OLD AGE PEACE MAKING [T, 3-28-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--OLD AGE PEACE MAKING [T, 3-28-23]

 

I wrote about Jim Pruyne in my last column. I was feeling rather mellow this morning, thinking about Jim, with whom I had some difficult relationships many years ago. I was mellow because I realized I had made my peace with him. Then it occurred… had he made his peace with me?

That’s what Jesus said. “If you’re feeling mellow and realize that your brother has something against you, go make it right with him before that second cup of coffee.” Something like that.

Note that he does not say how that passage is usually exposited: “If you have something against your brother…” No, it is “If your brother has something against you…” It might be totally unjustified, what that brother has against you. Jesus, though, doesn’t care who started it. He’s telling you to finish it.

That is part of old-age peace making. Not just, am I at peace, but what about those who were on the other side of those thorny relationships?

There were seven campus ministers at IL State U, representing various denominations. Jim was senior, meaning he had been there longer than the rest of us. Indeed, he had started there part-time on weekends while he was still in seminary, when ILSU was still Illinois State Teachers College, in the town of Normal. He stayed in Normal until he died, 65 years later. He was senior emotionally as well as chronologically.

Also, in 1969, he had a brand-new building, dedicated to campus ministry only, while the rest of us worked in makeshift quarters--old houses or church basements. He seemed to think that his seniority and edifice gave him a preeminent position in determining how all of us should go about our ministries.

But none of us were brand new. We’d had successful ministries on other campuses. And our student groups were larger than his. And—this is easier to recognize and admit now than it was then—we had turf to protect.

Two other elements were at work at that time—ecumenism, and the changeover from “student work” to campus ministry.

ECUMENISM: “The ecumenical movement” was generally thought to be uniting all the denominations into one, as The United Church of Canada had done. Jim figured that since we were ministers in higher education, we should be the vanguard, even before anything was done formally by our denominations, uniting all our student groups into one, which, of course, would meet in his building. Also, we would work as one staff, with, of course, him as our chair.

STUDENT WORK BECOMING CAMPUS MINISTRY: When bishops and their ilk talked of my appointment, they spoke of “student work.” That was the job description: to minister to the students on our campus. But campuses were changing. What administrators and faculty did had ever more to do with what students experienced. The student workers felt that they needed to be involved with administration and faculty as well as students. We needed to minister to the whole campus, hence “campus ministry” instead of “student work.”

That was right in Jim’s strike zone. He was dedicated to staying in Normal forever. Students came and went, sometimes at dizzying rates. Faculty and administrators were his Normal-forever peers. It was also more prestigious to hang around with profs than with students. Jim’s idea was that, as chair of the staff, he would minister to the faculty and staff, and leave the “student work” to the rest of us.

Jim was personable. I liked him. He had a lot of good ideas. I really wanted him as a friend. He was not pugnacious or arrogant. He did, however, have a presumption of preeminence.

So, we staged what today would be called an intervention. The seven of us campus ministers had always met together as a group to share ideas and support. At our next meeting, we took turns explaining to Jim the problems we had with how he was treating the rest of us. He became upset and walked out.

He tried for a long time, though, to create a domain where he was emperor. I’m sure he didn’t think of it that way, but it is the way entrepreneurship looks to others.

He did manage to get five small, struggling Sunday evening student groups to merge into one. After their merger, they had one small, struggling group instead of five. That’s the nature of reality, the reality you don’t recognize if you’re working at the theory level rather than the practice level. Yes, Christian groups need to be united, but spiritually and in witness, not necessarily structurally and in organization.

My Sunday evening group, the largest by far, did not want to merge. We stayed as we were. I was roundly pilloried by for that by Jim and other folks who focused on ecumenism. But I knew that several groups give more students chances for leadership and witness and fellowship. I wanted that for my kids. That Wesley Foundation group is still going strong today.

Often, the best thing I did in my appointments was to hire good people. So it was with Anne Paxton as administrator at The Wesley Foundation. She was mother to generations of students, and savior to four iterations of campus ministers. When she retired, after 30 years, there was a banquet to honor her. I lived a long way off, but I made a point of being there.

Jim was there, too. He looked the same, just a little older, but I had grown a beard and gone bald since he last saw me. Nonetheless, he recognized me, and greeted me as though we were just old friends, running into each other. We had a nice conversation, caught up on our families.

So, I think he had made his peace with me. I hope so. Even in old age, peace-making always goes two ways.

John Robert McFarland

                                                                                                                

 

 

 

 

Insufferably Proud… of HELPing [Sa, 3-25-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—Insufferably Proud… of HELPing [Sa, 3-25-23]

 

Jennie Edwards Bertrand, one of my “kids” in the ministry, who is the pastor of Hope UMC in Bloomington, IL sent me the link to an article about how PATH of Bloomington-Normal is now the call center for all of Illinois for the 988 suicide-crisis hot line. They get more than 300 calls per day. 

Little did we know… when Jim Pruyne and I started PATH in 1971, what it would become.

The campus ministers at Illinois State University—in Normal, the sister city to Bloomington—worked together, sometimes, in a loose conglomerate. Nothing official, although Jim thought it was.

Jim was the Presbyterian campus minister at Illinois State University. He was a creative type who had lots of good ideas for ministry. He thought that since we campus ministers were an association, with him as the de facto head, since he had been there the longest, that he should think up ministries and other campus ministers—Lutheran, Baptist, Episcopal, and Methodist--should carry out his ideas.

That sort of approach never works very well, for obvious reasons. It was especially insufferable for me, because I also had lots of ideas for how to do campus ministry and was more interested in carrying out my own ideas.

That didn’t mean we couldn’t work together, though. Jim and I had already started a problem pregnancy counseling service, when abortion was illegal in Illinois.

Then drugs started showing up. Depression followed. So did suicide. Students came to talk over their problems with campus ministers, but we were family guys who went home by midnight. Students stayed up all night. So Jim installed an extra telephone in his building—352-PATH—and told the other campus ministers to recruit students who could stay up at night to answer the phone and tell kids not to commit suicide. We thought he was insufferable, but we did, because it was a good idea. It was the PATH to help, or officially, Personal Assistance Telephone Help.

I was already working on an idea of my own, HELP, which was exactly what it says. I thought Bloomington-Normal should have a central organization that provided any sort of help needed by any person, student or not. I did not think of HELP doing all the helping itself. The folks who answered the phone would have a directory of all helping agencies and could direct people to the right place.

I called together a number of people in Bloomington and Normal who were known to be helpers. We formed a board. We called HELP into being

There were plenty of holes in the social services network in those days--such as transportation for folks to the social service agencies, and to doctors, etc—so HELP began to recruit its own helpers, too, to fill the holes.

Jim suggested that since PATH already had a telephone that was peopled 24 hours per day, we should use it for HELP. So we did. And PATH became not just a suicide/crisis line, but a one-path-to-help, any kind of help.

Today it is what we envisioned, that one PATH to any sort of HELP. But it’s especially gratifying to see that it has expanded so far beyond its original purpose, as a suicide/crisis hotline, not just for one campus, but for the whole state.

I’m sorry that Jim Pruyne is not alive to see it; he would be insufferably proud.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

REMEMBERING THE TIMES I SPENT WITH GOD [W, 3-22-23]

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

REMEMBERING THE TIMES I SPENT WITH GOD [W, 3-22-23]

[To the tune of “Standing On the Promises” by Russell Kelso Carter]

 

{I discovered this hymn start in my “Work On These” file. I’m not satisfied with it, but it’s a Lenten hymn, so I’ve got to get it in here soon… Of course, it’s not for corporate worship, unless it’s in a setting where there are only old people.}

VERSE 1

My brain is full of sawdust

And my eyes are failing fast

My ears are full of noises

And I know my strength can’t last

But I can sing this song of joy

As I face the Lenten fast

I’m remembering the times I spent with God

CHORUS

Remembering, Remembering

Seeing scenes of holiness

Along the days now past

Remembering, Remembering

Remembering the times I spent with God

VERSE 2

We’ve shared the times of joy and grief

Pled for mercy when I went wrong

Upheld by the everlasting arms

Divine love so full and strong

Knowing I would be renewed

When the days and nights grew long

I’m remembering the times I spent with God

CHORUS

Remembering, Remembering

Seeing scenes of holiness

Along the days now past

Remembering, Remembering

Remembering the times I spent with God

VERSE 3

I’ve heard the voice of angels

When children sang on Christmas eve

I have felt the arms of comfort

When a loved one turned to leave

As I face eternal dawn

Nothing left now to achieve

I’m remembering the times I spent with God

CHORUS

Remembering, Remembering

Seeing scenes of holiness

Along the days now past

Remembering, Remembering

Remembering the times I spent with God

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

LIVING IN THE PRESENT TIME [Sa, 3-18-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith and Life For The Years of Winter—LIVING IN THE PRESENT TIME [Sa, 3-18-23]

 

The voting for the Hall of Fame is complete. Spring training has started. Opening Day is close. That means it is time for comparisons…

Who was the better pitcher, Walter Johnson or Randy Johnson? Who was the better hitter, Joe DiMaggio or Joe Morgan? Who was the better left fielder, Ted Williams or Carl Yazstremski? Who was the better Aaron, Hank or Tommy? [Together they hit 768 home runs.]

Impossible and irrelevant. They were all great in their era, but their eras were very different, one from the other—different scouting, umpiring, ball manufacturing, nutrition, shoes, mound heights, coaching…and a hundred other variables,

Some players would be great in any era, because of their physical tools. Willie Mays, for instance. But most can be judged only against their contemporaries. Especially Judge…Aaron, that is.

That’s true with any old person. As we look back and evaluate our lives, we can do it only in terms of what was relevant in our twenties, or thirties, or fifties… not what is necessary to be relevant for folks who are in their twenties, or thirties, or fifties… now.

I used to do early morning walking in malls in winter time, especially when we lived in northern climes. One day I was walking by the vending machines and saw an old man trying to stuff a dollar bill into the coin slot of the coke machine that had raised its price to $1.00. Since I was a young man of 70 at the time, I showed him how to smooth out the bill and place it into the dollar slot, which he didn’t even know was there, since he had always lived in coin slot eras. He looked down and muttered, “I’m such a dummy…”

No, he wasn’t. I’m sure he had used coin slots successfully for years. He wasn’t a dummy, just evaluating himself by a different era, the era of obscenely expensive cokes.

We do a lot of irrelevant evaluating… Kids are so much smarter now. We don’t even know what Tik Tok is. I can’t figure out how to work that thing on the TV, but little kids can. I don’t understand what rappers are saying. [Be glad!]

When I look back at the various stages of my life, I have to ask, Did I make a relevant contribution in terms of what was needed then, not in terms of what is needed now?

John Robert McFarland

Musical Garbage, Backward Gifts, Stupid Technology, & Other Odds & Ends [W, 3-15-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—Musical Garbage, Backward Gifts, Stupid Technology, & Other Odds & Ends [W, 3-15-23]

 

We have friends who spend the winter in a small town in Ecuador. They say that the garbage trucks play music as the make their rounds. What a nice idea… as long as they don’t play the same songs as the ice cream trucks.

We have too much stuff, which means we don’t need gifts of stuff for birthdays or other gift-giving days. So our daughters give gifts to refugees as gifts from us. Our church has a ten-person three-generation Syrian family, and one daughter’s church has a three-generation Ukrainian family. Sometimes they make money donations in our name, and if they are able to give hard gifts—a lamb cake pan or a mixer to a grandma who likes to bake—they take photos of them to send to us. Either way, they are gifts that make us happy, and gifts that make happy people who had to flee their homelands with nothing at all.

“The Indiana Daily Student” is the best newspaper in Bloomington. A bunch of college kids, who write well, and are willing to go any place to get a story. They cover not only the IU campus but the city and county, much better than the city paper does. Of course, it its defense, The Herald-Times has been purchased by a chain that has reduced the local staff to one part-time robot. The IDS, however, is half a million in debt, because, to maintain journalistic independence, it is part of the university but receives no financial support. So they’re asking for donations. I was a journalism student when I started at IU, so I wanted to help. Helen tried to send them a contribution via their web site. OMG! You would think a bunch of tech savvy younguns would know how to make it easy to do that. Not so. She finally gave up and sent a check by mail. People who have grown up with technology often don’t realize its purpose is to make things easier, not to show off their tech chops. [They probably don’t know how to deposit a check, either.]

From my poetry journal of 1-14-23 [sa]

MYSTERY

The light shines brightest

when no one sees

The song is loudest

when no one hears

And I still say

the words

 

“Poetry can help us remember what we didn’t know we knew.” Robert Frost

Janet Lennon, of The Lennon Sisters, says that when they were starting out and gaining fame, their father told them, “You will meet a lot of people, and every one of them will be better or worse because they’ve met you.” She said they always tried to take that seriously. But that’s true, even if you’re not a celebrity.

John Robert McFarland

 

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—Remembrance of Presidents Past [SU, 3-12-23]

 

Daughter Katie Kennedy, the author, has driven 10 hours to be here for the weekend, and lost another hour overnight to DST. We keep up pretty well with one another--by telephone and email and text and zoom and grandchildren—but it’s always special to be together in person. We do wish, though, that she didn’t have such a long trip.

She is willing to do it, though, so that she can watch me in person for signs of…what…oh, yes, memory loss. Because I did not remember a paper she wrote in fourth grade.

I read recently that John Adams, even though enough of an American patriot that he became our second president, had been the lawyer for the British soldiers who were on trial after “the Boston Massacre.” Not only that, he mostly got them off.

He took the job because no other lawyer would touch it. Adams felt that if America became a democracy, it was necessary to have a justice system that treated everyone equally, that gave everyone a fair defense. Now, there is a guy who should be president!

So I emailed Katie about that, because she has been writing a book about the presidents, as a companion to her The Constitution Decoded. I told her that I had not known about Adams defending those soldiers.

“Oh, yes you did,” she replied, “because that was in a paper I wrote in fourth grade that you typed for me.” And she went on to tell all about the trial and its aftermath.

I forgot about that paper that she wrote in 4^th grade, but it’s really because I remembered a paper she wrote in 5^th grade.

I was the Teaching Assistant for Jim Spalding, the Director of the University of Iowa School of Religion. Actually, I was more of an administrative assistant. For tax reasons, or separation of church and state, or some such, the School of Religion had its own board and raised its own budget. So the Director had to go to a lot of meetings. Except, he didn’t, because he sent me in his stead.

He did, though, teach one Intro to Christianity course, one of those hundred students in a big amphitheater room classes. Sometimes he had me teach the class, and he always had me grade the tests, which were essay type.

One day I was grading those papers when 5^th grade Katie handed me a paper she had written. “Good grief, my grade school daughter writes SO much better than these college students!” I realized that I should not be a college teacher; I would flunk them all because my expectations would be too high for them to match.

Being Jim Spalding’s graduate assistant wasn’t much use to me, since I already knew I didn’t want to go to meetings, and now I knew I didn’t want to teach, because I’d have to grade papers.

A column like this should provide advice, so: Don’t tell your children anything, because it is probably something they told you and you forgot.

Katie’s book on the presidents will be published in October. I’ll give you the details when we get closer to that time. If I remember to…

John Robert McFarland

 

OUT SHOOTING SQUIRRELS [R, 3-9-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—OUT SHOOTING SQUIRRELS [R, 3-9-23]

 

We have too much stuff. We try to get rid of stuff. So, when daughters ask me what I want for Christmas or my birthday, I ask for donations to food pantries or refugee relief and such. They are good about making those donations, but they still think they have not given me a gift unless they wrap something up. They know I’ll read anything that comes into the house, so the wrapped-up gifts are books.

Thus, I read Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses, a gift from daughter Katie Kennedy, the author.

It reminds me of going out shooting squirrels, with Don Survant.

Don’s family moved from St. Louis to the country near Oakland City when he was in 8^th grade. We rode the same school bus. He was only a semester ahead of me, so it was natural that we rode together and talked together. Well, I did most of the talking.

Don was quiet. Smart, but not much interested in books. He liked hands-on stuff. We spent a summer working together as construction helpers. Most importantly, he was a totally reliable friend. We did a lot of things together, including squirrel hunting. Once.

Gibson County was hunter-friendly but not really a hunting culture. Same as my family. Of my 13 aunts and uncles, and 35 cousins, only Uncle Ted, my mother’s oldest brother, ever hunted, and he did it mostly so that Aunt Nora would let him have a dog.

But when Don said, “We’re going out shooting squirrels,” I said “Sure.” I never wanted to be left out of anything. And I liked being with Don. He listened to my mutterings of teenage angst.

I didn’t think about what would happen if I actually shot a squirrel. I’m sure my mother would not have wanted to skin it and cook it.

I didn’t have a rifle, but Don showed up on our appointed hunting day with two. We went out into the woods. Don said we had to be quiet and patient. Neither was a natural quality for me. When I was with a friend, I wanted to talk. Turns out that I was a good shot, though. Aiming at branches. But we shot no squirrels. I don’t think the squirrels even took us seriously.

 

Don didn’t say anything, as usual, but it was clear that he cut our hunting day short because his best friend was not cut out to be a hunter. He never again said, “We’re going out shooting squirrels.”

As kids and teens, even as adults, friendship is mostly liking and doing the same things. Together. So it’s a disjoint, when you learn that a friend does not have the same interests, wants to do other things.

Except for each other, Don and I had very different tastes in people. I wanted to be with the cool kids, and date the pretty girls. That didn’t matter to Don at all. He chose a girl best described as “plain.” She came from a slightly disreputable family, at least her brothers. But Don saw qualities in her that did not show on the outside, just as he did with me. I was his best man when he married her. They kept their vows until they were “parted” by Don’s death, over 60 years later.

After high school and marriage, Don joined the air force. He was a jet engine mechanic. You want reliable people in a job like that. We lived many states apart, but we wrote letters, the way you communicated in those days. But we both got busy. The letters stopped. We lost touch.

Then the internet arrived. It was possible to connect with people again. Google found Don for me a couple of years before he died. It was a joy to learn that he was still my friend and still different from me.

Per Petterson’s characters didn’t really steal the horses. They just wanted to ride them. They took them back. The story is about the activities of two boys, how those activities define their friendship, and continue to impact their lives even though they lose touch with each other.

We spend our lives perfecting who we are. The conventional wisdom way of saying it is that as we age, we become more like ourselves. I think that Don and I both became ourselves, and that’s really what you want in a friend, even if you don’t steal any horses, even if you don’t shoot any squirrels.

John Robert McFarland

 

WHAT’S ANOTHER WAY TO SAY BARF? [M, 3-6-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—WHAT’S ANOTHER WAY TO SAY BARF? [M, 3-6-23]

 

I’ve written about this before, but I’m thinking about it again, because today marks my 33^rd anniversary of starting chemo.

After emergency colon surgery on my birthday revealed a malignant tumor, my first oncologist said, “a year, or two.” My cancer survivor friend, Rose Mary Shepherd, said, “You’ve got to see my oncologist. They call him ‘Dr. Cancer.’” Alan Hatfield told me, “There’s a clinical trial we can get you on, but you have to start the chemo within 30 days of your surgery, and today is your 30^th day…”

It was Helen’s birthday. We began to dread special days.

As time went by, some folks in the cancer treatment room suspected that head nurse Becky and I were having an affair, because we did a lot of conspiratorial whispering. An affair was reasonable as an explanation for the whispering, because she was pretty and I was needy, and for a man, that’s all that’s necessary,

It's hard to have an affair, though, with someone who makes you throw up every time you see her.

I’d walk into the chemo room, and there would be Becky, looking all pretty in her white dress, and it just made me want to puke! So I did. I ran to the bathroom and called Ralph on the big white phone. It’s “anticipatory nausea.” Becky had not done anything to me yet, but I knew she was going to give me stuff that would make me hurl. I just went ahead and got it out of the way. It’s a very efficient system.

[One of the side effects of chemo is learning a lot of different ways to say vomit.]

The stories of anticipatory chemo nausea are legion. One was even quite local. Marie Deschamps was a former nurse in my center who had become the administrator. A classier or more elegant woman you’ll never see. One day she was shopping in a super market. She went around a corner, and came face to face with a woman who promptly lost her lunch all over poor Marie. Yes, a former patient.

Even worse is the story of the oncologist on vacation in Paris. As he walked down the street, a woman a block ahead suddenly ran to the curb and upchucked. He went to see if he could help. When he got closer, he recognized her. Yep, former patient. Years later, in a foreign country, but that anticipatory nausea part of her brain was still sharp. She couldn’t stomach the sight of him.

The odd thing is that these people who make us bring it up for a vote are the very ones who help us get well

Becky and I were whispering because I was the cancer center hitman. After I had tossed my cookies at the sight of her, she would whisper to me if she wanted me in the back room that day, because of some other patient who was there, or wanted me sitting beside a particular patient in the main room, or if she wanted me to talk to a parent, or slip me an address so I could go to the highways and byways to drag in some patient who had dropped out of treatment. We had to whisper because we were probably breaking all sorts of professional standards and privacy laws.

As my treatment came to a close, Becky accepted a marriage proposal. She asked me to perform the ceremony. I was pleased. It was a wonderful honor. But I told her, “Don’t wear a white dress.”

John Robert McFarland

Becky was not the only one. Happy Birthday to the woman who says that I surely amassed some sort of record for a preacher who did weddings for his chemo nurses.

LEARNING TO KEEP GOING [Sa, 3-4-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—LEARNING TO KEEP GOING [Sa, 3-4-23]

 

I still get up every day thinking, “Today, I’m going to get it right.” I think I learned that from my father, although his first thought was more like, “Today, I’m going to…” For him, it wasn’t about getting it right, whatever “it” might be. For him, it was just about keeping going, for that was his only choice.

He was born with a bad eye. Not impossibly bad, but a nuisance. It was probably one of the reasons he didn’t like school, and dropped out halfway through his first semester in high school.

He liked learning, even though he didn’t like school. He was good at arithmetic. He read a lot, and taught Mary V, my older sister, to read, before she started kindergarten. But mostly he liked learning on his own, about animals and motors and machinery and the old West.

He didn’t teach me to read, the way he had Mary V, because when I was about five, he lost most of the rest of his eyesight in an industrial accident. A piece of steel flew into his good eye. He didn’t become completely blind until late in life, but from that point, he was legally blind, and his sight kept getting worse.

He endured a series of operations, where they put a needle right into his eyeball. He endured the disappointment of those useless operations. He endured job refusals because of his blindness. He endured the indignity of being on welfare. He endured his wife, our mother, who was not always very understanding. He did the only thing he knew how to do in response to what life had dealt him—become the hardest working man in the history of humankind.

Without eyesight, he withdrew into himself. Not sullen, but just the silent man who worked hard and said nothing. If you live on a farm, where no one else sees you, you can find a myriad of ways to work around blindness.

 

He never lost his wry sense of humor, which showed up again after Helen joined the family as his daughter-in-law. She quickly became his favorite child. Also, Mother’s. She changed the dynamics of the family. We all began to be able to relate to one another in ways we had not before. She was that member every family needs, the “non-anxious presence.” Well, at least she was a less-anxious presence.

From my father--and from Mother, too, in her own way, which was much more vocal--I learned that you just keep going. That has served me well: in corn detasseling, in long distance running, in chemotherapy, in old age. I think it is why I don’t worry about death. On the day that I die, I’ll get up and say, “Today, I’m going to get it right…”

John Robert McFarland

A sharp-eyed reader noted that my recent column on “Trees In Winter” is basically the same one I did back in 2018. Remember, I grew up on a farm. I believe in rotating the crops, but when you’ve rotated through them all, you have to come back to planting corn again.

The photo above is not my father, nor is the horse Old Prince, but it is a close resemblance.