FEAR NOT, 9/11 or 5/19

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter

Recently an old high school acquaintance came across my email address via another high school acquaintance. He sends out group emails. I’m now included in that group.

He was a year ahead of me in school. I did not know him well. We did not hang around together. But in a small school, you’re always in some of the same activities, and you get acquainted that way. I remember him as a nice kid, just a regular kid, like all the rest of us.

These days he is very religious. Every day I get several emails from him quoting Bible verses, many of them having to do with love and forgiveness. Also every day he sends several irrational rants, such as: “Obama is a socialist muslim [sic] devil” and “you can tell Moochelle Obama hates America because she holds her hand wrong during the national anthem” and “the Obama daughters are ugly and dress like sluts” and “the supreme court is taking away our freedom” and “the gay agenda is all about taking over and putting straights in concentration camps.”

I think he really wants to be a Christian, to believe in and live in the love of God. But he is pulled between 9/11 and 5/19. On 9/11, Christians can either give in to fear, which is what the terrorist agenda is all about, or we can face our fear with 5/19, II Corinthians 5:19, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, and God has given us this ministry of reconciliation.”

The first thing the angels say to announce the coming of the Christ is, “Fear not.” It’s hard to be a Christian when you are so afraid. Why is my old schoolmate so scared? I don’t know, but I do know he is old. It must be so miserable to live one’s final days in that kind of fear.

I remember him as that regular kid, and I pray for him.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

WHEELCHAIR ESCAPE

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter… ©

I am reluctant to use the wheelchair escape as the title here. It is not the important feature, but that was what first really got my attention.

We were visiting daughter Mary Beth in Chicago last week. I was watching the TV news. A retired pastor in a retirement home had shot another retired pastor over “a religious argument.” Then he “escaped on a motorized wheelchair.”

I posted about it on Facebook. It was ludicrous. Hilarious. The sort of thing that happens in a sitcom, not in real life. Two old preachers, arguing over supralapsarianism vs sublapsarianism, [1] and one shoots the other and escapes in a wheelchair. It doesn’t get any funnier.

Except, I learned later, the old preacher who was shot died. At 80 years of age, one dead and one a murderer. Not so funny.

Old people often complain that younger people don’t understand that we are the same people we have always been, just in weaker bodies. We have the same needs, for love and companionship and acceptance and hope.

We usually don’t mention that we have the same sinful tendencies, the same argumentative spirit, the same assumptions that we are right and others are wrong, the same anger.

St. Augustine said that “the so-called innocence of children is more a matter of weakness of limb than purity of heart.” The same can be said for the so-called wisdom of old people, more weakness of limb than purity of heart.

Yes, we have the same needs as always, including the need to submit our will and impulses to the will of God. We never get too old for that.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] I don’t know if the subject in dispute was actually supralapsarianism, but Dr. Wilkey says that is the argument that usually gets out of hand.

I tweet as yooper1721, because when I started, I thought you were supposed to have a “handle,” like CB radio, instead of a name. I was a Yooper, resident of MI’s UP [Upper Peninsula], and my phone ended in 1721, so…

Here I come to save the day! No, not Mighty Mouse. Yuri Strelnikov, the boy genius of Katie McFarland Kennedy’s delightful Learning to Swear in America. Buy it or borrow it, but read this book! [What do you mean, you’re not old enough to remember Mighty Mouse?”

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CLASSICAL

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter

The IU students are back in town, and I am remembering when I was one of them, a new freshman… with a whole new world opening up, including classical music, like The Student Prince, to which I am listening right now.

At least, that’s what I thought The Student Prince was when I first heard it, classical.

I had never really even heard a “record” when I went off to college, except for the 45s used at the “sock hops” at school. My family had only one record player, which took only very long play spoken recordings, because my father was blind, and the Library for the Blind in Indianapolis sent him “talking books” from time to time. No music. Mostly Western novels. It was the highlight of an afternoon or evening when Daddy got out “the record machine,” and all six of us sat around the table, staring at the slowly rotating record as a story of cowboys battling “savages” on The Powder River filled our dining room.

We had a radio, but other than an occasional station that played “popular” music, meaning Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, all the stations featured “hillbilly” music. Yes, that’s what it was called then. “Country” came along much later. PBS classical music stations were decades away.

So when my IU roommate, Tom Cone, brought a “hi-fi” from home, with three records, which included The Student Prince and South Pacific, I thought I was a real classical college man, listening to “classical music.”

I had never heard of Bach or Beethoven or Mozart or Tchaikovsky or Rimsky-Korsakov or Vivaldi. Through the years, they have inscribed themselves on my list of favorites. [1] I know what classical music is. I was a history major. I know all about the 18^th century. Well, I know a little about it, enough to date the “classical music” period up to 1830.

For me, though, the real classics will always start with Be My Love and Some Enchanted Evening.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

1] Yes, I’m expanding the usual dates for the “classical” period a bit.

PLEASE DON’T YELL AT ME

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter

I am a big, mature [i.e., old], rugged [i.e., decrepit] Scots man.

Raluca Vucescu is a little, young, cute Romanian woman.

I know it can sound sexist and disrespectful to call a woman “little and cute.” As Katie Couric once said, about always being described as little and cute, “Bob Costas is little and cute, but no one describes him that way.”

I mean that description, however, only as a contrast. She is little and cute and Romanian. I am big and not-cute and Scottish.

That means she should fear me. The only people tougher than the Romanians are the Scots. But it’s the other way around. SHE scares ME.

She is my MD.

If I return to her office as a fat unexercised man, and fail the A1C test, she will yell at me. That’s what our daughters told their friends during high school when we quietly demurred to go along with one of their hare-brained schemes. “My parents YELLED at me!”

That’s what Dr. Vucescu will do. She will look up at me with disappointment, both of us knowing full well that I said last time, “No, I don’t really need any medicine; I can do this on my own with diet and exercise,” and she will quietly say, “We need to talk about medicine.” In other words, she will yell at me.

That’s one of the strange things about old age. Roles are reversed. We used to be the ones who yelled at the young miscreants. Now we are the old miscreants, being yelled at. I liked it better the other way.

The good thing, though, is that Dr. Vucescu specializes in geriatric medicine. The older I get, the more she likes me.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

GIVING THANKS FOR OUR LABOR DAY TOMATOES

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter

When I was growing up, Indiana produced more tomatoes than any other state except California. I don’t know if that is true now, but I do know that when I picked tomatoes one summer, because Mr. Thiemann, our neighbor, had leased his land to tomato growers, it was the hardest job I ever had, and that is saying a lot, when you’ve also spent a summer detasseling corn.

Detasseling corn was miserable. We walked. The corn stalk heads were way above our sun-blasted heads. We had to bend them down to grab the tassel and pull it out without breaking the stalk. The corn leaves cut our arms and hands and faces. The humidity in among those stalks was 100% and the temperature was in the 90s. We were drenched in sweat. Our overseers were profane and mad that we did not work harder. If we got behind, they left us in the field. There was never enough water. We made fifty cents an hour.

With one proviso. If you worked the entire season, from day one to day last, without ever missing, we got an extra 25 cents per hour. That is a big bonus. I needed that money. Only one other boy and I got that bonus. Others worked a day or two and found out how miserable it was and dropped out. I learned I could stand almost anything if I had to.

Even picking tomatoes. From what I’ve said about detasseling, you’d think tomato picking would not be so bad. No corn leaves to cut, or be down in among with 100% humidity, Mr. Heathman’s well immediately accessible for water, bosses who were marginally nicer than the corn masters. Tomatoes, though, grow down low. That kind of work is correctly called “stoop labor.” At the end of a day, I couldn’t straighten up. And I was only fifteen. Imagine what it was like for folks who were 45 or 65, and there were plenty of them.

So as you put a slice of tomato on your Labor Day hamburger, or squirt some ketchup on, and your neighbor talks about how immigrants just want an easy life at someone else’s expense, think about the folks who picked your tomato, and say a word of thanks.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

KEEPING A PROMISE YOU NEVER MADE

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter

 I’m thinking this morning of my friend and colleague, Grantland Sharp, may he rest in peace, as he was not allowed to in life.

He was cursed with that classy name. [1] He was cursed with rugged, thoughtful good looks. He was cursed with a pleasant baritone voice.

Unfortunately, he was not any of the things that his name and looks and voice promised.

It wasn’t his fault. It was his parents who chose his name, and, in the genetic way, chose his good looks and his manly voice. It was his parents who reared him to be a nice and caring person. Unfortunately, they did not rear him to live up to his image.

He was not a Grantland Sharp. More of a Wilbur Dull. He was not rugged and thoughtful. More reticent and shallow. His voice was manly, yes, but monotonic.

His entire life and career, people expected him to live up to the promises his name and looks and voice made. When he couldn’t do it, they despised him. They thought he was a fraud, when actually, he was very authentic. He was always himself, but people didn’t want the real Grant. They wanted his image.

Grant was a bit dull, but he was not slow. He knew what people expected, and why they expected it. He once told me, “Yes, it bothered me when I was young. Now, though, I know who I am, and God knows who I am. That’s all that matters.”

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] Grantland Sharp is not his real name, but it’s like that.

BABES IN BELLICOSE LAND

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter

When our granddaughter was in pre-school, about three years old, maybe four, she complained to her mother that a certain boy insisted on calling his tricycle a bicycle. “I explained to him that bi means two and tri means three, so it had to be a tricycle since it has three wheels, but he keeps calling it a bicycle, anyway.” Her amused mother said, “Well, his Latin just isn’t as good as yours.” Our granddaughter replied, “Yes, but he’s quite bellicose about it.”

He’s probably still bellicose, and still calling things, and especially people, by wrong names. I suspect he is cheering at Donald Trump rallies.

Hillary Clinton has been running what to me is a very good TV ad. It shows Donald Trump aggressively calling people names and ridiculing them in typical bellicose, bullying fashion. It shows young children watching him and asks the question of what our children will learn.

As good as the ad is, I don’t think it will be very effective, because many people see nothing wrong with the way Trump treats weaker people. There are some people who are bullies. They see no problem with bullying. And there are those fearful folk who are not bullies themselves, but they are so afraid of the bullies that they try to placate them. They are bully enablers.

Some people just like aggression and force. They like to see the powerful trample on the weak. They applaud when a comedian or politician talks about spanking children. They applaud and cheer when a politician says “Let ‘em die” about people who cannot afford health insurance.

They think that protecting kids from bullies is wussy; you should teach kids to stand up for themselves and fight back. They justify their love of aggression and force by saying that it is the way of the world, that people are going to be violent anyway, and all you can do is protect yourself.

There is some truth in that. There is violence in all of us. St. Augustine was right—there is a God-shaped void in our soul. But there is also a fist-shaped snarl in our brain. I’m not a pacifist. I’m a Niebuhrian realist. [1] Maybe an Amos Wilson realist. Amos is a Presbyterian pastor who served almost his whole career as a prison chaplain. “There are some really bad people in there,” he says, “and they need to be kept there.”

I suspect that 95% of terrorists, as distinct from regular soldiers or people fighting for their homeland against outside invasion, would find a reason to keep on terrorizing even if all their demands were met. That gives credence to those who say, “The only thing they understand is force.” But even terrorists have people who love them and who share their narrative. You can’t eliminate them by force, for every time you do, you create a martyr whose family and friends want to avenge him.

Sharron Angle, former US Senate candidate in Nevada, talked about “Second Amendment remedies,” which has since been echoed by Donald Trump. Since the 2^nd Amendment, which to most of its supporters is the whole of the Constitution, is about the right “to bear arms,” there is no question what she was talking about, despite how much she tried to wriggle as the election approached. Lee Harvey Oswald used a 2^nd Amendment remedy on John F. Kennedy. John Hinckley tried to use a 2^nd Amendment remedy on Ronald Reagan. [2]

Jesus was realistic about this. He understood the world is a dangerous place where people try to control the lives of others through force. But he knew that aggression ultimately does not work. That is the point of “turn the other cheek.” Retribution begets retribution, violence begets violence.

The problem arises when we unthinkingly accept violence and force as the way of the world, and even celebrate it, rather than reluctantly accepting it as an occasional necessary evil.

Many will say, “But Jesus used force, when he drove the money changers out of the temple.” Yes, but that was not bullying. The folks who ran the temple businesses were the ones with the power. Jesus was not bullying them, he was speaking truth to power. He was overturning the accepted financial and religious practices of the day that allowed the powerful to take advantage of the weak. That’s not bullying; that’s doing the work of God.

There are and will always be bullies. They will find various political and theological theories to justify their aggression, but the truth is, they just like to be among the strong who take advantage of the weak. The only real solution is to keep power away from them so they cannot misuse it.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

BTW, Happy September!

I tweet as yooper1721

1] Reinhold Niebuhr was one of the leading theologians through the first two world wars, the Great Depression, and the Cold War. See Moral Man and Immoral Society and/or The Nature and Destiny of Man. He also composed “The Serenity Prayer.”

2] I’d like to give Trump the benefit of the doubt and accept his explanation that his statement meant that 2^nd Amendment people would vote for him and that was how they would defeat Hillary Clinton, rather than calling for them to assassinate her. Angle never tried to explain “2^nd amendment remedies” that way.