We Reserve the Right, a short story. 4-25-24.

 

BEYOND WINTER: Personal Reflections of an Old Man—

We Reserve the Right, a short story. 4-25-24.

 

[Someone—Bob Parsons, I think—said that I could still post things here, even if they were not spiritual/religious meditations. This is a short story that won an award at a conference but never found a publication. Warning: it’s 1700 words]

 

WE RESERVE THE RIGHT

John Robert McFarland

Lori first saw him as he tried to get out of the long, old dinosaur of a Chevy. It was gold, mottled by patches of brown rust. She usually didn't notice cars much, at least not old sedans, but it was just the night before that Father had pronounced one of his pronouncements, about gold cars.

            "Hardly ever see a gold car anymore," he had said, pulling at the tuft of hair in his ear. "I was just saying that to Ed this morning. Hardly ever see a gold car anymore, and if you do, it's got a woman behind the wheel."

            Father liked to quote whatever he said to Ed.

            Here, however, was proof that Father was wrong, which didn't surprise Lori much. A gold car, with an old man.

            With his feet out on the blacktop, he bounced on the edge of the seat three or four times, until he got enough momentum to lurch out and grab the open door to steady himself.

            Lori watched him through the field of plate glass while she wiped the tables and picked up trays and cups and muffin wrappers that people had left strewn around the dining room.

            They were supposed to put them in the big boxes marked "Thank You," but a lot of folks didn't. Lori was the newest girl, so she got the cleanup job, instead of working behind one of the cash registers with the cute little pictures of food in place of numbers.

            Cleanup was dull but it was fine with Lori, at least for today. Brenda, the morning manager, was in a real mood. The first thing you learned from the other girls, and even the older women, was "Don't do anything to set Brenda off when she's in one of her moods."

            Besides, Lori was happy just to have a job. Since the canning factory had closed, they were barely able to pay the rent and the heat bill from what Mother made at Wal-Mart.

            The old man was thin and stooped, wrinkled red skin pulled tight over the bones of his face. He wore a black baseball cap with a logo Lori didn't recognize. Thin, white hair wisped out from underneath it, like cobwebs that had collected on the cap's black felt while it hung on a hook. His light yellow shirt was buttoned at the neck. Dark blue pants gathered in folds around his pipe-stem waist. His shoes were long and bright brown and had strings tied in big looping bows. 

            Lori wasn't sure why the old man had caught her attention, why she was watching him so closely. Maybe it was because he looked like a grandpa. Allison had a grandpa who took her places and listened to her. That was neat. Not many grown-up men were willing to listen to a girl talk. Lori shrugged. It was probably just because he was more interesting than cleanup duty. She could wipe the tables and watch the old man at the same time, anyway. “Fast food ain’t rocket surgery.” Maybe she would say that to Allison and then quote herself to Father.

            She didn't want to stare at the old man, though. That was rude. Besides, he might stare back. Lori didn't like for people to notice her. But maybe he looked like the grandpa she had never seen, the one who would take her places and listen to her talk, if he hadn’t been killed in the mine. The only picture she had of Grandpa was when he was very young, in a Marine uniform, but he would be old now. Maybe he would drive a gold car. She watched him out of the corner of her eye.

            The old man weaved his way across the parking lot like she'd seen soldiers do in mine fields during the war on TV. His bird-like head moved from side to side, as if he expected to be run down by a “16” at any time. That’s what Father called a 4x4, a “16.” Maybe that's why he went to the wrong door, because he was watching out for “16”s.

            It was simple enough to do. The door was toward the rear of the building, back where the rest rooms were, and he had parked in that end of the lot. It looked like a regular door, until you got up close and could see the sign that said "Exit Only." He tried to pull it open, though, before he saw the sign.

            He stood there for a minute, looking confused, like maybe he thought they weren't open. That was silly to think, of course, on a Friday morning, with a bunch of other cars in the lot.

            Then he saw her inside, wearing her red and gold overseas hat, like those singing sister acts wore in old movies, and the red and gold uniform smock, too. It looked like he knew she was watching him, even though she was trying not to stare.

            He muttered something and looked down at his brown shoes and tried to make a quick turn. He almost lost his balance and started to fall into the bed of ivy and gravel and little spotlights. He reached out, like he was grabbing at an invisible trapeze bar. Somehow he managed to catch it and hang on and right himself. He backtracked down the concrete walk and found his way around the gravel to the two sets of glass doors.

            It took him a while of tugging and pulling to get the doors open. Lori thought maybe she should hurry over there to help him. She actually took a couple of steps, but she knew he was already embarrassed about going to the wrong door. She didn't want to make him feel any worse. She stopped and let him pull until he finally wedged himself through the opening. He pushed his cap back a little and darted a quick glance at her, then fixed his gaze on the wood and metal sculpture on the wall above the plastic booths. It showed two women and a pig driving an open, old car past a barn.

            "Been a long time since I've been out," he said.

            Lori wasn't sure he was talking to her, but there was no one else on that side of the restaurant.

            "Forgot about that door bein' just for leavin'."

            She thought she should say something, but didn't know what, so she just stood and looked at her pink and white running shoes. Finally he'd seen enough of the sculpture on the wall and went around to the counter.

            "May I help you?"

            Lori could hear it even around the corner. It was Kim's voice, bright and cheery and false. Kim was perfect behind the counter. You could tell her your mother had just died and she'd perkily inquire if you wanted fries.

            "You got them chili dogs, don't you?"

            "Yes..."

            Kim's voice was a little more tentative now. They had chili dogs, but...

            "Good. I'll have me one of them chili dogs, and a side salad, and a hot tea. And I get ten percent off, don't I?"

            "Well...uh...we have chili dogs...but it's not lunch time yet. It's still breakfast. We can't serve chili dogs until 10:30."

            Lori slipped around the corner, still carrying a stack of brown, plastic trays. The old man looked confused. Kim was pointing at the clock on the wall above the fryer.

            "You mean, you've got 'em, but I can't have one?"

            "Well..." Kim looked exasperated. "It's not that you can't have one. You can have one at 10:30. That's when we start lunch."

            Just then Brenda lurched into view from behind the warming slots where the ready sandwiches lived between cooking and eating. Her face was red and her hair was spreading out in what was known behind her back as "the mood special."

            "What's wrong, Kim?"

            Brenda didn't like for things to be wrong.

            "Uh, this man wants a chili dog, and I'm trying to explain..."

            "She says you have chili dogs..." the old man began.

            Brenda pointed at the clock.

            "No chili dogs until 10:30. That's when we start lunch."

            "No chili..."

            "No chili dogs until that clock says 10:30, Sir!"

            Brenda was almost shouting now, in her manager's voice, the one that said whatever was wrong, it wasn't her fault.

            The old man ducked his head and shoved his hands down into the pockets of his ballooning pants. It made him look like that famous clown with the sad face. Aunt Edna had a little statue of him on her coffee table.

            "I...been a long time since I've been out...That's why I went to the wrong door...I thought there was a discount..."

            He seemed to be muttering to no one in particular. Brenda's mouth turned down in a disgusted scowl.

            "No chili dogs until that clock says 10:30," she declared again.

            The old man turned away from the counter and started shuffling toward the doors.

            He started to get wavy in front of Lori, and she realized she was crying. She didn't know whether she was crying for him or for the grandfather she had never even seen. Maybe I'm crying for myself, she thought, because she already knew what she was going to do.

            "And I really need the job, too..." she muttered.

            She dropped her stack of trays on top of one of the big trash boxes. She stepped in front of the man. She reached out and gripped his thin arms.

            "Wait," she whispered. "It'll be okay."

            She turned him back around to face Kim and Brenda. Then she went behind the counter and pulled herself up onto the shake machine with a move she had learned in gymnastics class, back when Father was working and she was taking lessons. She put her finger on the long clock hand and pushed it down to the bottom of the circle.

            "Ask him if he wants fries with his chili dog, Kim," she said.

 

FOND FAREWELL [T, 4-9-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—FOND FAREWELL [T, 4-9-24]

 

Well, it finally happened. I’m out of words, ideas, stories, energy. I suppose I could keep on writing if I were out of just one or two of those, but all of them together…that’s too much.

I thought I was out of writing possibilities at my birthday, Feb. 4. But I had a few more ideas, especially since Lent and Easter were on the way. But Easter is over; resurrection is here. Now seems to be a good time to say farewell.

I’ve said two or three times in the past that it was time for me to stop writing, that I was replete with depletion, but it didn’t stick. Some event or idea or memory would come along, and it just seemed right to share it.

Now the only events in my life are cups of coffee. Each one is precious to me, but provides nothing unique to share. My ideas and memories… Nothing new there. I’ve written about all of them, many times.

And energy? Just a shimmering recollection. I wouldn’t even have those cups of coffee if I didn’t make them strong enough so that they can walk from the kitchen to my sofa by themselves.

So now, you’ll just have to go elsewhere to hear shopworn stories, and irrelevant ideas, and memories of times so remote that no one today can believe that they were even real.

But sharing those shopworn stories and irrelevant ideas and remote memories has been so meaningful to me in my years of winter, and I thank you for reading them.

It would be reasonable, of course, for you to say, “Why Christ in Winter? Yes, it’s clear that you’ve been writing in the winter of your years, but why Christ in the column title? You’ve never said much about Christ.”

 Well, I’ve never said much about Jesus--even though I have a great interest in Jesus--but every searching and wondering and remembering and rejoicing word has been about Christ, for “Christ is God’s eternal answer to the world’s eternal why.”

Now, deep in winter,

fondly, farewell.

Grace and peace,

John Robert McFarland

 

7 STANZAS AT EASTER [Sun, 3-31-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--

7 STANZAS AT EASTER [Sun, 3-31-24]

[A Holy Week contention with John Updike]

           

MONDAY [1]

No, there need be no body

            TUESDAY [2]

Escaping the grave

Rising cinematically into the sky

            WEDNESDAY [3]

Before we can know

The resurrection

The daily presence of the Christ

MAUNDY THURSDAY [4]

Some call it Tenebrae

This celebration of bread and wine

Broken and sipped in darkness

I’ll sing, “This little light ‘o mine”

GOOD FRIDAY [5]

Were you there?

Does anyone care?

Is it just a song?

Listen to the answers

Of the 14 questions from the cross

            HOLY SATURDAY [6[

What does a Messiah do on the day between

Crucifixion and resurrection? He goes to hell

To preach there the same good news

Lived out upon the dusty roads of Galilee

That no one perish eternally

Without the chance to choose The Way

            EASTER DAY [7]

Christ is risen! Christ is risen, indeed!

So we greet the morn and one another

Sin, original and not, still with us

What difference where the body lies?

We are souls that have bodies

Not bodies that need another chance

He lives! He lives!

 

John Robert McFarland

You can find Updike’s poem, “7 Stanzas at Easter,” online.

…

 

 

BEING REASSEMBLED [W, 3-27-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—BEING REASSEMBLED [W, 3-27-24]

 

I loved to hear Max White give the pastoral prayer in Sunday morning worship. He always started with, “O God, bless those of us assembled here…” 

I knew that he was asking a blessing upon the congregation, the corporate body, we disparate individuals who had come together for this special time together. I rejoiced in that.

I heard his prayer as well, though, as a request for reassembly for those whose parts had been scattered all over by the forces of the world. We came to church to be put together again, to have our brokenness made whole. “Bless those of us being assembled here…”

Max White was a blessing to me. In his retirement, he was the part-time minister of visitation at Wesley UMC in Charleston, IL for twenty years.

He and Ruth moved to our town when he retired after 40 years as a preacher. Ruth came to see me shortly thereafter. “This church is too big for you to handle by yourself,” she said. “You should hire Max to be a part-time parish visitor. He’s great with old people.” “I’d love to hire Max,” I told her, “but we don’t have enough money.” “How much to you need?” she asked.

Apparently she had, as the old saying goes, married Max for love but not for lunch.

So, I talked to some folks and found enough money to hire Max. I figured it was easier than doing marriage counseling.

So, every few weeks, when our associate minister or campus minister wasn’t helping to lead Sunday morning worship, I’d include Max as the pastoral liturgist for the day, complementing the lay liturgist. The lay liturgist’s primary duty was scripture reading and the pastoral liturgist’s primary duty was the pastoral prayer.

When Max prayed, “Bless those of us assembled here…” he was asking for help for each of us in being put back together.

As we age, our bodies become disassembled. It’s called senescence. It’s not the number of years that causes old-age problems. It’s the disassembly that happens in our cells over the years. Every time cells divide, there is a chance that something will go wrong, that they won’t come back together in the same way. The longer we live, the more opportunities there are for disassembly of those cells.

The same is true with disassembly [senescence], of the mind. Which is why we worship, not only when we are assembled with others in a church, but when we pray.  We need reassembly. In taking our lives to God in prayer, we are being assembled, put back together.

John Robert McFarland

LENT AS SPIRITUALLY RELIGIOUS [PALM SUN, 3-24-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—LENT AS SPIRITUALLY RELIGIOUS [PALM SUN, 3-24-24]

 

According to a Pew research study, about 10% of Americans are religious but not spiritual. They like religious stuff, but not God stuff. They like chanting liturgies and putting water on babies. They like wearing yarmulkas and crosses and hijabs and turbans. They enjoy religious music. They like kneeling in the right way at the right times.

But they don’t care about prayer and heaven and hell and eternal life and that soul stuff. They don’t need a relationship with God to enjoy talk and activities about God. They are in the religion, but not of the religion. Who needs a “higher power?” Well, alcoholics, but that’s different.

This, of course, is the opposite of the tiresome, “I’m spiritual but not religious,” which is mostly what people use to excuse their absence from church or synagogue or temple. Until they want said venues for a wedding or funeral. Free, of course.

Despite my snarkiness, I understand why people want to be spiritual without being religious, and also why they want to be religious without being spiritual. I suspect most people live in one or the other of those categories a lot of the time, often without knowing it.

I see this especially in retired clergy colleagues. Some drop out of the church altogether. They’ve handled holy things too long. They’ve learned that most Christians aren’t. They wonder why they ever bothered with being religious. Or being spiritual.

Others, of the conservative or evangelical variety, become Episcopalians, or even Catholics. They’ve trusted in feelings, getting worked up, and those feelings wane with overuse. Now they’re tired. Now they feel more comfortable if they hold a prayer book that is responsible for producing the prayers and words and auras.

Psychologists tell us that as we age, we become more like ourselves. Which is why old people are often described as “set in our ways.” As I age, I find myself being the same as I have always been spiritually, but less religious. By that, I mean that I have always known the Presence of God in the same way that I do now, but I am less reliant upon the traditional forms for acknowledging that Presence.

I’m a bit reluctant to say that, because it reminds me of the old man giving his testimony in church and saying, “When I was just a boy, the Lord filled my cup to the brim, and He hasn’t taken a drop out or put a drop in since then.” Some boy in the pews said, “It must have wiggletails in it by now, then.”

I have become less religious, meaning I don’t use the tokens of religion as much as I used to. I still like them—the liturgies and books and candles—but I feel no loss without them. God is always present, in all of life, not just in churchly appurtenances.

Lent is the perfect time for those who are religious without being spiritual; there is a lot of outward stuff to do for Lent—forehead ashes, giving something up, lighting candles, etc. And Lent is the perfect time for those who are spiritual without being religious; there is a lot of inward stuff to do that does not depend upon ashes or candles.

I suspect that the right blend for old age is both—being religious without being spiritual, and being religious without being spiritual.

John Robert McFarland

 

GIVING UP OMISSIONS [R, 3-21-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—GIVING UP OMISSIONS [R, 3-21-24]

 

It’s a bit late to decide to give up something for Lent, but I have decided to give up omissions. If that sounds oxymoronic, well, maybe it is, but…

About 35 years ago, I preached the memorial service at the annual conference of The Central IL Conference of the UMC, honoring the preachers and spouses who had died in the previous year. Present were about a thousand people—preachers and lay members of the conference and family members and friends of those we honored. Each time I have remembered that sermon, for lo, those many years, my heart has sunk a little.

Not that it was a bad sermon. In fact, it was pretty good. When I went to the audio desk to buy a copy, the company that was recording the various services told me, “Oh, you get a free copy. We’ve sold more copies of your sermon than everything else put together.” That pleased me, but, still I remembered… my omissions. [1]

I preached about how the mission of the church is to tell the story of God, put simply, the story “…of Jesus and his love.”

That is a line from “I Love to Tell the Story,” by Katherine Hankey. [2]

We ended the service by singing it. I thought its last verse was the perfect capstone for a sermon/service honoring those who had spent their lives telling the story and had now gone on to their reward: “I love to tell the story, for those who know it best, seem hungering and thirsting, to hear it like the rest. And when in scenes of glory, I sing the new, new song, ‘twill be the old, old story, that I have loved so long.”

I told stories in that sermon, of course, of how the church tells that story “of Jesus and his love.” By that time, I had been preaching for almost 30 years. I was no longer using a manuscript or outline to preach. I had never written a manuscript for a sermon, except in the days of Civil Rights and Viet Nam, when I wanted to prove to people who wanted to misquote me exactly what I had said. And you don’t need a written outline if you have a narrative outline in your head. A narrative outline flows naturally from one part of the story to the next. And it is valuable to see the faces of those in the congregation. You get feedback, know when they are getting it and when they aren’t. You can’t do that if you’re looking down at a manuscript or outline.

So all I had on the pulpit was the bulletin for that service. Early in the sermon, my eye fell on the bulletin and I saw there the list of the names of those we were honoring. We were honoring them because they had told the story. So after each of my stories of how the church tells the story, I picked out a couple of the names and said, “That is what Tom Brown and Clarence Young did, told the story.”

The problem was, it was spontaneous. I was picking out names at random, names I recognized. I lost my place. I had not started soon enough, had not called out enough names at each segue in the sermon. It was over, and I had omitted some of the names.

No one assumed that the honorees had to be named in the sermon, of course. In fact, I think in the 40 years I listened to memorial sermons at annual conference, I was the only preacher who included the names of the deceased in the sermon itself. They were honored earlier in the service when each name was called and a single bell note was sounded for each. It’s a solemn and moving moment. But I had omitted some who deserved as much as those I included…

I know that I am probably the only person left who even remembers that. So I am giving it up for Lent, along with the other omissions I have committed [can you commit an omission?] through the years.

The important point is that I did honor my fellow tellers of the story in that sermon. I honored them all by preaching as best I could. That’s my Lenten discipline—to remember and appreciate the ways I have included my fellow tellers and livers of the story, rather than the ways I have omitted them

John Robert McFarland

[1] This was before Apple. Cassettes were still the cutting edge of recording.]

2] Music by Wm. G. Fischer

REVERSE ALMS JUSTIFICATION [M. 3-18-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—REVERSE ALMS JUSTIFICATION [M. 3-18-24]

 

I think another necessary Lenten discipline—one that I not usually listed by the ecclesial calendar makers—is accepting alms, not just giving them.

Justice is restored when there is equality between giver and receiver. It’s like the old auto mechanics who talked about “justifying” an engine. It was justified, ran correctly, when all its parts were working together in the correct ways. There is no alms justice when giving and receiving are out of balance.

One of the kindest things people have done for me in my old age is to accept alms from me. Not just money or stuff, but books, time, advice… You are accepting from me right now by reading what I am thinking.

After a lifetime of giving, in my old age there is little I can give, and even less that people want to receive from me. It is almost a work of supererogation for someone to accept something from my hand, or brain.

When someone does accept something from me—including reading what I write—that reminds me of who I am, reminds me of my calling, reminds me of who called me.

I am restored to wholeness not just by receiving the help that people give to me in my old age, but by being allowed to give help to others. You give me a gift by accepting my gift.

Individual personalities make a difference of course. There are old people who only want others to do for them. There are others who don’t want to accept any help at all. [They are usually the ones who cause the most trouble!]

This is true throughout life, regardless of age. Many folks can’t accept. They don’t want to be beholden. Others can’t give; they feel the world owes them an easy life.

If you are a giver, this Lent, practice receiving. If you’re a taker, this Lent, practice giving.

Lent is the time for working on the discipline at which you are least able. That way your personal life is justified. You are made whole.

John Robert McFarland

THE MAC HOUSE HIT MAN [F, 3-15-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--THE MAC HOUSE HIT MAN [F, 3-15-24]

 

[I’m proud of this story. I think it’s one of my best. But I’ve never gotten anyone to publish it, perhaps because it has only a niche audience—people who have spent time in a Ronald McDonald House. It’s fiction, but many of the people and scenes are ones I experienced myself as a Mac House grandpa. I really was a cancer hitman, taking contracts on other patients, usually given by nurses or social workers, to get them to “straighten up and fly right,” but that was in a cancer center, not in a Mac House. Be warned: My usual CIW columns would print out at 2 pages. This one is closer to 6.]

I am up at five, but I know Parker will beat me to the Ronald McDonald House. He is probably already there, baking. Parker is the handsomest man I know, but he did not have a date last night. Never on Friday. He has to get up too early on Saturday to make it to the Mac House, as the volunteers and the families all call it. No, I said that wrong. It is not that he has to get up too early. It is just that he does get up that early.

            I asked him once why he does it. “Kids like cookies,” he said. His face got red as he said it. He does not want anyone to notice that he is doing good things for sick kids and their families. He is as shy about getting praise as he is good looking.

            Don’t get me wrong. I do not normally notice whether a guy looks good or not. Raymond, in my support group, is gay. We talked in Group one night about how cancer is equal-opportunity. It doesn’t care if you’re black or white, straight or gay, male or female.

“You’re so straight you squeak,” he said to me that night while we munched oatmeal cookies. “I don’t blame you,” he went on. “Your wife is… well, let’s just say she makes me want to be straight.”

            I didn’t know what to say, so I just slugged him on the shoulder. Gay guys like to get whacked on the shoulder as much as straight guys do. It means that, gay or straight, we all belong to the same fraternity, Iota Beta Delta [I Bea Dumbass.]

            But Parker is so good-looking even squeaking straight guys notice. He’s sort of the good-looking version of George Clooney. He is a hell of a baker, too. In the time is takes me to clean the toilets at the Mac House, he can turn out six dozen cookies, two dozen muffins, a couple of loaves of bread, some of those twisted stohlen things, and three birthday cakes, just in case anybody has one that week.

            He says he gets there so early every Saturday so he can use all the ovens at once without getting in the way of the families when they get up and need to use the kitchen to fix breakfast, but it’s really so when the moms and dads and sisters and brothers and grandmas and grandpas of kids in the hospital come down to the dining room area, they will sniff all those baking smells and know that there is something in their lives that is going to be good that day. I tell them the smell of a clean toilet is just as good, but nobody pays attention to me. The mothers and sisters and, yes, even the grandmas are too busy staring at the fast-reddening Parker, and the dads and grandpas and brothers are too busy gobbling up cookies for breakfast while the women are not noticing what they are doing.

            All but Crystal, and the mother from Israel.

            That is the other reason I am there this morning, in addition to cleaning the toilets. There is a contract out on Crystal.

            I am the cancer center’s hitman. When there is a deal with a patient beyond medicine, I get the contract. Sometimes a fellow patient can get stuff done that nobody else can.

Crystal’s mother is fixing a bowl of cold cereal. I offer to fry her some eggs. Parker uses only the ovens, not the burners, of the six stoves in the big kitchen.

“I’ve got to lose some weight,” she says, as she stares at Parker.

If I could just troll Parker around town, I could call it the Mac House Diet and make a ton of money. He reminds every woman that she wants to look good, which women always interpret as losing weight.

“Cereal is not good for you,” I say. “You ever heard of cereal killers?”

“I’ll take eggs, provided you washed your hands,” says a gruff voice from behind me.

I know it is Keeley, the day manager. She does not get up until seven on Saturday. Here she is, in her flannel moose pajamas and bunny house slippers and all-night hair.

“Don’t you need to lose weight, too?” I ask her.

Every head in the whole dining room turns. Every voice goes quiet. Keeley is bigger than I am.

“I’m used to him,” she says, tilting her head toward Parker.

Parker gets redder, which goes very nicely with his black tee-shirt and tight jeans.

“Bacon, too,” Keeley adds, tilting her head back toward me.

I put on my Kiss the Cook apron and start scrambling. A grandpa rises and makes a little bow in my direction. He is impressed. He knows that I have said the one thing a man must never say to a woman, and yet I have survived. Unfortunately, Keeley sees him.

“Don’t encourage him,” Keeley says. “He gets to live only until I get those eggs.”

She flops down into a chair and puts her bunny slippers up on the table and wiggles her toes so that the bunny noses do the bunny nose thing at a little brother. The kid giggles.

Keeley and I do an improv routine every Saturday morning. It goes along with Parker’s baking. We try to loosen up the families before they trudge back over to the hospital.

Also, Keeley is the one who put out the contract on Crystal.

I start some whole-wheat toast so it will be ready when the bacon and eggs are. I am impressed when my timing works. Nobody else notices. I take a cholesterol special plate to Keeley and some toast to Crystal’s mom. She needs something warm to go with the cereal.

“I don’t see Crystal this morning,” I say.

She looks at the toast and her face begins to dissolve, like those old-fashioned computer screen-savers. My toast isn’t that bad.

I sit down and butter her toast for her.

“TV room?” I ask.

She nods.

Crystal is in eighth grade. Her little brother is over on Floor Seven at the hospital. He is not doing well. She is acting out her anxiety about her brother and her anger at God by taking it out on her mother, by refusing to relate to the poor woman at all. She slept in the TV room last night rather than stay in a room with her mother. Now she is skipping breakfast rather than be civil to the poor woman. She is even skipping the chance to stare at Parker. I know this because it is not the first time.

The way we work out love-worry never makes much sense.

I get a plastic bag and put some of Parker’s new muffins into it. I stick a jar of apple butter and a knife into my apron pocket and wander upstairs to the TV room. Crystal is watching Hanna Montana reruns with the sound off. She is wearing jeans and a ratty tee-shirt and dirty socks, the clothes she slept in.

I sit down on the floor, take a muffin, spread some apple butter on it, eat it in two bites. I take another muffin out of the bag, spread apple butter on it, hold it out to Crystal. She looks the other way. I eat that one, too. I get out a third muffin, spread apple butter on it, start it toward my mouth. Crystal reaches out her hand, palm up, without looking at me. I put the muffin into her hand. It disappears in one bite.

“Parker makes good muffins,” I say.

She does not reply, just holds out her hand again. I take another muffin, do the apple butter thing, put it into her hand. It takes two bites this time.

“He has good buns, too,” I say.

Crystal begins to giggle. The giggle does not last long. Now tears are spreading down her cheeks. She looks an awful lot like a little girl instead of an all grown-up eighth grader.

I let her cry, every once in a while handing her a new muffin, until they are all gone.

“I need you to do something for me,” I say.

“I’m not talking to her,” she says.

“Somebody else,” I say.

“Who?”

“Go get showered and put on some makeup and clean clothes and meet me in the little lounge,” I say.

“Only the Jew goes in there at this time of day,” she says.

“You owe me for the muffins,” I say.

She gives me the finger, then sticks it down her throat like she is going to give me the muffins back.

“Okay, okay,” I say. “We’ll go to the mall with you dirty and stinky.”

Her eyes take on a radioactive glow. The word mall has that effect on teen-age girls.

“Tell her not to come in the room while I’m there,” she says.

“Okay.”

“219” she adds, as though her mother would not know their room number. I am glad she said it, though, because that was my dorm room number in college. It brings back good memories, back when I did not know that children got cancer.

I go back to the dining room. Crystal’s mom is talking with Keeley and another mom. I go up to Keeley, whisper into her ear, telling her to keep Crystal’s mom busy for half an hour. She slaps me.

“You make a proposition like that to me again, mister, and I’ll take you up on it and you’ll die,” she says.

Parker turns red. The other women snort.

“I do all the scut work around here, and you still won’t put out,” I say.

“What does put out mean, Mama?” one of the little brothers says.

“It means I won’t put the garbage out in those big cans in back because that’s his job, but he’s too much of a moron even to find the cans. Can you help him?”

Keeley really thinks fast.

“Sure,” the boy says. He is proud to help a moron. Great. Now I have to put the garbage out, too.

I take the kid by the hand and we go to the kitchen to get the garbage. Parker snickers. At least it will keep me out of trouble until Crystal is ready to help me get the Israeli mother out to the mall.

Yeah, right. She is going to cooperate with me like Jerry cooperates with Tom.

Crystal does not know, of course, that “the Jew” is going with us to the mall.

The Israeli woman has brought her little girl all the way from there to here because we have a doctor who can operate on little bodies in a way that very few can. Right now the girl is undergoing chemo to shrink the tumor, getting ready for surgery.

Unfortunately, the mom, Tama, speaks just a few words of English, and her daughter, Adira, not even that much.

One of our nurses, Rabab, is a Palestinian refugee who speaks Hebrew. She and the little girl get along famously, but something happened the first day between the nurse and the mom that neither one will talk about.

The bottom line, though, is that they refuse to speak to each other, and Rabab won’t go in Adira’s room if the mom is there. If communication gets done between Tama and the medical staff, they have to call in Rabbi Friedman, and that takes a while to set up. Also, the rabbi seems to like the nurse more than the mom, which doesn’t help the tension.

I have to admit that Tama is hard to like. She acts as if she is a celebrity and everybody else should know it and be glad to be her servants. She gets mad if you don’t understand what she is saying, like everybody should know Hebrew, too. Well, actually, she doesn’t get mad anymore, because no one will have anything to do with her. At the hospital and the Mac House both, she is increasingly isolated.

If she does not fit the medical definition of depression, she will soon. She spends all her time in the little lounge at the Mac House. Does not even go to the hospital much to see her daughter.

Crystal shows up in the little lounge as I am practicing my Hebrew on Tama, who is slumped in the corner of a couch like an old-time movie actress.

I know about ten words in Hebrew, including shalom and hava nagila and aloha and terre haute.

“I told you she’d be here,” Crystal says.

She knows Tama does not understand what she is saying, but she probably would say it anyway. She is, after all, an eighth grade girl.

I ignore Crystal and say to Tama: susi zaqen gadol, which means My horse is old and large. At least, that is what I think it means. I do not have an old and large horse, but I know how to say that I do. Tama looks at me like horse is slang for something else. At least, that is what I think that look means.

Crystal looks at me like she’s impressed. Or disgusted.

“Are we going to the mall or not?” she asks.

“Mall,” I say, sort of like I am thinking about it. “Mall…”

Tama perks up. Mall is a universal word to women. I continue to mutter: labas yape beged, which I think means to put on a beautiful garment. I add issa, which means woman, because I know it, and jerk my head at Crystal and say ebed, which means servant, I hope.

Tama stands up. She brushes her hair back from her face. One thing about celebrities: You don’t really have to invite them, because they assume it’s all about them.

“Oh, no,” Crystal says. “I’m not going anyplace with her.”

I take out my credit card and wave it in front of her face. I take her hand and press the card into it. She puts it back in front of her face.

“Wow, platinum,” she says.

Damn. I meant to give her the one with the $100 limit.

Tama grabs her purse. It looks like the feedbag for a sus. She hands it to Crystal, the ebed. 

Tama pulls up short when she sees my truck, but Crystal has that credit card and she is not about to be deterred. She pushes Tama up onto the running board and then into the center of the bench seat and climbs in behind her.

I always park as far from the mall doors as possible. It means I get more exercise, and I figure people who can’t walk as well as I do need the places closer to the door. Crystal and Tama don’t even notice that it’s a mile from the doors. They are off before the motor has shaken to a stop.

“Make sure Tama uses her own credit card,” I yell at Crystal’s retreating back. She gives me the Hawaiian good luck sign, which I think is not a good sign.

            I can’t possibly keep up with them, but I don’t want to follow them around anyway. I figure they’ll know to look for me in Starbucks. I go to Books on First first. It used to be on First Street before it moved to the mall. I buy the new edition of Now That I Have Cancer I Am Whole. Hardback. I have finished it, plus three coffees and four scones, by the time Tama and Crystal arrive.

They are carrying a whole lot of fancy looking sacks, none of which says Target. I think that is a bad sign, too. Crystal blows on my credit card and shakes it, trying to get it to stop smoking. Tama giggles. She is carrying her own purse.

On the way back to the Mac House, they “talk” to each other by pulling various garments out of the fancy sacks and showing them to each other, even though I am sure they have seen them before. They make sounds men can only shudder at, and Tama says, “Just gorgeous” with great frequency, and totally without accent. I assume that Crystal has been drilling her.

I let them out in front of the Mac House. I don’t want to go in, in case Keeley has thought up something else for me to do. Crystal hands me a little sack.

“We got you something, too,” she says.

I open it. There’s a cloth bookmark that says, “No day is wasted if it makes a memory.” There is also a big wad of credit card receipts.

 

 

           

 

 

 

SINGING AS A LENTEN DISCIPLINE [T, 3-12-24]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—SINGING AS A LENTEN DISCIPLINE [T, 3-12-24]

 

I recently heard Bono, of U2, say that we sing to combat our demons, and when we sing together, we combat the demons of society.

Lent is an opportunity to practice the disciplines of spiritual growth—Bible reading, prayer, meditation, worship, alms giving. Singing is rarely mentioned, but I think it is an important spiritual activity.

So, each morning during Lent I am gathering my missing friends, from the various eras of my life, and we sing the hymns and spiritual songs of those days that we shared.

We sing our songs of youthful aspiration…

“Pass me not, O gentle savior, hear my humble cry. While on others thou art calling, do not pass me by…”

We sing our songs of youthful purpose…

“I know the Lord, I know the Lord, I know the Lord has laid his hand on me…”

We sing our songs of youthful courage…

“Are ye able, said the master, to be crucified with me? Yea, the sturdy dreamers answered, to the death we follow thee…”

We sing our songs of preparation…

It’s me, it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.

Give me oil in my lamp to keep me burning, give me oil in my lamp, I pray. Give me oil in my lamp to keep me burning, keep me burning ‘til the break of day.

We sing our songs of our youthful witness…

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace.

I love to tell the story. Twill be my theme in glory. To tell the old, old story, of Jesus and his love.

We sing of how sometimes we are lost…

Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand. I am tired, I am weak, I am worn. Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light. Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.

We sing of how we are being found…

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.

Beneath the Cross of Jesus, I fain would take my stand. The shadow of a mighty rock, within a weary land. A home within the wilderness, a rest upon the way, from the burning of the noonday heat, and the burden of the day.

We sing of our maturing witness…

They’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love. Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

I shall not be, I shall not be moved. I shall not be, I shall not be moved. Just like a tree that’s planted by the water, I shall not be moved.

We sing of hope…

We shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall overcome some day. O, deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome some day.

We sing of eternity…

For all the saints, who from their labors rest, who thee, by faith, before the world confessed. Thy name, o Jesus, be forever blest, Hallelujah. Hallelujah.  

I’ll fly away, oh glory, I’ll fly away, in the morning. When I die, Hallelujah by and by, I’ll fly away.

Finally, we sing of resurrection, the end that is the beginning…

He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today. He walks with me, and talks with me, along life’s narrow way. He lives! He lives! Salvation to impart. You ask me how I know he lives, he lives within my heart…

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

EAT DESSERT FIRST [Sa, 3-9-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—EAT DESSERT FIRST [Sa, 3-9-24]

 

One of the lesser-known disciplines of Lent is eating dessert first. It is important to get temptation out of the way quickly.

The great thing about old age is that you have permission to eat dessert first. You might die before the meal is over, so why miss out on the best part?

Our friends, Glenn and Allyson, used to visit an elderly couple in the local version of Shady Pines. I’ll call the old couple Homer and Hazel. They had children, but they lived a long way off. So, Glenn and Allyson went in their place. One visit they took cookies. “Don’t you eat a cookie, Homer,” his wife said. “Sugar isn’t good for you.” “For heaven’s said, Hazel,” Glenn said. “Let him have a cookie. He’s 102 years old.”

I was a campus minister in the 1960s. Boys from my campus began to go off to Viet Nam as soldiers. When they returned, they told of life in the war. One thing they told about pierced my heart. They said that when they broke open their meal packs, they took first the little metal can of peaches and ripped it open and gulped it down as quickly as possible. “It was the only good thing in the meal. If you got killed before the meal was over, you didn’t want to miss out on the one good thing.”

It was so sad. I still cry when I think about it. But even in the midst of chaos and pain and evil, they were doing the right thing. They were eating dessert first.

It’s so easy to want to get everything in order, get the little stuff out of the way, before you start on the important stuff. No, don’t wait until you’ve trashed all the spam emails. Let them lie. Go ahead and write that note of appreciation, or help, or love. Don’t wait until you’ve balanced the check book; go ahead and make that donation to the food pantry now. Don’t wait until the dishes are clean and put away and you have time to fold your hands and kneel; go ahead and thank God for all your blessings now.

The lesson of Easter is that life doesn’t begin until the end. Eat dessert first.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

ADDING TO LOVE [W, 3-6-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—ADDING TO LOVE [W, 3-6-24]

 

I am re-reading Rachel Naomi Remen. Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather’s Blessings. Stories from her life, about how she changed from a human doing to a human being, changed from a medical doctor to a human doctor.

She grew in three stages. She went from scientist to oncologist to psychologist. She doesn’t tell it that way, doesn’t use the taxonomy of three stages, but that is what I see in her story. As she went from one stage to another, she did not abandon what she had learned before. When she became wholistic, she didn’t give up using her skills as a surgeon, but she added on. She did not grow out of any stage. She added onto each stage.

That’s the key to aging, I think—not discarding, or outgrowing, but adding on.

That seems to me to be the way we all age, in three stages. We add each stage to the one before it. Of course, they are not the same for everyone.

I would describe my own add-on stages as going from a human doing, to a human being [cancer], to a human waiting. Or maybe, doing the Word, hearing the Word, listening for the Word. [Yes, hearing and listening are different.]

In my human doing stage, I said often that love is a verb. Love is doing.

Cancer brought on my human being stage. I couldn’t do love nearly as much, so I was able to be in love. Love was sharing.

Now I’m waiting and watching, to see how love will be. Love is.

Physical life is designed so that energy come first and wisdom comes last. That is especially true of brain development. We are built for: fire, ready, aim. It doesn’t make sense, but that is the way it is.

Throughout these stages, two different emotions are at war within us. They are original sin and what John Wesley called prevenient [preventing] grace. Original sin is represented by first man, Adam, who tried to outdo God by eating from the tree of knowledge. Preventing grace, that saves us even in the midst of our original sin, is represented in the new man, Jesus Christ.

[Original sin is not very original at all in the way we use that word currently. It’s just the same old boring sin everyone has always had. “Original” means that it was present at and in the origin of humanity, and in and at the origin of each of us, origin-al.]

Original sin is love gone wrong. Prevenient grace is love gone right.

My three stages of understanding and living love have gone like this: Love is a verb. Love is a noun. Love is a hope.

I did not give up the doing of love when I started into the being of love. And I gave up neither the doing or the being when I started the hoping. Love has simply become fuller with each new stage.

Okay, three stages is arbitrary. The main point about growing in love is this: don’t give up any of love as we go along-- how we do love, how we are love, how we hope love--but to add onto it.

John Robert McFarland

I’m thinking about love today because it’s the birthday of the woman who has taught me all about it.