. Some were more complex. The complex ones were much more interesting. I tried to stay away from them.

One of those had a dove ritual to close the service at the cemetery. Right after I pronounced the benediction, he would throw a white dove into the air. It was actually a white homing pigeon that looked like a dove. It flew away, into the infinite sky. Actually, it flew back to its cote, but we saw it only as it disappeared over the rainbow, not as it was going home for supper.

Except for that winter funeral.

Cemetery services in winter are tricky, especially if there is snow. When Helen’s great-aunt died, her only family was Helen and her sister. So not only was I the preacher, Helen and Mary and John and I were the pall-bearers, lugging her casket from the hearse to the grave through knee-deep snow. But at least we didn’t have a dove release to deal with.

In that other winter funeral that I’m talking about, the one with the dove, it was SO cold! I made the committal as short as possible. Dick threw the dove into the air. But either he had held it too tightly, trying to keep it warm, or the below-zero temps had just done in its little lungs, for instead of flying away over the horizon, it dropped to the dirty frozen snow, a lump of motionless feathers, dead. Not a very helpful symbol. It couldn’t make it through the winter.

Can I make it through the winter? That is what old people ask about this time of year. If they think they can’t, or don’t want to try, they go ahead and die in October.  Ministers and funeral directors know that.

If we do decide to try to make it through, it seems such a waste to die half-way along, so we wait until May to die. Ministers and funeral directors know that, too.

It seems so wrong, that October and May are the dying months. They’re the prettiest months of all—new leaves in spring, and colored leaves in autumn.

In October we face the question the colored leaves put to us: can you make it through? Through the snow, the cold, the boots, the isolation… so that we don’t have a winter funeral?

From Dick and other complex funeral directors, and from my own attempts at complex worship, through the years I became more and more simple, depending not upon doves or musical instruments or audio-visuals. I’m not opposed to those things. They do make worship more interesting, in the same way as the Chinese curse—“May you live in interesting times.”

Jesus didn’t have any of those things, and he did okay.

I’m old. I don’t have a lot of energy to deal with the fallout when things go sideways—literal fallout when the dove dies. So more and more, I just depend on the stories, the words of the Word. That way, I think I can make it through the winter.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

ODDS & ENDS VIII: PANTHERS, SUPPLY CHAINS, ET AL [W, 10-13-21]

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

As you know, Helen has a “different” outlook on sports, which earned her the title, with our then-teen daughters, not of “the color commentator,” but “the off-color commentator.” In today’s newspaper this was the title on a sports page article: “Panthers Pummel Penguins.” She said, “Well, they’d be pretty poor panthers if they couldn’t pummel penguins.”

It reminds me of when my school chum, Mike Dickey, RIP, was coaching a grade school football team called the Panthers. He got mad at them and told them, “I’m taking away your name. You are not worthy of it. You cannot call yourselves Panthers anymore.”

After he sent them away, one of the fathers came up to him. Mike was tough and muscular--back in high school days, forty years before--but not a big man—about 5’9, 160 lbs. He said, “This guy was huge. Like a truck driver or construction guy. He was glowering. Then he teared up and said, ‘Does that mean I can’t call myself a Panther, either?’”

“A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water.” Eleanor Roosevelt

Facebook “suggested” a post for me that was headed “Only women will understand.” I think I’m complimented…

“The Kingdom of God is not for the well-meaning but for the desperate.”  James Denney

We hear quite a bit these days about the economic recovery--following the pandemic, as though it’s over, which it is not—being “K shaped,” meaning simply that parts of the economy are recovering at different rates from other parts. That sounds “N shaped” to me, meaning Normal, but I guess it’s isn’t. I once had a Plymouth “K car,” and it rarely recovered at all, so maybe the economy is named for it.

A title popped into my head, prompted by recent events. Stuck in the Suez Again. It might be a novel, or short story, but I usually think of titles as belonging to sermons. The good thing about a sermon title like Stuck in the Suez Again is that it’s intriguing, catches attention, because it’s timely, but any aspect of the Gospel can fit into it. I’d probably go with Jesus’ story about putting your trust in stuff, about the man who amassed so much stuff that he had to build bigger warehouses but died anyway. If you can’t get along without the stuff that is stuck in the Suez, you need to redo your life. “Do not put your trust in the supply chain, where moth and rust corrupt.”

When our granddaughter was a student at MI State U, just a few years ago, “supply train management” had more students than any other major. They must have some pretty bad teachers.

“The sweet poison of the false infinite…” CS Lewis

“Nobody wants to read about a soldier who’s just a little brave.” F. Scott Fitzgerald on writing. I suppose in writing, that makes sense, but in my experience, it’s the little bits of bravery that get us by.

“If God exists, he isn’t just butter and good luck.” Mary Oliver

John Robert McFarland

 

 

ALL THE CLICHÉS, ALL OF THEM [M, 10-11-21]

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

Today is the first day of the rest of your life. This is the slogan/cliché that Jean Cramer-Heuerman referenced when we both got cancer. Before those days, we sat in the back of committee rooms and made cynical remarks to each other about the simplisms other people spouted. But after the oncologists told us we’d die, she said, “You know, all the cliches are true. This really is the first day of the rest of my life.”

So I began to be less cynical and more open to using one cliché or another to direct me through some hard thing. Which is one of Carrie Newcomer’s cliché songs: You Can Do This Hard Thing.

Here is some of my collection so far:

Reach for it, even if you can’t grasp it. “A baby’s reach should exceed its grasp, or what’s a cat’s tail for.” The original is Robert Browning’s “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for,” but I prefer this tweak by the humanities professor and new father who Tweets as “Saethelred, the Unready.” It’s just so visual.

Try again. Our pastor, Jimmy Moore, recently used this in a sermon about a very popular and effective rabbi who had tried seminary when young and was told he didn’t have the gifts and graces necessary. Later someone suggested that he should be a rabbi. He told him he had tried but it hadn’t worked out. “Try again,” he was told. He said it’s the advice he used most often in his ministry.

Be Perfect. [John Wesley] Perfection is not just the goal; it is the method. Perfect not in action or knowledge. Those are not possible. But perfect in love. Perfection in love means always intending/trying to do the right thing, the kind thing. Love is not just the goal; it’s the method.

Don’t get careless with your mind. A college student in one of my churches told me that this was his problem: “I get careless with my mind.” So I told him, “Don’t do that.”

            Doctor: Does it hurt when you do this?
             Patient: Yes.
            Doctor: Then don’t do it.

Bloom where you’re planted. My seminary roommate [for 3 weeks, the only time either of us had a seminary roommate], Walt Wagener, has always been such a good example of this. He always refers to that rabbi whose name I always forget who said that on the judgment day, we shall be called to account for every moment of beauty we failed to appreciate.

Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. From an Alfred Lord Tennyson poem.

Love is the answer. Doesn’t make any difference what the question is; love is always the answer.

No day is over if it makes a memory. One of Helen’s favorites.

Laughter is the best medicine. “Unless you’re diabetic. Then insulin is the best medicine.” Scott Burton, cancer survivor comedian

Knock, and it shall be opened. Or, as the golfers say, “Never up, never in.”

Put your shoulder to the wheel. Yes, my frail strength can’t make much difference, “But I am prejudiced beyond debate, in favor of my right to choose, which side shall feel the stubborn ounces of my weight.” Bonaro W. Overstreet

Whenever I have faced some problem, I have chosen a helpful cliche and recited it to myself. But now I’m old. I’m easily confused. Sometimes I can’t remember which mantra I should chant to put myself into right mind and actions. Also, my inadequacies have accumulated so greatly in so many years that now, I just say, “All the clichés! All of them!”

John Robert McFarland

“Moments come and go, but phrases you find framed at Target last forever.”

 

PREACHER CALLING [Sa, 10-9-21]

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

 

A vaccinated, retired preacher couple came to our house last week. It took a number of emails and telephone calls to arrange the time together. In the olden days, they would have just showed up. We would have let them in and made some coffee and looked around for cookies.

Even preachers just don’t do “drop in” visiting anymore, and the pandemic has made it even less acceptable. We have busy lives. Some of us are working from home. Some have kids doing on-line schooling. Some of us are binge-watching “Call the Midwife.” Some of us are unvaccinated, and I’ll gladly turn you away at the door if you are unvaccinated.

There was a time—before TV and working wives--when preachers were expected to just drop in on their parishioners. Making an “appointment” was okay, but not expected. It was a system that provided some great stories.

I think my favorite was about the family that had a front door in a shift-shape frame. The door stuck so hard that the only way they could get it open was by sticking the thin blade of a hatchet in between the door and the frame and they prying. So everyone knew you didn’t use their front door. Except the new preacher, who had just come to town and was making his rounds unannounced. He rang the front doorbell. One of the children peeked out a window to see who it was. As the pastor stood on the front steps, he heard someone shout, “It’s the preacher. Get the hatchet.”

I once ran out the back door to escape a drop-in call by the preacher, and I was a preacher myself at the time. And I wasn’t alone. My wife, and my brother and his wife, and our two teen daughters went with me.

It was at the house of my parents. As most of these stories go, the preacher was new. He was a distinguished looking man, with an impressive prow, and a long flowing white mane in a time, about 40 years ago, when men didn’t wear their hair long. And his wife was with him.

My brother and I were roofing our parents’ house. In southern Indiana in July. It was 95 degrees and 80 % humidity. We had started as soon as there was enough light to see, to try to beat the heat. Now it was afternoon, of the third day, and we were taking a break in front of their one little room air-conditioner, sweating like Turks [if that’s racist, say that we were sweating like Hoosiers], with our shirts off. Our women folk had been doing kitchen stuff for Mother and were similarly sweaty and disheveled, although with shirts. When the front bell rang, we peeked, and saw this distinguished looking couple. We weren’t ready for polite company. Somebody, and I swear I don’t know who, said, “It’s the preacher! Run!” So, lemming-like, we ran out the back door while Mother was letting The Rev. & Mrs. Dewitt Coates in through the front door.

Once outside, we realized that this surely was not the correct way to react. By then, though, we were too embarrassed to go back in, and not fit to sit on overstuffed chairs with overstuffed guests, anyway, So we snuck around the side of the house and walked the five blocks or so to Uncle Johnny’s hardware store [my mother’s youngest brother] and got wonderfully cold cokes out of the vending machine and waited until we figured my parents had hosted the preacher long enough that he had continued on his get-acquainted rounds, like Garrison Keillor’s “fishing dog,” Bruno, waited to return—the time he stole the whole salmon off the table-- until he was sure that people thought he had forgotten about his misdeed so that there was no point punishing him.

Times change. When I started preaching, everyone expected me to drop in at any time, and I did. By the time I retired, 40 years later, I would not have thought of going to someone’s house without making an appointment. Life is vastly different now from when I started preaching, and visiting, 65 years ago.

This is probably a better system now, making appointments. But there aren’t nearly as many good stories that come from when the preacher shows up announced.

John Robert McFarland

When Maltbie Babcock was a famous preacher in the fancy section of Boston, he was out calling and saw a little boy straining to reach the doorbell on a house. So, he went up and lifted the little boy up so he could ring the bell. When he put him down, the kid said, “Now, mister, run like hell!”

 

THE SOULS OF CHILDREN [R, 10-7-21]

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

Last Sunday’s Gospel reading, according to the Common Lectionary, was Mark 10:2-16, which contains Jesus’ remonstrance to his church ushers about running children off, because folks can’t enter the kingdom of heaven unless their own souls are like those of little kids. In that passage, he also says divorce is wrong, but not only is half the congregation divorced these days, but half of the preachers are, too, so we make do with “It was because in Jesus’ day, a divorced woman had no place in society or a way of making a living, so it wasn’t really divorce he was against, but the economic structure, but that’s different now, so we can’t apply his words literally…”

All of which I think is accurate, but creates all sorts of thorny questions, like “Well, when and how DO we apply Jesus’ sayings legitimately?” I mean, how can we say “Gays are wrong because the Bible says so, when we don’t say divorce is wrong because the Bible says so?”

So, we preachers usually choose to ignore the divorce issue and go with his statement about “let the children come to me,” by doing a “children’s moment” in worship, and then sending the children away to “children’s church,” so they won’t bother us while we listen to the preacher talk about what Jesus said about letting the children stay.

Well, all this is too confusing for an old man. I thought I’d write something mildly homiletic, not too preachy, about it, but how? Why in the world did Mark put Jesus’ exclusion of divorce and inclusion of little kids together? Didn’t he know that would cause consternation for preachers?

Fortunately, “tradition” is part of the Wesleyan quadrilateral for deciding what is right and wrong--along with Bible, experience, and reason--so I’m going with tradition when I ignore the divorce issue and let the little children into this column…

At coffee time of my first Sunday as pastor at the Arcola, IL UMC, a four-year-old walked up to me, announced, “I’m Wobbiebigs,” and held out his arms. I grasped his wrists and twirled him in a circle. He smiled and went on his way. That happened every Sunday until his legs got too long and my arms got too short. I learned that my predecessor, Glen Bocox, had started that ritual with him. Wobbiebigs just assumed that was part of the job of the preacher, whoever had that position at the time.

At the all-church birthday party, when we sat at the table of our birth month, regardless of age or family, four-year-old Wobbiebigs and 84-year-old Art Harry would carry on long and involved conversations that the rest of us at the table did not understand. It was fascinating to watch the two of them listen so intently to each other.

I doubt that Dr. Robert Biggs. M.D. remembers Glen Bocox or Art Harry. He remembers me a little, because he was 12 when I retired. I suspect, however, that even if he does not remember how he was treated by Glen or Art or me, his soul remembers how he was treated in that church. He could expect to get a twirl from the preacher just by holding out his arms, he could expect that an old curmudgeon would pay attention to him when he talked. That’s good soul work with a child.

I have long felt that the main reason that old people exist is for doing soul work with children. Well, not just old people, but all Christians and churches. Soul work with children, that’s our job.

I remember once at a church conference, when there were not many women pastors yet, and clergy women felt like that had to justify their existence, a young woman pastor said that it was good to have women in the ministry because they were more sensitive to children. “I know the names of all the children in my church,” she announced proudly. I was stunned. I knew the names of all the children in my church, and my church had five times more kids than hers did. It never occurred to me that any pastor, male or female, would not know the names of all the children. Knowing their names was just the start of doing soul work with the kids, but it was a necessary start.

In the process of doing soul work with children, even if it is “only” praying for them, we find that our own souls are re-molded, so that they are like the souls of little children, fit to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Any time a child sticks out hands to you, grab them and start twirling.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

GENERAL INCLUSION [M, 10-4-21]

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

When I dropped out of high school in my senior year to work in the Potter & Brumfield factory, in the county seat, Princeton, 12 miles away, I assumed that if I went to college, it would be in my hometown, Oakland City College [Now a university]. I could go there part-time, maybe even full-time if I worked the night shift at the factory. I knew that even though it was a small college, you could get a good education there. Almost all my teachers had gone there, and they were smart enough. [1]

The General Baptist theology of OCC would have been in line with my Methodist affiliation, for both believed in “general” atonement, usually called “free will.” We weren’t predestined for heaven or hell; how we lived in this life determined where we would be in the next.

That stuff really meant nothing to the teen me, though. I was just an amorphous Christian in those days. Serious, but not really educated in the faith. Being Christian meant treating others as you wanted to be treated, and going to church, and avoiding serious sins, like smoking cigarettes.

OCC was [and is] the only college of The General Baptist denomination. In my high school days, it was a very small denomination, only about thirty thousand people, mostly in little churches in small towns in southwestern Indiana, a few in Tennessee, and… in Guam.

Exactly how Guam came into the General Baptist universe I don’t know. Maybe soldiers from Oakland City in WWII? Anyway, the GBs were very proud of being a missional church, all the way to Guam… until Angelo Flores Sablan came to Oakland City to attend OCC. Then there was a problem.

He wasn’t white. What did you let a Guamanian into, and how far? Could he live in the dorm? Have a white roommate? Eat in the cafeteria with everybody else? What if he wanted to hold hands with a white girl? [Holding hands was as far as GBs were supposed to go.] Worse, what if a white girl were willing to hold hands with him?

If he were a Negro, it would be simple enough. He would sleep in the furnace room, eat in the kitchen, sweep up the concert hall after a minstrel show. If he even looked at a white girl, you’d ride him out of town on a rail. Regular stuff of the day. Simple rules for stratifying and satisfying people. 

But Angelo wasn’t a Negro. His skin wasn’t even very dark. Besides, he was a General Baptist, so he had to be treated… how? There were no readily available categories to use to discriminate against him. But everybody knew he had to be treated differently some way or another, because… well, he was different! Yes, “general” in “General” Baptist meant Jesus had died for him, too, but… he wasn’t white!

To their credit, the college and the town reacted in a noble way, a traditional Christian way, by talking about it a lot and doing nothing about it at all. Angelo probably thought we were all nice Christian folks who accepted him gladly, instead of confirmed racists who were befuddled by what to do about one who is our own… but different.

I looked Angelo up on the internet. He died in 2011, in Florida. His funeral was at a Baptist church. I’m sure he went to heaven, because the “general” in General Baptist means Christ died in general, for everybody.

John Robert McFarland

1] I learned many years later that I could have had a scholarship to OCC, too. Homer Heathman, our neighbor on the next farm, up the hill, had given money to the college at a time when it was in financial straits. In return, they had put aside two scholarships for him to give. His grandson told me that Homer had saved one for me, but he didn’t tell me, because he wanted me to be able to make up my own mind about where I wanted to go to college without feeling undue pressure from him. He was a good neighbor, and did many good things for me and my family. One of the best things he did for me was something he didn’t do, for had I not gone to IU, I would not have met Helen, and…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NAUGHTY GIRLS [Sat, 10-2-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life For The Years Of Winter

A writer friend recently told daughter Katie Kennedy that her son had asked her, rather hesitantly, if girls farted. [In Canada, they say “tooted” instead of farted, because they are on the metric system.] When she assured him that they do, he said, “This changes everything!”

It was heartening to me to learn that boys still believe, until their mothers spill the beans, that girls are delicate creatures who do not participate in the naughtier parts of life--like gaseous emissions, which produce about 80% of boy laughter--for that was certainly the word on the street when I was in grade school. Of course, I probably believed that girls never did anything naughty because that’s what my older sister told me.

Along about 7^th grade, I joined 4H, the equivalent of scouting for farm kids. So I knew all the words to “I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover.”

It was written by Mort Dixon and Harry Woods and released in 1927, but it was having a radio-play revival of sorts 20 years later when I first started riding a school bus. Everyone went around humming, “I’m looking over, a four-leaf clover, that I overlooked before…”

The 4-H clubs, at least where I lived, had adopted the song as a sort of unofficial anthem. It was a natural, for it was rural in nature, even mentioning “…a homestead in the new-mown hay” in one verse. More importantly, though, 4H, established in 1902, already used the four-leaf clover as its symbol.

The four leaves of the 4H clover stand for head, hands, heart, and health. For Harry Woods they were “…sunshine, rain, roses that grow in the lane, and someone that I adore.” Close enough.

Then, one day on the school bus, I heard some girls, teens, a few years older than I, giggling in the back end of the bus. They were singing “Four Leaf Clover.” I perked up. My 4H song! But they were singing secretively, and laughing and shushing each other a lot. I picked up enough, though, to know they were not singing either about head and hands or sunshine and roses. The main line seemed to be “I’m looking under a two-legged wonder…” About boys!

It was embarrassing to realize that they knew all about my anatomy--rhyming, even--when I knew nothing of theirs. It only got worse. About 8^th grade, Darrel Guimond snuck a pamphlet on “human reproduction” out of the secret drawer in the school library, but it had unfathomable terms like “fallopian tubes,” and line drawings that revealed nothing. You could tell one was a girl, because it had a pair of little smiley lines on its chest, and more head hair than the other figure. Not really helpful.

To add to my continuing ignorance, because of snafus in scheduling, I had to take freshman biology with the girls, taught by the Old Maid Home Ec Teacher, Iva Jane McCrary. [I’m sure that Old Maid Home Ec Teacher was part of her official title, for no one ever referred to her without it.] Sammy Kell was the only other boy. You’d think that might be helpful, biology with the girls, but when it came time for the two-day session on human reproduction, Sammy and I were sent to the principal’s office to wait it out. I wasn’t sure I would ever get to humanly reproduce.

The worst thing, though, was the shattering of my image of girls. I thought naughtiness was the province of boys alone. Now we had nothing that was our own…

John Robert McFarland

In looking for pix to go with this column, I googled "naughty girls." Big mistake.