FINAL BENEDICTION [T, 5-17-22]

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

I loved Rachael Richardson. She was a member of my church in Charleston, IL, and a constant critic of all I did wrong. And a constant appreciator of all I did right. Because of her brusque honesty, and faithful support, we became good friends. She was the quintessential teacher. When I knew her, she was teaching English at EILU, but she had started as a grade school teacher, then went on to high school, and finally college. She said that on her gravestone, she wanted only the word TEACHER. She said that she would never retire, that they would have to carry her out of the classroom. So I was amazed when she showed up in my office one day and said that she had put in her papers for retirement. “But… I thought…you said… why now…” She smiled and said, “Just because it’s time.”

            Sometimes that “time” comes without much warning, but you know it’s right.

Thank you for reading Christ In Winter. I have enjoyed writing it for almost a dozen years now. [The first column was July 14, 2010.] But I am running low on stories, and energy, and focus, and readers. It’s time. So, now, this final benediction…

It will be soon

That final day

That final hour

With farewells said or silent

And even memory

Fades to darkest gray

Then may my hand be seen

Upraised in blessing

One final prayer of hope

For those I love

 

John Robert McFarland

 

THE LAST MILE poem [A repeat] [Sun, 5-15-22]

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

 

When we lived in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, each January, Bryan Bowers, the great autoharpist/folk singer, came to do a concert at The Second Sunday Folk Dance at Fortune Lake. Dean and Bette Premo, who host Second Sunday, great folk musician themselves, as well as PhD environmentalists, would invite a bunch of regulars to their house to have supper with Bryan, then sit around with instruments and have a hootenanny. [Helen’s tropical beets salad and the black bear stew of her buddy, Mountain Man Mike, were always the gustatory stars of the gathering.] Two of those regulars were John and Judy Reed, who had a four-wheel drive Subaru. We had only a sedan, and there was no way it would make the last mile of the trip to the Premo’s on Fire Lake, uphill, in the deep January snow. John and Judy had invited us to go with them, so in an email, I said that we would “…ride the last mile with you.”  Helen saw it, and liked the phrase, and said, “You should do something with that.” So I did.

 

I’LL WALK THE LAST MILE WITH YOU

On the bright white floral morning

When we could see forever

And the path was paved with blossoms for our feet

We clasped our hands together

And this is what I whispered

I’ll walk the last mile with you

 

I’ll walk the last mile with you

            Wherever this road takes us

In sunshine or in rain

In gladness or in pain

I’ll walk the last mile with you

 

On those chill still rainy mid-days

When storm clouds gathered o’er us

And the way was only mud beneath our feet

We linked our arms together

And this is what I stammered

I’ll walk the last mile with you

 

I’ll walk the last mile with you

            Wherever this road takes us

In sunshine or in rain

In gladness or in pain

I’ll walk the last mile with you

 

On this low slow lingering evening

When the light is growing dimmer

And the road is long behind our weary feet

We shall press our lips together

And with our fading breath say

I’ll walk the last mile with you.

 

I’ll walk the last mile with you

            Wherever this road takes us

In sunshine or in rain

In gladness or in pain

I’ll walk the last mile with you

 

John Robert McFarland

 I have considered Christ In Winter as a way of walking the last mile with my friends. Thank you for coming along.

I am preaching at St. Mark’s UMC in Bloomington, IN at 10:30, Eastern Daylight time, this coming Sunday, May 22. With the advent of livestreaming, you don’t have to be present to “attend.” Just go to smumc.church and click on the livestream button, from about 10:25 on. The service goes into the church archive very soon after it is over, and you can get it at any time through the livestream button or the video archive button at smumc.church.

 

 

 

THE IN-BETWEENS [F, 5-13-22]

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

Ida Belle Paterson was the youngest of thirteen children, on a farm in Iowa. Her mother lived over 100 years. Ida Belle, being the last child, never knew her mother as a young woman. But she learned from the way her mother did her work, even at 100, still living on the farm, by herself.

One day Ida Belle watched her mother bake an apple pie. She peeled the apples. After that she sat and thought for a while. Then she rolled out the crust. After that she sat and looked out the window. Then she combined the apples with the other stuff that makes a pie. After that she chatted with Ida Belle. Then she put the pie into the oven…

I find that in my old age I need in-between times, those opportunities to rest and reflect between events. In my younger days I would have five or six events in a row. There were no in-betweens.

I remember how in my campus ministry days at IL State U, I hated to leave town, for as students came, needing to talk over their problems with someone, Anne Paxton, my friend and secretary, would feel so bad for them that she would schedule them for an hour on the day I got back into the office. I’d have seven or eight intense one-hour counseling sessions [sex, pregnancy, gender identity, money, parents, sex, bad roommates, flunking out, sex, wrong major] in a row, One event followed another in quick order. I needed in-betweens, but there was no time for them.

It's always tempting to say that what fits us best now is the way things ought always to be, and I want to avoid that. Still, I like this time of life, these “golden” years, when there is opportunity for the in-betweens.

Often in former days, when I did have a chance for an in-between, I would reflect by asking where God was present in the event[s] just past, or how God was directing me on those occasions. Now I think that’s probably too narrowing. I simply try to stay open to what I just did or thought or heard, in general, not asking any questions or looking for anything in particular…just being open.

John Robert McFarland

I’m preaching a week from Sunday, on March 22, at 10:30 Eastern Daylight time. You can get the service via livestream at smumc.church, either when it’s live or later via the archive. Just go to the site and click on the Livestream button. [Not smumc.org; that’s a different St. Mark’s.

IF SO, NOD YOUR HEAD [T, 5-10-22]

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

I probably said a unique word of thanksgiving last year. I doubt that any other thanks-giver said this particular word. I probably should have said it before, but I never thought of it until we watched “All Creatures Great and Small” on PBS, the Christmas one where Helen Alderson backs out of her wedding to Hugh Helton. In the church! In front of everybody!

So I said, “Oh, Lord, I’m so thankful I never had that happen in a wedding.” Because I know that it does happen. Some of my friends have real horror stories to tell, like the groom, who when Miley Palmer said, “Do you take this woman to be your wife?” thought for a minute and then said, “No, I don’t think so.”

As we watched PBS, Helen Alderson sitting in the church, all by herself, in her gown, waiting for everybody to go home because she’s too embarrassed to be seen, Helen [my Helen] said, “I’m proud of her.” Which worries me a little, what with the name the same, and all. But I also give thanks that not all Helens do that.

The closest I came was the wedding of Chinese mathematics graduate students. I tried to be accommodating, knowing we had some cultural differences. But they weren’t interested in putting anything “Chinese” into the service. They were getting married in America, and they were going to have an American wedding, by Uncle Sam! The bride had even gone to J.C. Penney’s and bought a very pretty, very traditional [American traditional] white dress.

It was a “formal” wedding, meaning the groom and best man were in tuxes, and I was in a robe, and the twenty or so guests were all dressed up. It was a small wedding. They hadn’t been in America for very long and didn’t know many people here. There were a few fellow graduate students, but attenders were mostly the mathematics faculty and spouses. We were in the chapel, not the sanctuary.

The groom and best man and I got into position. The maid of honor, also in a J.C. Penney’s dress, walked down the aisle. The chapel doors were open. We waited for the bride, who, having no one to “give her away,” would be walking in by herself.

We waited. And waited. And waited some more. The organist had been through all his music and was starting to improvise. His arms were beginning to droop. Everybody was getting antsy. I had just decided I would have to go looking for her when a faculty wife got up to do it. Thank goodness. The poor bride just hadn’t gotten her cue right. The faculty wife would tell her she could come in now.

But she didn’t. We waited some more. The organist drooped some more. Then finally she appeared in the doors. With the faculty wife behind her, literally pushing her, step by step, down the aisle. Tears streaming down her face! No sobs or shakes, but enough tears to raise the Titanic.

I surmised what had happened. A wedding is such a big deal in Chinese culture. She had thought it didn’t matter, that she was getting married away from “home.” But now, all of a sudden, on the most important day of her life, she was in a J.C. Penney’s dress, in a land on the other side of the globe. She had just been overcome.

I couldn’t be sure, though, because she couldn’t talk. With all the crying, her throat had closed up. I couldn’t continue if she had changed her mind. After all, she hadn’t exactly come in on her own. So, finally I said, as the intended groom looked on anxiously, “If you still wish to get married today, nod your head.” She nodded.

So I improvised the vows, the part where bride and groom have to talk. I read them from The Book of Worship, just like they were printed there: “Will you have this man/woman to be your husband/wife? If so, nod your head.”

There is an epilogue to this story, but I’m over-words, so it will have to wait ‘til later. For now, I’m just going to say thanks, again, that I never had to deal with a bride or groom who walked out of a wedding.

John Robert McFarland

 

MAYBE IT’S MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE CHURCH [Su, 5-8-22]

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

On Sunday mornings, including today, I pray/think through all the churches that have been important to me, starting with the first one I can remember, East Park M.E. in Indianapolis, where I started to Sunday School when I was four, and where I was confirmed when I was nine.

One of my favorite churches to remember and pray for is one where I never went to worship. Indeed, I was there for only one evening, for a meal. It wasn’t even a Methodist church. Some would say it wasn’t even a Christian church. It was the Unitarian church in Birmingham, AL.

The Alabama Methodist Student Movement had called the Indiana MSM and asked us to come down to march into Montgomery with them, to hear MLK, Jr. give his famous civil rights speech at the end of the Selma March. We sent the campus minister and a prof and a student from each of our campus ministry units around the state, on a chartered DC3.

It was a tense experience.

On the way down, our flight attendant and pilots took turns chatting with us, questioning our mission, wondering if we weren’t doing more harm than good, suggesting that we just needed to give the racists more time, if we shouldn’t just stay home because it was none of our business.

As we tried to fly back to Indiana, the Montgomery airport flight controllers refused to let us take off until a hurricane from the gulf was almost on us. Our pilots tried to outrun it, but that DC3 was no match for a hurricane. They did an emergency landing at the Birmingham airport.

We wouldn’t be able to fly again until the next day. We called hotels, to try to get a place to stay for the night, but knowing that we were “Yankee agitators,” there were “no rooms available”. There were places to eat in the airport, but none of them would serve us, even our sweet little grandmotherly IU education prof who tried to buy takeout sandwiches.

The hotels had room for our flight attendant, a pretty young white woman in a uniform that did not reveal her agitator associates, but our pilots spent the night in the plane, staying awake in turns, to be sure no one sabotaged it overnight.

But we had an outlier in our group. When the Unitarian pastor in Bloomington had heard about our trip, he asked to come along. Now, from the Birmingham airport, he called his colleague at the Unitarian church. Those questionable Christians sent cars to pick us up, took us to their church building for a sudden pot-luck, and took us to their homes to spend the night.

On the way home, the stewardess—as they were called then—and the pilots took turns coming back to chat with us. “My God,” they said, “we thought you were just trouble-makers going where you shouldn’t. This race thing is serious business. Somebody needs to do something about it.” Well, yes.

The real Christians tried to get us killed in a hurricane. The sort-of, agnostic, non-theological Christians took care of us. The Unitarians in Birmingham… one of my all-time favorite churches.

John Robert McFarland

Speaking of Sundays: You have other things to do on Sunday morning, but in case you need something else, I’ll be preaching at St. Mark’s UMC in Bloomington, IN on May 22 at 10:30 am, EASTERN DAYLIGHT time. It will be on livestream at smumc.church. Just click on the Livestream button. But you don’t need to “attend” at 10:30 on Sunday morning. Shortly after the service concludes, it will go into the St. Mark’s archive on YouTube. You can access the archive by clicking on the Video Archive button on the smumc.church site.

 

 

QUOTES YOU MAYBE HAVEN’T HEARD [F, 5-6-22]

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

“I really don’t think that preachers ought to lie. Especially about religion.” The Rev. John Ames, Lila, Marilynne Robinson, p. 99.

“Resurrection doesn’t mean you wake up without scars.” Someone else’s quote, but passed along by daughter Katie Kennedy.

“Story is in no way an evasion of life but a way of living creatively instead of fearfully.” Madeline L’Engle, Walking on Water, p. 53.

“The method of Jesus is to start with the cure.” George Matheson

“It is our business to love people, and God’s business to change them.” Herb Beuoy

“God gave me this body to get rebounds.” Jordan Geronimo, 6’6” IU basketball player, with 7’2” wingspan.

“The meek will inherit the earth, but they won’t get any offensive rebounds.” Shon Morris, former 6’11” Northwestern U basketball player, and Big Ten basketball color commentator.

“Basketball is a simple game that is difficult to play.” Bob Knight.

“Life is a simple game that is difficult to play.” John Robert McFarland

“Whoever invented cookies did a good thing.” Helen McFarland

“You have to believe in God, and have a 9x13 pan.” Katie McFarland Kennedy, when asked what is necessary to be a Methodist.

A music prof gave this advice to a piano student: “Get the first note right, get the last note right, and don’t fall off the bench in between.”

Does anyone ever draw a line that is not in the sand?

“Atheism is a peculiar state of mind. You cannot deny the existence of that which does not exist.” Madeline L’Engle

“I am deteriorating faster than I can lower my standards.” [Google credits this to a TED talk by Anne Lamott, but I think she was quoting someone else.]

“There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation.” Madeline L’Engle

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

 

TWO WAYS OF MISSING HIM-Poem [5-4-22]

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

She feels his absence

now throughout the day

One plate to wash

one cup to fill

No muttered angst

at football scores

No quirky plans

to thwart the deer

The shelves in order

no socks adorn the floor

 

I know he’s missing

only when I hear

his stories

in my inward ear

know we share

the present

as we did the past

 

and some day soon

the future

 

John Robert McFarland

ASK THE SCHIZOID: A short-short story [M, 5-2-22]

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

  

It started when I had this silly call-in show, “Ask The Schizoid.” You asked a question, about anything, and I’d make up an expert to answer it. Part of the joke was I didn’t try to make my voice different, use an accent or dialect to distinguish one character from another. It could be Dr. Dan or Rev. Ray or Officer Ollie or Gary the Garbage Guy, they all sounded just alike. Even Prostitute Priscilla and Schoolmarm Sarah.

            After a while, people would call in and ask for a particular expert. “Hey, Schiz, I need to ask Car Guy Carl about the transmission on an old Caddy,” or “I’ve got a question about credit for Banker Brandi.”

            I’d say, “Okay, Ignorant One. Here’s our Expert. What’s your question?”

One day, toward the end of the show, this guy called in and said he wasn’t sure who he needed, maybe Dr. Dan, but probably Rev. Ray.

            “Okay, Ignorant One. Tell The Schizoid your question and I’ll get the right expert.”

            “It’s not exactly a question. My wife’s dying.”

            There was something about his voice that said this wasn’t for fun.

            “Maybe you should talk to a real doctor.”

            “No. We knew this was coming. The real doctor said there’s nothing more… You know. Anyway, she wanted to die at home, and we’re here. I gave her a pain pill. I think she’s alright that way. But her breaths are… farther between each one. The doc said when this time came, nothing to do but let it come.”

            “Are you alone, just the two of you?”

            “Yeah. I’m holding her hand.”

            “Maybe you should call somebody else, somebody to come be with you.”

            “There’s nobody like that, nobody we’d want. But Thekla, she always liked your show so much. It made her laugh, even when she felt real bad. She said your voice… I thought maybe you could be with us.”

            I swallowed hard and hoped the mike didn’t pick it up.

            “I don’t want to keep calling you Ignorant One. What’s your name?”

“Tedd, with two ‘d’s.”

“I don’t think the second ‘d’ will matter much on the radio, Tedd.”

“Oh, yeah.” He chuckled, or maybe gasped. “You hear that, Honey? The Schizoid made a joke for us.”

“Okay, Tedd. Maybe we should get Rev. Ray.”

            “Yeah… No, that’s okay. We just want you, Schiz.”

            “Okay. I’m here.”

            “Oh, God. She squeezed my hand when you said that. We’re listening, just like we always do. She heard you, I think.”

            “Maybe. Or maybe she just likes to squeeze your hand.”

            He began to sob, very softly.

            “I have to keep talking, I’m afraid. I’d like to just sit here and hold your hand while you hold hers, but they won’t let us keep radio silence. So, I’m going to hold your hand with my voice, okay?”     

            He didn’t answer, just sobbed some more. I kept on talking, not sure of what I was saying…

            “…no matter how many personalities you have, there comes a time when there’s only one that matters. That’s the one that does the loving. And no matter how many questions you have, there’s only one that matters, and that’s the question about the loving…”

            I was running out of stuff to say. I looked over to the control booth. Everybody in the building was standing in there, just staring at me. I pointed at the clock. The station manager grabbed a sheet of paper and scribbled on it and held it up to the glass. “Keep Going!” So I did, right past the news and the weather and on into the next hour.

            “…it was a simpler time when the Beetles sang I wanna hold your hand. Who holds hands anymore? People meet, don’t even ask names, just say I wanna do you now…” I don’t have much of a voice, but I sang it. “Then they walk off. Hand never even touches hand. But there comes a time when all that loin stuff–the excitement, all the passion, all the conquest–doesn’t mean a thing. All the romance, all the meaning, is in that simple act of holding hands…”

            I had no idea how long I talked. I couldn’t see the clock. My throat was getting dry, my brain was getting empty.

            “How are you doing, Tedd with two ‘d’s?”

            There was a little pause, just for a moment. Then he spoke, like he was understanding we couldn’t let the air go dead.

            “I’m alright now, Schiz. She slipped away a long time ago. I just didn’t want to let go yet…”

 

John Robert McFarland