LIVING IN THE PRESENCE OF CHILDREN [W, 9-6-23]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—LIVING IN THE PRESENCE OF CHILDREN [W, 9-6-23]

 

In my final sermon a couple of months ago, I told the story of how I got into the ministry racket. It wasn’t just for the big bucks and short hours [only one hour per week], the way most people suspect.

When I was 14, my older sister became deathly ill. I told God that if He [No question about God’s gender in southern Indiana in 1950.] would save her life, I’d become a preacher. It was my only bargaining chip. God kept his part of the bargain; she’s even now the healthiest old lady you’ll ever meet. With fear and trembling, I kept mine.

As I preached, friends were sitting behind a new family at St. Marks UMC—an appropriate venue for my final sermon, since Helen and I  were the first couple married there 64 years ago--that has a couple of boys. They heard the older one, probably about 14, mutter, “Is this a true story?” It does sound made-up, but it is true.

There is more than one kind of truth in stories, though…

Ray Bradbury is known primarily for science fiction works, like The Martian Chronicles, and Fahrenheit 451. My favorite book of his, though, is Dandelion Wine.

It is written as fiction, but it is based very closely on his growing-up years in Waukegan, IL.

There is one story about a neighborhood woman named Mrs. Rogers. [My name for her; I can’t remember Bradbury’s, and it’s important to the story that she have a name.] The neighborhood children loved to go to her house on long summer afternoons just to hang out with her, and enjoy the refreshments she served. She liked it because she could tell them stories of her childhood. She was a widow with no children or grandchildren, so her only stories were about herself.

She would even show them artifacts of her childhood—dolls and toys. She told of how her childhood name was Topsie. [again, a reasonable facsimile]

But they did not think her stories were true. They had no stories of childhood because they were still in it. So, they refused to believe her and insisted that she stop telling those tales and live in their world. She was never a little girl, they insisted. She was always an old lady. They made her admit it out loud before they would sit on her porch.

My name is Mrs. Wilson. It was never Topsie. It has always been Mrs. Wilson. I have no first name. I have always been an old lady with gray hair. I never played with dolls and toys. I always just made lemonade and baked cookies…

Obviously, Bradbury is not opposed to remembering and enjoying the past. That is what Dandelion Wine is all about. But those kids gave Mrs. Wilson a great present, the gift of the present, the real now. Mrs. Wilsons own reality was being lost in her memories. Those children brought her into the present.

We shall Zoom with our grandchildren soon, as we do on a regular basis. One is two states away, and the other lives on the Pacific coast. They are working adults in their 20s, and we are so grateful that they want to spend time with us. But I will start to tell them stories of how I played with them when they were little… and that’s okay… except too much remembering says that I don’t recognize who they are now…

It is important not only to live in the present moment, but to allow others to live here, too.

John Robert McFarland