BEYOND WINTER: The Surprised
Revelations of An Old Man--
Daughter Katie Kennedy, the author [1], recently told of how impressed—if that is the right word—her pastor was when she learned that I had started preaching at 19, and went on until I was 87. Pastor Dani had the good sense to wait until she had graduated seminary, and had grown up a little, before she started to preach.
It is true that I had not intended to start preaching at 19, with a regular, every-Sunday, appointment. It is true that when I told the District Superintendent that I was thinking about being a preacher, that he said, “Good. You can start next Sunday.” It is true that I started preaching just because I did not know how to say “No.”
As I have thought about it these 70 years later, though, I realize that by 19 I had learned that I was competent. Growing up on the farm, and the affirmations of my Oakland City schoolmates, had shown me that even though I was too young to know how to do something, that I could learn how. I could learn by doing, and from those who were with me in the doing. [2]
I said this to Katie when she told me about Pastor Dani’s look of shock, upon learning how young I was when I started, and she said something that surprised me: “Yes, you knew you could learn, and also you did it because of your natural courage.”
Natural courage? I have never been a courageous person. I have been afraid most of my life—afraid of pain, of embarrassment, of failure, of judgment, of being rejected, of hurting someone’s feelings...
I have been courageous on only one front: unfairness.
I don’t mean equality. People who want to be unfair always accuse us fairness people of wanting equality. “Equality is not possible,” they say. “People are born with differing amounts of brain power, and physical power, etc.” Of course. Everybody knows that.
But despite different personal inborn speeds and different spots on the starting line, everyone can be given a fair chance to run the race. Fairness is always possible, even though equality is not.
I started early in my war on unfairness. I was barely four. We were living with my grandparents, because of The Great Depression. My four-years-older sister, Mary V, was allowed to eat white bread, because she was a mature eight-year-old and did what she wanted anyway, but my mother required me to eat brown bread, because, she claimed, it was healthier for a growing boy.
That was unfair. If Mary V got to eat less healthy bread, I should, too. I decided to protest, to demonstrate. I pushed my head into a niche of a wall, since that was the obvious way to protest brown bread. It got stuck.
I learned that protesting had a price. But I also learned that there are those who will join you if you protest. My five-foot grandmother pulled at the wall, content to tear the house down to save her favorite [only, at that time] grandson.
That disgust with unfairness never left me.
When I was growing up, racial prejudice was the great unfairness. I did not think that all black folks and all white folks were equal. Goodness, those big black ball players and sprinters were way more than equal to us skinny white boys. And it was manifestly unfair to say that they should not be allowed to play and race because they were “inferior.” Clearly, they were not.
Equality of opportunity, and treatment--by the law and the school and the church and every other public institution--are matters of fairness.
Racial unfairness is still with us. So is economic unfairness, and gender unfairness, and tax unfairness, and…
Unfairness still rankles me. Always has. I guess it brought out courage in me. Still does. But I like brown bread now.
John Robert McFarland
1] Katie’s most recent book, Did You Hear What Happened in Salem? will be out in about a week. Workman Press, so available wherever books are sold. All her other books are still in print, of course.
2] I have often said that
I learned more about ministry from Catherine Adams in 3 months on the Chrisney
Circuit than I did in seminary in 3 years.
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