ODDS & ENDS FOR LEAVING JANUARY—CREATIVITY [Su, 1-30-22]

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

Since I’m posting this on Sunday, we’ll start with CREATIVE BIBLE STUDY

“Everything works together for good to those who love God… and have a very vivid imaginations.” {The Apostle, Paul, as amplified by the then teen-aged Mary Beth McFarland}

 

CREATIVE OBITS

I have occasion to read obits these days. One recently recounted, “She never had a mean thing to say about anyone, but there was some eye-rolling.” That’s delightful.

 

CREATIVE CARDIOLOGISTS

My friend, Stan McMorris, is a huge U of IL fan. He was facing a quick quintuple bypass, probably because of many years as the Staff-Parish Relations Chair at his church, and was dismayed to find that the cardiologist was proudly displaying a U of MI pin on his white coat. In his avuncular insurance salesman way, Stan protested, questioning if he could entrust his heart to such a person. The doc said, “If you wish, I’m sure we can find someone less qualified to do the operation.” [Wearing a U of MI pin at a hospital in Champaign, IL, he probably had used that line many times already.]

 

CREATIVE TENANTS

The University of Iowa newspaper recently ran an article about a guy being arrested for shooting his landlord. Reminds me of the old Irish priest who complained, “It’s liquor that makes you shoot at the landlords, and it’s liquor that makes you miss.”

 

CREATIVE EXCUSES

Bill Linneman died Jan. 7. He was 95. He and Besty were great supporters of The Wesley Foundation at IL State U, where Bill was a professor of English, when I was campus minister there. His specialty was written humor, especially political humor. He practiced that humor himself in columns for the local newspaper. A few years ago he wrote of why he had decided to stop driving. “I live in a retirement residence that has a little bus that takes us wherever we want to go. It’s much less stressful and more enjoyable to let someone else do the driving, just enjoy the sights. Also, I failed the driving exam.”

CREATIVE EYE TESTS

Reminds me of going to the BMV to get my license renewed this week. Channeling Bill Linneman, I got two of the first 8 letters on the top line wrong and couldn’t see the last 4 at all. “Good enough” the young woman said. I love living in Indiana.

After many years of trying to be perfect, “good enough” is a great relief.

[Note to my daughters and the police: Don’t worry. Because of covid, I didn’t want to get my face right down into the eye test thingy, so…]

 

CREATIVE AGING

I was dumbfounded the last time I was at the doctor’s when nurse Olivia weighed me and then asked if I wanted to know my weight. Turns out that she couldn’t tell me without my permission, since there are people who don’t want to know their weight.

            Next time, I’m going to ask her if she is allowed to tell me my age as well as my weight. I can believe what the scales say about my weight, but not what the calendar says about my age. Maybe if I hear it from someone else…

 

CREATIVE TEACHING

The first half of her teaching career, Helen was in universities. The second half was in high school. She was uneasy about making that transition. But a couple of years in, a student told her one day, “You’re our favorite teacher.” Helen was astounded. She knew she wasn’t a favorite because she was easy on the kids. “Why?” she asked. “Well, because you like us!”

John Robert McFarland

For some reason the comments section at the bottom of these columns seems not to work, or is unfindable, or something. So, if you want to comment, try johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com.

 

 

NO, GOOGLE IS NO HELP ON THIS [F, 1-28-22]

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

If you hack into my computer and see in my search history that I have Googled “How to commit suicide,” don’t be alarmed. Comedian Brian Simpson says that Google saved his life, because when he searched for “How to commit suicide?” what came up was: “You are not alone. Help is available.” And then it gives the number for the national suicide prevention hotline, 1-800-273-8255. I thought that he might be saying that simply as part of his shtick, so I checked it out. He is right. That’s exactly what happens.

[Brian Simpson is very funny, and is featured in “The Standups” series on Netflix. He goes on in his routine to say he had to go to Reddit, where they gave him lots of methods for committing suicide.]

Google gets a lot of deserved criticism, since they haven’t exactly lived up to the motto of their founders, “Don’t do anything evil,” but they should receive commendation for putting that telephone number right there. As often as Google is used, for every search, they probably have really saved some lives.

SUICIDE STATISTICS

Our local newspaper reports that suicide is six times higher among farmers than in the general population, and that the covid pandemic is making it worse. I knew that suicide in general is getting worse, but I was a bit surprised that it was hitting farmers the hardest. Vaguely, I remembered that it used to be dentists who were first on the suicide list. It makes sense to me that dentists would outrank farmers in suicides. Farmers get to look at cows and skies all day. Dentists have to look at plaque and uvulas, and everybody hates them.

So I decided to get more info. I consulted several web sites. They had widely varying ideas about which groups have the highest suicide rates.

Apparently there are many ways to gather and analyze and categorize this sort of data. One site had lumberjacks ranking second and fishermen [Think “The Deadliest Catch”] third.

But one site that intrigues me is blackdoctor.org. Here is their ranking of suicide frequency:1] Doctors 2] Dentists 3] Financial Planners 4] Lawyers 5] Real Estate 6] Electricians 7] Farm Workers 8] Pharmacists 9] Scientists.

Blackdoctor.org doesn’t rank lumberjacks and fishermen at all, and gets to farmers only at # 7. And which group ranks first for them? Why, medical people, of course. We are just more aware of the “joys and concerns” of our own groups than we are of those of other folks. So it behooves us all to be generous to others as we look at statistics.

If you know someone who might consider suicide, act like you’re sympathetic and suggest they Google “how to commit suicide.” They might get a comedy routine out of it. They’ll at least get a useful telephone number.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

WHERE DO WE GET OUR VALUES? [W, 1-26-22]

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

As we do each year, the “dream” part of MLK’s 1963 march speech was played as part of our worship at St. Mark’s. I’m stirred and strengthened every time.

That, coupled with David Letterman’s interview of Barack Obama on Netflix, has made me think about the lasting values I inherited/learned from my parents.

Obama spoke of how he might have gotten his color and name and brains from his father, but he got his Midwestern values from his mother.

The primary thing I learned from my father was hard work. That quality in him is so obvious that it needs no explanation. He and I did different types of work, but I learned from him not to be satisfied that you had done enough even when all the time was used up and you were exhausted.

The primary thing I learned from my mother was respect for all. Mother believed that everyone--especially those, like black folks, who were usually disrespected--should be treated with respect [except for her husband, but that’s a different story].

A few years ago, we were invited to a movie discussion night. A movie club, about a dozen or so folks, had watched “Mississippi Burning” and were discussing it. They had specifically invited me because I was the only person they knew who had been on the Selma march, the Montgomery end.

It had not occurred to me to go on that march. I was a Yankee [Terre Haute, IN] and had two little children. But the Alabama Methodist Student Movement called the Methodist Student Movement folks, including me as the campus minister at Indiana State U, and asked us to come down and march with them.

 

As we talked at the movie discussion, a man asked me, “What age were you when you became aware of the racial justice problem?” I had to say that there was never a time when I was not aware of it. An old Negro lady lived next door to us in Indianapolis, ages 4 to 10 for me. Mrs. Dickerson was the only black person for blocks around. Just how she got there, who knows? But Mother talked to her, the way she would anyone else. Mother was very clear that we should treat Mrs. Dickerson with respect.

And Mrs. Dickerson sometimes had me run an errand for her—having asked Mother’s permission—and would give me a nickel. That was enough for me to accept black folks! Weren’t no white folks givin’ me no nickels.

[Although great-uncle Joseph Gordon McFarland gave me $5 for singing the Prince Albert pipe tobacco commercial, Oh, fill your pipe up with PA, and take a puff or two. You’ll get that extra smoking joy, Prince Albert gives to you. at which point I announced, “Now I have five dollars and ten cents.”]

In addition to his mother, Obama gave tribute to John Lewis—his courage and his forgiving love--as the source of his own values.

Letterman had asked John Lewis about the nature of racial prejudice. He said, “It’s skin color.” He just left it at that, because it’s just that simple, and just that stupid.

Original sin always activates our desire to put ourselves “above” others, and the easiest way to know who is “up” and who is “down” is skin color [and NB gender].

I was always a little further out on racial justice than my contemporaries or congregations or the times, and I always got into a certain amount of trouble, but I never thought of that as strange. Of course, it was the right thing to do, and of course, there would be negative reaction.

I certainly never considered that anything I did, including going to the Selma march, was courageous. Yes, I lost friends and church members, and people got mad at me and said unkind things, and I didn’t like that, but that was no big deal. It certainly didn’t take courage. MLK and John Lewis and Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges and Elizabeth Ann Eckford… they were the ones who had courage. I was just acting on what I knew to be right.

That’s really my only value: I just wanted to be a good person and do the right thing. I knew that took hard work. Along the way, that has created a little bit of trouble, “good trouble” John Lewis might call it, and so much fun, and satisfaction, and the people I have gotten to meet in the process are such wonderful gifts.

Well, I really started this just so nobody in the family would say in future years, “Oh, we should have asked him about that when we had the chance.” Then it seemed like I should share it with you, too.

We’ve been marching for a long time. We’ve come a long way. We still have a long way to go.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

IT’S OK IF YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO REMEMBERS [M, 1-24-22]

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

It had 53,640 miles on the odometer. My wife laughs every time I mention that. “How can you remember things like that?” Well, because up to that point, it was the most important number in my life.

That was followed up months later when the odometer went to 55,555.5 just as I pulled into the Shell station at the edge of town to get a gallon of gas. I didn’t say “Fill it up” in those days, It was “one gallon” or “five gallons,” according to whether I had the 29 cents that each gallon cost.

 Actually, it was closer to 55,555.6, because I had to pull forward a bit to get the gas cap to line up with the pump, but it still looked like a row of 5s, a most remarkable feat. I tried to get all the guys who were hanging around at the station to come look at the odometer. Only one was willing, and he just took a glance and went back to… whatever.

I was flabbergasted. Didn’t they know how unusual, and thus important, this was, to turn up a whole row of 5s just when you could stop and contemplate how unusual and complete that was?

It was our first car, the first time we could afford a car, because it was during the Korean War, and my father had gotten a job at the Whirlpool factory in Evansville, making M1 rifles. It was a hurry-up contract, and they were willing to hire even a blind man. Strangely, his job was to clean the rifles at the end of the manufacturing. You didn’t need to be able to see to do that. The routine was that you did two swabs and three wipes and four something elses. At that point, the rifle was clean, regardless. That’s the way assembly line manufacturing works.

So, between the two of us, we had enough money for a down payment on a used Chevy, with reasonable expectations of making the monthly payments. Also, we finally had a driver, for I had turned sixteen and taken driver’s training in school, and Aunt Dorothy had taken me to Winslow to get my driver’s license. Dad could not get a license, of course, and Mother had never driven a car. I thought of that magnificent gun-metal gray conveyance as “my” car, since I was the only driver, although my parents definitely did not share that idea.

For a year, that car was the be-all and end-all of my existence. So when that row of 5s showed up on the odometer, I thought it was the top event of the year. Nobody else cared. Not even Darrel, my best friend, when I told him about it. He said “Cool” and changed the subject back to girls. I mean, who could be interested in girls when you had a car that could rack up a row of 5s just when you had a chance to stop and contemplate its meaning?

Nurse Willis still laughs every time she sees me, and says, “Here comes the pinnacle of irrelevance.” That’s because I told her about how Ernie, the grand-dog, had ignored me when we saw him after several months of absence. I had always been his favorite person, but it had been too long. I hadn’t taken him for a walk or given him a treat for six months. “You are at the pinnacle of irrelevance,” I had told Nurse Willis, “when the dog ignores you.”

I’m not sure why Nurse Willis thinks that is so funny, but it’s a good reminder. Nobody cares how many miles I have on my odometer, not even a dog. Except me. I care. Some things, it’s okay if you’re the only one who cares about them. That’s why I remember that number, 53,640.

John Robert McFarland

EACH MEMBER HAS A ROLE [Sat, 1-22-22]

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

I knew a man, I’ll call him Ron. When he was in his 50s, the sister of the wife of one of one of his sons came to him with a problem. She was a young wife and mother whose spending had gotten out of hand. Unknown to her husband. She had credit card bills that had reached, in today’s terms, about $60,000.  Ron was not wealthy, but he was relatively affluent, and he was the only person she knew who might be willing to help her. Sister of an in-law is pretty far out in the family circle, but he loaned her the money. At least, Ron thought it was a loan. She paid off the bills and never said another word about it to him, never paid a dollar back, to this day. Was he a sucker? No, he was just a Hero. That’s what happens to the Hero in a family.

In family systems theory, the Hero is the one the family expects to be dependable, and the one the family puts out in front when it wants the world to think it is better than it is. The Hero is the face of the family to the outside, and the one the others turn to in times of trouble on the inside.

Churches and organizations have many characteristics in common with families. All the churches I pastored looked much better to the world outside than they did from the inside because they had Heroes like Earl and Jane and Rose Mary and Grace and Maurice and Scott and…

I belonged to a national professional association of clergy. The year Gary was president, he said to me, “When we want to impress potential members, we put you out front.” A clear Hero definition. I was pleased, but also terrified. Being a Hero carries a lot of responsibility. The Hero has to be better than s/he is in order to make the family/organization look better than it is.

I was the Hero of my family, although I never understood that until my cousin, Nancy, told me that I was the Hero. Nancy was a PhD professor of education and taught family systems. Until Nancy, I thought I was a sucker--the son/grandson/nephew who loaned money and took care of the old folks. It was nice, at first, to think of myself as a Hero instead of a chump.

I was the Hero by default, because I was the first male grandchild on either side of the family, when being first and male [primogeniture] was still important culturally if not legally. More important than it should have been. There were several older girls, including my sister, Mary V, who would have been perfectly good Heroes, but I got stuck with it just because of a Y chromosome.

 

Nancy had more than the Y chromosome in mind, though. She said, “I always knew you were the Hero.” By total coincidence, her mother, my Aunt Jeanetta, played cards with Helen’s mother, in a town far, far away from where I grew up. When Helen began to tell her mother about the boy she was dating at college, Georgia said, “Oh, good grief. I already know about him. Jeanetta talks about him all the time, what a nice boy he is.” Despite the image here, Helen is not an alcoholic. She is, however, an enabler, in the sense that she has always supported me. Heroes need support, too.

 

When you are the Hero, you realize quite early that you are expected to be a nice child. Your relatives don’t want to explain some juvenile scoundrel to their friends. You don’t get to do all the naughty stuff that folks wink at in other kids. Nobody ever includes you in “boys will be boys.” Are you a sucker? No, just a Hero.

You have/had a role in your family. Every member of the family has a role. You might find yourself here…

 

Hero is not a better role than the others, just different. But as I look at it now, I find that it was a good role for me, because it made me into a better person than I would have been. Some people live a good life just because it’s the best thing to do. I got to enjoy living a good life because folks I love expected me to. It’s worth being a Hero to get to live a good life.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

THERE IS A REASON I’M RETIRED {R, 1-20-22]

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

 

Knowing I was going to retire at the end of it, Helen started a journal at the beginning of my last year of full-time ministry, in case I forgot what it was like and wanted to go back to work some time. She didn’t get through the whole year. She got busy and forgot about it after a few months. In fact, just this week she discovered it while going through old boxes of stuff that we have moved unopened through several years and places. She just presented it to me, unfinished and 26 years late. This turns out, though, to be the perfect time to read about the way it was.

For, yes, I have recently been tempted. There are so many problems now, and clergy are so overworked and overstressed. It’s impossible to do the ministry tasks during a pandemic in the ways we learned in the past. And people in general are so stressed and depressed.

I figured I could still help out. After all, I am awake for several hours each day, and I can drink coffee while reclining on the sofa as well as I ever could. You can do that on Zoom meetings even better than in-person meetings.

I probably couldn’t do everything a minister must. Like preaching. I can’t wander around the chancel while preaching, the way you’re supposed to these days. I have to stand in the pulpit so that I have something secure to hold onto and lean against. And I’m forgetful, so I might repeat the same sermon over and over.

Reminds me of the preacher who gave the same sermon the first five weeks he was at a new church. The board members went to him. “Do you realize you’re preaching the same sermon every Sunday?” “Yes,” he said, “and when you’ve done what I say in that one, I’ll preach a different one.”

That reminds me [Have you noticed that every story reminds me of another one?] of the preacher giving his retirement remarks at annual conference. “All those years,” he said, rather piously, “I really had but two sermons.” A colleague in the audience whispered, “You mean there was a second one?”

Like that guy, I have only one sermon. I do, however, arrange the stories in a different order. Being old and forgetful, though, I might confuse the order, so, no, probably not preaching.

But counseling is a possibility. Lots of folks, in church and out, are depressed and need counseling. I was never a very good counselor, but you don’t have to be good to be useful. You really just have to listen and act like you’re paying attention. That last part, however, is a problem at my age. If you’re already depressed, it’s not good if the counselor falls asleep as you recount your problems.

As for the other abilities necessary for ministers in these pandemic times: I can’t remember how to mute and unmute on Zoom. I can’t understand what people say if they are masked. I have no patience with stupidity.

More importantly, Helen’s journal reminds me of the way it was. It records various problems and conflicts that followed one another in tumultuous succession, from dawn to midnight, every day, so many that I have only a vague recall of most of them, and of some, no memory at all, and I have a better-than-average memory. Even without a pandemic, the work and stress were constant. I was glad to deal with the work and the stress, then, because I could.

Whenever I have filled in at a church in my retirement years, though, and someone has said, “I wish you were our preacher all the time,” I have replied, “There is a reason I’m retired.” Helen’s journal has reminded me of that reason.

So, I guess the best thing I can do to help the church and the preachers in these pandemic times is just to leave the rest of the pages in Helen’s journal blank. You’re welcome.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

 

PREPARING TO DIE 4: STUFF [T, 1-18-22]

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

In a “Call the Midwife” TV show we watched recently, an old lady could no longer live by herself. She needed to go to a “home.” But her house was “stuffed” from floor to ceiling. The nurse could barely get in to find her. She refused to leave her “stuff.” It was what gave her life meaning. But stuff is just stuff. “You can’t take it with you,” as the old saying goes. If we are getting our meaning from our stuff, we are not prepared to die. Indeed, one reason we hang onto stuff is as a form of denial; I still need the stuff because I am not going to die.

We need to learn to let go of the stuff. I know that sounds preachy, and I’m not supposed to be preachy in this column. But sometimes we need reminders. This is one of those times—let the stuff go!

Sure, we need to keep the coffee pot. And underwear. And fuzzy slippers for winter. Otherwise, let it go.

We need to pass stuff on now to those for whom it will have meaning now, as well as later. As we go through old photos and documents, I find an aunt or a friend who is precious to me, but I need to send it to their children. [That is also a gift to my children, so that they don’t have to do it.]

Or if there is no intrinsic meaning in a piece of stuff for someone else when we are gone, we need to give it to someone who can get good from it now. I have finally accepted that I shall never shoot baskets again. My bad shoulders won’t let me. Yes, I got a lot of enjoyment out of that ball, and it bounces full of good memories, but I need to give that ball to some kid, so that they can get fun memories, too. We are not prepared to die if we are possessed by our possessions 

My friend, Bob, has a library of thousands of books, really good books. It would take his children a dozen cars and a dozen weeks to get rid of those, so he has arranged with the local food bank to take them. It’s a good solution. They have a huge book sale every year, to make money to buy food for the needy, and, also, they have a big truck!

We need some stuff right up to the day we die, of course. Like teeth. That’s what my dentist always tells me when I say I don’t need to make regular visits to her since I’ll die soon, anyway. She may have an alternative motive, like wanting to hear my stories over and over, but she has a persuasive argument. Books and mementoes are not in the same category as teeth, but a few of those are just as necessary for me to keep reading and looking at right up to the end.

John Robert McFarland

 

PREPARING TO DIE 3-RELATIONSHIPS [Su, 1-16-22]

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

It was at Bill and Susie’s 50^th wedding anniversary party. [None of the names are actual.] It was a pleasant Sunday afternoon in the church parlor. No formal receiving line, just happy milling around, standing, eating cake, drinking punch. Bill and Susie were well known, so many people were coming and going, including folks I didn’t know. Thus, it wasn’t surprising when a man came in by the “wrong” door, or that he looked a bit lost.

You can tell if someone is a newcomer by what they look at. This is probably true of all organizations, but I know it in terms of church. If they are looking at the building, they are strangers. They don’t know the layout. They are trying to figure out where to go. If they have been there before, they are looking at the people, figuring where to sit to be among friends, or where to sit to avoid someone. [1]           

The “wrong door” man was clearly a stranger in our building, but he wasn’t looking at signs. He was scanning the crowd. I was sure I didn’t know him, but still he looked familiar. When he spied Bill, he went straight to him. Bill looked surprised and not surprised at the same time. Susie and everyone else ignored them. They talked rather seriously for about fifteen minutes, with neither happiness nor anger, and then, without shaking hands, the man turned around and left, by the wrong door.

Sam, the adult son of Bill and Susie, and the host for their party, had watched this. As he saw the man leave, he looked both bewildered and relieved. I went over to him.

“That was my uncle, Bob, my dad’s brother,” he said. “Dad has never said why, but they have not spoken to each other for over thirty years.”

Bob died not long after that. He was getting ready for death, by getting his relationships in order, by finishing the business of making the broken whole, as much as possible. He knew if he had called Bill on the phone, he might not even take the call. But he knew that Bill would have to receive him, and whatever he needed to say, in that public setting in the church. Or maybe not—it was a risk. But it was worth taking, in order to get ready to die.

John Robert McFarland

1] It’s amazing what church people get worked up over. When I was newly appointed to a large university church, I saw lots of folks come in and look around at the building. We had many newcomers every Sunday. It was a large, multi-leveled, multi-winged new building, but nothing fancy. The walls were just concrete block. Nicely painted, but designed for use. I suggested that we buy small, unobtrusive signs, in a color that contrasted nicely with the wall, with arrows pointing out the various places people needed to locate—rest rooms, sanctuary, chapel, parlor, offices, Sunday School, etc. One woman went ballistic. “That’s ridiculous to spend money for that. It would ruin the looks of our nice new building. Everyone knows where everything is anyway.” So the board decided not to buy signs. They didn’t say there could be no signs, though, so I got some student artists to make very nice signs for nothing. Needless to say, that did not go well with “Mrs. Aginer,” but no one else objected, and new folks were able to find their way around. Eventually the board decided to replace them with discreet, purchased signs, just like the first ones I had suggested. Some folks think things have value only if you’ve paid for them.

 

 

PREPARING TO DIE-GETTING OUR BODY RIGHT [F, 1-14-22]

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

I used to go to a deep-muscle therapist. She was great. She got me straightened up. She saved me a lot of agony. We became friends, in a professional way--since I am a story-teller, she was interested in how I “sculpt” a story. For she was a sculptor, both of materials, and of bodies.

She came to the US from Norway when she was twenty to pursue that dream of being a sculptor. She was successful. She became an excellent and celebrated sculptor.

“But,” she said, “I realized that while I created other bodies with my sculpting, I was neglecting my own body, and my own soul, for I had no relationships. I was in my studio all day, alone. I figured that since I knew anatomy because of my sculpting, I could learn to sculpt bodies, and that way I would have contact with people. But it’s not as easy as you would think. Here you are, lying on the table. You can’t get away from me. You have to talk to me. But I think most of my clients would prefer to drop their bodies off with me and come back and pick them up the next day. They want me to have a relationship with their body, but they don’t want to have to relate to their own body.”

Preparing the body to die seemed contradictory to me when I first thought of it. Sure, there are the details of what to do with our body when we no longer need it. Donate it to a medical school for research. Donate organs so others can see or walk or live. Make arrangements with a funeral home. Etc.

Surely there’s nothing else to do, though, is there? I mean, isn’t that the way we know a person is dead, that the body is no longer “right?” Isn’t getting the body “right” a way of staying alive instead of a way to prepare to die?

 

Yes, living in a healthy way is mostly for keeping the body alive. But it is also for easing the way of death. I like the book title by John H. Bland, Live Long, Die Fast. We die “better” if we keep the body in good physical shape. We do this not just for ourselves but for our loved ones.

There is an emotional element in preparing our bodies for death, though. There are a lot of ways this can go wrong, but in general, the better condition our bodies are in, the easier and simpler our death will be. Not the actual moment of death, I suppose, but the process of leading up to it.

I want to be quite careful not to be “judgy” here, of people who die from long debilitating diseases or conditions. There are dozens of problems that can come into our bodies through no fault or bad decision of our own. And certainly, the point of keeping our bodies in shape for death is not so we’ll look good in a casket!

Our bodies have “minds,” if you will, of their own. [If you don’t believe that, watch what my body does when I tell it to walk in a straight line!] Bodies have memories that may be lost to our brains. 

But preparing the body to die is not just about making for an easier death. These bodies have been through a lot with us. They have tried to serve us well, often against bad odds. So often it seems that we are fighting with our bodies. They are trying to get sick, and we’re trying to get well. They are a nuisance, a frustration to deal with. They want attention while we just want them to leave us alone.

 

I think this is good to do at any age, but before we die, it is important that we have a whole relationship with our bodies, that we accept them as they are and have been, that we thank them for helping us through these years of life.

John Robert McFarland

 

PREPARING FOR DEATH--SPIRIT [W, 1-12-22]

 

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

We should start this new year, I think, by getting ready to die…

As my friend, Bob, was coming very close to his last day on earth, I prayed with him. Not very well, because my throat was choked up, and so was my heart. We were such close friends for so long. When I ended, praying for good memories and good hopes, he said, “Don’t worry. I have no unfinished business.”

As the old joke line goes, “You had only one thing to do…” So it is with old age. We have only one thing to do, which is to get ready to die. That means finishing up our “business,” in four areas—spirit, body, relationships, and possessions.

All four are a process. We’re never quite done with any one of them. As my dentist replies, when I say, hopefully, “Maybe I’ll die before I have to come back here again…” “You need teeth right up to the end.” Spirit and body and relationships and possessions are all like teeth—we need at least some of each right up to the end. But we can be better prepared to die if we work on our unfinished business.

Of course, we don’t know the exact time of our death, so we need to get ready and stay that way, which is why I don’t understand people who get all worked up about figuring out the date for the end of the world. The end of your world might be at any moment, regardless of what you read in Daniel or Revelation, or what you get from Q on the web, so just get ready for the end and stay that way.

In this column I want to talk about working on the unfinished business of SPIRIT [Mind, soul, brain, etc.] We’ll do body and relationships and possessions in consequent columns. [Don’t worry; I don’t think this will be as boring as it sounds.]

There are “disciplines” we can do to get our spirits ready—prayer, meditation, etc. I think the main need, though, is acceptance, acceptance of the mystery of death. I’m not quite sure that there is a “discipline” or “method” to get to acceptance.

I believe that there will be some sort of life for my spirit after my body is dead. But no one has any idea what that might be like. For me to be ready to die, I need now to accept that there may be nothing at all. If so, that is okay. It has been a gift to have a life in the body. If there is something more, fine. I’ll accept that gift when it comes, too.

The first thing we must do as babies is learn to trust, that someone will care for us, even though we have no idea what the future is like. That is exactly the last thing we do as old people, learn to trust in that same way.

To be ready for death, I have to say: It’s okay that I don’t understand. Life, be it now or in the future, is a mystery. So is death. I shall go forward to the mystery of death in faith.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

ODDS & ENDS: Not Going to Church, Personal Choice, Honest Friends [M, 1-10-22]

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

PANDEMIC ACTS OF DISCIPLESHIP

The Rev. Rebecca Ninke is a Lutheran pastor in WI who is livestreaming her worship services with a skeleton crew [her husband and daughter] because covid is so rampant there. She has told her congregation not to come to church. She says: “It is a funny turn to consider it an act of discipleship to not go to church, that not going to church is an act of discipleship.”

But she’s right. I go to church, but via livestream. I’m pretty sure I don’t have covid. I take every precaution not to get it. But as an old person who doesn’t have to go out in public, if I did so, even to church, and I got the virus, I might pass it to others, and I would put even more strain on the medical folks. By staying home, I’m protecting a lot of people. That is part of following Jesus.

[Rebecca is also the co-author, with daughter Kate Watson, who was ten at time of writing, of There’s No Wrong Way to Pray, and a columnist for wearesparkhouse.org]

OF COURSE IT’S A PERSONAL CHOICE. SO WHAT?

 

I don’t understand people who excuse themselves from vaccinations or wearing masks by saying, “It’s a personal choice.” Everything is a personal choice.

Eating Cheerios for breakfast is a personal choice. Shooting your neighbor is a personal choice. That does not explain or excuse either one of them. Saying “It’s a personal choice,” is like saying “Air exists.” The point is, “WHY are you making THIS choice?”

My sister-in-law, Millie, was one of those strange people who really likes junior high kids. It made her a great classroom teacher for them. She was so good because they knew she cared about them, and they knew that because she always held them accountable for their choices.

She would say, “Because you chose to do… whatever… your punishment will be…” And they would immediately say, “It just sort of happened. I didn’t choose to do…” And she would say, “Oh, yes, you did. It may have been a stupid and mindless choice, but it was a choice. There were other things you could have done, but this is the one you chose.”

That may have been the best thing she taught them. Everything is a choice. Not all choices are equal. All choices have consequences.

“It’s a personal choice” is just a way to weasel out without taking responsibility. It is used mostly by people who insist that OTHER people should be held accountable for their choices. They are usually the ones who claim that being homosexual is a personal choice, but they certainly don’t accept it because “it’s a personal choice.”

FRIENDS WHO TELL THE TRUTH

Speaking of that…

When I was in graduate school, everybody was laughing about some Woody Allen movie in which the typically sad sack Woody has “a gay scare.” He is suddenly frightened that maybe he is secretly gay. This was the early ‘70s, and being gay meant even more societal problems than it does today, so it was legitimately scary.

I wasn’t aware that you could be gay and not know it, so it got me to thinking…the other grad students with whom I hung out were mostly women. We didn’t even have that many women in the Iowa School of Religion. It would have been easier to hang out with the guys.

So I said to the late and lovely Joan Mau one day, as we were hanging out in the graduate student lounge, “I’m afraid I might be secretly gay.” “Why?” she asked. “Well, because I like to hang out with you and the other girls.” “You moron,” she said. “It’s the other way around!” It’s nice to have friends who will call you a moron.

That’s why I say to people who claim that getting vaccinated is just a personal choice: You moron!

John Robert McFarland

 

 

FOUR WHO TAUGHT ME FRIENDSHIP [Sat, 1-8-22]

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

When you’re a child, you don’t really have friends; you have playmates.

When we moved to Indianapolis, I was four, and I had one playmate, Jimmy Mencin. Our relationship was only the convenient, across-the-street type. We would not have been playmates otherwise. I went to PS # 3 and East Park Methodist Church. He went to Catholic school and church. We would never even have met had we not lived across the street, and had there been any other boys our age on our block of N. Oakland Ave.

As I went up through the grades in school, I yearned for friends. I wasn’t exactly sure what made for a friend, but I knew it was more than being playmates.

Then we moved to the country outside of Oakland City, 120 miles south. [Yes, Oakland Ave to Oakland City; I thought it was an omen.] There I was put into a friends incubator—a school bus, where you have no choice. You have to relate to kids of all ages and genders and personalities. With good fortune, some become friends.

My intro to the school bus did not start well. My older sister and I had to walk about ¾ of a mile, on a narrow gravel road, with a couple of hills in it, to the wider gravel road, where we caught the bus. Mary V. was in high school, and pretty, so there were plenty of kids willing to share a seat with her. I was ten and backward, so I got the seat over the hole in the floor. [School bus standards were “different” then, meaning non-existent. Drivers owned their own buses, and not much inclined to spend money for maintenance.]

But there were other boys on the bus! Darrel and Donald Gene and Philip and David were already there when I got on. Don got on toward the end of the route. There was always a huddle going on about the relative talents of various baseball players and teams. It had been going on forever, and it continued for the 8 years I rode the bus. I assume it continues still. I was a Reds fan. The only one. The Cardinals and Cubs fans taunted me. But I didn’t care. I had friends! They could not leave me or avoid me, at least until the bus reached school, but I knew there would always be another chance to prove to them from the back of a baseball card that Johnny Wyrostek was better than Enos Slaughter of Andy Pafko.

Mike Dickey did not ride the bus, and he was not a baseball fan, but he told his mother about the new, poor kid in his fifth-grade class. She started sending her husband out to our farm to bring me into town to spend time with Mike, have lunch and talk and play tag. That friendship never wavered.

I was best man for Darrel--the alpha male, who always included his shy friend. He died from a brain injury suffered in a car accident. Shortly before he died, he told his wife, “I don’t know who you are, but I know you are the best thing that ever happened to me.” I was his best man, He was the first best thing that happened to me on that school bus.

I was best man for Don--the steady presence, the sober one who could be counted on but rarely laughed. Helen looked at the photo of Don they used for his obit, a big smile across his face, and said, “He looks just like you now!” He looked happy. That made me happy.

Donald Gene--the pleaser who always made me feel important--cited me as his best friend in his memoirs. He had a distinguished career as a navy pilot, but as he was dying, he felt that he had been swindled out of a lot of money by an investment counselor. He lived a continent away but often called me to talk about his unhappiness. I tried to please him by sharing memories from our childhood days.

Darrel and Don were in the class just ahead of me, and Donald Gene in the class just behind. Mike--the kid who was the real leader of our class even though he always claimed I was; we were the only presidents our class ever had--was the only one of my close friends from my own class, so I got to see him from time to time, at our every-five-years class reunions. When he died in 2015, I flew to AZ to do his funeral.

The four close friends of my childhood and teen years are dead now. As I think about them, I am fascinated by how each one fulfilled a different role in helping me to grow. I needed each one back then. I guess they needed me, too. I need them still, and they are still with me. As this new year starts, I give thanks for my new friends, and I give thanks for my old friends, who taught me how to be a friend.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

A POEM FOR EPIPHANY, AND THE WAY TO A WOMAN’S HEART [R, 1-6-22]

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

THE FIRST TRAVEL WRITER

I just went along for the ride

hoping to get a column

for “Back East Times”

They promised me

a rubber cigar

What a bust that was

It was loaded

It exploded

But we got to see the baby

I like babies

And Mary washed out

the myrrh bowl

so I could take it home

the way my wife said

I’m not even going

to write about the trip, though

Nobody would be interested

Not enough for a whole column

 

THE WAY TO A WOMAN’S HEART

 

I love the story of the scrawny little guy who applied at the lumber camp to be a lumberjack. “You’re too little to be a lumberjack,” the boss said. “I’ll show you,” the little guy said. He grabbed an axe and in twenty minutes he had cleared an acre of tall trees. “Where in the world did you learn to do that?” the boss said. “In the Sahara Forest.” “But the Sahara is a desert.” “Yeah, it is now.”

There are many ways, especially for a preacher, to “apply” that story, but mostly it makes me think of the years we lived in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where we were in lumbering territory, and knew a lumberjack. A scrawny little guy. Well, he was actually a cook at a lumber camp.

 

“It was mostly a mistake,” he said. “I went to the camp to apply to be a lumberjack. I’m not very big, but I’m strong, and I needed a job. The foreman said, “Our cook just quit. Can you cook?” I said, “No.” He said, “Good. These guys will eat anything. Here’s your apron.”

 

“I figured it would be easier than felling trees. Boy, was I wrong. I had to be up in the morning before anyone else to bake dozens and dozens of biscuits and fry dozens and dozens of eggs. I had to stir up huge cauldrons of stew for supper. Then I was washing up everything when everyone else had gone to bed. But it worked out great. I got me a good woman because I knew how to cook.”

I knew his wife. She was very skinny, so apparently she was not the type to eat dozens of biscuits, but she didn’t like to cook, so this kind of husband was perfect.

It has always been said that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Women are catching up…

John Robert McFarland

 

 

ODDS & ENDS FOR JANUARY—Coffee, Bagpipes, Scots, Bewilderment [T, 1-4-22]

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

COFFEE TIME

[For Paul Mallory, with apologies to DuBose Heyward and George Gershwin]

Coffee time

And the sippin’ is easy

Caffeine runnin’

Down into my veins

Brain synapses

Are beginnin’ to function

So stop groanin’ old head

You’re gonna wake up

 

One of these days

You’re gonna rise up screamin’

You forgot to order

From the coffee bean place

You gotta go out

And buy stuff in public

So don’t forget

To put a mask on your face

 

EVERYBODY LOVES A BAGPIPE

On 1-1-22 we watched the London New Year parade. Ended with an all-Indian bagpipe band. The name was two very long words I can’t remember, pronounce, or spell, ending with Swamibapa Pipe Band. Full Scottish regalia, including kilts and sporrans and the whole outfit. About two dozen Indian men in their 20s to 40s, playing American folk songs, like “Camptown Races” and “Yankee Doodle” and “Comin’ Round the Mountain.” They had every imaginable Scottish doo-dad on their uniforms, plus one small ornament that looks like a depiction of four Hindu gods. Or maybe the band’s founder. Whatever, it was the most marvelous mishmash. Makes me proud to be a Scot, because everybody else wants to be one, too.

 

EXCEPT MAYBE THE FOLKS AT THE MOTEL

Reminds me of the time a Sunday morning worship service was coming up at Wesley UMC in Charleston, IL, and every organist in town was going on vacation. I knew a guy who played bagpipes and thought it would be neat for him to provide our music. He agreed to come play for us, the whole agenda—prelude, postlude, hymn accompaniment, etc. For Prelude he chose a piece called “Macfarlane’s Gathering.” That was thoughtful, but despite their titles, all his pieces sounded very similar. I asked him when he got time to practice. “Oh, I’m the night manager at a motel,” he said. “I practice then.” I was glad when the organists came back. I don’t know if motel guests ever came back. 

 EVEN THE NORWEGIANS

            I had a dental hygienist whose last name was Scott. She was very proud of her Norwegian heritage. I said, as best I could with her hands in my mouth, “Wait a minute. How can you be Norwegian if your name is Scott?”

            “My people had some trouble in Scotland,” she said. [Quite possibly with the McFarlanes, although I didn’t speculate on that, since she had sharp instruments] “and fled to Norway. The locals couldn’t pronounce their clan name, just called them the Scots. So, that became our family name. But we’re fjord people, not loch people.” Yeah, just try singing “…on the bonnie, bonnie banks of Fjord Lomond” and see how it sounds!

BEWILDERMENT

I just finished Bewilderment by Richard Powers. He writes so, so well. And he is so, so smart. As with all his books, I am a bit overwhelmed. I’ll need to read it 2 or 3 more times.

There are billions, perhaps trillions, of universes “out there.” But Powers asks the bewildering question: Is the space out there, or the space in there, larger, more bewildering?

John Robert McFarland

Bonus quote via Ron Wetzell: “Adversity doesn’t create character; it reveals it.”

And via Ron, from Maya Angelo, to start the morning: “What a beautiful day. I haven’t seen this one before.”

 

ADVICE FOR THE NEW YEAR [Sun, 1-2-22]

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

“You failed me,” the young man said, rather petulantly, as he got up and headed for the door of my office.

I wasn’t totally surprised. I was usually a failure as a counselor, but most folks were too polite to tell me so. Besides, I had never met him before he showed up, unannounced, and said he wanted to talk about his problems. He was perceptive, though. It took him only thirty minutes to figure out that I wasn’t giving him any help with those problems, although he hadn’t said exactly what they were.

So I asked. “Why is that, do you think? That I failed you?”

He looked dumbstruck, like the answer was more than obvious.

“Why,” he said, “you’re a preacher. I thought you would give me a Bible verse to repeat, something like that, and all you do is sit there and ask questions.” He left.

In his defense, it’s a bit confusing to know what to expect when the counselor is a preacher. In my defense, if a person wants help and doesn’t tell you what the problem is, about the only way to keep the conversation going is to ask questions.

If I had it to do over, I would have given him the verse from Genesis where Noah says, “Quit whining and start bailing.” That’s good advice for most situations.

Since I spent a lot of my ministry on or near university campuses, I listened to a lot of young people wonder about decisions—major, romance, abortion, romance, professions, romance, gender, romance. That was back when I thought I knew how to be a counselor.

One girl was trying to decide between two guys. I’ll call them Larry and Bob. I did what I had learned in a class, had her list all the qualities she liked and did not like about each one. When we were done, she sighed and said, “Well, the answer is clear, isn’t it?” Yes, it was. Larry was a total loser, while Bob had every quality a parent could hope for in their daughter’s intended. I was pleased. My learning had paid off.

She was almost radiant as she smiled and said, “Yes, it has to be Larry.” She left.

The heart wants what the heart wants, regardless of what the lists or the counselor says.

When I ended my campus ministry days, and was appointed to serve a congregation, I realized that my counseling would not be so much about what partner to select as whether to get divorced from that bad choice.

So I went to a marriage counseling center, where they not only did actual counseling but offered classes for people who had to do it on an amateur basis—preachers, social workers, bar tenders, hair dressers, although I don’t recall any bar tenders or hair dressers in the classes, more’s the pity.

I started with a lot of enthusiasm. After all, isn’t saving a marriage, or at least making it better, an admirable goal? Turns out that when a couple finally got around to consulting me, one of them had already made a decision and was just waiting for the other to catch up. That was sad work. All my nodding and questioning and list-making didn’t mean much.

 

One couple, though, still thanks me from time to time for “saving our marriage.” It’s sort of embarrassing, for all I did was listen to her cry while he was off living with another woman. I was fairly straight forward, though, in talking her out of having a revenge affair. That probably helped.

All the mental health people say this pandemic has been really hard on us emotionally. It’s even worse because the counselors are so overwhelmed that it’s hard to get an appointment. So, until you can talk to someone who knows what they’re doing, I’ll give you the quote from Noah up above to keep repeating.

 

John Robert McFarland