UGLY SISTERS [Sun, 10-29-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—UGLY SISTERS [Sun, 10-29-23]

 

I have a pinball brain, and it’s the fault of the ugly sisters…

I had two sisters. Both quite pretty. So I don’t like the term “ugly sisters” very much, but brain scientists tell us that it’s the “ugly sisters” who create so many of our old age memory problems.

Ugly sisters are memories that are sort of like the memory we are trying to construct.

That’s a key—construct. Because we don’t remember a memory, we re-construct it.

Here is a very crude synopsis of how memory works: An event happens. It comes to us in sight and sound and smell and emotion, to the hippocampus part of the brain. The hippocampus takes all those different elements and combines them into a whole. But, unlike you’d think of something named for hippos, the hippocampus is relatively small. It does not have room for all the different memories it is creating. So it farms them out to other parts of the brain… but not all in one place. There are different places for smells and sounds and sights and emotions. When you want that “memory,” your hippocampus has to re-call them and recombine all those elements from all those places. That’s when the ugly sisters appear…

…because you have lots of smell and sound and sight and emotion stuff from the past in your brain. The older you are, the more of it you have. And the hippocampus has to look all through your brain to get the right elements together to recreate that former event, what we call a memory. When people say their memory is slow because they have so many memories, they are right!

Say you’re trying to remember the name of the car dealer who sold you that Ford Fiesta. The Ford car is stored in the same place in your brain as Gerald Ford. You ask yourself: Isn’t he the one that Lyndon Johnson said he played too much football before they invented the helmet? And fiesta is Mexican, isn’t it? Was the Ford Fiesta manufactured in Mexico? Don’t they have tacos at fiestas? Oh, oh… ugly sisters. All understandable, but your brain pinballs from to Gerald Ford, to football and why IU can’t win, to tacos, to Taco Bell, to a guy you knew called Taco, but he was Japanese, to nuclear bombs… Those are the ugly sisters. And you never did get to the name of that Ford dealer.

It's like the way Seymour met Beverly. She was a nurse in an old people’s care place. Seymour was the new preacher who came to do a Sunday afternoon worship. The service was carried on the public address system, so that even the room-bound could “attend.” Beverly said, “They were singing, and there was the most God-awful voice I’d ever heard coming out of the speaker in the ceiling. I just had to go see who it was. It was Seymour.” That’s how they met. They were married a long time, and Seymour always said, “The best thing about being married to a geriatric nurse, the older I get, the more interested she is in me.” Beverly always said the best thing was when he didn’t sing.

It’s true that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” It’s good to accept the ugly sisters, just as Beverly accepted Seymour. She just wanted to find out who had that ugly voice, and she got a handsome husband.

Ugly sisters are part of the family, too. Embrace them when they come, because maybe they’ll end up being better memories even that the ones you were trying to construct.

John Robert McFarland

 

JESUS KNOWS YOUR NAME {R, 10-26-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—JESUS KNOWS YOUR NAME {R, 10-26-23]

 

Irish American and Catholic comedienne, Kathleen Madigan, does a funny shtick called “Don’t Bother Jesus.” You first use your rosary. Then you try your patron saint. If that doesn’t work, go to your guardian angel. Still no luck? Then go to the BVM [Blessed Virgin Mary]. Only after all that is it okay to bother Jesus.

Which reminds me of one of the perils of computer use in church—the replace function. The church was in Australia, if I remember correctly. There was a funeral for a woman named Mary. When another woman died the next week, they were using the same liturgy, so the secretary just used the “replace” function to put her name in where Mary’s had been in the worship bulletin. Which resulted in the congregation praying several times to The Blessed Virgin Edna.

Which reminds me of the funeral of my wife’s Aunt Bertha. It was at the cemetery in the old home town, where Bertha had not shown her face for a long time. The local Baptist preacher agreed to do the funeral, even though he did not know her. It was a lovely day. We were gathered around the grave. Everything was fine, except the preacher kept referring to Bertha as Martha.

Finally her son-in-law broke in and corrected him. It was a good thing to do. Clayton was saving his wife from the embarrassment of experiencing her mother being buried with the wrong name. And he was saving the preacher from the embarrassment of finding out after the service what he had done.

So, the appropriate thing for the preacher to do was say “Thank you” and go on with the service, using the correct name. But he didn’t. Instead he tried to explain. I think he must be the origin of the phrase, “Never complain. Never explain.” He went on and on about how his last funeral was for a woman named Martha, and how he had written in his Book of Worship… etc. His explanations made things worse. We were all embarrassed for him.

I don’t think that was nearly as bad, though, as the time I called a woman by her husband’s first wife’s name. In front of 200 people in worship. She was joining the church. Standing there with her new husband. In front of all those people. And as I started to give her the vows of membership, I called her by that first wife’s name. Everybody in the church knew the first wife. Knew that was her name. Knew it was not this woman’s name.

I said to her, “Do you think there is any way I can get out of this?” She thought for a minute and said, “No, I don’t think so.”

Sometimes the only explanation is, “I goofed.” Life goes on. Jesus knows your name even if the preacher doesn't. 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

POTPOURRI FOR OCTOBER [M, 10-23-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—POTPOURRI FOR OCTOBER [M, 10-23-23]

 

A bit of marital advice: When your wife asks you, “Do you know what anniversary this is?” do not say, “Yes, it’s the anniversary of the introduction of the transistor,” even if you HAVE just read it in The Writer’s Almanack, and so are proud you know the answer, if it is also the anniversary of when you got engaged.

**

A recent obit in our newspaper online said that the deceased “enjoyed golf and Harry Potter.” What a delightful pairing.

**

I had a new dentist last time. He is retired but was filling in for my regular dentist while she was away for a family illness. He checked me over and said, “I am at peace about your mouth.” That’s the ONLY  time someone has said that they are at peace about my mouth!

**

Dr. Atul Gawande, in his book Being Mortal, says that when we are older, we need to tip our chins down to swallow. That sounds backward. But he says that as we age, the insides of our mouth change shape. We don’t know it, because we can’t see that change.

 

I think that everything inside changes as we age, not just our bodies, but our hearts and minds. To swallow those changes, we need to change the positions we use.

**

Going through old artifacts again… When I was in the high school band, music teacher, Ralph Chandler, would send post cards reminding us of summer band practice. He would say, “you can probably find an excuse” to miss summer band practice. It was the opposite for me. Summer band practice was an excuse to miss farm work. I wasn’t much of a musician, but I had the best attendance record of anybody!

**

Something recently reminded me of who much vocabulary I have learned from hymns… Just a quick survey reveals so many. I have underlined the words I didn’t know, at least in that particular context, until I sang about them in church…

He lives, salvation to impart.

Beneath the cross of Jesus, I feign would take my stand.

He will my shield and portion be.

See on the portals he’s waiting and watching.

Ode to joy.

Naught be all else to me.

Robed in the blooming garb of spring…

I’m sure there are many others, but these remind me of how much my literary capacities were enhanced by the language of the church. Maybe yours were, too.

**

85% of all humans have neanderthal DNA. [Christine Keneally, The Invisible History of the Human Race] Neanderthals and humans are not the same. Neanderthals were not simply early humans, even though they are portrayed in cartoons and comic strips as big, dumb cave dwellers. Neanderthals and humans are distinct species. It’s like tigers and lions—two distinct species, but able to breed together. At some “bottleneck” of history, Neanderthals and humans were in enough contact to do that breeding. Then, from that bottleneck, they spread out through the world.

So if you are inclined to look down on some ethnic group of which you are not a part—white, black, brown, red, yellow, etc—remember that there is an 85% chance that you are descended from Alley Oop.

John Robert McFarland

BEING WHO WE REALLY ARE [F, 10-20-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—BEING WHO WE REALLY ARE [F, 10-20-23]

 

I have written about this before, but it arises in my memory now because the U of Iowa [UIA] hospital system is seeking to buy the independent Mercy Hospital in Iowa City. Mercy was always a little sister, struggling for acceptance and independence and equality and money. Folks questioned if such a hospital was even necessary, in a town with the UIA Hospitals. After 50 years, Mercy has given up the struggle, sort of. They are willing to sell, and UIA is willing to buy, but there are snags. The sale will go through eventually, though. Things change. [1]

The whole thing reminds me of taking CPE [Clinical Pastoral Education] as part of my PhD work at UIA. I don’t remember why, but occasionally our group of 7 or 8 clergy [all men] would meet at Mercy instead of UIA hospital, even though the CPE was a credit course at UIA and taught by David Belgum, Professor of Religion & Medicine. Two of us were degree candidates at UIA. The others were pastors of local or nearby congregations, doing continuing education.

As I looked at the photo of Mercy in the article in The Daily Iowan about its possible purchase, and presumably sublation into the UIA Hospital, I could pick out the window of the room on the third floor where our group met.

It was from that room that I had hurried to the rest room down the hall when break time had started one day. I had gotten settled into a stall when I heard the rest of the guys coming in together. They were talking about someone with disgust. “Where does he get off with this poor country boy crap, anyway?” “Yeah, he’s smarter than all the rest of us put together.” Etc.

Then something was said that caused me to realize who they were discussing. Me!

I was aghast. How could they think I was being duplicitous? I portrayed myself as a poor ignorant country boy because that’s who I was.

Except, that’s who I had been twenty years before. When I was doing CPE, discussing every day with those peers how to be better pastors, I was an experienced, educated, articulate scholar/preacher. I was holding the group back by not understanding and acknowledging that.

Those colleagues never did know that I overheard them. But they did me such a favor. They showed me that I could not hide behind an identity that was no longer real. As I changed, the way I saw myself, and thus portrayed myself to others, also had to change.

Now, I’m not an experienced, educated, articulate scholar/preacher. That’s okay, because now I do not need to be any of those things. Now I am a forgetful, confused, dysnomic, filter-less old man. That’s okay, too. And sort of fun…

John Robert McFarland

 

1] It has been revealed now that the UIA Hospital bid to buy Mercy was, with the knowledge of all involved, a stalking horse bid. Mercy has been acquired by an investment firm, which paid UIA Hospital a small sum for doing their bid. I do not understand finance!

 

CONCLUSIONS ARE HARD [T, 10-17-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—CONCLUSIONS ARE HARD [T, 10-17-23]

 

One day in June, 8 years ago, two of my closest long-time friends died on the same day. Bill and I were clergy and couples friends for 55 years. Mike and I became friends when we were ten years old. He died 68 years later.

 

Bill was in the hospital for several days. His children and grandchildren came to see him, or if they were too far distant, called him. He got to say goodbye to them and to friends like us. I felt good about the conclusion of his story.

 

Mike took his grandchildren to a movie and out for ice cream. Then he went home and sat in his recliner to wait for supper. He dropped off to sleep and never woke up. I felt good about the conclusion of his story.

 

Their conclusions were so different.

 

This comes to mind because I have had trouble with the conclusions of several CIW columns recently. Most of them I have not posted. I did not feel good about their conclusions.  Some I posted anyway. Then I felt even worse about their conclusions.

 

Both as a reader and as a writer, I’m aware that the conclusion of a story is usually the hardest part. I can tell when an author just gave up because they couldn’t figure out how to end the story. The worst one was an early novel by a now highly-respected writer. I was really enjoying the book. It had so many irons in the fire. I was looking forward with excitement to how he would bring them all together. But he didn’t know how. He had gone down all these promising avenues and couldn’t find where they went, or find his way back. So he had his protagonist sit on his back porch at the end of the book and say, “Well, I guess I’ll never know who Susie married and who killed Ralph and whether the twins got away and…” It was the worst conclusion ever!

 

So, first, I apologize for my own poor conclusions. Normally my thinking about a column starts with the conclusion. But sometimes there is a story that I want to tell, and I get it told, except for the conclusion, and…

 

But I knew how I wanted to conclude this column when I started. It’s about concluding life, which is why I started with the ways Bill and Mike concluded their lives. I like to start and end in the same place, the way Garrison Keillor usually did with his Lake Wobegon monologues.

 

How do you, how should you, go about writing the conclusion of your own story?

 

Well, that’s as far as I’ve gotten… Maybe you can finish it…

 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

HOW TO GET FREE FOOD AT MCDONALD’S… [R, 10-12-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—HOW TO GET FREE FOOD AT MCDONALD’S… [R, 10-12-23]

 

Okay, I’ll explain step by step how to get free food at McDonald’s. No, not just that “senior coffee” discount. That’s small potatoes, or small French fries in McDonald’s terms.

Make it look like you plan to use the drive-thru. However, admire the wild flowers growing there and go past the entrance lane and turn into the exit lane.

A lot of cars will start coming right at you, with no place to turn around. So make it look like you are an old person with nothing to lose and let them make the decision to drive into the side of the building to avoid you. Go to the back of the lot, beside the garbage dumpsters, and make a K turn with much backing and filling to avoid said dumpsters, and said cars that want to get past you to take their burgers home.

Notice that it’s actually a good thing you did not get into the drive-through lane because there are many cars backed up waiting their turn to order. Now you are going in the direction as everyone else, so you can angle park near the front doors and go inside to order, since that will be much faster.

Inside, however, there will be a sign that says you have to order at the kiosk, which is that big fancy board where people used to be. You can look at photos of sandwiches and fries and drinks and tap on them with your finger to say what you want, and how many, and even round up to give your change to the Ronald McDonald House. Eventually the kiosk will note that your order number is 810. The kiosk says you can pay there or at the counter. You are trying to keep the cash economy alive for the sake of poor people who don’t have credit cards, so you elect to pay cash at the counter.

Go to the place where lots of customers are standing around watching the other side of the counter where lots of employees are running around doing food-prep like activities. Listen as someone calls out 808, so that you know you’ll get your food soon. Try to look old. Wait…

The manager will yell out that some employees should come out and pay attention to all the people standing around. One employee will actually do so. All the other customers will be given sacks of food and leave. Try to look pitiful. Wait…

Stand there looking decrepit and pathetic. The manager will beckon you over and call you “Dear” and ask what you ordered. By that time, you will have forgotten, so you just tell her whatever comes to mind, which is 2 cheeseburgers, even though you actually ordered quarter-pounders with cheese, since this is the main meal of the day, and they are much larger than just plain cheeseburgers.

Wait while she asks you three times--because she is “distracted with much serving,” the way Martha was when Jesus came to visit--which size fries you ordered. Answer “medium” each time.

She will hand you a sack. Act like you are getting out money to pay. She will be tired of seeing you by then, and also feel sorry for you, and say, “Go on. Get out of here. I’ve got this.”

Stagger a bit as you exit so that she’ll know she made a good decision.

Mollify those at home by saying yes, you know that the cheeseburgers are small, but that you got them for free…

John Robert McFarland

 

WHO WROTE THE BIBLICAL TRUTH ABOUT…? [M, 10-9-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections On Faith & Life For The Years Of Winter: WHO WROTE THE BIBLICAL TRUTH ABOUT…? [M, 10-9-23]

 

Did Paul write Hebrews, the book in the Bible [New Testament] by that name? Yes, according to the Jeopardy TV show. No, according to most Biblical scholars.

Don’t we have enough Bible controversies without Ken Jennings creating yet another instance of authorship brouhaha? Of course, Ken was not the writer of the question, but he is the face of Jeopardy these days, so he gets the blame.

It was the Final Jeopardy question [answer, in Jeopardy’s backward approach] in The Tournament of Champions: “Paul’s Letter to Them is the New Testament Epistle with the Most Old Testament Quotations.”

Amy Schneider said “What is Hebrews?” Sam Buttrey said “What is Romans?” Andrew He said “What is Philippians?” Jennings declared that Schneider was correct.

It’s sort of a common-sense sounding question. “Hebrews” sounds more Old Testamenty than Romans or Philippians. And I assume that it must have more OT quotes, by count, than Romans or Philippians, although I have not done such a count myself. The controversy could have been avoided if the Jeopardyians had just said “The letter to them” instead of “Paul’s letter to them.” We know it’s a letter. We know it has a lot of OT quotes. We don’t know that Paul wrote it.

Even when I was a Bible scholar, I didn’t think it was very important just who wrote one book or another. The issue for me was never who wrote it but what it said.

Of course, sometimes knowing authorship can help with interpretation. Since we know what Paul thought about potlucks from what he wrote in letters that are surely his, if the author of III Thesalossiphilipans wrote something vague about potlucks, but it sounds like what Paul wrote, then it’s likely that we can still potluck in the church and know it’s an ecclesiastical activity that is sanctioned by apostolic tradition.

It’s what the author says about potlucks, though, that is important. As daughter Katie replied when her Roman Catholic husband-to-be asked her what was necessary to be a Methodist, she said, “You have to believe in God and have a 9x13 pan.”

The Bible says so. Maybe Paul. If he wrote Hebrews…

John Robert McFarland

 

THE BLESSED CERTAINTY OF DR. WILKEY [F, 10-6-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter— THE BLESSED CERTAINTY OF DR. WILKEY [F, 10-6-23]

 

When his Aunt Mary died, my late, great friend, The Rev. Dr. John Conrad Wilkey, arranged, with his brother Larry, for a grave stone for her. Larry did everything but the marker. He left that to the preacher. Who got it wrong. He had 1995 engraved on her stone as her death year, when it was actually 1994. Dr. Wilkey said that everybody in the family reminded him of that mistake every Memorial Day. But what could be wrong with giving Aunt Mary an extra year of life?

I felt that when another late, great friend, The Rev. Dr. William Luther White, died, three days short of his 85^th birthday. All the obits said he was 84. They cheated him out of 362 days.

For many years I called Dr. Wilkey and Dr. White by first names, John and Bill. That continued with Bill. We had known each other since we were boys. But Dr. Wilkey and I did graduate work together, including reading a total of 13 volumes of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. [Dr. Wilkey read 12 of them.] We were so relieved when we finished and were able to call ourselves “Dr.”

But we were also very humble.  We couldn’t go strutting around telling others to call us “Dr.”  So I called myself John; Dr. Wilkey called me Dr. McFarland. He called himself John; I called him Dr. Wilkey. Our way of bragging about our degrees without letting anyone else hear. I miss Dr. Wilkey. For a lot of reasons. But, yes, because no one calls me “Dr.” anymore. [Sounds like the title of a country song.]

Dr. Wilkey remained true to Barth’s neo-orthodox theology. In his sermons and funeral homilies and newsletter columns, he used very traditional language and theological images. Dr. Wilkey and I had the same commitments to Christ and the church, one of the reasons we were such good friends, but we used very different languages and images in our talk about those commitments.

In funerals, I was not afraid of dealing with all the negative emotions that arise at the time of death, particularly the doubts, by admitting my own doubts. I used modern language and told stories. I did not tell people what to believe. I just shared in their grief and hopes.

Now that I am old, and I read his published funeral homilies, I think what a comfort Dr. Wilkey must have been to the folks who heard him as they mourned a loved one. Dr. Wilkey dealt with those doubts at the time of death by stating, with authority, with certainty, that that there is a heaven, because of the resurrection of Christ, by whom we are saved, that God is love, and love conquers death.

Dr. Wilkey and I both had reputations for doing funerals well. I shared in people’s doubts. Dr. Wilkey shared in their faiths.

I have no reservations about the ways I dealt with death when I pastored, by facing the reality of doubt, but as I contemplate my own death, I am comforted by the sure certainties of my dear friend, Dr. Wilkey.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

ROUNDING UP [T, 10-3-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—ROUNDING UP [T, 10-3-23]

 

Can I make it through the winter? That is what old people ask about this time of year. If they do not want to try it, they go ahead and die in October.  Ministers and funeral directors know that.

If we do decide to try to make it through the winter, it seems such a waste to die half-way along, so we wait until May to die. Ministers and funeral directors know that, too.

It seems so wrong, that October and May are the dying months. They’re the prettiest months of all—new leaves in spring, and colored leaves in fall.

As October comes on, we face the question that the colored leaves put to us: can you make it through? Through the snow, the cold, the boots, the isolation…

So often we lose the joy of autumn by dreading the advent of winter. But autumn should be a joy in itself, and also a joy that winter is coming, because winter is a privilege. Not everyone gets to winter. I am glad that I have made it to winter. Almost.

So I do not intend to die in Oct. I shall die on Feb. 5. Not this next one, I hope. Maybe not for many February fifths to come. But I think that Feb. 5^th is perfect.

So often I see an obit of someone who was born on, let’s say, Sept 8 of 1937 and died on Sept. 7 of 2023, and the obit says he was 85. No! They cheated him out of 364 days.

That’s why on August 5 I start saying that I am a year older than people usually acknowledge. If you’re closer to the next birthday than you are to the last one, then round up.

That’s why young children and old people get along so well. We are the only age groups that want to claim we are older than others acknowledge.

John Robert McFarland