CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—
On this day of
requisitioned Thanks
I am glad my life
is drawing to a close
Don’t get me wrong; I love
memories and puppies
and trees that weather
storms
But we can give thanks
in prose and prayer
only a finite number
before the infinite
appears
to beckon with new
memories and puppies and
trees
to weather storms
John Robert McFarland
CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--
We were visiting a daughter. She had been invited to a gathering of friends and didn’t want to miss it so she took us along, even though we were old and Methodist, and not likely to fit in with a bunch of Roman Catholics in their thirties and forties.
It was a pleasant occasion, back yard cookout on an evening of good weather. We were the oldest people there. Our daughter’s friends were being very careful around us, in a respectful way, for they were all Catholics, and they knew that I was a Methodist preacher. The host had gone to the university where I did my doctoral work, so he even introduced me to everyone as a theologian, not just as a preacher.
At one point I was sitting in a circle of 7 or 8 women. They sort of forgot about me, except for the woman beside me, who seemed especially uneasy as the subject turned to abortion. Everyone had an opinion, an uninformed opinion, an anecdotal opinion, different from every other opinion. They were all quite adamant that their opinion was best because it was backed up by a story they had heard from the friend of a cousin whose brother had been a priest. The woman beside me whispered, “Shouldn’t you say something about this?”
“I’m just a theologian,” I replied. She thought for a moment, then looked a bit sad as she said, “Oh, yeah…”
In this age of internet and social media, we not only ignore the educated, the informed, the specialists, but we don’t trust them. Their opinions count for less than those of the uneducated, uninformed, friends of cousins, and anonymous posters on the web.
Trust is now upside down. We now trust people who are ignorant or even people who are known liars. We mistrust people who are educated about a subject, people who rely on facts.
Trust now is based not on reality but on emotion. Trust is equated with emotional comfort.
It’s all Garrison Keillor’s fault. In his Lake Wobegon, all the children were above average. Those children are grown up now. They’ve accepted for so long that they are above average that they don’t need experts or specialists.
They are those whose gravestones will read, “I did my own research.”
Like the first emotional task of a baby, the last emotional task of an old person is learning to trust. A baby has to learn to trust parents and other care givers, who are stand-ins for God. An old person has to trust some care givers, yes, but they aren’t stand-ins for God. We are faced directly now with God. Shall we trust God for what is real and true, or shall we trust what we get from the internet, or a cousin’s friend?
You can tell the difference between true trust, trust in God and false trust by the way it makes you feel. False trust makes you feel comfortable. Trust in God makes you feel real.
John Robert McFarland
CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—
Illusions are good. Delusions not so much.
An illusion is when you pretend to be Meadowlark Lemon while you’re shooting hoops in the barnyard. A delusion is when you think you are Meadowlark Lemon. Or Christ. Or God, when you’re only the president.
Don Lemkau was the Minister of Visitation at Charleston [IL] Wesley UMC when I became Directing Minister there. I was 42. He was 72.
“The problem with middle-aged people,” he said to me, “is that they think they’ll never get old. But everybody gets old.”
I believed him. I knew I would get old. Now, though, now that I’m older than he was then, a whole lot older, I don’t just believe, I understand. I’m still sort of mad at him, though.
I mean, why did he bust my bubble, take away my illusion of eternal youth?
I’ve never understood the people who want to disillusion younger people about what will happen to them when they get older. I am especially irritated at older people who tell children how bad it will be “in the real world.” Okay, they’re correct, but why destroy the present with fear of the future? The real world is whatever your world is now. That’s where you have to live. And being able to live in the present real world sometimes requires some illusions.
As Jesus said, “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.” [Mt 6:34]
No, I’m not talking about lies, like saying “It’s okay” when you know it’s not okay, or the lies of omission, like refusing to tell someone that the doctor has said they’re going to die.
I’m talking about illusions like the one I told Kim Wagler, my first cancer nurse, during my first week of chemo. “I’m just not the kind of guy who gets side effects,” I said. It wasn’t a lie. I really believed it. And even though I was spectacularly wrong, it kept me going in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
Old people do a lot of denying. We think the time will never come when we can’t walk, or drive, or eat. But reality says all those unpleasant things are very close to a time when they can happen.
Especially dying. Lots of denying there. We can’t imagine a world without us. We all assume we’ll live forever, that this “one person-one death” scheme will be suspended in our case.
I am beyond denial. I have made my peace with death. I intend to go out in a blaze of glory, facing down the terrorists who have invaded the hall where I am receiving the Nobel Prize for the advances I have made in both narrative theology and quantum field theory. If you don’t think that’s an illusion, keep it to yourself.
John
Robert McFarland
BEYOND WINTER: The
Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—
I read a lot of stuff about brain science and psychology, not to try to apply their insights to pastoral work, the way I used to do, since I no longer have any pastoral work, except occasionally when I try something I have learned on some unsuspecting friend, but to apply new insights to my own life. You would think that I would understand my own life pretty well by now, but no, the more I learn about it, the less I understand it.
One of the most frequent and common pieces of wisdom that confronts me is: live in the moment! I think that’s good advice. Don’t regret the past and fret the future; live in the moment. I try to do it…mostly.
Living in the moment is a great idea if the moment contains something worthwhile—something challenging or hopeful or wholistic or interesting or…
But I’m old. Most of my moments are just boring. So I live best in the moment by living in memory. Yes, that sounds contradictory. But it works… at least for me.
Like most old people, many of my most important memories are early ones, from when we were kids and young people. Those moments set the way for all our future moments. When those are present memories, they provide present moments.
Preachers don’t seem to visit in member homes much anymore, but in my preaching years, it was a regular part of the job. Mostly it was just to get better acquainted, and that was good, for when a real need arose—an illness, a wedding or funeral, a wayward child or lost job—the preacher already knew what was important in that home.
As a young preacher, I called especially in the homes of the elderly, because they were always at home. It was easy to find them. Also, I felt comfortable with them. Even though I was as much as sixty years younger, we had a lot in common, for I, too, had grown up with an outhouse, using a horse to get to town, killing chickens for Sunday dinner, making hay the loose-load way, picking field corn by hand…
One thing we did not have in common was memories. Certainly, I remembered my former days. I’ve always had a good memory. I had not lived long enough, though, to have many memories. Besides, I was interested in the future, not the past. My elderly members, though, would tell long and intricate stories of events about when they were barely into school, always with a bit of wonderment, like maybe they were telling me about it in case I had an insight that they could not find.
I had no idea 70 years ago that I would now be telling my own versions of those same stories, over and over, peering into them, trying to gain some insight about why they happened, and what they meant, and if I might have done them better in some other way. And then deciding, no, this is the way it was, and that is okay.
I live in the moment by taking all those past moments and bringing them forward into this moment.
When Phil Jackson was coaching the Chicago Bulls professional basketball team, he told them, “Trust the moment.” I think that is even better advice than “Live in the moment.” Trust it, because it contains all your moments, and that makes it whole.
John Robert McFarland
CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—
It’s Sunday as I write this, so I’m thinking about Joys and Concerns…
A newly married young woman—I’ll call her Lori--was sent to me by a friend who was a member of my church. Lori had spent quite a bit of money on something without consulting her new husband. She was afraid that he would be upset. She didn’t know if she should tell him. She also realized that he would probably find out even if she didn’t tell him. Then he would be angry because she had kept a secret from him. It’s the sort of dilemma that drives the story of almost every TV show.
Lori was a little embarrassed about coming to me for marriage counseling. She was not a member of my church. She had a college education, and had been teaching school for several years, but she had never even been to a church service. Any church. Not even once. What right had she to waste the time of a preacher when she wasn’t a church supporter?
I assured her I was glad to be of help, regardless of her church affiliation, or lack of it, and encouraged her to follow her instincts about talking to her husband. [I’ll call him Jeff.] I also suggested it might be good for her to bring Jeff and come to church. She did.
After a couple of months, I asked her how it was going. “It’s great with Jeff,” she said. “I told him about the money, and why I spent it, and he was very understanding. As far as church is concerned, I don’t understand a thing, but I like the singing, and I like Joys & Concerns.”
That was intriguing to me. I like the singing in church, too, but I’ve always had doubts about Joys & Concerns, the part of the worship where we share our… well, our joys, and our concerns.
Most preachers would agree that it’s okay to print joys and concerns in the worship bulletin. Clem and Clemidia Kladdilhopper are new grandparents. Their daughter, Theodosia, had a baby… Chauncy Thistlewhite requests prayers as he has surgery this week… The flowers on the altar are in honor of…
Allowing people to pop out of the congregation, however, to voice their joys…Trump got elected again… or their concerns…Trump got elected again… can create a lot of problems. It’s hard for the preacher to keep things from getting out of control. You begin to feel like you’re playing whack-a-mole. And it can get very picky. We once heard a man whisper to his wife, “Was that the left ventricle or the right ventricle we were supposed to pray for?”
Doing Joys and Concerns is a long-time Christian tradition, though. The Apostle Paul was the first one to do Joys and Concerns. Look at the last chapter of Romans. But is tradition enough reason for doing it? Joys and Concerns can take a lot of time, and either cause controversy or get quite boring. Sometimes both. Is it worth it?
Probably so. Even someone who is an outsider to the congregation, or to the church as a whole, like Lori, feels like she’s in the community, when people share what’s important in their lives.
Lori and Jeff are no longer outsiders. They are in church, every Sunday, sharing joys and concerns.
John Robert McFarland
I
don’t know if he said it during Joys and Concerns, but Ben Franklin, upon
recovery from an illness, said that he felt “lightsome.” That’s a great word,
and a joy to share.
CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--
As I listened to a recording of “It Is Well with My Soul,” I sang along. But then I was struck by the phrase, “the clouds be rolled back as a scroll.” As I sang along with it, I had sung “like a scroll.” Horatio Spafford [1] used “proper” English when he wrote it in 1873, meaning grammatical English. I had not used proper English when I sang it 145 years later.
I should have known better. At Indiana University, when I was in freshman composition, that would have been a “gross illiteracy.” If you committed 3 gross illiteracies in a composition, it was an automatic F.
I also remember the controversy over a 1950s Winston cigarette commercial that used the phrase, “Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should.” Grammarians were offended and protested so much that Winston’s advertising agency actually came out with a new ad wherein an English professor marked through “like” and replaced it with “as,” while smiling college students looked on with nicotine addled approval. [Their bright teeth gave lie to the idea that they actually smoked the things.]
I have always been caught between the law of language and the grace of language, wanting to be accurate, keeping the laws of grammar, but also wanting to be creative, using the flexibility of the words to convey old truths in new ways.
That’s our problem, caught between grace and law, even in our language, caught between the language of the rules and the language of the streets, or these days, the language of the tweets. [2]
One of the graces of the English language is its flexibility. We have so many ways to say things. The more arrows we have to shoot at the truth, the more likely we are to hit it once in a while.
The laws of grammar are important. They help us to communicate clearly. I cringe when I hear someone say “I could care less,” because they are trying to say the exact opposite, “I could NOT care less.”
The main thing, though, is not to keep the laws of the words, but to use the words to express the grace of the Word.
John Robert McFarland
1] The music is by Phillip Bliss.
2]
I’m quite sure I have mentioned this before, and I apologize for doing so
again, but I think it’s insightful, and fun. Daughter Katie said years ago,
when Vance Law played 3rd base and Mark Grace played 1st
base for the Cubs, that the reason the Cubs could not win was that they were
caught between Grace and Law.
BEYOND WINTER: The
Irrelevant Daily Devotions of An Old Man—T
Yes, I’ve told you about Joe and Leroy before, but it’s too good a story to tell only once.
Joe and Leroy were long-distance truck drivers, with one of those sleeper cabs, so one driver could sleep while the other drove. They were called in for a periodic driving exam. Joe was the senior driver and went in first.
The examiner said, “Joe, you are going down a steep mountain side when your brakes go out. At the bottom of the mountain is a one-way bridge. Coming at it from the other direction, down another slope, is a big rig like yours. What do you do?”
“Well, first I’d wake up Leroy.”
“Why in the world would you take the time to wake up Leroy?”
“Well, he’s not been driving very long, and he’s never seen a really big wreck.”
I recently subscribed to a daily devotional series. No, not to get ideas for my own columns. I really want to hear the Word in the words of others. I know that will be good for my soul. But those well-meaning devotionals turn out to be a drag on my soul.
No, there is nothing really wrong with them. They are well written, by able thinkers, but they do nothing for me, because they are didactic and hortatory. Not a story anywhere.
There is a line, I think from a poem by William Stafford, where a little girl asks, “When you’re old, how do you know what to do?”
It’s a perceptive question for a child. They always know what to do, because older people are always telling them what to do. Be nice to your brother. Don’t talk back. Do your homework. Pick up your toys… but being told what to do does not mean that it always gets done.
You know what to do when you’re old just because you’re old. I don’t have to be told what to do. I already know what to do; I’ve known the right stuff to do for a long time. Just telling me to do it, regardless of how enthusiastically you tell me, isn’t going to make any difference. That is more likely to depress me.
In the church, for a long time now, we’ve been telling folks what they should do, and yelling at them to try to get their attention, get them to do it. It’s not working very well. We have the best story in the world, a life-giving and life-changing story, and we need to start telling it, rather than talking about it.
What I need are stories that illuminate the possibilities in such a way that I can see the way forward for myself. Don’t just tell me what the way is. Don’t just rail at me to try to get me moving. Show me the way!
Oh, wait, I just became didactic and hortatory, didn’t I?
Well, as Rosanne Rossannadanna used to say, “Never mind.”
But you’re thinking about waking up Leroy, aren’t you?
John Robert McFarland
BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Theology of An Old Preacher—SUNDAY MORNING FUN [Sat, 11-8-25]
Tomorrow is Sunday, so I’ll be doing what I usually do on Sunday mornings, praying for my preacher friends, and listening to a CD of worship songs by the Barbary Coast Dixieland Band.
The first time I experienced a Barbary Coast worship service, I was retired and filling in, on fairly short notice, for a preacher who had to be away that Sunday. After the service, one of the musicians said to me, “We go around to anywhere from 15 to 30 churches a year, so I’ve heard a lot of sermons. That was the best I’ve ever heard.”
That didn’t surprise me. I’m always convinced that the last sermon I preached is the best one anyone has ever heard. He continued. “I’ve never before thought about what you said, that the point of life is to have a good time.”
That did surprise me. Didn’t he already know that? Isn’t that the whole point of both Dixieland and worship, to have a good time?
After all, the pivotal verse in the Bible is John 10:10, where Jesus says, “I’m here. Let’s party.”
So as I pray for my preaching friends, I don’t pray that they’ll preach the best sermon ever. That’s already been done. But I pray that they, and the people in their worship services, will have a good time.
John
Robert McFarland
John
10:10 is often in a generic way, “I have come that they may have life, and have
it abundantly.” It means, “I’m here; let’s party.”
CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—THE JOY HALL OF FAME [R, 11-6-25]
Charlie Nelms is being inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame. It’s because of his many significant achievements in the field of higher education. He is already in the JOY HOF.
Well, I guess there is no JOY HOF, but there should be. I say that Charlie should be in it because, despite the difficulties of growing up as a poor black boy in Arkansas in the worst days of segregation and lynching, perhaps because of growing up in those desperate times, he has always known that joy is a form of resistance, resistance to those who run the oppressor system, to those who want to control us by fear.
We can live our life in joy, or we can live it in fear. What the oppressors and fear-mongers fear most is joy. They can’t control joy.
What do we fear?
Anyone
who is different from ourselves.
People
who make us uncomfortable because they are not intimidated by our status.
People
who speak a language we can’t understand.
Anyone
who is weak but demands to be taken seriously. That’s not right. “Beggars can’t
be choosers.” Who do they think they are, anyway, equal citizens? Human beings?
Children of God?
Anyone who has always been a second-class citizen and aspires to be treated like a first-class person. We think they are uppity. They should “stay in their place.”
Sex and race are the most basic human qualities, so it’s easiest for the oppressors and fear-mongers to generate fear about people who are trans or gay or black.
The fear-mongers have no joy. They don’t even have humor. They rarely laugh, and when they do, it’s with a sneer, after they have made some rude remark about someone, ridiculed or humiliated someone, usually someone who is too weak to retaliate.
I wanted to go to the recent No Kings rally. I’m a Christian. I believe in no kings but King Jesus, no lords but Lord Jesus. I used to go to rallies and demonstrations all the time. In fact, I started a lot of them. But to go to a rally now, I have to be able to use one of those squiggly squares on the computer screen to say I’m coming, and then I have to be able to drive, and then find a parking spot, and then back into it because some idiot has decided that downtown angle parking should be back-in instead of pull-in, and then walk, and then stand, and then march, and then yell…
Well, I did my own rally. I stayed home and sang, “Joyful, joyful, we adore thee…” It was a joyful time.
Joy is the silver bullet to fear.
Who would you nominate for the JOY HOF?
John Robert McFarland
CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life from the Years of Winter—
Old people should be grateful to live in the days of screens. No, not the screens on doors. They aren’t important anymore. We don’t need them now that we have air conditioning. A lot of folks don’t even have screen doors now. Air conditioning means we no longer have to leave the outside doors open, hoping for a breeze.
It’s the screens we watch to get entertainment and news for which we need to give thanks. Some of us are old enough to remember when there were no such screens. It was a rather boring time.
And a laborious time. You had to work hard to see things. Sometimes you actually had to get up and walk across the room to change the channel on the TV. Now we can recline on our sofas and push a couple of buttons on the remote—usually the wrong buttons to begin with—and see people and events from all the world.
We need to be careful, though, as we give thanks, not to disrespect those days of yore, those days before the big screens.
What appeared in screens even a few years ago appears as primitive compared to now, but those images were important to us then.
I first saw TV in 1947, in Uncle Johnny’s hardware store in Francisco, IN. It was World Series time, and we wanted to see local boy Gil Hodges playing for the Dodgers. Uncle Johnny installed an antenna on the roof. It had a cable that came down the side of the building to a handle you could rotate to turn the antenna in different directions to grab the TV signal from different directions. The TV set itself was quite large, but with a screen that was no more than a foot wide.
The
pictures of this year’s WS between the Dodgers and Blue Jays were as sharp as
the blade on that knife Tom Woodall, Sr. gave Helen 45 years ago. It was a
special knife, and he thought Helen should have one, because she has always
been a favorite of old men. He said that if she took care of it, she would
never have to sharpen it. That was 45 years ago. He was right.
The screen on our present smart TV is about ten times larger than the screen on Uncle Johnny’s first TV. On it, the Dodgers are very clear and dodgy, the Jays very clear and blue. Some people say this was the best WS ever. No, the best WS ever was in 1947.
It is dangerous to judge the past by the present.
It is dangerous to judge the summer by the winter.
It is dangerous to judge the decisions of young people by the decisions of old people.
It’s tempting to do that. I have less energy in winter, so I assume I am wiser. I judge much of what I did in summer to be fruitless. But that’s winter talking. What I did in summer was necessary then. What I did in earlier years was not “youthful silliness” just because I’m too old now to engage in the fun of silliness.
We are not wiser just because we are older. It is wise, though, to say that we should not judge the summer by the winter.
John
Robert McFarland
CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith and Life for the Years of Winter—
I wrote about my brother, Jim, in this column for Aug. 24, since his birthday was coming up, on August 28. I wrote about how much I like having a brother, even though he was nine years younger, and so we didn’t get to do a lot of the brother stuff.
I have a brother now only in memory and hope. When I wrote about him back in August, he and his wife, Millie, were making plans to go someplace warm for the winter. We had no idea that he would die on Nov. 1, yesterday.
About a month ago he began to have significant pains in his back. They went to the ER. He was diagnosed with an “angry” [inflamed] pancreas. That was not really surprising; he’s been diabetic for a long time. Because of the location of the pancreas, its pain shows up in the back. They sent him home with pain medicine and instructions for a clear liquid diet.
That lasted only a couple of days. The pain became too much. This time they were sent to the cancer hospital, an hour’s drive away. At first, he was diagnosed with stage 2 pancreatic cancer. As they did more tests, the stage went up to 3 and then to 4, plus spreading to his stomach.
They got the pain under control, mostly, and sent him home to decide if he wanted to do chemo. Of course, we all know that chemo against a diagnosis like that is like spitting into the wind.
Throughout, we spent a lot of time with Millie on the phone. It was the only way we could be supportive, since they live in New Mexico, and we can’t even drive to the airport, let alone get on a plane.
Jim and Millie have no children or grandchildren, and none of their siblings are able to travel. It’s hard to have no family around when you are in trouble, and it’s hard on the family members who want to be helpful but cannot.
Early yesterday afternoon, Millie told us of all the appointments they had this week, to put in place the services Jim would need. We were glad they were getting his severe pain under control, because it looked like he would live for several weeks. Millie was looking around for a warmer place where they could go for the winter. We started plans to have a “memorial” service for Jim while he was still alive to enjoy it. We planned to do it via Zoom so that far-flung family members and friends could participate.
When she called back a few hours later, she said Jim had been napping on the living room sofa when she went to the kitchen to get something to eat. When she returned, she realized that she had to call 911.
Thank you for listening, as I try to process my brother’s life and death. As it says in the funeral ritual that I read so many times in the course of my years as a preacher, “Since we know not what a day may bring forth, but only that the hour for serving Thee is always present…”
John Robert McFarland
Following is a screed about the reason for our family’s battles with cancer. I put it down here where you can ignore it if you wish, because it doesn’t seem really appropriate, as I mourn my brother’s passing, and as I hold out hope for his different life now, but it is a part of what I feel…
Jim was nine years younger than I. Our sister, Margaret Ann, was 8 years younger. She died from cancer when she was only 60. Jim had it first in his 30s, but made it to 79.
When we moved to the farm, Margey had just turned two, and Jimmy was still a babe in arms. Our older sister, Mary Virginia, was already a teen, and I was ten.
I think there is a good reason that Mary V is 93 and still in great health, without ever having cancer, and I had cancer 35 years ago but am still alive, while the youngsters, Jim and Margey, are the ones who died first.
They lived on the farm much longer than Mary V and I did, through the heyday of the pesticide, DDT. Their exposure for so long, starting when they were so young, made them more vulnerable. The manufacturer assured everyone that DDT wasn’t dangerous. Pour it on; it’s as harmless as chocolate. Just because it kills bugs doesn’t mean it’s deadly...
DDT was banned in 1972, 25 years after we moved to the farm, way too late to help my little sister and brother. But that’s okay; Montrose Chemical Corporation had already made lots of money from it, and isn’t making money the American way, regardless of the consequences?
Montrose paid millions to
lawyers, for years, fighting attempts to hold them accountable for the damage
done by DDT. They never did pay anything to people who were DDT victims, but
finally agreed to escape accountability by paying a sum for general environmental
cleanup.
