OLD PEOPLE TELLING STORIES [F, 12-31-21]

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

[This column is dedicated to an old person who tells stories, The Rev. Dr. Fred Skaggs, APC, who is retiring today… for the third time!]

OLD PEOPLE TELLING STORIES  [F, 12-31-21]

 

I mentioned Archie Yarde in the recent column about volunteer fire fighters. Archie was my first pastoral call when I was sent, in retirement, to do a one-year, part-time interim at Tampico, IL, a town of 600 or so people. It turned out to be one of my most pleasant pastoral experiences.

I lived about 30 miles away, so I was not in town every day. But that first week, I went out to get the lay of the land, and meet with the secretary to get orientated to the congregation. She told me that I should call on Archie. “He’s been so depressed since his wife died. He has been a pillar of this church forever, but he hasn’t come to church since her funeral, because it was so bad. She was one of the most-loved women in town, and he feels it was disrespectful to her, the former preacher doing such a bad job of honoring her. Nobody even knew what the preacher was talking about. Archie just feels bad about being in the church where that happened.”

Everyone agreed that my predecessor was a nice man but a terrible preacher, who, while preaching, would “wander into the long grass,” and not be able to find his way back.

So I went immediately to Archie’s house. We didn’t talk about his wife’s funeral, or his disconcert with my predecessor. We just talked, a couple of old guys getting acquainted. Archie was as advertised, sort of forlorn. But as we talked that afternoon, he began to brighten. We just told each other stories.

He told me about his wife and twin daughters, middle-aged women then, but as always with fathers, the stories of when they were little took first place. I had two daughters, too, also married women, approaching middle age, with my own stories of cute little girls. He was probably twenty years my senior, but we were contemporaries in stories.

He told me about Tampico, what I needed to know about the town, but no gossip about people, just what the town was like. One of my campus ministry students at IL State U, and continuing friend, was from Tampico, the son of Archie’s wife’s best friend, and we shared stories of Ron.

Finally, he said, “I’m okay.”

He became a regular at church again, and one of my best supporters and friends. All of us, always, need someone who will listen to our stories. That’s all Archie needed to get back to “okay.”

Sometimes, though, as we get older, there are fewer folks to listen to our stories. I remember a M*A*S*H episode on TV when a reporter was there, interviewing the doctors and nurses. Commanding officer, Col. Potter, the oldest of the bunch by far, said that he loved the young doctors he worked with, their competence and enthusiasm, but he had started as an army doctor in WWI. He rode a horse! There was no one in his MASH unit who understood his stories.

If you find yourself with no one to listen, tell your stories, anyway. Write them down, or just tell them to yourself. Or tell them to God… God’s old enough to understand everybody’s story!

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

ODDS & ENDS FOR THE END OF 2021 [W, 12-29-21]

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

PLAN B

I’ve never seen this on a shelf in a grocery store, but we eat lots of “Plan B” at our house. At least, that’s what the cook calls it.

 

CURMUDGEONLY DREAMING

One of the interesting questions of the last two years, the pandemic years, for old people is: how much of the change in my life is due only to covid restrictions, and so can be ignored if we ever get through the pandemic, and how much of that change is due to real old age decline, so that there will be no recovery? It’s not exactly necessary to know the answer now. Still, I think I might be able to deal with life a little better if I know if my aversion to people in the flesh is just because I’m trying to avoid the virus, or if I have truly morphed into the curmudgeon I always hoped to be, so that I can keep on being the man of my hopes even after the virus is vanquished.

 

AT LEAST OUR STATE IS FIRST IN SOMETHING!

Indiana’s Attorney General, Todd Rokita, says that he doesn’t believe the covid 19 crisis is all that bad, even though all Indiana hospitals have had to appeal to the National Guard for help because they are overwhelmed by more covid patients than ever before. Rokita does not believe the figures his own state releases on covid because …that’s been politicized from day one. Those figures are just puffed up. It’s not nearly that bad.

Rokita is right. The covid crisis is politicized in his state. He just doesn’t admit who is doing the politicizing. Not surprisingly, this state ranks 42^nd in vaccinations. But we have a legitimate claim to being first in stupid politicians. [Yeah, yeah. I know. Your state does, too.]

 

CHRISTMAS CHAOS WRAPUP

Old friend Paul Unger told us of a Christmas when he was pastor of Calvary UMC in Normal, IL. The tree for Christmas was outside, waiting for entrance, and decorating, when an ice storm came up and covered it. Paul took it to the parsonage garage, next door, to let it thaw, but that wasn’t fast enough, so he ran the garden hose from the hot water faucet in the kitchen and sprayed it with hot water. Took a lot of time and water. Then it went to the church and got decorated for Christmas eve. When folks came in for the service, though, they found that every last needle on the tree was now on the floor. He had “scalded” the tree, something that he, even though a farm boy, did not know was possible. [I’m a farm boy, and I didn’t know it, either.] But, of course, he got a sermon out of it. “You Can’t Keep Christmas from Coming.” Makes no diff how many needles the tree does or does not have.

Paul also told us that when they were young, he and his 3 sibs would snoop before Christmas to find and look at their gifts. One year they thought it would be funny to put them back in a different hiding place. Problem was that when Christmas came, their parents couldn’t find them, and they couldn’t, either, because they could not remember where they had hidden them.

 

I think I quoted this years-ago observation from old friend Kathy Roberts in another recent CIW, but… “I don’t understand why people are surprised when Christmas is chaotic. Anything that starts with the birth of a baby is bound to be chaotic.” As faithful watchers of “Call the Midwife” on PBS, I can certainly understand that.

Reminds me of the yuppie couple of a few years ago who had a baby and were so amazed when it changed their life. They had assumed they’d just keep going on as usual with their yuppie lifestyle. They were so surprised that they couldn’t keep on as usual that they wrote a book about it, so that other couples would know ahead of time that their life would change when a baby came into it. How “Duh?” can you get?

 

WHO IS THAT MASKED MAN?

The young woman pharmacy tech at CVS called me “Mr. John.” Apparently she felt that I was too old to be just “John” but not old enough to be “Mr. McFarland.” That’s sort of nice.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

NOTHING IS AS OVER AS CHRISTMAS [M, 12-27-21

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

 

NOTHING IS AS OVER AS CHRISTMAS   [M, 12-27-21, a repeat from Sat, 12-28-19, and I think from some other years before that, too!]

That is what Georgia Karr, the world’s best mother-in-law, always said, as she slumped into an easy chair on the afternoon of Dec. 25. Over. The buying, the making, the wrapping, the cooking, the smiling, all of it—over.

There is another way that nothing is as over as Christmas: God spoke the complete Word of Christ once, in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. The Word of Love. The Word of You Matter. The first word, and the final word. Alpha and Omega.

Once. That was enough. But it’s like that good story Grandpa always tells at Christmas. It is a once-upon-a-time story… “once”… but it’s a repeat story, too. It happened once, but it’s such a good story, such an important story, that it needs to be repeated, retold, relived.

God birthed Love into the world once, came to us in the flesh, incarnate, once, but each Christmas we retell the story. One story, one Word, but told over and over, in a thousand different languages, in a million different voices…

Nothing is as over as Christmas. But Christmas is never over.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

GOD STAYS AND PLAYS [Sa, 12-25-21]

 

This, of course, is my favorite Christmas story, and so I repeat it every year.

As Christmas approached when our granddaughter, Brigid, was about four years old, she said to her mother, “You know, Santa and Grandpa are a lot alike. Santa has a bald head, and Grandpa has a bald head. Santa has a white beard, and Grandpa has a white beard. Santa brings toys, and Grandpa brings toys… but Grandpa is better, because he stays and plays.”

That, I think, is the message of Christmas. God is not just some Santa, hurrying through the universe, stopping on the roof of the earth long enough to throw a few toys down. In Jesus, the Christ, God stays and plays.

John Robert McFarland

ODE TO A THREE-FOOT K-MART CHRISTMAS TREE [R, 12-23-21,

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

 ODE TO A THREE-FOOT K-MART CHRISTMAS TREE [R, 12-23-21, a repost from 12-1-16, edited to make it current.]

 

Helen is an excellent and enthusiastic seasonal decorator. Christmas has always been her favorite time for decorating, but when we moved from a large house to a small condo, six and ½ years now, she gradually but bravely gave up our big Christmas tree and a lot of decorations.

Still, to begin with, I had to hang as many shelves as possible on the walls of our narrow one-car condo garage to accommodate the remaining decorations. The first year I took down 20 boxes—some large, some not quite as large--and a wreath. The second year it was only 16 boxes. It’s been a smaller number every year.

We did add one thing, though, that first year, because our living room isn’t very big. Helen has been very brave about accepting it, in part because we stopped hosting Christmas but instead went to daughter Katie’s house. She has a really big tree.

It is important for older people to learn to accept a smaller life, and Helen accepted that little, three-foot, artificial tree, that stands on the round coffee table my father made. Last year, though, Helen was tired enough at the end of Christmasing that she decided we no longer needed a tree at all. She just took the ornaments off the tree and stuck it out on the patio, lights and all. This year, she discovered that wintering and summering on the patio hadn’t hurt it at all. That’s a tough little tree!

What do you do when a three-foot K-Mart Christmas tree refuses to die? You bring it in, and put ornaments on it, and sing a song about it! It’s not long, but you can sing it…

ODE TO A THREE-FOOT K-MART CHRISTMAS TREE

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree

How shortened are your branches.

 

You stand upon a table round

You’re much too short to be on the ground

Your ornaments do not make a sound

There’s no room for gifts beneath you to be found

 

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree

How shortened are your branches

 

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree

Forever short your stature.

But your tiny lights bring large delight

We smile when you are in our sight

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree

Size is no measure of pleasure

 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

I HEARD THE TRUTH ON CHRISTMAS DAY [T, 12-21-21]

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

       {A repost. I first posted this in 2010}

 

It’s Christmas, almost, and I miss my friend, Phyllis, for it was at Christmas time that I first met her, when we were both ten years old. I miss her especially when I hear “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.”

My family had moved from the working-class near-east side of Indianapolis to the country near Oakland City in March. Phyllis and I were both in fifth grade, but I didn’t meet her until Christmas time. I was in 5-A, kids who started school in January, and she was 5-B, kids who started in Sept. She lived in town and I rode a school bus. And we went to different churches.

I went to Forsythe, an open-country Methodist church. Phyllis’ father, Jimmy Graham, was the pastor at Oak Grove General Baptist Church, a mile down the gravel road from Forsythe. Those churches held different theologies [except for belief in free will], but we shared a common culture, and so we also shared a common VBS and Christmas program. It was at that shared Christmas program in 1947 that I met Phyllis.

After the little children had “said their pieces,” and the older ones had sung a carol in a rag-tag choir, there was an excited stirring, especially among the Methodists, who were not used to excitement in church, at least not of the Baptist kind. Everyone looked to the back of the church. Striding confidently forward, holding an accordion almost as large as she, came this skinny little girl. She stepped up onto the platform, worked the bellows, and began to sing, with the deepest, fullest voice I had ever heard. Her song was “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” Longfellow’s 1863 poem, written in the midst of the Civil War, later set to John Calkin’s music.

I had never before heard a song like that, or a voice like that. It seemed like I was in the presence of royalty, or perhaps twelve-year old Elizabeth Taylor in “National Velvet,” or Margaret O’Brien in “Meet Me in St. Louis.” I later learned that when Phyllis sang in churches, she was billed as “the little girl with the big voice.”

I say that I met Phyllis then, but she didn’t meet me. Because of different grades and buses and churches, we didn’t really meet until we were freshmen in high school. We met then because I was in the girls’ biology class.

I was a mid-year student, and worked on the school newspaper and sang in the choir. In a small school, with limited class offerings, that meant a confused class schedule. As a freshman, I had the second semester of “Commercial Arithmetic,” without benefit of the first semester, with mostly junior girls, and since I was otherwise scheduled during the boys’ biology class, I was placed in the girls’ class, taught by Iva Jane McCrary, the “old maid” Home Ec teacher. Phyllis and I sat across a big sewing table from each other. Phyllis was quite pretty and very smart, which meant that I could look at her or her test paper and expect erudition in either case.

The high point of freshman biology was learning about “human reproduction,” which took two whole days. When those two days came, though, Sammy Kell and I, Sammy being the only other boy with a class schedule as eccentric as mine, were sent off to sit in the principal’s outer office during biology class, since we did not have the right mind-set, or equipment, presumably, to learn about human reproduction with the girls.

When I returned to class, I asked Phyllis about what I had missed. “I think you’ll still be able to have children,” she said.

In our sophomore year, Phyllis’ father took a church in Tennessee. I did not see her again until I was the new Methodist campus minister at Indiana State University and Rose Polytechnic in Terre Haute, just graduated from Garrett Theological Seminary, and she was a new professor of mathematics at Indiana State, having just received a PhD from Indiana University. Typically of Phyllis, she had done graduate work in math because she felt it was her weakest subject, thus the one in which she needed extra work to be a truly educated person.

Phyllis was pleased that I had indeed been able to have children, two darling little girls. She became a member of our family, a special aunt to Mary Beth and Katie, sharing meals and picnics and friends.

The Wesley Foundation did not have its own worship services, and as the new campus minister, I got to preach only once a semester at Centenary Church. By the time those rare Sundays came around, I had a lot of ideas and passion stored up. Those were Sundays when Phyllis became a Methodist. After one of those sermons, she waited until everyone else had filed past me at the door, then reached up and grabbed me by the top of my robe and pulled me down to her face and said, “You don’t know it yet, but when you’re in that pulpit, you’re something special. People will believe what you say just because of the way you say it. So you make damn sure you say the truth.”

So, in memory of my friend, whom I miss especially at Christmas time, I will say the truth, in the words of William Wadsworth Longfellow, the words I first heard from the little girl with the big voice:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

‘God is not dead nor doth he sleep.’

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail

With peace on earth good will to men.’

 

May the peace of Christmas be with you,

John Robert McFarland

 Phyllis died much too young. I spoke at her funeral. I told the truth, that we had learned in our little country churches: the only thing that matters is love.

 

 

CHRISTMAS IS ABOUT LOVE…AND ED TUCKER [Su, 12-19-21]

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

Ed Tucker originally thought of himself as a Lutheran, because one Sunday afternoon, at Christmas time, when he was in 8^th grade, his father took him to a Lutheran church in their neighborhood, in Chicago, and dropped him off for the Christmas party for kids. So this is a sweet little story for Christmas… except…

 

Ed said, “I have no idea why my father took me to that Christmas party. We never went to church. I didn’t even know what a church was. My father was a huge racist and was mad at church people who were in favor of segregation. But I thought it was great. They gave me a book as a gift. No one had ever given me a book before. And they had food! I was in 8^th grade and weighed 200 lbs. I loved to eat. I kept going back.”

I’m going through old files… discarding most… keeping some… enjoying the memories… including the booklet Garrett Theological Seminary put together for the 40^th anniversary of my class. They asked each of us what we remembered most or liked best from our student days there. Ed said, “The daily commuting rides with John McFarland, when he drove in from Cedar Lake, Indiana and picked me up on the south side of Chicago.”

 

Because we spent so much time together, Ed is one of my best memories, too, not just for seminary days, but when we were together for class reunions and occasional continuing ed events. Even when we were retired, when he lived in Chicago’s western burbs and I in Sterling, IL, to be with the grandkids, we would meet halfway, in Dekalb, at a Borders store, and drink coffee and buy books and reminisce.

The guidance counselors saw Ed as a big dumb fat kid and so sent him to Lane Technical High School to learn to be a draftsman. He said, “That’s all they taught us in the drafting program. We didn’t learn English or history or that stuff. But being big and dumb, I got to be the catcher on the baseball team. After sitting at a drafting table all day for four years, I knew I didn’t want to do that the rest of my life. I applied to Chicago Teacher’s College. They’d take anybody. Except me. But the baseball coach convinced the admissions people to let me in, because he needed a catcher.”

“I kept going to church, and I met some Methodist ministers who were active in civil rights. I began to think I should be a preacher. So I applied to Garrett. They turned me down flat. I had a degree from Chicago Teacher’s College, with a baseball major and a D minus GPA. But those Methodist ministers intervened. They convinced Garrett to let me in on probation. The first quarter, I flunked every class. Garrett was going to throw me out, but those guys begged them to give me another chance.”

They did, and the church was so much better because they did.

Ed has always given me credit for getting him through the last barrier of seminary graduation, comprehensive exams, because we studied together for them. I’m glad to take any credit I can for Ed, because he had a good and fun and useful career as a preacher, but I think I was less important than he claims.

Ed not only was a warm and compassionate pastor but, because of all that drafting work at Lane Tech, an excellent artist, illustrating various publications for the church.

 

Yes, a sweet little story for Christmas… I sometimes wonder if Ed knows that he went through all that stuff, that he had a career in ministry, not because the Lutherans gave him books and snacks, or those Methodist preachers kept after Garrett to let him in, or because I guided him through comps, but because his parents took him to that Christmas party to get him out of the house so they could make love.

 

Christmas is all about love, but I don’t think I’ll mention this to Ed, since it apparently has never occurred to him, but I will find out if he reads this column.

John Robert McFarland

The title I used most often for Christmas sermons was “Odd Times, Strange Places,” even though the sermon was different from Christmas to Christmas, because that’s the story of Christmas, how God comes at odd times, in strange places, the way God came to Ed.

THE FORGOTTEN CHRISTMAS WEDDING [F, 12-17-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…

[This is a repeat from 12-12-12. That’s why the title includes “…from a place of winter…” for we still lived in Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, then.]

 

“Rev. McFarland, aren’t you coming to our wedding?”

It was the Sunday before Christmas. We’d had two good morning worship services. I was tired. I was sitting at the table in the kitchen, sans shoes and tie, gratefully full of lunch, sipping a second cup of tea, when the phone on the wall beside me blared more forcefully than necessary. I picked it up. A rather thin, small voice…

A minister should not schedule anything on a Sunday afternoon. A Sunday morning is intense. It empties your brain out. By the time it is over, there is no room to remember anything that is coming up.

In over 50 years in ministry, I forgot two events. The first time I was supposed to be part of a panel discussion for an evening program at a church on the other side of town. It’s not too bad if one member of a panel doesn’t show. It’s definitely not good if the only minister doesn’t show up for a wedding.

It’s even worse if the bride is a scared teen-ager whose family threw her out when she told them she was pregnant. 

I hadn’t known her or her boyfriend, but they came to me when her pastor refused to marry them. “People say, when there’s no place else to go, they come to you,” they told me. Now even the pastor of last resort had forgotten about them, too. 

I set a record for retrieving shoes and tying tie, and I flew out the back door. Helen was right behind me. Mary Beth and Katie, who were teenagers, were right behind her. Fortunately, we lived next door to the church building, and there was already a path shoveled through the big snow drift that always swept in and up between the back doors of the parsonage and the church building.

They were in the kitchen, the bulging bride, and her skinny husband-to-be, and the nervous teen couple they had brought along as witnesses. This was well before cell phones. When I had not showed up at 1:00 o’clock, they had wandered through the building and found the phone in the kitchen.

I led them back to the sanctuary. Oops. I had forgotten something else. After the morning services, we had prepared for the Christmas program that evening. The pulpit and lectern and altar table had been removed, turning the chancel into a large Akron-plan wrap-around stage. The chancel was bare.

But we were decorated for Christmas. Wreaths and candles and red ribbons, and a crèche set. They took their vows standing in front of the manger, part of a scene that said, “Love came down at Christmas.”

Every Christmas, the wedding I forgot is the one that I remember.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL--1926 [12-15-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter [W, 12-15-21]

 

{For many years I wrote a new Christmas story each year to use as a Christmas eve sermon. This is the most well-known, and most-often published. This version is a CIW repeat.} 

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL--1926 

Before the green hills had become the spoil banks of the strip mines, when United States highways were graveled ribbons and mules still pulled the plows, where the Wabash meets the Ohio, my father "rode the mail." 

            It was not a regular job.  The people in the hills read slowly and wrote only when they had something important to say.  A postage penny was a lot of money.

            Once each week or two, however, the letters and circulars for the folks in the hills mounded up until they filled a leather mail-pouch.  When the papers peeked over the bag top, my father unhitched the mules with which he had been grading the roads since he was twelve, saddled up his horse, and clucked a "giddyap" out toward the cabins where no roads dared to go. 

            The trackless hills, where the woods are deep, are cool and pleasant in the haze of summer. When the autumn comes, though, the heavy rains dump the soggy maple leaves down upon your head.  The water sneaks in between your hat and the collar of your coat. Then the hills hunker down and close in and say, "Beware."

            It was on such a day that Father lost his way.  So when he crossed a clearing and saw a cabin, it was both relief and fear that ran with the rain down along his backbone.  From underneath his dripping hat he hailed the gray, unpainted shack. 

            "Helloooo, the cabin," he called.

            No answer.  The owner must be in on such a day, he thought, or else the cabin was deserted.

            His right foot had left the stirrup and was half-way over the horse's rump when he saw the shotgun.  Only one barrel, but it was big, and it looked straight out at him from where the door had cracked open.  Off the saddle, he waited.

            "What do y' want?" a thin voice from behind the shotgun demanded.

            Father thought fast. 

            "I'v brot your mail," he called.

            "And I need a place to git dry," he added.

            The shotgun held its place, and so did Father.  Finally, however, the muzzle lowered toward the rough boards of the porch, and Father lowered himself to the ground.

            "Come," the cabin called, and Father went.

            Inside the door he met the oldest, frailest-looking woman he had ever seen.  A hound dog that must have shared her birthday lay in front of the fireplace.  A table, a ladder-back chair, a bed, the shotgun, a shaker chest, and a stool were the cabin's only other occupants.

            The woman was still wary. 

            "I don't git no mail," she said.

            Father fished into the pouch and hooked an old circular.  He pushed it out across the gap between them.  A thin, veined hand took it and held it close to two slow eyes.  The eyes were satisfied.  The hand pointed to the chair. 

            "Sit," she said. 

            Father sat.  He wondered a little at how the old woman had read the circular while holding it upside down.

            She brewed some tea. They sipped and sat before the fire until the silence of the roof reported that the rain had gone. They did not talk--just sat and sipped together--the very young man who was only beginning, the very old woman whose life was ending. 

            Father said, "I'll be goin' now.  I thank you for the shelter and the tea." 

            The frail old hands picked up the circular as he left.

            From then on when Father rode the mail, he put into the pouch an old sale bill, or a circular, and he took it to the little cabin in the clearing in the woods.  Each time the young man and the old woman sat and sipped in silence.  Each time Father noted that the "mail" of his last trip had been tacked up on the wall.

            When the winter comes, the rains stop, but the sky is gray as slate sometimes, and the wind sneaks past the button sentries.  In those cold days, Father was especially glad for the cabin and the fire and the tea and the silence.

            A week before Christmas, Father put an old catalog into his pouch, along with all the cards for others on the way, and set out to ride the mail.  He took the catalog to the cabin.  There they sat, the silent young man and the quiet old woman.  As Father rose to leave, the old woman spoke into the silence.

            "It was good of y' to leave your own family and come out to see me on Christmas day," she said.

            Father looked at the walls around him.  There was no calendar, only the circulars and sale bills winking back at him in the firelight.

            Father did not ever talk much, but many, many years later, when he told this story to his children and grandchildren, he said, "I guess she never did know it wasn't really Christmas day."

            Perhaps he never knew it really was.

 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

 

DEATH BEFORE CHRISTMAS—A poem [M, 12-13-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith and Life from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter…

 

[A repeat from 12-14-14]

The lady down the street
has died, two weeks before
Christmas. Her children
are clearing out her house.
They have thrown her Christmas
tree along the curb,
still green, but on its side,
in dirty snow, stripped
of its festive trimmings, ‘cept
for straggly tinsel, and one
small, missed ornament,
a smiling angel, peeking
low, through branches that will soon
turn brown.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE MESSAGE OF THE STOVE [Sat, 12-11-21, a repeat from12-11-16]

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

When I was in high school, I worked at Moe’s. It had no other name, like Moe’s Gas, even though we sold gas, out of two pumps, or Moe’s Garage, even though we worked on cars, like doing lubes and oil changes, or Moe’s Grocery, even though we sold every sort of food a person could possibly want, as long as it was bread or bologna, out of a building about the size of my living room. No, just Moe’s, after Moe Conley, its owner.

It was at the edge of town, the poor edge, the only gas station and store that was open on Sundays and holidays and late into the evening. This was in the 1950s. Respectable places closed on Sundays and holidays and at night. Moe’s was respectable enough, in its own down-trodden way, but being on the poor edge of town, we didn’t get as much business as places that were better looking and better situated. Moe felt we needed the Sunday and holiday and night trade to keep up.

Moe didn’t like to work Sundays and holidays and nights himself, though, especially opening early and closing late. So those were my hours, Sunday and holiday mornings and nights. 

 

One Sunday morning I opened up and then tried to get our only source of heat, the pot-bellied coal stove, going. It was reluctant, and I was cold, so I went to the garage, got some old motor oil, and poured it in on top of the coal to give it a little impetus. Then I struck a wooden kitchen match and dropped it in. Whump! Blew the iron door right off the top of the stove. The door didn’t hit me, and I was able to put it right back into place, but the flames got me. I felt the burning of my face. I looked into a mirror. My face was quite red. My eyebrows were gone! I was quite lucky, but also feeling quite painful. I couldn’t leave. What to do? Surely there was something in our stock… No, no Unguentine, or calamine. But we had butter! I smeared butter all over my face and hoped we’d have no customers.

I was embarrassed. How stupid can you be? I knew better than that. So I told no one about the stove. I told customers that I was preparing for a school play that required me to look Chinese.

 

And I thought about Glenn Cunningham. I was a track runner, and he was my hero. He had almost accomplished the impossible, running a four-minute mile. And he had done it despite pouring oil into a coal stove and burning himself badly. Bad enough that the doctors said he’d never walk again. But he persevered. I thought maybe now that I had blown a stove up in my face I’d be able to run a four minute mile, maybe outdo even my hero Glenn.

 

Didn’t turn out that way. It was Roger Bannister who ran the first four-minute mile, even though he had not blown up any stoves. In fact, maybe because he had not blown up any stoves in his face. Although you’d think a buttered face would cut down wind resistance.

The four-minute mile has been run many times since Roger Bannister, but until he did it, it was just a theory, a possibility, a hope. It became a reality only when somebody did it. Somebody had to be first or it could never be real.

 

That’s the message of Christmas, I think, at least in part. God present in the world, incarnate in human beings--God as love, God as love in the here and now, in human form—that was only a theory, a possibility, a hope, a prophecy by Isaiah, until somebody actually did it, until somebody was first. Jesus of Nazareth is the Roger Bannister of God incarnate.

This is only one of the many ways we try to understand God incarnate, God in Christ. It’s not the only way, not complete, but it’s helpful, I think. And it doesn’t even require blowing up a stove in your face to get the message.

John Robert McFarland

 

DECEMBER SONG poem [12-5-21, a repeat from 12-10-19]

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

 

I don’t have any new Christmas stories. I don’t have any new stories at all, since I don’t do anything or go anyplace or think anything. [Don’t feel sorry for me; I’m fine like this.] But Christmas is a time for re-hearing the old stories, and, besides, Fred Skaggs says it’s OK for me to do repeats when I run out of new stuff.

DECEMBER SONG poem [12-5-21, a repeat from 12-10-19]

As the light fades

the way toward home

grows dim

 

Dust motes linger

tiny statues in still air

 

Shadows lean long

through bare limbs

maple trees so recent

full to overflowing

with wild dancing leaves

 

Silhouettes of wild

blackberry canes

hover ghostly on the berm

beneath a slivery moon

 

Fence posts tilt toward dusk

The wires between go slack

Sassafras leaves are dusty

with forgotten days

The ditch is dry and cracked

 

The light grows dim

I have no lantern

but I know the way

 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

BEING A ROLODEX [T, 12-7-21]

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

My friend and colleague, Danny Cox, responded to the column I posted on Nov. 26, 2021, about creating the HELP/PATH organization in Bloomington-Normal, IL, when I was the UM Campus Minister at IL State U. He was an ILSU student, active in our Wesley Foundation campus ministry, and a couple of times a week he took on the night shift at HELP, answering the phone.

He said that his biggest problem was sounding awake when he answered the phone. Getting help for the caller wasn’t really an issue, because he had a rolodex with listings of people and agencies that could help with any problem. He just had to answer the phone and flip through the rolodex.

It was something of a shock when he became a pastor to realize that he no longer had a rolodex. So, he said to me, “You became my rolodex.”

That is one of the nicest things I have ever been called, a rolodex! I don’t remember being of that much help to him as he went through his distinguished career in ministry, which outshone my own in many ways. I did, though, enjoy staying in touch with him, knowing what was happening in his life, and learning from him

He was my rolodex once, at a pivot point in my life. I had heard the pale oncologist tell me that I would be dead “in a year or two.” There was so much more I needed to do. I had not walked my daughters down the aisle. I had not held my grandchildren in my arms. Two years sounded like so much more than one, so I worked hard at getting that second year. I did chemo. I did meditation. I did prayer. I did support group. I did journaling.

Then annual conference time arrived, the week-long gathering of all the UM pastors and lay members from all the churches in the Central IL Conference. I looked forward to seeing my “children in the ministry” at those occasions. I had 23 of them, until time began to thin the ranks in recent years. [1] I encountered Danny in the hallway. He’s always been a good listener, so he was patient as I told him all I was doing to gain that second year. Then he said, “It sounds like you’re having in-body experiences.” That literally changed my life.

 

Of course! That was the problem. That was why I was never impressed much when people talked about having out-of-body experiences. I was out of my body all the time. I was in the body of the church, trying to help it get whole. I was in the body politic, trying to help society get well. I was in the body of nature, trying to help the environment get well. I was in every body but my own, and the cancer had broken my body open so that I could get into it!

Well, I have on my desk a large, expensive rolodex that I can’t get rid of. I have offered it to dozens of people and organizations, but no one uses a rolodex anymore. Numbers and addresses are stored on mobile phones and iPads. I think maybe I’ll just write on those cards the names of all those who have been my rolodexes through the years. Each day, I’ll riffle through it, and give thanks for those friends who have helped me become whole, as I have in-body experiences.

Oh... and I wish you an Average Advent.

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] [Oops, in editing I must have taken that stock line out above. It was, "My children in the ministry say they entered the ministry because I made it look like fun. They all hate me."]I told that stock line to Jim Kiefer a few years ago and got a hearty laugh. He said, “Well, I did have fun, and I don’t hate you.” That was nice to hear. 

John Robert McFarland

For some reason, the space below for comments usually doesn’t work. You are always welcome to comment directly at johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

 

 

MY NIL IS NULL [Sun, 12-5-21]

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

I recently reached a totally spiritual state. CS Lewis says that we are not bodies that have souls, but souls that have bodies. I am now in that bodyless state.

I knew that I had faded from view during the covid19 lockdown. I’m just not out where people can see my image and likeness. I go to church on my sofa, with my coffee. I use the drive-thru at the bank. Then…

Helen had decided to do without greens for Christmas decs this year, but our friend, Kathy, said, “Why don’t we go looking for greens while John fixes lunch for us?” Helen is a strong-willed woman, but what wife can turn down a deal like that?

I know how to cook, but only in even-numbered years. However, I am “never daunted,” as I sing each day in the IU fight song. I went to Fresh Thyme to buy ready-made sandwiches. I had been there only once prior, several years before the pandemic hit, and I have faded so far from view that my image and likeness did not even register on the automatic door. I stood there, feeling rather foolish, hoping that some more substantial person would come along, so that I could glide through the open door behind them. Then an employee-type person on the other side of the glass, the other side of reality, came over and waved a hand at the ceiling. He did not say “Open Sesame,” but the door slid over. I slipped in and said “Thanks,” but he turned away without a word, apparently embarrassed to be seen with someone so insubstantial that the door won’t even open for him.

Being so spiritual, I don’t think I can make any money on my NIL [name, image, and likeness] the way college athletes can now. NIL marketing agencies are signing up college players and publicizing the list of what they charge—so much for an autograph, this much for a photo, a whole lot for coming to your kid’s birthday party. You used to get thrown out of college for that.

 

And sports gambling! Pete Rose is denied the Hall of Fame because he gambled. People went to jail and paid fines because they gambled on games. Now, like in no time at all, which is all the time it ever takes if someone sees a way to make money out of something that was formerly a crime or sin, you’re not even allowed to watch games on TV if you don’t gamble on them. The guys who are supposed to be telling you what is happening on the field or the floor are spending their time trying to get you to bet on the next play: “Just text the number of your pension account to YUSUCKR and wager on whether the next shot will be for one point or four!”

What if you broke some law, like sports gambling, that is no longer forbidden? What if you went to jail, or paid a fine, or lost a job, for doing something like sports gambling that everyone does now with impunity? Shouldn’t there be some recompense?

Even worse, what if you were consigned to hell for doing something that is no longer a sin? What if you were a Catholic and ate meat on Friday? I know my Catholic friends and cousins were scared witless about going to hell back then because of eating the wrong stuff on the wrong day, or praying the wrong stuff in the wrong way. What about all those Catholic kids who unknowingly ate a hamburger on a fish-only day because their Methodist grandma didn’t care if they went to hell? Is there some sort of “get out of hell free” card the pope can give you in a case like that?

I expect that I’ll be enlightened with the answers to such dilemmas, now that I have become so spiritual that my NIL does not exist. But I would suggest you not depend on me to provide lunch.

John Robert McFarland

KEEPING THE FIRE GOING [F, 12-3-21]

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

Please don’t get me wrong. I have a lot of admiration and appreciation for all fire fighters, but…

 

“Well, first we chop a hole in the side of the house, and then we check the address.”

That’s what Chief Dick Bickel told Helen when she asked how the Arcola, IL volunteer fire department went about its work, one of those Sunday mornings when Dick and the rest of the Methodist volunteer fire fighters jumped up and ran out, and it wasn’t even time for the sermon yet.

It wasn’t quite that bad. They had indeed chopped a hole in the side of the house, but they did have the correct address. The problem was that the fire that was heating the side of the house, and made them think that a hole was necessary, was actually smoldering under some stuff in the flower bed below the front wall. So… that wall got some extra ventilation. But Chief Bickel assured us they wouldn’t do THAT again!

It worried me, though, when that fire department announced that it was going to burn down the house beside ours for practice. It was okay. The new owners wanted it gone, so that they could build a new one. The evening of the practice burn, almost everybody in town came to watch, brought their lawn chairs and set them up across the street. We figured we’d better do so, too.

The frontage of those lots was not wide, so the burning house was only a few yards from our south wall. We started worrying when one of the fire fighters felt our windows and then started spraying a hose onto our wall! Turns out it was getting so hot they thought the windows might explode. Chief Bickel assured us they wouldn’t do THAT again!

 

All this comes up now because fire department burns have been a big issue in Bloomington, IN these past few days. They burned down a really big one. [Actual photo below] Lots of good practice, putting it out, starting it up again, putting it out again. Problem is, it was an old house, with lots of lead paint, that got spread all over the other houses and yards in the area as the winds took the burning house pieces aloft. Chief Jason Moore has assured us that they won’t do THAT again!

Be they volunteer or professional, one of the chief responsibilities of a fire chief seems to be assuring us that they won’t do THAT again!

I suppose they have a special interest in not doing anything that will get them condemned to the fires of hell. I mean, can you imagine a fire chief who is not allowed to put out the fire?

 

Which reminds me of my good friend church member, Archie Yarde, of the Tampico, IL volunteer fire department, may he not be in the fires of hell.

Fires are what fire fighters live for, but volunteers can sometimes go years and years without a call-out. It’s a big deal when one happens. They have a good time, hanging around the fire house, but that is not very exciting. But when a farm house fire erupted, and the Tampico volunteers were summoned, Archie was up on pole on the other side of town, since he was “a lineman for the county.” He didn’t want to miss the fire, so he called ahead to the chief, “I’ve got to stop in town for cigarettes, but keep the fire going until I get there.”

I don’t think that the irascible and unique Archie ever promised that he wouldn’t do THAT again!

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com