THOSE WERE THE DAYS [F, 6-30-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—THOSE WERE THE DAYS [F, 6-30-23]

 

Last night I was on a regular Zoom meeting with the few friends left from our action days. Those were the days…

I was much taken with Mary Hopkin’s recording of “Those Were the Days” in 1968. I was only 31 then, in campus ministry, a long career ahead of me, working to make the world a better place. Still, I understood that song then; I knew it would someday be mine, and my friends’.

I have re-written it to fit the generation of those who sang it then, but understand now that in old age, we do not have the energy or time to “work out our salvation” through good deeds.  We must trust in mercy alone.

[If you’re not sure of the tune, you can get Hopkin’s recording on YouTube.]

VERSE 1

Once upon a time

There was a new church

where we met

to share the Gospel Word

We sang and prayed

with hands clasped tight together

and talked of how we’d bring

change to the world

REFRAIN 1

Those were the days, my friend

we thought they’d never end

we’d storm the crumbling ramparts of the past

we’d beat the Gospel drum

we knew we’d overcome

we were sure that evil could not last

VERSE 2

Then the days of meetings came upon us

minutes, notes, and memos filled our days

if by chance I saw you in the hallway

we’d smile at one another and we’d say

REFRAIN 2

These are our days, my friend

It seems they’ll never end

We have so many meetings to attend

But climb that ladder we must

Reach the top or bust

These are our days, my friend, these are our days

VERSE 3

Just tonight I stood before that old church

Nothing seemed the way it used to be

In stained glass I saw a strange reflection

Was that lonely Christian really me?

REFRAIN 3

These are days of judgment, friend,

when we must learn to bend

our will to that of the Divine

We’ll set our pride aside

with peaceful souls abide

We’ll share the Gospel’s bread and wine

VERSE 4

Through the door there came the sound of singing

I looked inside and saw your smiling face

In the faults and failures of our dreaming

we’ve learned to trust in God’s redeeming grace

REFRAIN 4

These are the days, my friend

We know they’ll never end

even though we each must face the grave

We live by mercy now

We have learned to bow

These are God’s days, my friend, these are God’s days

 

John Robert McFarland

Mary Hopkin’s recording is of Gene Raskin’s English words to the Russian song, “By The Long Road,” by Boris Fomin.

 

 

BEAR WITH ME [T, 6-27-23[

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith and Life for the Years of Winter—BEAR WITH ME [T, 6-27-23[

 

We had a neat Sunday morning at St. Mark’s Above the Starbucks. Folk singers Carrie Newcomer and Kid Kazooey [Kevin MacDowell] led the worship. Mental health worker Sandy brought Samson, her adorable little therapy dog. He sat in front of us, which makes any worship service perfect as far as Helen is concerned, especially since he played peek a boo with her through the openings between chairs.

Strangely, the part of the morning that I liked best started out by breaking my heart a little.

About half-way through the service, a child behind us started crying. Not loudly, but so hard, so completely. I heard a woman trying to sooth, but it wasn’t doing much good.

So, it was bear time.

I have actually thought about not carrying my bears anymore, the ones I use for just such a situation. We hardly ever go some place that we encounter a child who is having a hard day. That’s what the bears are for. Why give pocket space to bears if you don’t need them?

They are little hard rubber bears, about two and ½ inches long, an inch high. I started carrying them to use when my grandkids, now well into their 20s, had a bad day and needed a distraction.

Then I began to run into other children who were having a bad day. In a restaurant, or medical waiting room, or mall. Getting a new bear out of the blue just seems to make a day better.

I did not give the bear directly to the child. I gave it to the adult with them, at the same time explaining to the child that they should not take things from strangers but it was okay this way. It was a sideways statement of support to the adult, and also a reminder that people noticed how they were treating the child.

Even though we don’t encounter many bear-necessary situations now, old habits die hard. I automatically put three bears—black, brown, and dark brown—into my suit coat pocket as we left for church. [Three is the most I’ve ever needed at one time, and they need to be distinguishable.] [1]

My body twists only with difficulty now, but when I heard the crying, and the soothing didn’t work, I twisted far enough around to see a little boy [three? four?] sitting on his grandmother’s lap, his older sister [five?] looking at him anxiously and solicitously.

I don’t know why the little boy got to crying. Certainly not because of anything his grandma did to him; I know her. But he cried so hard, even though he was almost silent. So I reached into my pocket and pulled out two bears and gave one to each child. The crying stopped.

After the service, the children asked if they could keep the bears. I said yes. They were eager to talk about the bears and how they intend to play with them. A good Sunday morning worship experience.

I’m going to have to go bear hunting, though. I’m almost out.

John Robert McFarland

1] When we were in the airport in Montreal, we had to empty our pockets directly onto the conveyor belt for inspection. The woman behind me started laughing and had a hard time stopping. She pointed at the bears. “I just didn’t expect that,” she giggled.

 

 

WHY AND HOW I AM ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT [Sat, 6-24-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—WHY AND HOW I AM ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT [Sat, 6-24-23]

 

I’m one of the few men in our church—three or four on a normal Sunday, out of about fifty-- who wears a suit and tie to worship. I do it because I’m anti-establishment.

Don’t get me wrong; I do believe it’s okay to “come as you are.” One of the iconic moments early in our attendance at St. Mark’s was when two male ushers brought the offering up during the Doxology. One was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. The other was wearing a suit and tie. It said so nicely that we include everybody.

The problem is: casualness in everything has become establishment. I am sometimes criticized for “dressing up.” That sort of criticism, either personally or on social media, is the essence of the establishment mentality, regardless of how “anti-establishment” you might look.

A friend of our daughter, Katie Kennedy, the author, sent a photo of her father as a young man in 1946, going to the movies with two of his friends. He’s 100 now, and she wanted to show that he hasn’t changed much. In the photo, the three young men are wearing suits and ties to go to the movies!

Look at all the public photos from back then, even outdoor venues like baseball games, and you’ll see the same thing—suits and ties and fedoras for men, dresses and high heels and fancy hats for women.

Back then, we all wanted to be part of the establishment—government, economy, education, church—part of the mainstream of society, so when we went out in public, we dressed like the leaders of business and education and government and church dressed, to show that we belonged.

Then came the 1960s… and Viet Nam. It was the people in suits who sent us to die in Viet Nam. We no longer wanted to be part of the establishment. So we went braless, and wore bell-bottoms and t-shirts with slogans, and flowers in our long hair.

I was a campus minister then. One day I was standing on campus, watching a student demonstration, with a woman friend who was very precise in all her ways. A “well endowed” student came toward us, wearing a t-shirt, and obviously braless. My friend said, “She just looks so disorganized.”

Precisely the point for those students!

So, little by little, even the most formal among us started dressing down. I’d walk down a hallway in an academic building and look into a classroom and be unable to tell the professor from the students.

It felt so free, so comfortable! Why not be casual all the time?

The problem is that there is always an establishment. The anti-establishment becomes the establishment.

When that happens, the only way to maintain your credibility as anti is to be more and more “extreme,” the favorite word of the world of entertainment, and to “double down,” the favorite phrase of politicians.

As everything becomes more extreme, everything becomes more divided. That’s today’s establishment.

Or…

…you can wear a suit and tie to church. To show that you are anti-establishment.

John Robert McFarland

HOW LONG THE DAYS [W, 6-21-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—HOW LONG THE DAYS [W, 6-21-23]

 

I never knew my mother’s father, my grandfather, Elmer Pond. He was a coal miner. He was killed in a mine cave-in before I was born. I have a washstand that he built, a simple wooden table he kept outside his backdoor at home. He made it more than a hundred years ago. When he returned from the mine, he would fill a tin basin with water and wash off the coal dust before he entered his house.

My grandfather Pond spent most of his time in darkness. Especially in winter, he went down into the mine before the sun was up, and he came up from the mine after the sun was already down. His only light in the mine was the dim glow of a carbide lamp on the front of his hat.

I think about him often, even though I never knew him, perhaps because I never knew him. I wonder if he got to see sunlight in summer, since the days were long. Like right now, as we hit the summer solstice.

We say that the days are long in summer and short in winter, but every day still has twenty-four hours. Only the day when we are born, and the day when we die, only those days are any shorter than the others.

It is not the day but the light that is long in summer and short in winter, “in short supply.”

It is true, though, that in a more profound way, we measure the days by light. More light, more day. Less light, less day. If there is less light, we have less time. “Work, for the night is coming, when no one can work.” [Jesus of Nazareth, recorded in John 9:4.]

This day of summer, as I look at the wash stand my grandfather made, still so sturdy, at the end of the sofa, stacked with books, I think again about this man whose coal-mining genes I carry, and the day is long with light.

John Robert McFarland

 

           

 

THE LIMITS THAT MAKE US FREE [Sun, 6-18-23]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—THE LIMITS THAT MAKE US FREE [Sun, 6-18-23]

 

The Episcopalians made a big difference in the preaching of this Methodist, even though I never preached in an Episcopal Church.

I’ m going to tell you about that, but first I want to note that I am aware that only a few of the readers of this column were/are preachers. In old age, though—and from time to time before we get to old—we need to reflect on whatever it was that we did with our “productive” years. Homemaking, teaching, business, writing… we learned about them as we did them. Sometimes we got better at our work because we came up against barriers and limits that made us be more focused. That’s what the Episcopalians did for me… through “Selected Sermons.”

Throughout most of my career, there were quite a few periodicals for ministers that printed sermons. I’m not sure there are any today. Preaching is not a high value item for publishing anymore, or anywhere else, for that matter. But preaching was a major focus of my ministry. Many of my sermons were published, starting when I was still in seminary.

I did not know about “Selected Sermons,” of Seabury Press, the Episcopal publishing house. But they knew about me by reading my sermons in “Christian Ministry” and “Pulpit Digest” and such. They asked me to write for them.

That was a nice compliment. I agreed. Then I found out I wasn’t free to wheel and deal, the way I usually did in the pulpit. [My printed sermons were usually done after the fact, my secretary transcribing them from a tape.]

“Selected Sermons” were for a specific clientele—Episcopal Lay Readers. These folks fill in when a priest is not available at a church. That’s sometimes true permanently because the church is too small to pay a priest, or for a few weeks or months between priests. Selected Sermons were designed for Lay Readers to take into the pulpit and read the sermon.

So, the editors of Selected Sermons told me: No first-person stories. No big words. No running either short or long. No variations from the Lectionary. No quotes. No cute asides. In other words, none of the usual stuff I did in a sermon. They even sent me special paper, with every line numbered, and strict margins.

During the 20 or so years I wrote for them, the editors and I became such good friends, because I always ranted and raved and railed against their restrictions, but I always met them. They said I was the only writer that they never edited. Whenever they got in a bind, because some other writer failed to meet the deadline, they’d call me in a panic and ask me for a week or month worth of sermons, preferably by yesterday, and I would bail them out. [They sent me a big supply of the special paper.]

I thought my pulpit preaching [as differentiated from written preaching] would be diminished by trying to stay within such strict parameters. Instead, it got better. The barriers and limits that my Seabury editor friends put upon me made me sharpen my focus, eliminate stuff that distracted, think about how each word would be understood or misunderstood.

Limits sometimes make us free.

That’s the way with aging. As we face new limits on energy and thinking, we are free to listen for the Spirit.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

 

REINCARNATION, a poem [R. 6-15-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—REINCARNATION, a poem [R. 6-15-23]

 

I met a man who believes

in reincarnation, he said

 

Not to claim laurels past

to alleviate his current lowly state

Not for him a kingship then

Nor even feudal fiefdom

But a drawer of water

and hewer of wood

 

Which makes his present state

of driving a big rig

a step up the ladder

of spirit recycling

 

It makes me wonder…

 

If he is right

then what was I in my former lives

A bishop, a soldier?

The lonely sheriff

in a rowdy Western town?

 

Probably a penniless poet

on a windy day

begging passersby

for pen and paper

since mine had blown away

gone with the wind

 

Oh, there’s a title to use

I said

back then…

 

John Robert McFarland

 

LISTS [M, 6-12-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—LISTS [M, 6-12-23]

 

Almost any show we watch on TV, there is some kid who gets away with just not doing what their parents tell them to. Doesn’t say “No.” Just ignores it. Life these days make that possible. Kids have a lot of free space.

Back in my day [do I sound old, or what?] I could not get away with that. It was so obvious if I did not keep the water bucket filled, hoe the weeds in the garden, empty the thunder mug.

My parents never asked if I had done homework. If I remained ignorant, that affected only me. But failing to fill the kerosene lamp or bring in the coal or take out the ashes affected the whole family.

But every kid needs a space that is free of parental expectations. If you can’t get away with ignoring the space you share with parents, you have to add in other spaces for yourself,

Since I could not get away with shirking errands to give me personal space, I added in a space of my own. The one thing I could do for myself, that no one else knew about, was make lists. It gave me control of my world.

The first list was ball players, and their batting averages and home run totals, or ERA for pitchers. Pencil, of course, since almost every list in those days was by pencil, and so I could update the lists when the Sunday paper came with those agate type stats columns. I needed those lists so I could argue the relative merits of my Reds against lesser ballplayers, on the school bus and at recess.

Then classmates. As we entered the high school building in 8^th grade, we merged two homerooms into one. I made a list of everyone. I was elected class president because I knew everybody’s name.

I made lists of people throughout my life and career. Especially when I was in campus ministry, when I would encounter, literally, a thousand or more new students every year. I needed lists to keep them straight.

Teachers. Church members. Colleagues. Writers. Books. People who need prayer. [1] Cars. Addresses. TV channels. Songs. Movies…

Lists gave me memory and control.

It would be possible to say simply that I have OCD. [Or CDO, as it ought to be, as the joke goes.] But I think it started simply as NBS [Need for Baseball Statistics].

The act of making lists on paper, and on computer, apparently engraves them on my brain. I know my lists without even looking at them. People today comment on my remarkable memory. I often hear, “How can you remember all that?” Well, I have lists.

John Robert McFarland

1] I have several different prayer lists. I remember them geographically. I start at one coast or the other and work my way across the country. I always wake up around 2:30 a.m. It is then that I pray for the troubled adolescent/adult children [and sometimes grandchildren] of my friends, kids [some now in their 60s] who have trouble getting their lives to go in good directions. A couple of them, their parents don’t even know where they are. Some of them, the parents are dead. I just want them to be remembered, regardless of what intercessory prayer “does” or “doesn’t” do.

 

 

 

 

IT AIN’T OVER ‘TIL IT’S… [F, 6-9-23]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—IT AIN’T OVER ‘TIL IT’S… [F, 6-9-23]

 

The pastor of our church, St. Mark’s UMC in Bloomington, IN, is on clergy-renewal leave. When our associate pastor, his wife, asked if I could relieve her of preaching duties on an occasional Sunday in his absence, I realized tht I am no longer able to preach. To preach, you need to be able to stand for 20 minutes in a row and think for 20 minutes in a row, and I am now too old to do either of those. I told about this in the column for May 28.

However, I told her that there was one exception—if she got sick on Saturday night or Sunday morning. Apparently, she thought that period started on Thursday afternoon. 

I sort of hoped the bulletin was already done.  One of the things that keeps me from preaching these days is having to make choices. With a completed bulletin, I would have no choices to make. I would just use the scripture and sermon title already there. No problem. There is no scripture I haven’t used in 60 years of preaching. I have no notes or manuscripts or old bulletins anymore, but I have so many stories in my brain that I can preach for 20 minutes on anything. Or at least “preach until I hit upon a subject,” as Garrison Keillor said the fill-in pastor at Lake Wobegon did.

No such luck. I even had to pick a theme so the music director would know how to finish his work. I thought about “The Past, Present, And Future Of God, Man, And The Universe.” That’s the title Gerald Kennedy used for a lecture series when I was a seminary student. He said that he had no idea what to say when they asked for a title, and he thought that would cover anything he came up with. But that was too wide even for me. I figured I could not go wrong with “Nothing can separate us from the love of God.” Romans 8: 31-39.

So you’re welcome, if you have nothing else to do Sunday morning, at 10:30 Eastern Daylight Time, to join us, by going to smumc.church and clicking on the Livestream rectangle. Or any time thereafter by clicking on the Video Archive rectangle.

When I was a young pastor, I was intrigued by the stories old people told me when I called on them. They were almost all stories of their childhood, as though it had just ended. I did not understand that then. I do now.

Since I think that this really will be my last sermon, I decided to go back to the beginning…

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

STARTING WITH LOVE [W, 6-7-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—STARTING WITH LOVE [W, 6-7-23]

 

Be careful where you start, because where you start determines where you finish. At least in thinking about God…

In the column for 5-11-23, I mentioned the Reformation theological division between John Calvin [1509-1564] and Jacobus Arminius [1560-1609].

John Wesley [1703-1791] was a follower of Arminius, because he started his theology in a different spot than Calvin. The starting point… that’s the main cause of different systems of thinking in any field.

From long before the time Luther started the Reformation through the time of Wesley, the main theological discussion was about heaven and hell. In the days of the Reformers and Wesley, heaven and hell were very real geographical places, and everyone went to one or the other upon death. Forever! To eternal bliss or eternal misery! So, it was rather important, especially since life expectancy in the body was rather short in those days, and eternity quite long.

Calvin started his thinking with the power of God. If God is omnipotent [all powerful] and omniscient [all seeing], then God already knows where each person will go upon death. It’s called predestination. You might live the most blameless life in this world, but it makes no difference. Your fate is not determined by the choices you make on earth, but by the choice God has already made about you in heaven.

Wesley, though, started his thinking with the love of God, as seen in Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. Step by theological step, that led to everyone having a chance in this life, by our individual actions, to get into heaven.

Essentially, Calvin was a philosopher, starting with an idea. Wesley was an historian, starting with the story of God’s interaction with God’s chosen people, and the Messiah [Christ]. From that story, Wesley concluded that God is loving, which means giving us a chance to make our own decisions about how we want to live, and thus where we’ll end up for eternity.

God is power, but God is love. You can’t choose both of those as your starting point. Where you choose to start out makes all the difference in where you end up. If you start with the love of God, then the purpose of life is simply to love.

Love is sometimes a feeling, often an action, but always a decision.

 

You make the loving decision, Wesley said, by using what church historian Albert Outler called “The Wesleyan Quadrilateral:” You consult the Bible, tradition, experience, and reason. You will make the most loving decisions if you use all four of those together.

What is most important, for where you end up, is where you start.

John Robert McFarland

 

POTPOURRI: PERFECT ATTENDANCE TO WALK THERAPY [6-4-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—POTPOURRI: PERFECT ATTENDANCE TO WALK THERAPY [6-4-23]

 

PERFECT ATTENDANCE

My friend, Ron, told me of going to his granddaughter’s 8^th grade graduation, which was mostly an awards night. The very first award was for perfect attendance. There was only one kid who, for 8 years, had never been absent or tardy. They called out his name. He wasn’t there!

When we told grandson Joe, he said it would be worth going to school on time every day for 8 years just to be able to pull that off.

 

TOOTIEHEADS

When our granddaughter was in kindergarten, she reported to her mother one day that a classmate had been sent to the principal’s office because he called another child a “tootiehead.” “Do you know what a tootiehead is?” Katie asked. “No, but apparently the teacher does.”

ROCK THE VOTE

I received an email from Rock the Vote, a non-partisan organization “working to be sure young people are enfranchised in the political system,” to remind me to vote, for “our voices count.” That’s one of my nicest compliments ever.

 

18^TH CENTURY GREATS

On line, I came across a list of the 100 greatest people of the 18^th century. Marie Antoinette made the list. So did Benedict Arnold and the Marquis de Sade. So did Indiana’s own Wm Henry Harrison. And Black Beard, the pirate. John Wesley did not. In fact, there were figures from politics and science and literature and economics and music and philosophy and war, but no religion people at all.

 

A MAN CALLED OTIS

Otis Collier was my District Superintendent in the Calumet District of The Northwest Indiana Conference, while I was pastoring at Cedar Lake and Creston, while driving back and forth, 60 miles each way, to Garrett Theological Seminary, at Northwestern University, in Evanston, IL.

Helen says I should tell you about the reunion Otis went to each year.

The Calumet District was basically Lake County—Gary, Hammond, East Chicago, etc. Plus Crown Point, the county seat, and the smaller towns in the south end of the county, like Cedar Lake and Lowell. Otis had been out to one of his churches and was driving back to his home when a freak April snow storm hit without warning. It was huge. The highway traffic came to a standstill. Otis was on a back road. He trudged up to a farm house. They took him in.

Soon, other motorists arrived. Then a passenger train—yes, a train! It came to a halt near the farm. The passengers made their way across the farm fields to the house. The place was full! The farm family got out all their supplies and fed everybody. They were all there for almost two full days.

“We had such a good time,” Otis said. “We all gave the farm folks all the money we could muster up. Now, every year, on the date of that storm, we all go back. It’s a family reunion, but we’re not family. It’s church, but we’re not a church. It’s just… people… being what people ought to be…” 

 

TALK THERAPY OR WALK THERAPY

So many people have gone to counseling, what is called “talk therapy,” over the last few decades that it has now been studied empirically. Big surprise: The evidence is that it is useful for some folks and not for others.

I think walk therapy is best, as when Jesus says, “Come, follow me.”

John Robert McFarland

 

A SHADOW WITHIN A SHADOW [R, 6-1-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—A SHADOW WITHIN A SHADOW [R, 6-1-23]

 

I have always been aware of this, but as my days “dwindle down to a precious few,” it is rather startlingly clear: I have lived in two directions at once—both forward and backward. It is what Jaber Crow calls “a shadow within a shadow.” [Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry]

When I first began to think in stories, what some people call writing, I had hardly any stories of my own, and my generation had even fewer. The stories we grew up with were WWII and The Great Depression, the stories of the generation before us. As the years went by, living forward, I added in The Korean War and The Silent Generation, then Civil Rights and Viet Nam.

But as I added each decade from the future into the present, I also added the one from the past that mirrored it. The Roaring Twenties became part of my story along with The Quiet Fifties, The Horseless Age with the Activist Sixties, The Gilded Age with The Me Generation, finally even The Civil War with The Days of Greed.

Now as I have pushed almost 90 years forward from my birth, I have pushed 90 years backward, also. My story goes from 1847 to 2027, from the end of the Mexican-American War to the end of The MAGA War. [Yes, it will end, because all such eras contain the seeds of their own destruction.]

I first became aware that students could “major” in a subject along about 7^th grade. But as I heard it, I wasn’t sure if the word were “major” or “measure.” I think that confusion helped me to do this living both back and forth at the same time. I majored in history in and theology. And I was measured by history and theology.

In my soul, in my history and theology, I am almost 200 years old. “Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come. Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”

John Robert McFarland