POEMS FOR THE FINAL STAGE [F, 12-30-22]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter: POEMS FOR THE FINAL STAGE   [F, 12-30-22]

 

[As we move from one year to another, it seems appropriate to reflect on the final stage of all those years, so here are entries from various days of my poetry journal.]

OVERNIGHT DELIVERY

I got so very old

so very quickly

I blame Amazon

 

PRACTICALITY

If this is

the day I die

I don’t want

to be tired

so I’d better

take a nap

 

WINTER VISION

Being good at being old

means seeing the beauty

in bare limbs

  against gray skies

in the way grass hunches

  its shoulders up

  against cold rain

in memories of color

  as twilight darkens

 

LEARNING TO BE GOOD

I so much wanted

to be good at…

 

Tying my shoes so I wouldn’t trip

Subtracting nineteen from seventy-three

Reading faster than Jimmy or Carol

Knowing the words to Down in the Valley

Spelling amphibious as well as cat

 

Plowing a furrow straight and true

Hitting a pitch that curved

Changing the oil in a Chevrolet

Putting my arm around a girl

Writing one true word, and then another

 

Riding the circuit from church to church

Making them laugh, making them think

Three points, a poem, and benediction

Offering bread to eat and wine to drink

Life in joy with God and self

 

Listening with my heart for love

Balancing a baby on my knee

Being a friend to all who stumbled

Baptizing prisoners who yearn to be free

Storming the gates of injustice

 

Hearing the Word, saying the words

Leading the way to the promised land

Listening for bassoons in the silent night

Clarion call for the carnival band

Singing a marching song

 

Now I want to be good at being old

Slipping away so quietly

that folks must search the internet

to know on which side of eternity

I’m trying to learn to be good

 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

THE YOUNG PREACHER’S COMEUPPANCE [T, 12-27-22]

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

THE YOUNG PREACHER’S COMEUPPANCE [T, 12-27-22]

 

Now is the day

of my comeuppance

for all those years

of preaching

that love is a verb

and life is

too much trouble

unless you live

for something big

and Christ has no hands

but my hands

[Actually, I never liked

that one, but I said

the same thing

in different ways]

Now I can live for nothing

more than remembering

why I am in this room

even when it is the bathroom

If Christ has no hands

but my hands

we’re both in bad shape

I live no verbs

Even my nouns

are passive

So I ask forgiveness

of all those old people

  “puny & feeble”

  marked beside their names

  in the Solsberry member roll

who heard me proclaim

that they must go

do great things

when they could barely

find the mouth with the spoon

or remember what comes after

Our Father…

 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

BETTER THAN SANTA [Sa, 12-24-22]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter: BETTER THAN SANTA [Sa, 12-24-22]

 

I post this every Christmas, not just because it features my favorite granddaughter--although that is enough reason for a grandpa--but because it is the best explanation of Christmas that I know.

As Christmas approached when Brigid was 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 is the message of Christmas, the birth of Christ into the world. God is not just some Santa, hurrying across the roof of the world, stopping long enough to throw some goodies down the chimney. In Jesus, the Christ, God stays, and plays.

John Robert McFarland

The pic is from the web, even though it does look quite a bit like Brigid and me.

The Human Face of God

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections On Faith & Life For The Years Of Winter: The Human Face of God [W, 12-21-22]

 

When I was the ten-year-old new kid on the school bus, one of my fellow riders, about my age, said, “My father says that the worst white man is still better than the best black man.”

He said it like he wanted to believe his father, but as though it didn’t sound quite right. I didn’t say anything, even though I knew it wasn’t right, because I was afraid to talk in those days. I knew it was wrong, though, because I lived in the real world, the world of facts and knowledge and logic and common sense. I knew what was going on.

That surprised my teachers during my first 4 school years in Indianapolis, because in their report card comments, they noted that I could not spell and I could not write and I could not read and I could not talk, including the obligatory reading aloud.

They also all commented, however, on how well-informed I was in social studies and current events. How could a kid who couldn’t read or write or spell or talk know that much?

I think that was because those were WWII years, and my beloved uncles, the younger brothers of my parents, were in the army and air force and navy and marines. The whole family listened each night to H.V. Kaltenborn on the radio, to the news of all the theaters of the war.

That led me to seek out news of the world in other places. I listened, and I learned. So I was not taken in by that “any white man is better” stuff. I knew about George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington. And I knew how to think.

That school bus experience was 20 years before the Civil Rights movement. I learned that a lot of people believed the same way as my school bus friend’s father, as non-sensical as it was. They wanted to believe it because it meant that they always had someone they could look down on, regardless of how miserable and unsuccessful their own lives were.

That’s why Trump is so appealing to many people, despite the common sense that he is a charlatan and scammer. Trump claims he is successful and wealthy when he isn’t. We identify with that. We want to think we are successful even though we aren’t. Trump claims that he gets cheated out of what is rightfully his. We identify with that. We feel like we get cheated out of ours, too. Trump claims that he is better and more deserving that others just because of who he is, not because of merit. We identify with that. We want to believe that about ourselves, too.

It is easier for us to relate to a person than to a theory or to reason. Christians should understand that. After all, we say that Jesus of Nazareth is the human face of God. He’s easier to relate to than some distant deity. The more out of control your life is, the more you need to simplify. The easiest simplification is through relating to a person. “Heil, Trump!" “Save me, Jesus! Come, Lord Jesus!”

That’s why so many people claim that Hitler or Elvis or whoever their savior is still lives. We want, need, some PERSON, who can go with us through the valley of the shadow of death…without any of those black people or gay people or educated people who think they’re better than we are. When we look into the mirror, we want to see the face of God.

But here’s the crux, and the point of Christmas: Jesus says that you’ll never see the face of God when you look into the mirror. You’ll only see the human face of God when you look into the face of your neighbor, your fellow human being.

I suppose my grade school teachers would be surprised that I lived my life as a talker, and as a writer. I hope they would not be surprised that most of that talking and writing was to say that we do have a Person to whom we can hitch our wagons, and that Persons says that the best white man and the best black man should walk together to help everyone be better.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

IT HAPPENED OVERNIGHT [Su, 12-18-22]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections On Faith & Life For The Years Of Winter: IT HAPPENED OVERNIGHT [Su, 12-18-22]

 

The first time I can remember it was when I went down to breakfast one hot June morning at Howell Neighborhood House in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. I was a social worker at HNH that summer, before my senior year in college, and also the Sunday preacher at the Wycliffe and Halstead Street Methodist Churches. Randy Robertson and I lived in the back room on the fourth floor. The summer social work girls and the professional staff lived on the third floor, closer to our common living room and kitchen.

That morning, I walked down the stairs and into the kitchen and thought, “What in the world happened overnight?”

There sat a vision of loveliness, a beautiful blond girl in short white shorts. “Oh,” she said, “I’m Marian. I just got in from California last night after everyone had gone to bed. I’m hungry, but I didn’t know what it’s okay to eat…”

I was used to being first up and fixing breakfast for everyone anyway, and she was pretty, so she ate well.

Then there was that time that I woke up in the hospital. They had taken me into the operating room at midnight, on my birthday. They told me to count back from one hundred and I think I got to 99 before I went out.

The next morning I woke up and counted the tubes going in and out of my body. There were more tubes than I had body openings for tubes! I thought, “What in the world happened overnight?”

The older we get, the more of those overnight changes there are. We’re going along just fine, and suddenly, everything is different. Some are pleasant, like having to eat breakfast with a California girl. Some are not so pleasant, like Nazi nurses coming into your room and making you get up to walk before you even know what’s happened to you.

And some will be like that inn-keeper, going out to the stable to check on his lowly guests the next morning, and finding a bunch of dirty shepherds and pristine angels hanging out together around a crib with a little baby in it. “What in the world happened overnight?”

You’ll be forever marked. You’ll always wonder what happened to Marian after that summer in Chicago, and you’ll always wonder what happened to that part of you, both physical and emotional, that the surgeons cut out. You’ll always wonder what became of that baby who was born with so much promise.

I think maybe heaven will happen that way. You’ll wake up and say, “What in the world happened overnight?” You’ll always wonder…

John Robert McFarland

 

REMEMBERING TOM [R, 12-15-22]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter: REMEMBERING TOM [R, 12-15-22]

 

C. Thomas Cone, Esq, died this morning, Dec. 15, 2022.

When I write a eulogy for a friend, I try to find some theme, something that can be used to explain their whole life. The only theme I have for Tom Cone is this: I never understood him. I don’t feel bad about that; I don’t think anyone else ever understood him, either.

Sometimes, people you don’t ever know do you the greatest favors. So it was with some anonymous clerk in the housing office at IU,

In September of 1955, the IU housing office put into the same room in Linden Hall, in the long-defunct Trees Center, a naïve farm boy from a very small high school and a brilliant city kid from the biggest high school in the state, only because neither of us smoked. From that came a 67-year unique friendship. I am reluctant to say that Tom and I were best friends, for I don’t want to compete with his other friends, but our friendship is, I think, one-of-a-kind.

Although I never understood him, living with him as college students, and enjoying his friendship over the rest of these years, has allowed me a few insights…

Tom was a fundamentalist. The fundamentals for him were law, family, knowledge, friends, the Red Sox, and bridge, not always in the same order. He loved justice more than law, competition more than winning.

Tom was a rascal. He loved practical jokes, and they sometimes backfired, like the gardening competition when the police got the idea that someone was threatening to murder one of Hancock county’s elected officials. Tom was never the favorite person of the local police, and so he never admitted that he was the guilty party who had lost the contest and so had hung dead flowers on her door with a note that said, “I’ll get you next time.”

He did not suffer fools gladly, but he could be remarkably patient with people like me, who were never up to his intellectual level, but who shared his fundamentalist values.

For 67 years we have had nothing in common, except values.

One shared value was family. He loved Helen, and was sure she could have done better. I know that, because, on our wedding day, he told me that. He loved my children and grandchildren, and taught them math shortcuts, and wondered why they turned out so well. I love Sally, and was sure she could have done better, and I told him that many times. I love the Cone children and grandchildren, and while I could not teach them any math, I have been able to do weddings for them. I’m sure that Sally is the only reason they turned out so well.

Another shared value was justice. It pained him that the adversarial system so often required him to defend people he knew were guilty. He did not like the system in which guilty people got off simply because he was smarter than the lawyers he was up against. [Although he did revel in being better than any lawyer he had to face.]  But he knew that justice could not be done if everyone in the system did not do their best.

A third shared value was learning. Tom was always the smartest guy in the room, which both pleased him and irritated him. He loved being smarter, but he also loved competition, and he wanted people to be smart enough to challenge his mind. Few of us could. Starting out as the smartest guy in the room did not keep him from wanting to keep learning, though. Throughout his life he loved ideas, and debating them.

I am a preacher by profession and a theologian by education, so I think in religious terms. Thus, I shall say that God and Tom have a lot in common. For one thing, they are both good at testing your patience. More importantly, I’m never going to understand either one. If you are going to love either one of them, you have to do it by faith, acceptance. I learned that earlier about Tom than about God.          

The last time we had lunch together, he had trouble with speech because of his stroke. At one point he tried to ask me if I were still preaching and couldn’t quite get the thought right. Finally, he said, “Do you still say the words?”

Well, yes, my old friend, I do, so I’ll say these words: I love you. Thank you, for being my friend, for being incomprehensible, for being you.

John Robert McFarland

The photo is of Linden Hall. Tom and I lived in the middle, upper floor.

 

 

 

 

 

The Satisfaction Of Absent Things [W, 12-14-22]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter: The Satisfaction Of Absent Things [W, 12-14-22]

 

Old people face the coming of Christmas with a particular sort of dread. I’m going to get presents! There is nothing wrong with presents, of course. They are signs that people care about us. Sometimes they are useful. Sometimes fun. Sometimes chocolate. But they add to our supply of stuff. Stuff that we don’t need.

My mother was an especially bad gift receiver. We were young enough when she was old that we did not understand why she did not want stuff, because she needed stuff. One day, about this time of the month of December, Helen and I went to do our usual errands and such for my parents, and Helen took the occasion to try to sneak some gifts in while Mother wasn’t looking. Mother could be observant, though. “What is that?” she demanded. “Stuff,” Helen said. My father, who liked to push Mother’s buttons almost as much as she liked to push his, said, “Don’t you recognize stuff when you see it?

Well, yes, we old people do recognize stuff, and we have too much of it already, and we don’t want more. So, at Christmas we are a real problem to our children, who want to give us stuff. For several years I’ve said, “Stuff we can read or eat, that’s all.” This year I asked for underwear for boys age 4 to 6. The MUSH tree at church {Mittens, Underwear, Sox, Hats} always needs more of that kind of stuff. It also allows me to yell to other old men, “I brought my underwear to church today.”

 

So, here’s an entry from my poetry journal:

THE JOY OF ABSENT STUFF

I gave away some

books this week

a tie and a suit coat

a radio, cassette tapes

a toy bank, a cap

I rejoice in their absence

John Robert McFarland

The above seems a rather short reward for taking the trouble to find your way here, so I’ll repeat one of my favorite stories about daughter Katie Kennedy, the author, [1] since she came to visit us recently and got lost only once. [That she told us about]

I mention that because she is not averse to getting lost. At age 20 she got lost in Moscow intentionally to see if her half semester of Russian language was enough. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t.

But she encountered a young Russian man who wanted to try out his English. He got her back to her hotel. This was in Cold War days, before “Glasnost.” Being a provocateur, she wore a cross around her neck. The young man pointed it out and asked if she were a Christian. When she said she was, he reached into his shirt and pulled out the Russian Orthodox cross around his neck. “Is that why you helped me?” Katie asked, “because I’m a Christian?” “No,” he said. “I helped you because I’m a Christian.”

John Robert McFarland

1] The Constitution Decoded; What Goes Up; Learning to Swear in America.

NEARING THE FINISH LINE a poem [Sa, 12-10-22]

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

NEARING THE FINISH LINE a poem [Sa, 12-10-22]

 In days long past

when I ran the race

upon the roads

on highways and byways

be it meters or in miles

 

First would come

that runner’s high

the joy of movement

floating just above

the pavement

 

then came the second wind

that welcome renewing

of limb and lung

settled into rhythm

the beating cadence

of swinging arms

and pounding feet

contentment in determination

 

but the final stage

was barely holding on

the finish line in sight

but every bone and muscle

besieged with pain

vision blurred with sweat

and constant light

steps of staggered hope

 

Only one desire

to break the tape

to find a patch

of accepting grass

for that welcome collapse

 

John Robert McFarland

One of the gifts of old age is getting to run all the way to the finish line with your friends. This column is dedicated to my through-the-years friends who have broken the tape and found that patch of accepting grass:

Darrel, Don, Donald Gene, Mike, Donna, Jarvis, Jack, Bob, Mina Ann, Phyllis, Nancy, Hovey, Jim, Austin, Max, Ben, Bob, Jan, Forrest, Ruth, DJ, Dick, Gordon, Sid, Bob, Judy, Harold, Roy, Thelma, Tony, Bruce, Eugenia, Paul, Otis, FT, Andre’, Mary Jean, Alma Louise,  Leroy, Dave, Gary, Dianne, Pat, GL, Bettie, Jack, Joan, Kay, Keith, Barbara, Herb, Ron, Jean, Jerry, Nancy, Don, John, Miley, Bill, Harvey, Paul, Lee, Dale, Mike, Bill, Betsy, Bob, Mary, Danette, Wally, George, Jim, Dave, Joan, Dwayne, Perry, Roger, Joe, Kim, Thor, Earl, John, Dickson, Beverly, Leroy, Will, Martha Lou, Ted, Rose, Dick, Elmer, Barbara, Jessie, Elston, Ray, Larry, Perry, Roger, Joe, Kim, Earl, John, George, Rosemary, Maury, Jay, Maurice, Dorothy, Jane, Joel, Lee, Catherine, Scott, Bob, Judy, Max, Berniece, Betty, Tom, Eunice, Eli, Rachael, Max, Ruth, Don, Adelia, Paul, Kenny, Earl, Eileen, Delbert, Grace, Jane, Archie, Seymour, Lois, Marcus, Trina, Dave…

 

In the column for 12-7-22, about my late, great friend, Dr. John C. Wilkey, I made an inadvertent error. I said that Dr. Wilkey read all 4 volumes of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. His son, Wes, reminded me that Barth wrote 12 volumes, and his father read them all. I was thinking of the later collated publication in which Barth’s 12 volumes were collected into four. Made for some pretty thick reading!

I also said that Dr. Wilkey started preaching while he was in college at Illinois College, in Jacksonville. Although he did graduate from Illinois College, he started at Western Illinois, in Macomb, and that was when he started preaching, in the fall of 1953, at Fish Hook, driving a 1936 Buick. Makes the 1947 Oldsmobile that I drove to start preaching on the Chrisney IN Circuit in the fall of 1956 look positively modern.

  

The Perfect Model of a Methodist Preacher [W, 12-7-22]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter: The Perfect Model of a Methodist Preacher [W, 12-7-22]

 

Dr. Wilkey died yesterday, Tuesday, Dec. 6, exactly one month after his 87^th birthday. I emailed him on that birthday. He replied. We exchanged ideas on what will be the future of the UMC that we have served so long. He said that a note from me always cheers him up. I realized then that I would never see him again in person, so in a way, I have already done my grieving.

We were ordained about the same time, served 30 years or so as pastors together in the Central IL Conference of the UMC. He was the most scholarly pastor I ever knew. Even read all four volumes of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics when he didn’t have to, when he was already out of seminary and ordained and pastoring a congregation fulltime. He told me that he read them standing up to keep from falling asleep. But that was the kind of scholar he was. Barth was one of the 2 or 3 major systematic theologians of our day, and Dr. Wilkey was determined to know and understand what he was saying. [Don’t ask me; I read only one volume, and I did fall asleep!]

For our early years of friendship and colleagueship, he was just John. But then we did our doctorates together, traveling back and forth from Illinois to Iowa. You get to know a person much better when you spend a lot of time together in a car. We loved being together, sharing ideas, but we were so relieved when it was over. So we started calling each other “Doctor,” as in Dr. Wilkey and Dr. McFarland, even in the most casual of conversations. It was our way of sharing a victory, and still not taking it too seriously.

Dr. Wilkey wasn’t just a scholar, though. He was an excellent bluegrass musician, playing mandolin and singing in several string bands, and then after Eileen died, with his second wife, Stephanie, as a duo.

As befits a scholar, he was a teacher. He taught Religion in community colleges in the areas where he pastored, and was the regular instructor in preaching for many years in the License to Preach School, that first step toward ministry and ordination.

He was an important leader in the Conference. He was patient and disciplined. He was the Chair of The Conference Committee on Finance and Administration [CCFA] during some of our most difficult and challenging times. His clear thinking, tough patience, disciplined focus, and methodical approach brought us through. He got me onto the CCFA, even though the work of that group was way beyond my skills and abilities. I think he just wanted a friendly face at which he could roll his eyes when the meetings got ridiculous.

Most of all he was a preacher/pastor. It was only a year or two ago that he finally gave up every-Sunday preaching, and the pastoring that goes with that, at the little Laws Chapel, near Atlanta, TX, where he and Stephanie retired. He started preaching when he was still a student at Illinois College in Jacksonville. Almost 70 years of preaching!

Due to the livestreaming of worship necessary because of covid19, I got to see him preach even though neither of us was in central IL anymore. Being two old preachers who had listened to each other and supported each other through 54 years, and knowing we would not see each other again in this world, that was a source of comfort to me.

In his last email to me he said that he had just seen his doctor and so was “…good for another day or two.” I assumed he was joking, but perhaps he intuited something.

But it made no difference, a day or two or a decade or two. He was the perfect example of a Methodist preacher. John Wesley said that he required only three things of his preachers, to be ready at any moment to preach, pray, or die.

Dr. Wilkey was always ready.

John Robert McFarland

ARTIFACTS OF MEMORY [T, 12-6-22]

REFLECTIONS ON FAITH & LIFE FOR THE YEARS OF WINTER:

THE ARTIFACTS OF MEMORY [T, 12-6-22]

 

Helen thought tea would be nice. She was right. It was late afternoon on a cold and snowy Sunday, the first one after an unusually long, warm autumn, a perfect afternoon for tea and memories. As she brought the tray in, she said, “I have two words: Bill White and fish. What’s the rest of that story?”

Her question was precipitated by the little fish-shaped dish on the tray on which to put our squeezed-out tea bags. She said, “I got this fish dish to remind me of Bill, and it’s worked, except I don’t know why the fish dish is supposed to remind me of Bill.”

This is a fairly regular and normal occurrence for old people. We can remember just enough of a story or scenario to intrigue and bedevil us. What in the name of…whatever…is the rest of that story?

I tried to think it through methodically. Bill and fish? I could not recall my late, great friend, Bill [aka, The Rev. Dr. William Luther White, PhD from Northwestern in Theology & Literature] ever fishing. He loved the outdoors, but he was the tree-hugging type, not the hunting and fishing type. I couldn’t even remember him eating a fish. He was a Christian… the fish symbol for Jesus, maybe…

Then I remembered: that poem. The one about his ancestors. The one printed in the Hutterite journal. The one he wrote shortly before his death. The one I read at his memorial service.

It was, in a way, his last words to us. So Helen wanted an artifact, a brain jogger, to remember Bill. As we thin out our possessions in old age, the ones it is important to keep are the ones that remind us of those we love. If, when we are gone, no one else knows why we kept them, that’s okay. Let them throw them away. They did their job while we had them, bringing back to mind for us the good memories.

Here’s Bill’s poem…

Some of my ancestors, I’m told,

            Were fish,

I have no pictures,

            No other details

That was a very long time ago.

 

And now, I’ve heard

            An enormous community of microbes

            Has taken up residence within

            Ten thousand different types!

            A hundred trillion creatures.

            It appears that I need these travel companions,

                        And they need me.

 

Cogito ergo sum

            Oh yes. But isn’t there something more?

            The boundaries of thought shift again:

                        “God,” / “life” / “me.”

 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

STILL UNITED-A POEM [Sat, 12-3-22]

 REFLECTIONS ON FAITH & LIFE FOR THE YEARS OF WINTER: STILL UNITED-A POEM [Sat, 12-3-22]

 

We are united now only in decline

that eager bunch with hopeful faces

turned up to the sunny heaven

ready to receive our marching orders

straightway from the God of righteousness

Laughing together at the demons

in their sluggish attempts to grab our ankles

Singing of how we would overcome

not knowing how distant some day could be

trusting that the arc still bent toward justice

Now we stand amidst the rubble

   those few of us yet left

as punishment for our easy expectations

the sun no longer beaming from heaven

but rampaging from out the fiery furnace

fueled by handbaskets full of sin

where even Shadrach would recant

Somehow, though, still trusting

in each other

me in hope

that you still hope

 

John Robert McFarland

 

FULL-SERVICE MINISTRY [W, 11-30-22]

 

REFLECTIONS ON FAITH & LIFE FOR THE YEARS OF WINTER: FULL-SERVICE MINISTRY [W, 11-30-22]

The obit of Rev. Larry C. Meadows was in the Princeton, IN newspaper online this week. He was 75. It said, “The last few years, he ministered directly from his front porch.” How neat.

I didn’t know Larry. No opportunity to. We were 10 years and 12 miles and one high school and several denominations apart. But I loved the obit of this tent-maker minister.

Not tents, literally, like the Apostle Paul in the New Testament. Larry was an auto mechanic. The obit said he got his first car at age 12 and was a mechanic forever after. He owned and operated the last full-service filling station in the county.

Full-service was the norm for gas stations when I worked at Moe’s, while I was in high school. That place was even more full-service than most, because we had a grocery section, too, where we had to slice the bologna—no prepackaged stuff at Moe’s--as well as a hydraulic lift, in a side building, where we changed oil and lubricated cars. And, of course, we pumped the gas while you sat in comfort in your car. Also we checked your oil and washed your windshield and head lights. FULL service, to be sure.

Larry was also a Pentecostal preacher for 30 years. Served one congregation for 24 years. And then that wonderful line: “The last few years, he ministered directly from his front porch.”

I don’t know the details. I assume that Larry was physically limited in these last years. Maybe couldn’t get beyond his front porch. It’s neat to think about folks he served in his Sunoco station, and folks he served in his churches, just dropping by to hear the Word while having a chat with words.

If you’ve lived the right kind of life, you don’t have to go to the highways and byways to get them to come in. [Mt 22:9-11] They’ll come to you. Especially if you’ve kept both their cars and their spirits running. Full service.

John Robert McFarland

A PRAYER FOR PROTECTION [M, 11-27-22]

REFLECTIONS ON FAITH & LIFE FOR THE YEARS OF WINTER

Our church doesn’t use hymnals. Everything is printed in the bulletin. It’s handy, but does provide opportunity for typos, such as in the bulletin for yesterday, 11-27, in the hymn, “Blest be the God of Israel.”

“So have the prophets long declared that with a mighty arm

God would turn back our enemies and all who wish us farm.”

Thinking further about it, though, perhaps that is not a typo, but something Michael Parry intended. After all, he was born only five years after I, so if he grew up on a farm, he might have lived the same way I did on the farm—using an outhouse, carrying water in from a well [and from the nearest neighbors, a quarter mile away, when the well went dry], hoeing weeds in the garden, plowing with a horse, making hay with a pitch fork, picking corn by hand, milking cows the same way… did I mention hoeing weeds?

So, I pray: Oh, God, please turn back my enemies, but don’t stop there. Turn back all who wish me farm.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

STILL NOT OLD ENOUGH [F, 11-25-22]

 REFLECTIONS ON FAITH & LIFE FOR THE YEARS OF WINTER

So, people are worried, because we have our first octogenarian president. The worriers include me. I’m concerned that Joe Biden is not old enough yet for the office.

“Old enough for…” is a moving target.

The first time I figured I was old was when I accidentally went into a big grocery store on Senior Citizen Day. I had just run in to get some dog food for Wags. [J. Rodsdale Wagsworth, III] I got trapped behind old ladies pushing carts, old men with bifocals trying to read labels, old people comparing current prices with those of 1922. “Why, I can remember when this was only…”

I finally got the dog food and managed to get to the checkout. The cashier was… maybe 19. She looked at me and rang up the Senior Citizen Day discount. I didn’t know exactly what age activated that discount, but I was sure it wasn’t 43. I started to yell, “How old to you think I am, anyway?” Then I realized that was not a smart question to ask a nineteen-year-old. She was probably seeing only my bald head and white beard, not my trim and taut runner’s physique. [Some people called it “scrawny.”]

Of course, being bald and white bearded and scrawny at 43 allows people to say for the next 40 or 50 years, “Why, you haven’t changed a bit.” Anyway, I figured if she was going to insult me by seeing me as a senior citizen, I’d just take the discount, even though I wasn’t old enough.

 

There have been more points along the way when I thought I was old enough, but then I found out I wasn’t. That has plagued me ever since, not being old enough. Not just for senior discounts; I passed that line a long time. No, the problem is being old enough to know everything I need to know. There is always something else that I need to get right, need to figure out, need to understand, need to avoid…

 

Poor Joe Biden. Only 80. He thinks turkeys should be pardoned. Still not old enough…

John Robert McFarland

 

THE BIBLE IN JEOPARDY [T, 11-22-22]

 REFLECTIONS ON FAITH & LIFE FOR THE YEARS OF WINTER

Did Paul write Hebrews, the book in the New Testament by that name? Yes, according to the Jeopardy TV show. No, according to most Biblical scholars.

Don’t we have enough Bible controversies without Ken Jennings creating yet another instance of authorship brouhaha? Of course, Ken was not the one who thought up the question, but he is the face of Jeopardy these days, so he gets the blame. [Yes, I know: In Jeopardy, the answers are the questions, and the questions are the answers.]

It was the Final Jeopardy question in The Tournament of Champions: “Paul’s Letter to Them is the New Testament Epistle with the Most Old Testament Quotations.”

Amy Schneider said “Hebrews.” Sam Buttrey said “Romans.” Andrew He said “Philippians.” Jennings declared that Schneider was correct.

It’s sort of a common-sense sounding question. “Hebrews” sounds more Old Testamenty than Romans or Philippians. And I assume that it must have more OT quotes, by count, than Romans or Philippians, although I have not done such a count myself. The controversy could have been avoided, though, if the Jeopardyians had just said “The letter to them” instead of “Paul’s letter to them.” We know it’s a letter. We don’t know that Paul wrote it. 

Reminds me of when daughter Mary Beth got married at the Suburban Temple in Cleveland. Rabbi Oppenheimer said I could put “anything Methodist” into the service, as long as I didn’t mention “you know who.”

That was tricky, since “you know who” is fairly important in Methodism.

I asked about I Corinthians 13, since Mary Beth wanted a friend to read it in the service. “Oh, that’s not Christian,” the rabbi said. “That’s just part of the culture now.”

So we were okay on that, but how to do a Christian homily and liturgy in a Jewish service? I used the various passages from the New Testament where Jesus—who was a pretty good Bible scholar-- quoted from the Old Testament, although Jesus did not call it that. Worked perfectly. The Jews at the service thought I was quoting the OT, and the Christians thought I was quoting "you know who."

I think Jeopardy’s only escape now from the controversy they have created is to announce that they have hired me as a consultant for future Bible questions.

John Robert McFarland

STILL JESUS [Sa, 11-19-22]

 REFLECTIONS ON FAITH & LIFE FOR THE YEARS OF WINTER

STILL JESUS [Sa, 11-19-22]

 

I heard a lot of chopping sounds from the kitchen before Helen came into the living room for mid-morning coffee time. “It sounds like you were busy,” I said.

She sighed. “It’s so satisfying. I have vegetable soup on the stove, and the bread is rising. I feel so authentic.”

Well, yes, that’s who Helen has always been, a competent person who works smart and gets things done. That’s her authentic self.

That’s who she still is. She’s still Helen…even though she’s old, and it takes longer to make the soup and the bread.

We recently watched the movie version of neurologist Lisa Genova’s novel, Still Alice. A brilliant linguist, only fifty or so, gets early-onset Alzheimer’s. Julianne Moore does an excellent job of showing the stages of Alice Howland’s decline into… nothingness? [1]

Genova is saying that she is “still Alice.” But is that right? It’s comforting, but is it true? Who are you when you don’t recognize anybody, even yourself? Are you really “still” your authentic self, even when you can’t get the satisfaction of working smart and getting things done?

I have reservations, but I think Genova is right. Alice was still Alice. Because, as CS Lewis says, “You are a soul that has a body, not a body that has a soul.”

Your soul is your self. Your self is not your body, not your brain, not your memories. Because you are a soul, you are always your authentic self.

That’s the point of the resurrection of Jesus. Even in death, he was still Jesus. That is what it means to conquer death. That is what it means to be Christ. That is what it means to be authentic.

John Robert McFarland

1] Fortunately, we don’t have to worry about that. As daughter Mary Beth said not long ago to her mother, “At least you don’t have to worry about early-onset anything.” She seemed to think that was comforting.

 

 

 

 

REFLECTIONS ON FAITH & LIFE FOR THE YEARS OF WINTER 

FAILING AT DOUBTING [R, 11-17-22]

 Going through old papers, I came across this page, handwritten, from 4-8-03. I think I was rather perceptive, considering how young I was. [66]

 I tried to doubt this morning, to sit at my end of the sofa and look out the window at the unpainted fence and the gray sky and the leafless tree and say, “There is no God.” It didn’t work. I ended up giggling; it just seemed so silly.

 The wellspring of doubt is not the absence of God but the absence of me. It is when I have become hidden under layers of isolation and addiction and busyness and selfishness and self-pity that I am able to doubt, because there is no me to believe. When there is so much ME there is no room for me.

 It is my existence that is really in question, not God’s. Jesus said that the one unforgivable sin is the sin against the Holy Spirit. That’s because when I refuse the Spirit, I refuse my own existence, for it’s the Spirit that gives life. And, like everyone else, I am a soul that has a body, not a body that has a soul.       

I spent the first part of my career preaching to doubts. Perhaps that was because I was on college campuses, where there is so much ME that there is no room for me, no one left to do faith. Later I began to realize I needed to preach to people’s faith, not their doubts. Preaching to doubt encourages us to believe that our spiritual life is about believing instead of faithing. I can be a believer, conquer doubts, but still have no me to do faith. Belief and faith are not the same thing.

When John Wesley expressed to Peter Bohler his inability to preach faith, because he had none, Bohler told him, “Preach faith until you have it.”

It is important for preachers to preach faith, in order to have it, but it is important for the rest of us to hear faith, in order to have it.

The less Me there is, the more me there is, to do faith.

John Robert McFarland

 

BAPTIZING THE WORLD [M, 11-14-22]

 

REFLECTIONS ON FAITH & LIFE FOR THE YEARS OF WINTER

Our daughter, Katie Kennedy, the author [1], emailed me to say that she had to do a 3 or 4 minute devotional to start a meeting at her church, and that she could think of nothing, and had looked online without anything appealing to her. Did I have any ideas? I’ve been thinking about the meaning and efficacy of baptism recently, so, I wrote the following…

When the great Reformer, Martin Luther, was tempted to give in, to take the easy way, to say that sin was too strong for grace, he would shout, “But I was BAPTIZED!”

All of us here could say that. “I was baptized.” But what does it mean?

Did Luther think his baptism was magic, that if he reminded the world and himself that he was baptized, he would automatically do the right thing? Hardly. He still made plenty of mistakes.

John, the Baptizer, said the baptism he gave people was “for the forgiveness of sins.” Putting water on folks was a good symbol for that. Water makes us clean. Did that mean that the people washed with baptism sinned no more? Not likely. It certainly does not seem that those of us in this church who are baptized manage to get by without sin.

In Methodism, we recognize two sacraments—communion and baptism. We say that a sacrament is “a means of grace.” Apparently, a “means of grace” is a work of the Holy Spirit. But does the Holy Spirit automatically appear when we commune, regardless of how distracted we are, or stays on us when we are baptized any more than the water does? Isn’t it arrogant to think we can summon the Holy Spirit with our rituals?

Methodists tend to say that the sacraments are “symbols.” They remind us of a reality that can’t be expressed easily or completely in words. Yes, but it feels like there’s something more than just a symbol…

At least at its base, baptism is a reminder that we belong to God. And as God’s people, we have the joyful responsibility of being the baptizers of the world, of pouring the water of grace upon the world. Or, as Methodists, maybe just sprinkling it.

Baptism isn’t just grace we receive, but grace we give. Whenever we share the bread with the hungry and give drink to the thirsty, we are baptizing the world. Whenever we visit the sick and imprisoned, we are baptizing the world. Whenever we share the good news, we are baptizing the world. Whenever we sprinkle the baptism of grace, we remind the world that it belongs to God.

We already know these things. We already do these things. But the world is so abrasive, and original sin is so insidious. We get worn down pretty quickly. So whenever we come together, we are reminded, “Yes, we are baptized.” Whenever two or three of us are gathered together in Christ’s name, he is with us, and our baptism is renewed, that we might baptize the world.

As the writer of II Corinthians put it, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, and he has given us this message of reconciliation.” [5:19]

John Robert McFarland

1] The Constitution Decoded; Learning to Swear in America; What Goes Up.

 

 

FIRST SNOW [Sa, 11-12-22]

 

Are two inches enough

to justify yet another poem

about morning snow?

What else can be said

than has not already been

blurted out about

the covering of sins

and the coming of winter

and whatever the hell

it means?

Is it enough, even,

those two inches

to justify a Christmas CD?

Well, yes,

especially with coffee.

 

John Robert McFarland

 

DEALING WITH UGLY SISTERS [T, 1-11-22]

 

An older woman out in public ran into an old friend she hadn’t seen for a long time. They started chatting, decided to have coffee, etc. She kept trying to think of the other woman’s name and just couldn’t. Finally she said, “I’m sorry, but I just can’t remember your name. Will you tell me, please, what your name is?” The other woman thought and then asked, “How soon do you need to know?”

The older we get, the more relevant that joke is. We just don’t remember very well. If we remember at all, it’s a lot slower than it used to be.

I had two sisters. Still have one. Both quite pretty. So I don’t like the term “ugly sisters” very much, but brain scientists tell us that it’s the “ugly sisters” who create so many of our old age memory problems.

Ugly sisters are memories that are sort of like the memory we are trying to construct.

That’s a key—construct. Because we don’t remember a memory, we re-construct it.

Here is a very crude synopsis of how memory works: An event happens. It comes to us in sight and sound and smell and emotion, to the hippocampus part of the brain. The hippocampus takes all those different elements and combines them into a whole. But, unlike you’d think of something named for hippos [yes, I know], the hippocampus is relatively small. It does not have room for all the different memories it is creating. So it farms them out to other parts of the brain… but not all in one place. There are different places for smells and sounds and sights and emotions. Then you want to remember that “memory,” your hippocampus has to re-call them and recombine them. That’s when the ugly sisters appear…

…because you have lots of smell and sound and sight and emotion stuff from the past in your brain. The older you are, the more of it you have. And the hippocampus has to look all through your brain to get the right elements together to recreate that former event, what we call a memory. When people say their memory is slow because they have so many memories, they are right!

But say you’re trying to remember the name of the car dealer who sold you that Ford Fiesta. The Ford car is stored in the same place in your brain as Gerald Ford. Isn’t he the one that Lyndon Johnson said he played too much football before they invented the helmet? And fiesta is Mexican, isn’t it? Was the Ford Fiesta manufactured in Mexico? Don’t they have tacos at fiestas? Oh, oh… ugly sisters. All understandable, but you begin to think about Gerald Ford and Lyndon Johnson and football and tacos. Those are the ugly sisters. Nothing wrong with them in themselves, but they are leading you away from the memory you are trying to recreate about that Ford Fiesta.

There is no simple solution to memory retrieval, nor to the ugly sisters. They are there, a part of life. And just like the rest of life, you have to resist the temptation, as consciously and as focused as you can, and stick to the most important thing.

I used to worry about new and interesting ways that I could present a biblical story or a theological truth in a sermon. Helen said, “You worry about that too much. You have only one thing to do in a sermon, to remind us that God loves us.”

When the ugly sisters show up, just turn away and say, “My memory might not be very good, but God loves me.”

John Robert McFarland