ON BEING A CONSERVATIVE LIBERAL [W, 7-29-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—ON BEING A CONSERVATIVE LIBERAL [W, 7-29-26]

 

When I was growing up, conservative and liberal were both good words, at least where I lived.

Conservative meant honoring the past. Biblically, it meant keeping the fifth Commandment, “Honor your father and mother.” We sang “Faith of our fathers, holy faith…” It meant hanging on to what was good, not “…throwing the baby out with the bath water” as we made “progess.”

Liberal meant generous, as in a liberal giver. It meant broad, as in a liberal education, covering all the arts and sciences. It meant progress, which was always touted as a good thing, especially by business people.

When I was in high school, in the early 1950s, those words began to pull apart, primarily because of the issue of racial integration. Brown v Board of Ed was decided in 1954: separate but equal was neither equal nor Constitutional. Honoring the past meant hanging on to racial segregation, and many folks did want to do that. They said they were being conservative. I knew that particular conservatism was wrong.

A lot of our identity comes from what those who disagree with us call us, often in disparagement, like Methodists. That was originally a sarcastic designation for John and Charles Wesley. They were methodist [methodical] in trying to follow Jesus.

In high school, people began to call folks who believed in equal rights both nigger lover and liberal. I knew I believed in equal rights, so apparently, I was a liberal.

Especially on civil rights, equal rights, the lines were clearly drawn. You were either for or against, which meant you were either conservative or liberal. I knew which side I was on. I began to embrace being a liberal.

[I recently heard Kara Swisher, on the “We’re Back” podcast with Brian Williams, say that most liberals got that way because of the equal rights issue.]

When I was in college, I took courses in The History of Christian Thought from the most excellent Dr. D.J. Bowden, and discovered the Personalist theology of Borden Parker Bowne [1847-1910], the most liberal of liberals, even before liberalism was really a thing. I wanted to be the most liberal of liberals. Yes, I was a young contrarian.

But that did not work very well, because as the words conservative and liberal began to divide, liberal started to mean broad morally as well as theologically and socially, and I was very conservative morally.

Morality at the time was almost entirely personal habits—drinking, smoking, gambling, cheating, lying, sexual promiscuity [any sex “out of wedlock”]. Drugs, beyond alcohol, didn’t even exist in my world so were not an issue.

One reason personal morality appealed to me was that it was so clear. You knew if you “drink, smoke, or chew, or go with girls who do.” Social morality was a lot more complicated.

I think a lot of us who were young Christians back then grew up conflicted. We were sure that the liberal stance of inclusion, especially of black folks, was right, and we wanted to be on that side. But liberal also began to mean at least accepting, if not outright practicing, alcohol, marijuana, pornography, promiscuity, profanity, etc. “Now everyone knows, anything goes.” [1] We were not comfortable with “liberal” morality; it just didn’t seem very Jesus-like. But we weren’t comfortable with conservative theology and social norms.

Now, I am older than dirt, and I remain socially liberal and personally conservative. Socially, inclusion seems to me to be the Jesus way. “Go to the highways and byways and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.” [2] Personally, respect seems to me to be the Jesus way.

“Respect” in this context takes more than a sub-clause to explain. I eschew drugs and alcohol and tobacco and gluttony and lust because they alter, and thus dishonor, the body, the temple, God gave me. [3] {Yes, I know that drinking coffee makes me hypocritical. Maybe taking meds does, too.}

I eschew promiscuity and pornography for they are likewise dishonorable to the temple of the body.

“Respect” includes all temples, everybody’s bodies, not just mine.

Gambling and booze and drugs damage not just individuals but society. There really are no “victimless” sins.  

So, what does a socially liberal Christian do about including druggies and alkies and bad people, not just in the church but in society and in the heart? Don’t they need to be included, too? Don’t they need to be loved rather than judged?

Well, I already said that social morality is harder to figure out. I’ll let you know if I ever get this dilemma sorted. In the meantime, I know that I am conservative and liberal at the same time…

John Robert McFarland

1] Cole Porter’s musical was in 1934, but, even though Cole was an Indiana boy, it took Broadway morals about 30 years to get to the part of Indiana where I lived, “the Mississippi of the North.”

2] Lk 14:23, KJV

3] I Corinthians 6:19-20.

 

 

THE SADNESS OF A WORLD WITHOUT PONTIACS [7-27-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Curmudgeon—THE SADNESS OF A WORLD WITHOUT PONTIACS [7-27-26]

 

The main thing I hold against Ronald Reagan is the demise of the Pontiac automobile. Not directly, of course. He was four years dead when the last Pontiac came off the assembly line. But he was responsible for killing the Pontiac, the most important car of my life.

I hold many things against Reagan, even though I also have respect for him. He wasn’t a very good actor, and he wasn’t a very good president, but he was a good enough actor to act like a good president, and that’s really all that American voters require. I don’t think he was ill-intentioned. Like so many young people, he just got in with the wrong people. He wanted to be part of the “in crowd,” and the “in crowd” always makes you think you’re in, so that they can use you to their own ends. [1]

I first started riding in Pontiacs when we lived in Indianapolis, because Aunt Dorothy lived there, and she always drove Pontiacs. Whenever we got to go someplace neat, it was in Aunt Dorothy’s Pontiac. When it came time for me to take my driver’s license exam, after we had moved to the farm near Oakland City, my family had no car, so Aunt Dorothy took me in her Pontiac to get my license. When I started to college, it was Aunt Dorothy’s Pontiac that I went back to IU after weekends at home, as she drove back to Indianapolis after her weekend at home to care for her mother.

 

My high school friend, Mike Dickey, always drove Pontiacs, because his father was a Pontiac dealer. All through high school, all my double dates--which was most of my dates, since I did not have a car—were in a Pontiac.

Also, one of my main run-around friends in high school, Bob Keeton, always drove a Pontiac. I was best man at his wedding. I rode with his parents all the way from Oakland City, Indiana to Rochester, MN, for the wedding, in a Pontiac.

 

Most importantly, I went to my own wedding in a Pontiac. My roommate, Tom Cone, had a Pontiac at school our senior year, because his father was a Pontiac salesman. I had a very unreliable lemon-yellow Anglia [English Ford], and when it didn’t want to go to church on a Sunday, so that I could preach, I borrowed Tom’s Pontiac.

On the afternoon of my wedding, though, I did not borrow it. I just ran to Tom and yelled, “My car won’t start. Give me your keys.” I didn’t worry about Tom. I knew he’d find some other way to get there. He did. I never thought to ask how. Without a Pontiac, I would never have gotten married.

Oh, wait. Maybe it’s Barack Obama instead of Ronald Reagan that I should blame. When General Motors was about to go belly-up, Obama agreed to bail them out with government loans as long as they stopped making cars they couldn’t sell. They kept the Chevy and Cadillac and GMC lines and dropped Oldsmobile and Pontiac.

 

Maybe it’s just as well that the Pontiac automobile closed out. All those Pontiacs, so important to me, looked like real cars, distinctive, not like these current cars that all look alike, regardless of maker, like they are all produced on the same mimeograph machine. Chief Pontiac would be embarrassed by those final 2008 cars.

 

Well, at least I am sure that the demise of Pontiac is the fault of somebody else, even though I never bought one.

John Robert McFarland

1] I’ve told many times how I had the very last word on Reagan. When he died, the last of his several funeral services was in Tampico, IL, where he was born. I was preaching at the Tampico UMC then, a part-time appointment in retirement, and I was asked to give the benediction at that service.

EXTREME LOVE [7-25-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Poverty of An Old Reverse Snob—EXTREME LOVE [7-25-26]

 

Some friends have a twenty-something son who drives the van for his church. They go to the homeless encampments to take folks sandwiches and socks. One day, after distributing those helpful items, the van wouldn’t start, and they had to get a homeless guy, living in his car, to give them a jump start. That’s so neat. Despite wealth and poverty, love—if it’s really love--always goes both ways.

A few years ago, when I could walk long distances, I was walking home from downtown and cut through the parking lot of a city park. I saw a couple, probably in their thirties, getting dressed, rather awkwardly, in the front seat of their car. She was putting on a dress. He was struggling into what looked like mechanic’s overalls. At first I thought they had spent an illicit night together and were in the midst of a “Wake up, little Susie” moment. [An Everly Brothers song] But the back seat of the car was piled high with clothes and household items. I realized that they were living in the car. They were homeless. But also they were getting dressed to go to work, or at least go look for work.

They were homeless. But their poverty was not extreme. They had a car to live in, and jobs to go to. Yes, there is a surprisingly large part of the homeless population that works regularly.

Our city has a large homeless population. Like most of America, we also have an affordable housing crisis.

I used to think that I grew up in extreme poverty. Not so. To be able to claim extreme poverty for your backstory, to show that you have achieved in spite of your background, you have to be homeless, at least part of the time, and be hungry, hungry enough that you eat at a soup kitchen or ask for handouts on the street. It also helps if you had to steal stuff to keep from going hungry.

There goes my achievement story. I grew up in primitive conditions—no water in the house, etc, but I was never homeless. I wasn’t even hungry, except once in a while. Occasionally we had only rice soup, that was mostly water, maybe with a carrot or two chopped up in it, but sometimes we ate better than most folks, things we raised ourselves-fried chicken and sweet corn. Besides I could not have eaten at a soup kitchen because we lived in the country without a car. And I never stole stuff to eat. Living in the country without a car is a good way to avoid a life of a crime.

Please understand. I am not disrespecting homeless folks. Even in college, I sent money to a lighthouse mission place in Chicago. I thought the folks in extreme poverty were in the big cities, homeless and hungry.

Yes, I know there’s a double narrative going on here. I’m able to brag about achieving, despite growing up poor, by pointing out that my extreme poverty was not really extreme.

It bothers me that I’m in a growing group of reverse-snobs. There is way too much “I’m better than you because I started out poor. Even better, I was homeless.” Throw in “Also, I was a drunk and an addict and…” Well, then you’ve got the winning trifecta.

We think we are better than folks who started out with privileged lives because we started out with limited lives and still achieved… what?

Nobody chooses the life they have as children. The only worthwhile achievement is being a kind and merciful and loving person, regardless of whether you start out poor or rich. Anybody can be hateful, and anyone can be lovefull.

You are poor and homeless only if you are without love, and that can be whether you are rich or poor. You are wealthy only if you love.

John Robert McFarland

 

HIT BY A BUS [R, 7-23-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Original Sayings of An Old Man—HIT BY A BUS [R, 7-23-26]

 

Well, I said it first. “I could get hit by a bus.”

Comedian Ryan Hamilton actually did get hit by a bus. In 2025. So it was reasonable for him to say it in his recent Netflix appearance.

 

Then he went on: “I know everybody anymore says that you ought to enjoy life right now, because you could get hit by a bus…”

Hold on there! What do you mean, “Everybody says it?”

So I looked it up on Google. Yes, several people have said it. Even wrote songs about it. But every reference for someone else saying it is in the 21^st century. I said it way back in 1990. And again in 1995, when Now That I have Cance I Am Whole was published. So I have to assume all these 21^st century people who are assuming they might get hit by buses got the idea from me and are ignoring my copyright!

It came about this way…

The pale oncologist didn’t actually say I was going to die in a year or two, but he certainly implied it. I was 53 years old. At the time, I figured that was old enough to die. Barely. But after a brief flirtation with the idea that death would clear my schedule so neatly, I had decided I didn’t want to die, even though continuing with life meant I would still have to go to committee meetings.

So, I was in the midst of trying to recover from surgery, and undergoing a year of debilitating chemotherapy, and working fulltime, with a congregation that was not universally cooperative, and feeling sorry for myself, when I looked out our front window and saw one of those huge tour buses bumping along on our brick street.

 

Tour buses were a regular sight in Arcola, IL. We were in Amish country. People with cameras got on big buses and rode for miles so they could take photos of people who don’t know what a camera is. Then they went downtown, right past our house, to get lunch at The Dutch Kitchen.

Our parsonage was across the street from the church building. I made my way across the street several times each day, right in the pathway of that bus. I was barely able to move in those days. If that bus didn’t see me…

I was thinking I would die soon from cancer. Then I realized: I might not die from cancer at all; I could get hit by that bus!

It was such a great feeling of relief. There were so many ways I could die. Death from cancer was not inevitable. Saved by getting hit by the bus!

So, if you are down in the dumps one day, and worried that you might die from some dread disease, just remind yourself: I could get hit by a bus.

And remember who to thank for the idea…and it’s not Ryan Hamilton.

 

John Robert McFarland

A reminder in case you think I stay up too late or get up too early: The posting time listed on these columns is California time, because that is where Blogspot, my gracious host, is located. I live in the Eastern time zone, so if Blogspot says I’m posting at 2:30 in the morning, it’s 5:30 where I am.

 

THE 20 YEAR RULE [7-21-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Lufe for the Years of Winter—THE 20 YEAR RULE [7-21-26]

 

I knew a plumber who said, “The first seventeen years, I thought I had the best job in the world. I didn’t mind the yucky parts of plumbing because I enjoyed so much diagnosing problems and fixing them. But then there were no new problems, only old ones, ones I’d seen before. It wasn’t satisfying anymore.”

He had run up against the 20 year rule…just a bit early.

I was once chatting with a middle-aged, second-career Episcopal priest. When he was being ordained, he told his bishop that his only regret was that he spent so many years as a business man before going to seminary and becoming a priest. “How many years will you be a priest before retirement?” the bishop asked him. “Only twenty.” “My God, man, that’s plenty!”

Social research has concluded that the Episcopal bishop was right. Twenty years is plenty for any job. Actually, these days, if you can get twenty in before technology or culture eliminates your job, you are doing pretty well.

I have a pastor friend who just retired. He’s earned it. He is 70 but looks 80. He put in 44 years all together, so that’s twice enough.

Rapid cultural change causes many problems, because the basic needs of humans remain the same, even though the means of fulfilling them change. One of those basic needs is satisfying work, work that at least comes close to being a vocation, a calling.

When I felt the call to preach, the ministry was referred to as “the high calling.” I think the title was called high so that we wouldn’t notice that the pay was low.

Calling, though--the feeling that you are doing what you are supposed to do--does not necessarily go with job title. The job might be called high, but if you don’t fit in it, your life is low. I have known homemakers and teachers and farmers and bus drivers and cooks and gardeners and carpenters and so many others who experienced their lives as a calling, even if they didn’t use that language. They fit their job.

Even then, though, you probably need some sort of renewal. And these days, that twenty-year rule seems to apply. So how do you get renewal?

Well, you’re right. What can someone my age know about this? I haven’t worked in a long time. Even more, since this column is for old people, why bother? We don’t have jobs to get tired of.

I had the same job for a long time. As I look back on it, I see that although my job didn’t change every 20 years, my life, my calling, did.

You don’t have a calling unless someone calls you. Looking back, I realize that each time I hit the end of my calling, I went back to God and asked for another one. To others, it might have looked like I was still doing the same stuff, but it was renewal to me.

I don’t really like to give advice or “helpful hints for happy living.” I’d rather just tell my little stories and let God speak from within them. But I’ll actually give advice this time: If you find yourself getting close to the end of your 20 years, it would be better to ask God for another call, instead of asking the world for a different job.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

THE DEMISE OF THE 1950 CHURCH [7-19-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—THE DEMISE OF THE 1950 CHURCH [7-19-26]

 

When I was in seminary, our homiletics professor, Merrill Abbey, had us listen to a sermon by J. Wallace Hamilton, the preacher at Pasadena Community Methodist Church [PCMC] in St. Petersburg, FL. The sermon was on a long-play vinyl record, the best available technology at that time. I was so impressed that I bought a copy of that record for myself. I wanted to be a good preacher, and I wondered, “How did he get to be such a good preacher?”

Prof. Abbey said that Hamilton’s church was a new, struggling start in 1929, only four years old, when Hamilton was appointed there. He had just been ordained as a probationer. He wasn’t fully ordained until two years later.

Some of the lay people recognized that he had a special gift for preaching. “We have a chance to grow here. You concentrate on preaching. We’ll do the rest of the work the preacher usually does so that you’ll have time for it. You preach, and we’ll bring the people in to hear you.”

By the time I was in seminary in the 1960s, PCMC had become one of the first megachurches, over seven thousand people on some Sundays, even though the sanctuary, built during Hamilton’s tenure, seated “only” two thousand. Others listened to speakers in their cars in the parking lot, drive-in movie style.

 

PCMC had three different pastors in its first four years. That was fairly standard for Methodist churches in those days. Many appointments were for only one year, especially for a small church like PCMC. Preachers were eager to “move up the ladder” to bigger churches with bigger salaries. What was definitely not standard was for a Methodist preacher to stay in his first appointment for his entire lifetime, for 39 years, from the time when he wasn’t even fully ordained yet, until his death. J. Wallace Hamilton did that. [1]

 

He was a preacher in The 1950 Church.

That’s what sociologists call it, The 1950 Church, because it hit its zenith in the 1950s. It continued, though, while declining almost imperceptibly, for most of the 20^th century. It was pulpit centered and denominationally identified and growth oriented. It was perfect for J. Wallace Hamilton.

It was perfect for me, too, starting in 1956, since I thought the main job of a minister was preaching. But The 1950 Church was already starting its decline in the 1950s. That’s how we name things, according to my sociology professor friend, Paul J. Baker. “If you cut down all the shady oaks in building a sub-division, you name it Shady Oaks.” It’s called The 1950 Church because that’s when it began to decline.

That decline wasn’t statistical. Church membership and attendance kept going up until 1964. In some ways, 1950 is an arbitrary date. But the culture had started to change in subtle ways then, especially the advent of television, that was going to have effects we could hardly imagine.

So, don’t be too sorry for The 1950 Church. It had a good 70 years after it started to die. That’s better than most of us.

John Robert McFarland

1] Another who did it was Ralph Washington Sockman, generally considered to be the best Protestant preacher in the country from about 1940 to 1960, when he was the regular preacher on The Protestant Hour radio show as well as the pastor at Christ Church Methodist in NYC. His first appointment was to Madison Ave. Methodist Episcopal Church, which became Christ Church Methodist, which was second in Protestant fame only to Harry Emerson Fosdick’s Riverside Church. [Interdenominational]. One of his colleagues said, “Poor Ralph. The only preacher in Methodism who never got a promotion.”

 

 

PUBERTY FUN [F, 7-17-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Man—PUBERTY FUN [F, 7-17-26]

 

This may sound strange, but I really enjoyed puberty. 75 years ago, puberty didn’t mean you were starting a life of lust and angst. It meant you were grown up and could stay out until the root beer stand closed, at ten o’clock.

75 years ago, puberty didn’t mean that you were starting a dangerous life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and 15 years of living in your parents’ basement because your degree in AI was just obviated by the new AJ system. No, it meant that you were grown up. You could learn to type, and that was all you needed to get a good job.

For me, it meant I was suddenly a foot taller than everybody else—except for Don Falls. When I hit puberty, it seemed that I was just the right height—tall enough to see the parade, but not so tall that I was the first target for pooping birds. Most doors, I could get through without ducking. [1]

Oh, sure, there was worry, wondering if Jeanette would think I was a nerd, or afraid I would turn red if Carolyn’s arm brushed against mine when we passed in the hall, but all the other guys were just as yearnful as I. Puberty was a whole new life, and exciting. And I had the blood on my face to prove it, because…

…shaving was the most noticable rite of passage for puberty. The double-bladed Gilettes of the day were designed to test both dexterity and courage. There was certainly no choice about using razors; no one was allowed a beard! Or hairy legs, if you were required to wear a skirt!

Of course, it would be considered gauche [had we known that word] to tell people you had started shaving, so you counted on the gashes on your face to let that news be known. If a guy wasn’t sure he was getting the information across, he would come to school with little pieces of bloody toilet paper stuck to his face. Also, if a girl had little pieces of toilet paper stuck to her legs…well, you knew she was grown up, too.

I feel sorry for kids these days. Puberty is all about the worries without any of the fun. Yes, fun. In our era, the awful days of puberty were fun, because the great restrictions we lived with gave us a chance to enjoy puberty, not just agonize our way through it and spend the rest of our life in therapy.

I’m not being judgy. Kids today haven’t chosen this onerous form of puberty. It’s been thrust upon them by a society that is intent on treating things as people and people as things, where being grown up only means meaningless sex and credit card debt.

Kids, if you get disgusted with how the oppressive money economy wants to use you today, come around and I’ll tell you how exciting it was to sit at the sofa fountain and dream of getting to hold hands.

 

And don’t bother to tell me that I’m only remembering the good stuff. I know.

John Robert McFarland

1] When I started preaching, I learned that recent [1950] research showed that I was exactly the right dimensions for a preacher. Congregations, we learned, wanted a preacher who was tall enough to command attention, but not so tall as to be intimidating. Deep voiced enough to be masculine, but not enough to star in a horror film. And goodlooking enough to avoid scaring little children, but not so handsome that men had to worry about their wives. No wonder God called me to be a preacher.

 

 

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Robert McFarland

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

HUMANS

Sometimes I am overcome

with the joy of being human

In the company

so many others, humans all

with hopes and faults

trying to get by

Such fullness

 

SPIRITUAL OR RELIGIOUS? [M, 7-13-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—SPIRITUAL OR RELIGIOUS? [M, 7-13-26]

 

According to a Pew research study, about 10% of Americans are religious but not spiritual. They like religious stuff, but not God stuff. They like chanting liturgies and sprinkling water on babies. They like wearing yarmulkas and crosses and hijabs and turbans. They enjoy religious music. They like kneeling in the right way at the right times.

But they don’t care about prayer and heaven and hell and eternal life and that soul stuff. They don’t need a relationship with God to enjoy talk and activities about God. They are in the religion, but not of the religion. Who needs a “higher power?” [Well, alcoholics, but that’s different.]

This, of course, is the opposite of the tiresome, “I’m spiritual but not religious,” which is mostly what people use to excuse their absence from church or synagogue or temple. Until they want said venues for a wedding or funeral. Free, of course.

Despite my snarkiness, I understand why people want to be spiritual without being religious, and also why they want to be religious without being spiritual. I suspect most people live in one or the other of those categories a lot of the time, often without knowing it.

I see this especially in my retired clergy colleagues. Some drop out of the church altogether. They’ve handled holy things too long. They’ve learned that most Christians aren’t. They wonder why they ever bothered.

Others, often of the conservative or evangelical variety, become Episcopalians, or even Catholics. They’ve trusted in feelings, getting worked up, but those feelings wane with overuse. Now they’re tired. Now they feel more comfortable if they hold a prayer book that is responsible for producing the prayers and words and auras.

Psychologists tell us that as we age, we become more like ourselves. Which is why old people are often described as “set in our ways.” As I age, I find myself being the same as I have always been spiritually, but less religious. By that, I mean that I have always known the Presence of God in the same way that I do now.

I’m a bit reluctant to say “the same way that I do now,” because it reminds me of the old man giving his testimony in church and saying, “When I was just a boy, the Lord filled my cup to the brim, and He hasn’t taken a drop out or put a drop in since then.” Some kid in the pews said, “It must have wiggletails in it by now, then.” [I’m assuming you’re old enough to understand about wiggletails.]

But I have become less religious, meaning I don’t use the tokens of religion as much as I used to. I still like them—the stoles and books and candles—but I feel no loss without them. They are a help in coming into the Presence, but the Presence does not depend on them.

I suspect that the right blend for old age is both—being religious without being spiritual, and being spiritual without being religious. When I get old, I suppose I’ll find out for sure.

John Robert McFarland

 

AVOIDING SELF-HARM [Sat, 7-11-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—AVOIDING SELF-HARM [Sat, 7-11-26]

 

Our bodies are designed to help us avoid hurting ourselves.

Dr. Kalanithi [1] had a patient who went into a coma upon hearing a bad diagnosis. This is not uncommon. I have often seen lesser forms of it, where people go “blank” for a while. I’ve done it at least once myself. The news is incomprehensible, so you stop trying to understand it. That’s one way our bodies protect us, letting us just hang around for a while until we’re more able to deal with bad news.

But Dr K knew he couldn’t let his patient take too long to “come back.” He had to help him snap out of it. So he took the patient’s limp arm, held it up over his face, and let it go. The man stopped his arm from coming down and hitting himself in the face. Even in a semi-comatose state, our bodies protect us from harming ourselves.

My friend, Paul, when we were both about 15 years into our pastoral careers, told me of a man in his church whom he was counseling. I’ll call him Ed. Ed had a nice wife, and good children, and a successful career. He also had a mistress, twenty years younger. Ed knew he needed help.

Paul walked Ed through his life. He especially asked him two questions: What do you want your life to be a year from now? What do you want your life to be twenty years from now? Ed talked it through with Paul. He realized that the answer to both those questions was clear: he wanted to have a happy home with his wife.

I had a number of marriage counseling situations at the time and I was fascinated with Paul’s approach. “Man, that’s brilliant,” I said.

All you had to do was help the counselee see into their future, see what they really wanted. I started asking those questions of all my counselees.

The next time I saw Paul, I asked him about Ed.

“He left my office after he’d answered those questions, went straight to his mistress. Now he’s divorced and the mistress has left him, too. I’m not so brilliant after all.”

I so much wish I had known about Dr. Kalanithi’s method, instead of Paul’s method, during my pastoral career. Instead of asking a counselee what they wanted their life to be in 20 years, I would have taken their hand and held it up over their face and dropped it, to show them they did not have to hurt themselves. That’s immediate. I’d say, “See, you don’t have to make that stupid mistake. You can stop it right now.”

Try it. Next time you’re about to do something stupid, hold your hand up over your face and let it drop.

I tried it myself. I ate the cookie anyway.

Wm. James famously said that “When the will and the imagination are in conflict, the imagination always wins.” Or, in biblical terms, “The spirit is willing, but the cookie is chocolate chip.”

John Robert McFarland

1] Paul Kalinathi, When Breath Becomes Air

WALKNG ON WATER [R, 7-9-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—WALKNG ON WATER [R, 7-9-26]

 

This story comes from the Baptist preacher at Cedar Lake, Indiana, back in 1962. Baptist preachers have usually kept their distance from me—except for Fred Skaggs and Kim Egolf-Fox and Bill Tuck and Gary Reif, colleagues in The Academy of Parish Clergy—but there were only two preachers in Cedar Lake back then, and the poor Baptist guy had to hang around with somebody. Besides, he seemed to like challenges. He went from Cedar Lake to be the Baptist pastor in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Baptists have a baptistry in their church, a dunk tank for submerging people, even big people, during baptism, which symbolizes the dying and rising again in Christ. It’s hard to persuade people to get baptized and join the church in winter, because in winter time, that water can get quite cold.

So, Baptists must have a way to heat their water. The Cedar Lake Baptist building was new and small, and they couldn’t afford a regular water heating system, so they had an electric rod they stuck down into the water. Worked well, except it electrified the water, so someone had to be sure the rod was pulled out before the preacher got in to receive those presenting themselves for baptism.

Well, of course, one winter Sunday night, the rod-puller forgot, and my friend started down the steps into the baptistry. “It was,” he said, “only the second time in recorded history that someone walked on the water. I just skimmed that water all across that baptistry from one side to the other.”

A bit of hyperbole perhaps, as much as the last time I told this story, but a point well taken: unless you are Jesus, you don’t walk on water unless you have to.

Helen pointed that out yesterday at our coffee time. When our fifteen-month-old grandson was diagnosed with liver cancer, his parents and grandparents went into water-walking mode for him and for his three-year-old sister. We didn’t touch down for two years.

When reading about how Jesus walked on the water [Mt 14, Mark 6, John 6], it looks he did it just to get from one place to another, which is why most of us do any walking at all. It’s usually told as a story of faith. When Peter started to walk on the water, too, to go meet Jesus, he was fine until he realized what he was doing. Then he sank. When you need to walk on water, you can’t stop to think about it.

It’s a good thing to have faith, but it’s even more important to be without other options. You can walk on water if you have no choice.

John Robert McFarland

DEPARTMENTAL GIRLS [T, 7-7-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Delusions of An Old Man—DEPARTMENTAL GIRLS [T, 7-7-26]

[Time for another reminiscence with no redeeming social value.]

 

Middle School in Oakland City was called “The Departmental,” meaning we graduated from being in one room all day, with one teacher, to going between Departments [classrooms] for English and social studies and arithmetic, etc.

We moved to OC on May 21, 1947. At least, Daddy and I did, via Uncle Johnny and his lumber business truck. Uncle Bob and Aunt Rosemary--who was probably still Fiancé Rosemary then--brought Mother and Mary V and Margey and Jimmy a couple of days later, after Daddy and I had time to put beds and stoves together, etc.

Shortly thereafter, I rode Jimmy Bigham’s totally dilapidated school bus to OC Grade School. Bus drivers owned their own buses, and apparently there were few standards. Most of the windows were stuck open or closed, in all weather. As the new kid, I had to sit over the hole in the floor. 

I was in May Mason’s 5A class, meaning we had started first grade in January. The 5B kids had started in September. As the new kid, I got to sit between Ernest Bilderback and Jim Brown. Both looked to be about 15. They were never unkind to me, and I felt sorry for them, especially since Mrs. Mason was not very nice to them. I didn’t think they had chosen to be, in the word of that time, dumb.

[I was into free will at an early age. I later expressed that by saying that I have great sympathy with people who are stupid by nature but none for those who are stupid by choice.]

In 6^th grade, we went to The Departmental. It was only 6^th and 7^th grades, since 8^th grade was in the new high school building. Mr. Ronald Nelson [Social Studies] and Mr. Claude Gladish [English] and Mr. Cecil Grubb [more English?] and Mr. Carl Fowler [Arithmetic] stayed in their own rooms, and we students did the traveling between them. It felt very grown up.

Each student in The Departmental had our own desk in the assembly room. There was a cloak room for “wraps” and galoshes. Our desks served as lockers. We kept our books and personal stuff and lunches in the desk, and we sat at them to eat our lunch.

The assembly room was quite long, with a stage at the front end. The stage had a piano and a flag and a desk, for whoever was watching us during homeroom [study hall] and lunch. Occasionally the stage would be the site for a musical program or address from the principal. Five long rows of desks. The back desks were highly prized, since they were less visible to the homeroom teacher. The desks had ink wells, from back when my father went to school there, no longer necessary in those modern days of fountain pens and the burgeoning “ball points.”

There were windows behind the stage and up and down the left side of the room, with a pencil sharpener under the windows. You could get up to go to the pencil sharpener whenever you needed to—one of the few activities available without permission.

One day, Shirley Black, about 10 desks ahead of me, got up and went over to the sharpener. She was short, with curly hair, and bounced when she walked, sort of like Tigger, except I did not know about Tigger then.

I thought, “She’s pretty.” Then I thought, “Where did that come from?” I mean, girls were yucky and had cooties. You needed to avoid them as much as possible.

Actually, I never believed the yucky and cooties stuff. I respected older girls, because my older sister demanded it. And I thought little girls were cute, because my little sister adored her big brother, since she could manipulate me into playing with her.

But I knew girls in between respect and cute were mysterious. I didn’t think I was supposed to be noticing girls as pretty. I mean, if you start thinking about girls as pretty, where will it go?

The Departmental was a long time ago, but Shirley is still pretty, I’m sure, even though I haven’t seen her for a long time. I’ve forgotten a lot, but I’m still able to remember pretty. That hasn’t gone anywhere yet.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

DESIRE PATHS [Sun, 7-5-26]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Mutterings of An Old Man—DESIRE PATHS [Sun, 7-5-26]

 

I read an article by Melissa Kirsch, in the NY Times online, about “desire paths.” They are the routes people take even though they are not prescribed or intended.

Kirsch uses the example of crossing in the middle of the block, instead of at the corner, which is the proper way, the legal way, because it is the safest way. We all know that we should cross at the corner, but it’s so much easier just to go ahead right here… so, a desire path.  

I learned about that kind of desire path when I was a campus minister. The campus had a nice network of concrete sidewalks. If there were snow, or if it were raining, students stuck to the concrete walkways. But any sunny day, they would wear a path into the grass if it saved a few steps, or saved even one step. Since several thousand students used that desire path every day, the grass was soon dead.

This happened to the lawn at Wesley United Methodist Church on the campus of the U of Illinois. Instead of using the sidewalks that made a square around the church lawn, students were wearing out the grass on a diagonal line across the lawn. The trustees put up signs, Don’t Walk on the Grass. Didn’t work. They tried Stay Off the Grass. Didn’t work. Then someone suggested Let It Live. The students went back to the sidewalk.

We desire the easy way, the short way. Hence, desire paths. But we also desire community, and that requires respect for others, even if it’s just respect for grass.

As a society, we seem to be in a desire path frenzy. Everyone, from the president on down, wants to take the short cut, the easy way, instead of using the sidewalk, the community way, the respectful way.

From its earliest days, Christian faith has been called The Way. That’s not in order to leave non-Christians out. It’s to remind Christians that the path we take is not up for debate, not available as a shortcut, not subject to our desire. It’s not a desire path. It’s the Christ path.

It’s strange these days, that the people proclaiming most loudly their devotion to The Way, so easily slide off into desire paths. But that’s the nature of a desire path, isn’t it? Taking the easy way.

There is a reverse Catch 22 here: The longer you stick to the Christ path, which does not appear to be an easy way, the more it becomes a desire path.

I think it’s time to put up a sign: 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

PATRIOTISM OR NATIONALISM? [F, 7-3-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—PATRIOTISM OR NATIONALISM? [F, 7-3-26]

 

Through much of my ministry, the church year, the appointment year, started on July 1. That meant that my first Sunday in a new appointment was on the July 4 weekend. People were expecting a sermon, and scripture, and hymns, about America. Usually what a great country we live in, how we’ve been blessed by God, how the blessings show that we are favored by God.

For some preachers, that was no problem. They just equated faith in God with faith in America. In worship, they sang all the patriotic songs, used patriotic slogans and liturgies, paraded with the American flag, had military veterans stand to be honored, preached that we live in the world’s most wonderful country—natural resources, beauty, freedom, military might, financial freedom, that God has blessed us and given us the responsibility of running the world.

That gave me problems. It was my first sermon in this new place. In many ways, it would determine the course of my entire ministry in that place. And I could not preach “American exceptionalism.” I had to make the distinction between patriotism and nationalism, and a lot of people can’t make that distinction, or at least don’t want to.

I’ve written before, I’m sure, about walking down a street in Moline, IL about 40 years ago. It was early July.  I passed a bakery. In the window was a white cake, formed to look like an open Bible, edged with red frosting. On it, in blue frosting, were the words God so loved the USA.

No, that’s not what John 3:16 says. God does love the USA. More importantly, God loves the world. We might have the biggest economy and the biggest army but God doesn’t love us any more than any other country.

 

We see it in bold letters these days, but it has always been with us, this struggle between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism is being proud of your country and being a good citizen of it. Nationalism is saying your country is the only one that counts, that it is special so it should get to do whatever it wants. Patriotism is respectful. Nationalism is arrogant.

It’s the struggle between original sin and prevenient grace [original empathy], writ large. It’s been going on for 250 years now in our country.

Many of the early statesmen of this country believed that there should be no political parties, that they would end up dividing the country into warring camps.

In some ways, it worked in reverse. The country divided into warring camps, quite literally, over an issue, slavery, and political parties took sides over that issue. In that, we see the beginning of our current political chasms, patriotism vs nationalism.

I think about worship services and concerts and other events when we’ve had military veterans stand to be honored. It always gives me a shiver down my spine. I respect those men and women so much. But almost always, some announcer says something like, “These are the defenders of democracy and freedom.” Not so. Military folks are defenders of the nation. It’s up to all citizens to be defenders of democracy and freedom. That is what patriots do.

John Robert McFarland

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

He had no answer for that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Robert McFarland

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joh Robert McFarland