Who's Your Hoosier? [Not quite CIW]

Not quite a Christ In Winter, but watching basketball is what we do UP here in winter…

 
With the Indiana Hoosiers atop the college basketball world again, broadcast interlude talk often turns to the derivation of the word “Hoosier.” Some think it was because early settlers in Indiana, using their pioneer patois, would call out “Who’s there?” when someone approached their cabin, but in the pioneer patois, it sounded like “Hoosier?” Others think it was because early Indiana pioneers were brawlers and the next morning after a bar fight, when the pub keeper was cleaning up, he would look at the littered floor and ask, “Who’s ear?” which, again, in the Indiana accent, sounded like “Hoosier?”
 
One of the most plausible but hardly ever mentioned derivations of Hoosier is that Indiana folk were called after the first and most famous African American Methodist circuit rider, Harry “Black Harry” Hoosier, 1750-1810.
 
Hoosier was born a slave in NC but obtained his freedom, converted to Methodism, and in 1781 became a preacher. He was a close friend of Francis Asbury, “The Father of American Methodism.” They often traveled together to preach. Asbury noted that he drew big crowds, but that Hoosier’s crowds were even bigger. Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, said that Hoosier was “the greatest orator in America,” even though he was illiterate.
 
Hoosier preached a famous sermon, “The Barren Fig Tree,” which was the first ever recorded by an African American Methodist preacher.
 
People everywhere thronged to hear Hoosier. Except in the South. Methodists were, with some notable exceptions, strongly outspoken in their anti-slavery sentiments. Southern folks like Virginia Baptists used the word “Hoosier” as a term or derision, denoting a northern Methodist, anti-slavery socially and Arminian [Wesleyan, free will] theologically. Because of the circuit riders on what was then the frontier, Methodism was strong throughout the Midwest, including Indiana.
 
So, were Hoosiers named for Black Harry? Probably so. After all, the present-day basketball Hoosiers draw Harry Hoosier-sized crowds to hear the Good News of basketball salvation.
 
JRMcF

 

 
  

CAPE COD CAPERS-Theological Division

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of WintER

I think Helen still has not forgiven me. Not for taking her to Cape Cod; she liked that. But we got there because I was the “outside” theologian at a New England theological gathering of the United Church of Christ. [UCC], “outside” meaning I was Methodist, Midwestern, and theologically “narrative” rather than “systematic.” There have always been story-tellers in Christianity, starting with Jesus, but as a theological approach, narrative was in the 1970s new, exotic, and of questionable repute. [It wasn’t “rigorous,” and you didn’t need a Harvard doctorate to do it.]

 
[The UCC was formed in 1957 by the merger of The Evangelical and Reformed & Congregational Christian denominations.]
 
I had a pretty good time. We were in a long-time UCC campground, with nice cottages and a big tabernacle and a spacious eating hall. I got to walk around the beautiful grounds and drink coffee and teach a workshop and bop into the tabernacle once in a while to “address” the plenary assembly.
 
Also my first theological mentor, D.J. Bowden, my professor of The History of Christian Thought at IU, was a Congregational Christian from the Northeast who got his PhD at Yale. I could well imagine him as a boy singing camp songs in the tabernacle, or later being a presenter himself at such a conference. It was quite inspiring to think that I was following in his footsteps.

 Since Helen was a “participant” instead of a presenter, she was required to be a member of a theology work group. She was assigned to the bunch that was writing a new faith statement for the UCC. It was composed mostly of academic theologians and preachers, who argued endlessly about whether “of” should go before or after “parousia.” Or maybe it was “from” instead of “of.” She wasn’t keen on the details. Her participation was mostly rolling her eyes, making snoring sounds, voting “No” on everything, and hitting me on the head, hard, when we were alone.

 
Sometimes the presenters hung out together, but I didn’t hang if I knew Dr. Austere would be there. [That wasn’t his real name, although it should have been.]  I stayed as far away from him as I could, for several reasons. For one thing, he was a professor of systematic theology in a UCC seminary, and I was running the Gospel through Marshall McLuhan and Hans Frei instead of Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. For a second, I had a wife who was doing her best to sabotage the entire belief system of the UCC.
 
More importantly, before my plenary presentation each day, he gave a theology lecture, austerely, with footnotes and bibliography. Next to him, Friedrich Schleiermacher and Soren Kierkegaard looked like simpletons. His lectures were like the marching band in a parade, every line in step, each instrument playing its own part, only its part, and playing in tune. My presentation was like the clown in the parade, sitting in the back of a pickup throwing candies by the handful and hoping someone caught a peppermint, hoping a root barrel didn’t take out somebody’s eye. During my presentation, Dr. Austere would stand--never sit--in back, with his arms folded over his chest, looking stern. I was intimidated and embarrassed. He was so scholastic, and I was so… well, just a story-teller.
 
One night, though, the director of this theological institute took the presenters and their wives out to a seafood place. I was trying to avoid both Helen and Dr. Austere, so naturally the director seated me between them, where she could reach across me and tell him what she thought of UCC theology, and he could reach across me and tell her what he thought of MY theology.
 
I had a mouth-full of crab when he turned to me and said, “How do you DO that?”
 
“Do what?” I mumbled, thinking that now I had further embarrassed myself by eating crab like a Hoosier hillbilly gnawing a pork-chop.
 
“Tell those stories,” he said. “I work and work to try to get people to understand, and then you just tell a story that pulls the veil off all my words and makes people see what I was trying to say. I’d love to be able to do that.”
 
All I could think to do was grab his hand and put it into Helen’s and say, “You two should talk.”
 
JRMcF [John Robert McFarland]
 
It’s tempting to pull a “moral” out of this story, such as “Don’t assume you know what a person with crossed arms is thinking,” but grandson Joe says the problem with kid lit stories that win prizes is that “…they have morals. Kids just want good stories.” As Jesus said, “If you want to enter the Kingdom, be like a kid who just wants a good story.”
 
The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!
 
You are always welcome to Forward or Repost or Reprint. It’s okay to acknowledge the source, unless it embarrasses you too much. It is okay to refer the link to folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin, or make it into a movie or TV series.
 
{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

 

WE DON'T SAY "NO" TO DONNA

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…

 

 
The package contained ELEVEN tubes of toothpaste. With a note that said, “Donna will call you and explain.”
 
There were supposed to be only FIVE. And that was only because we overpaid last time. I am old. I don’t even buy green bananas. How am I doing to use up eleven tubes of toothpaste before I die? [1]
 
Donna was my high school classmate. She is a distributor for Forever Bright™ toothpaste. We buy from her because a long time ago she asked us to. We don’t say “no” to Donna.
 
She did call to explain. She owed us five tubes from our previous overpayment and tried to get the company to send them directly to us. She doesn’t have much time for boxing up out-of-town orders. Her mother is well over a hundred years and in a nursing home. Donna slept on a mattress on the floor of her room until her back got so bad she had to have surgery. Now she sleeps at home but spends most of her daytime hours at the nursing home. So why not get headquarters to send directly to us? But apparently eleven is the minimum to mail to a separate address. Who knows why? If 13 is a baker’s dozen, perhaps 11 is a dentist’s dozen.
 
I knew Donna in school, of course, but not well. We had a class of only 62, and I was class president for 3 years. But we didn’t run in the same social circles. I was high in the work circle of the class and school—class president, Student Council officer, newspaper editor, orchestra bassoonist—but I was not high in the power structure, which was based mostly on money and family, or the social structure, which was based mostly on looks and clothes. [1] Donna was high in the social structure; she was Homecoming Queen.
 
We expected a high society life for her after school, of course. It didn’t turn out that way. Her first husband divorced her, her second committed suicide. Her two sons died in their twenties, one of cancer and the other in a motorcycle accident. Her only grandchild, Jada, either committed suicide or was murdered in Donna’s house, at the age of 19. Her only family now is her mother and two sisters, one deep into Alzheimer’s, and the other living in a different state and unable to walk. Donna takes care of her mother and sells toothpaste.
 
Except, Donna makes a life out of nothing. She knows everybody and she knows their stories. Helen says one of the best times she ever had was when we went to lunch with Donna when we were back in Oakland City for our 55 year reunion. She introduced us to everyone in the restaurant, including the pig farmer who was, thankfully, getting take-out and whose clothes were splattered with what Helen devoutly hoped was mud. Young or old or in-between, Donna knew them all, and later she explained why each one needed her special attention, although she didn’t put it that way, because of the difficulties of their lives. We’ve been with her several times through the years at nursing homes. She goes in like a swarm of laughing bees on a summer day, landing on every worker and every patient with a hug and a smile and a “How are you, Sweetie?” And besides, who can’t love a woman in her 70s who is a backup dancer/singer for an Elvis impersonator?
 
She’s still in the social circle, but she’s in the work circle now, too. She was telling us about how some sorority she belongs to was doing a benefit for some burned-out family or good cause or… I’m not quite sure because it’s hard to stay up with Donna. They were trying to get 25 people to sponsor it at $100 each so they could pay the band and then all the money they raised would go to the good cause. Turns out sponsors got 4 free tickets. Donna found some young married folks who wanted to go but couldn’t afford it and told them, “Pick up tickets at the window. Just tell them you are named McFarland.” We don’t say “no” to Donna.
 
We decided a long time ago to stop going back for class reunions. 700 miles is just too far away. But through the years we’ve become a talisman for Donna. When it came time for our 50 year reunion, she called and asked us to come. “Everyone will tell about how long they’ve been married, and about their children and grandchildren, and I won’t have anything to say. But I think I can make it through if I can sit between you and Helen.” When it was 55 years, she called and said, “I’ve got to have back surgery the Monday after. I think I can make it through if I can see you first.” We don’t say “no” to Donna.
 
Helen wrote the following on Jan. 13: So last night I was lying awake in bed, and this morning when I first awoke, I was feeling kind of sorry for myself. Nothing specific—just mid-winter blahs. Seemed like there are so many wrong with the world, and in the lives of people I care about, and in my own diminishing abilities to think and work and affect my world. Just feeling kind of down. I prayed about it, asking God for guidance and direction And what does he do?? Before I finished breakfast, he tapped Donna on the shoulder and said, “Call McFarlands—and be sure you talk to Helen, not just John.” {After Donna and I had talked, she said, “Does Helen have anything she wants to say to me?} Donna!! Of all the people I’ve ever known, Donna is probably the one who makes the most of what she’s been given, stays upbeat when her world is falling apart [which it has several times] and does the most good for the most people. God could have sent any number of reasonably cheerful people into my life today and it would have helped me on my way, but NO—He has to call out Donna—the BIG GUN! After we had talked and I was cheered and inspired as I always am by her, I smiled and said, “God, you really know how to send a message.”
 
So, we don’t say “no” to Donna, but… do you need some toothpaste?
 
John Robert McFarland
 
1] I guess I could put the toothpaste in my will. Daughter Katie looked up McFarland wills in the county courthouse in Xenia, OH. One of my ancestors, Greene Clay McFarland, I think it was, had willed a three-legged stool to the daughter “with a bad eye,” and “the bucket without the hole” to another, etc. Eleven tubes of toothpaste might look pretty good.
 
2] I experienced the difference of work, power, and social circles primarily in the church, but most groups of humans, and primates generally, are like high school. {Shudder!} There is some overlap between the circles, but also some clear distinctions.
 
 
The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!
 
You are always welcome to Forward or Repost or Reprint. It’s okay to acknowledge the source, unless it embarrasses you too much. It is okay to refer the link to folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin, or make it into a movie or TV series.
 
{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

 

 

FORGIVE & REMEMBER

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…

 As we enter a new calendar year, we get all those retrospective shows and articles about the events of the year just past. In our winter years, we get a retrospective of the events of all our years past.

 
In my first appointment after seminary, I was standing around at a break in some ministerial meeting, chatting with my colleagues. One was the pastor of a large and prestigious church. He was less than a year from retirement and so prone to looking backward rather than forward. He gave some advice to those of us who were young and looking forward.
 
“You young fellas need to trust the bishop and the cabinet,” he said. “They’ll do right by you. They always gave me better appointments than I deserved.” [1]
 
I pointed out that obviously we could not trust the bishop and cabinet, because if they gave him better appointments than he deserved, they gave some of his colleagues lesser appointments than they deserved. You couldn’t be all that pleased or trusting if you were in the latter category.
 
He was totally befuddled. He didn’t understand at all what I was saying. That, of course, was because he didn’t mean what he said.
 
In addition to the false modesty to which all men, and women, of “the cloth” are prone, he was just saying, “I accept my past.” His was not a rational, truth-in-a-scientific-way statement. He wasn’t doing arithmetic; he was doing forgiveness. He was forgiving the bishop and the cabinet and his congregations and himself for all that was past. He thought he had to deny the facts of reality to make things come out okay.
 
Rather than the usual mantra of “forgive and forget,” I suggest that it is better to forgive and remember. Remember the facts of your past, or your past loses meaning. But forgive the reality. Accept the gift of the past, “warts and all.”
 
Paul Tillich said, “Forgiveness doesn’t change the facts, but it does change the meaning of the facts.”
 
Remember the past. Forgive the past. Accept the new meaning that forgiveness brings. Accept that which is, thankfully, better than you deserve.
 
John Robert McFarland
 
***
 
1] In The United Methodist Church, ministers are not hired by the congregation. They are appointed by the bishop and the cabinet, which is the District Superintendents glommed together. We can’t request a particular appointment, and we have to go where we are sent, although we can sometimes weasel out of it. From the beginning of American Methodism through the first half of my career, there was no negotiation of any kind. The bishop told you where you were going, usually through the DS, and that was all there was to it. Sometimes you weren’t even told; sometimes you didn’t know until the appointments were read on the last day of the annual conference where you would move the next week.
 
2] The instructions of Oliver Cromwell to the artist, Sir Peter Lely, about painting his portrait according to the facts of his face.
 
***
The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!
 
You are always welcome to Forward or Repost or Reprint. It’s okay to acknowledge the source, unless it embarrasses you too much. It is okay to refer the link to folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin, or make it into a movie or TV series.
 
{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

 

 

 

THE UNSPOKEN WORDS

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…
 
While our pastor recovers from heart bypass surgery, I’m filling in. During the worship last Sunday, not counting announcements and items printed in the bulletin and hymnal, I uttered, out loud, 6,820 words.
 
I don’t write those words down ahead of time. I figure if I can’t comprehend and remember them in my brain and spirit as I speak them, I can’t expect those in the pews to comprehend and remember them as they listen. That does not mean I don’t prepare. I spend almost every waking moment in the week before a worship service, sometimes several weeks, sifting through the words I might speak on the scriptures and the subject of the day. For the 6,820 words I finally utter, there are 675,180 I don’t speak, that are rejected as being unworthy of God and not useful for the congregation. Only one percent of the words that go through my brain comes out of my mouth.
 
The words spoken are a gift. The words NOT spoken are often an even greater gift. That is true every time we speak, even though most of us are never in the pulpit.
 
Rejoice, ye peoples, ye peoples of Chrisney and Crossroads and Bloomfield, of Solsberry and Koleen and Mineral, of Greene County Chapel and Walkers Chapel, of Cedar Lake and Creston, of Terre Haute Centenary, of Normal First, of Stanwood and Red Oak Grove, of Orion, of Hoopeston, of Charleston Wesley, of Mattoon Faith, of Arcola, of Mason City Wesley, of Walnut, of Tampico, of Morrison, of Sterling Wesley, of Iron Mountain Trinity, rejoice in the 99% that God led me NOT to utter on the Sundays of the last 56 years.
 
Rejoice ye people who read Christ In Winter, in the several thousand words God took away to the recycle bin so that you would have to read, not counting the announcements, only 316.
 
Rejoice, ye peoples of the world, as we come toward the end of Advent/Christmas, the season of preparation and proclamation, that God prepared well enough that it was necessary to speak but one Word.
 
John Robert McFarland
 
***
 
The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!
 
You are always welcome to Forward or Repost or Reprint. It’s okay to acknowledge the source, unless it embarrasses you too much. It is okay to refer the link to folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin, or make it into a movie or TV series.
 
{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

 

 

THE FORGOTTEN WEDDING

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…
 
It was the Sunday before Christmas. We’d had two good morning worship services. I was tired. I was sitting at the table in the kitchen, sans shoes and tie, gratefully full of lunch, sipping a second cup of tea, when the phone on the wall beside me blared more forcefully than necessary. I picked it up. A rather thin, small voice…
 
“Rev. McFarland, aren’t you coming to our wedding?”
 
A minister should not schedule anything on a Sunday afternoon. A Sunday morning is intense. It empties your brain out. By the time it is over, there is no room to remember anything that is coming up.
 
In over 50 years in ministry, I forgot two events. The first time I was supposed to be part of a panel discussion for an evening program at a church on the other side of town. It’s not too bad if one member of a panel doesn’t show. It’s definitely not good if the only minister doesn’t show up for a wedding.
 
It’s even worse if the bride is a scared teen-ager whose family threw her out when she told them she was pregnant.
 
I hadn’t known her or her boyfriend, but they came to me when her pastor refused to marry them. “People say, when there’s no place else to go, they come to you,” they told me. Now the pastor of last resort had forgotten about them, too. 
 
I set a record for retrieving shoes and tying tie, and I flew out the back door. Helen was right behind me. Mary Beth and Katie, who were teenagers, were right behind her. Fortunately, we lived next door to the church building, and there was already a path shoveled through the big snow drift that always swept in and up between the back doors of the parsonage and the church building.
 
They were in the kitchen, the bulging bride, and her skinny husband-to-be, and the nervous teen couple they had brought along as witnesses. This was well before cell phones. When I had not showed up at 1:00 o’clock, they had wandered through the building and found the phone in the kitchen.
 
I led them back to the sanctuary. Oops. I had forgotten something else. After the morning services, we had prepared for the Christmas program that evening. The pulpit and lectern and altar table had been removed, turning the chancel into a large Akron-plan wrap-around stage. The chancel was bare.
 
But we were decorated for Christmas. Wreaths and candles and red ribbons, and a crèche set. They took their vows standing in front of the manger, part of a scene that said, “Love came down at Christmas.”
 
Every Christmas, the wedding I forgot is the one that I remember.
 
John Robert McFarland

***

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!
 
You are always welcome to Forward or Repost or Reprint. It’s okay to acknowledge the source, unless it embarrasses you too much. It is okay to refer the link to folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin, or make it into a movie or TV series.
 
{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}
 
I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.

 

STRENGTH & AVAILABILITY

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith For the Years of Winter…
 
STRENGTH AND AVAILABILITY
 
I have just learned of the death of George Paterson.
 
Helen and I met George and Ida Belle in 1972, when we moved to Iowa City so I could pursue a PhD in the School of Religion at the U of Iowa. We had a lot in common. Their Lisa and our Katie were in the same grade at school. We were both former Wesley Foundation ministers, we were Methodist clergy without a congregation, and George himself had gotten his PhD at U IA. George had two jobs, as chaplain at University Hospital and as a professor in the School of Religion.
 
There were three pivotal moments in our relationship:
 
1] I was doing a quarter of Clinical Pastoral Education under David Belgum, professor of pastoral counseling. One day he brought to class a woman in her forties, who was struggling with cancer. She told us of how George had walked into her room…
 
“I knew him. I thought, What is the trombone player in jazz groups that play in seedy places I frequent doing here? Then he explained that his real job was hospital chaplain. He made all the difference for me. He had just the right combination of strength and availability.”
 
I have spoken to many clergy since then, in various settings—conferences, retreats, classes, periodicals. I have always told them: Be like George Paterson. You’re no good if you’re only strength, because people can’t receive you if you’re only strength. You’re no good if you’re only availability. They can get into you easily, but there’s nothing there. Be that combination, like George.
 
2] Second pivotal moment: George flunked me out of the PhD program, which means he failed my qualifying exam. He put it as nicely as he could: “You have such a creative mind,” he said. “You use so many ideas and stories from so many different fields, and so many parenthetical expressions to explain them, I can’t tell what you’re saying.” [I appreciated that he said “creative” instead of “disorganized.”]
 
When I began to write in earnest—stories, essays, reference works, professional articles, novels, books for cancer patients—in my mind I always put at the top of the every page: Write this so that George Paterson can understand it or you will fail! It has served me well.
 
3] When the grandchildren moved to Mason City, IA, 175 miles northwest of Iowa City, we retired and moved there, too. George and Ida Belle had relatives in Mason City, so they stopped in to see us whenever they were in town. We went through Iowa City on our way to IN to see my father, so we’d meet for lunch on our way through. We had just begun to get really acquainted again when fifteen-month old grandson Joseph was diagnosed with liver cancer one Thursday afternoon. By Thursday evening Katie and Patrick were at Children’s Hospital in Iowa City with him. George and Ida Belle were there, too, and they remained. Often Katie was there alone with Joe. Patrick had to work to keep insurance in force. Helen and I had to care for four-year-old Brigid. But Katie wasn’t alone. George and Ida Belle were there, surrogate parents and grandparents, and with a bed and a meal and a hug for the rest of us when we could be there, too—a storm home, all the way through. Joe is now an extremely handsome young man of 13, with an easy mix of strength and availability. Along with their own grandchildren, his picture is on the Paterson’s refrigerator, as is Brigid’s.
 
As regular readers know, I recently learned from Father Guido Sarducci that things are so backed up in heaven that when we die we are judged in groups of ten thousand, to expedite things. George was the first person I contacted. “Wait around for me when you get there,” I told him. “I figure my chances are a lot better if I can be in the same group with you.”
 
On Monday at noon, we’ll celebrate a life so well-lived that ten thousand can ride to salvation on it.
 
May the peace of Christ be with George, and with us all,
JRMcF [John Robert McFarland]
 
{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}
 
(If you would prefer to receive either “Christ In Winter” or “Periwinkle Chronicles” via email, just let me know at jmcfarland1721@charter.net, and I’ll put you on the email list.)