A MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR JACK [T, 7-30-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—A MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR JACK [T, 7-30-24]

 

A friend says that the covid shutdown shows that we don’t need memorial services for the dead. We got along fine without them when we had to, she says. I love our friend, but I think she’s wrong.

Yes, you can get along without a lot of stuff when there is no choice, but I choose memorial services. Not just for myself. I’ve outlived everyone who ever knew me. There will be only eight people at my funeral, and one of them will be paid to be there.

No, I want memorial services because Jack Newsome didn’t get one, and there are so many great stories about Jack. They need to be shared.

Jack is one of those who never got a service because he died during the covid shutdown. Like many who died in those days, family and friends said, “We’ll have a service for Jack when the covid problem is over.”

Covid, of course, is not over, and probably never will be, just like flu. But it’s over enough that we could catch up on funerals now. Except… everything has changed.

Jack’s wife, Joan, moved to California to live with a daughter, and died soon thereafter. His children and grandchildren stretch from California to North Carolina. He spent 40 years in Central IL as a preacher, but he lived a long time, so he was retired a long time. Members of a congregation forget a preacher pretty quickly once he has moved on. And the colleagues of his generation are too old to drive to a funeral to share stories.

That is where the problem comes. There are so many great Jack Newsome stories. Mutual colleague Jim Bortell even keeps a folder of them. Jack was a great friend. He was smart and kind. He was a good preacher. He had all the necessary gifts and graces for the ministry, and he used them well. But…

…he was spacy.

In his last years, he began to have some neuropathy problems. He went to a famous neurologist, who took one look and said, “I can tell you have Parkinson’s without even examining you because of that vacant look on your face.” Jack said, “But I always look this way.” Everyone else who heard that story immediately said, “But he always looks that way.”

It wasn’t just that Jack was spacy. He was one of those persons who is a magnet for strange events, and whose response to them makes them even funnier.

We had a surprise 50^th birthday party for Jack. That morning, Joan put a punch bowl and plates and napkins with “50” on them on the dining room table. He was totally surprised when all his friends showed up. Joan said, “I could be having an affair in the front bedroom and he wouldn’t know it.”

Joan started out, to me, simply as Jack’s wife. But she became a friend in her own right. I cherished that, in part because I was sometimes able to serve as an interpreter when they did not understand each other. They had a deeply committed relationship, of a particular kind. This kind…

…Bishop Hodapp appointed me to our Conference’s Investigation Committee. I did not think it was a good idea. “I’ll be too easy on the accused,” I said. “That’s why I want you on the committee,” he replied. “Every sinner should have one friend.” At supper that night, our teen daughters had a perceptive question. “What will you do if you have to investigate Jack Newsome?” So, the next time we were with Jack and Joan, I put the question to them. “Don’t worry about it, John,” Joan said. “Just tell me and I’ll take care of it.”

I always said that if I went to Jack and yelled “That damn bishop” and got on his desk and jumped up and down, he would get up there with me, and jump up and down, and yell “That damn bishop” right along with me, even if he had no idea why the bishop should be consigned to hades. That immediate “withness” made him such a good friend and such a good pastor. But it meant that he was totally into this moment. Other moments, other possibilities, were not in his consciousness.

Well, I started this in order to have a service for Jack by telling stories about him, but I’ve gone too long. That will have to be manana. Oh, yes, now there’s a story…

I’ll tell it in the next column.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

THE UNCERTAIN PREACHER [Sun, 7-28-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings and Memories of an Old Man—THE UNCERTAIN PREACHER [Sun, 7-28-24]

 

It is Sunday morning, and I have finally broken myself of the Sunday morning habit of saying, “If the preacher gets sick this morning and I have to fill in, what will I preach?” I preached for 40 years. When I retired, I could not get out of the habit of needing to be prepared—Sunday morning going up.

I was well suited, by “gifts and graces,” for a career as a preacher. I was also vexed by it. For 68 years.

I was 18 when I started preaching, although I didn’t really think of it as such. It was “preaching” only forty years later, when Bob Robling came up to me at our class reunion and said, “Do you remember that summer after we graduated, and you and Dave Lamb and Bob Wallace and I would pile into one of our old Chevies each Sunday morning and go to wherever the District Superintendent sent us, where the preacher was on vacation or something, and we’d sing as a quartet, and you’d preach? I always said the best preacher I ever heard was an 18-year-old kid.”

Whenever I tell that story, I say, “This teaches us two things. The first is that Bob did not go to church for 40 years…” I had to update the story, every five years, when we’d have another class reunion, for Bob would forget, and ask me the same thing. So my consequent line would be, “Bob didn’t go to church for forty-five years…” “Bob didn’t go to church for fifty years…”

When Bob heard me say that, when I was the speaker at our fifty-year reunion, he protested. “I go to church a lot.” That was true. He went because he was in the church choir. He was an industrial arts teacher by profession, but his passion was singing. I didn’t want to hurt Bob’s chance at adding to his chain of perfect attendance pins at Sunday School, but it was too good a line to leave out.

That summer, though, I didn’t think I was preaching. I just wanted to run around with my friends. I just thought I was in a quartet. I had a bass voice, but I didn’t really know how to sing the bass line. The other guys were good singers, though, so they carried me. Usually “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior.” That wasn’t hard.

As being the least-able singer, they decided that I should be the talker. So when it came time to for the sermon, I’d tell any jokes I knew that were fit for church, plus any cliches about religion that I had picked up, and I’d say that you should go to church because the people were nice and you learned stuff about God there. If you’re 18 and earnest and have a decent voice, people think you’ll amount to something.

I was all of 19 when I really began to preach regularly, when I received my first appointment from the bishop: Chrisney-Crossroads-Bloomfeld. I was 78 when I received my last appointment from the bishop, Oolitic. I was 86 when I preached my last sermon, filling in for a sick preacher, at St. Mark’s in Bloomington, IN. In between Chrisney and Oolitic, I had ten regular appointments, plus six interims. 68 years from start to finish.

Was I really called by God to be a preacher? 68 years of uncertainty. Except once in a while…

…when I had to go into homes where tragedy had struck, where children died from cancer or were run over by cars, where girls had been murdered, where boys had committed suicide. Where no words were adequate, but they had to be said. It was in those moments that I never had any doubt about my calling. “I know the Lord has laid his hand on me.”

 

I sometimes sing that on Sunday mornings now, with Bob and Dave and Bob. They are so young and eager, and have such good harmony. I even sound good on the bass.

John Robert McFarland

HOW TO BE AN OLD MAN [F, 7-26-24]

 BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—HOW TO BE AN OLD MAN [F, 7-26-24]

 

I have been trying to decide what kind of old man I should be. It is a pressing issue, for my half-birthday is coming soon. This is not a simple decision, however, for there are several templates…

THE GENTLEMAN

He is polite and pleasant. His voice is soft. He does not make smart remarks just because the occasion for such is presented. Especially if he created the occasion himself.

His attire is not fashionable but it is not noticeable. He does not wear multiple plaids at the same time. When in public, he wears “dress” shoes. They need not be highly polished, but they should not be falling apart, just because he liked to wear tan bucks when he was in college, and especially they should not be the same tan bucks he wore in college.

His head attire does not make it look like he has hair when he does not.

He has not figured out whether to wear the belt above or below, but it looks like he is trying.

He does not wear belt and suspenders at the same time.

He does not offer to show you what he carries in his cargo pockets.

THE ACCEPTOR 

He accepts old age with grace. He does not try to act like a young person. He does not run marathons. He does not enter dance competitions. He does not carry a Viagra pack sticking up out of a pocket.

He does not have “a bucket list.”

He is not jolly. He does not wink a lot. He does not say things like, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going,” and “When a door closes, another opens.”

He does not quote himself: “As I was saying to Hortense this morning, it’s a hot day.”

He is not despised as “a curve raiser.” [See “not running marathons” above.]

THE HUMORIST 

He sounds like Mark Twain, or at least Garrison Keillor, not like Dave Chappell or Jo Koy.

He does not tell you how to react to his humor, as in, “Oh, man, you’re going to laugh at this one.”

He does not think that stories are better if they are longer.

He knows that stories should have a punch line.

He does not think that everything he says is funny.

THE SAGE 

Everything he says is considered and considerate instead of just stuff that comes into his mind.

He does not speak if he has nothing to say

He does not give advice unless asked for it.

He calls on his vast reservoir of knowledge instead of making up statistics on the spot.

DECISION?

As you can see, there is a great deal wrong with all these models for a man like me. I guess I’ll have to get older before I can fit into one of these categories. I’m just not old enough to be an old man.

John Robert McFarland

 

THE UNKNOWN DRAWER [W, 7-24-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings and Misadventures of an Old Man—THE UNKNOWN DRAWER [W, 7-24-24]

 

Now that Helen is using Ron Walker’s walker—a felicitous juxtaposition of proper name and common name—she occasionally breaks down and lets me do something in the kitchen. Like open a can of something for lunch. Which requires a can opener. Which is not in the secret, mysterious, unknown, previously undiscovered drawer.

Don’t misunderstand; I use drawers in the kitchen all the time. The one to the left of the stove has the IBC root beer bottle opener that plays the IU fight song as it flips the lid of the rooty nectar. The one two drawers left of it has the “eatin’ irons,” as my mother-in-law called them. I use that drawer often, especially on “choose your own silverware” day.

That leaves the drawer between. The one I didn’t even know existed, although we have lived here for 9 years.

Helen told me, I thought, that I could find the can opener two drawers left of the stove. She knows I am sure of the name and position of the stove, for even though I don’t use it, I use the radar range that is above it. So it’s a handy starting point for directions.

BTW, the thirty-second button on the radar range is the greatest invention of all time. If you want to tell someone how long to heat an item, you can just say “two punches” or “three punches,” etc. No need to worry with numbers, which usually only confuse things.

Anyway, I thought she meant the silverware drawer. I didn’t remember ever seeing a can opener in it on “choose your own silverware” day. But, no! There was another drawer, between the bottle opener drawer and the drawer where the dish runs away with the spoon.

In my defense, a quite unexceptional drawer. Only a foot wide. Only one pull knob. But it has all sorts of interesting looking stuff in it. I recognized Band-Aids and corn handles, but nothing else, although I later heard Helen say something about an emulsifier, which I thought was an Ante-Nicene heresy.

Actually, the can opener turned out to be in the root beer opener drawer. But again, in my defense, it wasn’t the first thing in the drawer, so what can you do, look behind stuff? Actually, two openers, both the one that you use first and find out that it doesn’t work—even with the help of the cleaning lady, who happens to be in the kitchen at the time—and also the one that does work, if you push hard enough.

My advice is: look around your house, especially the kitchen. There might be a drawer you haven’t noticed before. It won’t have what you’re looking for, but…

John Robert McFarland

BTW, I met Lacey this morning on my walk. A perfect name for a little white puffball. I know the names of all the dogs on my route. Eddie, and Hazel, and Jack, and Bo, and Daisy, and Frankie, and Gypsy, and Angie, and Cici, and Charlie, and… Unknown drawers, yes. Unknown dogs, no.

TOO OLD [M. 7-22-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—TOO OLD [M. 7-22-24]

 

Well, I certainly was not expecting to write about Joe Biden this week. Or anything else having to do with politics. Others are able to understand and talk about politics much better than I. I do know more than most, though, about what it means to be old, and that seems to be the only thing that Joe Biden has been for a couple of months now—old.

Not President, not Commander in Chief, not “leader of the free world,” not the Democratic nominee for the election in November, not the guy taxed with the American economy—and thus the world economy, not husband or father or grandfather or friend, but… old.

When John McCain ran for president in 2008, he and I were the same age. I voted against him because, among other things, I thought he was too old. I knew what it was like to be that old. We could think pretty well, but we needed naps. President is a 24/7 job. I didn’t think I could do it, so I didn’t think he could do it. We were 72.

Joe Biden was born in 1942, so he’s younger than I. Still, I’m not so old that I can’t remember what it was like to be that age. I needed naps.

Joe Biden has done a remarkable thing, made a decision that is far too rare in politics these days. He has put the nation first. He has decided that he is too old.

That is a hard decision. Nobody wants to be considered too old. But he knows that he needs naps. I’m glad he’ll be able to get them in six months, when his service as President is over.

Now you know who is too old to be president? Donald Trump. Born in 1946. In Kenya. Eighty-two years old, for pity’s sake. I can remember what that was like, too. He needs naps. I hope he can get them in three months, when the election is over. Have mercy on him, people; he’s much too old to be President.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

COFFEE SHOP GIRL [Sat, 7-20-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—COFFEE SHOP GIRL [Sat, 7-20-24]

 

Following up on the recent column about Coffee Time…

I like to sing as I do stuff. I try to fit the song to the activity. Sometimes there is not a logical theme song, though. Like taking out the trash. So I create a song for the occasion. Taking out the trash, taking out the trash, we are not rejoicing, taking out the trash… You have probably figured out that it’s to the tune of “Bringing in the Sheaves.” Of course, you can also take out the trash to the Lone Ranger song: To the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump, dump…

So I needed a coffee song for the mid-morning coffee time Helen and I do. I went to the internet.

First was a Frank Sinatra hit of 1948, “There’s a Whole Lot of Coffee in Brazil.” It has the wonderful line, You date a girl and find out later/ she smells just like a percolator. Who under the age of 80 even knows what a percolator is?

So I decided to write a coffee song myself: I went down to the coffee shop, to sip a brew or two/ To admire the barista’s lovely smile and her new hairdo… Not something worthy of Sinatra. So, back to the internet…

Ah, a Sarah Maddock song, “Coffee Shop Bop.” Basically gentle rap. The singer goes to the coffee shop and admires the pants another girl is wearing, and… well, you’ll have to look it up, because I stopped listening at that point. It made me think of the girl at The Moose Jackson Café in Iron Mountain, MI.

She was new. She looked to be about twenty, so was probably a college girl just home for the summer. Exceptionally pretty. Blond hair in a ponytail. Great figure. Pink t-shirt, and pink shorts, what I could see of them. The table kept me from seeing her legs, but I saw a snow-white sneaker beneath. A really pretty girl put together in a delightful way.

Then she got up to go get some more coffee. I saw both white sneakers. And all of her short pink shorts. But… she had a metal leg. From shoe to shorts. Not a looks-like leg, but a long, complicated metal rod. She had one perfect normal leg, and one…well, I guess it was perfect, too, perfect for its purpose.

With no indication she thought there was anything unusual, she got up, filled her cup, returned to her books. I was thankful she didn’t look my way. I was afraid my shock might show. That metal leg just looked so out of place.

There had to be a story, and it was probably terrifying. Whatever it was, though, it was not the story she was now living. She didn’t need two fleshly legs to be a pretty girl in a coffee shop. She just needed another cup of coffee.

So, I guess I’ll have to start my song over: I went down to the coffee shop, hung my feed cap on a peg/ stopped to admire a pretty girl’s smile, and her metal leg…

John Robert McFarland

 

 

Forgive Me My Knees [R, 7-18-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—Forgive Me My Knees [R, 7-18-24]

 

Helen apologized to me several times yesterday. Great contrition and shame. You know why? You know what awful thing she did? She needed help.

Sixty-five years ago, I promised that I’d give her help if she ever needed it. That’s what “in sickness or in health” is about. You’d think that sixty-five years would be enough for that to sink in. But Helen is not supposed to need help. She is supposed to give help.

Yesterday morning, though, she finally needed help. Woke up with a knee that hurt so badly she couldn’t get out of bed. Couldn’t go down the hall to the bathroom.

I was up early [4:30], as I always am, because of the demands of my surgically reduced semi-colon. I was on my sofa in the living room, drinking my chocolate pinon coffee, when my cell phone rang. Much too early and much too loud. I was disgusted with it. I didn’t want it to wake Helen. Who could be calling at such an hour? Then I realized it was my special ring tone for Helen alone. But she was just through the wall in the bedroom…

She was afraid that if she yelled for help, it would frighten me, make me think something was wrong with her. She needed help, but she didn’t want me to worried about it. Since her cell was beside the bed, she thought it would be better to call me.

Well, yes, something was wrong. There was excruciating pain in her knee. And, yes, she needed help. She couldn’t move. But she has so little experience with needing help that she doesn’t know how to ask for it.

Reminds me of when the flatboat full of Lutheran pastors sank in Lake Wobegon. Water wasn’t deep. Even the short ones were only up to their necks. They just stood there, because nobody knew how to call for help.

We got Helen out of bed. I dug out my father’s striped white blind-man cane, and Uncle Ted’s old generic wooden cane, and, as she later told a nurse on the phone, “I can move at all only with two canes and one husband.” 

But Ron brought his walker and new, adjustable cane. Allyson and Glenn brought us lunch. The walker was a game changer. The knee still hurt, but she had stability with only one leg. She could go to the bathroom by herself. The chicken casserole was excellent.

So, she started apologizing… who was she, to be using Ron’s walker and eating Allyson’s casserole? Who was she, to be asking her husband for help?

Old age brings up independence-vs-acceptance issues that we hardly knew even existed before. We started dealing with that when we were quite little, three to five years old. “Initiative vs guilt” in the terms of developmental psychologist Erik Erikson. At that age, many of us learn that we are supposed to be independent, but only so that we can be helpful to others. We internalize that. Independence is a major issue. It defines our whole lifetime.

Then comes old age, when decline and decrepitude erode independence, when absence of energy--and eyes, and legs, and backs—requires us to accept help rather than just give it.

Life is always about holding opposites together, isn’t it? Giving help when others need it, and accepting help when we need it, is a balancing act. We’re not likely to get them into the right proportions, ever. That’s why Jesus talked so much about forgiveness. Of others, and of ourselves. “Forgive me my knee, as I forgive those who knee against me…”

John Robert McFarland

Turn the Other Cheek; I’m Just Checking on You [T, 7-16-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—Turn the Other Cheek; I’m Just Checking on You [T, 7-16-24]

 

Two old women in a nursing home talking. “How did your date go last night?” “I had to slap him three times.” “He was getting fresh?” “No, I thought he was dead.”

That sounds sort of unkind, in a comical sort of way, but it’s exactly what she needed to do. What we all need to do for one another. What I hoped someone would do when I was at the dermatologist’s last week.

It’s a new dermatology practice in town. I went there because, in the publicity flyer they sent out, the dermatologist had a wild and crazy gleam in his eye. My kind of guy.

My first appointment went great. He and his staff were fun to talk to. Pleasant and professional.

I went for the usual reason I do anything medical; Helen told me I had to. She did not like the place on my temple. I don’t care about my looks, unless they get bad enough to scare little kids, and Helen thought that the place on my face was getting close to “scare city,” as our daughters used to say when they were little. The dermo agreed with her, and sent a biopsy off. Sure enough, cancer.

That’s not the first time, and it’s not surprising. I’m fair-haired and light-skinned. I grew up on a farm, going shirtless all summer to hoe weeds in the garden and to make hay. Even to play baseball or basketball. We didn’t know about sun screen. I don’t think it even existed then. Anyway, I burned all summer, every summer, and we now know what that does to skin when it gets old.

This dermo doesn’t do Mohs surgery, because you have to maintain a path lab on site for that, so he sent me to the big dermatology center in town. Went fine. Can’t even tell the place used to be there. Little kids flock to me.

He suggested I make an appointment for a full-body scan, and I was overdue, so I did. It was about six months away. No prob. About two months ago his office called and asked if they could reschedule my appointment from 2:30 to 2:25. It seemed like a long leadup for such a minor change, but I took it as a good sign—he wants to keep a tight schedule. He wants to be on time.

So, I obsessed for two months about getting there on time. I was there at 2:15. Sure enough, at precisely 2:25, an assistant led me through the warren of halls to an exam room.

She told me to take off everything but my undershorts, to put on the thin little backless gown she handed me, and to sit on the elevated, armless exam chair. She left. I complied with her instructions, hurrying to get my clothes off and the gown on so I would not hold things up. Hurrying for an old man is not exactly quick, but I did the best I could.

The room was cold. Because my year of chemo gollywhacked my internal thermostat, it’s fairly easy for me to get chilled. I did not see a blanket anywhere, but no prob, he’d be in right away

Dermatologists are the quickest of all the medical professionals. I think there is some sort of daily competition for spending the least amount of time with patients. They want to show off their competency by running in, taking a quick peek, and running out again. “Look, I’m so smart I can tell at one glance if little kids run when they see you.”

But I began to shiver.

The chair was padded, but the pads were hard, and the chair had only one position, at least only one that I could figure out, and that was straight up. I’m used to being on a sofa, where I can change positions often. So, my back began to hurt. But, no prob; he’d be in right away.

At 15 minutes, I thought that his entrance was surely imminent. Likewise at 20. And at 25. And at 30. I thought about opening the door and going out to see if they had all left for the day, but I thought a barefoot old man in a backless gown might be sent to the psych ward…

Nobody checked on me. No offers of water. No request to see if I needed a blanket. No “We’ll be in soon.” Nobody came in to slap me that whole time, to see if I were still alive.

At 30 minutes, I rolled off the high chair, and managed to shiver my clothes on and tie my shoes. At 35 minutes, I exited the room… and met the dermatologist, and his whole cheery crew, “We’re just coming in to see you,” he exulted. “Too late,” I said.

He must have won the prize that day. The exam took none of his time at all.

Here is my suggestion. Go check on someone you disagree with or don’t like. If you’re a lib Dem, go check on a MAGA neighbor or relative, and vice versa.

Don’t go to converse. I think if we gave up talking to one another in these times of great division, but just checked on one another, to see if somebody needs some water or a blanket or a hand to get out of an uncomfortable position, a lot of our problems would be solved.

It’s okay to slap them, but only to be sure they are alive.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

GEOGRAPICAL CHURCH [Sun, 7-14-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—GEOGRAPICAL CHURCH [Sun, 7-14-24]

 

Our guest preacher at church emailed me afterward to say that it was an honor to sit in North By Northwest [NNW] as he waited for the time to mount to the pulpit. That’s embarrassing.

We have a “pass the peace” time at the start of our worship services, which is more of a “good morning, how are you?” period. To try to jar folks out of that rut, I started to say, “Welcome to the Alfred Hitchcock section of the sanctuary,” because our section is actually, geographically, the north by northwest area of the sanctuary, and “North By Northwest” is his best movie. I just wanted to see what folks would say.

For a while some people on the other side touted their area as the James Dean section because it was “East of Eden.” Unfortunately, that didn’t stick. But our preachers talked about NNW as a “neighborhood” in the congregation, especially on “Sit Some Place Else Sunday.” So NNW stuck.

I have been referred to as the mayor of NNW because by habit of long pastoring, when we first came to St. Mark’s nine years ago, I went around the whole sanctuary before worship, greeting people, welcoming them, telling them that this is a church of misfits and requiring them to provide proof of mis-fitness. [I’m not sure our preachers knew about this.] I didn’t want St. Mark’s to get stuck with a bunch of prims and propers who think Christian faith is about “…committing sourselves to ministry,” [1] rather than having a good time, the way Jesus said to. [John 10:10.]

As I get older, I cannot venture too far from our assigned seats in NNW, so now folks drop by my aisle chair [necessary because aisle chairs have arms for pushing one’s recalcitrant body up] to present evidence of weirdness adequate to allow them a seat in NNW.

Yes, NNW is a bad idea. Congregations do have smaller groups within—Sunday School classes, UWF circles, etc. But corporate worship is the one place where we need to be a single, complete body, the Body of Christ. If we have separate neighborhoods, they should at least have biblical names, like the Paul Section, and the Apollos Section. Oh, wait, that might not be the best model. [I Corinthians 3:4-9.]

Helen and I have always gravitated to the left rear seating in any room. Our younger daughter, Katie, is deaf in her left ear, so she needed to have her right ear to the action, plus a sightline of the whole place. [2]

So, when we came to St. Mark’s, by habit we started sitting in the left rear section. NNW. Now we’re stuck with it. Folks who want to leave their current section even ask my permission to sit in NNW. That’s not good ecclesiology.

But it’s a lot of fun.

John Robert McFarland

1] This was part of the graduation liturgy at a Claremont School of Theology some years back, long before Phil Amerson’s presidency there, I’m sure. We can only hope it was a typo.

2] Katie Kennedy’s most recent book, Hearts on Thin Ice, is available by mail or in any book store.

COFFEE TIME [F, 7-12-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—COFFEE TIME [F, 7-12-24]

 

Helen and I have been watching the old [from 20 years ago] “Gilmore Girls” series on Netflix. The main characters are always seeking coffee, asking others for coffee, staggering around looking for coffee. Coffee is their holy grail. Yesterday, Helen said, “They always get coffee, but they never drink it. They get a cupful and start talking and set the cup down and abandon the coffee. That is sacrilege!”

Yes, there is a spiritual dimension to coffee. Coffee is even called “the common cup of Methodism.” If you’re not a coffee drinker, that’s okay. There are other ways to share. In the morning hours, though, coffee is a divine gift.

Helen is both serious and joyous about coffee, especially the beans we grind ourselves, the chocolate pinon of the Rio Grande Roasters. [1] My brother, Jim, and his wife, Millie, turned us onto chocolate pinon many years ago. They live in Santa Fe. Those people know about artful things, like chocolate pinon.

Each morning at 9:30, I grind the beans and start the coffee pot going. At 10:00, Helen stops paying the bills or sorting through recipes or calling some utility to explain that we did pay our bill but they just don’t know it because they changed their system yet again. I stop staring into space. We sit on our respective sofas, opposite sides of the living room, facing each other, and enjoy our “coffee with.”

“Coffee with” is a term we picked up when we lived in Amish country, as in, “You want coffee with?” The “with” is some sort of pastry.

We sit and sip and talk. You would think that it is hardly necessary to have a designated time of day to talk to each other. We spend 24 hours together each day. [2] but there is something different about talking while sipping a cup of coffee, with a piece of a pastry your daughters had delivered, as an anniversary present, or something Helen baked herself from the recipe of a now-gone friend. [3]

We spend an hour or two at coffee time. A little bit of schedule reminding, but mostly reminiscing, talking about old friends, little children, funny happenings, cancers past, appreciating how lucky we are to have lived long enough to be totally decrepit. How lucky we are to share a common cup.

Sorry. Got to go. Kathy is coming over from Brown County this morning and bringing “coffee with.”

John Robert McFarland

1] Strangely, the Rio Grande Roasters are in Little Chute, Wisconsin.

2] Well, granted, about half of it is sleeping, either at night or any-time naps, so only about 12 hours a day for conscious talking.

3] Trina Mescher was the Lay Leader of St. Mark’s UMC here in Bloomington, IN at the time of her death. She was an early-childhood education expert and a noted cook. One potluck, she brought her marvelous “blueberry buckle.” Helen and the other bakers demanded the recipe. “Oh, it’s in that cookbook,” Trina said, “You know, the one with the cover falling off.” Helen knew exactly which cookbook. All women of a certain age received the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook as a wedding gift, and after the requisite years of use, all those covers were falling off in the same way.

 

 

JUST LIKE A TREE THAT’S PLANTED BY THE WATER… [W, 7-10-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings and Memories of an Old Man—JUST LIKE A TREE THAT’S PLANTED BY THE WATER… [W, 7-10-24]

 

My friend, with his wife, are moving today from the home they built many years ago to a retirement village. He doesn’t want to, for many reasons, one of which is that he has to give away most of his books. But it’s time. They need to move. I feel for them, but I’m glad that my friends will be in a good place. I hope those books find good homes, too. I suspect that some young person is going to get one of those books, and see my friend’s name in it, and be inspired to do great things.

I still have a book that was Floyd Selig’s. He was a preacher in the Indiana Conference when I was just starting out. [1] When he retired, he gave his books away to young preachers. I have gotten several books that way. I cherish them. They connect me to that “long line of splendor of the goodly fellowship of the prophets.”

This was back in the day that pastoral appointments weren’t even discussed by the Cabinet [the bishop and District Superintendents together] ahead of the week-long annual conference in June. The annual conference was held in the Indiana University Auditorium. [2] While other business was going on, reports and such, the DSs would huddle around the bishop’s table on the stage, and they would decide where each guy {all guys then} would be appointed for the next conference year. [3]

The bishop had his list made already, but he wanted to consult the DSs before finalizing. Took a lot of huddles, all week. You didn’t know until the last hour of annual conference, when the bishop read the appointments, where you were going to go… or if you were going to stay. [4]

It was common then for preachers to move often. Three years was a long appointment. Floyd had just built a new parsonage at his Evansville church and had been there 3 years. He was due for a move. But he wanted to get some good out of that parsonage.

Floyd was the conference song leader. [5] Whenever there was a lull, he’d jump to the microphone and lead us in song. Great sound, with a thousand preachers singing lustily.

So, as the cabinet huddled to decide his fate, he jumped up and led those thousand voices in several rousing choruses of…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 waaater, I shall not be moved!

He was not moved.

I told this story to my friend yesterday. He liked it. The body can move to any place, but the spirit is like a tree that’s planted by the waters.

John Robert McFarland

1] When I started preaching, there were three Methodist conferences in Indiana. The southern conference, basically everything below Indianapolis, was just called The Indiana Conference. The Northwest Indiana and North Indiana Conferences divided the rest of the state via a line straight up from Indianapolis.

2] The bishop consulted the cabinet, and sometimes a DS individually, but the final decision belonged to the bishop. Our bishop then, Richard Raines, had no problem accepting that authority.

3] The Methodist Church agreed to ordain women in 1956, the year of my first appointment.

4] The real old-timers could remember that sometimes, as the bishop was actually reading the appointments, he would take out a pencil and erase one place on his list, and write on it, and then erase another place, and write on it. He was switching pastors even while reading the list!

5] I do not want to prejudice you about whether to capitalize bishop or conference or annual or cabinet, so I have done them all in every possible way, so that you can make up your own mind about it.

 

 

 

A SADDLE SHOES SUMMER [M, 7-8-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings and Memories of an Old Man—A COLLEGE TOWN SUMMER [M, 7-8-24]

 

I stayed in Bloomington the summer after my soph year at Indiana U. I probably could have made more money, living at home, working again at the Potter & Brumfield electrical relays factory in Princeton, but I was preaching on the Solsberry Circuit, which included Koleen and Mineral, and I needed to live close enough to do that.

Fortunately, I got a job with IU buildings and grounds [B&G], so that helped financially. On the other hand, I had to rent a room in a house near campus, and I had to eat out because my landlady forbade food in my room. I, of course, cheated, with fruit and such that did not need cooking, but I was careful not to leave evidence, like rinds or packages. Those I took with me when I left to go wash the windows of IU buildings.

That was not my only B&G job that summer. I went wherever the kindly George McClain, chief of maintenance, sent me, which was sometimes filling in for some building janitor who had a week’s vacation. But usually I washed windows, with a squeegee on the end of an aluminum pipe. The pipe was in sections. I could add more sections to get higher windows. There was also a water hose attached to the squeegee end. The host put water on the window, and I wiped it off with the rubber squeegee blade, careful not to leave streaks. Like washing the car windshield at a gas station.

Except it was difficult to maneuver because it was so heavy. Yes, aluminum was light, but by the time the pole was long enough to reach third floor windows, it was getting heavy, and unwieldy, and the hose was full of water. “Heavy water” is a technical term in physics, but the water in my window-washing hose also felt very heavy.

Mostly what I remember was that all the water cascaded down onto me. I was thoroughly soaked at the end of a window-washing day. There was a foreman guy with me, but he just stood out of reach of the water and criticized.

One night, just after it got dark, I was walking back to my room, across campus. I had finished a fill-in janitor shift at the music building. It was right beside the women’s quad.

There were four dorms, built around an open courtyard. I heard voices singing, so I went into the courtyard.

Several summer-school girls were sitting around, talking, occasionally breaking into song. It was the sort of scene I always dreamed of when I had yearned to go to college while a high schooler. I did not dream of going to classes and amassing knowledge. I dreamed about sitting around with girls in saddle shoes, the way college was portrayed in magazines.

I stopped and watched and listened. Connie Omoto invited me to sit with them.

Everyone knew Connie. It was a small college then, only 10 or 11 thousand students, so there were a few iconic students everyone recognized. Connie was very recognizable. She was exotic. From Hawaii. Very few IU students from so far away in those days. Too far to go home for the summer. She was too skinny to be glamorous, but she had smooth brown skin and that Polynesian look, so I was immediately in love.

When I joined in the singing, they decided it was better to just talk.

My love for Connie did not last long, for someone decided it was time to go in and study, and I never saw her again. I was so filled already with an enduring memory, though, that the next morning I eschewed the heel of my smuggled in loaf of Wonder Bread and went to Ladyman’s Café for breakfast.

I have always wondered about Connie. I hope she had a good life. I’m thankful that she helped me fulfill my fantasy about college.

But a couple of months later, I went to the Wesley Foundation one night as they were preparing for freshman orientation. Loyd Bates, the campus minister, asked me to fold program cards, sitting at a table with a pretty blond girl who was wearing saddle shoes…

John Robert McFarland

 

 

LOVING YOUR REPLACEMENT [Sat, 7-6-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—LOVING YOUR REPLACEMENT [Sat, 7-6-24]

 

Willie Mays died recently, at the age of 93. I am among those who think that Willie was the greatest baseball player of all time. He had such a combination of speed and eye and strength. His lifetime stats do not lead any category—home runs, batting average, stolen bases, etc—but he was proficient at all of them, for a long time.

He came along at the right time, 1950. The color barrier had just been broken, so he did not spend the early years of his career relegated to The Negro Leagues, the way players like Satchel Paige and Ernie Banks were. In the 1950s and ‘60s, baseball was at its zenith. The NFL and NBA barely competed for fans, but TV was making baseball from New York or San Francisco available even to the hinterlands.

Willie did not have good language skills. He is known as “The Say Hey Kid” because he could not remember names and he did not know what to say to people. So he greeted anyone and everyone with “Say, Hey.”

There is one story from his life that has haunted me.

His father, William Howard Mays, Sr, known as “Cat,” was a famous semi-pro player, in an industrial league in Birmingham. He was black, and older, with a family to support, so no dreams of a career in baseball for him. But he was the best center fielder in the league.

Willie began to play on his father’s team when he was only 15. He played left field. A line drive was hit into the gap between left and center. It was the center fielder’s call, and he got there in time, but the exceptionally speedy Willie cut in front of him and caught the ball. His father left the field and never played again.

Cat was not an old man. Lots of Major League players go beyond their mid-thirties. But he was a “Sr.” who had been replaced by a “Jr.” He was no longer needed on that team.

I have no follow-up. I know nothing about the relationship of father and son after that event. I do know, though, that sooner or later, each of us is replaced, regardless of how swift or powerful we might have been before. A lot of how well life goes for us depends on whether we can love the one who takes our place.

John Robert McFarland

NECESSARY HEROES [R, 7-4-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—NECESSARY HEROES [R, 7-4-24]

 

Ernest Hemmingway said, “As you get older, it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.”

I think he’s right, on both counts.

But “hero” doesn’t mean much anymore. We call anyone who wears a uniform a hero. I understand why that’s become common, but what do you call the gal who runs into the burning building to save the baby when she’s already called a hero just because she has an asbestos uniform and a funny hat?

Super-hero is already taken, by heroes that aren’t heroes because they can’t be real. To be of any use to us, a hero has to be real, one of us, an ordinary guy or gal who answers the call when something extraordinary has to be done. I think that’s why God chose an ordinary guy to be the Christ. [1]

“Hero” has become debased because we don’t honor heroic attributes.

We need heroes, so we say that any soldier or cop or firefighter or nurse…anyone in a uniform, that’s a hero. That’s okay. I understand it.

But real heroes do heroic things. They have heroic characters. We honor only money and power, and we have produced a society where only those with money can have power.

Here we are, on the day of heroes, Independence Day, The Fourth of July, with cowards all around us, claiming to be heroes.

A hero is sort of like a wagon train scout in the old West. Out front far enough to see the dangers and possibilities first, but coming back often enough to fill us in on what can be.

The reason it is harder to have heroes as we grow older is that we become content in our own wisdom. We are competent in enough to think that we are competent in more than we are. Heroes are better than we are. They remind us not to trust ourselves too much. Without heroes, we become narcissists.

Here is a poem I wrote a long time ago. It’s called, simply, “When My Hero Died.”

 

When my hero died

And I could no longer

See his face

I lost my place

 

He was always

Out in front

Arm stretched long

To show the way

I lost my place

 

When my hero died

His name blurred

His voice unheard

I lost my place

 

When my hero died

So many doubts and questions came

Then I became my hero

But it never was the same

 

John Robert McFarland

1] Because of my vast and irrelevant theological education, I know that by using the word “chose” here I have opened a can of homousian worms. Let it go…

 

 

WHEN THE BIBLE STUDIES US [W, 7-3-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—WHEN THE BIBLE STUDIES US [W, 7-3-24]

 

Because I spent ten years pursuing higher education degrees myself, and because my first decade after ordination was in campus ministry, and because I wrote stuff, I had a reputation among my peers as a scholar. A preacher/theologian.

So, a new, young preacher, just out of seminary and into a second career after banking, called and asked if she could come see me. She said, “They say if you want to talk theology, you’re the place to go.”

I was flattered, but of course, she didn’t really want to talk theology. Nobody does. She wanted to complain because the church, and her ministry colleagues, were not nearly as Christian as she thought they would be. She used up the whole tissue box I always kept by the chair for my visitors. Almost all the women preachers who came to see me through the years ended up weeping. The men needed to, and should have, but the code of manliness required them to weep only inwardly. That was easier on my tissue supply, but not, I suspect, on their souls.

But Brad [not his real name] really did want to talk theology. He was the associate pastor at a big university church. He was out of seminary, and had been ordained for several years, but he was working on some sort of continuing education that required him to have a mentor to guide his reading and thinking. He asked me.

He usually drove the 30 miles to my place for our meetings, but one day I needed to go to his city for other errands so I arranged to take him to lunch. When I got there, he said we’d have to wait an hour. The senior pastor was supposed to meet with a Bible study group, but had been called away, so Brad needed to do Bible study before we could eat.

No problem. I was glad to sit in, as Brad’s mentor, to see him in action.

It was a pretty good group. A little too intellectual, as befitted a university church. Too interested in studying the issue some more before making a decision.

Then someone mentioned a hurricane that had just devastated Puerto Rico. We’d all seen the awful videos on our televisions that morning—homeless and hungry people and destroyed homes.

“I just feel so sorry for those people,” one woman said.

“Yes,” I put in. “They already had so little.”

“Oh, no,” the woman said. “I don’t mean the natives there. They’re used to it. I feel sorry for all those people at the beachfront hotels who’ve had their vacations ruined.”

I was stunned. This was in a church that claimed to take its cues from Jesus. Brad gave me a sideways glance. Someone else quickly changed the subject. The Bible study went on.

I’m still chagrined that I did not respond to that. Even if I had to break in later, change the subject back, I should not have let that go unchallenged. Brad had warned me off with a head shake then, and told me later that the woman “was like that,” so there was no point in pursuing it. I understood about folks like that. Had lots of them in my churches along the way. But others were there; they needed to hear a challenge as a witness.

Most importantly, every time we ignore what the Bible really says, we give permission for folks to replace the Bible with their own prejudices.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way. Most of them were sins of omission, like that day. Of all of them, that’s still the omission that rankles me the most.

I no longer like Bible study groups much. So many people aren’t really interested in learning from the Bible or from other Christians. Those should probably be called “sharing our ignorance and prejudice” groups.

Sheesh! I’m not a very good Methodist. John Wesley built that movement on “class” meetings. Everyone was in a group, a class. And here I am, a Methodist preacher, saying I don’t like those groups. But the class meetings didn’t study the Bible. They confessed their sins.

I guess I would have to be in the same class with that woman who was so upset about spoiled vacations.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

 

AMBULANCE AT THE RECTORY DOOR, a poem [T, 7-2-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings and Memories of an Old Man—AMBULANCE AT THE RECTORY DOOR, a poem [T, 7-2-24]

 

When I attended Garrett Theological Seminary at Northwestern U, I pastored the NW Indiana churches at Cedar Lake and Creston. It was a crazy arrangement. I was a fulltime pastor and a fulltime student at the same time, meaning I didn’t do either job as well as I wanted to, but I needed the salary of a fulltime church [which wasn’t all that much] for we had two little girls to raise, and my parents to help.

So I drove forty miles each way, up around Da Region [1], and through Chicago and Evanston, so I could be home each evening, for child-rearing and husbanding and churching. Somehow, it worked, primarily, I think, because Helen and I were young and energetic and didn’t know we couldn’t to it.

These were the days before expresssays and interstates through Chicago. I worked hard to find the easiest and quickest city streets to use. One day I caught a scene down a side street. An ambulance was parked in front of the rectory beside a Roman Catholic church building. Attendants were carrying a stretcher from the rectory to the ambulance.

As though I didn’t have enough to do, I wrote the following poem. I did not usually write poetry then. I was too much into day-by-day reality for that. I would change some words and line breaks now. But this was the way I felt it back then. It was published in “The Christian Century.”

AMBULACE AT THE RECTORY DOOR

 

White frocked and sterile

men of muscle, bone,

brainlessly familiar with

life’s margin space,

intruding they come

upon carpet worn by feet

bringing those in need:

the wretched,

poor in body mind and hope

“How beautiful are the feet…”

upon the…carpet…

 

They view the dusty corners

of the room, while you search

nooks of mind for some

lost coin of deed to hurl

against hard history’s page.

Long before the search is done,

they wheel you out upon the busy

street…and no one sees.

 

The key turns

in the collar’s lock and you are free

to go where no one calls you “Father”

but where the Father calls you “son.”

 

John Robert McFarland

The Hammond-Gary metroplex on the Indiana side of “Chicago Land” is The Calumet Region, known in the local patois as “Da” Region.

AUNT JEANETTA [M, 7-1-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—AUNT JEANETTA [M, 7-1-24]

 

As I write this, our heat wave holds on, and I am thinking about Aunt Jeanetta, for she once sent me a Christmas card in the middle of a heat wave.

I was on sabbatical and trying to finish up a book of Christmas stories. I had quite a few already. For several years, I had written a new story each year to use as a sermon at the Christmas Eve service. But there were not enough to present to a potential publisher as a book.

Writing about Christmas in a heat wave is tough sledding, but I needed to get that done while I had the time for writing. I’m not quite sure how Aunt Jeanetta learned of my struggles, but when she did, she sent me that card. “Maybe it will help you get into a Christmasy mood,” she wrote in it.

Aunt Jeanetta was always proud of her nephew, the preacher, the first in her small-town coal-mining family to go to college. She was always eager to tell people about me, and to help me achieve my goals.

Probably the best thing she ever did for me was to brag about me to Helen’s mother, Georgia, long before Helen and I ever met. Aunt Jeanetta was the daughter-in-law of Georgia’s best friend and card-playing neighbor in the little town of Monon, Indiana, where she had moved when she married Jack Madlung. Aunt Jean, as she liked to be called, talked about her nephew over cards. “He’s such a nice boy, and smart.” [One of the reasons I liked her—she was easily fooled.] When Helen told her mother about this boy she had met at Indiana U, Georgia said, “Oh, I know all about him.”

Helen was slightly miffed that her mother knew about me before she did, but it smoothed the way when she said she was going to marry me.

In some ways Jeanetta and Jack were a strange marriage match. She was kind and pleasant, almost glamourous in a SoInd [1] sort of way. He was boisterous and could be insensitive. He had been in a Nazi POW camp during WWII, but when I tried to suggest that had something to do with his bull-in-a-china-shop approach, everyone in Monon said, “He’s always been that way!”

He was a good father. Nancy, the first of his three children, was the biological child of Jean’s first husband, but you would not know it. Nancy adored her father, Jack, and thought he could do no wrong.

It was a good marriage. Jack was never abusive to Jean, or anyone, but he was difficult to live with, because he was always doing crazy things—like selling their house—without mentioning it to her.

When their kids threw Jeanetta and Jack a 50 year anniversary party, Nancy thought it would be neat to put in a surprise vow renewal service. By that time, she was a PhD college professor, so she should have known better. She arranged for Helen and me to be guests. Aunt Jeanetta was pleased that her favorite [2] nephew was there, and forgot for the moment that he was a preacher who officiated at weddings.

When Nancy announced to all at the country club that her parents were going to renew their wedding vows, her father predictably protested. Boisterously. Even thought it was Nancy’s idea, and she could do no more wrong in his sight than he could in hers. But Aunt Jeanetta calmed him in ways a long marriage had taught her, and by the time they were standing in front of me to say their vows again, you would have thought that it was his idea all along.

She was such a nice wife, and mother, and smart. It was my turn to be proud, of Aunt Jeanetta.

John Robert McFarland

Her full name was Anna Jeanetta, but I don’t think I knew about the “Anna” part until her obit. She often went by Jean. Sometimes Jeanette. I don’t know why she never used Anna. She was 6th of 8 in the birth order of my mother and her siblings. 

1] SoInd=Southern Indiana, like SoCal=Southern California. Except SoInd girls are prettier.

2] “Favorite” is my designation, not hers. Aunt Jeanetta eventually had five nephews, but I was first, so I get to claim “favorite.”