tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24816305055627752462024-03-18T04:59:11.438-07:00Christ In WinterJohn Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.comBlogger2038125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-60821937529519353682024-03-18T04:58:00.000-07:002024-03-18T04:58:39.732-07:00REVERSE ALMS JUSTIFICATION [M. 3-18-24]<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">REVERSE ALMS JUSTIFICATION </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[M. 3-18-24]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAgOYbo-xeQ_0BIUJuknHmGXnd1As3KpqIkBFcQJbbTbISFKYJ__81q3AnuDrnoR0h36U8NhsHU_NkHJGi4y_GihjXqhzTCs0pg9xp1yPkot1Iiz3Csa-hjNY_DtpFxcRNBm0X_8WcAL4adrj3UNIGOvb0cqMf3hRUiqvRCvtKDbcAmn8kXpDl0OLbJzo/s180/wil%20blg%20for%20food.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="180" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAgOYbo-xeQ_0BIUJuknHmGXnd1As3KpqIkBFcQJbbTbISFKYJ__81q3AnuDrnoR0h36U8NhsHU_NkHJGi4y_GihjXqhzTCs0pg9xp1yPkot1Iiz3Csa-hjNY_DtpFxcRNBm0X_8WcAL4adrj3UNIGOvb0cqMf3hRUiqvRCvtKDbcAmn8kXpDl0OLbJzo/s1600/wil%20blg%20for%20food.jpg" width="180" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I think another necessary
Lenten discipline—one that I not usually listed by the ecclesial calendar
makers—is <u>accepting</u> alms, not just giving them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Justice is restored when
there is equality between giver and receiver. It’s like the old auto mechanics
who talked about “justifying” an engine. It was justified, ran correctly, when
all its parts were working together in the correct ways. There is no alms
justice when giving and receiving are out of balance.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">One of the kindest things
people have done for me in my old age is to accept alms from me. Not just money
or stuff, but books, time, advice… You are accepting from me right now by
reading what I am thinking.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">After a lifetime of
giving, in my old age there is little I can give, and even less that people
want to receive from me. It is almost a work of supererogation for someone to
accept something from my hand, or brain.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">When someone does accept
something from me—including reading what I write—that reminds me of who I am,
reminds me of my calling, reminds me of who called me.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I am restored to wholeness
not just by receiving the help that people give to me in my old age, but by
being allowed to give help to others. You give me a gift by accepting my gift.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Individual personalities
make a difference of course. There are old people who only want others to do
for them. There are others who don’t want to accept any help at all. [They are
usually the ones who cause the most trouble!]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">This is true throughout
life, regardless of age. Many folks can’t accept. They don’t want to be
beholden. Others can’t give; they feel the world owes them an easy life.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">If you are a giver, this
Lent, practice receiving. If you’re a taker, this Lent, practice giving.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Lent is the time for
working on the discipline at which you are least able. That way your personal
life is justified. You are made whole.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">John Robert McFarland<o:p></o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-58015341899589726382024-03-15T04:56:00.000-07:002024-03-15T04:56:04.281-07:00THE MAC HOUSE HIT MAN [F, 3-15-24]<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">THE MAC HOUSE HIT MAN </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[F, 3-15-24]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihrmQzBuFm_HLnb9aNkH8ho8P_nPrABQAyksBuL-NH-OKevtDshYxg5SITsvdHyIikxqlY_IygnanJEZnNTT-yF3DGYq7TioXsDJVIkuiwTmuQ3xkpv750fPQAXsW97_hO4HDN317mqQRCk-mBORPM7VDBYCnxoNvjQMSSGK0VuQdWzK3u3cYILloofr4/s474/ic%20ron%20mac%20house.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="266" data-original-width="474" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihrmQzBuFm_HLnb9aNkH8ho8P_nPrABQAyksBuL-NH-OKevtDshYxg5SITsvdHyIikxqlY_IygnanJEZnNTT-yF3DGYq7TioXsDJVIkuiwTmuQ3xkpv750fPQAXsW97_hO4HDN317mqQRCk-mBORPM7VDBYCnxoNvjQMSSGK0VuQdWzK3u3cYILloofr4/s320/ic%20ron%20mac%20house.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">[I’m proud of this story.
I think it’s one of my best. But I’ve never gotten anyone to publish it,
perhaps because it has only a niche audience—people who have spent time in a
Ronald McDonald House. It’s fiction, but many of the people and scenes are ones
I experienced myself as a Mac House grandpa. I really was a cancer hitman,
taking contracts on other patients, usually given by nurses or social workers, to
get them to “straighten up and fly right,” but that was in a cancer center, not
in a Mac House. Be warned: My usual CIW columns would print out at 2 pages.
This one is closer to 6.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
am up at five, but I know Parker will beat me to the Ronald McDonald House. He
is probably already there, baking. Parker is the handsomest man I know, but he
did not have a date last night. Never on Friday. He has to get up too early on
Saturday to make it to the Mac House, as the volunteers and the families all
call it. No, I said that wrong. It is not that he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">has</i> to get up too early. It is just that he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">does</i> get up that early. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I asked him once why he does it. “Kids like cookies,” he
said. His face got red as he said it. He does not want anyone to notice that he
is doing good things for sick kids and their families. He is as shy about
getting praise as he is good looking.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Don’t get me wrong. I do not normally notice whether a
guy looks good or not. Raymond, in my support group, is gay. We talked in Group
one night about how cancer is equal-opportunity. It doesn’t care if you’re
black or white, straight or gay, male or female. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“You’re
so straight you squeak,” he said to me that night while we munched oatmeal
cookies. “I don’t blame you,” he went on. “Your wife is… well, let’s just say
she makes me want to be straight.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I didn’t know what to say, so I just slugged him on the
shoulder. Gay guys like to get whacked on the shoulder as much as straight guys
do. It means that, gay or straight, we all belong to the same fraternity, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Iota Beta Delta [I Bea Dumbass.]<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But Parker is so good-looking even squeaking straight
guys notice. He’s sort of the good-looking version of George Clooney. He is a
hell of a baker, too. In the time is takes me to clean the toilets at the Mac
House, he can turn out six dozen cookies, two dozen muffins, a couple of loaves
of bread, some of those twisted stohlen things, and three birthday cakes, just
in case anybody has one that week. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He says he gets there so early every Saturday so he can
use all the ovens at once without getting in the way of the families when they
get up and need to use the kitchen to fix breakfast, but it’s really so when
the moms and dads and sisters and brothers and grandmas and grandpas of kids in
the hospital come down to the dining room area, they will sniff all those
baking smells and know that there is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">something</i>
in their lives that is going to be good that day. I tell them the smell of a
clean toilet is just as good, but nobody pays attention to me. The mothers and
sisters and, yes, even the grandmas are too busy staring at the fast-reddening
Parker, and the dads and grandpas and brothers are too busy gobbling up cookies
for breakfast while the women are not noticing what they are doing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>All but Crystal, and the mother from Israel. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That is the other reason I am there this morning, in
addition to cleaning the toilets. There is a contract out on Crystal.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I am the cancer center’s hitman. When there is a deal
with a patient beyond medicine, I get the contract. Sometimes a fellow patient
can get stuff done that nobody else can.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Crystal’s
mother is fixing a bowl of cold cereal. I offer to fry her some eggs. Parker
uses only the ovens, not the burners, of the six stoves in the big kitchen. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“I’ve
got to lose some weight,” she says, as she stares at Parker. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">If
I could just troll Parker around town, I could call it the Mac House Diet and
make a ton of money. He reminds every woman that she wants to look good, which
women always interpret as losing weight.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Cereal
is not good for you,” I say. “You ever heard of cereal killers?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“I’ll
take eggs, provided you washed your hands,” says a gruff voice from behind me. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
know it is Keeley, the day manager. She does not get up until seven on
Saturday. Here she is, in her flannel moose pajamas and bunny house slippers
and all-night hair. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Don’t
you need to lose weight, too?” I ask her.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Every
head in the whole dining room turns. Every voice goes quiet. Keeley is bigger
than I am.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“I’m
used to him,” she says, tilting her head toward Parker. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Parker
gets redder, which goes very nicely with his black tee-shirt and tight jeans. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Bacon,
too,” Keeley adds, tilting her head back toward me.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
put on my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kiss the Cook</i> apron and
start scrambling. A grandpa rises and makes a little bow in my direction. He is
impressed. He knows that I have said the one thing a man must never say to a
woman, and yet I have survived. Unfortunately, Keeley sees him.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Don’t
encourage him,” Keeley says. “He gets to live only until I get those eggs.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">She
flops down into a chair and puts her bunny slippers up on the table and wiggles
her toes so that the bunny noses do the bunny nose thing at a little brother.
The kid giggles. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Keeley
and I do an improv routine every Saturday morning. It goes along with Parker’s
baking. We try to loosen up the families before they trudge back over to the
hospital.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Also,
Keeley is the one who put out the contract on Crystal.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
start some whole-wheat toast so it will be ready when the bacon and eggs are. I
am impressed when my timing works. Nobody else notices. I take a cholesterol
special plate to Keeley and some toast to Crystal’s mom. She needs something
warm to go with the cereal. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“I
don’t see Crystal this morning,” I say.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">She
looks at the toast and her face begins to dissolve, like those old-fashioned
computer screen-savers. My toast isn’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i>
bad.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
sit down and butter her toast for her.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“TV
room?” I ask.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">She
nods.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Crystal
is in eighth grade. Her little brother is over on Floor Seven at the hospital.
He is not doing well. She is acting out her anxiety about her brother and her
anger at God by taking it out on her mother, by refusing to relate to the poor
woman at all. She slept in the TV room last night rather than stay in a room
with her mother. Now she is skipping breakfast rather than be civil to the poor
woman. She is even skipping the chance to stare at Parker. I know this because
it is not the first time. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The
way we work out love-worry never makes much sense.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
get a plastic bag and put some of Parker’s new muffins into it. I stick a jar
of apple butter and a knife into my apron pocket and wander upstairs to the TV
room. Crystal is watching Hanna Montana reruns with the sound off. She is
wearing jeans and a ratty tee-shirt and dirty socks, the clothes she slept in. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I sit down on the floor,
take a muffin, spread some apple butter on it, eat it in two bites. I take
another muffin out of the bag, spread apple butter on it, hold it out to
Crystal. She looks the other way. I eat that one, too. I get out a third
muffin, spread apple butter on it, start it toward my mouth. Crystal reaches
out her hand, palm up, without looking at me. I put the muffin into her hand.
It disappears in one bite. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Parker
makes good muffins,” I say.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">She
does not reply, just holds out her hand again. I take another muffin, do the
apple butter thing, put it into her hand. It takes two bites this time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“He
has good buns, too,” I say.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Crystal
begins to giggle. The giggle does not last long. Now tears are spreading down
her cheeks. She looks an awful lot like a little girl instead of an all
grown-up eighth grader. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
let her cry, every once in a while handing her a new muffin, until they are all
gone.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“I
need you to do something for me,” I say.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“I’m
not talking to her,” she says.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Somebody
else,” I say.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Who?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Go
get showered and put on some makeup and clean clothes and meet me in the little
lounge,” I say. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Only
the Jew goes in there at this time of day,” she says.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“You
owe me for the muffins,” I say.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">She
gives me the finger, then sticks it down her throat like she is going to give
me the muffins back.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Okay,
okay,” I say. “We’ll go to the mall with you dirty and stinky.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Her
eyes take on a radioactive glow. The word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mall</i>
has that effect on teen-age girls.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Tell
her not to come in the room while I’m there,” she says.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Okay.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“219”
she adds, as though her mother would not know their room number. I am glad she
said it, though, because that was my dorm room number in college. It brings
back good memories, back when I did not know that children got cancer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
go back to the dining room. Crystal’s mom is talking with Keeley and another
mom. I go up to Keeley, whisper into her ear, telling her to keep Crystal’s mom
busy for half an hour. She slaps me.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“You
make a proposition like that to me again, mister, and I’ll take you up on it
and you’ll die,” she says.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Parker
turns red. The other women snort. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“I
do all the scut work around here, and you still won’t put out,” I say. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“What
does <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">put out</i> mean, Mama?” one of the
little brothers says.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“It
means I won’t put the garbage out in those big cans in back because that’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">his</i> job, but he’s too much of a moron
even to find the cans. Can you help him?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Keeley
really thinks fast.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Sure,”
the boy says. He is proud to help a moron. Great. Now I have to put the garbage
out, too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
take the kid by the hand and we go to the kitchen to get the garbage. Parker
snickers. At least it will keep me out of trouble until Crystal is ready to
help me get the Israeli mother out to the mall.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Yeah,
right. She is going to cooperate with me like Jerry cooperates with Tom.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Crystal
does not know, of course, that “the Jew” is going with us to the mall. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The Israeli woman has
brought her little girl all the way from there to here because we have a doctor
who can operate on little bodies in a way that very few can. Right now the girl
is undergoing chemo to shrink the tumor, getting ready for surgery. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Unfortunately,
the mom, Tama, speaks just a few words of English, and her daughter, Adira, not
even that much. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">One
of our nurses, Rabab, is a Palestinian refugee who speaks Hebrew. She and the
little girl get along famously, but something happened the first day between
the nurse and the mom that neither one will talk about. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The
bottom line, though, is that they refuse to speak to each other, and Rabab
won’t go in Adira’s room if the mom is there. If communication gets done
between Tama and the medical staff, they have to call in Rabbi Friedman, and
that takes a while to set up. Also, the rabbi seems to like the nurse more than
the mom, which doesn’t help the tension.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
have to admit that Tama is hard to like. She acts as if she is a celebrity and
everybody else should know it and be glad to be her servants. She gets mad if
you don’t understand what she is saying, like everybody should know Hebrew,
too. Well, actually, she doesn’t get mad anymore, because no one will have
anything to do with her. At the hospital and the Mac House both, she is
increasingly isolated.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">If she does not fit the
medical definition of depression, she will soon. She spends all her time in the
little lounge at the Mac House. Does not even go to the hospital much to see
her daughter.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Crystal
shows up in the little lounge as I am practicing my Hebrew on Tama, who is
slumped in the corner of a couch like an old-time movie actress. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
know about ten words in Hebrew, including <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shalom
</i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hava nagila </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">aloha </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">terre haute.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“I
told you she’d be here,” Crystal says. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">She
knows Tama does not understand what she is saying, but she probably would say
it anyway. She is, after all, an eighth grade girl.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
ignore Crystal and say to Tama: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">susi
zaqen gadol</i>, which means My horse is old and large. At least, that is what
I think it means. I do not have an old and large horse, but I know how to say
that I do. Tama looks at me like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">horse</i>
is slang for something else. At least, that is what I think that look means. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Crystal
looks at me like she’s impressed. Or disgusted.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Are
we going to the mall or not?” she asks.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Mall,”
I say, sort of like I am thinking about it. “Mall…”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Tama
perks up. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mall</i> is a universal word to
women. I continue to mutter: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">labas yape
beged</i>, which I think means to put on a beautiful garment. I add <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">issa</i>, which means <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">woman</i>, because I know it, and jerk my head at Crystal and say <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ebed</i>, which means <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">servant</i>, I hope. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Tama
stands up. She brushes her hair back from her face. One thing about
celebrities: You don’t really have to invite them, because they assume it’s all
about them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Oh,
no,” Crystal says. “I’m not going anyplace with her.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
take out my credit card and wave it in front of her face. I take her hand and
press the card into it. She puts it back in front of her face.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Wow,
platinum,” she says.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Damn.
I meant to give her the one with the $100 limit.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Tama
grabs her purse. It looks like the feedbag for a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sus</i>. She hands it to Crystal, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ebed</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Tama
pulls up short when she sees my truck, but Crystal has that credit card and she
is not about to be deterred. She pushes Tama up onto the running board and then
into the center of the bench seat and climbs in behind her. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
always park as far from the mall doors as possible. It means I get more
exercise, and I figure people who can’t walk as well as I do need the places
closer to the door. Crystal and Tama don’t even notice that it’s a mile from
the doors. They are off before the motor has shaken to a stop.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Make
sure Tama uses her own credit card,” I yell at Crystal’s retreating back. She
gives me the Hawaiian good luck sign, which I think is not a good sign.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I can’t possibly keep up with them, but I don’t want to
follow them around anyway. I figure they’ll know to look for me in Starbucks. I
go to Books on First first. It used to be on First Street before it moved to
the mall. I buy the new edition of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Now
That I Have Cancer I Am Whole</i>. Hardback. I have finished it, plus three
coffees and four scones, by the time Tama and Crystal arrive. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">They
are carrying a whole lot of fancy looking sacks, none of which says Target. I
think that is a bad sign, too. Crystal blows on my credit card and shakes it,
trying to get it to stop smoking. Tama giggles. She is carrying her own purse.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">On
the way back to the Mac House, they “talk” to each other by pulling various
garments out of the fancy sacks and showing them to each other, even though I
am sure they have seen them before. They make sounds men can only shudder at,
and Tama says, “Just gorgeous” with great frequency, and totally without
accent. I assume that Crystal has been drilling her.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
let them out in front of the Mac House. I don’t want to go in, in case Keeley
has thought up something else for me to do. Crystal hands me a little sack. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“We
got you something, too,” she says.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
open it. There’s a cloth bookmark that says, “No day is wasted if it makes a
memory.” There is also a big wad of credit card receipts.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-61424164332401257712024-03-12T09:35:00.000-07:002024-03-12T09:35:52.114-07:00SINGING AS A LENTEN DISCIPLINE [T, 3-12-24]<p> <span style="font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for
the Years of Winter—<o:p></o:p></span><i style="font-size: 16px;">SINGING AS A LENTEN DISCIPLINE </i><span style="font-size: 16px;">[T, 3-12-24]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr72KRwb2rD1Ett_0fT43cH3nOEpCI0hTYlvL8Z9IgU8XzQ9pZibwre4x2hiAybY4QDCCp6tRw_yU1XmBE6XouWVUrcCsww4fXYYD4dT4BcT7mnTNx-QbbfyfHWs_9POB16IZ2EDAcyLV-DB_pO84f1808RePC8eISlOOIPBFn5RVyGx2vwst5e7-_-lI/s470/1747947-Cartoon-Senior-Man-Singing-Hymns-Poster-Art-Print.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="470" data-original-width="450" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr72KRwb2rD1Ett_0fT43cH3nOEpCI0hTYlvL8Z9IgU8XzQ9pZibwre4x2hiAybY4QDCCp6tRw_yU1XmBE6XouWVUrcCsww4fXYYD4dT4BcT7mnTNx-QbbfyfHWs_9POB16IZ2EDAcyLV-DB_pO84f1808RePC8eISlOOIPBFn5RVyGx2vwst5e7-_-lI/s320/1747947-Cartoon-Senior-Man-Singing-Hymns-Poster-Art-Print.jpg" width="306" /></a></i></div><i><br /></i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I recently heard Bono, of
U2, say that we sing to combat our demons, and when we sing together, we combat
the demons of society.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Lent is an opportunity to
practice the disciplines of spiritual growth—Bible reading, prayer, meditation,
worship, alms giving. Singing is rarely mentioned, but I think it is an
important spiritual activity.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">So, each morning during
Lent I am gathering my missing friends, from the various eras of my life, and
we sing the hymns and spiritual songs of those days that we shared.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><u><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">We sing our songs of
youthful aspiration</span></u><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">…</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Pass me not, O gentle
savior, hear my humble cry. While on others thou art calling, do not pass me
by…”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><u><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">We sing our songs of
youthful purpose…</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“I know the Lord, I know
the Lord, I know the Lord has laid his hand on me…”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><u><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">We sing our songs of
youthful courage</span></u><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">…</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Are ye able, said the
master, to be crucified with me? Yea, the sturdy dreamers answered, to the
death we follow thee…”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><u><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">We sing our songs of
preparation</span></u><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">…</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s me, it’s me, O
Lord, standing in the need of prayer.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Give me oil in my lamp
to keep me burning, give me oil in my lamp, I pray. Give me oil in my lamp to
keep me burning, keep me burning ‘til the break of day.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><u><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">We sing our songs of our
youthful witness</span></u><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">…</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Turn your eyes upon
Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow
strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I love to tell the
story. Twill be my theme in glory. To tell the old, old story, of Jesus and his
love.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><u><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">We sing of how
sometimes we are lost…</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Precious Lord, take my
hand, lead me on, let me stand. I am tired, I am weak, I am worn. Through the
storm, through the night, lead me on to the light. Take my hand, precious Lord,
lead me home.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><u><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">We sing of how we are
being found…</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Amazing grace, how
sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am
found, was blind but now I see.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Beneath the Cross of
Jesus, I fain would take my stand. The shadow of a mighty rock, within a weary
land. A home within the wilderness, a rest upon the way, from the burning of
the noonday heat, and the burden of the day.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><u><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">We sing of our maturing
witness…</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">They’ll know we are
Christians by our love, by our love. Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our
love.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I shall not be, I shall
not be moved. I shall not be, I shall not be moved. Just like a tree that’s
planted by the water, I shall not be moved.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><u><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">We sing of hope…</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">We shall overcome, we
shall overcome, we shall overcome some day. O, deep in my heart, I do believe,
we shall overcome some day.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><u><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">We sing of eternity…</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">For all the saints, who
from their labors rest, who thee, by faith, before the world confessed. Thy
name, o Jesus, be forever blest, Hallelujah. Hallelujah. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ll fly away, oh
glory, I’ll fly away, in the morning. When I die, Hallelujah by and by, I’ll
fly away.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><u><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Finally, we sing of
resurrection, the end that is the beginning…</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">He lives! He lives!
Christ Jesus lives today. He walks with me, and talks with me, along life’s
narrow way. He lives! He lives! Salvation to impart. You ask me how I know he
lives, he lives within my heart…</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">John Robert McFarland<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-74082923901342110152024-03-09T05:37:00.000-08:002024-03-09T05:37:46.961-08:00EAT DESSERT FIRST [Sa, 3-9-24]<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">EAT DESSERT FIRST </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[Sa, 3-9-24]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyDI2LhEp9G6QUR6XIH6ZbFb0Uc8xQJWyZiwff2Bj-Kan7DqBQIl4A-xjWA9LpPSbVE-IfekNwLo2bJ9Jbk22ZsmfJQ-6b0dNbdS1425wvf8aLZDC5uY7Ol2oCZ2SYgGpSabh1nRNZyJnQpXPQp2Dgen36fhFRomDDj_TZEW4CVKva400ZXZe5fhBQYEc/s1000/eat%20dessert%20first.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="667" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyDI2LhEp9G6QUR6XIH6ZbFb0Uc8xQJWyZiwff2Bj-Kan7DqBQIl4A-xjWA9LpPSbVE-IfekNwLo2bJ9Jbk22ZsmfJQ-6b0dNbdS1425wvf8aLZDC5uY7Ol2oCZ2SYgGpSabh1nRNZyJnQpXPQp2Dgen36fhFRomDDj_TZEW4CVKva400ZXZe5fhBQYEc/s320/eat%20dessert%20first.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">One of the lesser-known
disciplines of Lent is eating dessert first. It is important to get temptation
out of the way quickly.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The great thing about old
age is that you have permission to eat dessert first. You might die before the
meal is over, so why miss out on the best part?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Our friends, Glenn and
Allyson, used to visit an elderly couple in the local version of Shady Pines.
I’ll call the old couple Homer and Hazel. They had children, but they lived a
long way off. So, Glenn and Allyson went in their place. One visit they took
cookies. “Don’t you eat a cookie, Homer,” his wife said. “Sugar isn’t good for
you.” “For heaven’s said, Hazel,” Glenn said. “Let him have a cookie. He’s 102
years old.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I was a campus minister in
the 1960s. Boys from my campus began to go off to Viet Nam as soldiers. When
they returned, they told of life in the war. One thing they told about pierced
my heart. They said that when they broke open their meal packs, they took first
the little metal can of peaches and ripped it open and gulped it down as
quickly as possible. “It was the only good thing in the meal. If you got killed
before the meal was over, you didn’t want to miss out on the one good thing.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">It was so sad. I still cry
when I think about it. But even in the midst of chaos and pain and evil, they
were doing the right thing. They were eating dessert first.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s so easy to want to
get everything in order, get the little stuff out of the way, before you start
on the important stuff. No, don’t wait until you’ve trashed all the spam
emails. Let them lie. Go ahead and write that note of appreciation, or help, or
love. Don’t wait until you’ve balanced the check book; go ahead and make that
donation to the food pantry now. Don’t wait until the dishes are clean and put
away and you have time to fold your hands and kneel; go ahead and thank God for
all your blessings now.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The lesson of Easter is
that life doesn’t begin until the end. Eat dessert first.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">John Robert McFarland<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-41718594494519228312024-03-06T03:23:00.000-08:002024-03-06T03:23:30.983-08:00ADDING TO LOVE [W, 3-6-24]<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—</span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">ADDING TO LOVE </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[W, 3-6-24]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMM0Rx3A5YfRH2G7UpymEMNuR86dAmn-helFV9SWuTvIYXS028uXehKi0UCRApS9w_zdzbt_OynBSLKRQQuXCtxAFhqf3c4-0pYTmIrEDznBQJDF5YojWTei3R8MyQsQiZRWlDI4LqNyAPjybL0_kh1ziiZQ_ZXUCmCgan9JxUBzwmSKk_apwmsV4_TbM/s600/love%20in%20script.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMM0Rx3A5YfRH2G7UpymEMNuR86dAmn-helFV9SWuTvIYXS028uXehKi0UCRApS9w_zdzbt_OynBSLKRQQuXCtxAFhqf3c4-0pYTmIrEDznBQJDF5YojWTei3R8MyQsQiZRWlDI4LqNyAPjybL0_kh1ziiZQ_ZXUCmCgan9JxUBzwmSKk_apwmsV4_TbM/s320/love%20in%20script.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
am re-reading Rachel Naomi Remen. <i>Kitchen Table Wisdom </i>and <i>My
Grandfather’s Blessings. </i>Stories from her life, about how she changed from
a human doing to a human being, changed from a medical doctor to a human
doctor.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She
grew in three stages. She went from scientist to oncologist to psychologist. She
doesn’t tell it that way, doesn’t use the taxonomy of three stages, but that is
what I see in her story. As she went from one stage to another, she did not
abandon what she had learned before. When she became wholistic, she didn’t give
up using her skills as a surgeon, but she added on. She did not grow <u>out</u>
of any stage. She <u>added </u>onto each stage.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That’s
the key to aging, I think—not discarding, or outgrowing, but adding on.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That
seems to me to be the way we all age, in three stages. We add each stage to the
one before it. Of course, they are not the same for everyone.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
would describe my own add-on stages as going from a human doing, to a human
being [cancer], to a human waiting. Or maybe, doing the Word, hearing the Word,
listening for the Word. [Yes, hearing and listening are different.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
my human doing stage, I said often that love is a verb. Love is doing.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Cancer
brought on my human being stage. I couldn’t <u>do</u> love nearly as much, so I
was able to <u>be</u> in love. Love was sharing.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Now
I’m waiting and watching, to see how love will be. Love is.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Physical
life is designed so that energy come first and wisdom comes last. That is
especially true of brain development. We are built for: fire, ready, aim. It
doesn’t make sense, but that is the way it is.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Throughout
these stages, two different emotions are at war within us. They are original
sin and what John Wesley called prevenient [preventing] grace. Original sin is
represented by first man, Adam, who tried to outdo God by eating from the tree
of knowledge. Preventing grace, that saves us even in the midst of our original
sin, is represented in the new man, Jesus Christ.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">[Original
sin is not very original at all in the way we use that word currently. It’s
just the same old boring sin everyone has always had. “Original” means that it
was present at and in the origin of humanity, and in and at the origin of each
of us, origin-al.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Original
sin is love gone wrong. Prevenient grace is love gone right.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">My
three stages of understanding and living love have gone like this: Love is a
verb. Love is a noun. Love is a hope.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
did not give up the doing of love when I started into the being of love. And I
gave up neither the doing or the being when I started the hoping. Love has
simply become fuller with each new stage.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Okay,
three stages is arbitrary. The main point about growing in love is this: don’t give
up any of love as we go along-- how we <u>do</u> love, how we <u>are</u> love,
how we <u>hope</u> love--but to add onto it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">John
Robert McFarland</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m
thinking about love today because it’s the birthday of the woman who has taught
me all about it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-53329600148923481052024-03-02T05:45:00.000-08:002024-03-02T05:45:49.695-08:00SATURDAY SPENDING {Saturday, 3-2-24}<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--</span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">SATURDAY SPENDING</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> {Saturday, 3-2-24}</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOXKc-5PbQHLsIppi6kQQFOngta5IjgiNLiq_NBBkmR_aTdXBIoi_9lYANQeZuonOD_jbORJNGoaJqnNziQDL0_YacVqQXWKw19B2mhlGyy7_A9cKXmlBMP4nae771Sul8LEFR3hxWEUCHi4lmk-kO8cYLQr4SRoP2zWHGOpBRzMPciG1uauCouS74RL0/s1242/363927-Good-Morning-Happy-Saturday.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1142" data-original-width="1242" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOXKc-5PbQHLsIppi6kQQFOngta5IjgiNLiq_NBBkmR_aTdXBIoi_9lYANQeZuonOD_jbORJNGoaJqnNziQDL0_YacVqQXWKw19B2mhlGyy7_A9cKXmlBMP4nae771Sul8LEFR3hxWEUCHi4lmk-kO8cYLQr4SRoP2zWHGOpBRzMPciG1uauCouS74RL0/s320/363927-Good-Morning-Happy-Saturday.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Dory
Previn’s “Come Saturday Morning” was published in 1969. It was a hit song for
The Sandpipers. I have always loved the opening and repeating lines:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Come Saturday morning, I’m goin’
away with my friend<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We’ll Saturday-spend to the end of
the day<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Just I and my friend…</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s
clearly the anticipation of a young person who is spending the week working or
studying but thinking about what it will be like, “Come Saturday morning.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Maybe
something particular on the agenda, but that is not necessary. No sex or
competition or schedule involved in “Saturday-spending.” Just friendship.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is something special about Saturday
morning, even when you’re retired. It has a different feel, an anticipation and
remembrance of “Saturday-spending.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Just
to spend schedule-free time with a friend, what a blessing. True if that friend
is your long-time spouse. True if you are single or single again. For anyone,
single or not, at any age, just to be able to Saturday-spend with a friend,
what a blessing.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Come
Saturday morning,” God said, “I can’t go away with a friend unless I create
one.” So, on the 6<sup>th</sup> day, the first Saturday, God created humans… to
have a friend for Saturday spending.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Just
in case, that Saturday creating included dogs and cats and horses and skunks…
in case people didn’t work out as friends. [Genesis 1:24-26] I suspect God is
very pleased about making sure there were other friend possibilities.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
ecclesial calendar makers don’t say anything about “Saturday spending” as a
Lenten discipline, but I suspect it will do more good than any amount of personal
introspection.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Maybe
that’s why we anticipate a heavenly afterlife, because it will be the ultimate
in Saturday spending…</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">John
Robert McFarland<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-91898006978362098092024-02-29T09:03:00.000-08:002024-02-29T09:04:24.032-08:00POPPING OUT A DEMON [R, 2-29-24]<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—<o:p></o:p></span><i style="font-size: 16px;">POPPING OUT A DEMON </i><span style="font-size: 16px;">[R, 2-29-24]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1xCoOWHNny1u-nusz0vjSF9IX5RKpY3l4R4JL7PMlypjLnOwca9wK1TGAy0QhC8HSbNntpiP1csw3DEsSAVjfjyDXH7uoXd6DYDa5-uysWlDOUMBSriNRyo8kYVJ5o_FWjOfTK6g7Bcn8HXcf0AfP4DcT8hM2lj8OsEfGO1IgHcjfI1TAmUA5tAjUssk/s685/this%20kind%20only%20w%20prayer.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="514" data-original-width="685" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1xCoOWHNny1u-nusz0vjSF9IX5RKpY3l4R4JL7PMlypjLnOwca9wK1TGAy0QhC8HSbNntpiP1csw3DEsSAVjfjyDXH7uoXd6DYDa5-uysWlDOUMBSriNRyo8kYVJ5o_FWjOfTK6g7Bcn8HXcf0AfP4DcT8hM2lj8OsEfGO1IgHcjfI1TAmUA5tAjUssk/s320/this%20kind%20only%20w%20prayer.webp" width="320" /></a></i></div><i><br /></i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I had a woman friend I’ll
call “Jean.” Her husband, “Jim,” and I were friends first. That was true with
many of my women friends over the years. They started out as the wives of men
friends but became friends in their own right as we shared experiences.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Jean and an adult daughter,
“Susan,” were totally estranged. The estrangement had caused problems with Jean
and Jim’s other children, too. Susan was not speaking to her mother, would have
nothing to do with her. But Susan would call the house to talk to her father.
Jim would take the phone into a different room to talk to Susan.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">One day, Jean called me,
crying. “She’s ruining the family, but Jim’s choosing Susan over me,” Jean sobbed,
“and I’m his wife. It’s not my fault Susan won’t talk to me. That’s her choice.
Jim should be supporting me, not her.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I felt her pain, and I
knew she was right.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Jim and I were close
friends, had shared a lot of life, so I felt comfortable talking to him about
it. “I know Jean feels that way,” he said “but what can I do? I can’t turn my
back on my daughter. Besides, somebody has to stay in contact with Susan or there’s
never any chance that she’ll return to the family.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I felt his pain, and I
knew he was right.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The problem was, Jean and
Jim couldn’t both be right. But that’s a false alternative, isn’t it? Because
they <u>were </u>both right.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Poor Jim was caught in the
middle. He needed to show Jean that he loved and supported her, but he needed
to show Susan that he loved and supported her, too.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Jim was making one major mistake
as he tried to deal with his wife and his daughter—he tried to reason with
them. Tried to get them to see a better way. Appealed to their better angels.
All that brain stuff.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I thought about how the
disciples of Jesus had tried to rid a boy of a demon and been unsuccessful.
Demons aren’t all the same, so they can’t be driven out the same way. Jesus
said, “This kind can come out only by prayer.” [Mark 9]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Estrangement is caused by
a demon, the kind that can come out only with prayer, the kind of prayer where
you hug a person so hard that the demon just pops out.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I said, “Jim, you need to
shut up. When Jean cries, don’t tell her she should try to understand Susan
better. Don’t say a thing. Just go to her and hold her. When Susan calls, tell
her that you aren’t going to say anything, you’re just going to listen to her
talk about anything she wants to say. Don’t say a word about Jean. Just tell
Susan that you love her.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Susan asked me to
officiate at her wedding. When Jim died, of her several children, Jean went to
live with Susan.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">There are some demons that
come out only through a special kind of prayer, the sort of prayer where we
listen instead of talking. Then the demon pops out.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">John Robert McFarland<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-3611801548233600732024-02-26T02:58:00.000-08:002024-02-26T03:03:40.309-08:00LENTEN JUSTICE M, 2-26-24]<p>CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the
Years of Winter—<i>LENTEN JUSTICE </i>M, 2-26-24]</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><o:p> </o:p></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlIH64I53Ogm2WzpGY_7xMN7lked-lwPqcNzkM9BIZngiZPHHwAFa75iE6X1Q5Cn3RyJ-Xy7pdYY4khzWQdped4FHT_8Sy6XPnUEVAngLaEtoIWzw7UA5glNZYbbSJMLp1RqZXvIPXpHb9LftpdnzbBWrRFdyG7ZyNuhyphenhyphenpBimD3aqE09XasCiemLPpqjE/s850/alms-are-an-inheritance-and-a-justice-which-is-due-to-the-poor-and-which-jesus-has-levied-francis-of-assisi-75-87-97.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="850" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlIH64I53Ogm2WzpGY_7xMN7lked-lwPqcNzkM9BIZngiZPHHwAFa75iE6X1Q5Cn3RyJ-Xy7pdYY4khzWQdped4FHT_8Sy6XPnUEVAngLaEtoIWzw7UA5glNZYbbSJMLp1RqZXvIPXpHb9LftpdnzbBWrRFdyG7ZyNuhyphenhyphenpBimD3aqE09XasCiemLPpqjE/s320/alms-are-an-inheritance-and-a-justice-which-is-due-to-the-poor-and-which-jesus-has-levied-francis-of-assisi-75-87-97.jpg" width="320" /></a></i></div><i><br /></i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">I resent Lent and its emphasis upon the spiritual
disciplines, because it makes undisciplined people like me feel bad. I’m good
for prayer and Bible reading and meditation and such maybe one day out of
forty, certainly not forty days in one stretch. So I justify my lack of
discipline by portraying Lent as individualistic navel-gazing that neglects
Jesus’ emphasis upon Christian fellowship and caring for the less fortunate.</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">I rant, [usually where others can’t hear, because I’m a
preacher, and we are supposed to be the wagon masters of the Lenten journey, so
I don’t want to be the cause of somebody else “forgetting” to be disciplined]:
“If the purpose of Lent is to get ready for the resurrection, how are you going
to face the resurrected Christ when all you’ve done is look at yourself for
forty days, as in a glass darkly?” [I’m very proud of myself when I can justify
my narrow-mindedness with a well-crafted sentence.]</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Even alms giving, the one thing about Lenten disciplines
which involves other people, is an individual act, isn’t it? Well, not really.</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Alms giving in the Bible is not just about giving to the
poor, feeding the hungry. It is about restoring justice. The Hebrew word for
alms is <i>sadaqa</i>, which means justice or righteousness. Giving to the poor
helps establish the right social order—justice.</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">The problem with alms giving is that it can easily go awry
when it is face-to-face. Personally, I prefer to send a check to UMCOR than to
give something personally to a needy person. I <u>don’t</u> want to see the
smiles on the faces of the poor when they reach out for some pittance that I
have gotten through an unjust economic and political system, one that favors
tall straight white men.</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">When Helen and I directed Rankin Community Center in
Dallas, while I was a Perkins School of Theology student at SMU, we had a
volunteer who insisted on being in on any aid distribution to our people. “I
just love to see their faces when I give them something,” he exulted.</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">It was all about him, and his feelings. Poor people were
just objects to feed his ego. They didn’t remind him how fortunate he was; they
reminded him how superior he was.</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Recently some friends were shocked to learn that I like
peanut butter and cheese sandwiches. Velveeta, even. They had never heard of
such a thing. But those sandwiches are a natural result, I think, of growing up
on welfare.</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">In addition to $80 per month cash [about $900 in current
dollars], from time to time we were given excess farm commodities, that stuff
the government buys from farmers to prop up the agricultural economy. There
were huge long blocks of very dry Wisconsin cheese, and huge glass jars of very
runny Alabama peanut butter. We could moisten the cheese with the peanut butter
juice. It restored sandwich justice.</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">As a welfare kid, I received handouts from time to time.
I could tell when a person was trying to restore justice to me, and when they
were just doing it for the kick they could get out of it. Government peanut
butter and cheese were good things. No government officials came around to
watch me eat those sandwiches, so that they could get their kicks by looking at
my smeary smile.</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">The oft-pilloried “welfare” restores justice. Personal
handouts are often humiliating, reminders that we should be grateful to people
who are our “betters” rather than fellow-citizens. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Does that mean we shouldn’t volunteer at the soup kitchen
or the homeless shelter? Of course not. I have done a lot of that through the years, and would still were I physically able. But I must remember that justice is not
about me. As we give our alms, let us remember that we are not just helping the
less fortunate; we are restoring justice. We are getting ready for the
resurrection of the Christ who says, “In that you do it to the least of these,
my brothers and sisters, you do it to me.” [Mt. 25:31-46.]</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">John Robert McFarland<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-12119814427894938192024-02-23T05:50:00.000-08:002024-02-23T05:52:45.120-08:00PROTESTANTS IN PRISON [F, 2-23-24]<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">PROTESTANTS IN PRISON </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[F, 2-23-24]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyXG5sTfICFTcB8VxNSsOwYzAIYD4sWCEFMxv9P9Ge6lfTXR3e62tcwe3YQDnW0S6ZjVX4xAkbMdDpiv5xC0tRab2jeB760oqRJB5nY1BVIkFjiYVp0vuffmz-KE1cRGmwc2Sw6h8y5EJTW4fjgifsspJyyI6YGtDX1MDR7Cy-cjzpPkuRxm6R1SD-P4s/s800/th%20pen.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyXG5sTfICFTcB8VxNSsOwYzAIYD4sWCEFMxv9P9Ge6lfTXR3e62tcwe3YQDnW0S6ZjVX4xAkbMdDpiv5xC0tRab2jeB760oqRJB5nY1BVIkFjiYVp0vuffmz-KE1cRGmwc2Sw6h8y5EJTW4fjgifsspJyyI6YGtDX1MDR7Cy-cjzpPkuRxm6R1SD-P4s/s320/th%20pen.jpg" width="320" /></a></i></div><i><br /></i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">In Lent, we are to
practice spiritual disciplines—prayer, fasting, Bible study, meditation, etc.
But we need to be careful not to neglect the social disciplines of faith. Jesus
said, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the
midst of them.” [Mt 18:20]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">When I was the campus
minister in Terre Haute, Indiana, I was also a volunteer assistant chaplain at
the federal penitentiary there. In those days, prisoners, at least in The
Protestant Brotherhood, divided themselves up by crime rather than race. The bank
robbers chose me as their chaplain.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I was not the only
preacher in the group. The real leader was Bert. He was one of the kindest
souls I have ever known—focused on the needs of everyone else. He loved singing
and Bible study and his fellow inmates. But Bert never smiled.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">One day a guard came to
get Bert during a group meeting. I was worried, but the others assured me it
was nothing strange. “It means the warden might have news about Bert getting
out. He’s been working on that ever since Bert came here.” Then they told me
Bert’s story… why Bert never smiled.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">He was a young Baptist
preacher in Memphis. His children got sick. He had no money to get help for
them. So, he robbed a bank.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">He immediately realized
the wrongness of what he had done. He went to the men of his church and told
them. They said, “We’ll go with you to the police.” They did. When his trial
came up, they vouched for him, said they would watch over him to be sure
nothing like that happened again.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">He was a first-time
offender. All the money was returned. No one was hurt. His church vouched for
him. And the judge sentenced him to 40 years. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC7K99SyH07IWuev3Z6y58xTtl0I-dZz6juRSSb_atMsqhHKEMzEpZq8DJublHSuMFekf-RPBuBxXnM232jJPxUrnpelpMuTlwOqdzqWuWQh9PhOT7FX-ERFNzuqW50H4RAH6HSFqTDYwrL0CKXctK1301XCq9iVPyoXeYkDoz53luGJVY9nSXiS7oEek/s1539/prison%20inmates.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1026" data-original-width="1539" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC7K99SyH07IWuev3Z6y58xTtl0I-dZz6juRSSb_atMsqhHKEMzEpZq8DJublHSuMFekf-RPBuBxXnM232jJPxUrnpelpMuTlwOqdzqWuWQh9PhOT7FX-ERFNzuqW50H4RAH6HSFqTDYwrL0CKXctK1301XCq9iVPyoXeYkDoz53luGJVY9nSXiS7oEek/s320/prison%20inmates.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">When I knew him, he was
half-way through that sentence. His wife had divorced him. She knew he wasn’t
getting out. His children had grown up without him. No one came to visit him.
He never smiled. He had no reason to smile.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The warden at the Terre
Haute penitentiary realized the injustice of Bert’s sentence. There were much
worse men in that pen who were serving lesser sentences. The warden had worked
for years to try to get Bert a new trial. It became more difficult every year.
The judge died. Witnesses died. Men of the church died. Prosecutors never want
to retry a case.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Bert came back to group
that day. He was not smiling. Somone asked how his meeting had gone. Bert just
shook his head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">At the end of Lent, The
Protestant Brotherhood had its annual Easter banquet. It was in a room off the
regular prison cafeteria, with the regular prison food, but it was a banquet.
The guest speaker was a former member of the group. His last name was Hood, so
in the Brotherhood, he was always called Brother Hood.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">His speech was simple and
eloquent. I am not demeaning his way of speaking, just trying to let you get
the real hearing of it…</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“When I done come to this big house, I didn
even know how ta read and write. But here, in this bruthuhood, you done
taughten me ta read and write. And I didn know ‘bout Jesus, or the Bible. But
here in this bruthuhood, you done taughten me ‘bout Jesus. Now I’m on the
outside. I’ve got a good job, driving heavy ‘quipment. I’m the assistant pastor
at my church. Because I’ve been in this bruthuhood, if I don’t make it on the
outside, you don’t make it, either. But if I make it on the outside, then you
done made it, too.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I was sitting across the
table from Bert… and I saw Bert smile.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">John Robert McFarland</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I tell this story in more
detail in <i>The Strange Calling. <o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-43752667500504843902024-02-20T05:23:00.000-08:002024-02-20T05:24:22.971-08:00THERE IS NO WRONG TIME TO START BELIEVING IN GOD [T, 2-20-24]<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">T</i><i style="font-size: 12pt;">HERE IS NO WRONG TIME TO START BELIEVING IN GOD </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[T, 2-20-24]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGKKTVBAKPywXbf-pDDZjpNvnpVqiwQEMKeg8lZusnLhQgiFyFL27f4okZvBBQgaTHGCiiQVjloBka11qwrO5bkHuXte0RjrQCRIa_h_yeih4ADCgM6e6-3c7CQV80GfdU25FHyFQFUdwuibdUaz3KNs5njl9lUyqsau87ltEmqYjS6JtVVSTN2Fo5GWM/s720/no%20wrong%20time%202%20believ%20n%20g.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="720" height="107" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGKKTVBAKPywXbf-pDDZjpNvnpVqiwQEMKeg8lZusnLhQgiFyFL27f4okZvBBQgaTHGCiiQVjloBka11qwrO5bkHuXte0RjrQCRIa_h_yeih4ADCgM6e6-3c7CQV80GfdU25FHyFQFUdwuibdUaz3KNs5njl9lUyqsau87ltEmqYjS6JtVVSTN2Fo5GWM/s320/no%20wrong%20time%202%20believ%20n%20g.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Actually, I started this
column to say the exact opposite—that I know people who start believing in God
at the wrong time. Then I realized that I had it inside out. There is no wrong
time to start believing in God.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I read a Pew Research
report that says about ten percent of Americans are “religious without being
spiritual,” the opposite of that rather tiresome thing so many people like to
say—mostly as excuse to not go to church: “I am spiritual but not religious.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The 10% who are religious
but not spiritual like the creeds and liturgies and books and songs and candles
and church/synagogue/temple stuff, the feeling of belonging to a people and a tradition,
but don’t really believe in God. Until something bad happens to them…</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">…then they start believing
in the wrong God, the god who gets blamed for everything. “Why did God let this
happen?” That is why I was going to say that some folks start believing in God
at the wrong time. But it’s the wrong God, not the wrong time.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">You know, God can take
anger. God welcomes it. It’s a way to get real about God.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve told before [1] about
the time a consultant was working with the Cabinet [Bishop and District
Superintendents] of my Conference. He asked Bishop Leroy Hodapp, “In what sorts
of situations are you most comfortable?” “Conflict situations,” the bishop
replied.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The others were astounded.
Nobody likes conflict. But the consultant asked Leroy <u>why </u>he liked
conflict. “Because that is the only time people are really open to change.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">So a conflict time with
God is an opening time, when people can change. For <i>religious but not
spiritual</i> folks, there’s a possibility to add the spirit to the forms of
religion.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Maybe we need to get mad
at God more often. There is no wrong time to start believing in God.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">John Robert McFarland</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">1] My “I’ve told before”
is like the dog owner who scolds the dog for peeing in a neighbor’s front yard.
It’s not to communicate with the dog, but as an apology to the neighbor. I know
that you know you’ve heard it before. I’m just letting you know that I know it,
too. But I’m going to tell it again, anyway!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-14170399860105671152024-02-17T03:22:00.000-08:002024-02-17T08:53:21.718-08:00FOMO, JOMO, & HEARING AIDS {Sat, 2-17-24}<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST
IN WINTER: reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—</span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">F</i><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">OMO, JOMO, & HEARING AIDS </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">{Sat, 2-17-24}</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUP6-n1z-3bqTrbVZ9vgmcSgoXw4pSyDWNSMnlqY6mjo0yV-aMD3zPr05WLrd1Fn7pE8lhxF_dt-Q0dpIgBNVJ76XXD0nNh_-Uo86a0lemWgsSCHJCDryCTzJW88CtUO9vxl9bNlNNJrlTTh0rPzV4EVVB4d2GbS6CFnuZRCxhJRAxLwHMIXX015T6dqU/s1492/FOMO-JOMO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="930" data-original-width="1492" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUP6-n1z-3bqTrbVZ9vgmcSgoXw4pSyDWNSMnlqY6mjo0yV-aMD3zPr05WLrd1Fn7pE8lhxF_dt-Q0dpIgBNVJ76XXD0nNh_-Uo86a0lemWgsSCHJCDryCTzJW88CtUO9vxl9bNlNNJrlTTh0rPzV4EVVB4d2GbS6CFnuZRCxhJRAxLwHMIXX015T6dqU/s320/FOMO-JOMO.jpg" width="320" /></a></i></div><i><br /></i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">[Yes,
I have hearing aids on my mind; just not in my ears.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">One
of the online newspapers I read recently ran two seemingly contradictory news
stories. One was about JOMO replacing FOMO. The other was about people who wear
hearing aids living longer, because they are more socially involved.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">FOMO
is Fear Of Missing Out. It affects a lot of people. That’s why folks are
looking at their screens all the time. The screen is the source of all
activity. Might miss something if you’re not looking.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">JOMO
is Joy Of Missing Out. I am a strong advocate of JOMO. I think it’s great to
miss out on almost everything. Ignorance is bliss, because very little of that
stuff that appears on your screen is worth your time. Advertisers and pundits
and fraudsters and politicians all proliferate there because they know they
have a captive audience. I don’t want to be a captive. I’m glad to miss out on
what they are selling and saying and scamming. If you wear hearing aids, you
hear all the stupid stuff people say. You can’t miss out. Viva JOMO!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m
kind of like curmudgeonly old Jim of my long-ago cancer support group. There
was a lot of then-new research that showed that patients with a positive
attitude lived longer. We talked about it in group. Jim didn’t believe it. He
was out to show that you could survive with a bad attitude. Everybody played
along. If his oncologist encountered him in a hallway, she’d exclaim, “I
thought you died.” He loved it. Being negative was very positive for him. He
missed out on a positive attitude, and it was a JOMO time for him.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m
inclined to say that JOMO is a gift of God.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
understand, though, why people who wear hearing aids live longer, because of
the experience of my long-time [for 68 years] friend, Bob. He says that when he
got hearing aids, his wife gave up her plans to murder him.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Of
course, had he continued without hearing aids, he would have had the JOMO of
not knowing what she was contemplating. Now, knowing what she was contemplating
in silence, he has the fear of what she might be contemplating without saying
anything about it… FOMO…</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">John
Robert McFarland<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-51674339970317876282024-02-14T04:20:00.000-08:002024-02-14T04:20:02.687-08:00HAVEN’T YOU EVER HEARD? [Ash Wednesday, 2-14-24] <p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>HAVEN’T YOU EVER HEARD? </i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">[Ash Wednesday, 2-14-24] </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Isaiah 40:21-31.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW157w0aJSyuBFwcmcGCbhR4ZE2YUNLUmtyHakMUV7OJQwzAAMxkof_iJDx0V0rvi66xMxI-riTOxwxT3n9qvjtp0NyJAs7hUKlacT9087215Kz6wrLq9gMdQaQmZWTHJ4dY5q69ysTOsdngo5FP_df5TPCHxTaGpoe4HkElGsNDSU1ogcsglnRNrp8Uc/s736/lent%20and%20hearing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="312" data-original-width="736" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW157w0aJSyuBFwcmcGCbhR4ZE2YUNLUmtyHakMUV7OJQwzAAMxkof_iJDx0V0rvi66xMxI-riTOxwxT3n9qvjtp0NyJAs7hUKlacT9087215Kz6wrLq9gMdQaQmZWTHJ4dY5q69ysTOsdngo5FP_df5TPCHxTaGpoe4HkElGsNDSU1ogcsglnRNrp8Uc/s320/lent%20and%20hearing.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No,
I do not need hearing aids, despite what some people, like my wife and my
doctor, think. What I need is for other people to stop mumbling. [Good grief,
people, haven’t you ever heard of e-nun-ci-a-tion?]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Besides,
if God had wanted everybody to hear everything, why did <i>They</i> [Yes, <i>They</i>.
Haven’t you ever heard of the Trinity?] invent Sub-Titles/Closed Captioning?
Well, actually <i>They</i> got deaf actor Emerson Romero to do it, in 1929,
when “talkies” left deaf actors and audiences out, but that’s the point of this
devotional. [Wait for it; the point is at the end. Haven’t you ever heard of
foreshadowing?]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">According
to people who invent ecclesiastical calendars, in Lent we are supposed to get
ready for Easter, for celebrating Resurrection, through Bible reading, giving
alms, self-examination, prayer, and fasting. Hearing aids will not help with
any of that stuff.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So,
I can do Lent perfectly without hearing aids. [No, that’s not the point yet.
Haven’t you ever heard about building anticipation?] Or, hearing at all, for
that matter. Getting ready for Easter is just about doing stuff I don’t need to
hear other people for. Except alms, and they don’t have to say anything, just
reach out with an open alm palm.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
silent Lent worries me a little, though. Almost all the times I’ve heard <i>Them
</i>speak, it was through some other person. Grandma Mac… Uncle Johnny… Mrs.
Darringer… Bishop Raines… Rev. F. T. Johnson… Joan of Arcadia… Helen… Emerson
Romero…</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At
my last doctor visit, she looked me straight in the eye, which is a good feat
considering that I am a foot taller, and said, “I’m used to your refusal of
everything I think will be good for you. You won’t take tests. You won’t take
medicines. You won’t take advice. But if you get to the place when you can’t
understand what people are saying, you must get hearing aids. You can live
without tests and medicines and advice, but you can’t live without people.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That’s
the same as saying you can’t live without <i>Them.</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Listen
to what people say. When you hear what they say, you might hear what <i>They</i>
say. It might get you ready for Easter.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Haven’t
you ever heard…</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">John
Robert McFarland</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Our
church, St. Mark’s on the Bypass, asked for contributions for a Lenten
devotional booklet. I submitted this, but our church staff does not acknowledge
or reply to emails, so they may not have received it, or if they did, they may
have decided not to use it. If they did, I apologize if you are a St.
Mark’s saint and have to see it twice.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-77766637120015414812024-02-10T02:46:00.000-08:002024-02-10T02:46:43.698-08:00COMMUNITY & COMMUNION [Sat, 2-10-24]<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;"> </i><i style="font-size: 12pt;">COMMUNITY & COMMUNION </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[Sat, 2-10-24]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhftGn3AQGrMRQik8RB2PljJgCvb7BrtpH41ukWCmyKW7E8s1aveyEopqr3ErK0CGf7QmLCgxGlGehx68O8SZopHTNsTYQNM0ySm83ejlGgVWF-4kZZolo2KWrfw3bb7EC3Kb_6agaM4vVjaVvoom6T2QJv9mCOj009S85TdUm2VOi5FzT68NedhgZCUeM/s952/communion%20and%20community.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="702" data-original-width="952" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhftGn3AQGrMRQik8RB2PljJgCvb7BrtpH41ukWCmyKW7E8s1aveyEopqr3ErK0CGf7QmLCgxGlGehx68O8SZopHTNsTYQNM0ySm83ejlGgVWF-4kZZolo2KWrfw3bb7EC3Kb_6agaM4vVjaVvoom6T2QJv9mCOj009S85TdUm2VOi5FzT68NedhgZCUeM/s320/communion%20and%20community.png" width="320" /></a></i></div><i><br /></i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">From early on, the
following was part of my cancer talk: “I read somewhere that people who went to
support group had a 50% better chance of getting well. I read somewhere else
that patients who kept a journal of their feelings had a 50% better chance of
getting well. I’m no dummy. That’s 100%! So I kept a journal of my feelings,
and I went to support group.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The journal became <i>Now
That I Have Cancer I Am Whole. </i>The support group--at Carle Cancer Center in
Urbana, IL--became the source of so many inspiring friends. I’m sure that group
was one of the main reasons I defied the pale oncologist’s prediction of “a
year or two.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">When I started going to
group, it had been running for twenty years, started by Everett and Rae
Endsley, when Everett was a lung cancer patient. With only a few necessary
absences, they had come to every meeting for all those years, even though
Everett had been declared cured long before. They were personable and friendly
and funny, but they didn’t say much at the meetings. They knew there were
others, newer in the cancer journey, who needed to do the talking. They always
came, they said, just in case a new patient had come and no one else was there
that night. They wanted to be sure every bewildered survivor had someone who
would listen to their fears and hopes.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">There weren’t any meetings
during the four years I was a part of the Carle group—before I helped form a
group closer to where I lived—when the Endsleys were the only old survivors
there, but sometimes it was close.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Later, when I began slowly
to ease out of the cancer community, I realized what a significant commitment Rae
& Everett had made. There comes a time when you need a different identity
beyond being a cancer survivor, being a part of the cancer community. Rae and
Everett had moved on. They had other interests. But they also had that
commitment, that no new cancer patient should be without a support group.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The problem is: community
does not last. Rae and Everett could not go on forever. No group, however
supportive, goes on forever.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I have trouble giving up
on community, both individual friendships and supportive groups. I hang onto
them as long as possible. But I’m getting closer to being “the last apple on
the tree.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I think old age is helping
me to be more aware of communion in place of community. Heaven, or its
alternative, is coming close. One of the great appeals of heaven is that
community will be restored. “I’ll get to see Mom and Dad and my dog, Sparky,
again, and…”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I don’t have any knowledge
of heaven, whether we’ll have that sort of community again, but I do feel sure
that the same God who has always been available for communion in this life with
continue to be present with us.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Community doesn’t last…
but communion does.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">John Robert McFarland</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">BONUS THOUGHT--ONE TRUE
SENTENCE: “God’s forgiveness is more than a blessing. It’s a challenge.” Wm.
Sloane Coffin<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-4934541092383083942024-02-07T03:02:00.000-08:002024-02-07T03:02:03.453-08:00A REALLY BIG BUT… [2-7-24]<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">A REALLY BIG BUT… </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[2-7-24]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW5Ke5BvyWsXfvpSZXGSXKsYkz3oMYzyIatC2LXZeUqxo6eY0kqwREIdApYUQzHiqF4hWWYaztaiJUDAIEY7N8PvPpOU8-9zWKtkLSjGuVtljcchH4szdSZ8UXac_4FkTaBNYCEbH-5I-kJXanv_gMh6qXwxG28uoA5a4o-HvVrc4-8v03W7yKgV7SE38/s5312/Why-I-Write-big%20but.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2988" data-original-width="5312" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW5Ke5BvyWsXfvpSZXGSXKsYkz3oMYzyIatC2LXZeUqxo6eY0kqwREIdApYUQzHiqF4hWWYaztaiJUDAIEY7N8PvPpOU8-9zWKtkLSjGuVtljcchH4szdSZ8UXac_4FkTaBNYCEbH-5I-kJXanv_gMh6qXwxG28uoA5a4o-HvVrc4-8v03W7yKgV7SE38/s320/Why-I-Write-big%20but.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I really thought that I
was going to stop writing with the 2-4-24 column on my birthday. It seemed like
the necessary exit, at the right time.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But,
and as one of the preachers I heard in my retirement years unwittingly said, at
the turn point in her sermon, “And I have a really big but here…”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I wrote to my young
Lutheran pastor friend, Rebecca, and told her. I should have known better. Her
feedback always makes me think again. That is the purpose of a preacher, to
cause a second thought, and why preachers need pastors themselves.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I had several good reasons
to think I should exit this column as gracefully as possible:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">1]
I’m at a life point where I need to focus inwardly instead of outwardly. For 70
years now, every insight, every step toward wholeness, has immediately been put
into words that I can say, by speech or writing, to others. It’s possible that
I have been so focused on speaking that I have done no hearing. If there are
Word words that I need to hear, I must get to them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2]
Not many will fail old age without CIW as a crib sheet. According to Blogspot,
each of my columns gets about 100 views, but none of my columns ever go
“trending.” There are plenty of blogs that give good advice instead of just
telling little stories and then turning you loose to see if you can get
anything from them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">3]
I have used up all my stories, and my current motionless life does not lend
itself to creating more. I’m beginning—continuing, really—to use the same
stories and ideas over and over. Yes, most of my readers are old, so I can
count on them not to remember, but sooner or later they’re going to say, “This
sounds awfully familiar… and it wasn’t that great the first time. Or the second
or third.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">4]
Increasingly, as old people need to, I muse over events and stages in my own
life, to try to understand who I was and who I am. [1] Good writers are able to
expose their personal lives and in doing so help the reader get a better look
at their own lives. But the self-musings of bad writers just become
self-indulgent. I fear doing the self-indulgent thing.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">5]
One of the appeals of my preaching and writing is that I use language well. Unlike
most current talkers and writers, I know more adjectives than the F word. My
language abilities, however, are declining. I’m not vain. I don’t feel I have “to
quit while I’m ahead,” to avoid embarrassing myself. I’m willing to expose my
decline if my words are still useful and interesting, even while stumbling. But
I really don’t like inflicting mundane language on others.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But,
the “bottom” line is: I need to keep writing. I like it. It keeps me socially
engaged. I don’t need hearing aids to do it. [Yes, THAT is a topic you’re going
to <i>hear</i> about a lot.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I
know, however, that I don’t write very well anymore, so, please, don’t feel
like you have to read my words just to be kind to me—although I appreciate unmerited
kindness. When you are not receiving something worthwhile from this column, you
have whatever permissions you need to go elsewhere.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Until
then, thank you for being in this elite company of Christ In Winter readers. I
appreciate your fellowship in this adventure, be your readership named or
secret.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Especially
since it’s not easy to get into this fellowship. A lot of columns, like <i>The
Writers Almanack</i>, will send each new post right into your email box. With
CIW, you have to bookmark it and then check every third day or so to see if
there is anything new. That takes a special kind of reader, and I thank you for
doing the extra work so that we can keep in touch.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Hope is the conviction
that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” [Vaclav Havel] There!
You have read one true sentence. Hemingway said that the key to writing was to
write one true sentence, then follow it with another… The rest of this column was
rather self-indulgent, and if it gave you nothing else, at least you have this one
true sentence.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">John
Robert McFarland</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A
big thanks to Mary Larson Childs for linking CIW to her <i>Port Wing Passages</i>
blog. [You should read it. </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="https://portwingpassages.blogspot.com/"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">https://portwingpassages.blogspot.com/</span></a></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">1]
Erik Erikson’s last stage of psycho-social understanding: final integrity vs
despair. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-91053133076282716002024-02-04T03:40:00.000-08:002024-02-04T17:44:31.728-08:00THE WRITER’S ALMANAC FOR FEB. 4, 2024<p> </p><p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">THE WRITER’S ALMANAC FOR FEB. 4, 2024</span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">By Garrison
Keillor<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Today is the birthday of
long-forgotten small-town preacher, John Robert McFarland.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Born in Ohio, his family moved to
Indiana when he was four. His mother once told him to “act like a human.”
Confusing “human” with “Hoosier,” he retorted, “I’m not a human; I’m a
Buckeye.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It was the last time he refused to
identify as a Hoosier. He went to Indiana University, which he saw as the
turning point of his life, primarily because he met there his wife, Helen Karr,
the noted Home Management expert. “From that chance meeting at The Wesley
Foundation,” he said, “stemmed all the good things in my life.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He said that being a father was the
most important task of his life, and being a grandfather was the high point of
his life.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He was a story-teller who called
himself “…a servant of the Word through words.” He wrote sermons, poems,
novels, short stories, devotional materials, biographies, memoirs, newspaper
articles and columns, plays, satires, gags for comic strips [especially Frank
& Ernest]. songs, and radio scripts. [He even wrote for “Prairie Home
Companion.”]<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Many of his works were actually
published, primarily via periodicals and publishing houses that no longer
exist. There is no conclusive evidence that his works led to their demise.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">He was a cancer survivor who spoke at
cancer conferences around the country and wrote a book for other cancer
patients, <i>Now That I Have Cancer I Am Whole, </i>which was published in
Czech, Japanese, and audio. The “Cansurmount” oncologist, Paul K. Hamilton,
called it “The best book ever for cancer patients, by a cancer patient.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">He wrote a blog called <i>Christ In
Winter, </i>which was available only to readers who qualified for The Light
Web. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In addition to preaching, he was a
public speaker, which for him was simply preaching in a non-church setting. He
was an actor, in community theater, and in radio and TV commercials. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He was a long-distance runner,
widely appreciated in the insect community for running so slowly that bugs
could hitch a ride on his chest.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He read in ten to twelve different
books daily, which he called his “page a day” books--science, biography,
medicine, history, fiction, Bible, theology, sports, politics, psychology,
poetry. “I like to see how the authors interact with one another,” he said.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Consequently, his brain was a
cluttered landscape of random ideas and facts which he could instantly combine
into some story that would make you think he almost knew what he was talking
about.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">It was said that, if given enough time, he
could tell you the name of anyone he ever met. That was probably because he
loved having friends and hoped that anyone he met would become a friend.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">He loved being part of “the goodly
fellowship of the prophets.” He was a strong advocate for respecting pastors as
professionals, and was a Fellow and Past President of The Academy of Parish
Clergy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Even at an advanced age, he was still
trying to understand the ways of God so that he might explain them to others,
and he was indulged and supported in that pursuit, and in his elderly curmudgeonlyness,
by his wife of 65 years.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">He loved intercessory prayer, good hymns, children
of any age, and little black dogs.</span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">[A special thanks to Keillor for including
me in The Writer’s Almanac, even though he may not recall doing so, and a
special thanks to you for reading Christ In Winter. JRMcF]<o:p></o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-9903656948846771112024-01-31T04:37:00.000-08:002024-02-02T12:37:01.133-08:00THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT [W, 1-31-24]<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections
on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">THE WINTER OF OUR <s>DIS</s>CONTENT </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[W, 1-31-24]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSCukeoBnH6DliVQ8ci2LaFc1y_tmpFdci1gpfEOGHAiqNxkG908rZ3lihyphenhyphenVLR60klDy4oV0YFqUDHODyhg-ojd8qJEYwpoAbybwkWX85AlINrI8-3THzOxAXCeBeXn_ihdbNNLXriEWGaFRHwcHUBe04eZlU8Dh8hMLsMNtdkEsIiyOj6nULV4Gni9-M/s474/winter%20contebtment.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="474" data-original-width="474" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSCukeoBnH6DliVQ8ci2LaFc1y_tmpFdci1gpfEOGHAiqNxkG908rZ3lihyphenhyphenVLR60klDy4oV0YFqUDHODyhg-ojd8qJEYwpoAbybwkWX85AlINrI8-3THzOxAXCeBeXn_ihdbNNLXriEWGaFRHwcHUBe04eZlU8Dh8hMLsMNtdkEsIiyOj6nULV4Gni9-M/s320/winter%20contebtment.jpg" width="320" /></a></i></div><i><br /></i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Every once in a while, I see
or hear some person who is interviewed at the end of their career. Often, they
say, “I have no regrets.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">That worries me, for the sake
of their soul. If you have no regrets, you are either insensitive, a sociopath,
or perfect. And as the old joke goes, “The only perfect man was my wife’s first
husband.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I think that’s why even his
supporters were discombobulated when President George W. Bush was asked, at the
end of his first term, what mistakes he had made. He could not think of any. Of
course, it’s not politically helpful to admit mistakes, but, as he pondered an
answer, he did not seem to be looking for the correct political response. He
seemed genuinely befuddled; he just couldn’t think of any mistakes he had made.
I think that is why he ended his first term with the lowest approval rating of
any president ever; he could not correct his mistakes because he did not know
what they were.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Winter was probably thought
of as a time of discontent before <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Richard
III</i>, in which Shakespeare wrote the line, “Now is the winter of our
discontent…”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The winter of life is either
a time of discontent, because we have regrets, or a season of contentment,
because we have come to terms with our regrets, not by denying them, but by
examining them and then discarding them in the fire that we need for winter
warmth.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Old people need to do this.
We go through the boxes of our memories, and take out the letters and clippings
and notes we have saved. We look them over, decide which our children or
grandchildren might want, and then throw the others into the fire. Just as we
do with the physical letters and photos.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Giving up our regrets, not by
denying them but by turning them over to God, makes winter the season of our
contentment.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">John Robert McFarland</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">On a sort of related topic—forgiveness—a
friend was confronted by a work colleague with an accusation of doing her a
wrong. My friend protested that she had not done so, and provided visual proof
[non-AI generated, it is necessary these days to say, about visual proof] that
it was not she who did it. Nonetheless, her colleague said that she “would be the
bigger person…” and forgive her. My friend says that it is very frustrating to
be forgiven for something you didn’t do. I suppose Jesus would say that she must
forgive the woman for forgiving her.<o:p></o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-167032918772477462024-01-29T03:37:00.000-08:002024-01-30T06:16:22.034-08:00SCENES FROM A SUNDAY SCHOOL PAPER [M, 1-29-24]<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—</span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">SCENES FROM A SUNDAY SCHOOL PAPER </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[M, 1-29-24]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGXNhDfEHjwk6hnFBN9yXSTw9c5u0A9SZd8X3TJM8qmsIORb_FI_exocPFjAphhDJrqgDv7JaTiLLTMHEF_Hc9Hr0bdozw4n_n_W2gwDSsnKpeQfFNhDKXhOiYZu2eTEZiZsjL3XkAbCzfF90W2ZTM_gJ968v9rDqcqz5bB20r-KP7IZN6REB53eptpxc/s2314/sun%20sch%20paper.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1012" data-original-width="2314" height="140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGXNhDfEHjwk6hnFBN9yXSTw9c5u0A9SZd8X3TJM8qmsIORb_FI_exocPFjAphhDJrqgDv7JaTiLLTMHEF_Hc9Hr0bdozw4n_n_W2gwDSsnKpeQfFNhDKXhOiYZu2eTEZiZsjL3XkAbCzfF90W2ZTM_gJ968v9rDqcqz5bB20r-KP7IZN6REB53eptpxc/s320/sun%20sch%20paper.jpg" width="320" /></a></i></div><i><br /></i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
love stories. Always have. Doesn’t everybody?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">My
late great friend, Herb Beuoy, once told me that his grade-school daughter said
to him, “Daddy, sometimes you preach, and sometimes you tell stories. When you
tell stories, I listen. When you preach, I read my Sunday School paper.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Of
course. Those little papers they hand out at the end of Sunday School have
stories.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
especially like stories that have a successful ending. That doesn’t necessarily
mean “happy,” as in “they lived happily ever after.” But I like it when the
story ends with people getting whole, having gone through trials and
tribulations, but ending by making a real connection with another person, with
their own true self, with God.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
saw a movie like that recently, and I wished that my life could be like that, a
moment of real contact and wholeness with some other person, or myself, or God.
A moment that freezes on the back of the eyes, the way the last scene of that
movie did in my eyes. The way I could keep seeing it as I went to bed and
played it over and over…</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">But
that is not the way real stories end. There is only one ending like that in
real life, and that is the death scene. In 50 years of ministry, and almost 90
years of life, I’ve lived in hundreds, probably thousands of those scenes where
contact is made, wholeness is experienced, growth is jubilated… but the story
didn’t stop there. No time to luxuriate in the joy. I had to drive home from
the hospital and deal with crazy drivers. Or empty the dish washer before I
realized the damn dishes were dirty. Or answer a scam telephone call… All the
things that take a whole moment and break it into shards of anger and
frustration.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Our
stories are told mostly in scenes mundane or broken. A whole lot of crazy
people and dirty doings and annoying intrusions. We can’t take a moment of
wholeness and just live in it forever, the way the people in a movie or a book
do. But those are the moments that give life meaning. Those are the scenes from
your life that would show up in a Sunday School paper.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">John
Robert McFarland<o:p></o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-16604619840798977092024-01-26T04:17:00.000-08:002024-01-26T04:17:17.258-08:00STILL WORKING AT INTERCESSORY PRAYER [F, 1-26-24]<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—</span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">STILL WORKING AT INTERCESSORY PRAYER </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[F, 1-26-24]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaesQljP-DWZGfxJUP_xdXakIDSwxFuX6RVrin74e5s3fNzNDOz96m2SQU58jk9Ao3Ai4hTyq2GsBDBK31oX6g1EyK7vNTLzpsnjhdIXj2Q7wWc5LmApplUcCa6SLJ7bbRjiLQWrXT39f4HdCHod8wEiI0i3atachUfxpbcew0oLmL4Cqcgz2A2lFr_48/s550/intercessory-image_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="295" data-original-width="550" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaesQljP-DWZGfxJUP_xdXakIDSwxFuX6RVrin74e5s3fNzNDOz96m2SQU58jk9Ao3Ai4hTyq2GsBDBK31oX6g1EyK7vNTLzpsnjhdIXj2Q7wWc5LmApplUcCa6SLJ7bbRjiLQWrXT39f4HdCHod8wEiI0i3atachUfxpbcew0oLmL4Cqcgz2A2lFr_48/s320/intercessory-image_1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
woman I know--approaching old age, maybe even in it--recently asked for prayers
as she faced some medical tests. She is not a churchgoing woman, although she
is accepting and non-judgmental about churchy folks. She is educated and
scientific in her thinking. So she pointed out that her request for prayer was
based on science. She had read all the reports of double-blind experiments,
etc. that showed that prayed-for people got better.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">When
I was doing Clinical Pastoral Education in the University of Iowa hospitals as
part of my doctoral work, I got acquainted with Larry Den Besten. He had been a
missionary surgeon in Nigeria before becoming chief of surgery at UIA
hospitals. He always prayed with his patients before their surgery. The nurses
told us, “Most of the patients could have gone on home right then. His prayers
were that powerful.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m
sure no patient ever said following the prayer, “That’s okay, Doc. I can go
home without the surgery.” And I’m sure that Larry would not have let them go.
He was a man of science. He knew they needed that surgery. But he was also a
man of faith. He knew they needed prayer.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Larry
Dossey, MD, in his book, <i>Healing Words, </i>says that prayer is the only
healing approach of which we require perfection. If we pray for someone, and
they don’t get well, we say, “See, prayer doesn’t work.” If we give a patient
chemotherapy, and they don’t get better, we don’t say, “See, chemo doesn’t
work.” We keep on using it, because sometimes it works.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yes,
I know I have written about intercessory prayer often, but I have to keep doing
so, because I don’t have it figured out. I was talking about this with friends
during breakfast at church one Sunday—back before covid, when we did things
like breakfast at church—and I said, “All I know for sure about intercessory prayer
is that I have to do it.” “Exactly!” Mary Jane said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That’s
not very convincing to someone who does not pray and does not believe in it,
but that’s okay. Faith, prayer, hope… these are all individual matters. There
is no “one size fits all” when it comes to prayer.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Of
course, a real doubter would say to my “I have to do it” reasoning, “Well, see,
you’re just doing it for yourself.” Partially true. The people who claim that
there is no purely altruistic act are correct. But isn’t a kind act that is
only partly altruistic better than a non-kind act, or a non-act? Frankly, I
don’t much care about the motivation of someone who is kind to me; I just
appreciate the kindness.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">If
I care about someone, and prayer is a tool I can use on their behalf, often the
only tool available to me, it would be actively unkind of me to say, “Well, I’m
not going to pray for you, because I don’t know if it will work.” Its like
saying to a drowning person, “I’m not going to call for help because I’m not
sure it can get here in time.’</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Well,
I prayed for that woman whom I mentioned in the first paragraph. Still praying
for her. I don’t know what difference it will make, but I know I have to do it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">John
Robert McFarland<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-17523488480218702192024-01-23T03:36:00.000-08:002024-01-23T03:36:38.769-08:00POEMS FOR THE END TIMES [T, 1-23-24]<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections On Faith & Life For The Years Of Winter—</span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">POEMS FOR THE END TIMES </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[T, 1-23-24]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">[From my poetry journal]</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJFoMJldYuBJvZMPs9unT8TdZgPzI2xq6hDU3npu8XbcbIefL0dgoWRjYn1ChyphenhyphenGp0Np4F-wwujfjf9T7lcj7MGezm0Rh1htDah1EYnl38x2lt0xUADWzooY6iv_dsvOw4xgoOD3oUU2midCNqe5W1zBRg6nUKGui2SWglmLvXmAZrEYMztQbWOskvo35U/s798/my%20poetry%20journal%20clip%20art.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="798" data-original-width="614" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJFoMJldYuBJvZMPs9unT8TdZgPzI2xq6hDU3npu8XbcbIefL0dgoWRjYn1ChyphenhyphenGp0Np4F-wwujfjf9T7lcj7MGezm0Rh1htDah1EYnl38x2lt0xUADWzooY6iv_dsvOw4xgoOD3oUU2midCNqe5W1zBRg6nUKGui2SWglmLvXmAZrEYMztQbWOskvo35U/s320/my%20poetry%20journal%20clip%20art.jpg" width="246" /></a></i></div><i><br /></i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">GUARDIAN
WITHOUT A GATE<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">So
long ago I was assigned<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">a
gate in the wall<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">of
the Kingdom<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">To
take my stance<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">turning
back the demons<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">of
danger and despair<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
did well<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Some
got through<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">by
guile or quickness <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">or
brute strength<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">But
not many<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Here
is the problem<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
did well enough<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">that
the demons no longer try<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">They
seem to have forgotten<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">about
my gate<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">GETTING
SOME PLACE<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Since
I could no<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Longer
run<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
began to walk<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Thirty-three
years now<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Of
walking<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">You
would think<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
would have<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Gotten
some place<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
ALWAYS DREAMED OF BEING A FAILED SONG WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">If
I could write a song for you<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I’d
use words like hazardous and blue<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">For
it’s dangerous to declare your love<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">And
songs must have a color, true<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">You
would smile and pat my head<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">And
say you know I did my best<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Then
we’d have a cup of tea<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">About
my song we would agree<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">That
I should not day job forsake<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">But
save the song for a somber wake<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">That
needs a note of levity<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">As
the corpse experiences gravity<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">TOO
OLD FOR THE ROAD [with apologies to Willie]<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">On
the street again<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Cant
wait to get on the street again<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
already wrote my blog<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Now
I want to pet a dog<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
can’t wait to walk on the street again<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">WHAT
WE HAVE<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">All
we truly have<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">is
what we love<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Even
if we own it<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">if
we do not love it<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">we
do not have it<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">FINAL
SATISFACTION<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">It
is pleasant<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
am sure<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">To
be satisfied<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">At
the end<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">But
the end <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Is
often so close<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">That
it is out of sight<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Better
to be satisfied<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Always<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">John
Robert McFarland<o:p></o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-77477979509061377922024-01-21T04:18:00.000-08:002024-01-21T08:52:18.311-08:00LOVING LIBRARIANS [Su, 1-21-24]<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—</span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">LOVING LIBRARIANS </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[Su, 1-21-24]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWfMwz5w1o6T7XFuwDRD-9DQaRel0dY6hKNvTvbPYnw3o4E31bHPprdyCW_Z01zlULD0f2MsfP2wlhiMdH96Lyyt9ZAZVbNzx6tVW0g1Z9qvOm28Uy668ZhrF5XuvKBITYY7rXuLFDpJuX4jT9yMU52Zq0sxwthVibWI2xFzanu-gp_SSiViDu0L3dB_o/s660/East-Washington-exterior-1910-s.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="373" data-original-width="660" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWfMwz5w1o6T7XFuwDRD-9DQaRel0dY6hKNvTvbPYnw3o4E31bHPprdyCW_Z01zlULD0f2MsfP2wlhiMdH96Lyyt9ZAZVbNzx6tVW0g1Z9qvOm28Uy668ZhrF5XuvKBITYY7rXuLFDpJuX4jT9yMU52Zq0sxwthVibWI2xFzanu-gp_SSiViDu0L3dB_o/s320/East-Washington-exterior-1910-s.webp" width="320" /></a></i></div><i><br /></i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
love librarians. It is because of them that I became a story-teller.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">It
must have been about third grade. The branch library on 2822 E. Washington
Street in Indianapolis was having a summer reading program. There were no spectacular
prizes. I think we only got a certificate saying we had read the requisite
number of books. But… with each book read, we had to tell the story to the
librarians, so they could know if we had really read it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">My
school teachers sent home notes saying that I couldn’t read, because I would not read out loud in
class, the way the other kids did. I was afraid to. I was one of those children
who would rather be thought stupid than make a mistake, because in my life,
mistakes meant punishments.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
remember presenting a book to the librarian. “Did you read this?” “Yes.” “Tell
me the story…”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Well,
yes, that was part of the deal. You had to prove that you had really read the
book. I was trapped. I had no choice. But, also, the library was a safe place.
The librarians would send no report card notes home to my parents, the way
teachers did. And it was just a pleasant lady, just one person…</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">That
did not last long. She called another librarian over to hear me tell the story.
She called another. Soon it seemed that all the librarians in the world were
standing there smiling, encouraging me to go on. Didn’t they have anything else
to do? Well, nothing as entertaining. Other kids, they just had them tell
enough that they could say, “Yes, you read it,” and put a mark on their tally
sheet. But they made me go on and on. They didn’t believe I had really read the
book!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
was humiliated. So I doubled my efforts to tell the story. They laughed. “Go
on,” they said. Then it became clear that they did not doubt that I had read
the book; it was something else. “We just like to hear you talk,” the first
librarian said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
remembered that at my last doctor’s appointment. I have been going to her for
eight years now. I was telling her some tale and then remembered that she is a
busy woman with a schedule to keep. I apologized for holding her up. “No, go
on,” she said. “I like to hear you talk.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Only
recently did I ever hear myself talk. My final sermon. The first time I’ve ever
been on livestream, so my first chance to see myself “in action.” Except there
was very little action. I was surprised at how boring I was. Little voice
modulation. No histrionics. No waving of arms. Just standing there, looking at
the people, talking.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">But
I was telling stories. If you tell stories, people like to hear you talk.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">John
Robert McFarland</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
library had the designation of Branch # 3, even though it is the oldest of the
branch libraries. Perhaps it was called # 3 because it shared an alley with
Public School # 3. It was founded in 1911, with a grant from the Carnegie
Foundation. It is now the oldest library building in Indianapolis, still in
use. Here is a pic of the librarians on opening day in 1911.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlhEE61PfOiqPmE2iqMsqB_LYgglgQK3O4O1TFlwH9xl3n2MhzSFAyusaps8qx32uwulDES8TE0jceKexgiEzN9rKU3eSMsYOIuJtve-aeGIXAAPPPRmbWLd0TCO2d2feN2jDeUvaRFBXRt9xsg2VH5ydjF4KnFixwihxTfonOK1Oh5itBsortyNPGkJ4/s1000/librarians-east-washington.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="595" data-original-width="1000" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlhEE61PfOiqPmE2iqMsqB_LYgglgQK3O4O1TFlwH9xl3n2MhzSFAyusaps8qx32uwulDES8TE0jceKexgiEzN9rKU3eSMsYOIuJtve-aeGIXAAPPPRmbWLd0TCO2d2feN2jDeUvaRFBXRt9xsg2VH5ydjF4KnFixwihxTfonOK1Oh5itBsortyNPGkJ4/s320/librarians-east-washington.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-75100034191795283912024-01-19T08:23:00.000-08:002024-01-19T08:23:14.662-08:00SUMMER OF DECISION [F, 1-19-24]<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—</span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">SUMMER OF DECISION </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[F, 1-19-24]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV78ECxopixVg3v3NHJA0JmJQXwVz9iPlcSCifDtmty5px1kJVIDF47UTRitnSw9DR3-SyP1Aq9Jyirsnz-LOTnGNYCIiCFaxandoYWTjWOzfmYSasVRBEtZQ6EJjhv8ioBKal0Q_o55byj9ggaqi_SECBUvg-p4-UCAXwIDyb2wN6ZOI98E6CUUll_cc/s1024/halsted%20umc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="863" data-original-width="1024" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV78ECxopixVg3v3NHJA0JmJQXwVz9iPlcSCifDtmty5px1kJVIDF47UTRitnSw9DR3-SyP1Aq9Jyirsnz-LOTnGNYCIiCFaxandoYWTjWOzfmYSasVRBEtZQ6EJjhv8ioBKal0Q_o55byj9ggaqi_SECBUvg-p4-UCAXwIDyb2wN6ZOI98E6CUUll_cc/s320/halsted%20umc.jpg" width="320" /></a></i></div><i><br /></i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
have long looked online for photos of Wycliffe and Halstead Street Methodist
Churches in Chicago. I’m still looking for Wycliffe, but I found one of Halstead
Street. The photo above is current. It is apartments now. But it looks just
like it did in the summer of 1958, when I was its last preacher. It didn’t look
what I thought a church should look like. I was a country boy; I did not
understand the city.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
<u>wanted</u> to understand the city, though. That’s why I was in Chicago’s Pilsen
neighborhood that summer, working at the Presbyterian Howell Neighborhood House.
I had read about the East Harlem Protestant Parish, in NYC. The inner-city was
the cutting edge for ministry. At East Harlem, they weren’t just saving souls,
they were saving people. I wanted to be a preacher in a place like that.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Settlement
houses, like Jane Addams’ Hull House, had been around since 1889. But settlement
house churches, called institutional churches, were newer. Settlement houses
saved bodies. Institutional churches saved souls and bodies together. Chicago
Methodists had a church like that, The Halstead Street Institutional Church.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
problem was Dwight Eisenhower. Meaning the interstate highways, he created. The
average highway takes 24 acres of land for each mile of highway. Interstates
require 40 acres per mile. That’s a lot of displaced people when you take 40
acres per mile to build an interstate through a city like Chicago. You’re not
going to displace folks on The Gold Coast or tony neighborhoods, of course. No,
you’re going to put those interstates through the slums. By the summer of 1958,
Halstead St. Institutional Church had been cut off from the people it served by
interstate highways. You looked out a window of that church and saw nothing but
highways. There is no point to a church that has no neighborhood, so it no
longer had a reason to exist.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
were a few folks, though, for whom that church was home. Each Sunday they
drover tortuous routes to get there to worship. They didn’t have a preacher,
though. Not enough worshippers to justify the bishop appointing somebody.
Somehow they heard about the kid at Howell House who was preaching at Wycliffe Methodist
Church.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Wycliffe
<u>looked</u> like a church. In the midst of the teeming Pilsen community. It
was a Bohemian/Czech congregation. At one time, Pilsen was the second largest
Bohemian city in the world, next to Prague. By 1958, though, most of those
folks had moved to Berwyn. Mexicans and Puerto Ricans and Appalachian whites
and southern blacks were competing for Pilsen. Just a few old babushka ladies
remained to worship at Wycliffe. I was their first English speaking preacher.
Like Halstead Street, I was probably the <u>last </u>preacher there, too.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Sunday
was a day off for the summer student staff at Howell House, but I ended up
preaching at Wycliffe at 9:30, and Halstead Street at 11:00. [1]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Inside</span></u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">, Halstead Street <u>did</u>
look like a church, a very nice one. The sanctuary, with a balcony, seated
about 500. I preached to about 20. There was a wonderful big office for the
pastor, with glass-fronted book cases, and easy chairs, and a fire place. It
was nicer than any office I had in 40 years of full-time ministry. In addition
to looking like a nice church, it also looked like a nice settlement house. The
building had a gymnasium, swimming pool, fellowship hall, lounges, kitchens,
rooms for classes and groups of all kinds. None any longer in use.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That
summer was supposed to get me ready to be an inner-city preacher, and to do it
alone, since I could not afford to get married. Instead, I found out that I did
not belong in the city. I thought that because I grew up in poverty, I could
minister to others in poverty. But rural poverty and urban poverty are so
different. Thus, no inner-city ministry for me. I also found out that I had to
marry Helen even though I couldn’t afford it. I was miserable without her.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nothing
about that summer turned out the way I thought it would, but it was my most
important summer ever. Apparently God really just wanted me to be a slightly
humorous, semi-intellectual, hillbilly liberal, story teller.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">John
Robert McFarland</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">1]
After preaching twice on Sunday morning, I went back to the third-floor lair of
my late-sleeping student colleagues and fixed lunch for everybody. I was
convinced of salvation by works of supererogation. The more you sacrificed for
others, the better Christian you were. I got over that.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-59103352922344124572024-01-17T04:25:00.000-08:002024-01-17T04:25:39.958-08:00LETTERS TO THE EDITOR [W. 1-17-4]<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">LETTERS TO THE EDITOR </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[W. 1-17-4]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYvN1mMKbw2aAO7gU1OPgiszefNY19mDZkRmd0twST5xjEx6mgMQ8QTB-6-eU7-dmDiqS2OoKR9jMR-EjwatKHIW9CB-vqY-xcGyOU2fxT-CfRrZbB3cLiGfx3eN-OUMh_Ai0WFDRr8Uz6re5kgK-I9hcQ8k4C8esMSuZiJIRaQ8HWxLfRm08jmzaVkIA/s852/stubborn%20ozs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="852" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYvN1mMKbw2aAO7gU1OPgiszefNY19mDZkRmd0twST5xjEx6mgMQ8QTB-6-eU7-dmDiqS2OoKR9jMR-EjwatKHIW9CB-vqY-xcGyOU2fxT-CfRrZbB3cLiGfx3eN-OUMh_Ai0WFDRr8Uz6re5kgK-I9hcQ8k4C8esMSuZiJIRaQ8HWxLfRm08jmzaVkIA/s320/stubborn%20ozs.jpg" width="320" /></a></i></div><i><br /></i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I received a nice note
from the columnist, thanking me for my letter to the editor, correcting his
mistake. He had written that it was Reinhold Niebuhr who composed what has
become known as “The Serenity Prayer.” <i>God, grant me the serenity to accept
the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the
wisdom to know the difference. </i>That wasn’t the mistake. I thanked him for
giving Niebuhr credit, for often folks act like that prayer just appeared out
of nowhere. But he had gone on to say that Niebuhr had been a Nazi U-boat
captain who had later become a theologian. Nothing could have been further from
the truth. In his thank-you note, Lee Truman acknowledged that he must have
gotten Niebuhr confused with someone else.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">That was only one of my
several “correcting” letters over fifty years of “letters to the editor.” I
even once corrected the Hebrew of a Bible professor! [And the editor noted
under my letter that I was right.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I know all this because
I’ve been going through my file of clippings, and copies of those letters, that
I wrote to a lot of different editors. It’s a thick file, but as I count them
up, I see that I was not as prolific a letter writer as I remembered. Only two
or three letters a year. Of course, I had a lot of other outlets for my ideas,
as a preacher and speaker and writer, so Letters to the Editor was not a
primary way for me to go.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Sometimes, though, it was
the best way. I’m only slightly surprised that I never wrote about specific
politicians. My concerns were issues—apartheid, Viet Nam, the treatment of
veterans, guns, booze, dope, capital punishment, Nicaragua, funding.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">And approaches, especially
hypocritical and illogical approaches and arguments. I was really bothered by
hypocrisy and illogic, and was more than willing to say so.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I doubt that my letters
did much good, changed many minds. But they did something for me. They reminded
me that I had a choice. I could stay silent in the face of injustice, or I
could oppose it, in my own small way.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">We may not have much power
or influence, but still, however small, we have a choice. In the lovely words
of Bonaro Overstreet, “…I am prejudiced beyond debate, in favor of my right to
choose which side, will feel the stubborn ounces of my weight.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">John Robert McFarland<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-76538102783304830752024-01-14T06:14:00.000-08:002024-01-14T06:25:42.498-08:00TWO THORNY POEMS [Sun, 1-14-24]<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—</span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">TWO THORNY POEMS </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[Sun, 1-14-24]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv958AAMpYWkwkuM8469D8jZZsBzMaTfbCwEFROrd7VSloDpZtcEUM_Gr7Ov6XKoDtwlpIuBxOxKRUZqdDVyXoNc1Z4ApmVyP5uOuDd3dGhTL3YCyoWZ8Xnchp53fu8aAdqQnOQMEksYrOvRx5cCJ2tfOPPAqLZD1_9ITpQnKtAm60OZ7K9VJU7HdqBRg/s1300/thorn%20in%20flesh.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="585" data-original-width="1300" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv958AAMpYWkwkuM8469D8jZZsBzMaTfbCwEFROrd7VSloDpZtcEUM_Gr7Ov6XKoDtwlpIuBxOxKRUZqdDVyXoNc1Z4ApmVyP5uOuDd3dGhTL3YCyoWZ8Xnchp53fu8aAdqQnOQMEksYrOvRx5cCJ2tfOPPAqLZD1_9ITpQnKtAm60OZ7K9VJU7HdqBRg/s320/thorn%20in%20flesh.jpg" width="320" /></a></i></div><i><br /></i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">[From
my poetry journal]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">[Sun,
1-7-24]<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">THE
NAME OF THE THORN<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Umberto
Eco was so wise<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">to
call it <i>The Name of the Rose<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Any
title that holds a rose<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">will
not linger long upon the shelf<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">But
what of the stories<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">that
claim to be<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">about
the rose<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">but
really<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">are
about the thorn</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">[Sat,
1-13-24]<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">HUMILITY
OF THE THORN<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">One
theory about the thorn<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">in
the flesh:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">God
gave it to him<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">to
keep Paul humble.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">He
was, after all,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">a
rather arrogant type<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>despite his occasional demurrers<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to the contrary<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">so
sure of his righteousness<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">that
he stoned poor Stephen<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">If
so, the thorn was good, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">the
obstacle being the way,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">as
Marcus Aurelius put it<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">much
too late to do Paul any good<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">and
also too late to do Stephen any good</span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">John
Robert McFarland<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-31031955856487314392024-01-11T03:23:00.000-08:002024-01-11T03:23:34.458-08:00LIMINAL SPACE [R, 1-11-24]<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">LIMINAL SPACE </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[R, 1-11-24]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEVwcMlxIr8noJzNr_ztfFrw7RMzUTpS5tHBxrYwLIzQgNEOqL5jIxKD3MCE1Cacer14dAUdZd8Jc4hFNLN7hc5mgGvZmC2f9NBP47VL25nJimOmwJkrFO1fyF6F0c7DlEImGEk-PF7pbiFBDXVulwzTnHOJ2pj3ys8PhZp668y3kvED6sRBo-0YQOA-I/s800/cro-understanding-how-liminal-space-is-different-from-other-places-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEVwcMlxIr8noJzNr_ztfFrw7RMzUTpS5tHBxrYwLIzQgNEOqL5jIxKD3MCE1Cacer14dAUdZd8Jc4hFNLN7hc5mgGvZmC2f9NBP47VL25nJimOmwJkrFO1fyF6F0c7DlEImGEk-PF7pbiFBDXVulwzTnHOJ2pj3ys8PhZp668y3kvED6sRBo-0YQOA-I/s320/cro-understanding-how-liminal-space-is-different-from-other-places-4.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">[WARNING: I like this
column. I think it is worthwhile. But it is twice s long as my usual 500 words,
so…]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I have been talking with a
young pastor about the future of the ministry. We are already in a ministerial
crisis. Most United Methodist conferences this year retired six pastors for
every one they ordained. The same is true in other denominations. Not only
that, but many already-ordained pastors are simply leaving the church.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">There will be a church of
some sort in the future, but what? Can that church afford to support a
professional ministry? More importantly, will that church be worth serving as
an ordained leader?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">My young pastor friend says that the
term “liminal space” is overused, but that she thinks it is accurate. I wasn’t
quite sure what liminal space means, so I looked it up: “A space that is a
transition between two other spaces.” In liminal space, we have left the old
space and not yet arrived at the new space. Sort of like wandering in the
desert for 40 years.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">She and I are both in
liminal space now, but different spaces. I am working on finding a congruence
by which I could understand both spaces, and thus provide some slight guidance
for both of us.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I found no congruence,
though. Her space, to far understate it, is between past and future. Mine is
between life and death. We can make some educated guesses about the future of her
space, because of experience. The future of my space, life beyond this life, is
totally unknown.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">But then I realized, or at
least decided, that we have two spots of congruence—hope, and the <i>more.</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I think that part of our
overarching feeling of hopelessness in the church is because of our “recent”
emphasis on social justice. That concern was with us, of course, at least from
Jesus on, but it so easily got lost in the theories of personal salvation and
eschatology, “getting to heaven” and “when will the world end?” Those were the
main concerns for Christians for so very long.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">In an era when
acknowledged sin is social instead of personal, however, who needs salvation?
Who needs a savior? We just need justice. In an era when no one believes in
heaven or hell, except in vague psychobabble terms, who needs to worry about an
afterlife?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>CLM, Current Lives Matter. Especially
the lives of those who are marginalized and neglected. In the past, the
dispossessed found hope in heaven. Now they are told they can find hope by
being included in this world.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Now, this should sound strange,
coming from me, the quintessential, at least in my own mind, radical priest.
There is the crux. I have to bear the blame, along with a lot of others, for
getting us out of balance, for deemphasizing the personal relationship with
God/Christ/Jesus.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Jesus wasn’t JUST a
prophet, the advocate of “thy kingdom on earth as well as in heaven,” “When
you’ve done it to the least of these…” He was that, for sure, but he was also a
mystic, a miracle worker, a healer, a visionary. He knew where “the thin
places” between heaven and earth existed. He had a direct relationship with
God. He believed in and lived in “the <i>more</i>,” in Wm. James’ evocative
phrase.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Perhaps because of my own
“strange” calling--trading my life for my sister’s in a deal with God--looking
for the <i>more</i>, and helping others to find and experience it, was what I
thought the ministry was about, when I took my first preaching appointment, by
accident, when I was 19. Relating to the <i>more </i>was not to get into
heaven, but because that was where the ultimate meaning resided, in the
transcendent and imminent “being” we call God.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Then the 1950s ended,
which was too bad for me, because I was a straight, white, tall, short-haired,
male. I graduated high school in 1955, college in 1959, a total child of the
‘50s, with all the perks and honors that went with my gender and race. Then MLK
came onto the scene. So did Richard Nixon. Decisions were required. Ministry
demanded more than remembering names and having a deep voice. The <u>world </u>demanded
more! But we social justice liberals, in our correct attempts at providing <u>more</u>
to those who had none, we began to neglect the <i>more.</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">We sowed the wind. The
answer, after all, is blowing in it. But we have reaped the whirlwind.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Our hope in social justice
as the answer turned out to be false hope. Justice doesn’t change hearts.
Original sin is always with us. What’s the point of being included along with
everybody else if everybody else is lost?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Saul Alinsky always said,
“If you want to see where the action is, look at the reaction.” We see the
action in Obama and BLM and the notorious RBG. We see the reaction in Trump and
the Supreme Court and the notorious MTG [Marjorie Taylor Greene].</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The action has been worth
it, but there will always be a reaction, and that reminds us that we cannot
trust in action alone.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Don’t worry. I’m not
giving up on social justice. Or environmental justice. Or any other kind of
justice. But I’m saying that it loses its meaning if it doesn’t have a place in
the <i>more.</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">In a lot of ways, the
uncertainty of this current liminal space is no different from what we have
experienced before. There have been wars—I and II and Viet Nam and Afghanistan…
There have been pandemics—plague and polio and small pox and flu… There have
been economic upheavals—the Great Depression, and a lot of others that weren’t
so great… There have been dictators and wannabes—Hitler and Mussolini and
Nixon…</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The thing that
differentiates liminal space now is climate change, although I suspect climate
change is already past the liminal phase. We really are destroying the very
space we live in, be it liminal or not. That, I believe, provides the
overarching sense of… nothingness. Meaninglessness. Hopelessness.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">And there, I think, is the
crux. We have put our hope in our own good works, and our good works are
losing, especially environmentally. We can’t neglect those good works, not
forego them, but this present liminal space wasteland reminds us that good
works are not the source or reason for hope.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">As I make my way across my
last liminal space, I know that my hope is in the <i>more.</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">John Robert McFarland<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481630505562775246.post-47384074319119431032024-01-08T06:10:00.000-08:002024-01-09T14:21:10.511-08:00OLD AGE AS A RISK FACTOR [M, 1-8-24]<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">OLD AGE AS A RISK FACTOR </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[M, 1-8-24]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCD80VRB-occyQ481_3eQnGRU3ecuZhKe176B3dvH4rFeMyS1xfaLNPWxzE2YTltO_TgATlQTZ7K48W-fIKpiOxqVTyG3Hh21PMEd7V3yaVE723LggNIJ5bgAYI1dlALONnX2NQ_PNpOLaUYUEsddvxhGlw_YlxqTXSq_yY25Cfuq0a9plKgiDNN6udbo/s497/old%20age%20is%20risk%20factor.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="497" data-original-width="474" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCD80VRB-occyQ481_3eQnGRU3ecuZhKe176B3dvH4rFeMyS1xfaLNPWxzE2YTltO_TgATlQTZ7K48W-fIKpiOxqVTyG3Hh21PMEd7V3yaVE723LggNIJ5bgAYI1dlALONnX2NQ_PNpOLaUYUEsddvxhGlw_YlxqTXSq_yY25Cfuq0a9plKgiDNN6udbo/s320/old%20age%20is%20risk%20factor.jpg" width="305" /></a></i></div><i><br /></i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">A friend my age recently had
to go on insulin. Her diabetes is beyond the control of diet and exercise and
even Metformin, the oral med for diabetics.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I’m diabetic, too,
although my doc says it is “…well controlled by medicine and exercise.” She
thinks the control is primarily through medicine. I think it’s because I walk
two miles a day.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I was first diagnosed as
diabetic twenty years ago. I think my doc then just liked to diagnose people
with one disease or another so that he could prescribe medicine. He had a PhD
in biochemistry as well as an MD degree. He never met a medicine he didn’t
like. So he said I was diabetic and prescribed Actos and made me stick myself
each day to test the level of my blood sugar.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">At first, I enjoyed being
diabetic. It gave me an identity to replace cancer survivor.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Cancer survivor had been
my identity for twenty years. I went to cancer support groups. I spoke at
cancer conferences. I wrote books and articles about being a cancer survivor. You
can be a cancer survivor forever, but you can’t talk about it forever, so I
needed a new identity.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">So, I liked having my
little blood monitor and all that stuff. I got to learn a new vocabulary and go
to a new support group. It helped to center my day. I got to make jokes about
eating nothing but cardboard and saw dust.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">But the doc at my next
town said I wasn’t really diabetic. That was Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper
Peninsula. Shivering is even better exercise than walking. He took me off Actos.
He was a hockey player and so thought people should suffer without meds or
complaints. That worked for several years. Not the “without complaint” part. It
was also good, since they found out that Actos causes bladder cancer.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">So when my current doc,
ten years later, said I needed to go on Metformin, since I was no longer
shivering at the Iron Mountain rate, I said, “I don’t need to, because I can
control anything with diet and exercise.” No, she said, <u>because you are old</u>.
No amount of shivering or walking or laying off cookies will work now, because <u>old
age is itself a risk factor.</u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">When did that happen? I
mean, diseases are the result of bad diets and no exercise and anxiety and genetics
and stuff, aren’t they? Old age? Just in itself? That’s not fair!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Well, it’s not all bad. Because
of the old age risk factor, we oldies are first in line for vaccines. And first
in line at potlucks. People will even bring a plate of stuff to you if you look
pathetic enough.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Then I started thinking
about life beyond the control of diet and exercise and attitude. What are the <u>spiritual</u>
risk factors that come to us just because we are old?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">There are probably
several, but the one that comes to my mind first is losing hope. I don’t mean a
halt to wishing, like losing “hope” for a particular type of afterlife, where
we get to see our friends or dogs of times gone. I mean losing hope in God,
losing the assurance of God’s presence, and God’s care. There is so much
evidence for the absence of God, for the simple unreality of God, at least of a
God of love. And we no longer have youthful energy to face the abyss. We don’t
have diet and exercise to spend on this kind of risk factor. Nor do we have a
cornucopia of days for starting over on hope. We may forget that we are a soul
that has a body instead of a body that has a soul.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Is there a medicine for
the spiritual risks of old age? I think so… Prayer, yes. But more than that,
people. Other souls.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">My hearing is as good as
ever, but I have noticed that people mumble so much more than they used to. Some
people, like my doctor, think the mumbling will stop if I get hearing aids. I
told her I would not get hearing aids, because they are too much bother. She looked
me straight in the eye, which is amazing since she is a foot shorter, and said,
“I’m used to your resistance to anything I think will help you. You don’t want
medicines. You don’t want tests. But you’ve got to promise me that if you get
to the point that you can’t understand people, you’ll get hearing aids, because
you can’t live without people.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I said, “Huh?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">John Robert McFarland<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>John Robert McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00365944834370009432noreply@blogger.com0