CONFRONTING THE HIDDEN DANGERS [W, 7-1-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—CONFRONTING THE HIDDEN DANGERS [W, 7-1-26]

 

When I was a new young pastor and husband and father, one of my church members was worried about me, because I did not seem worried enough—about the dangers of Communism. [This was 1961.] He brought to me a book that outlined all the ways the commies were trying to subvert us. Being a recent history major at Indiana University, I took exception to some of the facts in the book. My church member was dumbfounded. “Well,” he said, “if it wasn’t true, they wouldn’t put it in a book!”

He was not a stupid man. He had a good job and a nice family. He read the newspapers. He was a faithful church-attender. But… I mean, what can you say to that?

He wasn’t through. He thought maybe I would be more agreeable to his ideas if I were approached by a colleague, namely the local Lutheran pastor. Apparently my church member and that pastor were in the same local anti-communism group. My Lutheran colleague explained to me that he knew for a fact that the commies had already infiltrated the country so completely that they had secret control of the totality of Chicago Land. We lived in Indiana, but well within Chicago Land. “They could take over at any moment,” he said, “and when they do, they already have detention centers ready for all the clergy.”

“If they are already that well organized, and have that much power,” I said, “why don’t they just go ahead and do it? They want to take over, right? And they are ready. So what are they waiting for?”

He had no answer for that.

But I had already learned a lesson the year before, one that I forgot too often through the years. A Sunday School teacher came to me and begged to be allowed to quit. She was just too tired. She couldn’t do it anymore. So I found someone to replace her. Then she told others in the church how much she loved her class and how I had pushed her out against her will.

That was when I learned to look behind what was behind what was behind. People are multi-layered. If you deal only with the layer they present, you don’t understand what is really driving them.

People who are frightened by hidden conspiracies are not just being phobic. Hidden conspiracies actually exist for them. But they are not external, like Communists or gays or Muslims. The hidden conspiracies are within themselves. And they don’t want to admit it. They have to externalize their internal fears onto other political parties or religions or races or genders, any group beyond the pale. They know well the power of personal hidden conspiracies, hidden dangers.

They are often addicts—alcohol, sex, gambling, greed, drugs, lust, gluttony…all the biggies, some physical, some psychological.

Very few folks do not have something hidden within that is frightening to us. We really need to do something with it, so that it does not overwhelm us. So we project the personal danger within onto a supposed public danger without.

That’s why we go to church, to be reminded—and, once again, every 7 days is for most of us not often enough—that all that is hidden, why, God already knows about that. What’s the point in trying to cover up something that is known where it counts most, in the heart of God?

Go to church. Tell God about all the stuff you’re afraid of, including all that stuff inside of you. Then that stuff will lose its power.

John Robert McFarland

I’ve heard a rumor that it is July already. That can’t be true!

 CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Preacher—WELL, BLESS YOUR HEART [6-29-26]

 

In Methodist churches, the appointment year for pastors starts July 1. That’s when the transition to a new pastor starts, as it did for Wesley UMC in Mason City, Iowa, when we lived there.

We lived in retirement in Mason City because the grandkids were there, I was the occasional unpaid assistant pastor at Wesley UMC. Whenever Dave Shogren, had to be gone, he’d have me preach. Then the bishop appointed Dave to be a District Superintendent, and Bill Poland came to be our pastor.

Bill began to make changes. Church people don’t much like changes, but everyone liked Bill, so we were in a conundrum.

One change Bill didn’t make was asking me to preach whenever he was gone. So, one Sunday, I thought it good to take on that matter of the changes he was making. Here is the abbreviated form of that sermon…

I call where I come from, in southern Indiana, “The Mississippi of the North,” for how we deal with race, and for the humidity in the summer, and for the way we talk. In either Mississippi, you can say anything you want about a person if you follow it with, “Bless her heart; she’s doing the best she can.”

“That meatloaf she brought to the church picnic could choke a giraffe. But bless her heart, she’s doing the best she can.”

“He’s the poster boy for lead paint, but bless his heart, he’s doing the best he can.”

Our pastor, Bill Poland, is gone today, so we can say anything about him that we want to, as long as we bless his heart.

Bill keeps making all these changes, and every time he makes one, attendance goes up. Bill thinks it’s because we like the changes. But we don’t like change. We like Bill. We don’t just like him, we love him, because we know he loves us. So we keep coming to church, and inviting others to do so, not because of the changes, but in spite of them.

Bill doesn’t understand that. He keeps going to these conferences about church growth, and they suggest some change, and he comes back and does it, and then he thinks, “Hey, it worked. I did that change Willow Creek told us to do and now the attendance is up.”

He went to a conference and they told him he should take out the communion rails. You see any communion rails? Nope, they’re gone. Instead of kneeling at the rails, they told him, we should get in line and shuffle along like convicts in the prison cafeteria, and when we got up to the front someone would give us a tiny piece of bread and one swig of grape juice and say, “God loves you, and keep moving.” That’s both good information and good advice, but… well, bless his heart; he’s doing the best he can.

He went to another conference and they said that instead of an organ to accompany the hymns, we should have a clavicorn…or clavicle…or…whatever that instrument there is. But, bless his heart, he’s doing the best he can. We got one of those clavimachines, and attendance went up.

And hymns? We don’t even sing hymns anymore. He went to yet another conference, and they said we should sing “praise songs” instead of hymns. Praise hymns are a grocery list of all the known words for God or Jesus. Praise hymns are “count-down” music—5 words sung 4 times to 3 chords from 2 screens to… bless his heart. He’s doing the best he can. Now we’re singing praise songs, and attendance is up.

But church people don’t like change. We love Bill, but we’re so tired of all these changes. So I went to God and prayed about it, and God said… “Bless your heart. You’re doing the best you can.”

Joh Robert McFarland

 

 

JOHNNA ROBERTA [SAT, 6-27-26]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Preacher—JOHNNA ROBERTA [SAT, 6-27-26]

 

It was late afternoon when Lucy* showed up at my office, with a problem. I had never met her, but that was not surprising. I had a reputation as a good counselor. Well, maybe it was more that I had a reputation as a free counselor.

Lucy had grown up in a family that never went to church, any church. Her sister, though, had recently started coming to the church I pastored, and she had recommended that Lucy come to see me about her problem.

Lucy was an educated and competent professional woman.  She was also a new wife. She was used to spending money like a single professional woman, not as part of a marriage. She had spent a lot of money on a sick cat.

Women in general are willing to spend a lot of money on sick cats. Men in general think that money is misspent. Lucy knew that. Only after, though, had it occurred to her that perhaps she should have talked with her new husband first.

I was sympathetic. Helen and I had been married only six months when I showed up one day with a new car. In my defense, I had gone to the car lot just to look at the new models. In those days, every car make was different every year, from every other make and model, and different from the year before. Now all cars look alike, all the time. Back then, though, it was reasonable for a man to go look at the new models just for the looking. If suddenly a sales guy made you a trade offer too good to refuse, what could you do? Well, talk it over with your wife, that’s what you could do, but I had been financially independent since my childhood. I was used to making money decisions on my own.

I learned rather quickly, via that new car and my new wife, that monetary independence was not acceptable in marriage. So, I sympathized with Lucy, and I knew that she was in trouble.

I can’t remember what I told Lucy. It was probably along the lines of…Talk with Keith. Explain that you are used to making financial decisions on your own and that you won’t do it anymore. I’m sure he’ll understand. I had not yet met Keith, because he had never gone to church, either, so I wasn’t really sure he would understand, but I was hopeful.

It worked out. Lucy and Keith became regulars at church. They thought I was great, because I gave such good advice. They consulted me often. We became good friends. When their daughter was about to be born, they were deciding what to name her. I said that since they owed their marriage to my great counseling, they should name her Johnna Roberta. They said they would think about it.

Much to my dismay, they gave her some lesser name. We remained close anyway, through the rest of my pastorate there. I, however, secretly called that little girl Johnna Roberta, especially as I sat with her parents and prayed for her as she went through a lot of painful physical problems.

I stopped seeing Lucy and Keith when my pastorate there ended. It is necessary always to do that with every pastoral relationship, to allow the new preacher really to become the pastor. But they were special to me. I had been the only pastor they’d ever had, the one who walked through the valley with them. I kept them dear in my memories and hopes and prayers.

I ran into them a couple of years later, in the court house. I was delighted to see them, but they barely said “Hello” as they went by me. They had other things on their mind. They were involved in an imbroglio in small claims court.

I was disappointed. I wanted them to tell me again how wonderful I was, how I helped their marriage, how I introduced them to church. I wanted to see how they were doing, especially if Johnna Roberta were okay. But I understood…

Not every relationship is meant to be forever. Indeed, no relationship can be forever. If nothing else, death will end all relationships.

The message of God through Christ, though, is that the end of a relationship does not mean the end of love. Love is always, be it short or long.

I still pray for Lucy and Keith. And, especially, for Johnna Roberta.

John Robert McFarland

*Not their real names.

 

ARE YOU GOING ON TO PERFECTION? [R, 6-25-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings About Perfection by An Old Man Who Is Still Going On—ARE YOU GOING ON TO PERFECTION? [R, 6-25-26]

 

When I was still a young preacher, I heard a basketball referee say that in his profession, you were expected to start out perfect and then get better. I immediately applied that to the ministry.

 

I should not have been surprised at the need for perfection as the minimal standard. I had learned as a child that perfection would save me from punishment but not gain me any praise. Perfection was the necessary minimum.

For instance, I learned to be quiet about pain. Never say “Ouch.” If I got hurt, my mother would hit me. Not for saying “Ouch,” but for getting hurt. It meant I did something wrong. If I had paid attention, I wouldn’t have gotten hurt. To this day, pain doesn’t make me hurt as much as it makes me angry, at myself: Durn, I messed up again.

Perfection as the minimum standard was right in my wheelhouse, as a Methodist minister. After all, it was the organizer of Methodism, John Wesley, the great theological exponent of free will, who espoused the doctrine of Christian Perfection. Along with the others in my ordination class, I answered Yes when asked, “Do you expect to be made perfect in this life?” I’m sure that all of us crossed our fingers behind our backs, and, more importantly, immediately began defining perfection in various non-perfect ways.

 

When John Wesley declared that perfection should be the goal of Methodists, it is usually added that he meant perfection in love. No one can be perfect in intelligence or athletic performance and such, even in kindness, but love is entirely different. With love, you can start over at any time.

 

Gabrielle Zevin says that her book, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow “…is about work. And it’s about love.” It certainly is, but it’s also about perfection. Because it’s about video games.

The book title, of course, comes from Macbeth’s famous soliloquy in his eponymous play by Shakespeare…

 Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day. To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. [1]

Zevin is an excellent writer and story teller, but I’m sure I missed a lot of the nuances of the book because I haven’t played a video game since Pacman. Tomorrow3 is about young people who play and create video games. That involves work, and love, and the possibility of perfection.

There is no standard by which you can judge that a game is perfect when you are creating it. You can work and work and get it better, but how can you possibly know if ever does reach perfection?

Love and playing video games, though, you can start over at any time. You don’t even have to play to the end of the game. Any time you make a mistake, you can start over.

You have learned how to play better next time. You have moved closer to perfection.  When you feel that life is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing, you can start over.

In Christian terms, starting over is called repentance. Its original meaning is simply to turn around and go the other way. If you have trouble with the others who are trying to create and play the game, you can start over at any time. That’s called forgiveness,

You don’t go on to perfection by being perfect. When you make a mistake playing the game, you just start over.

You don’t have to wait for tomorrow… or tomorrow… or tomorrow…

John Robert McFarland

1] My college roommate, Tom Cone, once had a dog named Brief Candle, so that when necessary, he could order the dog out of the house in Shakespearean terms: Out, out Brief Candle!

 

FORGIVE & REMEMBER [T, 6-23-26-

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Preacher—FORGIVE & REMEMBER [T, 6-23-26-

 

I think all the annual conferences of The United Methodist Church have finished their confabs for this year now. The purpose of this annual assembly, of clergy and lay members from each congregation, is to make plans for next year, and to get a retrospective of the year past.

In our winter years, we get a retrospective of the events of all our years past.

In my first appointment after seminary, I was standing around at a break in some ministerial meeting, chatting with my colleagues. One was the pastor of a large and prestigious church. He was less than a year from retirement and so prone to looking backward rather than forward. He gave some advice to those of us who were young and looking forward.

“You young fellas need to trust the bishop and the cabinet,” he said. “They’ll do right by you. They always gave me better appointments than I deserved.” [1]

I pointed out that obviously we could not trust the bishop and cabinet, because if they gave him better appointments than he deserved, they gave some of his colleagues lesser appointments than they deserved. You couldn’t be all that pleased or trusting if you were in the latter category.

He was totally befuddled. He didn’t understand at all what I was saying. That, of course, was because he didn’t mean what he said.

In addition to the false modesty to which all men, and women, of “the cloth” are prone, he was just saying, “I accept my past.” His was not a rational, truth-in-a-scientific-way statement. He wasn’t doing arithmetic; he was doing forgiveness. He was forgiving the bishop and the cabinet and his congregations and himself for all that was past.

Rather than the usual mantra of “forgive and forget,” I suggest that it is better to forgive and remember. Remember the facts of your past, or your past loses meaning. But forgive the reality. Accept the gift. We need to remember the facts. Those are reality. But reality, when it is applied to memory, is overrated.

In my winter years, I have learned that rationality is not usually helpful in understanding things that are primarily emotional.

Paul Tillich said, “Forgiveness doesn’t change the facts, but it does change the meaning of the facts.”

Forgive the facts. Forgive the past. Accept that which is better than you deserve.

John Robert McFarland

1] The system is changing, but traditionally in Methodism, ministers are not hired by the congregation. They are appointed by the bishop and the cabinet, which is the District Superintendents glommed together. We can’t request a particular appointment, and we have to go where we are sent, although we can sometimes weasel out of it. From the beginning of American Methodism through the first half of my career, there was no negotiation of any kind. The bishop told you where you were going, usually through the DS, and that was all there was to it. Sometimes you weren’t even told; sometimes you didn’t know until the appointments were read on the last day of the annual conference where you would move the next week.

 

 

 

TOOLS [Sun, 6-21-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Man—TOOLS [Sun, 6-21-26]

 

Today is Father’s Day, so I’m thinking about tools.

A hardware store flyer came in the mail yesterday. I looked through it carefully. I don’t need or want anything from a hardware store, but I do it to honor and remember my father. Also in honor of my late brother, Jim, who inherited our father’s tool ability.

My father loved tools, and so he loved hardware stores. In his last years, when he had given away all his tools because he had to go to a senior citizen apartment, or was living in a nursing home room, he would have me take him to a hardware store, ostensibly to buy a light bulb or a cleaning cloth. Really it was so he could browse the shelves, to see what was new. The only eyesight he had left was about ten percent in one eye, but he would get that eye right up against the shelf, and comment unfavorably on the price.

I had no interest in tools myself, not his kind of tools. He lost his eyesight in an industrial accident when I was five. Shortly thereafter, I entered into the fourth of the eight stages of psychological-social growth, as outlined by Erik Erikson, industry vs inferiority. It’s basically when you learn to use tools, or fail to learn how to use them.

Tools, of course, are not just the hardware kind. There were many household tools that women had to learn to use. Doctors have to learn to use scalpels. Scientist have to learn to use telescopes and microscopes. But to me, tools meant the kind my father used.

Dad organized his tools so that he could still find them and use them, even with his minimal eyesight.

I, of course, was fascinated by his tools, so I would sometimes get one out to “use,” which meant to play with. I would sometimes leave it in the yard, where he couldn’t find it. In my psyche I heard him say, “You can’t use tools.” I think he probably said some variant of “You can’t use MY tools,” for good reason. I, however, internalized the idea that I could not use any kind of tool. I still can’t use his kind of tools. I settled for inferiority over industry.

Sort of.

I did play the bassoon, which requires as much manual dexterity as most workbench tools.

Also, I took up another kind of tool, language.

I wanted to be a journalist. That’s the trade of one who uses words as tools. I loved stories and wanted to tell them. Just as importantly, I wanted to tell them honestly. Everyone said that Ernie Pyle told the story of WW II the way it really was. I wanted to be an Ernie Pyle.

There is, of course, a different way to use the tools of words, just as there is a wrong way to use my father’s kind of tools, to make the instruments of war rather than to build a cradle for a little child. Many users of words use them to misinform, to propagandize, to lie.

Mastering a tool isn’t the only task. The tool user must also be mastered.

John Robert McFarland

“The aim of literature is to discover and illuminate truth, whether biography or history or fiction.” Rachel Carson

 

 

ALL OLD MEN LOOK ALIKE [F, 6-10-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Escapades of An Old Pizza Eater—ALL OLD MEN LOOK ALIKE [F, 6-10-26]

 

I was pretty well caught up on meditating, but Helen sent me to the pizza joint, anyway, to get a pizza, which is the other reason to go there. [See the column for 5-28-26 if you don’t understand this.]

Just as I left home, though, I got a text from the CVS drug store, a little farther down the street, saying they had a script ready for me. It was the fourth text they had sent me in the previous 24 hours. They even promised that they would send more texts. The only way to stop CVS from texting is to go get the durn prescription, even though you already have enough to last a lifetime, especially if your lifetime probably isn’t going to be a lot longer.

It takes about 15 minutes for a large pepperoni to bake, so I decided I’d go to CVS while the pizza was baking. I explained to the tattooed lady at the pizza joint that I would be right back and that she should not give my pizza to some other old man who came in and claimed that was really his pizza.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “that’s a problem, since all old men look alike.”

Wait a minute! That’s my line, that all old men look alike. Oh, maybe I’ve been to that pizza joint before.

But wait another minute! All old men look alike? No way! I was wearing a faded blue shirt and an IU ball cap and cargo shorts…oh, wait. That is what all old men wear. They all have white beards, too.

Turned out that CVS kept me for more than 15 minutes it takes for a pepperoni to get ready. They had no record of my prescription, even though they had texted me all those times to say it was ready.

[CVS likes to overdo things. Every time I go there, I regret not having invested in receipt paper. On a recent “Law & Order,” one of the cops said about an arrestee, “He has a rap sheet as long as a CVS receipt.”]

Despite the blunders of the CVS computer, the people who actually do the work at the South Walnut CVS are always kind and competent. The nice young pharmacist said she’d fix up my prescription right then, if I could wait ten minutes.

“Wait ten minutes? You’ve got to be kidding me. That woman at the pizza joint will give my pizza to some other old man if I don’t get back there in time.”

To her credit, the pharmacist understood. I mean, what’s the point of taking medicine to make you live longer if somebody else gets your za in the meantime?

When I got to the pizza joint, the tattooed lady was sitting there with my pizza on her lap. “I’ve been guarding it,” she said, “so somebody else can’t get it, but how do I know you’re not some other old man?”

That’s always the question.

John Robert McFarland

“The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

 

 

THE LAST WESTERN [W, 6-17-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Social Commentary of An Old Westerns Fan—THE LAST WESTERN [W, 6-17-26]

 

It was TV’s “rural purge” that did it.

From WWII to the end of the Gunsmoke TV series, Westerns reigned supreme as the primary entertainment genre. I grew up in that era of Western stories as entertainment—radio, movies, books, TV.

My hero was The Lone Ranger. Tonto, also. And Red Ryder. Little Beaver, also. Western heroes needed “faithful Indian companions,” but they were always the “and,” the “also,” the add-on.

As a kid, I loved the Westerns on the radio, and the Saturday matinees. As I got older, the Old West was still my era of choice for entertainment. It was for most folks who had switched from radio to TV and movies, too.

We loved Bonanza and The Virginian and Have Gun; Will Travel.

We loved the Cartwrights and Marshall Dillon and Paladin on TV.

We loved Paul Newman and Robert Redford and Gabby Hayes and Richard Boone in the movies.

We loved the writers, like Elmore Leonard. Terry Johnstone. Louis Lamour. Zane Grey. Tom Eidson.

And JR McFarland. Yes, I thought I should have a semi-pen name for the many Westerns I was going to write, to distinguish me from John Robert McFarland--who wrote stuff about religion and cancer and humor and anything else that came up--but still acknowledge, sort of, that I was that guy, with more than one career.

I really thought that when I retired, I would have a career as a novelist, especially Western novels. After all, An Ordinary Man was published by HarperCollins even before I retired. It was well-received and sold forty thousand copies. That sounded good.

What I didn’t know was that in 1995, there were only forty thousand Westerns readers left. I had gotten around to writing Westerns at the end of that era. A guy doing a Westerns historical archive asked me for an autographed copy of my book. I didn’t realize that being included in an historical archive wasn’t really a good thing.

No entertainment era lasts forever. That is partially because changes in technology make new forms of entertainment possible. But Westerns made the move to TV quite well. In fact, Westerns made TV as popular as it was. But TV was also the reason for the fall of Westerns, because of “the rural purge.”

Westerns celebrated a WWII mentality, good guys against bad guys. They even wore different colored Stetsons so you could identify them easily—white hats for the good guys, black hats for the bad.

The Folk music revival of the 1960s fit well with that mentality. It provided the musical ethos for Westerns. Its most celebrated hero was “a condemned man named Tom Dooley,” who was facing rural frontier justice “down in some lonesome valley, hanging from a white oak tree.”  

But then came rock and roll. The Beetles. Elvis. A Viet Nam war mentality, when it was not at all easy to tell the good guys from the bad. Westerns were “rural.” TV execs were seeking younger urban watchers who would be better customers for the advertisers of cosmetics and cars. Thus, “the rural purge.”

So, my Western novel writing career came to a sliding halt. Just as well. I was pretty good at coming up with titles. A good title often has the word “last” in it, like this column. I wasn’t very good at figuring out a good conclusion, though. Sort of like this column…

John Robert McFarland

I really thought An Ordinary Man would make a great movie. I even cast it, with Richard Harris as the ordinary man. I’m sorry you didn’t get to see it.

“It’s terrible to outlive your own generation.” Djuna Barnes

HUMAN WHOLENSS VS HIPPIE WHOLENESS [M, 6-15-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Psychology of A Hopeful Old Human—HUMAN WHOLENSS VS HIPPIE WHOLENESS [M, 6-15-26]

 

There is an old story about a young preacher who went to preach at a country church one Sunday morning only to find that nobody else had showed up, except for one old farmer. “Well,” the young man thought, “I’ve prepared a great sermon. I’ll just go ahead and preach it.” After the service, the old farmer said, “When I take a load of hay out to the field, if only one cow shows up, I don’t give it the whole load.”

I think there is wisdom in that story, but I have a little trouble with it, for “whole” is one of my favorite words, and that little story doesn’t do it justice.

After I got cancer, and was told I’d probably be dead in a year or two, my late, great friend, Bill White, drove a hundred miles one day to spend the afternoon with me. As we talked, I realized that I was starting every sentence with, “Now that I have cancer…” The cancer had changed every aspect of my life. Bill said, “That sounds like the title of a book.” He knew me. He knew that I needed to write about anything I experienced, to be able to understand it and deal with it. 

But when I sent my manuscript to AndrewsMcMeel Publishing, Editorial Director, Donna Martin, said, “I think what you’re really saying is, now that I have cancer I am whole.” That became the title of the book. [1]

So, “wholeness” has become my fulcrum word, the word that explains, if not the way I do live my life, at least the way I try to live my life.

As I have grown older, though, I’ve come to know that there is a difference between what I call human wholeness, and hippie wholeness.

Hippie wholeness is not living wholistically, but about dropping out of the attempt at wholeness, into the morass of self.

It’s very appealing as we age, to drop out, of more and more. It makes life simple.

But it does not make life centered; it just makes you self-centered.

Our coffee maker has a little ridge around the burner. As I make the first pot of the morning, while I’m more feeling my way through life instead of actually seeing it, it’s easy for me to stick the carafe onto the burner in a way that is not centered. Then there's a mess I have to clean up. Centeredness helps to make the world work right.

There is only one center in hippie wholeness—me. Hippie wholeness is about personal comfort. I, the person, should never be uncomfortable, be it physical or emotional. If it’s physical, I take some drug to make me feel comfortable. If it’s emotional, I drop out, I walk away. No thought to what happens to other people.

As our physician and I were talking about this last week, she said, “I’ve never heard the phrase, ‘hippie wholeness,’ before.”

I said, “That’s because I just made it up, and also because hippie wholeness puts your kind of medicine last. Human wholeness people start with the world, the community’s wisdom, the tried and true, penicillin and surgery and prayer. To be whole, we also do chanting and tree bark. Hippie wholeness people start with what is not common wisdom, what is offbeat, what is individual, chants and tree bark. They do penicillin and surgery after aroma therapy and coffee enemas don’t work.”

Hippie wholeness is personal prayer: “Me and my wife, our son and his wife, us four and no more, Amen.” Human wholeness is intercessory prayer, kissing the booboo not because it takes away the pain but because it takes away the loneliness. [A phrase from Rachel Naomi Remen]

Hippie wholeness is about the individual. Human wholeness is about community. Hippie wholeness people like to say they are being honest. Human wholeness is about being kind.

We get whole by being kind, to ourselves, to others, and to the world.

John Robert McFarland

1] Donna Martin was noted for finding the right title for a book, for writers much better known than I.

PAYING THE PIPER [Sat, 6-13-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Story Teller—PAYING THE PIPER [Sat, 6-13-26]

 

I was chatting with a medical professional, an obviously competent woman, who laughed brightly when she said, “You’ve been retired longer than I’ve been alive!” Great; I was already feeling old enough.

I retired 30 years ago today, the last day of the Central IL Conf. of the UMC, last day both for 1996 and forever, since later that day the CIC was merging with the S IL Conf. to form The Illinois Great Rivers Conf. When Vernie Barnett, the head of pensions for our conference, introduced each of us who were retiring, he told how many years each of us had preached. For me, it was 30. Which was both right and wrong.

It was right because I had 30 years of pension credit. It was wrong because I had been preaching, under appointment, for 40 years. But I had the kinds of ministry that didn’t always lead to pension credit.

Counting part-time interims in retirement, I preached a total of 60 years.

I was good at preaching from the start of those years. I don’t know why. I certainly did not have much self-confidence. But from the first, at age 19, I was good at it. Not really at preaching, the way it was usually understood in those days, but at just standing up in front of people and talking, telling stories.

I think I was comfortable, standing up in front and talking, because, if you don’t get in the way, you can let stories tell themselves. I wasn’t up there by myself. I knew the stories had my back.

One man said, “You don’t talk at us or to us. You talk for us.”

There was one problem, though, with being a preacher, all those forty years: people.

That’s the same problem in a lot of jobs. People have a tendency to get in your way in almost any job. The problem is exacerbated, though, by the strange backward familial nature of the church—the preacher is the parent, but the children [congregants] handle the money and provide the housing. They are sometimes [often?] parents who say, “My house, my rules.”

If the children don’t like the rules you are laying down as the parent--about how you should treat black folks and women and immigrants the same as everyone else, and how you should not be greedy but share your toys with the poor, and how you should do your chores and get to bed on time and leave them downtown women alone—they get back at you by cutting your allowance.

In the Methodist Church, the pastor’s salary is set each year at the Church Conference [annual business meeting], which is presided over by the District Superintendent. I had a District Superintendent who told me, as he completed his term: “I have sixty pastors in this District. I have spent more time during my six years on your salary than all the others combined.”

One year, Harry Keal came to Charge Conference to try to deny me a salary increase. And those increases were never really increases in buying power; just cost-of-living adjustments, like 2 %.

Harry agreed that I was a good preacher, but he did not like the stuff I preached, the stories I told. He did not want to say that, though. Indeed, every time someone tried to lower my salary at Charge Conference--and that was pretty much every year, and sometimes in between—they said it was because of budget constraints. Everyone saw through that, because there were other lines in the budget that should have been cut, too, if we really had money problems, but they never even mentioned those.

Harry was a farmer, and tried to make his case on the basis of free trade economics. “When I take my corn to the elevator, I have to take what the market dictates.” Young farmer Steve Holaday said, “Yes, but the other farmers in the Co-Op don’t sit down and decide what you’ll get for your corn. That’s what we’re doing here.”

Today is the anniversary of my official retirement from the ministry. I look back on those 40 years before retirement, and I give thanks. It was a great honor to get to stand up in front and tell the stories of God. But I also give thanks that there isn’t anyone available to say my pension should be cut, because I’m not giving thanks in the right way.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

MAKING HAY [R, 6-11-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of Lost Skills—MAKING HAY [R, 6-11-26]

 

It’s haying season.

When we moved to the farm, I was ten, and a city boy. The concrete sidewalks of Indianapolis were my world. That concrete was hard, but reliable.

Suddenly, in a day’s time, there was no concrete anyplace. It was all dirt and gravel.

I had loved listening to The Lone Ranger on the radio, and watching Red Ryder and Little Beaver in Saturday matinees at the Tacoma Theater on Washington Street. So, at first, I thought the farm was neat. It was like living on a ranch. It took me a while to realize that we had a horse because we couldn’t afford a car, that we were the kinds of farmers the cattle barons pushed off the land because we didn’t amount to anything, that primitive farm life was hard work. I didn’t get to ride in and solve a problem, like The Lone Ranger, and ride off again, with pretty girls swooning and asking, “Who was that masked boy?” I was stuck there, putting up hay.

There was a lot more farm work than just making hay, of course, but hay season takes on gigantic proportions in my memory of farm life. It was only one season of the year, only a week, maybe less. But when I think about farm life, I don’t think first about gathering eggs or slopping hogs or chopping kindling or carrying water. I think about making hay.

The main things I remember are the humidity and the heat. I guess that is because you can only “make hay while the sun shines.”

 

Also, of course the dust. My father loved [soy] bean hay. It wasn’t like what I call grass hay. Bean hay is mostly fine dust. At least, that’s what got down my shirt and into my hair and nostrils and lungs.

And the thirst. We had no ice to mix with the water we took to the fields, and we had no thermos jug to keep it cold, anyway. We just had a glass jar. We kept it in the weeds on the shady side of the field. It was a big jar, but we gulped from it every time we got to that side, even though the water was hotter every time. Soon it was gone, and we had to wait until a load was done and back to the barn before we could get a refill.

And the sun burn. I don’t think we even knew about sun screen then. Maybe it didn’t exist. I know it didn’t for us. Every year or so now the dermatologist removes a malignant patch of skin from my face. They got their start back in the hay fields.

And the fatigue. Making hay takes all your muscles and all your lung capacity. Chemo fatigue is the only tiredness I’ve ever known that was more depleting than haying fatigue.

Finally, though, I remember the satisfaction. I had survived the heat and the dust, and I learned how to build a load.

We had no fancy new equipment that did baling for you. We put up hay “loose.” My father would walk along beside the wagon--pulled by Prince, the horse who thought he was too good for pulling wagons--and get a big forkful of hay off the ground and pitch it up onto the flatbed wagon, where I stood with my own fork. I built the load.

In doing that, I had to be careful not to stand on hay I was trying to move. I had to build the load in such a way that hay already on the wagon would not fall off as new hay came on. Most important, it had to be unloadable. When we got back to the barn, we needed to take it off the wagon a forkful at a time, just as it had gone on.  As the load got bigger and higher and more complicated, that was harder than it sounds.

Like so many of the skills I learned as a kid, building a hay load is one that I’ll never use again. No one else will, either. But it has served me well. When times get tough, I can always say, “It could be worse. I could be making hay.”

John Robert McFarland

“I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.” Playwright & author, Jerome K. Jerome.

A CHURCH WITH NO FUTURE [T, 6-9-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Campus Minister—A CHURCH WITH NO FUTURE [T, 6-9-26]

 

The church is irrelevant and has no preachers because it has sacrificed its future to spread frankincense on its dead corpus. It won’t be resurrected until it knows once again the importance of ministry on the  campuses of higher education.

Years ago, I was appointed by the bishop to a Conference committee. It was his way of punishing me for making a motion at Annual Conference that we have no conference committee meetings for a year, and spend all the time we would have spent in committee meetings in evangelism, and then come back the next year to see if we might be better off. It failed, but by a surprisingly slim margin. The Bishop had an elevated sense of his status as an agent of karma.

That committee was tasked with learning what help congregations wanted from the denomination staff, to be more effective witnesses in their communities. We sent a survey for each congregation to fill out.

The churches were very cooperative. They all completed the survey forms and sent them back. All the members of the committee read all the responses. Or, at least, I did.

Almost all the congregations felt the same need—help with education, meaning, primarily, Sunday School and youth groups. And, more importantly, they wanted it right where they were. They wanted the helpers to come to them.

So, the committee met. In the Conference office. We came from all over the large geographical area of the Conference to meet. I myself drove 94.31 miles. [Yes, I had to look it up.] The Conference Program Director welcomed us, thanked us for our good work, said that the survey results were clear—we needed more Conference programming about Christian education. Fifteen minutes. He said we could go. Folks started to get up. A day wasted by 15 clergy and lay leaders of the church.

I didn’t get up. I said, “That’s not what the surveys said at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“They didn’t want Conference programming. They didn’t want to drive all day to the Conference headquarters. They wanted Conference staff people to come to their churches, to help them right there…”

The other committee members began to sit back down. “Yes, that’s right. That’s what the surveys said. They want local programming…”

The Conference Council Director was dumbstruck. He had never imagined such a thing. The purpose of being an administrator is to sit at headquarters and have people come to you, isn’t it?

As the numbers of church members have declined, precipitously, the number of administrators in headquarters has increased. We have fewer members and congregations, the reasoning goes, so we need to create more reasons for them to leave their locales and come hear experts, instead of going out into the highways and byways of their own towns and inviting people in. [Look it up. In every denominational headquarters, staff members have increased in direct proportion to the decrease of members and congregations.]

A huge number of pastors—and lay leaders--have come out of campus ministry. Starting with the time I was campus minister at IL State U [1966], more than 100 young people have gone into the ministry, from just that one campus ministry unit. Multiply that by campus ministries at every university.

As denominations have declined financially, though, church leaders have chosen to sacrifice the future of the church to prop up a moribund and outmoded system by cutting funds to campus ministries and adding more and more irrelevant administrators for “development,” who sit in offices and think up “programs” to be executed by non-existent preachers.

[Do I sound like an old curmudgeon, or what? Yes, but it’s all true.]

If you want to revivify the church, put whatever money and energy it has left into campus ministry.

John Robert McFarland

 

        

 

 

 

 

 

HOW ABSENT ARE THE FEET… [Sun, 6-7-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings About Irrelevancy by an Irrelevant Old Preacher--HOW ABSENT ARE THE FEET… [Sun, 6-7-26]

 

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!” [Isaiah 52:7]

So far, I have said that no one wants to be a preacher because they are irrelevant, primarily because the church is irrelevant. But there is a specific irrelevancy of preachers…

THE IRRELEVANCE OF PREACHERS

The church is no longer relevant or necessary in American society, so preachers are irrelevant and unnecessary. Who needs a preacher in a church that is irrelevant?

Preachers aren’t even needed for funerals and weddings. Officiating at those events was the main reason the larger society beyond the church put up with preachers and their annoying talk about God.  Now anyone can officiate, even at weddings. “Anyone” is often preferable, because there is no religious language to negotiate. Couples can write their own self-centered, temporary vows for weddings [‘til love do us part], and no one has to speculate about heaven or hell as we “celebrate” the life of some secular reprobate.

On TV shows, preachers are rarely even shown. If they are, they are usually bumbling buffoons. On a recent Grey’s Anatomy, all the doctors were complaining that there were no chaplains in the building to do an emergency wedding. One of them said, “How can that be?  Chaplains are supposed to be here all the time” But this was the 10^th season of Grey’s Anatomy, and in the 225 shows before this episode, not only had they not mentioned or shown a chaplain, no one had even acknowledged their existence. Of course, it provided a good excuse for some bed pan operator to get ordained online to do the wedding. That’s how important and relevant preachers are, with their seven years of higher education.

{The episode aired originally in 2014, but we have only recently started watching Grey’s Anatomy, via Netflix. We’ve still got 12 seasons to go.}

When we graduated university, my roommate, Tom Cone, went to law school. The guy in the room next door, Tom Lucas, went to medical school. I went to theological school. All our peers, all of society, considered that we would be three equal professionals. Everyone knew that the Toms would earn a lot more money than I did, but we would have the same level of education and respect.

When we got our professional doctorates, that was true. All the newly married and doctorated couples socialized together. Our main friends were young doctors and lawyers and their wives. [There were some women lawyers and doctors then, but they didn’t live in the towns where I was pastoring.]

The main virtues then, the ones that society valued, were education, patriotism, civic involvement, moral living, and respectability. It was the church’s responsibility to encourage [enforce?] those virtues. The primary encourager/enforcer, of course, was the preacher.

Then came the upheaval of social values.

The Viet Nam war was fought, we were told by “the establishment,” to protect those values and virtues. But, no, that war was really fought to protect interests antithetical to traditional values. The values being protected were greed and power. Young people developed a counter culture, a drop-out culture, of drugs and non-involvement, a culture that saw traditional values as corrupt or irrelevant or hypocritical.

When people give up on traditional values, and replace them with greed and drugs, who can be more irrelevant than a preacher of traditional values?

Yes, there are people who still believe in the traditional values, but to exist in a nontraditional culture, they have to “double down,” become strict and inflexible in upholding those values. Mainline denominational churches are seen as wish-washy, cooperators with a lax culture, accepting non-acceptable people. The code word is “obey.” Mainline churches and their preachers don’t use it. They are accepted by neither the traditional religion nor the libertine culture.

Oh, I so wish I could start as a preacher, again, right now. This is just about the best time ever to be a preacher. What a wonderful opportunity, to preach the Gospel in a culture that is so ready for it, and doesn’t even know it!

John Robert McFarland

“When old men become irrelevant, young men become irresponsible.”

 

HE IRRELEVANCE OF DENOMINATIONS [F, 6-5-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Observations of An Irrelevant Old Preacher--THE IRRELEVANCE OF DENOMINATIONS [F, 6-5-26]

 

I know you are eager to hear about the irrelevance of preachers, and I did promise that for today, but my scheduling is unreliable, and first we have to consider the irrelevance of denominations…

The original purpose of denominations was so that you knew who to avoid. You could go to any town and know that Catholics would not recognize Lutherans, and Lutherans would not recognize Baptists, and Baptists would not recognize one another in the liquor store.

I love that sort of joke, but it takes us away from the main point. There were theological differences between denominations, and people were convinced they would go to hell if they got mixed up with the wrong belief system. More importantly, there were cultural differences. Often language differences. A denominational label was a handy way of knowing who to avoid.

Gene Matthews was the preacher for a while at Forsythe Methodist, the little open-country church that nurtured me. He was a factory worker who got the call to preach in middle age. He took the courses to get a License to Preach and filled in part-time wherever he was needed.

One week, that was the Methodist Church in Darmstadt, near Evansville, where he lived. He was newly licensed and wanted to show off his preaching skills. That was back in the day when many churches had open Bibles already on the pulpit. Gene decided he would study the scripture for the day and just preach directly from the pulpit Bible. When he got there, though, he discovered that the pulpit Bible was in German! It had been a German Methodist congregation. They had given up worship services in German during WWII. But they had kept that old Bible. It was as much a part of their Methodist heritage as Wesleyan theology.

Denominations are about connections. In a denomination, congregations aren’t separate entities; they belong to something bigger, a system that works together, to establish and sustain colleges and universities and hospitals and missions and children’s homes and old folks homes.

Now, though, all those institutions have been taken over by government or rich people on boards of directors. A university or hospital might still carry the name of a denomination—Lutheran or Presbyterian or Whatever—but the church has no say about what goes on there.

I started these irrelevancy columns by saying no one wants to be a preacher. Well, that’s not true. There are plenty of folks who want to be preachers, but they don’t want to be part of a larger church, a denomination. They don’t want to go to seminary, or be vetted by peers, or know anything about comparative theology, or be questioned about whether they have the necessary “gifts and graces” to be effective pastors. They don’t need a degree or an ordination. They are “called,” and that’s all they need. They are business entrepreneurs. Denominations are irrelevant in a culture that is entrepreneurial.

Ordination is outdated. Now, whoever wants to be a preacher, they just declare themselves a preacher. They rent an empty building, give it a name that includes words like journey or harvest or new or start or, especially, community, and they’re a preacher, although they rarely call themselves that. They are the messenger or the leader or the prophet.

We don’t want to relate to other people in other congregations. We want just our own little New Start or New Life or New Hope or New News congregation, our own bunch of people self-selected to be like us, our own preacher who has no responsibility to anyone but us.

In a non-connectivity culture, indeed an anti-connectivity culture, denominations are irrelevant.

John Robert McFarland

“I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is to try to please everybody.” Herbert P. Swope

 

 

 

ONE MORE THING ABOUT CHURCH IRRELEVANCY [W, 6-3-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings About Irrelevancy by an Irrelevant Old Man—ONE MORE THING ABOUT CHURCH IRRELEVANCY [W, 6-3-26]

 

“Just one more thing…” That’s what Lt. Columbo always said on the “Columbo” TV show of the 1970s. He was on his way out the door, hand on the knob. The killer looked satisfied. The police detective was leaving without learning the truth. But “Just one more thing…” was preface to the question that would befuddle and expose the murderer, every time, for ten years.

So, just one more thing about the irrelevance of the church, before we go on to the irrelevance of preachers… 

If you take a quick look at America today, it does not look like the church is irrelevant. In fact, it looks more relevant than ever. There is a strong Christian nationalism movement, from The White House on down. Indeed, surveys show that almost all the people who voted for Donald Trump are in church every Sunday, and he is the kind of president who gets whatever he wants. That’s relevance…

No, it’s not, because politics and culture are very different creatures. The church is relevant to current politics but not to culture, what people really believe and how they really live.

Politics is ephemeral and manipulatable. Elections rarely reflect how people actually live. Voters can be manipulated. Elections can be falsified. Courts can declare that the winner actually lost.

People vote on politics. Culture is not up for a vote. We think we make decisions about cultural matters, and we do, but not by vote. Culture just happens, one personal act at a time until the whole world has shifted.

It’s an old phrase now, but I was impressed when I first heard it, 56 years ago, from James Spalding, the Dean of The University of Iowa School of Religion, when I was his graduate student assistant: The axe man of The French Revolution was exceedingly proud of the sharpness of his blade. They put a poor bloke on the chopping block before him. He swung mightily. The man laughed. “Ha! You missed me! I didn’t feel a thing.” “Just wait ‘til you sneeze,” the axe man said.

Political ascendency periods are very short. Usually no more than ten or twelve years. Even the Christian nationalist churches are already irrelevant. They just haven’t sneezed yet.

Yes, of course, there will always be a church. The Body of Christ will always be resurrected. But not in the ways that require preachers to lead them. So, next column, the irrelevancy of preachers…

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

STICK A FORK IN THE CHURCH [M, 6-1-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Mutterings of An Irrelevant Old Man About Irrelevance—STICK A FORK IN THE CHURCH [M, 6-1-26]

 

The annual meeting of my United Methodist Conference starts tomorrow. The Illinois Great Rivers Conference comprises 2/3 of the state of Illinois, everything below Interstate 80. There are 646 churches in that Conference. When representatives from those churches meet in solemn assembly this week, there will not be even one new pastor ordained.

For several years now, in most United Methodist Conferences, retirements have outnumbered ordinations about ten to one. Now it’s gotten to be ten to zero. Yes, we have a pastoral crisis. Not just in the UMC, but in any denomination: nobody wants to be a preacher.

At least, nobody wants to be a preacher in a denomination, where there are folks who are checking to be sure you’re not mixing up any kool-aid.

Why are there no new preachers? Four reasons: The Church is irrelevant. Denominations are irrelevant. Preachers are irrelevant. Campus ministry is non-existent.

Today: The irrelevance of the church. I’ll talk about the irrelevancy of denominations and preachers and campus ministry in subsequent columns. [If that doesn’t discourage you from reading, nothing will. There’s nothing as deadly as a preacher who starts a sermon with “This is the first in a series of…”]

THE IRRELEVANCE OF THE CHURCH

Society has evolved, especially in sexual mores and morals, and the church has not. The church still holds to a sexual ethic of no sex except in marriage. The current cultural sex ethic is no sex until you’ve known someone for two minutes. The current church could not possibly be any more irrelevant to the current society.

Nobody worries about going to hell. The church was important when people worried about going to hell when they died. Going to church now was insurance against going to hell then. Now most folks think there might be some sort of afterlife, but no one believes in a physical heaven up there and a physical hell down there. Certainly church attendance, and the disciplines of personal holiness, have nothing to do with what will happen to you in some unknown future, so why go to church and do churchly stuff?

The church is all about personal fellowship. Each of us is a part of the Body of Christ, and we need the other parts of the Body. John Wesley even had his Methodist class members confess their sins to one another. The only way that could be done now is via text or Facebook. We live in a society that has no personal connections. Who needs them when you have a cell phone and “social” media? We are never alone, and incredibly lonely.

 

The church used to have enough hold on government that it could dictate cultural and business schedules. No business or school activities on Sundays. Or Wednesday night [prayer meeting]. When we stopped worrying about going to hell, we had to have a different God, and a different form of relating to one another. If you live only for now… Enter money. Enter making money. Enter 24/7/364 shopping and gambling hours. Enter feeling good, right now, via alcohol and drugs and sex. If going to church doesn’t make you feel good, again, why bother?

Nobody likes to be irrelevant. Nobody wants to be associated with irrelevant losers. People don’t want to be part of an irrelevant institution like the church, so they spend their time and money and energy in relevant activities, like sex and golf, and relevant institutions, like shopping malls and bars and sports arenas and casinos.

Stick a fork in the church: it’s done.

John Robert McFarland

Okay, the next two columns might be irrelevant to you. And boring. Because you’re probably old enough that you are irrelevant, too. If you don’t want more of the same screeds, you might want to wait for the column of June 9, when I talk about the irrelevance of learning to build a hay load with a pitchfork.