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.