THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT [W, 1-31-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT [W, 1-31-24]

 

Every once in a while, I see or hear some person who is interviewed at the end of their career. Often, they say, “I have no regrets.”

That worries me, for the sake of their soul. If you have no regrets, you are either insensitive, a sociopath, or perfect. And as the old joke goes, “The only perfect man was my wife’s first husband.”

I think that’s why even his supporters were discombobulated when President George W. Bush was asked, at the end of his first term, what mistakes he had made. He could not think of any. Of course, it’s not politically helpful to admit mistakes, but, as he pondered an answer, he did not seem to be looking for the correct political response. He seemed genuinely befuddled; he just couldn’t think of any mistakes he had made. I think that is why he ended his first term with the lowest approval rating of any president ever; he could not correct his mistakes because he did not know what they were.

Winter was probably thought of as a time of discontent before Richard III, in which Shakespeare wrote the line, “Now is the winter of our discontent…”

The winter of life is either a time of discontent, because we have regrets, or a season of contentment, because we have come to terms with our regrets, not by denying them, but by examining them and then discarding them in the fire that we need for winter warmth.

Old people need to do this. We go through the boxes of our memories, and take out the letters and clippings and notes we have saved. We look them over, decide which our children or grandchildren might want, and then throw the others into the fire. Just as we do with the physical letters and photos.

Giving up our regrets, not by denying them but by turning them over to God, makes winter the season of our contentment.

John Robert McFarland

On a sort of related topic—forgiveness—a friend was confronted by a work colleague with an accusation of doing her a wrong. My friend protested that she had not done so, and provided visual proof [non-AI generated, it is necessary these days to say, about visual proof] that it was not she who did it. Nonetheless, her colleague said that she “would be the bigger person…” and forgive her. My friend says that it is very frustrating to be forgiven for something you didn’t do. I suppose Jesus would say that she must forgive the woman for forgiving her.

SCENES FROM A SUNDAY SCHOOL PAPER [M, 1-29-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—SCENES FROM A SUNDAY SCHOOL PAPER [M, 1-29-24]

 

I love stories. Always have. Doesn’t everybody?

My late great friend, Herb Beuoy, once told me that his grade-school daughter said to him, “Daddy, sometimes you preach, and sometimes you tell stories. When you tell stories, I listen. When you preach, I read my Sunday School paper.”

Of course. Those little papers they hand out at the end of Sunday School have stories.

I especially like stories that have a successful ending. That doesn’t necessarily mean “happy,” as in “they lived happily ever after.” But I like it when the story ends with people getting whole, having gone through trials and tribulations, but ending by making a real connection with another person, with their own true self, with God.

I saw a movie like that recently, and I wished that my life could be like that, a moment of real contact and wholeness with some other person, or myself, or God. A moment that freezes on the back of the eyes, the way the last scene of that movie did in my eyes. The way I could keep seeing it as I went to bed and played it over and over…

But that is not the way real stories end. There is only one ending like that in real life, and that is the death scene. In 50 years of ministry, and almost 90 years of life, I’ve lived in hundreds, probably thousands of those scenes where contact is made, wholeness is experienced, growth is jubilated… but the story didn’t stop there. No time to luxuriate in the joy. I had to drive home from the hospital and deal with crazy drivers. Or empty the dish washer before I realized the damn dishes were dirty. Or answer a scam telephone call… All the things that take a whole moment and break it into shards of anger and frustration.

Our stories are told mostly in scenes mundane or broken. A whole lot of crazy people and dirty doings and annoying intrusions. We can’t take a moment of wholeness and just live in it forever, the way the people in a movie or a book do. But those are the moments that give life meaning. Those are the scenes from your life that would show up in a Sunday School paper.

John Robert McFarland

STILL WORKING AT INTERCESSORY PRAYER [F, 1-26-24]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—STILL WORKING AT INTERCESSORY PRAYER [F, 1-26-24]

 

A woman I know--approaching old age, maybe even in it--recently asked for prayers as she faced some medical tests. She is not a churchgoing woman, although she is accepting and non-judgmental about churchy folks. She is educated and scientific in her thinking. So she pointed out that her request for prayer was based on science. She had read all the reports of double-blind experiments, etc. that showed that prayed-for people got better.

When I was doing Clinical Pastoral Education in the University of Iowa hospitals as part of my doctoral work, I got acquainted with Larry Den Besten. He had been a missionary surgeon in Nigeria before becoming chief of surgery at UIA hospitals. He always prayed with his patients before their surgery. The nurses told us, “Most of the patients could have gone on home right then. His prayers were that powerful.”

I’m sure no patient ever said following the prayer, “That’s okay, Doc. I can go home without the surgery.” And I’m sure that Larry would not have let them go. He was a man of science. He knew they needed that surgery. But he was also a man of faith. He knew they needed prayer.

Larry Dossey, MD, in his book, Healing Words, says that prayer is the only healing approach of which we require perfection. If we pray for someone, and they don’t get well, we say, “See, prayer doesn’t work.” If we give a patient chemotherapy, and they don’t get better, we don’t say, “See, chemo doesn’t work.” We keep on using it, because sometimes it works.

Yes, I know I have written about intercessory prayer often, but I have to keep doing so, because I don’t have it figured out. I was talking about this with friends during breakfast at church one Sunday—back before covid, when we did things like breakfast at church—and I said, “All I know for sure about intercessory prayer is that I have to do it.” “Exactly!” Mary Jane said.

That’s not very convincing to someone who does not pray and does not believe in it, but that’s okay. Faith, prayer, hope… these are all individual matters. There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to prayer.

Of course, a real doubter would say to my “I have to do it” reasoning, “Well, see, you’re just doing it for yourself.” Partially true. The people who claim that there is no purely altruistic act are correct. But isn’t a kind act that is only partly altruistic better than a non-kind act, or a non-act? Frankly, I don’t much care about the motivation of someone who is kind to me; I just appreciate the kindness.

If I care about someone, and prayer is a tool I can use on their behalf, often the only tool available to me, it would be actively unkind of me to say, “Well, I’m not going to pray for you, because I don’t know if it will work.” Its like saying to a drowning person, “I’m not going to call for help because I’m not sure it can get here in time.’

Well, I prayed for that woman whom I mentioned in the first paragraph. Still praying for her. I don’t know what difference it will make, but I know I have to do it.

John Robert McFarland

 

POEMS FOR THE END TIMES [T, 1-23-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections On Faith & Life For The Years Of Winter—POEMS FOR THE END TIMES [T, 1-23-24]

 [From my poetry journal]

 

GUARDIAN WITHOUT A GATE

So long ago I was assigned

a gate in the wall

of the Kingdom

To take my stance

turning back the demons

of danger and despair

I did well

Some got through

by guile or quickness

or brute strength

But not many

Here is the problem

I did well enough

that the demons no longer try

They seem to have forgotten

about my gate

 

GETTING SOME PLACE

Since I could no

Longer run

I began to walk

Thirty-three years now

Of walking

You would think

I would have

Gotten some place

 

I ALWAYS DREAMED OF BEING A FAILED SONG WRITER

If I could write a song for you

I’d use words like hazardous and blue

For it’s dangerous to declare your love

And songs must have a color, true

You would smile and pat my head

And say you know I did my best

Then we’d have a cup of tea

About my song we would agree

That I should not day job forsake

But save the song for a somber wake

That needs a note of levity

As the corpse experiences gravity

 

TOO OLD FOR THE ROAD [with apologies to Willie]

On the street again

Cant wait to get on the street again

I already wrote my blog

Now I want to pet a dog

I can’t wait to walk on the street again

 

WHAT WE HAVE

All we truly have

is what we love

Even if we own it

if we do not love it

we do not have it

 

FINAL SATISFACTION

It is pleasant

I am sure

To be satisfied

At the end

But the end

Is often so close

That it is out of sight

Better to be satisfied

Always

 

John Robert McFarland

LOVING LIBRARIANS [Su, 1-21-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—LOVING LIBRARIANS [Su, 1-21-24]

 

I love librarians. It is because of them that I became a story-teller.

It must have been about third grade. The branch library on 2822 E. Washington Street in Indianapolis was having a summer reading program. There were no spectacular prizes. I think we only got a certificate saying we had read the requisite number of books. But… with each book read, we had to tell the story to the librarians, so they could know if we had really read it.

My school teachers sent home notes saying that I couldn’t read, because I would not read out loud in class, the way the other kids did. I was afraid to. I was one of those children who would rather be thought stupid than make a mistake, because in my life, mistakes meant punishments.

I remember presenting a book to the librarian. “Did you read this?” “Yes.” “Tell me the story…”

Well, yes, that was part of the deal. You had to prove that you had really read the book. I was trapped. I had no choice. But, also, the library was a safe place. The librarians would send no report card notes home to my parents, the way teachers did. And it was just a pleasant lady, just one person…

That did not last long. She called another librarian over to hear me tell the story. She called another. Soon it seemed that all the librarians in the world were standing there smiling, encouraging me to go on. Didn’t they have anything else to do? Well, nothing as entertaining. Other kids, they just had them tell enough that they could say, “Yes, you read it,” and put a mark on their tally sheet. But they made me go on and on. They didn’t believe I had really read the book!

I was humiliated. So I doubled my efforts to tell the story. They laughed. “Go on,” they said. Then it became clear that they did not doubt that I had read the book; it was something else. “We just like to hear you talk,” the first librarian said.

I remembered that at my last doctor’s appointment. I have been going to her for eight years now. I was telling her some tale and then remembered that she is a busy woman with a schedule to keep. I apologized for holding her up. “No, go on,” she said. “I like to hear you talk.”

Only recently did I ever hear myself talk. My final sermon. The first time I’ve ever been on livestream, so my first chance to see myself “in action.” Except there was very little action. I was surprised at how boring I was. Little voice modulation. No histrionics. No waving of arms. Just standing there, looking at the people, talking.

But I was telling stories. If you tell stories, people like to hear you talk.

John Robert McFarland

The library had the designation of Branch # 3, even though it is the oldest of the branch libraries. Perhaps it was called # 3 because it shared an alley with Public School # 3. It was founded in 1911, with a grant from the Carnegie Foundation. It is now the oldest library building in Indianapolis, still in use. Here is a pic of the librarians on opening day in 1911.

 

 

SUMMER OF DECISION [F, 1-19-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—SUMMER OF DECISION [F, 1-19-24]

 

I have long looked online for photos of Wycliffe and Halstead Street Methodist Churches in Chicago. I’m still looking for Wycliffe, but I found one of Halstead Street. The photo above is current. It is apartments now. But it looks just like it did in the summer of 1958, when I was its last preacher. It didn’t look what I thought a church should look like. I was a country boy; I did not understand the city.

I wanted to understand the city, though. That’s why I was in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood that summer, working at the Presbyterian Howell Neighborhood House. I had read about the East Harlem Protestant Parish, in NYC. The inner-city was the cutting edge for ministry. At East Harlem, they weren’t just saving souls, they were saving people. I wanted to be a preacher in a place like that.

Settlement houses, like Jane Addams’ Hull House, had been around since 1889. But settlement house churches, called institutional churches, were newer. Settlement houses saved bodies. Institutional churches saved souls and bodies together. Chicago Methodists had a church like that, The Halstead Street Institutional Church.

The problem was Dwight Eisenhower. Meaning the interstate highways, he created. The average highway takes 24 acres of land for each mile of highway. Interstates require 40 acres per mile. That’s a lot of displaced people when you take 40 acres per mile to build an interstate through a city like Chicago. You’re not going to displace folks on The Gold Coast or tony neighborhoods, of course. No, you’re going to put those interstates through the slums. By the summer of 1958, Halstead St. Institutional Church had been cut off from the people it served by interstate highways. You looked out a window of that church and saw nothing but highways. There is no point to a church that has no neighborhood, so it no longer had a reason to exist.

There were a few folks, though, for whom that church was home. Each Sunday they drover tortuous routes to get there to worship. They didn’t have a preacher, though. Not enough worshippers to justify the bishop appointing somebody. Somehow they heard about the kid at Howell House who was preaching at Wycliffe Methodist Church.

Wycliffe looked like a church. In the midst of the teeming Pilsen community. It was a Bohemian/Czech congregation. At one time, Pilsen was the second largest Bohemian city in the world, next to Prague. By 1958, though, most of those folks had moved to Berwyn. Mexicans and Puerto Ricans and Appalachian whites and southern blacks were competing for Pilsen. Just a few old babushka ladies remained to worship at Wycliffe. I was their first English speaking preacher. Like Halstead Street, I was probably the last preacher there, too.

Sunday was a day off for the summer student staff at Howell House, but I ended up preaching at Wycliffe at 9:30, and Halstead Street at 11:00. [1]

Inside, Halstead Street did look like a church, a very nice one. The sanctuary, with a balcony, seated about 500. I preached to about 20. There was a wonderful big office for the pastor, with glass-fronted book cases, and easy chairs, and a fire place. It was nicer than any office I had in 40 years of full-time ministry. In addition to looking like a nice church, it also looked like a nice settlement house. The building had a gymnasium, swimming pool, fellowship hall, lounges, kitchens, rooms for classes and groups of all kinds. None any longer in use.

That summer was supposed to get me ready to be an inner-city preacher, and to do it alone, since I could not afford to get married. Instead, I found out that I did not belong in the city. I thought that because I grew up in poverty, I could minister to others in poverty. But rural poverty and urban poverty are so different. Thus, no inner-city ministry for me. I also found out that I had to marry Helen even though I couldn’t afford it. I was miserable without her.

Nothing about that summer turned out the way I thought it would, but it was my most important summer ever. Apparently God really just wanted me to be a slightly humorous, semi-intellectual, hillbilly liberal, story teller.

John Robert McFarland

1] After preaching twice on Sunday morning, I went back to the third-floor lair of my late-sleeping student colleagues and fixed lunch for everybody. I was convinced of salvation by works of supererogation. The more you sacrificed for others, the better Christian you were. I got over that.

 

 

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR [W. 1-17-4]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--LETTERS TO THE EDITOR [W. 1-17-4]

 

I received a nice note from the columnist, thanking me for my letter to the editor, correcting his mistake. He had written that it was Reinhold Niebuhr who composed what has become known as “The Serenity Prayer.” God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. That wasn’t the mistake. I thanked him for giving Niebuhr credit, for often folks act like that prayer just appeared out of nowhere. But he had gone on to say that Niebuhr had been a Nazi U-boat captain who had later become a theologian. Nothing could have been further from the truth. In his thank-you note, Lee Truman acknowledged that he must have gotten Niebuhr confused with someone else.

That was only one of my several “correcting” letters over fifty years of “letters to the editor.” I even once corrected the Hebrew of a Bible professor! [And the editor noted under my letter that I was right.]

I know all this because I’ve been going through my file of clippings, and copies of those letters, that I wrote to a lot of different editors. It’s a thick file, but as I count them up, I see that I was not as prolific a letter writer as I remembered. Only two or three letters a year. Of course, I had a lot of other outlets for my ideas, as a preacher and speaker and writer, so Letters to the Editor was not a primary way for me to go.

Sometimes, though, it was the best way. I’m only slightly surprised that I never wrote about specific politicians. My concerns were issues—apartheid, Viet Nam, the treatment of veterans, guns, booze, dope, capital punishment, Nicaragua, funding.

And approaches, especially hypocritical and illogical approaches and arguments. I was really bothered by hypocrisy and illogic, and was more than willing to say so.

I doubt that my letters did much good, changed many minds. But they did something for me. They reminded me that I had a choice. I could stay silent in the face of injustice, or I could oppose it, in my own small way.

We may not have much power or influence, but still, however small, we have a choice. In the lovely words of Bonaro Overstreet, “…I am prejudiced beyond debate, in favor of my right to choose which side, will feel the stubborn ounces of my weight.”

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

TWO THORNY POEMS [Sun, 1-14-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—TWO THORNY POEMS [Sun, 1-14-24]

 

[From my poetry journal]

[Sun, 1-7-24]

THE NAME OF THE THORN

Umberto Eco was so wise

to call it The Name of the Rose

Any title that holds a rose

will not linger long upon the shelf

But what of the stories

that claim to be

about the rose

but really

are about the thorn

[Sat, 1-13-24]

HUMILITY OF THE THORN

One theory about the thorn

in the flesh:

God gave it to him

to keep Paul humble.

He was, after all,

a rather arrogant type

  despite his occasional demurrers

  to the contrary

so sure of his righteousness

that he stoned poor Stephen

If so, the thorn was good,

the obstacle being the way,

as Marcus Aurelius put it

much too late to do Paul any good

and also too late to do Stephen any good

John Robert McFarland

 

 

LIMINAL SPACE [R, 1-11-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--LIMINAL SPACE [R, 1-11-24]

 

[WARNING: I like this column. I think it is worthwhile. But it is twice s long as my usual 500 words, so…]

I have been talking with a young pastor about the future of the ministry. We are already in a ministerial crisis. Most United Methodist conferences this year retired six pastors for every one they ordained. The same is true in other denominations. Not only that, but many already-ordained pastors are simply leaving the church.

There will be a church of some sort in the future, but what? Can that church afford to support a professional ministry? More importantly, will that church be worth serving as an ordained leader?

My young pastor friend says that the term “liminal space” is overused, but that she thinks it is accurate. I wasn’t quite sure what liminal space means, so I looked it up: “A space that is a transition between two other spaces.” In liminal space, we have left the old space and not yet arrived at the new space. Sort of like wandering in the desert for 40 years.

She and I are both in liminal space now, but different spaces. I am working on finding a congruence by which I could understand both spaces, and thus provide some slight guidance for both of us.

I found no congruence, though. Her space, to far understate it, is between past and future. Mine is between life and death. We can make some educated guesses about the future of her space, because of experience. The future of my space, life beyond this life, is totally unknown.

But then I realized, or at least decided, that we have two spots of congruence—hope, and the more.

I think that part of our overarching feeling of hopelessness in the church is because of our “recent” emphasis on social justice. That concern was with us, of course, at least from Jesus on, but it so easily got lost in the theories of personal salvation and eschatology, “getting to heaven” and “when will the world end?” Those were the main concerns for Christians for so very long.

In an era when acknowledged sin is social instead of personal, however, who needs salvation? Who needs a savior? We just need justice. In an era when no one believes in heaven or hell, except in vague psychobabble terms, who needs to worry about an afterlife?  CLM, Current Lives Matter. Especially the lives of those who are marginalized and neglected. In the past, the dispossessed found hope in heaven. Now they are told they can find hope by being included in this world.

Now, this should sound strange, coming from me, the quintessential, at least in my own mind, radical priest. There is the crux. I have to bear the blame, along with a lot of others, for getting us out of balance, for deemphasizing the personal relationship with God/Christ/Jesus.

Jesus wasn’t JUST a prophet, the advocate of “thy kingdom on earth as well as in heaven,” “When you’ve done it to the least of these…” He was that, for sure, but he was also a mystic, a miracle worker, a healer, a visionary. He knew where “the thin places” between heaven and earth existed. He had a direct relationship with God. He believed in and lived in “the more,” in Wm. James’ evocative phrase.

Perhaps because of my own “strange” calling--trading my life for my sister’s in a deal with God--looking for the more, and helping others to find and experience it, was what I thought the ministry was about, when I took my first preaching appointment, by accident, when I was 19. Relating to the more was not to get into heaven, but because that was where the ultimate meaning resided, in the transcendent and imminent “being” we call God.

Then the 1950s ended, which was too bad for me, because I was a straight, white, tall, short-haired, male. I graduated high school in 1955, college in 1959, a total child of the ‘50s, with all the perks and honors that went with my gender and race. Then MLK came onto the scene. So did Richard Nixon. Decisions were required. Ministry demanded more than remembering names and having a deep voice. The world demanded more! But we social justice liberals, in our correct attempts at providing more to those who had none, we began to neglect the more.

We sowed the wind. The answer, after all, is blowing in it. But we have reaped the whirlwind.

Our hope in social justice as the answer turned out to be false hope. Justice doesn’t change hearts. Original sin is always with us. What’s the point of being included along with everybody else if everybody else is lost?

Saul Alinsky always said, “If you want to see where the action is, look at the reaction.” We see the action in Obama and BLM and the notorious RBG. We see the reaction in Trump and the Supreme Court and the notorious MTG [Marjorie Taylor Greene].

The action has been worth it, but there will always be a reaction, and that reminds us that we cannot trust in action alone.

Don’t worry. I’m not giving up on social justice. Or environmental justice. Or any other kind of justice. But I’m saying that it loses its meaning if it doesn’t have a place in the more.

In a lot of ways, the uncertainty of this current liminal space is no different from what we have experienced before. There have been wars—I and II and Viet Nam and Afghanistan… There have been pandemics—plague and polio and small pox and flu… There have been economic upheavals—the Great Depression, and a lot of others that weren’t so great… There have been dictators and wannabes—Hitler and Mussolini and Nixon…

The thing that differentiates liminal space now is climate change, although I suspect climate change is already past the liminal phase. We really are destroying the very space we live in, be it liminal or not. That, I believe, provides the overarching sense of… nothingness. Meaninglessness. Hopelessness.

And there, I think, is the crux. We have put our hope in our own good works, and our good works are losing, especially environmentally. We can’t neglect those good works, not forego them, but this present liminal space wasteland reminds us that good works are not the source or reason for hope.

As I make my way across my last liminal space, I know that my hope is in the more.

John Robert McFarland

 

OLD AGE AS A RISK FACTOR [M, 1-8-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—OLD AGE AS A RISK FACTOR [M, 1-8-24]

 

A friend my age recently had to go on insulin. Her diabetes is beyond the control of diet and exercise and even Metformin, the oral med for diabetics.

I’m diabetic, too, although my doc says it is “…well controlled by medicine and exercise.” She thinks the control is primarily through medicine. I think it’s because I walk two miles a day.

I was first diagnosed as diabetic twenty years ago. I think my doc then just liked to diagnose people with one disease or another so that he could prescribe medicine. He had a PhD in biochemistry as well as an MD degree. He never met a medicine he didn’t like. So he said I was diabetic and prescribed Actos and made me stick myself each day to test the level of my blood sugar.

At first, I enjoyed being diabetic. It gave me an identity to replace cancer survivor.

Cancer survivor had been my identity for twenty years. I went to cancer support groups. I spoke at cancer conferences. I wrote books and articles about being a cancer survivor. You can be a cancer survivor forever, but you can’t talk about it forever, so I needed a new identity.

So, I liked having my little blood monitor and all that stuff. I got to learn a new vocabulary and go to a new support group. It helped to center my day. I got to make jokes about eating nothing but cardboard and saw dust.

But the doc at my next town said I wasn’t really diabetic. That was Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Shivering is even better exercise than walking. He took me off Actos. He was a hockey player and so thought people should suffer without meds or complaints. That worked for several years. Not the “without complaint” part. It was also good, since they found out that Actos causes bladder cancer.

So when my current doc, ten years later, said I needed to go on Metformin, since I was no longer shivering at the Iron Mountain rate, I said, “I don’t need to, because I can control anything with diet and exercise.” No, she said, because you are old. No amount of shivering or walking or laying off cookies will work now, because old age is itself a risk factor.

When did that happen? I mean, diseases are the result of bad diets and no exercise and anxiety and genetics and stuff, aren’t they? Old age? Just in itself? That’s not fair!

Well, it’s not all bad. Because of the old age risk factor, we oldies are first in line for vaccines. And first in line at potlucks. People will even bring a plate of stuff to you if you look pathetic enough.

Then I started thinking about life beyond the control of diet and exercise and attitude. What are the spiritual risk factors that come to us just because we are old?

There are probably several, but the one that comes to my mind first is losing hope. I don’t mean a halt to wishing, like losing “hope” for a particular type of afterlife, where we get to see our friends or dogs of times gone. I mean losing hope in God, losing the assurance of God’s presence, and God’s care. There is so much evidence for the absence of God, for the simple unreality of God, at least of a God of love. And we no longer have youthful energy to face the abyss. We don’t have diet and exercise to spend on this kind of risk factor. Nor do we have a cornucopia of days for starting over on hope. We may forget that we are a soul that has a body instead of a body that has a soul.

Is there a medicine for the spiritual risks of old age? I think so… Prayer, yes. But more than that, people. Other souls.

My hearing is as good as ever, but I have noticed that people mumble so much more than they used to. Some people, like my doctor, think the mumbling will stop if I get hearing aids. I told her I would not get hearing aids, because they are too much bother. She looked me straight in the eye, which is amazing since she is a foot shorter, and said, “I’m used to your resistance to anything I think will help you. You don’t want medicines. You don’t want tests. But you’ve got to promise me that if you get to the point that you can’t understand people, you’ll get hearing aids, because you can’t live without people.”

I said, “Huh?”

John Robert McFarland

 

 

CHRISTMAS DISAPPOINTMENT [F, 1-5-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—CHRISTMAS DISAPPOINTMENT [F, 1-5-24]

 

Another Christmas, another disappointment. We work so hard to get ready, we anticipate so much, and then… As my mother-in-law always said, “There’s nothing as over as Christmas.”

I was ten years old, almost eleven, when I experienced my first real Christmas disappointment.

It was my first Christmas after we moved from Indianapolis to the farm, my first Christmas at my beloved little open-country Forsythe Methodist Church. In the Willing Workers Sunday School class, we drew names for the Christmas program gift exchange. The conclusion of the program was the appearance of Santa, who made sure that everyone there got a gift. Mostly it was handing out the gifts from the name draws in the Sunday School classes. There were folks there, though, who were not in SS classes, so Santa was prepared. He had some gag gifts, like a hairbrush for a bald man. Mostly the non-exchangers got a green or red pencil that said Merry Christmas on the tube.

I waited eagerly, to see what I would get. I had put quite a bit of thought and almost all my meager savings into buying for the boy whose name I had drawn. But after Santa had finished up, I still was empty-handed. I didn’t even get a pencil. If Santa noticed me there at all, sitting in a pew with my classmates, he assumed that I had gotten something in the exchange.

I was embarrassed and ashamed. Yes, a strange reaction. I could have been angry. Perhaps I was a little bit. But primarily I was ashamed. Whenever anything went wrong, I assumed it was my fault.

I’d been taught that. Not intentionally, exactly, although one of my mother’s most-used phrases was, “Look what you made me do!” Whenever she made a mistake, it was because someone, usually me, had distracted her. My father wasn’t as vocal as Mother, but he said nothing to me unless it was to point out what I had done wrong, and it was never said patiently.

Sometimes we avoid disappointment by having no expectations, giving up hope.

You’re never too old to be disappointed by Christmas, which means you’re never too old to be disappointed by life.

So, years later, I recycled that experience. I wrote a story that started with an eleven-year-old boy suffering the exact disappointment I had. But his mother taught him, through an act of selfless love, that Christmas is a mirror. It reflects back to us the spirit we bring to it.

So if you had some disappointment this Christmas, if it did not live up to your expectations, recycle it, Tell yourself a story about how it might have been. Christmas is a mirror.

John Robert McFarland

I AM A SMOTHERS BROTHER [1-2-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—I AM A SMOTHERS BROTHER [1-2-24]

 

Tommy Smothers was 2 days older than I. When he died, we were only 36 days and 38 days, respectively, short of 87. But the obits said he was 86 when he died. On behalf of my brother, I resent that. They cheated him out of 11 months of living.

Yes, I was part of the Smothers Brothers. Tommy was not my brother in the way Jim, my biological brother, is. Or the way Dick was. I never met Tom in person. Perhaps it is best to say that we were social brothers instead of biological brothers.

As his social brother, I was deeply affected by Tommy’s death. Not mournful, exactly. I am thankful for his life and witness. Just sad that he will not be able to do any more witnessing.

We do that with public figures, and usually it is a good thing. I’m not a Swiftie, but I understand why a lot of folks are. When there is something about a public figure that we identify with, it is like we are at least friends. Maybe even family.

It can be a bad thing, of course. When the public figure is a Hitler or a Trump, that’s the epitome of a toxic family atmosphere.

But Tommy Smothers, along with Dick, created such a delightful family atmosphere. They were serious about social justice, about personal freedom, about free speech. But they expressed those serious concerns in humor that brought forth real laughter. And they sang!

And I was able to appropriate their material. Remember, “I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy?” When we were welcoming a hundred new students at our campus ministry at IL State U during Orientation Week, I had Dennis Heller and Mary Albers sing a parody of that. They started walking toward each other from different sides of the chancel, singing: “I see by your lapel cross that you are a Christian. I see by your lapel cross that you’re a Christian, too. We see by our lapel crosses we are both Christians.” They got to the middle of the chancel and faced the students. “If you get a lapel cross you can be a Christian, too.”

It was the perfect intro to our campus ministry: We’re not just lapel cross Christians here. It worked. Those kids were idealistic. They wanted to be serious Christians. They had just been waiting for right family.

Like Tom and Dick, I was serious about social justice and personal freedom and free speech. And love and morality. Like them, I tried to express those concerns in humor. But I did not have a TV show. And I couldn’t sing.

Tom and Dick made the witness publicly that I could only do personally. Oh, sure, a pulpit is public, but not like a TV show. When the Smothers brothers fought to air concerns about race relations and Viet Nam and abuse of power—with humor, with music--they did it for me. And for you.

That’s why we’re family. That’s why I write these words of appreciation for my brother. That’s why insist that Tommy Smothers was not 86 years old. I refuse to give up eleven months of his life and witness. Do your math, obit writers; have you never heard of “rounding up?” I He was 87!

John Robert McFarland