BEWARE THE STORIES THAT CHOOSE YOU [Sun, 7-23-23]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—BEWARE THE STORIES THAT CHOOSE YOU [Sun, 7-23-23]

 

The two most important books of my childhood were Tramp, the Sheep Dog, by Don Lang, and Mother Makes Christmas by Cornelia Meigs.

Early on in my story-loving life, they mirrored me to myself. They may also have led me astray.

Tramp was a good dog who wanted to protect the sheep but was misunderstood. He was a stranger. The farmer didn’t know his intentions were good. So poor Tramp ended up dying, in winter, in the snow, while protecting the sheep that the farmer thought Tramp was trying to hurt.

Tramp was “…despised and rejected by men. Acquainted with grief. He was despised, and we esteemed him not…” Oh, wait, that is Christ…

I got my earliest theology from that book. Tramp, I mean Christ, died because of our sin, our misunderstanding, our rejection of his protection.

I identified with that. Not with Christ. I always thought I had to be perfect, but I’ve never had a Messiah Complex. [The funny thing about that is that I don’t think that God, the Father, ever expected “his only son” to be perfect. Good fathers know better.]

I saw myself in Tramp. I was sure that my parents misunderstood me and esteemed me not. I was acquainted with that grief.

 

But, as counter balance, Mother Makes Christmas. It was hope more than reality. My mother was not much like the mother Cornelia Meigs wrote about, but I wanted her to be. We were poor, like the family in Meigs’ book, and I wanted Mother to pull us together into a family of love despite that poverty, the way the mother in the book did. But my mother was a real woman with a hard life that she wasn’t cut out for, not a story-book character. Still, that warm Christmas house was my ideal.

So, I envisioned a life, a family, in which I would be like Tramp, giving my life for the sake of others, in winter, in the snow, and at the same time I envisioned a life, a family, a church, in which love abounded, despite poverty, in winter, at Christmas.

The homiletical stirrings in my spirit have always been toward Christmas, writing stories that I preached as sermons. I named my blog column Christ In Winter because when I started it, we lived in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a place where winter covered thirteen months each year, and also I was in the winter of my years. But Christ In Winter goes all the way back to Tramp and Mother making Christmas, doesn’t it?

But now, late in life, I wonder if the stories of Tramp and making Christmas led my astray.

I was so wedded to the notion that I was a non-esteemed sacrificial homeless dog that I often failed to appreciate when people saw me with approval, and treated me with respect.

I was so focused on pulling everyone into the warm happy Christ-mas family that I often failed to understand those who did not want that sort of community.

If I had read different books as a kid, would things have gone differently? Better? If Treasure Island had been my book, would I have been happy as a pirate? Probably not. If it were Snow White, would I have just been Happy? Probably Grumpy.

I still have my copies of Tramp the Sheep Dog and Mother Makes Christmas. Maybe I could donate them. Is there a rare books library that specializes in books that write our stories for us?

John Robert McFarland

 

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