CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
As I pack for my journey
into the land of beyond
the lists I made so
carefully
for journeys past
stand unchecked
No extra shirts
No alternate socks
No backup soap
or blocks against the sun
Just the faces of babies
laughing,
memories of friends
and adventures
The melodies we hummed
along the way
John Robert McFarland
CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith and Life for the Years of Winter
Helen went to the doc, follow-up to her fall. Doc said she was very lucky to have such a mild concussion from such a major fall. That’s good.
She gave her exercises to do to deal with the dizziness. That’s not so good. One problem with our doc is that she is very big on giving you work to do to solve your problems, rather than just taking care of them for you. Did some lab tests, too, because all doctors love those.
So, nurse Olivia called
with test results. Helen was in the shower, so Olivia figured that she could
trust me--even though, as I shall explain later, she should know better--and
told me that Helen is not anemic but her blood sugar was low, so they thought
she might be fasting. I assured her that it’s been a long time since anyone
around this house did any fasting, including the tiny black ants that have
shown up along with the daffodils and forsythia [1] and weeping cherry trees,
so she said to have Helen call them when she got clean, and asked if I had any
more questions.
She’s fairly new, but she should already know better--from that incident when I told her I was Dr. V’s “favorite” patient, when I meant to say that Dr. V called me her “perfect” patient, because I always tell her my symptom history in the proper order, because I am a narrativist, and then Olivia told me later that I really was Dr. V’s favorite patient, because she had asked her, which was very embarrassing—Olivia asked if I had any questions. So, I asked her what the purpose of life is.
Then I found out that I
had unconsciously been underestimating Olivia, probably because she is young
and pretty and perky. She smartly turned it around. “You’d be better at that
than I. You should tell me. What do you think is the purpose of life?”
She was pleased when I told her that the purpose of life is to have a good time. I would have gone on to quote John 10:10 to her, but she giggled, and giggles always make me lose my focus.
John Robert McFarland
[1] Friend and colleague
and former student, Cindy Jones, said that she has always loved forsythia, for
when she was little, she always heard forsythia as For Cynthia.
CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
THE DEATH OF AN OLD
FRIEND-The APC [Sa, 3-26-22]
“Well done, good and faithful servant.” I’m saying that today to The Academy of Parish Clergy. I’m wearing my APC Past-President pin as I do so. I’m mourning the loss of an old friend, a faithful colleague for 50 years.
I’m not quite sure how to grieve the death of a beloved organization. It’s sort of the same as a beloved person, but…
I joined the APC when I was appointed to a congregation after ten years in universities, as a campus minister and PhD student. Those ten years were basically the 1960s, the years of Civil Rights and Viet Nam. Congregations had changed a lot in that decade. I knew I needed help to understand how to do a good job as a pastor in that new church.
Being a better pastor was the whole point of APC. We didn’t talk society or theology. We only talked pastoring and pastoral leadership. How can I do it better?
It worked so well because APC was ecumenical. Methodists of the time—and I suspect still—all read the same books and went to the same lectures. But Baptists and Lutherans and Moravians and Jews Congregationalists and Unitarians and Presbyterians and Disciples and Catholics and Mennonites read different books, and went to different lectures. We learned so much from one another, beyond our usual limits.
That was the basis of APC: The real experts in parish ministry were those who practiced it, and we could get better by “sharing the practice,” which was our method, and also the name of our quarterly journal.
APC was founded by psychology of religion professor Granger Westberg. Granger worked in medical schools and saw there how physicians were required to do continuing education to keep their licenses. He knew that preachers, other than an occasional lecture or retreat, did no continuing education after seminary, except for reading books. He realized that preachers needed a professional organization like the American Medical Association or American Bar Association, one that would insist on the highest standards of competency and ethics… and continuing education.
It was, everyone said, “an idea whose time had come.” Except it was an idea that had a very short time. It failed. For a number of reasons.
First, neither denominations nor congregations gave ministers “points” for being ecumenical. Or for continuing education. APC was often seen as an interloper that was taking time away from the denomination or congregation.
And we didn’t really
believe our own motto. We did an excellent job of sharing the practice with one
another in small groups, but we never invited pastors to lead our international
conferences. Those leaders were professors and authors and social workers and
sociologists and editors and street walkers. Anybody but a preacher. Preachers
are so humble.
Also, as ministers started
joining APC, theological schools realized that preachers really wanted
continuing education, and they realized they could make a lot of money by
letting preachers add another year to the three they had already put in, so
that they could have DMin [Doctor of Ministry] after their name. Preachers are
so gullible when it comes to degrees and titles. APC was not a degree-granter, so
could not compete with the allure of another seminary degree, although those of
us who went through the APC Fellow process got to put FAPC behind our names.
After an exciting beginning, APC began to decline. Even when I was president 25 years ago. Last month, the board voted to end the decline by ending the organization. Appropriately enough, by Zoom.
Four paragraphs up, I said APC failed, but it didn’t. It was enormously successful. We members really did become better pastors by sharing the practice with one another, ecumenically. It kept preachers like me going. My congregations got such much better leadership because of what I learned from my colleagues in APC. Most of my best friends through the years I never would have met without APC. [1]
So I grieve the passing of this old friend, but I rejoice that it served God and the church so well… in its time. Isn’t that the way of grief when any friend passes on—mourning for loss but gratitude for presence?
John Robert McFarland, FAPC
1] Even though most of
them are no longer sharing the practice in this life, I want to acknowledge the
friendship of my APC colleagues: Joe Dooley. Granger Westberg. Fred Skaggs.
Suzanne Schaefer-Coates. Perry Biddle. Dean Lueking. Kim Egolf-Fox. Bill Tuck. Jerry
O’Bee. Roger and David Imhoff. Earl Davis. Roger Perks. Don Shilling. Fred
Harper. Jim Dietz. Paul McFarland. John Freed. Gary Reiff. Randy Saxon. Thor Bogren.
Milt Mann. Darryl Zoller. Joann Dold. Dave Nash. Mark Petersen. Clyde Frye.
Oletha Williams. Bob Stauffer. Barbara Zontek. Willard Roth. Bob Cornwall. Mel
Henrichs. Roland Langford. Scott White. And all the others who, even if their
names are forgotten by me, are known to God…
CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
[Okay, these aren’t all about getting old, but I’ve collected them and don’t want them to go to waste…]
“Comfort is the enemy of progress.” So… progress is overrated.
I see the world with the same clear vision with which I have always viewed it, but the world looks back at me with the misty, wrinkled eyes of irrelevance. JRMcF
Life is like a helicopter. I don’t know how to operate a helicopter, either.
I thought getting old would take longer.
“Jesus was not a theologian. He was God who told stories.” Madeline L’Engle, quoting an anonymous friend. P. 54, Walking on Water
“…you had but one job…” as
the joke goes. At my age, I have but one job, to get ready to die, by
discarding all the unnecessary stuff--from my spirit, from my body, from my
relationships, from my possessions.
Actually, that’s the one job at any age. I sort of wish I had understood that better, earlier.
“Unexplained pain may sometimes direct our attention to something unacknowledged, something we are afraid to know or feel.” Rachel Remen
“The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their suffering might be like his.” George MacDonald
“Those who believe they believe in God but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, not in God himself.” Unamuno
“I am tired of having the front of my mind tickled.” Leslie Tizzard, on superficial preaching.
‘Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” Reinhold Niebuhr
“Christ saves many who do not think they know him.” CS Lewis
“A grumbler may finally become a grumble.” CS Lewis
“If you want to teach children to love God, teach them to love nature.” Anne Lamott
I am often nostalgic for times that never were. JRMcF
“I was born to reject rejection.” Hal David
“The pre-Easter Jesus is St. Francis with an exclamation point.” Marcus Borg
The surest way to be irrelevant tomorrow is to be too relevant today.
“Until I tell God what I want, I have no way of knowing if I truly want it.” Madeline L’Engle
“The holy scriptures were not given to us to enclose them in books but to engrave them on our hearts.” St. John Chrysostom
“We cannot easily give our hearts to something that our minds reject.” Marcus Borg
“Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where to find food.” D.T. Niles
“When old men become irrelevant, young men become irresponsible.”
“God contains everything and nothing contains God.” Irenaeus
“Sometimes all that is needed is the sense of possibility.” Rachel Remen, MD
“People are zealous for a cause when they’re not quite positive it is true.” Madeline L’Engle
“Moving into the unknown is often where we find the healing.” Dean Ornish
“Only in poetry is a word that means only one thing dysfunctional.” Billy Collins
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com
CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
When I started as a clergyperson, we were called preachers, even if we were in church leadership positions that did not include preaching. That’s what the bishop asked, what the Board of Ministry asked, what Aunt Nora asked, “Are you called by God to preach?”
I loved the preacher jokes, especially the one about the preacher who was getting wound up on the social sins. “If you cheat, you’ll go to hell,” he yelled. An old man in the front row yelled back, “Tell it preacher!” “If you drink whiskey you’ll go to hell!” “Tell it, preacher!” “If you chew tobacco you’ll go to hell!” “Now you’re quit preachin’ and gone to meddlin’.”
During my career, people switched over to calling us pastors. I guess they didn’t want us to “get preachy” or “go to meddlin’.”
It’s the job of a preacher to get people “under conviction,” to convince them of the error of their ways, so that they will accept God’s grace and straighten up and get “justified.” Nobody likes a person who “convicts them of sin,” who tells them they have to change.
[Justification means to
get all your parts in harmony. Old time auto mechanics used to talk of their
job as “justifying” a motor, getting all the parts to work together the way
they are supposed to.”]
Pastor is a much less
dangerous and intrusive designation than preacher. It means “shepherd.”
Shepherds don’t challenge those in their flock to be better sheep, they just
take care of them, lead them to green pastures and still waters [sheep don’t
like to drink out of running waters, like streams]. Shepherds fight off coyotes
and jackals and other sheep-stealers.
I think pastor as shepherd
is a mis-designation, for there is only one shepherd for the Christian flock,
The Great Shepherd. The so-called pastor is more like the sheep dog that
assists the shepherd—running in circles trying to keep the flock together and
headed in the correct direction, nipping at the heels of the stragglers,
barking out instructions that the sheep ignore in favor of just going the way
all the others are, staying up all night to watch for predators…
It’s too late now to
change my title, since I no longer have a flock, but I should have eschewed
“The Rev. Dr. McFarland” for “The Rev. K9 McFarland.”
I miss nipping at heels.
The Rev. K9 John Robert McFarland, Retired
“Retired” for a sheep dog
means on the last ride to the vet’s. Hmm, I’ll bet I could make a country song
out of that…
CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
UKRAINE RELIEF
One of the very best places to donate to help Ukraine folks who are injured and hungry and displaced by Putin’s invasion is UMCOR, which has an A+ rating from the charitable oversight organizations. https://umcmission.org/umcor/
If you designate Advance 982450, 100% of your donation goes directly to Ukraine relief. [Otherwise, it’s 97%, which is still so much higher than any other way of giving. Only 3% for administration.]
MENTAL HEALTH HAZARD
Brain researcher Andrew Newberg says that “…fear-based religions can be hazardous to your health. It’s too bad the Surgeon General can’t place a warning sign on certain passages from the Bible or Koran, especially those that encourage violence toward people who hold different beliefs.” Andrew Newberg, MD, and Mark Robert Waldman, How God Changes Your Brain, p. 62.
MODERN FAREWELLS
Friend of CIW, Nina, says that “good-byes” these days are different. They are not exactly good-bye. She recently had to say “good-bye” to the associate pastor at her church, which included “see you on Facebook.” There are many things I don’t like about FB, and being old and curmudgeonly, I try to avoid it as much as possible, but it really does make staying in touch much easier.
SHORTS CONFUSION
This is a confusing time of year for me. Yes, because of Daylight Savings Time, true, but mostly because of short pants. Congress is fixing to fix the twice-yearly time change confusion by making DST the year-around standard, but I’m not sure they can do anything about my shorts dilemma.
I love to walk in shorts. It’s much easier than long underwear under flannel-lined cargo pants under a parka, the kind of warmth an old man needs in winter. Walking in shorts in winter is my way of sneering at the cold. I love it when I can sneak in a shorts day in winter.
So I walked in shorts to start Feb. Yes, it was almost 60, and sunny, on Feb. 1, in Bloomington. And, yes, the next day it was almost 60 below, and blizzardy. So that day I did not walk in shorts.
In Indiana, it’s hard to know if it is a shorts day. It might be in the morning, but not the afternoon, or vice versa.
That’s okay. My schedule requires only one day per month walking in shorts. More if the weather is okay, but one is enough to make me think I am still a young guy, a shorts kind of guy.
Welcome, Spring!
CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
This column starts out like it’s irrelevant to anyone but professional pastors, but be patient. After the first two paragraphs, it’s relevant to everybody…
Our son-in-law, Bill, is a Roman Catholic eucharistic deacon. He says that priests these days are so busy with administrative duties that they have little time for actual pastoral work. Recently, he saw a priest defy the tyranny of administration. People were chatting and drinking coffee in the parish hall when a man went up to the priest and asked him if he had time to hear his confession. The priest said, “Of course,” and took the man off to the side of the room for an impromptu confessional. Bill was pleased for the priest. “He got to do what he was called to do by God, instead of all the administrative stuff he has to do.”
I understand that priest. As a pastor, I was never able to put administration ahead of a personal need. That is one reason that denominational administrators didn’t trust me. It wasn’t that I thought administrative stuff was unimportant. Cars don’t run well if the oil isn’t changed once in a while. But an oil change can be put off. A crying child or a hurting person needs attention right now.
Even in old age, we are still faced with the person/administration dilemma.
I have the good fortune to be married to a home management [administration] specialist. She has two degrees in the subject, has taught it in universities and high schools, and has practiced it for 63 years. She was practicing the principles of Attila the Hun, such as charging with extra horses to make the army look bigger, long before his principles were enshrined in current business management books. She knows how to maintain what I call personal infrastructure—finances, records, storage, appliances, deliveries, groceries, clothing, etc.
I still have problems with personal infrastructure, though. I just don’t like to have an infrastructure need hanging around in the back of my brain. I’m uneasy all day on Wednesday, until it’s time to put the garbage can out on the curb for the early Thursday morning pickup.
So, if Helen asks what I want for supper, I always say “spaghetti,” because I don’t have to think about it. But that is unfair to her. Cooking is her creative outlet. She wants to talk about new stuff to eat, like baked emu. I need to learn to put the personal needs ahead of the infrastructure needs, because they’re just more important.
Administration of our personal lives is a necessary reality. We need to get food and wash clothes and use the remote control for the TV. First, though, we need to listen to those who want us to hear their confession, however they say it.
Even in old age, when, yes, it takes a lot of time and energy just to get our shoes tied, the personal still comes first.
John Robert McFarland
CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
This week I read the death notices of two long-time friends. I’ll call them Bob and Andy. Bob’s wife sent me the notice of his death and the details for his memorial service. She knew I would be interested. Although older and more experienced than I, and a writer himself, he was always one of my biggest fans, keeping a file of all my articles published in religious journals. That certainly cements a friendship. We have kept up with each other through all these years, by telephone calls and letters and emails, especially when their daughter died in her 50s.
No one sent me the notice about Andy’s death. I came across it by searching for him on the web. I wanted to see if I could find him, to renew a meaningful friendship, meaningful at least to me. I was too late.
I lost touch with Andy about 20 years ago. His address changed. So did his telephone number and email. He didn’t inform us. We found out when they no longer worked. I asked mutual friends about him. They reported the same problems.
I’ve missed him all this time. Wondered about him. Prayed for him.
We met in college. I liked Andy. He was an interesting guy. His intelligence was a bit intimidating, though. He was the smartest guy anywhere, and he knew it.
He dated, and later married, the second-smartest girl in college. I was interested in dating her myself, but she knew that she was not the right girl for me, and she knew that her roommate was, so she “facilitated” our meeting. I’ll always be grateful.
After college, Andy went to the most prestigious theological school in the country, while his wife went to the most prestigious professional school in her field. Then he got a PhD, and she got another professional doctorate.
They were on the fast track on the high road…but it didn’t go anywhere. Rather than teaching in a seminary, he got a few jobs in small liberal arts colleges, none of which lasted long. She was not able to get a decent job in either of her professional fields. They became increasingly bitter.
I think they were
embarrassed, too. They never said--back when we were starting out, or along the
way-- that they were going to succeed far beyond the limits set upon the rest
of us, their average friends, but they expected to, and we expected them to.
When they didn’t, they didn’t want to face us. They didn’t want us to see them
in their failures. They just dropped out of all their old friendships.
That’s sad. When you’re old, long-time friends are important, friends who share your memories.
We are old. We don’t care now about worldly success. If they had stuck with us, we would have just reminisced together about old times, when dreams were fresh. And we would have comforted one another about the dreams that didn’t turn out, because we all have some of those.
So sad. For them. For us.
John Robert McFarland
CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
First, I slowed down and stopped because the man who was walking his dog was waiting at the crosswalk. No, that wasn’t the thing. I always stop when I see someone at a cross-walk, for the same reason I wear a mask during a pandemic. The “thing” was what the man did…
…he wanted to give me one of those friendly acknowledgment waves, the thank-you kind. As he and the dog started across the street, he waved at me with the hand that wasn’t holding the leash. I suddenly realized that he was waving a bag of dog poop at me! That’s sort of a mixed message. It was a big dog, too.
The second thing I’ve done often, but not recently. I made a woman cry.
I’ve done that a lot through the years, but the tears were usually from frustration or irritation. And I haven’t done it much at all for two years, since I’ve not been permitted out I public, where there are strange women who don’t know to avoid me.
All in all, an interesting day.
John Robert McFarland
CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
{Remember to set your clocks ahead.}
FOLLOW UPS TO THE 3-4-22 COLUMN ON TELEPHONE OPERATORS
Old college friend Bob tells of when he was in theological school at SMU, how he dated a Southwest Bell telephone operator named Marilyn a little, but then was gone for the whole summer. When he got back, he received a bill from Southwest Bell for several thousand dollars, which was to be sent to a particular operator, named Marilyn. He called her up and said that seemed like quite a lot, even in those says where long-distance calls were toted up by the minute, but he was willing to meet her in person to discuss it. He’s had a very smart wife named Marilyn for close to 60 years.
Faithful commentor, Maria, said that when she was growing up, their home phone number was very similar to Dial A Prayer. She says that “My dad often indulged folks.” How neat.
OUT WITH GRANDPA
Our grandson is coming to visit. I am delighted, and also a bit worried, for I am remembering the time when he was about three and wanted his mother to stop at the gumball machine on the way out of the grocery store. At that point, of course, any mother with a 3 year old and a 7 year old and a cart full of groceries simply doesn’t have time to stop. He started to tear up. His mother overheard his sister say, “Don’t worry about it. Just wait ‘til the next time you’re out with Grandpa.”
This worries me some, since now when he is out with Grandpa, we look at new sports cars.
AFTER THE CAMERA BREAKS AWAY
TV sitcom writers are smart. They’re not always good. Plenty of the stuff they try to put over on us as humor is lame, at best, but they know when to cut the camera away from the action.
It’s right after a character has said or done something stupid or embarrassing or awkward or dangerous. The laugh track comes up, and we’re left to write the rest of the scene for ourselves.
The real action comes after the camera cuts away.
Jesus had some pretty good writers—Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul. But the real writer of the Jesus story is The Holy Spirit, who does the writing after the camera has cut away. When we have said or done something stupid or embarrassing or awkward of dangerous, the camera cuts away, and we’re face to face with the risen Christ.
That’s what Lent is all
about.
John Robert McFarland
CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
Recently I have seen a photo of a train station in Poland, where Polish mothers have left a line of baby strollers for arriving Ukrainian refugee mothers. Unknown mothers understanding the plight of other unknown mothers. Just a simple little thing to make their desperate refugee life a little easier. It is an endearing and heart-rending picture.
It makes me wonder if Egyptian mothers did a similar thing for Mary when she had to flee her country to escape a narcissistic megalomaniac who was bent on killing not only her son but all the other little boys under age two in his nation, just to hang onto his power, without any concern for the agony he was causing others. [Matthew 2:13-18.]
We know very little of
Jesus until he was 30 or so. Imagine how many little acts of kindness other
mothers must have done for Mary along the way. It may not take a village to
raise a child, but it takes a lot of acts of kindness, one mother to another,
some known, some anonymous. Acts that are not chronicled in the bible, not
noted on a web site, not prattled on a podcast. Unknown acts from one mother to
another, so that all can get their children raised up…
Yes, there were other mothers who helped Vladimir Putin’s mother, too, shared some turnips or some rubles, or when things got bad enough, some vodka.
Many people claim that Ukraine will win this war. Because it should. That is the way the story is supposed to come out. But what does winning mean? Think of how many lives, how much property, how many works of art, how much culture, how much trust is being destroyed. Perhaps when it is “over,” Ukraine will continue as a free, democratic nation. Yes, that will be a victory. But a “broken hallelujah.”
I am not as optimistic. Russia is so large, and has so many resources, and it has a soulless dictator who has a lot of “face” at stake. That is the definition of “might makes right.”
But even if Ukraine is
subjugated as a vassal state of Russia, Putin can’t win, either. Dictators
never do. There are always too many mothers who are willing to leave a stroller
for the next refugee mother who comes along.
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com
CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
Now is the time to work on how we are going to restart when the virus and masks and isolation are gone. Yes, it seems a bit early. They are not gone quite yet. Maybe they won’t be gone entirely forever. But a restart of some sort will come, and we need to make decisions about it rather than just letting it happen any old way. “Any old way” is not a restart; it’s just chaos.
If there is anything good about this covid-induced shutdown and isolation, it’s the chance to reboot, individually as well as socially. We have a better idea now, if we’re paying any attention at all, about what is really necessary to have a whole life.
I once tried to get my conference to restart, but that did not work, for a lot of reasons. The main one, though, I think, was that the underbrush had not been burned off far enough for people to see the need. The covid19 virus has burned off a whole lot of underbrush.
A conference, in Methodist terms, is a geographical area. All the preachers, congregations and other ministries [hospitals, retirement homes, children’s homes, colleges, etc] belong to the conference. My membership was in The Central IL Conference, now part of The IL Great Rivers Conference.
It was almost 40 years ago now. As always, everybody had been moaning and groaning about the dearth of new people joining our congregations. I figured that the reason for that was simple: nobody ever invited anybody to come. We had lots of meetings to figure out what to do about it, but that was all we did—meet and talk.
So I made a motion at annual conference [the annual meeting of all the preachers and lay members, same number of both clergy and lay voting members] that we have no meetings for a year and instead spend the time we used for meetings for inviting people to join the church and come back at the next annual conference and see if we were better or worse off as a church.
Somebody got up and acknowledged that my motion was a fun way to bring attention to the problem… but Bishop Hodapp said, “No, we have a legitimate motion before us and we have to treat it as such. We can’t talk about it until it gets a second.” It immediately got a whole lot of seconds.
Nobody wanted to admit that they thought meetings were a better use of time than asking people to join the church, so they began to drag their heels in little ways…
Well, the conference trustees had to meet, in case we were sued because some preacher was a pedophile, or to deal with the insurance company in case the conference office building blew up. So I accepted an amendment to my motion to allow the trustees to meet.
Well, the Episcopacy [bishop] Committee had to meet, in case the bishop died and we got a new one. I accepted the amendment.
Well, there might be an emergency with the broom committee, or the rearview committee or… you get the idea. Even with all the amendments, the motion lost, but not by much. They just could not take a chance on change.
A few years ago, a conference administrator said to me, “To show how bad things have gotten, we’re beginning to take seriously ideas you suggested twenty years ago.”
That’s fine. It makes me feel affirmed. But my ideas were all about re-starting a church that no longer exists. We all had ideas before covid about how we should reform our lives. Those ideas are irrelevant now.
Yes, old people don’t have many years left, but we need to start working on how to live those years in a post-covid world. As Barbara Sher says, “It’s not too late unless you don’t start now.”
John Robert McFarland
CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
For some reason [it’s money, stupid!] America is set on eliminating people from commerce. Be it producing raw materials, using them in manufacturing, or selling the products, the ideal is “untouched by human hands.” The theory is: Anything people can do, machines can do better, and cheaper. There are gains, perhaps, economically, but we pay a high price socially.
Especially confounding is the loss of the telephone operator known as “Central.” That’s how she answered when you turned the crank and rang her up, just that one word, “Central.”
When Helen was about two, she cut off a leg. Well, it was something serious like that. Her mother grabbed the phone and yelled, “Call the doctor and call my mother” and hung up to attend to Helen. Very soon running up the walk were Dr. McClure and Lara Heltzel. “Central” had recognized Georgia’s voice and knew who her mother was and which of the town’s two doctors attended their family.
One day my mother called Central in Francisco, IN and asked for Dill’s store. “Do you want to talk to Johnny or Ted?” Central asked. “I think Johnny’s still there, but Ted just left.” Her office was across the street from the store.
Then there are people who are not designated as “Central,” but who do the work anyway…
Daughter Katie saw a tweet about a guy [apparently in England] whose father has a telephone number similar to that of the train station. He often gets calls asking about train schedules. It costs people to call, and he doesn’t want them to lose their change, so he just got a copy of the train schedule and looks up the next train to nowhere [actually, Katie said “to Bristol”] himself instead of telling them they have the wrong number.
When we lived in Arcola, IL, every September a man called wanting to talk to Phil Yoder. There were lots of Yoders in that Amish-laden area, but we knew of no Phil. The caller and Helen always had a nice conversation about Phil’s continuing absence from our house, but they had nothing else to talk about, so Helen finally just got Phil’s number herself so she could give it to the guy.
When we lived in Normal, IL our number was just one digit different from the IL State U office that handled both the university police and janitorial services. Unfortunately, one of their shifts ended at midnight, and I often got calls around 1:30 in the morning from women wanting to know “where in the hell is my husband?” I did quite a bit of wee hours marriage counseling on the phone.
When they lived in Gary, IN, Helen’s family often got a call from a man who whispered, “Is he gone yet?” Her mother got fed up with it and said, “Yes, come on over.” Then she got to worrying and watched the newspapers for days for reports of knifing incidents. There were so many, though, that she wasn’t sure if the man she had invited over was one of them.
Life is so much easier with a Central.
Every family, every group, every organization needs a “Central.” They may not be called that, but that’s what they are. Today is Helen’s birthday. I’m so grateful that my life still has a Central.
CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
EATING SNAKES
I think I forgot to relay this story when Katie Matson first told us. She is a nutritionist, and before retirement worked in the health service at Indiana University. It’s a neat program. Any student can have a free consultation with a professional nutritionist to get help with eating problems. A grad student from a Middle East country came to see her.
“My problem is snakes,” he told her. “I love to eat snakes.”
Katie was non-plussed. She has a Master’s degree and years of experience, but had no idea about the nutritional value of snakes.
“I know I should not eat snakes,” he went on, “but I love them so. I eat them all day long.”
Katie began to wonder where he got all those snakes. Bloomington has a lot of ethnic groceries and restaurants, since we have IU students and permanent residents from all over the world, but…
“The worst is, eating snakes at bed time. I know that’s the worst…”
Then poor Katie breathed a
sigh of relief. His English was very good, but he did have a bit of accent.
What she had been hearing as “snakes,” he was saying as “snacks!”
LOOKING WITH DOLLY
I saw an interview with country singer Marty Stuart about Dolly Parton, the voluptuous philanthropist. [When was the last time you saw those two words together?]
He said, “Dolly isn’t a dumb blonde. As she herself has said, ‘I know I’m not dumb, and I know I’m not blonde.’ She looks like that to get you to look at her. She knows what you’re thinking when you’re looking, so she’s able to pull you over to her side, so that you’re no longer looking at her, you’re looking with her.”
I think that’s what Jesus
does. Jesus knows what we’re thinking, and he uses that knowledge to pull us
over to his side, to see with him, to see the world as he sees it. We call that
salvation.
LOVING KINDNESS
I usually have half a slice of homemade bread with peanut butter for breakfast. This morning I decided that I am old enough to have jelly, too.
I have avoided jelly heretofore because I have diabetes. My doctor says that my diabetes is “well controlled through medication,” which irritates me, since I think it is controlled because I walk so far every day, and also do not eat jelly on my toast.
But, I just had a birthday, and when you’re this old, how many years am I cutting off my life by having a little jelly? Anyway, it reminded me of one of my favorite sermon illustrations…
A Sunday School boy was asked to define loving kindness. He said, “If you ask someone for a piece of bread, and they give it to you, that’s kindness. If they put jelly on it, that’s loving kindness.”
John Robert McFarland
CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
The fourth of a four-part series for Black History Month]
I drove the nuns and students of our Terre Haute SCOPE chapter to Atlanta for their orientation at Morris Brown College, before their assignment to Albany, so they could have Dr. Justin’s station wagon, then flew home. In his first report letter back to Terre Haute, Bob Mullins said that the group all agreed that they would miss me “…because his religious jokes are an inspiration.” It’s hard to interpret that now…
Bob was both serious and fun. Everyone at the Wesley Foundation [Methodist campus ministry] liked hanging out with him. But he was not musical. So it was a source of much merriment among his fellow WF students back in Terre Haute when we learned that, among all his other duties as de facto leader for the Terre Haute Scope chapter in Albany, Georgia “freedom summer” of 1965, the Golden Notes gospel singing group had decided he should be their manager.
Singer, no, but manager,
definitely yes. Bob was a remarkable twenty-one-year old. He was not fazed by
dealing with the business of running the Freedom School, and finding lodgings
for the nuns and the students, and even being the manager for the Golden Notes,
even though he thought that his only job that summer would be working on voter
registration.
It was a little more onerous to deal with the constant harassment of the police than to manage the Golden Notes. He was arrested almost daily for imaginary driving infractions, such as incorrect changing of lanes. The fines ranged from $17 to $30, which in today’s dollars would be like $170 to $300. He didn’t have to pay those personally. Those fines were paid by SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the sponsors of Freedom Summer] or those of us who raised funds back home. [There were 7 clergy-Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish-- in Terre Haute who together raised about $3500 to finance the trip.]
The two things that really did bother Bob were the apathy of the local “Negroes” in Albany, and the ignoring of journalistic ethics by the Southern newspapers.
In their final report, Sisters MJ and AL said that they largely failed at getting local Negro leadership involved with the Freedom School and the voter registration, especially the “middle-class Negroes.” It’s just the way it is; middle-class folks have the most to fear when change comes.
Bob was a journalism major at Indiana State and sent back articles on what he was doing that summer to “The Statesman” INSU newspaper. He was appalled that the newspapers throughout GA and AL referred to black people, as “niggers,” not just in opinion columns but in news articles.
One of his trickiest
incidents came one night when he was eating by himself at a restaurant and a
girl he described in his letter only as “very young” propositioned him. He said
that she was persistent, and he had to be careful how he rejected her
overtures, or he would be considered rude, for she was black.
Bob went with the expectation that he would just be another student, spending his time registering folks to vote. Instead, of necessity, he became the wagon-master, especially of Dr. Justin’s station wagon, but also doing all the things the wagon-masters of the old West did—scouting out the way, looking for water holes, finding grub, leading the way on the river fords, watching for hostiles.
I was so busy back then, as a son and husband and father, as a pastor, that the fullness of one day just ran into the next. I didn’t have time to stop to consider what an extraordinary thing our SCOPE chapter was doing, and what an extraordinary young man was leading them. It’s nice now to think about that.
Also, I have been rather stupid as I hear people say that they don’t think this “history” should be taught. “This isn’t history!” I rant. “This is life.” But then I realize that for anyone under the age of 65, and that includes most state legislators, this IS history. To me, it is what we did only yesterday, to try to be decent people.
John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com
