NOW VS ETERNITY [F, 4-10-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irascible Mutterings of a Christmas Preacher—NOW VS ETERNITY [F, 4-10-26]

 

As the old preacher story goes, a young woman cooked one of her first meals for her fiancé. After supper, she cuddled up and said, “Just think. After we’re married, we can do this forever.” He thought, “I don’t think I can take this forever.”

Now that the Easter season is over, maybe I can say that I prefer Christmas without sounding too much like a wet blanket. But, caveat lector, this is just a personal semi-screed about Easter. If it does have any positive message, it’s about Christmas. Easter has always semi-depressed me. Christmas? Well, I like Christmas. See, this is personal, not theological.

First off, the Easter message, the resurrection message, is eternal life. Forever. Alive forever. Floating around. Playing a harp, maybe. Even if we are united with that dog we loved so much, playing fetch in heaven forever will surely get boring, for both of us.

Maybe Easter depresses me because it is negative, starting with forty days of deprivation. And self-examination--finding out that I’m still the “wretch like me” again this year. How is that supposed to be uplifting?

Maybe it is because preachers have to work so much during the Lent-Easter season. I signed on for once-a-week, not all that extra stuff: Bible studies and meditation sessions and listening to the confessions of all the self-examiners. Putting up with the criticisms of trustees who are out of sorts because they’ve given up booze for Lent and they’re taking it out on the preacher, because it’s safer than taking it out on their wife/husband.

And Holy Week! Talk about work… Special worship services. Ash Wednesday. Maundy Thursday. Good Friday. Getting all the other churches to agree to a common Good Friday service, and getting Father Bertoldo to remember to come.

Easter sunrise, yet! Of course, it’s the youth who are in charge of Sunrise, of all things, Teens? At sunrise? And they are responsible for the pancakes that follow, which means it’s a bunch of disgruntled parents who are having to ride herd on the fiasco…experience. They are all on the Pastor-Parish Relations Committee, and they’re going to be mad for a year.

Extra Easter morning services because twice-a-year Christians don’t have the sense to be ashamed of showing up when they’ve not been there since Christmas eve. And just try to remember their names as they shake hands afterward, when they’ve all changed their hair styles since Dec. 24.

And trying to convince a bunch of twice-a-year-believers to believe something that is unbelievable…

Of course, religious holidays are really an excuse to get people to buy stuff, and Easter is such a pale commercial holiday when compared to the gifts of Christmas and the candy of Halloween and the gluttony of Thanksgiving and the fireworks of Independence Day. [Yes, all those are religious holidays.]

I mean, how is a puny basket with some colored eggs, that are probably past their use-by date, going to compete with a stocking full of candy oranges and peppermint sticks?

I think, though, the bottom line, of why I like Christmas more than Easter, is this: I can understand--very easily, because I watch Call The Midwife on PBS--a baby born into the physical body and having a life in a limited physical world. It’s much harder to understand a man getting out of a physical body and having a life in an eternal non-physical world.

And when you’re old and tired, “eternal” life doesn’t sound all that great.

Don’t worry. I’m still singing He Lives with my morning songs. But I’m also already humming Away in a Manger. I trust that God loves me, regardless.

That’s the true story of why I prefer Christmas to Easter—God is already here, in this life, no need to wait for resurrection--not, as some might tell you, because December is a better time for mincemeat pie.

John Robert McFarland

PLEASE DON'T TALK ABOUT ME WHEN I'M GONE [W, 4-8-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Questioner—PLEASE DON'T TALK ABOUT ME WHEN I'M GONE [W, 4-8-26]

“No shirt, No shoes, No service.” “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”

“No service” seems to be trending these days. “At his request, there will be no service.”

“Please don’t talk about me when I’m gone.” [1]

Jesus didn’t have a funeral, so maybe the folks who demand that we not talk about them when they’re gone are just trying to be like Jesus.

Jesus knew he was going to die. Had a pretty good idea when it would be. He didn’t say anything about a funeral service, though.

He did say, however, that we should talk about him after he was gone, every time we broke bread together.

Some folks sort of tried for a service for him. I mean, they used herbs and spices on his body, the customs of the day. A kindly man loaned his tomb. But that wasn’t really a funeral or burial. No crowd at the funeral home. No graveside service. No taped version of “Peace In the Valley.” Was it because Jesus knew he’d be resurrected, so a funeral was irrelevant?

My great, late friend, Jack Newsome, died during covid days. His wife said there would be a funeral later. But then she moved to California to live with a daughter. Then she died. No one to organize a funeral for Jack, which was very sad, for there were so many good stories to tell about Jack. So I decided to organize an online funeral for him, among his still-living friends. We emailed “Jack” stories back and forth. It was nice. It wasn’t adequate.

We knew Scott as a coffee shop owner, but he had once been a seminarian and student pastor. The day after Thanksgiving, a woman from his church came to see him. She told him that the day before, the whole family had gathered at her mother’s for a big Thanksgiving meal, as they always did. The food was on the table, everyone was seated, Grandma brought in the turkey, took her place at the end of the table, took a gun out of her apron pocket, put it in her mouth, and blew her brains out.

Was that a way of requesting no funeral service? Certainly no one would want to talk about it in public, the way we do at memorial services. “Remember the time that Grandma…”

Well, it was about having control, right up to the very last moment…and after, because who is going to forget a scene like that?

Most folks aren’t quite that controlling, but there are those who still want to have the last word, even when they’re dead.

Are they afraid of what people will say at a service, afraid they will be embarrassed? Or are they so humble they just want to save folks the trouble?

Anyway, Scott realized he had nothing to say to that woman. He knew right then, he said, that he was cut out to be a coffee shop guy, not a pastor.

I understand. I’ve done some funerals in those kinds of situations.

But isn’t the funeral for the survivors? Why do you even care? You won’t be there. It will make no diff to you.

And why stop there? If you are so eager to control everything that you say no service, why don’t you just go ahead and tell your loved ones that after you’re dead, no movie, no Florida vacation, no pickleball, no jalapenos?

I enjoyed thinking about my funeral when I thought I would die at 55--what songs folks would sing, what they would say. Not so much now that I’m so old that nobody will be there, since all my friends are either dead or unable to travel.

Maybe Jesus knew he would be resurrected so a funeral was irrelevant. Maybe those folks who say “no funeral for me” are just resurrection believers.

Anyway, if you’re thinking about telling folks, no services for me, think about it some more…and if you care about those you leave behind, remember why we say GOOD GRIEF! rather than NO GRIEF!

John Robert McFarland

1]. Sam H. Stept and Sydney Clare wrote it in 1930. Ethel Waters sang it first, in 1931.

 

THE 8TH DAY [M, 4-6-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Mutterings of An Old Curmudgeon—THE 8^TH DAY [M, 4-6-26]

 

I’d hate to be a Monday. Everybody hates Mondays,

Even cartoonist Jim Davis’ Garfield the cat. Especially Garfield. People ask, “Why does Garfield hate Mondays? For a cat, isn’t that day no different from any other?” But they underestimate Garfield. He is a theologian. He knows that Monday is not the first day of the week, or even the 7^th, Or the 2^nd, if you think of Sunday as the first. Or the third, if you’re a 7^th Day Adventist.

 

But there has to be a Monday. And it’s not the first day.

Garfield knows that Monday is the 8^th day, not the first. It is such a problematic day, because that’s when God let us into the mix, when the world really began after the creation, after God had rested.

Workers tell us that we should never buy a car built on a Monday. Or a house. Or potato salad. Monday is the day the line workers and the carpenters and the cooks are hung over.

I was having lunch with old friend, Bob Butts, one Monday. Our waitress brought the wrong food. He looked at our waitress and said, “Big weekend?” “I just got mixed up,” she said. Bob replied, “I taught college for 30 years. I know a hangover when I see it.”

Monday is such a bad day that preachers don’t even try to work then. What’s the use? We claim we take Monday as our day off because we are so tired from Sunday, and the week that went before it, but it’s really because nobody is going to pay attention to a preacher, or anything else, on a Monday.

Addicts know the 8^th day is dangerous. You’ve made it through a week and so you think you deserve a reward. No, not a sobriety pin. You think you deserve a drink, or snort, or bet. Everybody else celebrates that way. Why can’t I? If you can get through that 8^th day, well, that’s not just another day of staying clean. That’s an 8^th day of staying clean, regardless of where you are in the sobriety count you keep for your sponsor and your support group.

The eighth day is dangerous. Little chicks of pastel coloring to do something with. Same with a bunch of non-resurrected eggs. Chocolate smears everywhere. Bonnets and baskets to find a storage place. Trying to make sense of the gibberish the preacher used to try to explain resurrection… It’s enough to make a person say, “I’m not going back there until the end of the year…maybe the week before the end of the year…”

So, be extra careful today, this day after Easter, this Monday, this 8^th day. We’re riding high on sugar and ham and resurrection. A lot can go wrong in that condition. Just be patient with this 8^th day. There will be a first day tomorrow.

John Robert McFarland

UNENDING STORY [Easter Sunday, 4-5-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Story Teller—UNENDING STORY [Easter Sunday, 4-5-26]

 

As a writer, I have found that the ending is hardest, whether it be a sermon, or a short story, or a novel, or even this column. I think that is because there is only one story, and it has no end.

As writers, we think there has to be a conclusion. Or, just because we’ve run out of time or pages, we go ahead and provide an ending, a conclusion, that often does not belong there.

We do that with relationships, with society, with…

One of the worst novels I ever read--an early effort by a now famous author…  It was so good for about 380 pages. There were a dozen interesting sub-plots. I was eager to see how each one got resolved. At the end, though, the narrating character is sitting on his back porch and says something like, “I realized that I would never know who killed the preacher, and what happened to the baby, and if the building burned down, and where the treasure was hidden…”

What do you mean you don’t know? You’re the author! That’s unfair. If you raise the expectation of a conclusion, you need to provide one.

The cross was not the end of the Jesus story. Neither is the resurrection. That’s why we keep saying, “Christ will come again.” There won’t be an end to the story until that happens.

But we like conclusions. We want conclusions. We don’t like this open-ended non-ending. When I get frustrated with the ending problem, I go to Natalie Sleeth’s great “Hymn of Promise,” especially the way she writes the last verse…

In our end is our beginning;

In our time, infinity;

In our doubt there is believing;

In our life, eternity;

In our death, a resurrection;

At the end, a victory,

Unrevealed until its season,

Something God alone can see.

 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

LOOKIN’ GOOD [Good Friday, 4-3-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Good Friday Memes of An Old Runner—LOOKIN’ GOOD [Good Friday, 4-3-26]

 

When I turned forty, I realized that I was no longer young enough to get by on good looks and personality, and my lithe and limber body. My body had suddenly, it seemed, become stiff and uncooperative.

The running boom was just beginning then. Everyone who was not running was jogging. Gurus like Dr. George Sheehan and Jim Fixx wrote books. Many running magazines were starting up, as were running clubs. Every town festival included foot races of uncertain length, since apparently in running races you had to use unknown quantities, like kilometers.

So I decided to become a runner. I laced up my old basketball shoes and went to the park to run. Very quickly, my heels and soles and tendons and knees were aching.

I went to Jim Matta, a church member and the athletic director at the high school—and father of famous basketball coach, Thad Matta, who was only ten then—and told him my woes. Long before Spike Lee and Michael Jordan did that commercial, Jim said, “It’s gotta be the shoes.”

Now, everybody wears running shoes all the time, even men in suits and ties, even women in church dresses and evening gowns. Our pastor has a wonderful array of pulpit robes and stoles, and “underneath are the everlasting running shoes.” But running shoes were just a gleam in Phil Knight’s eye then.

I went to the shoe store on Main Street. In those days, folks thought shoes were leather things you put on your feet to walk to work and school and church. Running shoes were strange new things. People didn’t even know how to pronounce Nike. But the store had a pair of running shoes in my size. I had never heard of the Patrick Shoe Company, but I bought them because they were cream and crimson, my colors.

Within five minutes of running in those magic shoes, all my pains were gone. What a difference a heel makes.

So I became a runner. I bought a red track suit to go with my shoes and I ran all over town. My teen daughters were mortified. Their friends called me “The Red Phantom,” because I was so fast that I was just a blur. Or maybe it was only because of the red suit.

But I wasn’t just a runner. I was a racer. There were 10 K races in one town or another every weekend. Many were on Sunday morning, when I was busy otherwise, but enough were on Saturday that I became a regular on the racing scene. I even joined The Kickapoo Running Club. I won little statues for coming in 2^nd in my age group. [Usually there were three runners in my age group] I still display those statues on my book case, on the shelf where I used to keep theology books.

I don’t know exactly why, but the proper protocol in those days, whenever you met another runner, you shouted out to each other, “Lookin’ good.”

The races were often on an out-and-back course. That meant that we pack runners would still be going out and meet the front runners after they had made the turn and started back. They were running hard, all-out. they were sweating and puffing and beginning to lose smoothness. We called out to them, “Lookin’ good,” which was the exact opposite of how they really looked. But they looked the way they were supposed to, for people who were running all out, trying “…to run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” [Hebrews 12:1-2]

One of my favorite anecdotes/illustrations/points comes from Lin Yutang’s A Leaf in the Storm, enough so that I have used it many times. It is revolutionary times in China. The storm in the title is political upheaval and war. The leaf is a young woman named Malin who has always taken pride in her beauty, who has always lived in luxury and pleasure, but is reduced to the status of a refugee, fleeing the war on foot along muddy roads. Her fine clothes and shoes change from being status symbols to a hindrance.

Along the way, she sees peasant women who are ignoring the war. They’ve seen it all before. They are working in their rice fields, as they always have, for once the storm has passed, people will need the rice again. They are stocky and lumpy and have no comeliness of face or figure. They are standing almost up to their knees in mud. Their legs are not shapely to look at. But Malin has an epiphany. The legs of those peasant women are beautiful, because they are doing what they are meant to do. They were lookin’ good.

Today, on Good Friday, seeing Jesus there on the cross, those who understand look at that broken body and whisper, “Lookin’ good. Lookin’ good.”

John Robert McFarland

 

 

THE WATER OF MAUNDY [R, 4-2-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Maundy Thursday Mutterings of An Old Preacher—THE WATER OF MAUNDY [R, 4-2-26]

 

I have always been fascinated by Jesus’ references to water. He lived in a land where water was important because there was so little of it. So did I.

When I grew up on the farm, we had no indoor plumbing. Clean water had to be carried in in buckets and dirty water had to be carried out in other buckets.

The water came from a cistern and a well. The cistern caught water off the roof of the house. It was covered by boards. We dipped a bucket in to get the water that we used for washing clothes and other household chores. The well had a pump with a long handle. We kept a jar of water beside it to “prime” it so that it would produce.

It was a deep well and so the water was good. We used it for drinking and cooking. During long summers, though, it would go dry. So did the cistern. It was then that I had to go to the Heathman’s house to carry water in a bucket. Their house was up a hill on our little gravel road, about the distance equivalent of two city blocks, maybe three. A family of six needed a lot of water. That made for a lot of trips up and down the hill.

My right shoulder is lower than my left. I think that was from carrying water with my right arm from age ten, before I had stopped growing. When my wife made my first pulpit robe, she had to allow for that low shoulder.

I never took a shower or a bath until I went to college. We always washed out of a shallow basin on a wash stand. In college I lived in a decrepit old leftover BOQ building from WWII. It had a very ugly and dank shower room. But it had plenty of water. I thought it was wonderful.

I am careful with water. I don’t waste it, even now, when it comes out of a faucet or a shower head. I know what it’s like not to have water.

Jesus knew that, too. Which is why foot washing was such an important part of a host’s responsibilities toward guests. Guests had been walking, on dirt roads, in sandals. It wasn’t just that their feet were dirty, they were uncomfortable. But it was a servant’s job to wash feet. If the host did it, that was a mark of ultimate respect for the guest. And foot washing took water…you didn’t waste precious water on just anybody.

When Jesus and his disciples came in for supper that Thursday night before crucifixion, they’d been walking the dirt roads. Their feet were dirty. Somebody needed to wash them. So Jesus did.

We call that Thursday “Maundy” as a form of the Latin “Mandatum,” meaning a command. Jesus gave a new command to his disciples on that night, that they were to be servants, and he showed them how, by doing the foot washing himself. [John 13]

Foot washing has long been a part of our Maundy Thursday rituals as we prepare for Easter, sometimes literally, usually figuratively, often just as a homily subject. We rarely use actual water.

Several years ago, a CNN producer telephoned me. She was working on a special in which she was saying that the next big crisis in the Middle East would be water instead of oil, and she wanted to check some theological points with me. In the midst of an oil crisis, it’s hard to believe water is important, but everyone needs water to live. No one needs oil to live.

If, however, any of us are to live for long, we need to learn how to be servants, not of the oil, but of the water.

John Robert McFarland

I usually post every other day, but there will be extra posts—meaning almost every day—during the Easter weekend. I’ll be posting on April 3, 5, 6, and 8.

 

 

 

HOLY WEEK BIBLE BLUES [M, 3-30-26]

 

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Blues of An Old Man—HOLY WEEK BIBLE BLUES [M, 3-30-26]

 

“When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.” (Mk 14:26, Mt 26:30, NRSV)

One of my favorite vocalists is the marvelous Kate Campbell. I think her “10,000 Lures” (with Mark Narmore) is the best musical presentation of the Gospel I’ve ever heard. And “The Last Song” (with Walt Aldridge) evokes Jesus’ last moments with his disciples in a haunting and memorable way. It’s hard not to imagine yourself sitting there at that last supper…

“After the supper was over and the table had been cleared away

When the last bottle was empty, there wasn’t much left to say

Jesus started humming an old tune, everybody fell right in

They sang the last song, the last song”

I would love to hear that song Jesus and the twelve sang. What were the words? Kate says:

“I reckon it was some kind of soul song, maybe kind of sad and slow

All about how we get weary, all about holding on

Only Jesus knew what was coming; still he never said a thing

He sang the last song, the last song”

What did Jesus’ voice sound like? Did he sing out, or did he sing harmony? You can learn a lot about a person by listening to them sing.

Singing is natural. Everyone does it. Until we learn the rules. That’s strange, isn’t it, rules for singing? Singing is as natural as breathing, but we don’t have rules for breathing.

I’m not talking about the rules for being sensitive and civil. In John Wesley’s “Directions for Singing,” he says: “Sing modestly. Do not bawl…” That’s a good rule, but it’s not really about singing; it’s about being respectful of others.

I’m talking about the rules for singing that are really rules for not singing, like “Don’t sing at the table.” Singing would be a lot better than most of what goes on at tables. Maybe Jesus started that last song because he was tired of hearing the disciples argue about which was going to be first in the kingdom.

Wouldn’t a rule like “Always sing at the table” be better? But no solos. The rule would be: If someone starts “Down in the Valley or “Jailhouse Rock,” everybody joins in. Oh, but there you run into those pesky rules again.

There are definite rules about singing the Blues. They include: 1.) Most Blues begin with: “Woke up this morning…” 2.) “I got a good woman” is a good way to begin the Blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line like, “I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town.” 4.) The Blues is not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch… ain’t no way out.

The Blues rules started me thinking about Bible Blues. Quite a few Bible folks had reason to sing the Blues. Samson, for instance.

I got a good woman but she cut off all my hair

She took the razor to it and finished up with Nair

I went to slay some Philistines, for laughing at the Lord

But when they saw my hairless head they all just looked real bored

I’m gonna shake these pillars, all so nice and round

I’m fixin for to die, but I’ll bring this building down

Or take Jonah:

Woke up this morning, and there weren’t no mail

Looked around, O Lord, I’m in the belly of a whale

I tell you boy, when God tells you to set sail

Whether it comes by phone or fax or by that new email

You go where the message says; don’t fail

Or you’ll end up in the belly of a big old whale

Well, maybe the first rule should be: Don’t do your own Bible blues…

John Robert McFarland

Don’t worry; the rest of the Holy Week meditations will be better.

 

 

 

 

MARY ALBERS [SAT, 3-28-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Good Memories of an Old Campus Minister—MARY ALBERS [SAT, 3-28-26]

 

I’m thinking this morning about Mary Albers, because I listened this morning to the Peter Paul and Mary recording of “500 Miles.”

Mary was the soloist on that song when our Wesley Foundation [Methodist campus ministry] student choir sang it as the anthem for a worship service at First Methodist Church of Normal, IL, on the campus of Illinois State University, during Homecoming weekend.

First Methodist had three Sunday morning worship services in those days. The middle service was considered to be the “student” service. Usually the only differences between the three services was the music—a soloist at 8:00, the Wesley Foundation choir at 9:30, and the Chancel Choir [including ISU music faculty] at 11:00. Well, the liturgists were different, too. Not many churches used lay liturgists in those days. Clarence Young, the associate minister of the church, was the liturgist at 8 and 11, leading the worship except for the sermon, and I was the liturgist at 9:30. Gordon White, the senior pastor, preached at all three services.

Occasionally I was allowed to preach at the student service, since I was “the minister to students.” Students came to worship in large numbers in those days, because they had done so at home, but also because speech and English professors at ISU assigned them to do so when I preached. When it was announced ahead of time that I was preaching, a lot of “regular” church members came at 9:30 also, The 500-person sanctuary was packed on those occasions.

For some reason he probably regretted later, Dr. White let me preach that Homecoming Sunday in 1967. I asked Duncan White, the music professor who was conductor of The Wesley Foundation Choir, to have the choir sing “500 Miles.” He had never heard of it, but he listened to the PP&M recording I lent him and reproduced it very faithfully as a choir number.

It was a large choir, about 30 students, but Mary sang the first verse by herself: If you miss the train I’m on, you will know that I am gone, you can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles… And she sang the last line by herself, unaccompanied, If you miss the train I’m on, you will know that I am gone…

It was poignant, and a perfect setup for my sermon about the prodigal son and homecoming. It was even more poignant for those who knew Mary’s story then, and who knew it only a few years later.

When she was a teen, Mary felt God’s call to be a preacher. But that was in the early ‘60s. People, even the Methodist university where she started college, told her that girls can’t be preachers. So she transferred to IL State U, to become a special ed teacher.

None of us had any idea that Mary--beautiful and intelligent and called and whole--would be dead before she was 25, dying of cancer in the Philippines, where she went as a Peace Corps volunteer. She was a lot more than 500 miles from home.

 

Every time I hear that song, I think of Mary, and I know that she was called by God—called to live, and called, across those 500 miles, to home.

John Robert McFarland

COMFORT LANGUAGE [R, 3-26-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Word Sayer—COMFORT LANGUAGE [R, 3-26-26]

 

After Tom Cone--my late, great friend, and former college roommate--had a stroke, it was hard for him to find the right words. One day we drove up to Greenfield to take Tom and Sally to lunch. Tom mostly listened to our lunchtime chatter; that was easier for him. But as we were leaving, he wanted to ask me if I were still preaching. He worked hard, but couldn’t frame the exact sentence he wanted. Finally, he blurted out, “Do you still say the words?”

Too often now, I have to write a condolence letter to a friend, usually because their wife or husband has died. With most of my friends, it is hard only because of the grief. It is not hard to find the right words, because they are Christians. They already know the right words. They know which are the comfort words. All I have to do is remind them. All I have to do is say the words.

Especially in former times--before old age pretty much confined me to my house--in addition to the church, I was in other fellowship communities—writing, running, cancer, baseball, university, continuing education, pickle ball, folk music... Since I was the only preacher most of those folks knew, I was often asked to do a funeral for someone who was congenial to me but marginal at most to the church, who sometimes had no relationship at all to the church and its language.

At those occasions, not only was I looking at the faces of folks who did not know Christian language, but those funerals were usually in secular buildings. Church buildings provide comfort just by the way they are constructed, and by the symbols, like crosses and stained glass and open Bibles. Secular buildings provide none of those automatic points of meaning, these points of comfort.

In my retirement years, I did not have a church building I could use for funerals, which was probably just as well. Non-church people don’t want to have funerals in church buildings anyway. Just as automatically comforting as those buildings are for believers, they are automatically uncomfortable for non-believers.

I knew that my job in a funeral was to provide comfort and help people to grieve well. I was experienced at that in a church setting. I was good at it there. But I was in uncharted territory when I did not have my usual building and my usual language.

When church people see someone in a collar or pulpit gown standing in front of a cross and reading from a black book, there is automatic comfort. “If God is for us, who can be against us…”

But what if they have no awareness of a loving God? What if a robe just means you’re still in your underwear? What if that black Book of Worship is no more special than the Betty Crocker Cookbook?

I never solved that problem completely, but I tried to generalize the specific language of Christian faith, being true to its meaning even if not the same in its syntax. After all, as Marcus Borg said, “We are not saved by syllables.”

There are many ways of saying that God is love, and that God is with us. I learned that I could lean on the everlasting arms without using that image to folks for whom it would have no meaning.

When I die, though, I want someone in a black robe to intone, “In that we know not what a day may bring forth, but only that the hour for watching baseball is always with us…” Yes, that’s comfort language for me, because today is Opening Day of the baseball season!

John Robert McFarland

WHEN THE SERVICEBERRY BLOOMS [T, 3-24-26]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—WHEN THE SERVICEBERRY BLOOMS [T, 3-24-26]

 

The serviceberry bush/tree is basically a northern plant, from Maine to Iowa. It has beautiful spring buds and bright red and orange leaves in the autumn. Its berries are important to plants and animals and can be used by humans to make jellies and jams.

Oh, and you can’t get married or baptized until it blooms.

Two hundred years ago, in many places even just a hundred, if you lived in Maine or Iowa or in-between, when roads were dirt tracks, or mud tracks, or snow-covered tracks, you were shut-in from the rest of the world from November to May.

Finally, though, after that long, hard, isolated winter, the serviceberry bloomed, and you were part of the world again. The serviceberry’s bloom meant that the preacher could get back in to your world, and hold services. That’s why the Amelanchier is called the serviceberry. When it bloomed, it was time for services, again.

Sunday morning worship services, yes, but also marriage services for those who sought warmth with another in the cold and lonely months of winter, and baptismal services for the babies born to warmth-seekers.

And not just the services. The bloom of the serviceberry meant that the preacher--the one with both spiritual and legal authority--could sign the documents that proved you were a part of society, getting married and having a family.

In these modern days of snowplows and SUVs, the preacher can get through at any time. But nobody cares if there are services. Nobody cares if the preacher signs the documents, even if there are documents to sign. No need to wait for the serviceberry to bloom.

Still, isn’t it nice when it does?

John Robert McFarland

Thanks to Phyllis Carlson, the Yooper flower lady, for telling me about the serviceberry.

HERE IS THE RIGHT PLACE [SUN, 3-22-26]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—HERE IS THE RIGHT PLACE [SUN, 3-22-26]

 

Bill Linneman, distinguished professor emeritus of English at ILSU, wrote a column in which he announced that he was giving up driving. “I live in a retirement community,” he said, “and they have a bus that takes me anywhere I need to go. It’s much more fun and relaxing to watch the sights and scenes instead of the town instead of trying to avoid wild and stupid drivers. That’s the reason I’m giving up driving. Also, I failed the exam.”

What if I fail the driving exam? What shall I do if I can’t drive? That is always a looming problem as we age in this gasoline-driven America,

My late beloved friend, Bob Butts, drove a whole lot of cars a whole lot of miles over a whole lot of topography, even though he never passed a driver’s license exam, until he was 70.

He grew up in Mississippi. As a teen, he was riding around one day with a friend who said, “Hey, you want to go get your license?” “Sure,” said Bob, even though he couldn’t drive, since his family didn’t have a car.

But he went to the BMV, and he took the test. He failed. But the examiner must have checked the wrong box on the form. A couple of weeks later Bob received a license in the mail. He did not return it.

After that he lived in several different states, all of which have different laws for getting driver’s licenses, and renewing them, and he hit all of them just right, like hitting all the lights just as they turn green. All the states assumed that the one before it knew what it was doing and kept renewing his license. He did not have to take another license exam until he was 70.

My father lost almost all his sight in an industrial accident when he was 35. He had been driving since he was 12. He was a car guy, an excellent amateur mechanic, a perfect fit for the burgeoning automobile society of America. He was the most independent-minded man I have ever known, and suddenly he couldn’t drive. It changed him. He was no longer able to get out and about, so he withdrew into himself.

I think that driving a car is a spiritual thing. At least, God is involved. God invented cars to help kids separate from their parents, according to Anne Lamott.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? Cars allow us to go some place else, and we thus assume that some place else is a good place to be. And it is, because God is there. But God is also right here. We don’t have to go some place else. Perhaps the end of traveling in cars can be the start of traveling in the soul.

I think a key to carlessness comes from something Henry David Thoreau of Walden Pond said. When asked if he had traveled much, he said, “I have traveled a great deal…in Concord.”

Travel is good, but wherever you are, that place has all you need. Here is the right place to be.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

WATCHMAN, WATCHMAN [F, 3-20-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Time Keeping of An Old Man—WATCHMAN, WATCHMAN [F, 3-20-26]

 

Now, this column has no redeeming value at all. It is simply the follow-up to the 3-12 column entitled It’s Not Simple to Be Simple, the one about my attempt to find a simple wrist watch to replace the complicated watch that keeps changing modes, and which will not acknowledge Daylight Savings Time.                                   

Well, that’s not exactly true, that this column has no redeeming value, because there is a life lesson at the end: If you wish hard enough, your wishes will come true. But you already know that, for you’ve seen “Pinocchio.”

Anyway, fellow Crumble Bum Ron Walker found a simple watch for me, the exact one I needed. The problem is that it was at Amazon, and yes, their delivery is quick, but Helen said I should get a watch with an expansion band, since I’ll probably become senile soon and won’t be able to manage a band that requires getting that little metal tongue into a hole into the leather strap, and I figured I would have to try an expansion band on, to be sure it fits, since I am old and my wrists are now elegant…meaning skinny, which meant actually [shudder, shudder] going into a store.

So I decided that after the Physical Therapy for my balance issue, I would venture across The Great Divide, I-69, to Walmart, where their web site declared that they had the same time device that Ron found on Amazon.

That would have worked better if I had remembered where Walmart is located. It had been several years since I last shopped there. For a huge store, it is very easy to hide. It was none of the places I went for the first few hours.

I’ll note that the war with Iran has nothing to do with the high price of gas. It will soon be $5 per gallon because of all the gas I used in my wandering attempt to find the secretive Walmart.

Once there, though, a little old white-haired lady in a Walmart vest, who must have been 80 [I know her age because she flirted with me, and no woman under 80 does that] helped me find the wrist watch [jewelry] department. Another old lady who must have been 85 helped me find the correct watch.

She took it out of its box so I could try to expansion band. Way too loose! I would have to get a jewelry store to resize it, she said. No way! After all that driving around, I wanted that watch right now. Get me the same thing with a regular band, I said. She did.

It’s a great watch, a simple watch, with a big hand and a little hand, the way we learned to tell time as children. It has a face as big as the full moon. Neighbors can look at it from across our yard and tell what time it is.

The only problem is, the one with the leather band was not exactly like the one with the expansion band. It didn’t have a second hand. I don’t need a second hand, but Helen told me two things when I started this quest: Get a watch that works [some folks would take that for granted], and get one with a second hand.

Okay, to the wishing part. I was disappointed that my new watch did not have a second hand. I didn’t want to admit to Helen that I could did not remember her instructions. I wished and wished that my new watch had a second hand.

Then three days later, as I was strapping my new watch onto my arm, there it was, going smoothly all around the circle: a second hand! I had wished it into being. That’s amazing.

Or, maybe not so amazing. Perhaps the life lesson is not so much about wishing as it is about paying attention. If you get distracted and don’t pay attention to what you’re buying, in a watch or in a politician, all sorts of things will show up later when you least expect them. Yes, I’m going to go with that.

John Robert McFarland

ANGER II [W, 3-18-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Random Thoughts of An Angry Old Man—ANGER II [W, 3-18-26]

 

Remember the smile on the face of Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Gallaraga when umpire Jim Joyce called the 27^th batter of the June 2^nd , 2010 game “safe” when he was clearly “out,” costing Galarraga a “perfect” game? It would have put the relatively unknown Galarraga into the record books forever. Only 20 other pitchers had ever thrown perfect games. He had a “right” to be mad, didn’t he? Other people, with less “right,” got mad about it. But Galarraga smiled and went back to the mound and pitched to the next batter. Instead of getting mad, he said, “People make mistakes sometimes.”

Umpire Jim Joyce later admitted, after he had seen the tape, that he simply got the call wrong.

Anger comes when we have exhausted all our coping mechanisms. Galarraga had other ways to cope.

Some folks, of course, have very few coping mechanisms. They anger easily. Or their only coping mechanism is suppression, and when that runs out, their anger is explosive. My father had two emotional states: silence and rage. When his anger had steeped long enough in the silence, it broke out in rage.

There are various biblical suggestions for dealing with anger. “Put it away quickly.” “Don’t let it go down on your head.”

The problem with any such suggestion is that it tells you what to do but now how. When I was young, people could still remember The Grange, an organization dedicated to helping farmers, so I was able to use the story in preaching of the two farmers who met on the road. “You coming to the Grange meeting tonight? They’ll teach you how to farm better.” one asked. “No,” said the other, “I already know how to farm better than I am.”

Most of us know better ways to deal with frustration, better ways to cope than anger, but we get angry anyway. It’s easier.

As a pastor I learned about anger in three ways: 1] People got angry at me. 2] I got angry at them. 3] In counseling people, listening to their problems, I saw that at least part of any problem was misplaced anger.

People got angry with me for the silliest reasons, such as “using too many illustrations from sports.” That wasn’t just a criticism, it was anger; the person who said it foamed at the mouth and tried to get me fired. There is a lot of anger in people, for many reasons. If we express anger at people we work with or family members, we have to pay a price, perhaps even lose a job. Anger with a preacher is usually misplaced, but it’s much safer, because s/he is required to be nice to you anyway, and nobody will make you be accountable for that anger.

So much of the anger we see today in politics, on TV, in general incivility, is misplaced. It’s much easier to shake your fist at a politician than at your mother-in-law.

People often choose as anger targets, those who least deserve it, just because they are available. It’s the equivalent of a four-year-old’s tantrum at his mother for refusing to let him play with razor blades and matches.

Bishop Leroy Hodapp and I used to meet in Bloomington, IN for lunch and then go to IU basketball practice. Coach Bob Knight always referred to Leroy as his pastor. Indeed, Leroy had officiated at his second wedding. They were close friends. One day when we went to practice, though, IU was in a bad losing streak.  

Knight was sitting at a table beside the basketball floor. Hodapp went up to him and put his hand on his back and asked him how he was. Knight jumped up and started cursing the bishop in the loud string of invectives that he always used. He was very angry. He jumped up and grabbed his metal folding chair and threw it behind him without looking. It barely missed me. One of Knight’s greatest flaws was that he went to anger first, even if it meant being exceptionally rude to a friend. He related primarily to his own emotions, not to people. Anger always happens when you do that.

Remember Bob Parsons the school bus driver who started the column before this one? He has quoted “I don’t need anger management; I just need for people to stop pissing me off.” And Bob Hammel tells how one day when his daughter, Jane, around 8^th grade, was angry with her mother. He had explained to her that no one but she could make herself angry, that was her choice. One day, though, she called him and said, “Daddy, I know you said no one else could make me mad, but Mother is trying awfully hard.”

Well, you should be angry at me by now, for talking about anger and not providing any alternatives. So I’ll recommend The Enigma of Anger, by Garrett Keizer. I’m prejudiced, because he wrote a nice blurb for the jacket of my book, The Strange Calling. I think he’s an excellent thinker and writer, regardless.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

ANGER-PART I [M, 3-16-26]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Angry Old Man—ANGER-PART I [M, 3-16-26]

 

Old friend and colleague, Bob Parsons, became a school bus driver when he retired from being a preacher. He tells of another driver who lost his cool because of unruly students and slammed on his brakes. They had to call EMTs to attend to the injuries of some of the kids.

This brings up two issues: 1] Why don’t school buses have seat belts? 2] How should we deal with anger?

I have no answers for the first, and probably none for the second, but I’m going to write about anger anyway. In fact, I’m going to write about it at such length and in such a disorganized way that it’s going to take two columns. Reader beware…

Besides, this is Lent, a season that is dedicated to self-discipline and self-sacrifice, to remind us of the sacrifice of Christ. So, a good time to talk about anger. [An even better time would be when Jesus turned over the tables of the money changers in the temple, but I have other plans for that story…]

We can understand that bus driver. We’re all going to get mad sometimes, especially at children, who can be so uncooperative, because, after all, they are kids, and that’s how they get some control. Anger is a way to get control, for anyone. It sounds strange, but we get control by getting out of control.

Anger is real. We usually blame someone else, or some event, for it. “She made me mad.” Sometimes it just boils up. We don’t know where it comes from. We get mad way out of proportion to some little slight. I’ve heard people say that they had beaten someone else down into the ground “because he looked at me funny.”

 

I suspect that anger, especially that kind of anger, is part of original sin. It’s just there, anger about life. St. Augustine said that “the so-called innocence of children is more a matter of weakness of limb than purity of heart.” Anyone who has ever cared for a child understands what he was saying. Kids get mad just because they get frustrated.

Herman Melville has Ishmael speak of this original sin/non-rational root of anger in Moby Dick when he says “…especially when my hypos get such an upper hand on me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”

Anger means we have reached the limits of our ability to cope.

Ishmael, of course, is a “root” name. The original Ishmael was Abraham’s eldest son, though born of Hagar, the maid of Abraham’s wife, Sarah. Isaac, though, the biological son of Sarah, is claimed to be the true heir of Abraham, and thus of Jews and Christians, with his first-born half-brother left out. That’s enough to make anyone angry, so Melville’s Ishmael in some ways represents the non-rational side of human nature, the half-breed side, the angry side that just wants to knock people’s hats off for no reason. He is the original sin/anger part of Jung’s “collective unconscious.”

Also anger is probably a derivative of the biological imperative to stay alive, a way of getting up enough energy to fight for existence.

Bernie Siegel says that those who have the best chance to survive cancer are the automatic fighters, those whose first thought at any challenge is to fight back.

Anger at the cancer is part of the fight. It’s certainly understandable if someone gets angry with the insurance company that denies them treatment for the cancer, too.

Anger, though, at the doctors, at your spouse, at your children, at the neighbors, at your pastor, because you have cancer, is misplaced. It happens, though, because they are there and available, like the four-year-old tantrum is at the parents or the dog because there’s nobody else in the house.

But anger is also a choice, sometimes a largely unconscious choice, but it’s not the only possible reaction to any person or occasion.

My sister-in-law Millie was a great junior high special needs teacher. When she had to discipline a student, she would say, “Your punishment will be this because you decided to do that.” The kid would always protest. “I didn’t decide to do it.” “Yes,” Millie would say, “you did.”

Probably the best thing any of us can learn about anger: Regardless of how emotional we are, anger is always a decision. We have a choice. That is freedom.

John Robert McFarland

More next column.

Please pray for Judith Unger, who is having surgery today.

 

PAT AND THE BIG VICIOUS DOG [Sat, 3-14-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Friends and Dogs, by an Old Story Teller—PAT AND THE BIG VICIOUS DOG [Sat, 3-14-26]

 

Our friend, Pat, was a school teacher, thus she was a break-of-dawn jogger, so that she could get home and cleaned up and settled down before she had to face a room of thirty third graders.

Because of where she lived, she had to jog through downtown. That was no problem at first light. No stores or offices open, so no people on the sidewalks or cars on the streets. Unfortunately, the big, vicious dog didn’t worry about open hours.

Pat Is a small woman. Not much over five feet. Still as petite as she was in high school.

I didn’t know her well in high school. She was a year ahead of me. We did not have the same friends. I lived in the country, and she lived in town. We went to different churches. We didn’t do the same extra-curriculars. But I knew all the cute girls enough to say hello to them in the halls.

So it was a wonderful surprise, 25 years after high school, 25 years of different states and colleges and jobs and spouses [only one each], 25 years of no contact, that I was appointed to a new church and found that Pat and her husband were members there. We had a delightful time, establishing a new friendship, at the same time recalling high school days.

And Pat and I shared running. I think Roy and Helen got a bit bored when we talked about our running experiences. Until the day of the big, vicious dog. That was a running experience worth hearing about.

Pat was at the edge of downtown when the dog started chasing her, snarling all the way. She picked up the pace. So did the dog. She set some new land speed records. So did the dog. She mentally ran through all the businesses downtown, to see if one might be open, so she could take refuge. Nothing.

But then she remembered the police station. She would be running right beside it. It had a side door that opened directly onto the sidewalk. She was at full speed. So was the dog. She desperately yanked at the grab bar handle to open the door. The dog was almost upon her. It lunged at her. But Pat was on the other side of the long, glass door. The dog ran into the open door, bounced off of it, into the police station. Pat pushed the door shut and jogged home.

No account of the event ever made the news, but I don’t think we need to worry about the police. They are trained to handle emergencies, and they have weapons. They were probably quite surprised, though.

The point of a story is to see yourself in it, so that you can ask what you would do. Who are you in this story? Pat? The dog? The police? What would you do?

Or the Jesus story. Who are you? A disciple? An onlooker? Herod? Peter? The cock that crowed three times? The woman taken in adultery? The prodigal son? The man who went away sorrowful… What would you do?

Or maybe the point of a good story is simply to enjoy it.

Or sing a song about it. “Where, oh where, has my little dog gone…”

John Robert McFarland

 

IT’S NOT SIMPLE TO BE SIMPLE [R, 3-12-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Shopping of a Simple Man—IT’S NOT SIMPLE TO BE SIMPLE [R, 3-12-26]

 

I started buying Casio G-SHOCK wrist watches a long time ago, when I was a runner. They have many modes a runner needs, even an alarm. But my current one has gotten old. I don’t know how to make any of the modes work. Neither does anyone else. I have a manual. It’s one inch by an inch and a half and 40 pages printed in minus-3 point type. Probably in Chinese, but who can tell?

For several years I have not been able to change the watch when Standard and Daylight times switch places, but it’s still right half the year. The other half I just make the adjustment mentally.

That’s a bit more complicated since it started gaining time. Now I have to adjust each time I look at it by one hour and six minutes. Keeps me on my toes. That’s good.

But it’s become more complicated still because it has recently started changing modes on its own. When I look at it, I’m never sure which mode it’s in so I push all the little recessed buttons, one on each corner, until a number comes up that looks like it’s probably the correct time, if adjusted by an hour and six minutes. That’s becoming a bit more trying.

Today, Kathy was here to help Helen set up for their joint birthday tea party tomorrow. That sounded like a good time for me to go to Target, the only general store left on our side of town, to buy a new watch.

I’m an old man. I no longer run. I don’t need an alarm, or any of the other interesting modes on a Casio G-SHOCK. I’ll get a simple watch, I said, with an expansion band, with a round face, just a big hand and a little hand and a second hand. If it doesn’t have a battery, I can wind it each day, the way we did in Medieval times. A simple watch, that’s what I need, to lead a simple life.

A young man in a red Target shirt said the watches were in the middle of the Men’s Dept. The old woman in the red Target shirt in the Men’s Dept said they no longer sell watches, that 2 years before, “they” stopped sending watches to them. She did not know why. She did not sound interested in finding out why.

As I left the store, I ran into the young man in the red Target shirt. “Did you find them?” he asked rather cheerfully. When I explained what the old woman in the red shirt had said, he exclaimed, “Well, that’s silly. Everyone needs a wrist watch.” I noticed that he was not wearing a wrist watch, although he had several interesting tattoos where a watch might have gone, so maybe he hadn’t noticed that he has no wrist watch.

I was back in my sedan, now wedged between two behemoth mobiles, formerly known as pickup trucks, when it occurred to me that there are two jewelry stores in the mall, and there is a back door from Target right into the mall. I went back in.

I walk one to two miles per day for exercise. Target is a big store. I shall not have to walk for exercise again for several days. I finally arrived at the exit to the mall. It was not only closed, but barricaded, by some construction project on the mall side.

I walked back to my car, shimmied in between the behemoth mobiles, and started to drive across the great divide [I-69] to the other half of town, to go to Walmart, my least favorite place in the world, but when I got to High Street, I thought, “You know, this street will lead me home. It will be simple to go there. And I’ve gotten used to this good old Casio G-SHOCK. It’s right half the year, and it’s right 54 minutes out of each hour.”

How much simpler could you get?

John Robert McFarland

ABANDONMENT ISSUES [T, 3-10-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Somewhat Relevant Stories of An Old Friend—ABANDONMENT ISSUES [T, 3-10-26]

 

We heard our friend, Suzanne, tell this story in a public setting of a hundred or more people, and I’m sure she has told it more than once, so I’m not revealing anything private…

Suzanne was an Anglophile. She loved all things English. Cricket, tea, royalty, the whole nine yards. Especially the music of the Anglican Church. She is an excellent singer. So when she graduated college, she moved to London to work. There she joined an Anglican congregation and sang in the choir.

One day, in a parking garage, a man grabbed her and raped her. She is a small woman. Five foot-three, then not much more than a hundred pounds. The man who raped her, over and over, was huge—six foot-seven, and 300 lbs. Each time he raped her, he told her than when he was done using her, he was going to kill her.

She said, “I had no doubt he would do it. But throughout that whole time, I prayed, saying silently to God: Just don’t leave me. I can take the pain and the misery and the injustice and the indignity and even the death, as long as you don’t leave me.”

But he didn’t kill her. Someone intervened. He was stopped. He was sent to prison.

But, later, she learned she was pregnant. She had an abortion.

As a true Anglophile, she loved the liturgy of the Anglican Church, and she loved her priest, a little white-haired man with rosy cheeks and twinkling eyes.

As fate would have it, on the Sunday after her abortion, her priest preached an anti-abortion sermon. She approached him tentatively after the service and said, “You know, if abortion is outlawed, many women will die at the hands of backstreet abortionists.” He replied, with vigor, “Good! They should!”

She said, “I felt more alone right then than I had at any time during my ordeal. When I was being raped, when I was told I’d be murdered, I was sure God was with me. In the church, it seemed like God had abandoned me.”

She knew better, of course. In a life-long attempt to correct that wrong, she came back home and went to seminary and was ordained and is preaching and pastoring to this day, trying to listen and respond to the voices that are afraid to speak their needs.

A prayer for Lent: God, don’t leave us. We can take this world, its pains and injustices and indignities, and even the failings of the church, as long as you don’t leave us. Amen.

John Robert McFarland

LYING FOR PROFIT [Su, 3-8-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Curmudgeon—LYING FOR PROFIT [Su, 3-8-26]

 

I guess it was my mother who instilled in me not just a preference for telling the truth, but a fear of lying. 

I was little—age 5 or 6—and I can actually remember occasionally trying to tell a lie and having to back off. Before the falsehood was even concluded, I would hang my head and say, “That’s a lie.”

We tell lies for three reasons. 1, To make ourselves look better than we are, like folks who pad their resumes. 2, To stay out of trouble. “I’m not the one who broke the lamp…or spilled the milk…” 3, Because our brains are warped 4, Arrogance. 5, To make a profit.

Okay, I told a lie. It’s five reasons instead of three.

But is that a lie? Not really. That’s a mistake. When I started typing, I hadn’t thought of two of the reasons. But if I had said “three,” knowing full well that there are really five, in order to get you to buy my unwritten book, The Three Reasons to Lie for Fun and Profit, well, that would be a lie.

Of course, some folks are just serial prevaricators. Either they can’t tell the difference between truth and falsehood, or they get some satisfaction out of lying, thinking they are more clever than others because they can pull the wool over your eyes.

A good example is the recent Republican Congressman George Santos. He would tell you it was raining even if you were standing in the sunshine. And was outraged when you didn’t believe him.

That’s a pretty good tell is someone is lying—if they are outraged when called on it.

I once knew a man of whom it was said, “He would like even when it was to his profit to tell the truth.” He was a preacher.

The people who lie for profit are the most insidious, I think, because they consider not whether a statement is true or false, but if it is good or bad, as in “It’s a good lie, because our profits went up.”

I remember a TV show when folks were talking about advertising. They all agreed, and the audience clapped enthusiastically, when someone lauded the old shampoo bottle and commercial that said to wash, rinse, repeat. “Whoever thought up ‘repeat’ was brilliant. There is no need to wash more than once, but by adding that simple word, they doubled profits.”

Businesses lie with gusto, knowing we don’t believe them, but hoping, assuming, that somewhere there is a gullible soul who will buy stuff they don’t need. Just make up anything and throw it against the wall and see if it sticks. If it doesn’t, think up something else.

Like those folks who keep trying to get me to extend our auto maintenance warranty. They say all sorts of things they don’t mean. This is the only time we’ll contact you. This is your last chance. We won’t contact you anymore. We reserve the right to deny coverage if you don’t respond within 5 days.

The last one is okay, except they don’t mean it, because I get the same pitch next week.

We are told, “It’s not lying. It’s just advertising.”

I think that’s why Donald Trump gets by with lying so blatantly and often. He’s a business guy. We accept lying from business people. We don’t even think of it as lying anymore, especially from someone like Trump who lies all the time. It’s just the way he talks.

Accepting that kind of lying as normal is why the world is going to hell in a hand basket. And that’s the truth.

John Robert McFarland