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
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