MAKING FRIENDS LAUGH [2-20-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Humor of An Old Man—MAKING FRIENDS LAUGH [2-20-25]

 

What do you do when your hip, your computer, your furnace fan, and your car all go bad at the same time? Well, nothing! Not until you get them fixed. So I missed my usual every-other-day schedule of posting columns this week because of furnace repair guys, physical therapy, tow trucks, and computer guys who like to talk but cannot work and talk at the same time. The furnace fan is still a mystery, even though we did pay for a service call. Anyway… I suspect people would have laughed had they seen my befuddlement this week, which is the segue to…

Most people come to church hoping the preacher will say something funny, that they’ll have some reason to laugh.

I always felt that I needed to entertain a friend. In the early days, that meant telling jokes.

Fifteen-year-old boys rival dads for corny jokes. They collect them and tell them. I certainly took my turn at that.

[Spoiler alert: you’ve probably heard these jokes before…]

Preachers are especially subject to laughs about butts. Perhaps because it seems so naughty. Especially in the context of worship.

I remember how the late, great George Paterson laughed so hard when I told him and Ida Belle the one about the pastoral prayer in the worship service. The preacher intoned, “…we are but dust,” and would have gone on, but a little voice piped up and said, “Mommy, what’s butt dust?”

And Joe Snider, our wonderful pastor when I was retired, laughed so hard when I told him about something his successor did. She had been an accountant for many years before entering the ministry, and she preached like an accountant. She liked to build up all the arguments for a theological proposition, and then switch and name all the arguments against it. On one fateful Sunday, she got to the switch point and said, “But…and I’ve got a really big but here…” The congregation went deathly silent. We all knew that if one of us broke and giggled, the whole place would go up. Joe went exactly the opposite of silent; he knew just what each of those folks would look like, shoulders trembling as they tried to suppress guffaws.

Talk show host Stephen Colbert was only ten years old when his father and two brothers were killed in a plane crash. He thinks he became a comedian because after that loss, each time he could make his mother laugh was so precious.

Some of my happiest memories are when I made someone laugh. Not just genial laughter, but the loss-of-control laughter of surprise.

My father was a quiet man by nature, and even more so after he lost his eyesight in an industrial accident when I was five. He had so little to laugh about. When I was in my junior high joke spieling period, he was more likely to tell me to shut up than to laugh. When Helen joined the family, though, he loosened up so much. She’s had a knack for charming old men. Still does.

We were visiting my family—younger brother and sister still at home—when I told the story about Harry Truman campaigning out west on an Indian reservation. [1] Truman said, “You’re going to have chicken in every pot.” The Indians chanted, “Oompah! Oompah!” He continued: “And a car in front of every wigwam.” “Oompah! Oompah!” And so on. When he was finished, the chief said, “Mr. President, please step into the corral so we can present you with our best horse and silver-mounted saddle. But be careful. Don’t step in the oompah.” Daddy had voted for Truman, but he was sure than anything a politician said was oompah, but he’d never heard that word for it before. It caught him by surprise. He laughed until tears ran down his face.

We need laughter in the world right now. Say something funny. Even if you are the only one who laughs…

John Robert McFarland

 

1] “Indian” is the term the joke used.

THE BIG STORY [W, 2-16-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—THE BIG STORY [W, 2-16-25]

 

[More of my February self-indulgent personal memories, using my birth month as an excuse…]

I liked newspapers for as long as I can remember, which is about four years of age. They had stories that you didn’t have to know how to read to enjoy. Comic strips. There was progression from one panel to the next. Some, like Henry, didn’t even use thought/language balloons. I could see stories, before I could read, long before TV.

There was radio, of course, which I also loved for the stories. You didn’t need to read to enjoy them, either. But radio shows in those days were only “same time, same station.” If you missed an episode of The Lone Ranger or Red Ryder, you simply missed it.

The newspaper was constant, though. Even if my mother told me to get my nose out of the newspaper and run to the store, I could pick the newspaper up later.

Because I started looking at newspapers and listening to the radio for the stories, I began to understand that news itself was narrative. That was probably why my grade school teachers mentioned in their notes to my parents how much I seemed to know about current affairs. I listened to news broadcasts because I found stories everywhere.

I have often said that my interest in becoming a newspaper reporter stemmed from listening to The Big Story radio show, which is mostly true, but I want to give credit to The Indianapolis Times, too, the evening paper when I lived in Indianapolis from age 4 to 10. That was where I got to see the stories of The Phantom and Alley Oop and Joe Palooka and Henry, the kid who had only one hair on his head.

The Big Story radio show ran almost exactly through the years of my youth in Oakland City, 1947-1955. I wanted to go to college, but I knew I might not get to. No money. In those days, though, you didn’t have to be a college grad to get a job on a newspaper. I decided that with or without college, I would be a newspaper man.

So I got on the staff of Oak Barks, our high school newspaper, and worked my way up to Editor. I went around piously intoning that Thomas Jefferson had said that if he had to choose between government and newspapers, he would take newspapers. I figured no one could argue with Thomas Jefferson, so no one could argue with my vocational choice.

In the summer of 1955, I stumbled into admission at IU even without money, and I became a journalism major. But when I was 14, I had promised God I’d be a preacher if “He” saved my sister’s life, and He did. I had not kept my bargain. The guilt of my unfulfilled deal caught up with me the summer after my frosh year. I went back for my sophomore year as a pre-theology major. Of course, the godless state university had no such thing as a pre-theo curriculum, so I became a history major. History is all stories.

I was so disappointed that I had to be a preacher. I had looked forward, so much, for so long, to telling stories, in newspapers. Now, as a preacher, I’d have to give that up. I’d have to write long, boring sermons about whether God exists, and were there really miracles, and why you’d go to hell if you smoked cigarettes.

Even as a history major, though, I did not give up my love affair with newspapers. I took all the history courses that allowed me to read stuff by newspaper guys, especially the muckrakers, like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and the two volumes of The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens.

But that very autumn of my sophomore year, Dallas Browning, the District Supt of the Evansville District of The Indiana Conference of the Methodist Church, appointed me to preach every Sunday at the three churches on the Chrisney circuit. A new sermon, every Sunday. I did not know how to write sermons, and I had no time to write sermons. So I told stories.

People seemed to get more out of stories than they did sermons, so I just kept on doing what I had thought I would do as a newspaper man, telling stories, speaking truth to power, like Upton Sinclair and Lincoln Steffens.

Every week, I got to tell The Big Story.

 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

HELEN’S CHOICE [F, 2-14-25]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man—HELEN’S CHOICE [F, 2-14-25]

[Continuing my birth month personal history columns… so, today, a column about my Valentine.]

As a teen, Helen loved her pastor, Newton Fowler. Even more, his wife, Lucretia. They were warm and personal, but also dignified. Helen wanted to be like that.

“Dignified” was an exception in Gary, Indiana in the 1940s and 50s. Helen’s family moved to Gary because her father had a job at U.S. Steel. Her first ten years had been in the little town of Monon, where three generations of relatives, on both sides of her family, lived. She and her same-age cousin, Sam, could safely roam the town together. It was idyllic, and all she knew.

Gary was different. The first day there, Helen was sitting on her front stoop, reading a book, when a girl her age walked by. With malice, without knowing her, except that she was new, the girl called Helen a dumbass. [1] Gary was a rough and rowdy place.

Helen and her mother had attended the American Baptist Church in Monon. [2] After a couple of church tries in Gary that didn’t work, about the time Helen became a teen, they discovered Westminster Presbyterian, and Newton and Lucretia Fowler.

The Fowlers encouraged Helen. She was the only teen who sang in the chancel choir. She became president of the youth group. She began to think, vaguely, that perhaps she should have a career in the church. Probably as a Christian ed director, since women could not be ordained as clergy then. [3]

She met me at the start of her sophomore year in college. She’d already had a year as a home ec major, but a degree in home ec led to being a wife or a teacher. She didn’t think she wanted to teach, and being a wife was not in her control. She was still thinking, vaguely, about a church career, when she met this guy who as a college junior was already preaching on a three-church circuit. Getting involved with him meant a church career one way or another.

That didn’t bother her, of course. She liked the church. She had seen Lucretia Fowler live a good life as a preacher’s wife. But it did give her one problem…

…was she interested in me because I was a preacher? Did she want a Newton Fowler clone? Did she want the church, or did she want me?

I broke up with her in the summer of 1958 because I had so much responsibility for supporting my parents and younger brother and sister that I just couldn’t see my way to marriage, either financially or emotionally.

That summer Helen went on vacation with her parents and sister, making the grand loop around Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. As they passed through a town, she saw guys working the garbage truck. The question suddenly posed itself: would I want to marry John if her were a garbage truck guy instead of a preacher? It was sort of moot, but she said the answer was very clear: Yes! [4]

So, when I called her up on Oct. 18 that fall, with no preface at all, and asked her to go out with me, and presented her with an engagement ring, she had her answer ready.

Why did I change my mind? Because my heart had not made the change. When you are in love, all the reasons why you should not marry just fade into insignificance.

What happened to all my concern and care for my family? Poor Helen! She got 45 years of that, too!

John Robert McFarland

1] Maybe something worse. Helen was so shocked she isn’t sure she remembered it accurately.

2] Also called Northern Baptists, to distinguish their theology from that of the Southern Baptists.

3] Presbyterians didn’t get around to ordaining women until 1965.

4] She can’t remember which UP town it was where she saw the garbage guys at work. Maybe didn’t even know its name then. But there is only one highway to loop around the UP, US 2, so it’s possible it was Iron Mountain, where we lived 50 years later. That’s a fun coincidence to consider.

OLD AGE BRAGGING [W, 2-12-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Regrets of An Old Man—OLD AGE BRAGGING [W, 2-12-25]

 

Well, I did it. Something I had pledged never to do. There are many things I have pledged never to do, having done them before to great embarrassment and chagrin, but this particular broken pledge is about old-age oneupmanship.

I was sitting on a bench outside the walk-in clinic--where I had to go for x-rays because the machine in my doctor’s office was broken—waiting for Helen to bring the car around, to spare my painful hip the walk to the parking lot.

As old man walked by me. Well, almost. He got by me but then circled back. He needed to talk to someone who would understand. “We’re old, aren’t we?” he said.

Well, he was wrong, of course. People sometimes think that I’m old because of my gray beard or my absence of hair. Gray beards are simply distinguished, but I made the mistake of telling Helen’s hair cutter, as she was “trimming” mine, that Helen thought I looked more intelligent with short hair, so Kate decided to make me look like a genius. No, I’m sure he thought we were kindredly elderly not because I look old but because I had a cane.

Anyway, I wanted to be kind to him, since he was old, so I acknowledged the truth of his declaration. Mistake. “I’m 86,” he proclaimed proudly.

Old age bragging rights! I noticed them first when I started calling in the homes of old people when I was a young pastor. Those denizens of past years delighted in telling me how old they were and how many surgeries they’d had and how many spouses they had outlived. I didn’t really think that any of that was worth bragging about. They weren’t really achievements.

It was even worse when old people were together, standing around after church, or sitting together at a potluck. Constant oneupmanship. I’m older than you! I’m sicker than you! I’ve had more operations than you! I’m more decrepit than you!

I vowed I would never be like that

But when that guy said he was 86, and he was so proud of it, well, I said, “You’re just a kid. I’m 88!”

Immediately I knew what I had done. He needed to be proud that he had endured, but I was so eager to win the old age competition that I just threw cold water on his “achievement” by comparing it to mine.

I scrambled to make it up, and was successful, I think, because he got to brag that he is so old that he has a child who is 65, and my oldest one is only 63. I was gracious in acknowledging that he won that one. That made us even, almost, I hope.

I think now that when I get old, I’ll better understand what motivates this competition. I was wrong when I was young to think that many years and many operations and many pains were not achievements. Endurance is an achievement, something to be proud of.

Also, though, something that doesn’t need to be compared to the endurance of others to be worthwhile.

 I’m so much older than everybody else that I am wise like that!

John Robert McFarland

RENOUNCING THE DEVIL [M, 2-10-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—RENOUNCING THE DEVIL [M, 2-10-25]

 

One of my cousins, in her 80s, raised her great-grandson. Two generations of their family were either unable or unwilling to provide a home for him. I greatly admire her. Raising a child is difficult at any age, but in your 80s?

At his confirmation, like any thirteen-year-old, he was a bit anxious, being up in front of all those people in a solemn ceremony, and distracted, so when the pastor asked him, “Do you renounce the devil and all his works?” he looked quite startled and shouted out, “No!”

My cousin was quite relieved when they got it sorted out. It wasn’t because, coming into puberty, he thought the devil and all his works might be quite appealing, like Brutus P. Thornapple, of “The Born Loser” comic strip, who, when asked by his pastor if he were troubled by bad thoughts, said, “No, I rather enjoy them.” The boy had heard the reverse of what he had been asked; he thought he was being asked to affirm the devil and all his works.

Pastor, congregation, and great-grandmother all had a big and relieved laugh together.

These are times when it is easy to become anxious and distracted. Indeed, the devil tries to confuse us so that we’ll not hear correctly the question God puts to us. We are asked by so many forces in the world, in so many ways, to affirm the devil and all his works.

The only way we renounce the devil and all his works is by loving. Love is the only thing that trumps the devil. [Yes, I understand my use of that word.]

If we try to defeat the devil with anything other than love, we shall fail.

Love is not weakness. It does not try to avoid confronting evil. It uses all the power that God provides. That power of God is love.

But love is not vengeance. It is not disrespect. It is not schadenfreude. Love is patient and kind. Love is not boastful. It’s not proud. It keeps no scorecard of wrongs. It is faithful. It is hopeful. Love never fails. [I Corinthians 13 paraphrased]

I’ve had contact recently with a distant friend whose wife died. He said, “I’ve been comforted by something you wrote a long time ago. ‘Love and I looked death in the eye; death blinked.’”

As we travel through these current dangerous and difficult times, God asks us, “Do you renounce the devil and all his works?” It is important to remember that the only way to renounce the devil and all his works is by loving God and all of God’s works, all that God loves.

John Robert McFarland

We know that there are approximately 2.3 million grandparents raising grandchildren in the US, but there are no stats on the number of great-grandparents in that role. From my own pastoral experience, though, I know that there are way too many, far more than we realize.

SHORT STORY SALVATION [Sat, 2-8-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man—SHORT STORY SALVATION [Sat, 2-8-25]

 

[Warning redux: This is my birthday month, so the February columns are mundanely personal…at least, until spring training starts.]

Mrs. Powers gave me an old copy of “Capper’s Weekly” to take to Mother, for the recipes and hints on canning. On the way home, I looked into the magazine and found a story. Just a few pages. I read the whole thing before I got home.

I was astounded. You didn’t have to write a whole book to tell a whole story. It didn’t have to be the length of Treasure Island or Two Years Before the Mast. It could be whole in just a few pages, the time it took to walk the dirt road between the Powers house and ours.

I was eleven years old. I didn’t know then that as a literary genre, they were known as “Short Stories,” [Duh?] but I knew I had discovered something significant, something for a lifetime. I knew that I wanted to read short stories. I knew that I wanted to write short stories.

I did not know then that a sermon is a short story. I thought when I agreed to be a preacher that I would have to give up writing stories. Preaching, instead, was a fulfillment of that short story aspiration.

For sixty years, I told short stories from a pulpit. They were called sermons. That’s what it said in the worship bulletin-Sermon. But they were really short stories, about how God relates to the world and the creatures in it, each one a story in whole, that has no beginning and no ending.

Rarely did I actually write them. Yes, in the early days of my preaching, the days of Civil Rights and Viet Nam, I would write a manuscript, so that I could prove to some critic what I actually said rather than what they misunderstood me to say.

Also, because church and clergy periodicals sometimes wanted to print those sermons. It was easier to have a manuscript already prepared than to try to recreate it from memory. Once cassette recorders became common, though, I just recorded the sermon. If a copy were needed, it was simple enough for my secretary to take it off the tape.

Stories are always in the imagination before they are on the page. The “oral tradition” is much older than the printed page or the computer screen.

The Bible is not a book, a novel; it’s a collection of short stories.

The Gospel is not a book, a novel; it’s a collection of short stories.

When a tyrant tries to take over a nation, he wants to write a novel, a book, a long book, like Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich. It is difficult for the rest of us to write a book when the tyrant has the only pen. But there is still time to tell a short story, one that can be read even on a short and dusty road. We combat the long book of evil by telling the short stories of love.

John Robert McFarland

I say that Mrs. Powers gave me a “Capper’s Weekly,” but it might have been a “Collier’s.” There were several general-interest magazines then that included short stories. We could not afford to buy magazines, or subscribe to them, but neighbors kindly shared magazines with us when they were through with them. I loved them all.

My short story awakening did not cause me to give up on books. I’ve read plenty of them. Even wrote a few. Still read them. But I read books in short story form—a few pages at a time. Indeed, at any given time, I have 6 or 8 books in my “page a day” rotation, which is exactly what it says. I love to see how the authors and stories react to one another. Yes, sometimes I take 610 days to read a book. It’s how I judge the ability of an author, to hold my attention from day to day.

FLATTENED [R, 2-6-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man—FLATTENED [R, 2-6-25]

 

It was a lunch hour pickup football game. I was assigned to block Tommy Houchins. He was a 200 lb senior. I was a 100 pound 8^th grader. He growled, “If you get in my way, I’ll flatten you.” I think it was the only time he ever talked to me.

No, the seniors didn’t haze the 8^th graders, or mistreat us in general. They basically ignored us, except to refer to us as “those little 8^th graders.” It was an apt description. Most of us were little still, thirteen years old, barely into puberty, just beginning high school growth.

For some reason, in Oakland City, high school started with 8^th grade. Lunch-time pickup games included anyone who wanted in, even little 8^th graders. But we didn’t get to touch the ball, like throw it or catch it. We were assigned to the line…across from people like Tommy Houchins.

Folks usually don’t believe me when I say that high school was an idyllic time. Oh, sure, there were the usual academic woes concerning algebra, and the romantic tragedies of real or imagined rejection, but kids really were nice to one another. This was the 1950s. Niceness was expected, and rewarded. Yes, we made fun of one another. If a boy wore those green or gray work pants to school instead of blue jeans, we’d say, “You going to a funeral?” Miss Grace Robb frowned even on that, and we liked Miss Robb and wanted to please her, so we tried to keep out of her hearing when we made rude remarks.

Which brings me back to the offensive line, and Tommy Houchins. I was caught between a rusher and a quarterback. I didn’t want to let my team down, by letting Tommy through, but I didn’t want to get flattened, either. So, I tried to make it look to my teammates, especially my quarterback, that I was trying to block Tommy, while not actually getting in his way. It didn’t work. Tommy flattened me, and my teammates were disgusted with me, especially the QB, since Tommy flattened him, too.

You would think that the point here is that I learned my lesson and no longer tried to appease both sides of opposing forces. Not so at all! I continued that through my whole life, even though I learned then, and over and over, that there is no way you can please everybody.

But I take satisfaction from knowing that each time I got flattened, even though I was trying to avoid flattening, and each time my teammates got disgusted with me, even though I was trying to avoid their odium, it meant that I had lined up in the right place, on the right side.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

HOW MANY JOHN MCFARLANDS DOES IT TAKE TO… [T, 2-4-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—HOW MANY JOHN MCFARLANDS DOES IT TAKE TO… [T, 2-4-25]

 

Today is my birthday, so I looked up John McFarland on Google. Turns out that there are 1316 people in the US—mostly men, I assume--named John McFarland, “in places like Ohio,” it goes on to say, as though Ohio might be an especially useful place to be named John McFarland. I guess so; I was born there. So was my great-grandfather, John White McFarland. [1]

I had no idea there are so many of us. We could have a club.

It wouldn’t be nearly as big as the Jim Smith Society. The folks of that name, male and female [Yes, they admit Jimmies] even have an annual convention, no name tags required. They are never embarrassed by forgetting the name of another attendee.

Several years ago, we checked into a motel in East Lansing, MI, on a trip to bring granddaughter Brigid home for a college break. The receptionist was confused. She had us down both for one night and for two. Helen thought it might be because she [Helen] had called twice, because she had to make a change from the original reservation. But the receptionist decided it was probably because another John McFarland was involved, because, she said. “It’s a very common name.”

Really? In East Lansing, Michigan? She must have grown up in Ohio.

Well, yes, I know that it’s a common name, but not quite as common as Jim Smith. Also, I’m the only one with that name, except for my father and the other 1316.

Back when I was in college, all basketball players were named Johnson or something similar. Watching college basketball now, I’m often confused by the hyphenated last names of players. When you know the name only from hearing the commentators announce it, or mispronounce it, it often sounds like they are calling a player by first and last names, like Winston Morgan when he played for IU. For some reason other players were called only by last names, but he was always given both. Once someone referred to him only as Morgan and I had no idea who they were talking about. That’s why the names of players should always be on the backs of their jerseys. But these days, with a hyphenated name like Rodriguez-Wojtowicz, the letters are so small they are hard to read.

Hyphenated names have always existed, but they got a real boost from the women’s lib movement of the 1960s. [The movement for full rights for women had been going on for a long time, in various ways, but it wasn’t until the ‘60s that it was regularly called women’s liberation.] As women protested losing their family identity by taking the names of their husbands, one of the solutions was using both names, with hyphens. A couple of those couples were personal acquaintances, the Neufer-Emswilers and the Birkhahn-Rommelfangers. We often wondered what they would do if a child of the Neufer-Emswilers married a child of the Birkhahn-Rommelfangers. They certainly could not play basketball.

Anyway, today I am doubly infinitized. [An 8 horizontally is the sign for infinity.] So I feel doubly blessed. Thank you for being part of that birthday blessing.

John Robert McFarland

1] There is probably a simple migratory reason why John McFarlands proliferate in Ohio. Scots-Irish folk immigrated to America primarily in southern Virginia and the Carolinas and then--the never-quite-satisfied-with-where-they-be people that McFarlands are--worked their way up through Appalachia to Ohio and Indiana.

 

In Scotland we heard a folk singer warble, in Celtic, a song, when translated into English, says, “Grab your spears and grab your wife and run for your life, because the McFarlands are coming.” Consider yourself warned.

When a history professor of daughter Katie learned that her father was a McFarland and her mother a Kerr [pronounced Karr], he turned pale. What kind of offspring might come from the two most notorious Scots clans?

 

 

IS IT WRONG TO BE PROUD OF YOURSELF? [SU, 2-2-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man—IS IT WRONG TO BE PROUD OF YOURSELF? [SU, 2-2-25]

 

[Warning: It’s my birth month, and it may be my last. Nothing imminent—no dread disease. But I’ve had a whole lot of birth months now, so… Anyway, I’m doing personal reflections this month, while I can, just writing about my own life. It might be boring. You could check back at Lent to see if I’ve gotten beyond myself.]

Is it self-indulgent, or a mark of hubris, or illusionary…to be proud of yourself for… working hard and making something of yourself…bragging about how far you came… well, yes, I always thought so. I mean, you can always find folks who had it harder than you did. But…

I saw an interview with Sophia Loren. She was a lonely, skinny girl in southern Italy. Her father was gone. She and her mother barely had enough to eat. Her mother entered her at age 14 in a local beauty contest because they needed the prize money. She didn’t want to be in the contest, because she thought her mouth and nose were too big. Apparently they were, because she won only second place. But it was enough for them to move to Rome, where she got a job modeling.

As she assessed her career, in her 80s, she said, “I think it’s okay now to say I’m proud of myself. It’s not bragging. It’s just being authentic. I had a really hard time as a girl, but I worked hard, and I made something of myself.”

Well, I figure that if an old lady like Sophia [She’s 3 years older than I] can be proud of herself for working hard and making something of herself, then so can I. I hope it’s authentic instead of boastful.

My parents were born in the first decade of the 20^th century. They both grew up in primitive conditions—well for water, outhouse, coal stoves, walking or using a horse to get some place. That was normal for their time.

It was not normal, though, after WWII, when I was ten and they moved us to a primitive little farm, but primitive was our lifestyle, anyway. It was all we could afford. All our neighbors by then had indoor plumbing, running water, central heat, cars instead of horses. We had none of those things.

On top of that, my father was blind and could not get a job. My mother had to apply for Aid to Dependent Children—welfare, which automatically made us “welfare chiselers.” We had an income of $85 per month, $1200 per month in today’s dollars. $14,400 per year. It wasn’t much for six people.

My first jobs didn’t pay anything. My father would trade the labor of the two of us together—building fence, making hay, picking corn, etc—for chicken feed…literally. But as soon as I was able, I took any paying job I could get—detasseling corn, picking tomatoes, jack of all trades in a combo grocery/service station, night shift in a factory. My family needed the money.

I was self-reliant out of necessity. If I did not have something, I assumed that I should do something about it. If I were lonely, I should make a friend or read a book. If I couldn’t do that until all the farm work was done, then I should get the farm work done as efficiently as possible. If my sister was dying, I should make a deal with God to save her. If I wanted to go to town, I should hitchhike or walk. I knew nobody else was going to do it for me. I don’t say that in a despairing way. I had lots of help in many ways. But I knew the real action in my life had to be done by me.

Our neighbors and church folk thought that was normal for someone my age. They had grown up that way. They liked to tell me about it, about their young years. Their stories made it sound normal. Because I lived like that, I understood and appreciated their stories. I didn’t think my story was anything special.

But they no longer lived like that, planting fields of sweet corn by hand, using horses instead of tractors, going without cars. They had furnaces and indoor bathrooms and running water, while I was growing up without those things.

They praised hand-cranked ice cream but that is about the only thing the old people and I had in common

Living that same way that old people had lived earlier, though, served me well in pastoring older people in my early years of ministry, because in lifestyle there was no age gap. Older people accepted me in spite of my youth.

Yes, there were probably two or three other kids in Oakland City who lived the primitive life that I did when we were in school, but very few. They had indoor toilets and cars.

Only now that I am almost 90 do I really understand how different my life was from my peers. Their parents or grands may have lived the primitive farm life, still much alive in story, but they never had.

Coupled with the absence of money and the stigma of welfare, I was a real outlier. It was like running a hundred-yard dash when you have to start ten yards behind the line where everyone else starts. I’m proud that I managed to run the whole race. I hope that doesn’t sound boastful.

I think it’s okay for you—regardless of how different your story may be from mine, or any other—to be proud of what you’ve accomplished, too.

John Robert McFarland

CRITICAL OLD PEOPLE [F, 1-31-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—CRITICAL OLD PEOPLE [F, 1-31-25]

 

Old people like to help younger people learn the truth, by criticizing them for not having the truth already.

There was a campus minister at my university who liked correcting people. I’ll call him Floyd. I didn’t go to many campus ministry programs, because I was already preaching at three little churches, but I was madly in love with the secretary of the student cabinet [officers] of that campus ministry, so I hung around the building whenever I thought she might be there. Thus, even I did not escape Floyd’s corrections.

I think he saw saving people from their mistakes as part of his ministry. That is not how others saw it. They just saw a guy who liked to find fault.

Correcting a factual mistake might actually be helpful to the person corrected. For instance, if I thought that Illinois Wesleyan U is in Indiana, I could be saved some travel problems if someone corrected me.

I had gone to chapel once at ILWU to hear a well-known high-ranking church guy from NYC. But he called Chaplain Bill White just before chapel time to say he wasn’t going to make it. He was calling from Bloomington, Indiana to say he had flown there instead of to Bloomington, Illinois. Why in the world he thought Illinois Wesleyan was in Bloomington, Indiana he never explained. Some correction would have benefited him.

But Floyd didn’t really correct you, even your factual mistakes, in a useful manner. Instead, he belittled you for not already having the correct knowledge. He would have said, “What? You thought IWU was in IN? Where did you go to school?”

Correcting others for matters of opinion is even more problematic. “The trees are pretty,” some student might say. Floyd would reply, “Maybe to you they are, but to someone who has just lost a loved one to a gruesome death, nothing is pretty, and it’s an insult to them to say the trees are pretty.”

People just stopped talking to him, or in front of him.

Nobody really likes being corrected. As Mark Twain said, “I love learning, but I hate being taught.” Yet old people seem to think that since we acquired so much knowledge over our many years, we should impart it whether folks want it or not. Especially, we should correct their mistakes so they don’t make them again.

Being corrected is belittling. Young people lump it into a category called “judgy.”

Correcting a person’s factual mistakes can be helpful, to keep them from looking stupid in front of others. But there is a limit to how helpful that might be. If you split an infinitive, I could correct your grammar, but hardly anybody would care, and you probably wouldn’t, either.

In my retirement, I served as a sort of unofficial, unpaid Assistant District Superintendent. Our DS sent me out to little churches to hear new preachers and help them learn to preach better. I was glad to do so, but I told him, and them, that I would report to him only the things they did well. I saw my job not as correcting mistakes, but as building on their good points.

The job of old people is to help young people get better at living. Criticism rarely, if ever, does that. Affirmation of what we’re already doing okay at, I think, is what works best. [And don’t even think about correcting my placement of “at” in that sentence.]

John Robert McFarland

January of 2025 is over. It has certainly been a momentous month. I pray that your new month of February will be a good one.

 

 

 

 

 

MOTHER AND DEI [W, 1-29-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man—MOTHER AND DEI [W, 1-29-25]

 

We’ve heard a lot recently about DEI, mostly from the people who are opposed to diversity, equality, and inclusion. My mother, though, a long time ago, was a DEI advocate, although she thought of it as just being a good person.

Because my mother was so inconsistent in so many discombobulating ways, I don’t think I gave her the credit she deserved for being consistent—for her time and place—in one very significant way.

We lived in the working class near east side of Indianapolis from 1941-1947. Our next-door neighbor, at 232 N. Oakland Ave, was a woman known only as Mrs. Dickerson. I think she was the only African-American in all of Englewood, certainly in the Lucretia Mott PS # 3 area. I knew the area well, up and down Washington St. [US 40 at the time] and New York St. I walked to the Tacoma Theater, East Park Methodist Church, the Blue Ribbon Ice Cream store, various Mom & Pop grocery stores, Vic’s Drug Store, Cub Scout pack. In all those forays, I never saw anybody who was not white.

Except there was a black woman right next door. Why she was there, in the midst of all those white folks, I don’t think anyone knew.

I don’t recall anyone treating her badly, or even saying rude things. Partly, I suppose, because she never left her house, even to go into her yard. Occasionally, though, she would be on her screened back porch when my mother was hanging up clothes in our yard. That was when Mother would go over and stand beside Mrs. Dickerson’s porch and chat with her. They became friends, of a sort, the sort that called each other Mrs. Dickerson and Mrs. McFarland.

Sometimes Mrs. Dickerson would ask permission of Mother to let me run an errand to a store for her. I was only eight or nine, but I ran those sorts of errands for Mother, and Indianapolis was not the gun-murder capital of the world, as it is now, so Mother always gave permission. I think I was the only white person who was ever in Mrs. Dickerson’s house, going into her porch to deliver a loaf of bread or bottle of milk, and her change, from which she gave me a nickel. I wasn’t about to be a racist!

Mother wasn’t without prejudice. Even though she was Democrat enough to be a poll worker, she refused to vote for Adlai Stevenson because he was divorced, and she was sure the divorce was his fault, for anything that went wrong in a marriage was the husband’s fault.

No, not just her marriage; everybody’s! When Helen and I were stopped dating for a short time during college, Mother wrote to her demanding to know what I had done to cause the “breakup.” [Ironically, it was because I did not think that I could both marry and take care of my parents and young siblings.]

Despite that prejudice, Mother always insisted that people should be judged on their individual merits, not according to race or religion or any of the other categories we use to discriminate. It was the one thing about which she was totally consistent.

Her inconsistencies in all of the rest of life drove me crazy to the day she died, but I will always value what she taught me about how to treat people who were denied equality and inclusion.

John Robert McFarland

 

BEFORE THE FIRE GOES OUT {M, 1-27-25]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Forgetfulness of An Old Man—BEFORE THE FIRE GOES OUT {M, 1-27-25]

 

When I was in college, a common exclamation was, “Forget you!” I suppose Keota, Iowa—at least the Presbyterians there—might want to say that to me.

“Keota” in the Native American language of eastern Iowa means “the fire has gone out,” which is highly appropriate, for the fire has gone out in my memory about Keota. I don’t have even a glimmer of memory about Keota, or the Presbyterian Church there, even though I apparently preached there almost every Sunday for three months in 1972, when I was a PhD student at the U of Iowa.

I know this because I have been going through files—many, many files—of old stuff I have saved through the years, recycling most of it so that my children will not have to mess with it when I’m gone. One of those files is full of Sunday morning worship bulletins from the Keota Presbyterian Church, bulletins that list my name beside “Sermon.” Not only my name is listed beside “Sermon,” but there is a title each week, too. They sound a lot like my sermons; every title has “story” in it!

I was a Presbyterian preacher during my U of Iowa days because the Director of the University School of Religion was James Spalding, an ordained Presbyterian himself, and the de facto “bishop” of Presbyterianism in eastern Iowa. Whenever a church was between or without a preacher, it would call up Jim and ask him to send out somebody to fill the pulpit. I was technically Jim’s Teaching Asst, but neither of us did much teaching. I was more of an assistant director, doing whatever he assigned me, which was often going to meetings of the trustees or potential donors, since he didn’t like meetings. I didn’t, either, but I needed the money. Both from being Jim’s assistant, and from filling at little churches where he sent me. Including Keota. I guess.

The next year, I pastored, not just preached, parttime, at two Presbyterian Churches, Red Oak Grove and Stanwood, about the same distance northeast from Iowa City that Keota is southeast from there. I remember almost everything about them. So why don’t I remember Keota from the year before?

Forgetfulness is one of the main complaints of old people. Recently one of my former colleagues was very helpful to Helen as she negotiated some tricky insurance paper work. When she thanked him, he said, “Oh, I owed you. Your husband gave me the best advice I ever got.” Now I’m trying to remember what I told him. I could use some good advice. But…

I recently figured up that I have known almost ten thousand people by first and last names. In sorting through old files, I have found notes from many of them. I don’t recognize most of the names, or if I recognize the name, I have no memory of the person who goes with it. That’s probably not surprising. Most of us can’t relate to more than a few dozen people at a time, keeping them sorted out in our minds. That’s for a good reason. It would be overwhelming to me to remember ten thousand people. My brain protects me by dropping out those that seem least important right now.

So, as you do some old-age forgetting, remember that it’s because you have so much more stuff to keep in your memory vault now, but you have no more storage space that you ever had. Your brain is just protecting you by dropping out the irrelevant stuff.

I hope I can remember that, at least more than I remember Keota.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

 

BEACON PEOPLE: LYNN RINGER [SA, 1-25-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Sometimes Relevant Memories of An Old Man—BEACON PEOPLE: LYNN RINGER [SA, 1-25-25]

 Lynn Ringer died recently. 87 years old. They said she would die at 20.

Twenty is when she got ovarian cancer. The survival rate then was 1 [one] %.

She and a friend had moved away from their small town in North Dakota to live together in a city and have careers. Instead of a career, she got cancer. One night, in the hospital all alone, she spoke to the cancer. “Well, one percent means somebody will live, and it might as well be me.”

The next day a new oncologist came to see her. Not only new to her, but new to oncology. Paul Hamilton had been a pathologist but decided he didn’t want to deal with diseases only. He wanted to deal with people. He said to his new patient, “Well, one percent means somebody will live, and it might as well be you.”

The tall, beautiful young woman and the short, wily old man formed an immediate bond. Their story is told in the book, I’m a Patient, Too, By Albert Fay Hill. Paul understood that a cancer patient might listen better, and feel more supported, by a fellow patient than by a doctor. He began to take Lynn with him on his rounds. From that beginning came Cansurmount, the cancer support program, patient to patient.

That is common now, but it was novel in the 1960s. It was still new when Helen and I went to Iliff Theological Seminary in Denver in the summer of 1990 for a course called “Empowering the Cancer Patient,” lead by Lynn and Paul and fellow-survivor and theologian, John Anduri.

Only six months before, the pale oncologist had told me “A year, or two.” I needed empowering.

It was a fascinating class. I was the only one with cancer, so Helen became almost another instructor, for she had insights as a cancer spouse that no one else had. Most class members were Iliff students, but mature, second career people: A retired school superintendent. A minister whose wife was dying from cancer. A professional bounty hunter, who plied his trade on the weekend while he was in seminary. A few in addition to us who were there just for the one class: A nun. A reclusive woman in a wheelchair. An accountant.

The accountant, Judy, was fun. She said, “Accounting is so boring. One day I was driving by here, and saw the sign and thought, ‘Theology school. That looks interesting, so I just came in to sign up. When I told a friend, she said, ‘But shouldn’t you do something else first… like go to church?” She ended up marrying a preacher she met in that class.

Helen and I became fast friends with John and Paul and especially with Lynn. We stayed in touch. She was a pilot and would fly from Denver to Illinois to see us.

One day toward the end of the summer, John asked us each to say where we wanted to be in twenty years. I said, “I want to be sitting in the chair Lynn’s in now, and say the same thing she said twenty years ago. ‘Somebody’s going to live. It might as well be me.’”

I got to do that.

There are people in this life who are light house beacons. For me, one of those was Lynn. One of the joys of old age is getting to see the life of a friend in wholeness, from start to finish. “Well done, good and faithful servant.” I give thanks for Lynn, for her inspiration, for her friendship, for her life.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

HONOR THE SABBATH, TO KEEP IT MERCENARY [R, 1-23-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Complaints of An Old Man—HONOR THE SABBATH, TO KEEP IT MERCENARY [R, 1-23-25]

 

The silence-obliteration guys were doing their thing, with great success, for two weeks before Christmas. For some reason, our condo HOA cannot stand having even one leaf anywhere in our six or so square blocks. We pay to have every leaf blown over into Illinois.

But Sunday is a day of rest, right? It’s the sabbath. Not really, but we call Sunday the sabbath, which means it should be a day of peacefulness and quiet. Especially in the Christmas season. Not so, if there is even one leaf left. To people with leaf-obliteration equipment, Sunday is just another day.

One Sunday afternoon, as they scouted for miscreant leaves, they decided to park ALL their equipment, for a very long time, on the sidewalk five feet from the front of our house, all of it running, because it is never turned off. We were on sofas about six feet apart. We quite literally could not hear each other.

Yes, I was and am irritated, but more on behalf of those poor leaf-blowing guys than for myself. They had to have that noise in their heads ever since the first leaf hit the ground, even with those ear-muff things on their heads, because with that machinery, it’s not just the sound. You can feel it as well as hear it.

No Sunday sabbath, no day of peace and quiet, for them.

When I worked at Moe’s while in high school, his was the only gas station/grocery store open on Sunday in Oakland City. Moe did not like to get up early, and he liked to visit family on Sundays, so I got to open up and close up and work all day.

When we moved to Normal, IL in 1966, there was only one gas station that stayed open on Sundays and holidays. Bob Hohenstreiter was a nice man who kept his Marathon station open. He said he did it because somebody had to provide service for the folks who got caught without enough gas, or needed a start. It was a ministry for him, even though he would not call it that. He never charged for his labor on those days, only for the gas or battery or such.

 I never thought of pumping gas and slicing bologna at Moe’s on Sunday as a ministry. I made fifty cents an hour; I was rich. I was definitely in favor of everyone else observing Sunday “blue laws,” so that I could make money. When I became a preacher, I was still the only guy working on Sunday. Until… when did we decide that everybody needed to be able to shop any time, all the time?

We didn’t actually decide it. When Ronald Reagan destroyed the middle class, it became necessary for every family to have two incomes to survive. With everyone working, there is no time for shopping…unless the stores stay open, and the loop continues.

 

One of the reasons so many businesses are understaffed are the current 24/7/365 open hours.

We need a sabbath, both from working and from buying, a day that really is “a day of rest.” Those workers need a sabbath, a day of rest, a day without noise and bad vibrations. But nobody gets a sabbath anymore, and it shows in the vulgarity and crassness and rudeness and ugliness of our culture.

The culture is no longer going to provide a sabbath day, so it is up to each one of us to create a sabbath of our own. That’s just the way it is. Not Remember the Sabbath…but… Create the Sabbath…

John Robert McFarland

Bonus Observation: “With God, time is eternity in disguise.” Abraham Heschel

 

HELPING THE PUNY & FEEBLE [T, 1-21-25]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—HELPING THE PUNY & FEEBLE [T, 1-21-25]

 

Helen and I have been sick with colds for a couple of weeks. Friends have offered to help us, and they’ve gone ahead and done it. That’s tricky, helping old people, because we really do need help, often, but we usually don’t want to take it, because it cuts into our independence. So, here’s what I’m thinking about that…

Most of my life was spent with church people, but I also got to be part of other communities--theater, music, social justice, coffee house, cancer… For a long time, the running community was important to me.

I enjoyed running companions. Sweating and panting are great equalizers. In the running community, I wasn’t “the preacher,” just another guy struggling to survive. Dick and I lived in the same neighborhood, so often ended up in a group of three or four who encountered one another on the streets and then ran together.

One day I said I had to quit early to go to one of daughter Katie’s cross-country meets. I said it had been difficult, but in 12 years of having children in school, I had never missed one of their school events—academics, band, drama, sports, etc. I knew that Dick’s daughter ran on the cross-country team, so I asked him if he were going to the meet, too.

He rather self-righteously, or so it seemed to me, pronounced that he had never seen his daughter in any school event. That was her world, not his. She needed to learn how to negotiate in her world by herself. [I was probably projecting the self-righteousness, since I probably sounded self-righteous in bragging about going to the activities of my daughters.]

The meaning was clear: he was a better parent than I, because he neglected his children. That’s the way I heard it, and it both angered and confused me.

I’m still confused. Did Dick really think that was best? Did he think any psychologist would agree with him, that being that absent in a kid’s life was good for them? Did he do it to help his daughter, really, or just to make it easy on himself? Did it actually work?

I don’t know the answer to that last question. She and my daughter were nominal friends. She seemed like a nice girl. But we moved away before I got to see her as an adult.

My guess, though, is that she was okay. My pastoral counseling professor, Carroll Wise, used to say that if your kids know you love them and know that you are well-intentioned, they will forgive you a lot of parenting mistakes.

I once called on an elderly lady in a church where I had just been appointed pastor. We had a nice conversation. She told me how much her adult daughter helped her, how well the daughter was doing, despite some difficult circumstances, including the death of her husband. “But,” she said, “these days you never know how a kid is going to turn out.”

The “kid” was fifty-three years old, and a university professor.

There is some relationship truth in what Dick said. Even as old people, we sometimes need to step back and let folks do things for themselves, admit that it’s their world.

What’s the right mix, though, of helping and backing off? Who knows?

I’m old enough that I need help, but not too much help. I need to be able to do some things for myself, from getting my coat on to preparing to die.

Do the best you can. I know you’re well-intentioned. I’ll forgive you if you overhelp.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

I’M IN THE POOR HOUSE NOW [Sun, 1-19-25] Inauguration Special

BEYOND WINTER: The Somewhat Relevant Songs of An Old Man—I’M IN THE POOR HOUSE NOW [Sun, 1-19-25] Inauguration Special

 

To the tune of He’s in The Jail House Now.

I used to be a young man

Everything was oh so grand

I thought I would be good forever more

But I found out on Monday

That I got real old on Sunday

And now I’m so weak I can barely stand

 

I’m in the poor house now

I’m in the poor house now

Whatever could I do

They said it’s Shady Pines for you

I’m in the poor house now

 

My wild oats have all been sown

Every time I move I moan

I’m getting’ ready to face that final door

But I could still be neat and cool

I could move it like a dancing fool

If I could just get up from off the floor

 

I’m in the poor house now

I’m in the poor house now

I stagger when I try to walk

The words escape me when I talk

I’m in the poor house now

 

Remember the last election

Everybody was in action

Trying to find themselves a president

Now the country’s full of tension

There goes my old-age pension

Only rich folks make it now

 

I’m in the poor house now

I’m in the poor house now

If you elect yourselves a dope

You better trust in God and hope

I’m in the poor house now

 

John Robert McFarland

The “poor house” was the way society took care of the infirm old people before Social Security. In many ways, it was a good system. You lived in a big house with other old people, under the supervision of a younger couple, and helped with gardening and cooking and whatever you could. You had shelter and food, and most importantly, community.

Jimmie Rodgers wrote He’s In The Jailhouse Now. Many others also recorded it. You can hear most of them on You Tube. It was sung by the Soggy Bottom Boys in the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?. I’m indebted to Blind Blake [Arthur Blake] for the inspiration for my last verse.

 

 

 

 

 

RAGE WITHIN [F, 1-17-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Psychology of An Old Man—RAGE WITHIN [F, 1-17-25]

 

There is a rage deep within each of us. It is because we know life is futile, because we shall die, so what’s the point?

That undifferentiated rage is down at the bottom, below a lot of other layers, but it is there. It is what motivates everything else we do. Without conscious knowledge of it.

It is not just anger. Anger is at the upper levels. Rage is at the foundation. We recognize anger, can even “manage” it. Rage is beneath consciousness.

Adler said all that we do is motivated by the desire for power. Freud said it was sex. Jung said it was the collective unconscious.

 

Adler is right. The desire for power is the attempt to counter the deep rage. If I can just get power, I can hold death off. My world of power might be very small, perhaps just one other person, but if I can have that power, I am invincible. This is the source of rape, especially the most common rape, men against women. It is from the wombs of women that life, and thus death, comes. If I can have power against the life source, even in the life source, I can have power against death.

 

Freud is right for the same reason. Sex is the power to create life. If I can create life, I can hold off death. This is why poor people refuse to stop having babies, even when they cannot afford them. This is why pro-birth advocates are so often paradoxical, being only pro-birth, not really pro-life. They are also pro-gun and pro-capital punishment, sources of power over death.

 

Jung is right. In the collective unconscious is the deep rage against the futility of life.

 

John S. Dunne, SJ, says there are three strangers that come to us in life: the world, sexuality, and mortality. We experience “the world” mostly in other people, but it is also nature and its ways. Come puberty, sexuality jumps on us like a tiger. Mortality is always lurking. Dunne says that life depends upon whether we make friends or enemies of these three strangers.

I add a fourth stranger. I call that stranger Christ, but I do so knowing that other people call that stranger--the Word of God in the world, the Presence of God in the world--by other names.

 

If we make friends with God through Christ, all else follows into wholeness, including the world and sexuality and mortality. If we are enemies with God, the deep rage conquers, and we are enemies with the world and sexuality and mortality, enemies of the world and other people and our own true selves.

Jesus said, “I call you friends.” [John 15:15]

The Wisdom Literature of The Bible [Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon] says Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. I was quite taken with the Wisdom Lit when I was young. Now that I am old, I am not sure that the Wisdom Literature is all that wise.

Vanity, vanity, all is vanity? No, all is God.

John Robert McFarland