THY KINGDOM COME… [F, 8-30-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—THY KINGDOM COME… [F, 8-30-24]

 

I feel a bit like my life has been shortchanged, since Kingdomtide and I were born the same year, and Kingdomtide certainly hasn’t gotten much respect. Fortunately, I did not die along with Kingdomtide in… well, it’s never been given an official death date. Indeed, much like I, Kingdomtide just sort of keeps puttering and sputtering along.

From 1937 on, all the Sundays between Trinity Sunday [usually early June] and Advent [late November] in the ecclesial calendar were designated as Kingdomtide. Well, yes and no. Denominations never agreed on whether or when to celebrate Kingdomtide. Like the temperance movement, and church support for the labor movement, Kingdomtide was mostly Methodist.

Methodism was always primarily about action rather than theology. John Wesley said, “If your heart is with my heart, then give me your hand.” We don’t have time to worry about theological differences. Let’s get on with building the Kingdom of God on earth. Let’s feed the hungry and visit the sick and do unto others as we want them to do unto us. And to be sure we don’t forget anything, let’s do it on a weekly and yearly schedule. Methodically.

That is what Kingdomtide was supposed to remind us to do—build the Kingdom of God on earth. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” We were not just to pray it; we were to do it. {Build it and they will come?}

But we rarely celebrate Kingdomtide now, even in Methodist churches. The church calendar just gives us a whole lot of “The {Numbered} Sunday after Pentecost,” all the way to Advent.

The liturgical color for Kingdomtide is green, a color that symbolizes growth, at the end of a season [summer] when the world is as green as it’s likely to get. It follows Pentecost, the birth of the church, so green can be for growing the church as well as bringing in The Kingdom of God. Like Kingdomtide, itself, though, I think the church bureaucrats chose green for Kingdomtide just because it was the last color left over after the more popular church seasons got their pick.

Traditionally—if anything started in 1937 can be old enough to have a tradition--Kingdomtide started on the Sunday nearest August 31, the Festival/Feast of Christ the King, so that it had 13 Sundays before the start of Advent.

Yes, the season of Kingdomtide is much neglected, but we Kingdom-building aficionados aren’t bothered. We still get top billing in that prayer everybody prays every Sunday.

John Robert McFarland

 

WALK-UP MUSIC [W, 8-28-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—WALK-UP MUSIC [W, 8-28-24]

 

The recent Republican and Democrat political conventions, and political rallies in general, have focused attention, at least some of it, on “walk on” music, or “walk up” music, as we say in baseball.

Perhaps one of the most familiar, for old people, is “Happy Days Are Here Again,” used by FDR and Democrats in their conventions as The Great Depression ended.

I know most of the songs the Republicans currently use. They’ve been around long enough for an old man to be familiar with them. It’s different with the Democrats. They play current stuff--songs with strange names by singers with even stranger names. I have probably heard those songs, accidentally, but I don’t know their names. I have heard of singers like Megan Thee Stallion, but anyone who has not been interviewed by David Letterman is, to me, unknown.

It's always fun to see if I can recognize the chosen song as a ball player comes to bat. Joey Votto, the long-time first baseman of the Cincinnati Reds, used Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” as his walkup music. No one knows why, except that Joey does things his own way. And who doesn’t like Dolly?

One of my best baseball music experiences was with Aunt Gertrude at a Reds game back in Riverfront Stadium days. They announced that it was the umpire’s birthday, and the park organist played “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” [“He’s the baddest man in town…”] Aunt Gertrude recognized it immediately and laughed so hard.

Anyway, I got to thinking about what song I want for walk-up music as I ascend the golden stairs to the heavenly reaches.

Something funny? White and Nerdy, by Weird Al Yankovic? God does have a sense of humor, after all. I mean, look at bananas and platypuses. You want God in a good mood when you get there.

Or something placating? Amazing Grace, By John Newton? I have been a big sinner, after all, and it’s okay to remind God about forgiveness.

 Something that summarizes how I have lived my life? Take Me Out to the Ball Game, by Jack Norwith and Albert Von Tilzer? We do have a responsibility to be honest, after all. And we know baseball is the most heavenly of games, all that emphasis on getting to home and such.

Well, I’d better think a bit longer. But, while we’re at it, what’s your walk-up song?

John Robert McFarland

Okay, I’ll probably go with I Know the Lord Has Laid His Hand on Me. God does need reminders sometimes.

ON BEING WISE [M, 8-26-28]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—ON BEING WISE [M, 8-26-28]

 

As we gathered for Crumble Bums [1] recently, Charlie told me that I am the wisest person he knows. I was dumbfounded into silence, a very rare condition for me.

If I’m truly wise, I’ll just quit writing right now. It’s quite possible I didn’t even hear him correctly. Old ears, you know. More to the point, I don’t know what it means to be wise. But I’ll keep writing, which probably proves Charlie wrong about the level of my wisdom.

Our pastor recently preached on wisdom, using the passage in Kings about the wisdom of Solomon. In preparation for that sermon, he asked, on Facebook, for people to name the wisest person they had known. Charlie said he had not put anything on Facebook, but would have named me.

That’s humbling, because Charlie is a polymath, a student of and participant in everything—science, art, religion, politics, family, environment, baseball, health, society… He usually knows what he’s talking about.

My initial reaction, of course, was to make some smartass reply. “You need to get some better friends.” That sort of thing. But that didn’t seem appropriate. I didn’t want to insult my friend’s intelligence. I was wise enough not to say…

…oh, good grief! How can you tell if someone is wise? Especially yourself?

Well, first you have to figure out what wisdom is. There are a whole lot of definitions of wisdom, cluttering around C. H. Spurgeon’s statement that wisdom is “…the right use of knowledge.”

I have some knowledge. Lots of years of higher education. Lots of reading. Lots of thinking. But much knowledge is no guarantee of right use. Smart and wise aren’t the same thing. We talk about “The three wise men,” but is it smart to leave Orientar and take off across the desert without knowing where you’re going and only a star to guide you? And smoking a rubber cigar, yet? It wasn’t smart, but it turned out to be wise.

Joseph Goebbels was smart. He had a PhD, which he used to espouse Nazism and the eradication of Jews. Indeed, 32% of Philosophy professors in Germany joined the Nazi party. David Starr Jordan, early president of Indiana University [1885-1891], was smart. But he used his intelligence to espouse eugenics, “proving” some races, like blacks, to be inferior.

Good grief! [Again.] Shouldn’t philosophy professors and university presidents be wise?

Theological sociologist Tex Sample tells of how he grew up hearing his father say that Will Rogers was the best philosopher in the world. When Tex went to college, his advisor suggested he sign up for a philosophy course. “Sure,” said Tex. “Give me all of that you’ve got.” He was not amused when he had to deal with the esoteric theories of Aristotle and Plato instead of the pithy humorisms of Rogers. [2] But it turned out to be a wise move.

Rogers didn’t have much education. He claimed that “All I know, I read in the newspapers.” But most folks in his day would agree with Sample’s father.

So, how do you take knowledge—be it higher ed or only what you read in the newspapers—and use it rightly, become wise?

According to Reinhold Niebuhr, via his “Serenity Prayer,” you should pray for the courage to change what you can, and the serenity to accept what you cannot change. Wisdom is knowing the difference.

Well, perhaps the wisest thing is just to admit that you don’t know what wisdom is.

More importantly to me right now, what’s the wise way to react if someone calls you wise?

Perhaps the wisest thing is to accept it and say “Thank you.”

John Robert McFarland

1] Five good-looking, mature gentlemen, who gather for coffee--named for our original point of assembly, Crumble Bakery.

2] Currently relevant: “I don’t belong to any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”

 

MAKING YESTERDAY’S COLUMN CLEARER [Sun, 8-25-24=

BEYOND WINTER: The Slightly Relevant Corrections of an Old Man—MAKING YESTERDAY’S COLUMN CLEARER [Sun, 8-25-24=

 

I should have made a better distinction in yesterday’s column between the ecumenical movement and the church union movement. [Might be better to read the 8-24 column first if you haven’t yet.]

“Ecumenicity” is simply being open to those with other traditions, cooperating across denominational lines. “Church union” is merging all the denominations into one. Ecumenism works wherever folks meet one another with open minds and good hearts. No one has yet figured out how to make church union work.

The people in the Christian student movement always wanted to be, rightly, on the cutting edge of moving Christianity forward. That’s why the National Student Christian Federation [NSCF] was created, to unite the denominational student movements. The theory was that we would be a stronger force for good if we were united in one organization, speaking with one voice. And that we would be a witness to the old people [anyone over 22] in the churches, leading the way, teaching them how to do real Christian ecumenicity by uniting organizationally.

We did not understand that we could be united in mission without being united in organization. We definitely did not understand that organizational union might actually be a detriment to mission.

It was, though. The NSCF took in the Methodist Student Movement along with the student movement organizations of all the major denominations, and several of the smaller denominations. But it didn’ t work, for the reasons I listed yesterday. It lasted only 8 years. When it folded, there were no denominational student movements left. In the attempt to be together, we killed the whole student movement. The student generation was finished.

That doesn’t mean there weren’t campus ministry units left at various universities. But they were no longer part of a movement.

The church in general, though, the Body of Christ, learned from that. We learned that we can be ecumenical in spirit without being united in organization.

Ecumenicity has gathered strength in the last several years, denominations agreeing to recognize the baptism of others, sharing in communion.

Yes, the church is waning in attendance and participation and influence. But we are gaining in identity. Perhaps the hymn of Peter Scholtes will yet sing true, that “They’ll know we are Christians by our love.”

John Robert McFarland

 

 

ECUMENICAL MISTAKE & THE STUDENT MOVEMENT [Sat, 8-24-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—ECUMENICAL MISTAKE & THE STUDENT MOVEMENT [Sat, 8-24-24]

 

I have tried for some time to find a name for my generation in the church. In sociology, we were “the silent generation,” in politics “The Eisenhower generation.” Both of those designations suggest that we were not very important, did not make much of a difference. But that is not true in the church. In the church, we were the student movement generation. For Methodists, we were the Methodist Student Movement [MSM] generation. The student movement made a difference.

It’s time for college classes to start again. I’m thinking about campus days, both as a student and as a campus minister, part of the MSM.

The MSM grew out of and included the Wesley Foundations [WF]. The first WF was started by James Baker at the U of IL in 1913. Wesley Foundations were the start of Methodist campus ministry at the burgeoning public [state] universities.

Today, the name Wesley Foundation doesn’t carry the meaning Bishop Baker meant for it. “Wesley” was not just because John Wesley created Methodism and began its spread throughout the world. [1] Methodism started as a student movement, with John & Charles Wesley and their friends at Oxford. “Foundation” now usually means some money-raising, capital investment arm of an institution. To Baker, it meant “open,” available to all students, regardless of denomination.

WFs were the Methodist presence at public universities. Methodist colleges had chaplains and were automatically part of an unofficial Methodist student movement. Along with the WFs, in 1938, they officially became The MSM. 

The MSM was created in 1938, in anticipation of the 1939 merger of The Methodist Protestant Church, The Methodist Episcopal Church, and The Methodist Episcopal Church South. Because of The Great Depression and the lead-up to another world war, especially the appeal of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a new kind of college student was emerging. Needed was a new kind of witness to students, and new possibility of witness by students.

My college and early WF ministry days [1955-1974] were during the apex of the MSM. We had the acclaimed “motive” magazine. [Yes, it was lower case.] We had state and regional organizations. We had quadrennial conferences that brought thousands of students together from all over the world, to hear Christian leaders like D.T. Niles and Martin Luther King, Jr., and to plan together how we could change the world for the better.

But then came the well-intentioned but unrealistic “ecumenical movement.”

In 1969, the MSM disbanded in favor of ecumenicity, giving way to the NSCF, National Student Christian Foundation, a part of The World Student Council Foundation [WSCF]. The NSCF existed only from 1959 to 1967, because ecumenism was a non-starter. Everybody gave it theological lip service, but nobody wanted it, and nobody could say they didn’t want it.

We all had the mistaken notion that ecumenicity meant organizational union.

Ecumenicity was the watchword of the time. Eugene Carson Blake, who was General Secretary of The World Council of Churches, made a serious effort, starting in 1960, actually to reunite Protestant Christianity. His efforts resulted in The Consultation on Church Union, which tried for 40 years to effect the merger of ten mainline denominations, the Methodists and Presbyterians being the largest. Not a chance.

Ecumenism was a wonderful theological idea. It was a stupid sociological idea. People who have power don’t let it go, and any kind of merger—school, business, government, organization, family--means that some folks who have power will have to give it up. We merge only if forced, or if we see the chance for more power for ourselves.

I hope that wasn’t why I refused to let my WF join the Ecumenical Campus Ministry at IL State U, but it probably had something to do with it.

 The campus ministers of other denominations at ILSU had small, struggling student groups. They thought merging those groups, along with The WF--which was a large, very active group--would result in a big, vibrant campus ministry.

I knew enough group psychology to understand that the merger of a bunch of small, struggling groups results in one small, struggling group. There is a psychological limit to group size. So I refused the invitation to join, which resulted in quite a bit of calumny. I was called the worst name you could possibly have in those days, “anti-ecumenical.”

The other groups merged. Five small, struggling groups became one small struggling group. They don’t exist at all anymore. The WF, on the other hand, which goes now by the name of Merge--because that speaks more to current students, with WF in the small print on their publicity—is still going strong. [2]

Christian “unity” is not a matter of organizational union. It is simply accepting one another as Christians, even though we have different polities and traditions. Yes, even if we have different theologies. There is no reason—except human sinfulness—that we can’t share communion and accept the baptism of one another.

There is one true ecumenism: “They’ll know we are Christians by our love…”

John Robert McFarland

1] Wesley’s famous statement, “The world is my parish.”

2] They do, though, need some new electronic equipment, [the current lingua franca of students] so if you’d like to make a contribution, send it to Merge, 211 N. School St, Normal, IL 61761.

            While I’m at it, if you were a part of The WF at Indiana U and would like to make a contribution to Jubilee, which is the only Methodist campus ministry at IU now, you can make out a check to First UMC, 219 E. 4^th St, Bloomington, IN 47408 and mark it for Jubilee.

 

BC = BEFORE CHARLES [R, 8-22-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of an Old Man—BC = BEFORE CHARLES [R, 8-22-24]

 

Yes, I’ve written about this before. It was pivotal for me and Helen and our friends and generation. But I just saw the obit for Charles Morris in the Bloomington, IL newspaper…

Charles was a math professor at IL State U. When hired, he had just completed his PhD in math at U of IL. A prestigious achievement. Not surprising, though. He had graduated as valedictorian of his high school class when he was only sixteen.

What was surprising, though, was his hire by IL State, a former “normal” school—meaning a teachers’ college—and hence the name of its town, Normal, Illinois, which is about as flat a name as you can get, almost as flat as the prairie it sits on. Normal was a totally white town. No blacks were allowed to live in town. Charles and Jeanne were black.

His obit says that he and Jeanne were part of a team that bought housing in Normal for black students, but it doesn’t mention that they were the first black family that got to buy a house in Normal themselves. Up to then, blacks had to live in the twin city of Bloomington.

Yes, the exceptionally bright Professor Morris could teach students at ILSU, with his fancy PhD, but could Charles and Jeanne walk the same streets those students used? The town council said that the answer was “no.”

Some of us Normal people disagreed. We said the normal practice should be “open housing.” We set out to make Normal normal.

We signed petitions. We talked on radio shows. We made signs. We gave lectures. Helen and numerous other church ladies had coffees in their homes for neighborhood women. One of us even preached a sermon advocating open housing, through the strange mechanism of claiming it was good to keep black people out. “What will happen,” I asked, “if we let PhDs from the U of Illinois live here? Why, then we’d have to let Purdue people in, too.” Nobody else thought that was nearly as funny as this IU grad did, but it had the desired effect, of stirring people up, and giving Methodists permission to favor open housing, since one of their preachers advocated it, however backwardly.

The problem, though, was that I was just one of the Methodist preachers involved, and “the least of these,” to make it worse. I was just a campus minister, which hardly qualified as clergy, since I worked with students, always the most despised and disregarded group in a city where the residents make their money off of them.

The really important Methodist minister was Bill Hammit, Sr. He was the Director of The Baby Fold, our child care/orphanage ministry in central Illinois, and, much more importantly, an elected member of the Town Council.

Through many interviews, the members of the Council had made their views known. One was a realtor, a neighbor where we lived, who espoused the trite and popular excuse that black people would lower the values of Normal homes. The result of those known views was that the Council was evenly divided. But there was one more member.

All the Council members had made their views known, that is, except for Bill Hammit. It had become clear that when he made his decision, it would be the deciding vote.

One day, he came to First Methodist and called into session Gordon White, Senior Minister, and Clarence Young, Associate Minister, and the rabble-rousing John Robert McFarland, Campus Minister.

“You are my pastors,” he said. “Tell me how I should vote.” With one voice, we replied, “You have to vote for open housing.”

“But you’re preachers,” Bill replied. “People will say it’s easy for you to take that approach because you live in parsonages, so you don’t have to worry about the values of your homes going down.”

“Not me,” said Gordon. “I own my own home.” “Not me,” said Clarence. “I’m building my own home right now.” “Not me,” I said. “The Wesley Foundation doesn’t have a parsonage, so I have a twenty-year mortgage.”

“Well,” said Bill, “I guess I have to vote for open housing.”

I felt very good about being part of the start of open housing in Normal, but it still rankles me that I did not push back against Bill’s reasoning. As Christians, as clergy, it was our responsibility to do the right thing, without the smoke screen of “Well, it will ruin our house values, too.”

Charles Morris bought a house in Normal. He lived in it until a few years before his death, when he moved to a retirement center. He had a significant and useful career, rising to be VP of ILSU.

No one even thought to put into his obit, though, that there was a time before Charles and Jeanne that black folks could not live in Normal.

That's normal now.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

OPEN HEARTS [T, 8-20-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of an Old Man—OPEN HEARTS [T, 8-20-24]

 

Our neighbor brought us banana bread yesterday. She is going to have heart surgery, so she needs to stay busy. They are going to cut it open and replace some stuff. She is understandably anxious about it.

She need not be, though. Heart surgery is so routine anymore. It will be at the drive-thru window at the hospital. Or maybe they’ll give her a home kit so she can do it herself, if the surgeon wants to play golf that day. Heart surgery is so ho-hum now.

Not when they dug into the heart of Jack Lamb, the funeral director in my home town. They were going to do the first open-heart surgery ever. In Boston. They had interviewed several people who were desperate for heart help, but they didn’t find anyone with the right personality. For this unknown territory, they needed somebody who was either not afraid or didn’t care or felt that he could beat anything at its own game.

“Old Doc Ropp,” as distinct from “Young” Doc Ropp, heard about it and called them up and said, “Have I got the right guy for you. His heart is terrible, but he’s not afraid, he doesn’t care, and he figures he can beat anybody at anything. I can get him to Boston.”

Despite his profession, Jack was no Digger O’Dell. [1] Jack was a cockeyed optimist, with the confidence of a banty rooster. The folks in Boston interviewed him and judged that he had the right sort of heart in his head. [2]

I got to know Jack, as much as you ever get to know the parents of your friends. Dave Lamb was a year behind me in school, but we worked on the school newspaper together, topping out when I was Editor and Dave was Art Editor and drew the “Super Snooper” comic strip for the paper, which was not easy, since it had to be done with a stylus on a stencil for a mimeograph machine. We were newspaper friends who became hanging out friends, so I was sometimes at their house, which was part of the funeral home, as was the usual in those days. Jack liked to entertain us by sitting down at the funeral organ and playing current hits, like “Mr. Sandman,” by ear. [3]

Our neighbor owes a lot to the surgeons who have pioneered heart surgery, and made so much of it seem so simple now, almost like treating a cold. But she owes a lot to Jack Lamb, too.

Jack wasn’t just an optimist. He was a man of faith. He believed in life, and he believed that God was at work in this life. That’s why he had no fear, and didn’t care, and believed he could beat down any bad deal life threw at him.

His heart was bad, but his heart was just right.

John Robert McFarland

1] We would laugh so hard when Digger would say, mournfully, “Well, I’d better be shoveling off,” on “The Life of Riley” radio show back in the 1940s.

2] You won’t find this on the internet. But Jack’s surgery was in 1950, before the instances that are recounted on the sites Google brings up. You can’t trust historians fully. They claim that Paul Molitor’s 37 consecutive game hit streak was the longest since Joe DiMaggio’s 56. Not so; Pete Rose had 44.

3] When Dave married Maggie Jepson at the end of their college days, he asked me to officiate at their wedding. Fifty years later, they made the trip all the way from Barrington, IL to Iron Mountain, MI just so we could celebrate together.

Even though heart surgery is routine now, it's okay to pray for our neighbor. Her name is Stacy.

 

OLD AGE DOING [Sun, 8-18-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—OLD AGE DOING [Sun, 8-18-24]

 

In the poem “Any Time,” by the great William Stafford, a child asks, “When you get old, how do you know what to do?”

It’s a childish and child-like question, that asks more than it realizes.

When you are a child, older people are always telling you what to do. When there is no one older than you…

Is there a special thing we are to do when we get old? And indeed, what is it, and how do we recognize it?

Or is old age any different from any other age in knowing what to do?

I once called my late and beloved clergy and cancer colleague, Jean Cramer-Heuerman, at her church. The answering machine first gave me the church’s information, including “We have a Sunday School for persons of all ages.” I left a message that I qualified for Sunday School, because I am a person of all ages, but I couldn’t come because I was busy otherwise on Sunday mornings. [1]

If you are a person of all ages, don’t you do the same thing at any age?

Someone asked me recently, “How do you want to be remembered?” I said, “I never stopped trying.”

I never stopped trying to become perfect in love. That was my ordination vow. Actually, the question was, “Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?” It’s the question Methodist preachers were asked from the beginning, by John Wesley. It came directly out of his doctrine of “Christian perfection.”

According to Wesley, first comes salvation, also called justification. Then sanctification, also called “second blessing.” Then, perfection. {Don’t worry about this; it won’t be on the test.}

Wesley knew no one could be perfect in general—not intellectually or physically or emotionally… but love is different. Through grace and forgiveness, he said, it’s possible to be perfect in love, to will good for everyone and the whole world.

To be simple about Christian perfection, it’s just being a decent human being. [That’s my analysis, not Wesley’s.] I doubt, though, that anyone can be perfect in love just by trying. It does take grace and forgiveness.

It’s not easy, to be perfect in love, always to will what is good for everyone and anyone and for the world. I fail so often. Every day. Many times a day. But, I think that’s what we’re supposed to do, at any age—be perfect in love.

I’m old, but I haven’t stopped trying…

John Robert McFarland

 

1] She enjoyed using this as a sermon illustration.

WHY OLD PEOPLE ASK SO MANY QUESTIONS [F, 8-16-24]

 BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—WHY OLD PEOPLE ASK SO MANY QUESTIONS [F, 8-16-24]

 

The quick answer is: we ask questions of young people so they won’t have to listen to us talk about how ancient and decrepit we are…

We have returned from a family reunion. We were able to go because it was held at McCormick’s Creek State Park, only 15 miles from us. Folks came from CA and WA in the West, and FL and Toronto on the East, and “I” states in between, like IA and IN.

As the oldest people there [1], we got tired, but it was a great reunion. Except maybe for the younger people. Yes, the teens and twenties, but also the mid-forty folks.

It is the responsibility of old people in a family not only to tell stories no one has asked to hear, but to ask personal questions of younger people. I asked Joe and Nathan, both in their twenties, if they were troubled by aggressive girls trying to get into their lives. They said, “Not much.” Later I realized that I should have framed the question differently, for “not much” could mean either that they were not approached or that they were not troubled by such feminine efforts.

There is an art to asking old-man questions. You need to read the younger person. Some teens, like Simon, nephew-once-removed, have their lives mapped out and are eager to tell you about it. Others have no idea about the future and don’t want to think about it. In the former, it is your responsibility to listen. With the latter, you must make suggestions in the form of questions. “Have you considered being an astronaut, or a septic tank pumper?”

The forty-year-olds I asked about “midlife crisis.” I think that mid-life crisis is the best thing the psychologists ever thought up. It gives you an excuse for everything. “What do you expect; I’m in mid-life crisis!” I was in it for thirteen years, until Helen told me I wasn’t in it anymore. Now, when I question kids in mid-life, I prefer to call it “midlife evaluation.” They seem to appreciate it. Nephew Dean understood immediately: “I’ve already bought the red sports car,” he said.

That’s a good way to deal with mid-life, but I was going to tell him that you don’t really need a sports car or an affair or a new job. Everything you need to make the evaluation and move on, you already have inside you. You don’t need the exterior stuff. Of course, a red sports car is appropriate at any age.

The main reason, though, that old people need to question young people is so we won’t talk about ourselves--tell them how decrepit we are, how tired we are, how we have no energy, what foods we can’t eat, how close we are to death. That’s okay among ourselves. In fact, it’s really all we have to talk about now. But young people need to be thinking about other stuff.

As a pastor, I listened to so many stories of decrepitude from old people. Old people try to outdo one another with their list of ailments, the number of their surgeries. I understood that. That was their life. I was their pastor. I didn’t mind listening to them. That’s what I was there for. But I felt sorry for them. Their lives seemed to be so small.

Well, yes, our lives are small. Unless we can question young people, and broaden our lives by listening to them, and then praying for them as they face their years of hope.

John Robert McFarland

1] We do not count my older sister, Mary Virginia, for even though she is much, much older than I, she lives on with easy grace.

A REUNION BONUS STORY: One of our Canadian nephews-in-law told this story. He is 98% Irish. In the family, he is Andy, but his name is Andre’ Langevin, pronounced LAHNNg-van, the French way. If you are a business man in Canada, and you have a name like that, people assume you are French. Recently, after some lengthy conversation with another business man, the guy said, “Your English is very good.” Andy replied, “I work at it.”

Those Crazy Days of Summer [W, 8-14-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man--Those Crazy Days of Summer [W, 8-14-24]

 

 

It’s a long, hot summer. Picnics. Heat domes. Swimming pools. Cooling stations. VBS. Humidity. Picnics. Hurricanes. Baseball. Wild fires. County fairs…

So, as I walked, I found myself singing Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer, a hit song for Nat King Cole back in 1963…

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer

Those days of soda and pretzels and beer

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer

Dust off the sun and moon and sing a song of cheer

 

Fill your basket full of sandwiches and weenies

Then lock the house up, now you’re set

And on the beach you’ll see the girls in their bikinis

As cute as ever but they never get ‘em wet

 

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer

Those days of soda and pretzels and beer

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer

Dust off the sun and moon and sing a song of cheer

 

You’ll wish that summer could always be here

You’ll wish that summer could always be here

 

NO! Not with global warming. Summer is always here too much. We’re going to melt away. So I pulled out a song I wrote in my days in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to help balance our view of the weather …

 

Run from those wheezing, sneezing, freezing days of winter

Those days of snow storms and parkas in May

Run from those wheezing, sneezing, freezing days of winter

I wish that winter would just go away

 

Just fill your backpack with venison and bear steaks

Get your snowshoes and mittens and you’re set

And in their parkas you’ll see girlies eating pancakes

Nobody’s stuck their tongue on the pump handle yet

 

Run from those wheezing, sneezing, freezing days of winter

Those days of snow storms and parkas in May

Run from those wheezing, sneezing, freezing days of winter

I wish that winter would just go away

 

Hang on. You’ll be singing this soon enough.

John Robert McFarland

DO YOU HEAR THE BELL? {M, 8-12-24}

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings and Memories of an Old Man—DO YOU HEAR THE BELL? {M, 8-12-24}

 

Gracie loved to ring the bell. So, she rang it too long. Harry didn’t like Gracie, so he didn’t want Gracie to ring the bell at all. But he did not want to be seen as a bad guy, who kept a poverty-stricken old widow from her one weekly joy, so he proposed to me that we institute a policy for everyone—that nobody rang the bell except for the preacher. That would take in Gracie, of course.

Yes, she rang it too long. The days of summoning people to church via the bell were long past. Now it was just a Sunday background sound. I figured, though, that Gracie was more important than the bell. So, I told Harry that I I didn’t think such a rule was necessary, or a good idea.

“You’re not hearing me,” Harry said.

People always claim they aren’t being heard if they don’t get what they want. They can’t believe anyone would disagree if they understood what they’re saying.

“No,” I told Harry, “I’m hearing you just fine. Clear as a bell. And I’m disagreeing with you. Hearing doesn’t mean agreeing.”

That’s the way the church works. You’re not a loser if your idea doesn’t carry in the church. You’re still a beloved member of the community. But you have to let others be heard, too. Because people don’t all think alike, there are some ideas to which we have to say “No.”

The same is true in any community. The grab bag excuse for every half-brained political kook these days is, “They feel like they’re not being heard.” No, we’re hearing them quite well, and we’re saying “No.”

That’s the way democracy works. You don’t get to have your way just because you’re the loudest. Or because you claim you aren’t being heard.

Many of the folks these days who claim they aren’t being heard are the ones who have always had the megaphones, who are always heard, who always get their way.

You know, if you’re saying that no one should ring the bell, in order to keep certain people from the bell rope, you should not be heard.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

HOW MUCH SENSE WERE YOU BORN WITH? [F, 8-9-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—HOW MUCH SENSE WERE YOU BORN WITH? [F, 8-9-24]

 

Unlike Butterfly McQueen’s character in “Gone With the Wind,” I know plenty ‘bout birthin’ babies, because I see babies being born several nights a week. It’s always a struggle. So much anxiety. So much pain. So much screaming.

The mothers, yes, them, too, but I’m talking about me. I’m not exactly non-squeamish.

So, I refused to watch “Call the Midwife” on PBS for about six years, even though friends raved about it. Why would any man choose to watch something so elemental, so beyond reason, so… yucky? Along about season seven, though, we caught a show by accident. We couldn’t stop watching. Now we are going through the whole 13 seasons again on Netflix.

As Helen says, “It’s appealing because it’s about good people trying to do good things. It’s realistic. Sometimes they make mistakes. Sometimes there are conflicts. Sometimes tragedy strikes. But it’s so nice to see people trying do good instead of being stupidly destructive of everybody, including themselves.” [It also helps, for us, that the show is set in the period of the 1960s when we ourselves were having babies.]

Most episodes, I have to remind myself that the screaming mothers are really good actors. And that those babies aren’t really being pulled out of their bodies. And that they actually have a whole drawer of umbilical cords of different lengths to cut, so that the birth looks real. [1]

But the babies! They are so little. So vulnerable. So adorable. Some white. Some brown. Some black. Some yellow. [Yes, every ethnic is assigned a color for TV, and Asians get yellow.]

I look at them with relief as they are handed to their exhausted mothers, and I think…isn’t it strange that the attributes that are going to give these little babies the most grief are the very things they have no control over, the things they are born with—color and gender.

They did not choose to be black or white, male or female, straight or gay. Yet those are going to be their defining characteristics their whole lives. And if the color or gender they did not choose is the wrong one--according to other people who did not choose their race or gender either—the lives of those sweet little babies will be miserable.

Our characteristics over which we had no choice, and over which we now have no control, are the very ones for which we are held most responsible. “No, you did nothing wrong. We’re just treating you like a lesser person because you were born black or female or gay.”

That makes no sense.

I guess there may be one more birth characteristic that makes a difference. Were you born “with as much sense as God gave a goose?”

I have total sympathy with persons who are born stupid, but none with those who choose to be stupid.

John Robert McFarland

1] One of our introductions to St. Mark’s Above the Bypass was at Christmas when the preacher asked the kids at “Children’s Time” what they would have brought as gifts to the baby Jesus. One child replied, “Scissors, to cut the umbilical cord.”

 

 

 

 

LIBRARY DAYS [W, 8-7-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—LIBRARY DAYS [W, 8-7-24]

 

Not much time to write today. Family reunion this weekend. We’ll have to face our children, so we need to get to the library.

Our daughters--both being voracious readers, and one being a librarian--have been trying to get us to use our library more. We appreciate their efforts, but we already have a library. It’s called “The Living Room.” Its furnishings are shelves full of books, and coffee tables with piles of books, and rolling sofa-side tables with nooks and crannies full of books, plus, of course, the sofas on which we recline to read the books. Even the sofas usually have books standing or lying any place where our bodies are not. It’s a really good library, full of books that those very same daughters have given us. They have even written some of them.

Don’t get me wrong. We love libraries. We’ve used them a lot through all our years. But the main point is: BOOKS! It doesn’t matter where they come from.

Of course, our daughters know that. They are totally in favor of home libraries. They were both reading at 8^th grade level at the end of first grade, and they’ve never stopped. [I mean they’ve never stopped reading, not that they are still at 8^th grade level.] But we are old, and they think they should do something for us, because that’s what children are supposed to do for old parents—something. And the “something” of “helping” us to use the library is the “something” we are most likely to respond to, because, you know… BOOKS!

So, we went to the library, to get the kids off our back. Got a bunch of books. Selected them for interesting titles and good cover art. And ones that would fit in Helen’s Mary Englebreit book bag.

It takes me a long time to finish a book. I read in eight to ten books at a time--fiction, and all kinds of non-fiction, from science to literary theory. I usually read only one page a day. I want to see how disparate authors interact with one another. The rest of the family, and people in general, think that’s crazy.

After I’ve done one page of each of my current reads, then I start over and keep reading in the one that is most appealing to me that day. I keep some fictional “procedural,” like John Grisham or Michael Connely, going in case I need a non-thinking book that day.

Sometimes I read only one sentence a day. I did that with Kathleen Norris’ Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. I just didn’t want it to end. I want any good book to keep going and going.

So, off to the library. They don’t fine you for overdue anymore, but that’s the problem of going to the library, for old people. If you take books out, you have to return them some time.

Actually, you must be okay if the only complaint your children have about you is that you don’t use the library enough. 

BOOKS!

John Robert McFarland

Yes, the shelves in the photo above are the very ones where our returned books will go.

 

 

CAN YOU REMEMBER SCHOOL? [M, 8-5-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Memories of an Old Man—CAN YOU REMEMBER SCHOOL? [M, 8-5-24]

 

School starts here this week. Much too early. You’re supposed to start school after Labor Day, the way the Bible says. I wonder how much those kids will remember from these hot school days. Isn’t that the point of school, to remember what we learn? If so, my school days were useless. I remember nothing.

I saw Jimmy Kimmel interview actor Sean Penn recently. Penn is now only a couple of years short of Social Security eligibility, but he still has that brooding, potentially-explosive, bad boy vibe. But he remembered school so well, and so positively. His real school, not Ridgemont High.

He said that his academic record was straight D, except for one year. In his freshman year of high school, his GPA was A. More than A, since he took extra work. It was, of course, because of a teacher.

Penn said [my paraphrase because I don’t have the exact quote], “He taught history and social science, but he turned us on to learning in general. Once you get on a roll, it’s easy to be smart in everything. For one year, I could do math.”

I think he called the teacher Mr. Vincent, but I can’t remember for sure. That is not surprising, because I don’t remember any of my own school stuff, either.

I need to qualify that. I don’t remember the academic part of school. I remember quite well the friends and games and laughter and songs. I remember the teachers. I remember the classrooms and lunch time. But I don’t remember any algebra or chemistry or Latin.

I remember people and stories. I remember people because they ARE stories.

I remember the name of every teacher and every student in my class and most of the kids in the classes 2 and 3 years ahead of me, and those in classes one or two years behind me.

Because names are a short form of story. When I say Darrel Guimond or Carolyn Wilder or Mr. Morrow, I hear their stories.

There were stories in classrooms, of course. Mrs. VanMeter, my teacher for the first quarter of fifth grade, read aloud a new chapter from a book each day after lunch. It was the day’s pinnacle.

Mr. Cato, our algebra teacher and basketball coach and class sponsor, told the story of how former student Bill Rosenbloom was the most popular boy in school but he always asked the least popular girls to dance. Since I was class president, I figured he was aiming that at me, which was a problem, because I wanted to dance with the popular girls.

Mr. Kell, our principal, told of how Tommy Skelton collapsed on the basketball floor at the conclusion of our school’s only Sectional basketball championship. He had played so hard, they had to carry him off. I figured that was aimed at me, too. [1]

I remember most from school the learning from which I was banned. Mr. Barrett taught biology to the freshman boys and Miss Iva Jane McCrarey to the girls. We were divided by gender because there was a two-day section on “human reproduction.” The problem, I was in the girls’ class.

I was a mid-year student who wanted to be in everything, including music. Mid-year was bad enough. We entered high school in January. We could not take two-semester subjects that started in September, but only one-semester subjects. Music was a big deal at Oakland City High School. Band took a class period. So did orchestra. So did chorus. And I was in all of them. There were not enough one-semester subject periods left over for me, so I was placed in the second semester of Commercial Arithmetic, with the junior girls, and in the girl’s biology class, since I was otherwise engaged during the period of the boys class. I figured it was a good deal. I got to hang out not only with the girls of my class, but with the older women of the junior class.

I have no memory of a great teacher, one in particular who inspired me. But they all expected me to do well. They trusted me with their stories. I remember their names and faces. I had great classmates. They expected me to do well. They trusted me with their stories. I remember their names and faces.

Yes, I remember school.

John Robert McFarland

1] Marlin Kell was an excellent principal, but he believed in personal discipline. Kenny Liniger once told at a class reunion how Mr. Kell had called him and Don Falls into the office and told them to buckle down. “You two will never amount to anything,” he told them. Kenny added, “I think it was just a lucky guess.”

 

BEING HELPFUL WITHOUT BEING A NUISANCE [SAT, 8-3-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—BEING HELPFUL WITHOUT BEING A NUISANCE [SAT, 8-3-24]

 

Helen has had a bum knee. Painful even when off of it, but especially bad when standing or walking. So I’ve been doing extra stuff in addition to my usual chores. Carrying her meal tray, watering the flowers, etc. The problem is, she’s getting better.

No, I don’t mean it’s bad for her to feel better. But now she’s getting in the way. She is going back to doing the stuff she’s always done. Not entirely. Just enough to be confusing. Now when I try to help, as often as not, I just get in the way.

The trick is to be helpful without being a nuisance.

That is always the issue of course, at any age, but it’s a pointed issue for old people, because folks want to be helpful to us, and we’re smart enough—most of us, most of the time—to know that we need help. But we don’t want help when we don’t need it. That’s when helpful people are no longer helpful but instead are a nuisance.

My mother was a special problem when it came to help. She had a lot of problems, and needed a lot of help. She liked being a victim and needing help. Except when she didn’t. Then she acted like she was being molested if you tried to help. She would not decline help by saying
“No, thank you,” or “I can do this myself,” but she would literally yell, “Get away from me.”

Neither of my parents could drive, so in their latter years, Helen and I took them wherever they needed to go. When we arrived at our destination, Helen usually had my father on her arm, for he was blind and needed the guidance. So I would get Mother’s walker out of the trunk, and pull her out of the car and onto the walker. I would walk beside her, ready for a fall, but she would wave dismissively. “Go ahead,” she’d say. I couldn’t do that. She could fall when left on her own. Also…

…it was embarrassing to me. Here would be an able-bodied son leaving his poor old mother to struggle along on her own. There were always other people around to see that. What happens when someone who needs to help and someone who refuses help collide?

Helen and I sometimes do that literally in the kitchen. She does the cooking. I do the cleanup. Sometimes we want to be in the kitchen at the same time, doing our respective tasks. But it’s not big enough for cooking and cleaning up at the same time.

Receiving help puts us into debt. Some folks can’t stand being in debt. Not just financial. Especially emotional debt. I had a friend who is very much like Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory TV show. Sheldon never wants to receive a gift, for he feels he must give the giver a return gift of equal value. One time he even handed Penny something like $1.32 in cash when he learned that his even-it-up gift to her cost him $1.32 less than she had paid for his gift. I tried not to give my friend anything, even a compliment, for I knew he would spend days trying to figure out an equal compliment that he could give to me. It was exhausting for both of us.

There is no sure way to give help, or even offer it, without getting in the way. We just have to be both kind and forgiving, as we offer help and as we accept it.

John Robert McFarland

[Okay, so that’s a banal cliché ending. Listen, I can’t do an O. Henry ending every time. Be forgiving of boring writers, too.]

 

 

 

JACK NEWSOME STORIES [R, 8-1-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings and Memories of an Old Man—JACK NEWSOME STORIES [R, 8-1-24]

 

One reader—I’ll call him Bob--responded to my first column about Jack by saying that he isn’t planning on a memorial service for himself. I told him that it’s not up to him. The purpose of a memorial service is so your friends can tell embarrassing stories about you when you can’t defend yourself. I’m going to have a service for Bob whether he wants one or not. I’ve got too many good stories about him to not share them.

Many folks who knew Jack responded to that column with stories about him. I can’t put them all in here, but if we could have had a memorial service for Jack, the following would be just a few of the stories told…

It was when Jack was pastoring Vermont St. UMC in Quincy, IL, the largest church in the Jacksonville District. He was distraught by the number of people who put things off. “Manana,” he proclaimed. “Always manana. But manana never comes. Manana, manana…”

The problem was that Jack had only read the word. He didn’t know that it was pronounced mon-YAH-nah. He said muh-na-nuh, as rhyming with banana.

*

One year, at the Christmas party of mutual friends, Jack had an old Christmas card he and Joan had received. He marked through the name of the original signers of the card and replaced it with “Jack and Joan.” After showing it to us, he marked our name off a list. He was “sending” his cards the simple way.

*

When Jack was a District Superintendent, the Superintendents were having lunch with the Conference staff. There was a new woman on the staff, and Jack was being genially hospitable, as he always was, getting to know her. “Do you watch hardcore?” he asked. She looked shocked. Assuming she had not understood, he pressed on. “Do you watch hardcore?” “N…n….no” she stuttered. “You should; it’s good.” Thankfully, someone finally figured out that he was talking about a popular news show at the time, “Hard Copy.”

*

Jack was appointed the senior pastor of a large city church where there was a retirement home. A middle-aged woman in the congregation asked him to call on her mother at the retirement home. “Don’t be fooled by her,” she said. “She’s crazy.” Jack went. He found a sophisticated, dignified, well-spoken lady. They had a nice conversation. “That daughter of hers is the crazy one,” Jack was thinking. As he prepared to leave, the lady said, “Rev. Newsome, would you do me a favor?” “Of course,” Jack replied. “Good. Bring me a pistol. I’m going to shoot that SOB in the next room.”

*

Jack started college at Asbury in Kentucky, but finished at Georgia Tech, in Atlanta, 20 miles from his home town. He then went to Candler School of Theology at Emory University. He had a student preaching appointment in the North Carolina Conference. It was a fairly long drive, so it was not unusual to have to stop for gasoline on the way. One day he spilled some on himself while filling up the tank, so started the worship service by announcing, “If you smell anything from up here, it’s gas.”

*

Well, there are others. They were best when Jack told them on himself. But these “will preach,” as preachers like to say.

There. Now I feel better about Jack not getting a memorial service.

John Robert McFarland