A FRIENDLY LOCATION-Part 1. [M, 5-14-18]

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

A FRIENDLY LOCATION-Part 1.    [M, 5-14-18]

[This reflection on libraries is twice as long as a blog post should be, so I have divided it into two sections. This is the first of the two.]

Our library sent me an email telling me that it has been certified as a Dementia Friendly Location. Just why they thought I should receive this information, I am not sure. It did, however, start me thinking about the libraries of my life and their Friendliness designations.

When I was a grade school kid in Indianapolis, I was in the summer reading program at the branch library on Washington St. We had to tell the librarian the stories of the books we read so that we could get stars on our chart, and so they could be assured we had actually read the books. I thought it was a Suspicion Friendly Location, because she let my friends get away with a 15 second report on their books, but when I stepped up to report, she called all the other librarians over and made me tell the whole story. Scared me to death. It was years before I found out, from my mother, that she did that because all the librarians loved the way I told stories. [How could I not become a preacher?] It was a Beginner Friendly Location.

We moved to a little farm outside of Oakland City, 135 miles south of Indianapolis, when I was ten. The library in OC was on the top floor of the fire station, up a narrow wooden staircase. Whenever I asked the hump-backed little librarian lady for a book on ventriloquism or magic or history, she always said, forlornly, “We have mostly fiction.” It was an Imagination Friendly Location.

The Oakland City grade school did not have a library, but there was one in the high school, sort of--bookshelves in the front and back of the long study hall, which served also as the lunch room, and my homeroom. In study hall, I would hurry through my assignments so that I could go to the shelves in the rear and pull out a Howard Pease book, always about some boy who stowed away on a tramp ship and ended up having to battle pirates. It was a Dream Friendly Location.

When I went to IU, the magnificent Wells Library, named for long-time IU president, Herman B Wells, the most important figure in higher education in the 20^th century, did not yet exist. The library was what is now called Franklin Hall, which houses primarily the Media School. I went there in the evenings to sit and study in the long, wide, high-ceilinged Social Studies Reading Room. That reading room was my high school library magnified 100 times, except no Howard Pease novels on the shelves. Nothing but reference books there, thousands and thousands of them. In the stacks were hundreds of thousands of books. Anything on any subject in any language. I felt like such a citizen of the world there. That was an Aspiration Friendly Location. [1]

[More friendly locations tomorrow.]

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] I knew there were millions and millions of books without counting, because one of my summer jobs was back in the stacks using a vacuum system to dust all those books. Took all summer and we still weren’t done.

NEVER TOO LATE [Sun, 5-13-18]

NEVER TOO LATE                [Sun, 5-13-18]

Robert Goddard was the first real rocket scientist. He was ridiculed by the press for thinking that space travel was possible, since, everyone was sure that a rocket could not operate in a vacuum. He died in 1945. In 1969, the New York Times printed an apology to him after the Apollo moon landing thus: “It is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.” [1]

When I was going through chemotherapy-very miserably-and pretty sure I was going to die, either from cancer or the chemo, I came across the statement, “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” It’s likely that I had heard that many times, but it had never really meant anything to me before.

In old age, we have a chance to re-do situations where we made mistakes, and apologize to the Robert Goddards of our life, even if they are gone. The folks who work on the “healing of memories,” a term first used by Agnes Sanford, understand that. God is quite willing to act as a go-between to those who are no longer in this life--for our apologies, for our acts of forgiveness, and for our requests for forgiveness,

And it’s a lot cheaper than printing a classified in the New York Times saying, “I called you ostrobogulous when you were merely weird in a generic way. I regret the error.”

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] I read the story of the NYT apology to Goddard in Michio Kaku, The Future of Humanity [Doubleday, 2018]

Friday The 13^th, comes on Sunday this month.

WARM MORNING-a poem [Sat, 5-12-18]

WARM MORNING-a poem   [Sat, 5-12-18]

The stove was called Warm Morning

The morning was not warm

for my father

He got up first

to shake the ashes down

pour the new coal in

take the cinders out

Sometimes, cold mornings now

I lie beneath the comfort

of down-filled quilts and covers

wishing someone else

would get up first

place bare feet on cold floor

walk down the hall

and nudge the little lever

in the round thing

on the wall

to make the morning warm

Then I hear the sound of ashes

shaking down

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I always note “poem” in the title as a warning. Further warning: It’s almost always Saturday when I post a poem, because the Google stats people say CIW has few readers on Saturday. So if you want to avoid my poetry, Saturday is a good day to skip. I’m not ashamed of my poetry attempts, but I know I’m not really a poet, so I try to be as un-intrusive with it as possible. Obviously, though, you are a hearty soul, or just like amateurish poetry, and I thank you for hanging in there.

This one was written on 9-20-08.

PEOPLE WITH PROBLEMS AND PROBLEM PEOPLE [F, 5-10-18]

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

PEOPLE WITH PROBLEMS AND PROBLEM PEOPLE   [F, 5-10-18]

The telephone rang on Sunday afternoon, as it often does in a parsonage.

“Why did you say in church this morning that we shouldn’t pray for my son-in-law?” the voice demanded.

“Well, Bernice, I just wanted to do something nasty to you and make you mad,” I replied.

There was a long pause. Then she said, “I thought it was something like that.”

I had recognized the voice because I was expecting the call, because Earl had already telephoned. Bernice had called him and wanted to know why I had said that morning during Joys and Concerns in the worship service that we should not pray for her son-in-law.

Bernice didn’t come to worship regularly but she had telephoned me about her son-in-law. He lived in another state and had some relatively minor problem. I assured her we would put him on the prayer list and pray for him in worship, which we had done for three weeks when Bernice finally showed up. When I opened Joys & Concerns that morning, she asked for prayer for him. I noted that he was in the printed list in the bulletin and that we had been praying for him for several weeks and would continue to do so.

Earl said Bernice had already telephoned several others in the congregation, before she called him, all of whom had told her what he told her: “No, he didn’t say we shouldn’t pray for him. He said we had been praying for him and would keep on doing it.” Bernice was not deterred.

I like people with problems, in part because there is no other type of person to like. I have trouble, though, liking problem people, and in every church I pastored, there was a problem person or two… or ten.

People with problems are a possibility. You might actually be of some help to them. Problem people, though, are help-less. They are sure they are already right about everything. To them, it’s always someone else who is the problem. They are those “who have no need of a physician.”

We went on to have a nice conversation, Bernice and I, because her world had been restored to normalcy. She had been proved right. To anyone else, my stated desire to “do something nasty to make her mad” would have created a problem. To Bernice, it had solved a problem. I was back in her good graces. [1].

I’m not sure I want to recommend this as a general communication method. I doubt that it would have done Barack Obama much good to go on Fox News and say, “Yes, I was born in Kenya and I’m a secret Muslim socialist Nazi communist who hates white people.” Then his detractors would say, “See, he’s a liar, too,” not even noticing the contradiction.

But you can’t help problem people, because they won’t acknowledge that they are the problem. So you might as well have some fun.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] She even gave me the key to her house again, to be able to get in if something happened to her. She rotated the key among three men in town, according to which one of us she was least mad at for the moment

I used to keep a careful index of topics and stories so that I would not bore readers with repeats. But that became cumbersome, and since this blog is primarily for folks in the winter of their years, I figure they won’t be able to remember if they’ve heard it before, anyway.

COMMUNICATION THEORY & THE WILL OF God [R, 5-10-18]

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

COMMUNICATION THEORY & THE WILL OF God  [R, 5-10-18]

Granddaughter Brigid and I share a doctoral academic field—communication theory. She starts her formal doctoral-level study in the field this fall at the U of Chicago, in semiology. My doctoral study was in narratology and… a long time ago.

In fact, I finished my formal academic studies in communication theory when the professors who are retiring this year, after forty years of teaching and research, were my contemporaries. I was older when I got my doctorate—40. They were 25. Now they have put in 40 years and are reaping the rewards of all those years of high pay in the groves of academe, with time now to sit down and write that great contemporary novel.

I did a little research and writing and teaching in communication theory after finishing the academic years, but mostly I just practiced communicating. Sometimes not very well.

When my older sister’s 18 and 19 year old sons, Steve and Tony, were killed together in an auto accident, along with two of their friends, I was asked to speak not only at their funeral but at the general funeral for the four boys together. They were popular kids—still in high school or just out. The high school gym was full to overflowing for the general funeral in the morning. The funeral home was also overflowing for Steve’s and Tony’s funeral that afternoon, so much so that the funeral directors set up loud speakers in the parking lot so people who could not get in could stand outside and be a part of the service.

In both those services, I said: “This was not the will of God. God does not will that beautiful young men in the prime of life should be taken away from us. It is the law of physics, that when fast metal automobiles collide with fragile human bodies, the bodies lose, but that is not the will of God.”

That evening, after the funerals, I was sitting with my brother-in-law, Dick, in his den, as other folks came and went in the house. The shadows were deep when the president of the high school sports booster club came. Tony had been the quarterback on the football team, so he was well-known to Dick and Mary V.

We chatted for a little. Then he turned to me and said, “As you said this afternoon, it was the will of God.”

I was overwhelmed. I had a doctorate in communication. All my research and writing and study was current. Could I have communicated so poorly that this seemingly intelligent man heard the exact opposite of what I thought I was saying?

By the grace of God, I think it must have been, for it certainly as not of my own comprehension, since I had so much ego tied up in communicating “not so well that you can be understood but so well that you cannot be misunderstood,” as one of my mentors put it, I suddenly realized what he was saying, what anybody says at a time like that when they say “It was the will of God.” What they mean is: God did not pull the strings on this, but God is still with us, still willing, still trying to make something good come from this, still loving us.”

When I would get frustrated about communicating, despite all my study and theories, along about Saturday night, because I had not yet figured out a novel and inviting way to preach the next morning, Helen always said, “You worry too much about finding a different way to say it. You have only one job when you preach, and that is to remind us that God loves us.”

Maybe that’s all one needs to know about communication theory. We need to tell one another that God is in charge. That God loves us. That love never ends. It doesn’t make much difference how we say it—what words or symbols or artistry we use. We just need to communicate that love is all that counts, and that love never ends.

Poor Helen. She doesn’t know anything about communication theory. But I hope Brigid pays more attention to her grandmother than she does to her professors. Or to her grandfather.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Yes, if you have read The Strange Calling, or if you have heard me preach/speak, you have heard that story about “the will of God” before. I didn’t really intend to tell it again here. I was going to write about how time gets by so quickly--because no one has ever commented on that before--and I was amazed as I thought about a whole generation of scholars, forty years, in between my doctoral work and Brigid’s, so I was speculating about time and how every scholar who influenced me is long gone, and how scholars in the same field don’t even speak the same language anymore, [I never even heard the word “semiology” in my studies of long ago] but then that veered off into the will of God, and I’m glad it did, because how time does not conquer love is much better to contemplate than how time passes so quickly.

SLEEP-MORE THOUGHTS ABOUT IT THAN ARE REALLY NECESSARY [W, 5-9-18]

CHRIST IN WITER: REFLECTIONS ON FAITH AND LIFE FOR THE YEARS OF WINTER…

SLEEP-MORE THOUGHTS ABOUT IT THAN ARE REALLY NECESSARY    [W, 5-9-18]

I have been reading in my grandchild journal, preparing myself for the graduation of our granddaughter from college, and of our grandson from high school. Here is an entry from ten years ago…

The men at the next table at the Moose Jackson coffee shop are discussing sleep patterns. “I slept only three hours last night,” one of them says. “If I sleep too much at night, I can’t sleep after work,” he continues. I do not understand what that means. It sounds like a very strange pattern to try to sleep.

I don’t have time to think about it, though. I have to concentrate on what my granddaughter is saying over her hot chocolate. Concentration is difficult for me this morning because I had trouble sleeping last night. It’s because of her that I had trouble sleeping.

I do not see her as much now that school has started. I usually go to the coffee shop alone, but school is on break today, so we are here together. She used to keep us awake at night because babies and little kids do that to parents and grandparents. So did her little brother, and her mother and her aunt before them. Now they are not babies who cry in the night, but they still keep me awake, worrying about them, praying for them.

It’s not all because of worry, though. Last night I laid awake with anticipation, excited at the thought of being with my granddaughter. I kept thinking about taking her to the coffee shop, and how much fun it would be.

I recall the last day before she started kindergarten. Helen and I took her on a special picnic. We knew we would not get to see her as much as we had once she started school. She was so excited the night before our picnic that she couldn’t sleep. Now she has returned the favor.

Most of us, during our working years, have to get up at a certain time, either to get to the job or school on time, or to get others to jobs or school on time. We set an alarm clock, or we are so used to it that we automatically get up at the right time.

Helen was so used to getting up at five a.m. when she was a teacher that she woke up at that early hour for several years after she retired. It really griped her. She finally had the chance to sleep in, and she couldn’t. At last, though, her brain adjusted. Now she can sleep until eight if her body needs extra rest.

I don’t have a job pattern anymore, a time when I have to sleep, so that I can get up at a certain time, so that my body can fall into its natural rhythm. In retirement, no regular alarm clock is necessary. I don’t have to be any place at a certain time. I just sleep until I wake up. Then I get up.

Occasionally, though, like this morning, I have a required rising time. Because so much of my inside was removed by surgery, I have to hang close to the bathroom the first four hours after I get up. If I must be some place by nine, I have to get up at five. When I have one of those alarm clock mornings, it is harder for me to fall asleep and stay that way.

Some old people don’t need much sleep. My friend, Bill White, slept only a few hours each night in old age. If he couldn’t sleep, he just got up and got things done. I think he had a clear conscience.

It is hard to sleep if you are looking forward to something, either with joy or with dread. It is hard to sleep if you are angry or in pain or worried or guilty or excited. Good sleep requires a clear conscience or a dead one.

What does it mean to have a clear conscience?

The purpose of sleep is regeneration. Dreaming is part of that. It’s part of the rhythm of the body and the brain. Perhaps death, which we often liken to sleep, is just part of the rhythm.

Maybe that is why so many old people have trouble sleeping out the night. Our consciences are not all that bad, but we’re just excited about what the morning will bring.

That is part of Christian faith, that death is sleep, part of the rhythm. We fall asleep in death, but the day of resurrection will come, when we shall be awakened by the alarm clock of God, the trumpeting angels.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

WHOSE WIFE, ANYWAY? [T, 5-8-18]

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

WHOSE WIFE, ANYWAY?              [T, 5-8-18]

No, this is not about Henny Youngman saying, “Take my wife… please.”

A young friend recently wrote to ask a question. He and his wife had been watching a movie in which the main character’s wife died, and he remarried. He loved both women. So, she asked, what about in the life to come? How will they work that out?

Here is what I wrote to him:

The Bible has little to say about this question, and Jesus doesn’t mention it, except in answer to a question when the righteous folks were trying to trip him up to prove he wasn’t as smart as common folks thought he was.

That story is in the 6^th chapter of Matthew, along about verse 20. Family was the only economy of the time, so if a woman were widowed, she had no means of support. So The Law provided. Her husband’s brother had to marry her, which meant taking her into his household so she could eat. So, the scribes and Pharisees ask Jesus, what if her husband had six brothers and each of them in turn dies. So,” in the resurrection,” whose wife will she be?

Jews throughout Old Testament times were not particularly interested in afterlife, and were vague about it. By the time of Jesus, though, the idea of resurrection had taken currency. It was, however, a fairly primitive physical body resurrection—we shall be exactly as we are now, physically, after the resurrection. So “whose wife” was a practical, and reasonable, and difficult question.

Jesus replies that his interrogators don’t understand either the scriptures or the resurrection. There will be no marriage in heaven, but that folks will be like the “angels in heaven.” We don’t know exactly what he meant by that, because he does not talk about angels much elsewhere, but he was obviously trying to say that the resurrection means something different from a physical cloning of earthly bodies.

After the resurrection of Jesus, Paul refers to a “spiritual body,” when he says he does not know what kind of body we’ll have in the resurrection, physical or spiritual, but that we’ll have one. He means that we’ll have personal identity, since it is by the body that we are able to recognize one another as different individuals. [He expands on this in I Cors 15: 44-47.]

Now here’s the most important part, I think. Jesus says to the scribes and Pharisees, “You don’t know the power of God.” In other words, God will take care of this.

God’s power is not power at all, but love. As Paul says so eloquently in Romans 9: Love never ends.

So the love between a woman and man in marriage will not end, because the love in that relationship will not end. We don’t know how that works, but we know that we can trust God to keep love alive.

JRMcF

Johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com