THE MAN AT THE WINDOW [Sat, 4-30-22]

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

THE MAN AT THE WINDOW [Sat, 4-30-22]

 

“You might be in danger,” the young man told me.

Helen and I don’t see many people in person, because of covid, and because we’re old and don’t go anywhere. Occasionally there is someone in our house, most recently George, the plumber. If we see folks in person elsewhere, it’s usually in a medical office. So it was with the young man at the window.

The dental hygienist likes to schedule Helen and me back to back, so that each of us has to sit in the waiting room for an hour during the other’s “procedure,” pretending to read, so that other people will leave us alone. Waiting room conversations are usually fretful. They remind you of what and how most people are thinking, or not thinking. Reading is a cocoon, but you must choose the book carefully, so that its title alone does not spark conversation. A cover like Principles of Higher Mathematics Applied to Quantum Mechanics is useful. You can put a Colson Whitehead or a Marilynne Robinson inside it.

But I’d already been in a frustrating conversation in which a woman told me that she was sorry that people were suffering in the war in Ukraine but that it was “part of God’s plan.” That was when the young man appeared in the window beside where I was sitting in the waiting room. He tapped rather insistently on the glass. I tried to ignore it, but he kept tapping, so I looked. He motioned for me come outside. I was the only man in the building. I figured somebody should get ahead of the situation. So I went outside.

He was very nice-looking. A bit of a James Dean/Johnny Depp type. Mid to late 20s. Clean shaven, trim hair, no visible tattoos, simple but clean clothes. He told me his name was Christopher. He said his last name, too, but I didn’t catch it. His voice was pleasant, but he used it to say unsettling things. At least, at first. The first thing he said was that I might be in danger. He added that he was in danger, too. But, he continued, he loved me, and if I ever needed help, he would provide it, as best he could. Then he asked if he could shake my hand.

Well, this is covid times. You should not shake hands with strangers. But he was so polite and sincere. And I’m still a preacher, at least in my sensitivities, even if not in my activities. Preachers don’t know how to say “no” to people like Christopher. So I stuck out my hand. Instead of shaking it, he took it in both of his, leaned over and kissed it lightly, looked up at me and said, “Remember that I love you,” and hurried away.

The whole time I had been waiting for him to ask me for money. I was prepared. I carry a money clip in my side pocket with only a five-dollar bill in it. Whenever I am asked for money, I pull it out. The other person does not have a chance to look at my billfold and see that I have platinum credit cards and thousand dollar bills. But he did not ask for money. He just told me that he loves me.

Yes, Christopher means “Christ-bearer.” Yes, I believe that he was Christ in a person. But the woman who said that Ukraine was part of God’s plan may have been Christ in a person, too—just harder to figure out. So with the hygienist and the receptionist and the other people in the waiting room. Anyone might be an “angel unawares.”

Yes, the most likely explanation is that he is one of Bloomington’s many homeless people, most of whom have illusions of some sort. “Shalom,” our center for the homeless, is one of the main causes we support. Maybe I’ve even paid for a meal or a shower for Christopher at some time.

But, he did not claim to be Christ. He did not ask for money. He just reminded me that I am in danger, which is always true, and said that he loves me.

Christopher may be homeless and delusional, but he’s living a better life than a lot of folks in expensive houses, who are proud that they live in the “real world.”

John Robert McFarland

 

MY FAVORITE CHURCH MEMBER: Mae Everett [R, 4-28-22]

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

Going through old letters, I found one from Mae Everett. When she wrote that letter, she was about the age I am now. I was nineteen, when I became her pastor. When the letter came, I was no longer a college student part-time preacher but had gone on to seminary. She was thanking me for my few years as her pastor.

Preachers shouldn’t have favorites, but Mae is probably my all-time favorite parishioner. She never held my age against me, as some older folks did. I was her pastor; that was reason enough for her to take me as I was, even with all my immaturities.

She was widowed and had no family. She survived on a pathetically small pension from her husband’s work on the railroad. She lived in a tiny house that could more properly be called a shack. She heated with coal, and kindling she chopped herself. She pumped water from an outside well. She used an outhouse. She had no TV or telephone or car. She lived in a town with one school, one store, one barber shop. Anyplace she went, she walked.

That included church. Whenever the doors were open, she was there--singing the hymns, and sometimes dancing to them in the aisles. It bothered me when other people danced in the aisles. Somehow it seemed okay with Mae, because with her, it was just the joy of living overflowing.

Mae was unfailingly happy. She never complained about anything. She always had a smile on her face.

It was assumed in those days that the preacher would call in the homes of church members, especially the “puny and feeble,” as they were listed in the membership directory. Mae was anything but puny and feeble, but whenever I felt down or frustrated, I would go sit with her, in her bare. diminutive parlor, beside the pot-bellied store, telling myself that I was doing my pastorally duty, but really because I knew I would leave with a better attitude.

In her letter, she said, “I remember when you came to my house, how much we laughed.”

It’s a good way to be remembered. It’s how I remember my favorite church member.

John Robert McFarland

PHARMACISTS, NURSES, AND BRAINS [T, 4-26-22]

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

After that episode about the meaning of life with Nurse Olivia--that I wrote about a month or so ago, when I explained to her, at her request, sort of, that the purpose of life is to have a good time--I went to CVS to get a prescription. When the pharmacy tech asked if I had any questions, I posed the same one to her that I had to Nurse O, which Nurse O had turned back on me: What is the meaning of Life? The tech replied, “The purpose of life this week is not to kill my teenaged children.” When I explained that if she were patient long enough, they would cease being teens, she did not seem much mollified.

Speaking of CVS: Friends from Terre Haute [IN] visited 4-12. We told them of getting our 2^nd anti-virus boosters at the CVS in the Target store here. They said they had gone to a CVS in Terre Haute to get boosted but the pharmacist told them he would not give them the shot. He said that he and some other pharmacists in Terre Haute had decided the boosters would do no good and might do harm and so they would not give them. At least, that’s what he gave as his reason for refusal. But this is Indiana, where people divide into Republicans and Democrats over what color the sky is, so who knows? Anyway, our friends got their booster shots at a walk-in clinic at the health dept.

Speaking of Nurse Olivia, I was back at Dr. V’s for a regular appointment. Nurse O is young, and so likes to hear me talk about obscure stuff. I asked her if she knew that one of the best and most simple things you can do for brain health is to yawn. No, she had not known that, and I explained that I had not either, until I read it in How God Changes Your Brain, by Anthony Newberg, MD, and Mark Robert Waldman. She said that she would like to read that book, so I thought I could save her some time by explaining brain anatomy, including the anterior cingulate, where, theologically speaking, prevenient grace resides. I also described the hippocampus, where hippos sit reading philosophy under trees, and stroll hand in hand with their girlfriends, like any other campus. She said, “It sounds very interesting, in your brain.”

John Robert McFarland

 

I NO LONGER EXIST, AT LEAST WHERE IT COUNTS, ON FACEBOOK

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

“Pride goes before a fall.” [Proverbs 16:18]

I have been rather proud, self-righteously so, that although I am old, I do not get into trouble, because I do nothing that can get me into trouble, because I do nothing. I do not fall for the scams other old people do or get into problems on the computer/internet because I respond to no queries, do no business. I go to brick and mortar stores and pay cash. I don’t answer the telephone. I am immune. Except…

I am proud that I was an Oakland City Acorn. That was our team name in Oakland City HS, since Oakland City College had already taken Oaks, which sounds much mightier than Acorns. But in the early 1960s, OCHS was merged with Francisco and Mackey and Somerville and Buckskin and Hosmer to form a “directional school,” East Gibson. Naturally, all the former team names were out and a new, neutral name had to be assumed. Acorns and Owls and Aces became Trojans.

I thought it would be nice if the many dozens of folks who were still Acorns had a page on Facebook, to share Acorn memories. So I started one. Unbeknownst to me, that made me the administrator.

Recently various non-Acorns have used the page to try to sell products, and to scam Acorns into non-Acorn like activities. Real Acorns complained and said the page administrator should do something about it. I didn’t know how, and I don’t have many more years to live anyway, so I though a new administrator would be a good solution. Lowell Tyring graciously agreed.

So I went to the Acorns page and changed the administrator to Lowell. Or so I thought. Actually, I just changed my name to Lowell Tyring. Facebook understood that to be total, so now my own FB page says that Lowell Tyring not only went to OCHS, but is married to Helen Karr and was a poor preacher for 50 years. Poor Lowell!

Jesus said that we should “let your yes be yes and your no be no.” [Mt 5:37] Or, KISS [Keep It Simple, Stupid.]

I am old. I know my limitations. That’s why I don’t do anything. I know that when I do stuff, unintended consequences follow. The problem is that, being old, I am forgetful, so I also forget that I know my limitations and go ahead and assume I know how to do stuff when I don’t.

It’s a bit awkward. I don’t do FB hardly at all anymore, and I am a bit uppity toward people who “waste their time” that way. But really I’m just trying to stay out of trouble. Either way, I have made trouble for Lowell. They’re already putting his name on my tomb stone.

John Robert McFarland

I have now deleted my FB account. That ought to keep me out of trouble. Right?

THE REAL McFARLAND--AUNT GERTRUDE [F, 4-22-22]

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

They are burying AG today. Aunt Gertrude, that is. The widow of Randall, the young bachelor uncle who took care of me when I was a little boy. The last Grandma Mac of her generation. Almost 100 years old. Unfailingly kind and interested and interesting through all those years.

AG was the successor Grandma Mac to the original Grandma Mac, the remarkable Henrietta Ann [Retta] Smith McFarland who was mother to John, my father, and Glen, Helen, David, Bob, Genevieve, Randall, and Mike.

There were other Grandma Macs in AG’s generation. Mable, Glen’s wife. Mildred, John’s wife, my mother. Rosemary, Bob’s wife. Edna, Mike’s wife.

There are other Grandma Macs now, the next generation down, including Helen. And Evonne.

They lived out what it meant to be a McFarland, gave us our family identity. But what they all have in common is that they weren’t Macs, weren’t McFarlands. They were Smiths and Ponds and Robbins and Navaros and Karrs and Potts. They were immigrants to the clan. And they gave us, give us, our identity.

The original MacFarlanes, along the southern and western shores of Loch Lomond in Scotland, were wild men. They were fierce and warlike. Their main occupation was stealing cattle, especially from the Calhouns, which they did by the light of the full moon, which is why to this day the full moon is known as “McFarland’s Lantern.”

Apparently, though, along the way, they stole some of the Calhoun women as well as their cattle, and the great change began. Without the women from the other families, the McFarland men would still just be stealing Calhoun’s cows. Now, although it has taken a long time, and many generations of immigrant women, many new generations of Grandma Macs, we McFarland men are close to becoming acceptable citizens.

I give thanks for all those immigrant Grandma Macs, but this day, especially I give thanks for the one I call Aunt Gertrude. As I’ve told you before, Helen has a bracelet that reads WWAGD? What Would Aunt Gertrude Do? Sometimes it’s hard to know what Jesus would do, but we could always see what Aunt Gertrude did, and that was close enough.

John Robert McFarland

McFarland Cattle Company, “The Best of Calhoun’s Herd.”

 

 

“ONE DAY WHEN I WAS LOST…” [T, 4-19-22]

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

[Next post will be F, 4-22-22]

Helen has a friend with memory problems. I’ll call her Frances, although that is not her name. They have met for coffee, alternating houses, each Tuesday morning at 10:30 for several years. But even though Helen calls Frances the day before, and the morning of, Frances rarely shows up at the right place on the right day at the right time. Then the tracking-down commences. When they finally get together, they have good conversations. It’s a lot of work for Helen, but she does it, because Frances is lonely and needs the fellowship.

“Well,” I say to Helen, “you have always said that when we got old, you wanted to be able to help our old friends through their final years, because that’s what old friends are for.” Frances is not an “old friend,” but she is an “old” friend. We don’t live where our old friends do, so we can’t help take care of them. But we have new “old” friends, and we can walk toward that “door at the end of the hall” with them.

Loneliness, and needing a friend who will come looking for you when you have forgotten to show up, are not confined to the elderly years, of course.

A story repeat, because it fits, and because I like it: When daughter Katie was a young teen, we were runners. On vacation, she went running in Custer State Park in the Black Hills. Night fell, and she got lost. When we got her back to our vacation cabin, I said, “That must have been scary.” She said, “Yes, it was scary, but I didn’t worry, because I knew you’d come looking for me.”

That’s the Good News of the Gospel, I think. Whenever we get lost, even if it’s in our own brains, in Christ, God comes looking for us.

John Robert McFarland

The title of this column is also the title of one of my favorite Chad Mitchell Trio songs: “One day when I was lost, they nailed him to the cross…”

 

EASTER LETTING DOWN [Su, 4-17-22]

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

I have never liked Easter all that much. It’s a bit of a let-down, especially compared to Christmas

I mean, Christmas has cozy Christmas eve services with candles and a quiet version of Silent Night. Easter has cold, sleepy sunrise services, with bleary-eyed parents of teens not even coming to worship because they’re too tired from serving soggy pancakes at the breakfast we have to promise people to get them to come to the sunrise service. [Although I do love the story of the young woman who explained to her doubting friends why she went to church, “Sometimes they have pancakes.”]

Gene Autry tried his best to convince us that Easter was as good as Christmas, singing about how Peter Cottontail brought presents at Easter to good boys and girls. About as convincing as The Great Pumpkin. “There are jellybeans for Tommy, colored eggs for sister Sue, an orchid for your mommy, and an Easter bonnet, too…” Nothing for poor old dad, not even a tie. Although “maybe if you’re extra good, he’ll roll lots of eggs your way.” What? Being extra good to get eggs you can’t peel and then when you have what’s left, they taste like…eggs!? Yeah, they tried to up the ante on that by including chocolate eggs and bunnies, but nobody’s fooled? It ain’t Christmas!

Jane was one of the best Christians I ever knew, the Lay Leader of a congregation where I preached for 8 years. Once she said to me, “I believe all the other Christian stuff, but I just can’t believe in resurrection.” I wanted to scream, “I’ve explained it to you for 8 Easters; why don’t you understand?” Then I remembered that I don’t understand it, either.

Easter is anti-climactic. We’re supposed to be so elated, because it’s the promise of eternal life. But eternal life is overrated. One of my first sermon illustrations was of the young woman who was no cook but prepared a meal for her fiancé. It was execrable. After supper she sat on his lap and cooed, “Just think, after we’re married, I can cook for you forever.” He thought, “I can’t stand this forever!”

So we try to dress up forever, eternal life, make it look acceptable. In heaven, you’re happy all the time, and reunited with all your loved ones. Nobody notes that you’re reunited with all the people you don’t like, too. How does that work?

There is an old preacher story of the deformed, crippled little boy who is dying. The preacher goes to visit him and assures him that in heaven he will have a perfect body and can run and jump and do all the stuff he couldn’t do on earth. “Then I don’t want to go,” he says, “because it won’t be me.”

We had communion at St. Mark’s Above the Starbucks last week. The first time we’ve taken communion in person, in church with the rest of the congregation, in two years. Because of virus fears, nobody actually served it. We had to pick up a hunk of Wonder Bread, and two steps later get a thimble of grape juice, and then try to get the bread off the roofs of our mouths while swallowing the juice down before we had to dump the thimble into the discard basket three steps on, while the preacher behind the elements table mumbled something that sounded like “Accept the Body of Christ, and keep moving.” Not a bad formula for communion.

Not a bad formula for Easter, for “understanding” resurrection. What diff is it, if it’s in this life or some other life? Life is life, wherever. Just accept the love of God, and keep moving.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

PATRIPASSIONISM [Good Friday, 4-15-22]

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

  [A repeat from 2015, just before we moved from “the place of winter.”]

 

“This is our God. Not a distant God nor a sadist, but a God who weeps. A God who suffers, not only for us, but with us. Nowhere is the suffering of God more salient than on the cross. Therefore, what can I do but confess that this is not a God that causes suffering. This is a God who bears suffering. I need to believe that God does not initiate suffering; God transforms it.” Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix, page 128 [Jericho Books, 2013].

Patripassionism. The suffering of God. A heresy. Only the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, suffers. If theology has God suffering, too, then all hell breaks loose, or something like that. But Bolz-Weber talks about it like it’s just common-place stuff that everybody believes. Because it is.

This is what happens to heresies; they become orthodoxies. Patripassionism, the suffering of God, was a heresy for the first 2000 years of Christian faith, or at least since Augustine came up with the concept of the Trinity. In the last 50 years, it has become the most universally accepted theological concept.

Fifty years ago I started claiming I was the world’s leading authority on patripassionism. It was an easy claim. No one knew what it was or how to say it or even spell it. [Sphelzchek doesn’t even have patripassionism in its vocabulary.] I thought it would be neat to be called as an expert witness in a trial, when some theological renegade was brought up on heresy charges, having claimed, Unitarian [1] fashion, that God suffers along with us. Alas, now that will never happen.

I must confess my hypocrisy. All this time I have claimed to be an expert on the patripassionism heresy, I have preached that heresy as orthodox truth. Nothing else about suffering makes much sense.

“God is good all the time; all the time God is good.” Really? I think that is the heresy. But “All the time God is with us; God is with us all the time?” Not just with us in our suffering, but suffering with us. Call me a heretic, but yes.

John Robert McFarland

1] Sphelczhek also insists that I capitalize Unitarian even though I use it as a common rather than proper noun.

 

 

SIMULATING EASTER [W, 4-13-22] [A repeat]

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

Michio Koku is to physical and biological sciences what Malcolm Gladwell is to social sciences.

In books like Tipping Point and Outliers, Gladwell takes all the research of psychology and sociology and makes it understandable for common folk, including me. From him we learn things like “the ten thousand hours rule,” that it takes ten thousand hours of doing something, like the Beetles playing music or Bill Gates experimenting with computers, before we become truly proficient at it.

Koku does the same for physics in books like Physics of the Future and Einstein’s Cosmos, and especially for brain science/research in The Future of the Mind.

There is no totally accepted definition of “mind,” but Koku makes a good stab at it by saying that human consciousness is the ability to simulate the future.

That ability is not an unmixed blessing. The ability to simulate the future is how we “awfulize,” imagining all the awful things that might happen to us in the future. But it is what separates us from other species and makes us able to survive, even though we are not as resilient as cock roaches nor as fierce as tigers.

It is also what allows us to believe in resurrection, a life beyond this life. Our brains are far from developed enough to simulate what that future might be like, so we have to make do with a replication of current life, only better. For instance, heaven has streets, but they are made of gold. In the spiritual reality of heaven, it is unlikely there will be either streets or gold, but that is the only language we have. Our ability to simulate the future goes only so far.

We don’t have to go any further than we can, though. Theologian Eugen Rosenstock-Heusey reminds us that Easter is about understanding God’s story backward, not forward. We look at the resurrection of Easter and only then understand all that led up to it. It’s an “ah ha” moment; so this is what THIS LIFE is all about, living the Jesus life, the life of resurrection even before resurrection!

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

BIG PAN TIME [M, 4-11-22] [A repeat]

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

 

Easter is fast approaching, so it is the time to focus on…. [drum roll] resurrection? NO. It’s time to focus on the Easter dinner. And for many people, that means ham…

 

…which reminds me of the woman who always cut the ends off the ham before she put it in the oven. One Easter, her daughter asked her why she did that.

 

“Well, Mother always did that. I’ll ask her.”

 

So she called up Grandma and asked her why she cut the ends off the ham before baking.

 

“I had to,” replied Grandma. “My pan was too small.”

 

As I think about traditions in general, especially those by which we exclude certain people, I am reminded that a lot of them got started just because our pans were too small.

 

In these days of pre-slicing and microwaves and convection ovens and electric can openers, those traditions just don’t make sense anymore.

 

It’s big pan time.

 

 

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

STEALING DONKEYS FOR JESUS [F, 4-8-22]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith For the Years of Winter…

 

                

[I was under the impression that I post this every year for Palm Sunday, but apparently not, because the most recent posting is from 3-25-18. It’s twice as long as one of these columns should be, but I like it, so…]

As they approached Jerusalem, Jesus sent two of his disciples to get a colt that had never been ridden. “If anybody sees you taking it,” he told them, “tell them I need it.” They found the colt and brought it to Jesus and put their coats on it for a saddle and Jesus rode on it into Jerusalem. Many people spread their own clothes on the road, or leafy branches they cut from the trees, and they shouted “Hosanna” as he rode into town. (Matthew 21:1-11; Mark 11:1-11; Luke 19:28-40; John 12:12-19)

***

“It’s Palm Sunday, so I want you to go into town and steal me a donkey,” Jesus told his disciples. “If anybody catches you, tell them I need it.”

Reminds me of the time “Gunner Bob” Reinhart, one of my colleagues in the “Willing Workers” Sunday School class, happened to notice the keys dangling from the ignition in Mr. Bothwell’s new Olds Rocket 88. It was Palm Sunday afternoon, and Gunner decided to take the car for a Holy Week spin. Mr. Bothwell noticed his car taking off from in front of his house and ran down his driveway after it, house slippers on feet and Sunday funnies in hand.

“Why are you taking my car?” he cried.

Gunner, apparently remembering our lesson on the morning, yelled back, “I need it.”

One of Jesus’ disciples nudged the other as they walked into town. “And if they go for that, I’ve got some nice recreational lots along the Dead Sea I can sell them.”

Both capitalists and communists claim Jesus, but he was neither. His approach was entirely different; he just borrowed everything. He borrowed the water he turned into wine, and he borrowed the stone jars from which that wine was poured. He borrowed a boat from which to teach or by which to cross a lake. He borrowed houses in which to eat, teach, and heal. (Some of them did not fare very well, either–one lost its roof so a paralytic could be lowered in to be healed.) He borrowed sons, brothers and husbands to be his disciples. He borrowed the upper room in which he ate his last supper with his borrowed friends. Borrowed was the manger in which he was born, borrowed his cross, and borrowed his tomb.

We think of Jesus as a giver, not a taker. He was the giver of health, love, truth and even the ultimate, his own life. Yet Jesus throughout his entire career borrowed things.

This was not just his lifestyle as an itinerant preacher. He was teaching us that all we have is borrowed from God. He ignored all strictures against lending and borrowing , be it a cloak or a second mile or even one’s other cheek, because none of us really has any possessions. Bigger barns, Swiss bank accounts, even gaining the whole world–none of that is enough for us to establish a claim upon ourselves. You yourself, your very life, is borrowed, so how can you claim anything you have as your own?

Gunner and I learned in Sunday school the “accounting theory” of faith. You get what you have coming to you. Indeed, Gunner got it when he returned Mr. Bothwell’s car. One doesn’t steal donkeys–or Oldsmobiles–and get away with it in my hometown.

Over against the accounting theory stands the unexpected Jesus, the one who says, “If you would follow me, take up your cross, and steal me a donkey.” Jesus lived the reality of grace, of God being good to us not because we are good but because God is good; not because we have been true to some legalistic plumb line of stewardship but because God is rue to the divine identity. To see ourselves as borrowers is to recognize ourselves as those who live by grace, who have no claim upon God except the one that God give in Christ.

Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia launched the New York City Center of Music and Drama, but he never attended the ballet there. Someone asked him why, since he otherwise seemed to be such a supporter of art. He replied, “I’m a guy who likes to keep score. With ballet, I never know who’s ahead.” There is some kind of relationship calculator built into most of us that causes us to keep score.

Relationships, however, have a way of refusing to go by the numbers. That is why so many of us end up forsaking relationships altogether–relationships to other people, to God and even to ourselves. Unless we can keep score and know who is ahead, we do not even want to attend the performance. We may support the idea, and say that it is beautiful, just as LaGuardia did with ballet, but we do not go.

The unexpected Jesus says to us, “Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.” (Matthew 5:421). “And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But…lend, expecting nothing in return…” (Luke 6:34035a). “And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive every one who is indebted to us…” (Luke 11:4a).

That’s a clue. The last sentence comes from a prayer; it is a plea to God. “God, you forgive us our sins, for sins–­those attitudes and actions that keep us so far from you–are our debts, and there is no way we can pay off those debts. The only way we can make right our relationship with you is if you forgive those debts." Each one of us is a Third World nation.

Grace has no contract requirement, nor can it be attained through manipulation. Grace is what we borrow, knowing we can never repay, and knowing that the Lender understands we can never repay

Jesus frees us to be borrowers from God. Perhaps it is too much to expect us to borrow easily from one another. We are not ready to be fellow borrowers until we have borrowed life from God. That is what Jesus teaches. “Look at me,” he says. “I’m a borrower. If I can be a borrower, you can be one, too. Borrow what you need from me.”

Jesus comes to us in a borrowed manger, on a borrowed cross, up from a borrowed tomb, breaking to us the borrowed bread of life, lending us life, forgiveness and hope. “Borrow from me,” he says. “Borrow the things that make for life. Let others borrow as well, and do not hinder them. Hell is a life that is earned. Heaven is a life that is borrowed. Borrowed is best. Go steal me a donkey…:”

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Yes, I wrote it. It was originally published in The Christian Century, 3-21-90.

 

 

 

 

BUT MEMORIES-poem [W, 4-6-22, from my poetry journal of 1-24-22]

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

 

My spirit was without

so I was “moved”

by my muse

raspberry jam

on her face, as usual

to write a poem

which started as

“My spirit is dry

I have but memories…”

which reminded

of the story

about the preacher

who prayed,

“We are but dust…”

And a little voice

piped up with, “Mommy,

what’s butt dust?”

The muse said

that it was now

time to “end”

the poem

Nobody wants to hear

butt memories

 

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

RAGE AND LOVE [M, 4-4-22]

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

There is a rage deep within each of us. It is because we know life is futile, because we shall die. So, what’s the point?

That undifferentiated rage is down at the bottom, below a lot of other layers, but it is there. It is what motivates everything else we do.

It is not just anger. Anger is at the upper levels. Rage is at the foundation.

Adler said all we do is motivated by the desire for power. Freud said it was sex. Jung said it was the collective unconscious.

Adler is right. the desire for power is the attempt to counter the deep rage. If I can just get power, I can hold death off. My world of power might be very small, perhaps just one other person, but if I can have that power, I am invincible. This is the source of rape, especially the most common rape, men against women. It is from the wombs of women that life, and thus death, comes. If I can have power against the life source, even in the life source, I can have power against death.

Freud is right for the same reason. Sex is the power to create life. If I can create life, I can hold off death. This is why poor people refuse to stop having babies, even when they cannot afford them. This is why pro-birth advocates are so often paradoxical, being only pro-birth, not really pro-life. They are also pro-gun and pro-capital punishment, sources of power over death.

Jung is right. In the collective unconscious is the deep rage against the futility of life.

John S. Dunne, SJ, says there are three strangers that come to us in life: the world, sexuality, and mortality. Dunne says that life depends upon whether we make friends or enemies of these three strangers.

[I know, I’ve written about Dunne’s “strangers” before, but I’m coming at them from a different point of view this time.]

First Stranger: We experience “the world” mostly in other people, but it is also nature. If we abuse the world—other people, animals, the environment—use people and the environment instead of enjoying them, the world becomes a hostile and alien place to us.

Second Stranger: Sexuality is the drive for life, expressed in physical union. But that drive is never fulfilled, for death always follows the creation of life. We can do sex all day, forever, but it will not stave off death.

Third Stranger: Mortality. Death. Nothing lasts. That is why Ecclesiastes [1:2] says, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” We call that wisdom, as in “Wisdom Literature.” Nothing lasts, so why bother? We shall die, and with that death goes our love for other people, our care for the world, so why not just “eat, drink, and make merry?” Nothing matters.

I add a fourth stranger. Christ, the Word of God.

If we make friends with God through Christ, all else follows into wholeness, including the world and sexuality and mortality. If we are enemies with God, the deep rage conquers, and we are enemies with the world and sexuality and mortality, enemies of the world and other people and of our own true selves.

 

When we talk of salvation, we are saying that Christ saves us from our rage, creates in us a new heart, allows us to be friends with the world and sexuality and even death, for in Christ, death does not have the last word.

Not “vanity, vanity, all is vanity,” but “What lasts are faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love.” That’s true wisdom literature.

John Robert McFarland

A BINARY GUY IN A CONFUSING TIME [Sat, 4-2-22]

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

I have been a binary person all my life, but I didn’t know it. I just thought I was a guy. “Binary” means that a person is completely and only one sexual orientation, like male or female. But in more recent times, the NB [non-binary] spectrum has been brought into the open. Some folks aren’t just male or female.

Being a “binary” person, I don’t really understand what NB folks experience, except I know it is discrimination based on non-choice group membership, like being white or left-handed, and that is wrong.

So we are addressing the NB situation via “conscience language.” {CL}I have always tried to use CL, but I didn’t know it was called that. Now CL is a “thing.”

 [I’m a little bit confused about whether it’s “conscience” or “conscious,” but they sort of mean the same thing, and CL works either way.]

In saying that I always used CL, I mean that I always tried to be respectful about how I addressed people and what I called them. That started for my generation, of course, with race, specifically black folks.

That’s when I began to fall behind, too.

As I was growing up, the CL for black people was Negro. Then it became “Black.” Then it became African-American.

Charles Morris was the first black faculty member at IL State U. I had worked hard to get the town laws changed so that he could buy a house in Normal. We were on a campus radio station program together one night. I was proud of knowing the new, proper term of “black.” I had learned from black students that “black” was now the correct term. Dr. Morris remonstrated with me. “No, it’s Negro,” he said.

Charles caught up. The last time we talked he was African-American. But it’s hard to keep up with CL, even if you’re one who is supposed to benefit from it.

The older we get, the harder it is to keep up with the cutting edge of CL.

I used to help the homeless. Then I couldn’t anymore because they had become the unhoused. Now I can’t even find them because they are “people who don’t have addresses.”

Apparently, the prime way of starting a CL designation is “People who…” As in “People who used to be called Indians and still call themselves Indians but who must now be called Native Americans… oh, wait, now they are people who are First Nations…”

Also, you can no longer refer to whores as prostitutes. They are “sex workers,” which actually sounds worse to me, but I understand. We honor work, so even if a job is dishonorable, if you call it “work,” it becomes acceptable. That’s the problem. We think we are solving a problem by giving it an acceptable name rather than addressing the real issue of disrespect for human life that puts people into disrespecting position.

One CL that is most confusing for me right now is individuals who want to be referred to as “they.” “They,” to me, is a grammar issue; it’s plural. I guess if you think you are more than one, like the demoniac in the Jesus story who said his name was Legion “because we are many,” then “they” is psychologically accurate. It seems that some current “theys,” though, just don’t want to be restricted to “she” or “he.”

That’s okay. A person should get to choose how they want to be called. But it’s confusing, and sometimes we old, confused people are ridiculed because we can’t keep up. There’s a kind of self-righteous arrogance on the part of some CL talkers. That’s not okay.

But in terms of CL, it’s the C that counts, not the L. We need to try to keep up with language, but if we can’t, we still have to keep up with the conscience, what john Wesley called prevenient grace, the grace that caused him to be methodical about following the teachings of Jesus

John Robert McFarland