SAYING NO…TO YOURSELF [T, 2-28-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—SAYING NO…TO YOURSELF [T, 2-28-23]

 

It is well with my soul. For in my old age, I am learning to say NO. To myself…as in…

Tomorrow at Crumble Bums, I should end the month on a high note by telling the joke about the termites and the wooden leg…NO! You want to tell that joke just because it’s the only one you have heard in a week, and you want them to think you are funny, but that joke is not funny.

Maybe it would go better if I did a long introduction explaining the different forms of humor…NO! For obvious reasons.

I could call Bob and see if he’s heard any new jokes. NO! This is his writing time. Don’t bother him.

I could email him so that he could reply when… NO! You know his email doesn’t work right and so it frustrates him and he does it only because he has to.

I could tell it to Helen…NO! She’s at her desk, which means she’s trying to avoid your jokes. She’s even willing to do taxes, so that tells you a definite NO!

I could send it to Nina. She does email… NO! She would have to try to say something positive about it, and it’s not nice to tempt her into dishonesty.

I could Google “jokes for people who aren’t allowed to tell jokes…” NO! What is it with you and jokes? Get a life!

I guess I’ll just take out the garbage… YES! Finally! Something to which the whole world can say YES!

It’s very nice when the whole world says YES to you. Unfortunately, that seems to happen only after you’ve heard a lot of NO. But…you’re never to old to learn to say NO… to yourself.

“It is well, it is well, with my soul…”

John Robert McFarland

Horatio Spafford wrote the lyrics to “It Is Well With My Soul,” and Phillip Bliss the music.

 

TREES IN WINTER [SA, 2-25-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—TREES IN WINTER [SA, 2-25-23]

 

I think that I shall never see

            A poem lovely as a tree…

Joyce Kilmer’s Trees was one of the first poems I ever memorized, partly because we sang it at Lucretia Mott Public School # 3 in Indianapolis, partly because it was short and simple, mostly because it rang true to me.

I learned the incorrect version, of course, since we sang it. Kilmer closed it with: Poems are written by fools like me, but only God can make a tree. The song version says: Poems are made by fools like me…

I knew more about poems than trees, though, living in the inner city of Indianapolis. It was only when we moved to a farm near Oakland City, Indiana that I really began to understand trees, and to appreciate them.

My father was a good shade-tree botanist. He was an outdoorsman. He knew animals and plants. He could name trees.

On the farm, I learned to love trees and plants, except for the ones I had to hoe in the garden, but I rarely learned their names. I learned the ones everyone knew--maples, oaks, willows, cherry trees at certain times of the year. I never learned to tell a hickory from an ash, though. The only thing that was really important, it seemed to me, was the shade.

The summers in southern Indiana were long and hot and humid. Life was physical and sweaty. We carried water and fire wood in and out. We heated water on a wood stove and washed clothes in a wringer washer and hung them on a line. We hoed and canned vegetables. We had no air conditioning. We did have electricity, but only one old-fashioned slow-moving fan.

In our front yard, we had shade trees—big maples. The front yard was open on all sides except for the house. There was almost always a breeze. When the heat became too much, I would flop down on the grass in the front yard, in the shade of those leafy maples, and feel the breeze.

Helen’s father, Earl “Tank” Karr, always said that spring arrives on March 1. With global warming, spring will be even earlier this year. I should be glad. Old people look forward so much to spring. But, strangely, I am reluctant to see the advent of spring.

The trees are beautiful in spring and summer, all covered with green, and in autumn, ablaze with red and gold, but in winter, we can see the trunk and the limbs. They have their own beauty.

In winter you can see the beauty of what is below.

John Robert McFarland

FORTY DAYS OF LEARNING TO TRUST [W, 2-22-23]

Today is Ash Wednesday. Our pastors at St. Mark’s UMC in Bloomington have a funeral that conflicts with our noon service, so they have asked me to lead that service. If you are one of those few locals who is planning to come at noon, you might want to skip reading this, because you’ll hear a reasonable facsimile of it later.

 

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—FORTY DAYS OF LEARNING TO TRUST [W, 2-22-23]

When daughter Katie went to U of IL for grad work, she got a late start on housing and ended up in a Baptist house for grad students. 22 fundamentalist Baptists and Katie. Which meant the fundamentalists were badly outnumbered. One day, one of them said, “Katie, are you saved?” She said, “Yes,” which surprised him. “When were you saved?” he asked, suspiciously. “On Good Friday,” she said.

That’s really the only answer to that question, because we are saved not by our activities, no matter how much we fast and pray and read the Bible and go to church. We are saved by the grace and love of God. Salvation is a gift, not a reward.

But why do we need salvation? Because our relationships are broken. That is what sin is, regardless of how it is expressed: a break in relationship, to God, to the world, to other people, to our own true selves. God takes our fragmented selves and puts them back together, makes them whole.

So if God saves us as an act of mercy, why do we need forty days of Lent, leading up to celebrating Easter resurrection, by fasting and repenting and mourning our sins and sacrificing and…

Jesus was not a big advocate of “spiritual disciplines,” like fasting, which these days is “giving up something for Lent,” especially when they are out in public. He was big on prayer, but even that wasn’t supposed to be on display. [You can read about this in Matthew 6.]

And why ashes? It’s a bit embarrassing to go back to work or walk around town with that ashy cross on our foreheads.

The ashes are a reminder than we shall die. “Ashes to ashes.” And there is nothing we can do about it. It’s the only part of life that is totally out of our control. Oh, yes, we might control the timing of it some, but not the reality of its happening.

We wear the ashes, the mark of death, to remind us that we must learn to trust, trust in God for what comes after death, whatever it may be.

Anthony Newberg, MD, the brain researcher, says that the most important single thing for brain health is faith. Not necessarily religious faith, but trust, trust that it’s okay to keep going on. Christians can trust that way because we have seen how God took care of Jesus.

That sort of trust is not something learned quickly, in a day. It takes 40 days!

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

THE PROBLEM WITH CONCLUSIONS [2-18-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—THE PROBLEM WITH CONCLUSIONS [2-18-23]

 

One day in June, 8 years ago, two of my closest long-time friends died on the same day. Bill and I were clergy and couples friends for 55 years. Mike and I became friends when we were ten years old. He died 68 years later.

Bill was in the hospital for several days. His children and grandchildren came to see him or if they were too far distant, called him. He got to say goodbye to them and to friends like us. I felt good about the conclusion of his story.

Mike took his grandchildren to a movie and out for ice cream. Then he went home and sat in his recliner to wait for supper. He dropped off to sleep and never woke up. I felt good about the conclusion of his story.

Their conclusions were so different, but both were good.

This comes to mind because I have had trouble with the conclusions of several CIW columns recently. Most of them I have not posted. I did not feel good about their conclusions.  Some I posted anyway. Then I felt even worse about their conclusions.

Both as a reader and as a writer, I’m aware that the conclusion of a story is the hardest part. I can tell when an author just gave up because she couldn’t figure out how to end the story. The worst one was an early novel by a now highly-respected writer. I was really enjoying the book. It had so many different mysteries unraveling. I was looking forward with excitement to how he would bring them all together. But he didn’t know how. He had gone down all these promising avenues and couldn’t find where they went. So he had his protagonist sit on his back porch at the end of the book and say, “Well, I guess I’ll never know who Susie married and who killed Ralph and whether the twins got away and…” It was the worst conclusion ever!

So, first, I apologize for my own poor conclusions. Normally my thinking about a column starts with the conclusion. But sometimes there is a story that I want to tell, and I get it told, except for the conclusion, and…

But I knew how I wanted to conclude this column when I started. It’s about concluding life, which is why I started with the ways Bill and Mike concluded their lives. I like to start and end in the same place, the way Garrison Keillor usually did with his Lake Wobegon monologues. But how do you, how should you, go about writing the conclusion of your own story?

Well, that’s as far as I’ve gotten…

John Robert McFarland

 

 

SALVATION THROUGH BASEBALL [W, 2-15-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—SALVATION THROUGH BASEBALL [W, 2-15-23]

 

Today is the first day of spring training. I am excited. That will surprise anyone who knows my baseball inclinations, for I am a Cincinnati Reds fan. Of the 30 major league baseball teams, the Reds have a chance this year, if they are lucky, of finishing 31^st. For a Reds fan, “Wait ‘til next year” means 1990. Still, I am excited, for baseball was my salvation.

Yes, I know, we are saved by grace through faith, by God through Christ. But the resurrection means that the Christ spirit is available everywhere. So, if God chooses to save through baseball, well, as Martin Luther said, “Let God be God.” Or in the words of the Psalmist, if he were a current teen, “The FOMO of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” [Psalm 111:10] FOMO, the Fear Of Missing Out.

 

I spent the first ten years of my life just being afraid. FOBW, Fear of Being Whacked. Along about third grade, my school principal whacked me across the face for coloring wrong on my art project.  My parents whacked on me, too. Sometimes my mother would give me a whack as I walked by and I would protest. “Hey, I didn’t do anything.” “That’s for when you did something and I didn’t see it,” she would say. So, I learned not to do anything at all. FODA, Fear Of Doing Anything.

More importantly, the only sport anyone in the Englewood neighborhood of Indianapolis knew about was running, specifically running from the bullies. FONB, Fear Of Neighborhood Bullies.

 

Then we moved 115 miles south to the little farm near Oakland City. The boys on the school bus talked about baseball. Everyone was required to have a team. I declared that I was a Reds fan. I knew about the Reds because Grandma Mac was a Reds fan. I was the only Reds fan on the bus, which meant the Cubs and Cardinals fans were merciless in pointing out the deficiencies of my team. It was wonderful. I learned trash talk, like “Oh, yeah?” But no one whacked me for being a Reds fan. No FOBW. No bullies chased me. No FONB.  I was included. No FOMO.

 

More importantly, Uncle Johnny, my mother’s bachelor brother, would close up his hardware store and drive the five miles to our house after supper and hit flies to me in our sloping orchard/pasture field. I would glide through the long weeds in my clodhopper farm shoes and arrive at the right place just as the ball was ready to plop into Uncle Johnny’s old baseball mitt on my left hand. I wasn’t fast, but I understood arcs and angles. [1]

 

Whenever the boys of the Forsythe Methodist neighborhood would gather in the field in front of the Buyher’s house to play flies and grounders, they were amazed at the ability of the new kid to be in the right place before the ball got there. I was good at something! No FOBI, Fear Of Being Incompetent.

When you’re chasing a fly ball, you can’t be shy, try to stay out of sight. I was saved from FOBW and FODA and FONB and FOBI. Salvation from fear. At least most fears.

 

Now it is only FOMO. I don’t want to miss out when the Reds win the World Series this year.

John Robert McFarland

1] Much later, when I was the oldest pickleball player in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, I was known as St. John of the Angles. Apparently if you’re born with that kind of eye-hand coordination, it stays with you, even if it’s a different sport.

Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone… [M, 2-13-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter— Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone… [M, 2-13-23]

 

“Please don’t talk about me when I’m gone…” That’s a Sidney Clare song lyric from 1930. These days, folks aren’t saying “Please.”

I check the obituaries in several newspapers online. Increasingly, they contain a line like this, “According to the wishes of [name of deceased], there will be no funeral or memorial services.”

Why does [name of the deceased] get to decide that? The service is not for [name of the deceased]. It’s for the survivors. They should get to decide that.

And how nasty is that, anyway? I’m going to decide what you kids and grandkids and parents and siblings and friends can do even after I’m dead!

It reminds me of why my friend, Scott, left the ministry and became a coffee shop owner.

“The day after Thanksgiving, a woman came to see me. She said that on Thanksgiving Day, the family had gathered at her mother’s, as always. Her mother had cooked a big meal, as always. Everybody was seated at the table. Her mother brought in the turkey, put it on the table, sat down at her place, pulled a pistol out of her apron pocket, put it to her head and killed herself.”

Scott said, “I had nothing at all to say to her. I knew I was in the wrong profession.”

Well, I was in that profession for about a hundred years, and I wouldn’t have anything to say to her, either. Nobody would. Oh, a psychiatrist or psychologist, or even a preacher, could put a name to what she did, and catalog the ostensible reasons that she did it, but that is no help to a person who is going to live with that image and all its possible meanings for the rest of their life.

Doing something like that? To your whole family? I don’t think there are any words adequate to describe that kind of desperation, aggression, hate, sadness, loneliness, nastiness, sinfulness…all mixed up together.

I wonder about that woman’s funeral, and the person who conducted it. I’ve done a lot of difficult funerals, but never for someone who was so intentionally unkind to all who would be gathered there for that service.

There are a lot of preacher jokes about that sort of thing. They never reflect well on the preacher. Like the woman who wanted the preacher to do a funeral for her cat. He refused. She offered a thousand dollars. He said, “Well, you did say that cat was a Methodist, right?” Or the preacher who didn’t want to do a funeral for a man who was too nasty to think of anything good to say about him. They offered a thousand bucks. So she did it, but the best she could come up with was, “Well, at least he wasn’t as bad as his brother.”

[Back when I first heard these stories, it was only $100, but that’s not enough anymore to make the joke work.]

Back to the original intent of this column… the deceased being the one to decide on whether they should have a memorial service… no, and it’s not just because I want the thousand bucks for doing the service.

I’m sure someone will say, “Well, they never let me make decisions when I was alive, so finally I get to make one.” No! If you couldn’t stand up and tell folks that you were a real person without blowing your brains out at the Thanksgiving table, or demanding no memorial service, you forfeited your God-given right to be a person. Christ died so you can be a real person. This is your final chance, not to say “No,” but to say, “I am a person because God made me and Christ died for me. The rest of this stuff doesn’t matter. Let ‘em talk about me anyway when they want when I’m gone.”

John Robert McFarland

A FEW GOOD PEOPLE? NOT ON TV!

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—A FEW GOOD PEOPLE? NOT ON TV!

 

Apparently, current TV and movie script writers were all in Helen’s “adult living” and “family relations” classes in high school.

Talking about marriage one day, she asked the class, “What is the best marriage you know of? Doesn’t have to be your parents [she knew better than that] but grandparents, friends, just people you know… People you can look at to see what a good marriage is like.”

Silence. Awkward silence. Finally, one student said, “I don’t know of any good marriages.” The others all nodded. No one knew of even one good marriage, even one relationship they would want to emulate.

So, those are the people writers put into their scripts. The people they know. Mean people. Addicted people. Insensitive people. Self-destructive people. Self-centered people. Angry people. Arrogant people. Vengeful people. People who choose to be stupid.

You can’t get good relationships out of those people. You can’t get good stories out of those people.

When you’re old and can’t get out much, TV shows and movies are a very helpful way of passing the time, and even learning about the world. That is, about one in ten is a good way to spend your time. We love Netflix. Gives a lot of opportunities. Most of the shows, though, we don’t get through 30 minutes before switching off and looking for something else.

We don’t like stories about bad people living bad lives, doing bad things to other people. But bad people living bad lives is about 90% of the movie and TV offerings. It’s rare, and thus quite precious, to find a movie or TV series about people trying to live good lives.

By “good,” I don’t mean either the silly cheeriness of Sunnybrook Farm or the stiff-necked righteousness of keeping all the rules. “Good” is an honest attempt--howbeit imperfect, since we are all imperfect—to “do unto others…” It’s an attempt to side with the weak and oppressed against the predators and oppressors. It is siding with the sacred against the profane.

You can tell when a comedian or a script writer doesn’t have any good jokes or good stories because they fill in the many holes in their materials with profanity. Profanity is an attempt not to communicate, but to avoid communication.

David Letterman said that when he was a stand-up comic, he loved it when someone in the audience would heckle him, because it took up part of the 10 or 20 minutes he was supposed to fill with comedy. “I didn’t have much material,” he said. “Hecklers helped me avoid showing how little I had.”

The profane comics know they aren’t funny, that they have no material. They also know they can get a bunch of drunks to laugh just by yelling the f word or the s word. Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld have both said that they didn’t use profanity, because if they did, they wouldn’t know if they were really funny. They had to get people to laugh because of their material, not because of their non-language, which is what profanity is, a non-language, to avoid communication.

Well, I have to go watch “Call the Midwife” now. Yes, I’m squeamish about birth scenes, but those stories are about imperfect people trying to live good lives, helping others to live good lives. Those are people I can emulate. Stories that make me want to be a better person.

John Robert McFarland

BEING WHO YOU WERE [T, 2-7-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--BEING WHO YOU WERE [T, 2-7-23]

 

When you are young, like under 80, it is important to learn who you are, and accept that. When you are older, it is important to learn who you were, and accept that.

As I look back over my life, as old people are supposed to do--to come to grips with our own reality, come to acceptance of who we really were—I can’t come up with one word. It takes three—challenger, advocate, and creator.

 

Challenger: I was not a contrarian or gadfly. I did not like conflict. I was quite willing to accept established truth, if it seemed to work for everybody. But I challenged accepted forms that discriminated against excluded people.

Advocate: So, I was an advocate for people who needed help in challenging the ways of the powerful. Through the years those included ethnics, students, addicts, Jews, displaced, the hungry, the homeless, draftees, pregnant women, refugees, handicapped folks, LGBTQ+…

Creator: Sometimes, you challenge and get no response except resistance. Often you advocate but get no change. That’s when I became a creator. I mean simply going ahead, ignoring those who won’t change, and trying to get stuff done, creating whole new systems if necessary. [1]

I’m sure my motives were always mixed, that I wanted things that worked best for me and mine, as well as my conscious goal of simply doing more effective ministry, of helping the world to be its best self. Helen and I have both noted that everybody in our respective professions proclaimed as best the method with which they felt most comfortable.

That’s the way things are. That’s why we aren’t all alike, as ministers or teachers… or people. [2] Not everybody needs to be a challenger. Not everyone needs to be a vocal advocate. Not everyone has to create. But those were my gifts, and I’m glad I got to use them. Using them when I could is what brings me peace and satisfaction, now that I’m past the point of challenging and…  [Oh, that is so pathetic. I can’t figure out how to end this without making it sound like some pitiful attempt at self-justification. Just ignore this entire column!]

John Robert McFarland

1] Examples of “creating:”

When I was campus minister in Terre Haute [Indiana State U and Rose Polytechnic-now Rose Hulman] I created a program for college students to tutor ghetto kids. I got into trouble with colleagues and administrators because they wanted to “study the problem.” I just went ahead and asked kids to be tutors. Over a hundred showed up.

When the community center there proved inadequate, INSU prof Andre’ Hammonds and I got a bunch of people together and built a new one. Didn’t study. Didn’t ask. Just did it.

            When church sociologist Lyle Schaller pointed out in the 1980s that the large downtown churches were failing despite their importance, and no one was doing anything about it, I created an organization for the pastors of those churches to share ideas and support. SADMOB [Senior And Directing Ministers Of Bigchurches] Just sent a letter and invited them. No officers, no organization. Every one of them came, every time, despite busy schedules. They were lonely and eager for sharing and support.

2] Terry Clark succeeded me as senior pastor at Wesley UMC in Charleston, IL. He always gave me credit for the new sanctuary, even though it was built during his pastorate. Here’s why:

While I was still pastor there, Leonard Archer dropped by my office one afternoon and said he’d like to contribute $250,000 [in today's dollars] to start the fund for the new sanctuary, which was part of the original plan but had to wait until we got the rest of the building paid for. I said, “Okay, Leonard.” That was my contribution.

If I were still pastor there, we’d still be worshipping in the fellowship hall. Good worship, but not in the new sanctuary. Terry was not renowned as a worship leader, but he was willing to do the heavy lifting on that building. He hadn’t been there but two or three years before he had that building up.

It took the two of us together—hours and hours of meetings and fund raising and frustrations by Terry, and me saying “yes” to Leonard that day. 

 

 

 

THE FINAL SERMON, MAYBE [F, 2-4-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--THE FINAL SERMON, MAYBE [F, 2-4-23]

 

Each time I preach, I say that it is the last time. Because I’m old. I’m forgetful. I would hate to be in the middle of a sermon and be like Charlie…

I was walking down the hall in a hospital, going to see one of my church members--avoiding looking into rooms, since folks in the hospital have enough problems without people in clothes seeing them in those backless gowns--when some intuition caused me to alter my gaze and look into a particular room. There was Charlie. He was not one of my members, but I knew him. He looked desperate. So I stopped and went in.

He peered up at me and said, “I’m trying to pray, and I can’t remember what comes after Our Father…” and he began to cry.

A classic case of anesthesia hangover, both the forgetfulness and the depression, but when you’re in one of those periods, it’s very real. So I said that I could remember what came after in that prayer, so I would pray it with him. Together we got all the way through “…and the glory, forever. Amen.”

When I mentioned the experience to him later, he didn’t remember me being there, or our praying together. Of course not. That’s the way anesthesia works.

But there are other reasons for forgetting when you’re old, and I don’t want to be in the middle of a sermon and pronounce “Then Jesus said…” and not be able to remember what Jesus said.

I’ve always been disnomic anyway—unable to remember nouns. When George Loveland and I led worship services together in Charleston, IL he would sometimes shout nouns across the chancel to me when I took too long remembering what to call the altar or the offering plates. I miss George.

Sometimes I try to blame my disnomia on old age, but Helen always says, “I’ve known you since you were 20 and you’ve always been this way.” I guess that’s good news.

My mother’s youngest brother, Johnny, was my best friend from age ten until I went to college. He was a bachelor in a small town, and lonely. So he would come to our house to play baseball and basketball with me. He had a hardware store and took me on buying trips and had me help with inventory. Sometimes we went to movies together.

One of those was about a famous singer whose husband died. In despair, she cried out, “I’m forgetting. Even what he looked like. I want to remember.”

I used that as an illustration in the first sermon I preached when I was nineteen and sent by a desperate District Superintendent to be the preacher on the Chrisney, IN circuit—three churches each Sunday morning, Chrisney and Crossroads and Bloomfield. [Not the one that is the Greene County seat].

So, that being my first sermon story, I think it would be neat to use it in my last sermon…unless I have already preached my last one.

I thought it would be neat to preach my last sermon at age 90. That would be impressive. But I have decided on age 89 for my final sermon, because that would be 70 years since that first sermon, and I could use that first illustration again. If I could just remember the name of that famous singer…

John Robert McFarland

Uncle Johnny didn’t marry until he was 35, shortly before I married at 22. He was best man at our wedding.