LIVING IN YOUR OWN STORY [W, 7-15-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Story Guy—LIVING IN YOUR OWN STORY [W, 7-15-26]

 

There is a street sign I pass regularly that proclaims “Arden.” Makes me think of Eve Arden. Makes me think of “Anatomy of a Murder,” in which Eve was defense attorney Jimmy Stewart’s secretary. Makes me think that I am there in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where Jimmy defended Lee Remick’s boyfriend, contemporaries with Jimmy and Eve. Except they were 51 then, and I was 51 almost 40 years ago.

When you’re my age, there aren’t many stories where you can imagine being part of the adventures and banter. I mean, the folks in Friends and The Big Bang Theory don’t want to hang around with someone like me, and the lesser TV shows that pollute the airways now, I don’t want to hang around with them.

When I was young, I often imagined myself as a character in a story. Usually as observer but sometimes as a participant.

It was because of radio, specifically The Lone Ranger. Listening to a radio drama, you have to supply the pictures from your own brain. As the masked hero and his faithful friend rode out of the radio speaker in our living room, it was not a long reach to start riding along with them.

As a kid, you also make up your own hero stories. You are the one who makes the winning shot in the NCAA playoffs in your own driveway. Or you stand in the back of the auditorium and see yourself singing on stage.

As a teen, my participation in the fictional stories of others became greater. I was the reporter who got “The Big Story.” I was one of the college students who joined in singing about “The Halls of Ivy.”

With Bible stories, I was just a listener, instead of an imaginary participant, until I made a deal with God to be a preacher. As I read the Gospels, I wondered what it was like to follow Jesus around. That, of course, was encouraged by songs like “Were You There?”

I really got into the Jonah story when I was trying to escape that deal with God. I was Jonah, trying to escape God’s call to preach in Ninevah, and ending up in the belly of a big old whale.

 I especially like the worm that God appointed. I was Jonah, sitting under a nice big leafy vine, mad at God, because when Jonah got out of the whale, and did what God said, and told the people to repent, they did so, and it made Jonah look rather foolish, since he had promised God’s wrath rather than God’s mercy.

And then, the Bible story says, God “appointed” a worm to cut down the vine over Jonah’s head, so he couldn’t hide and mope anymore. As one who was appointed every year, by a bishop who claimed to be God, I had great sympathy for that worm.

But then I got so busy living in my own story that I did not imagine being in others. But I did write short stories and novels which had at least some of my story in them

In more recent years I’ve had less story of my own and so have started being in other stories again

In particular, I sometimes sit in the corner of The Drovers Arms and observed the characters in “All Creatures Great and Small.” I have pastored the Methodist chapel in East London in “Call the Midwife,” where I have made friends with the Nonnatus House nuns. It’s not a difficult imagining, because London’s Poplar in the 1950s is very similar to Chicago’s Pilsen, where I was a social worker and preacher in 1958.

Now I’m at an age where there are no stories for me to pretend I’m in. Folks who write for TV and movies, and even books, are in their 30s and 40s. They imagine that old people are either horny or foolish, which reflects the writers more than the old people about whom they write

It is okay to be in other stories. That’s what dreams and ambitions are, kids in the driveway shooting the winning basket, or standing in the back of the music hall and imagining being on stage. But those dream stories need to be within the context of our own stories.

Now that I am old, I have to live within my own story. It’s surprisingly interesting!

John Robert McFarland

From my poetry journal of [F, 7-10-16]

HUMANS

Sometimes I am overcome

with the joy of being human

In the company

so many others, humans all

with hopes and faults

trying to get by

Such fullness