HAPPILY EVER AFTER [M, 6-17-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man--HAPPILY EVER AFTER [M, 6-17-24]

 

Daughter Katie Kennedy was here last weekend. She brought us a copy of her latest book, Hearts on Thin Ice. She dedicated it to her parents, as those who taught her “about happily ever after.” That warms my heart. I can’t think of a better legacy.

She also reminded us of the story of Wes Greenan’s father.

Wes was the retired police chief in Mason City, Iowa, and Katie’s next-door neighbor. Mason City wasn’t just the home of Meredith Willson and the setting for The Music Man, but was also where Wes’ grandparents settled when they immigrated to the U.S., way back in the 1800s. But not his father.

He didn’t go to Iowa because he got lost at Ellis Island. He was six years old. In the hustle and bustle of the crowds of immigrants, he got separated from his family.

His family looked for him, of course. I mean, they really looked. For two months. But they had a future waiting for them in Iowa, and finally had to conclude that if they had not been able to find him in two months, that their son was lost forever. They went on to Iowa without him.

Some years later, the priest of their church was in New York. He was walking by a school yard when he heard a boy yell, “Hey, Greenan, throw me the ball.” He kept walking. But then it registered on him. That’s the name of a family in my parish. They had a lost son. Could it be… somehow…

He went back. He talked to the school principal. It was true! It was the lost boy.

Scarred and ruined forever by being separated from his family and having to fend for himself on the mean streets of New York… well, no! The exact opposite.

He was the prince of the neighborhood. No one knew how he got there, but he appeared. It was a poor area. No one could take him in, so everyone did. It was a child’s dream. No one to order him around, but everyone to take care of him. Whenever he wanted a meal, he’d just show up at a house. When bed time came, he’d go to any house he wanted; he knew they would give him a place to sleep that night. It was quite literally the reality of, “It takes a village…”

He had a good life in Iowa. He was glad to be with his family again. I knew his son, who was a good man, so I knew he had a “happily ever after.”

I wondered, though… How do you deal with it when you have been the prince of a whole neighborhood and have to give it up when you’re only nine years old?

John Robert McFarland

The photo above is Ellis Island immigrants waiting for processing.

 

 

ORDINARY DAYS [Sun, 6-16-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—ORDINARY DAYS [Sun, 6-16-24]

 

Some folks say you should live each day as though it is the last day of your life. Others say that you should live each day as though it is the first day [of the rest] of your life. I find that confusing, so I try to live each day not as last or first, but as just ordinary.

On an ordinary day, I treat others as I would like to be treated.

On an ordinary day, I forgive others as I am forgiven.

On an ordinary day, I take food to the hungry and water to the thirsty.

On an ordinary day, I visit the sick and imprisoned.

On an ordinary day, I go the extra mile.

On an ordinary day, I think on these things: whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy.

I’m so old and decrepit now that “I’m declining faster than I can lower my standards,” so I can’t do many of these things in person. But paying and praying and thanking, to support others in these works, can be part of an ordinary day, too.

On an ordinary day, faith, hope, and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love.

John Robert McFarland

WHAT’S IN A NICKNAME? [Sat, 6-15-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—WHAT’S IN A NICKNAME? [Sat, 6-15-24]

 

I was told that Mildred McFarland got the nickname of “Big Weed” when she wrestled professionally, but I cannot find corroboration of that. I can’t find any mention at all of WHY she was called “Big Weed,” even though every mention of her, including her obit, calls her that: Mildred “Big Weed” McFarland. Her obit says that she was the linchpin of her family’s Tennessee business, “Bar-B-Cutie,” so if she wrestled, it was probably before Bar-B-Cutie.

Now, this is interesting to me because my mother’s name was Mildred McFarland, although in grade school I spelled it as Mildread, which I’m sure now was a Freudian slip. I am pretty sure my mother was neither a wrestler nor a Bar-B-Cutie, although she did disappear into her room for a day or two every once in a while, claiming she had a headache. It was only 35 miles to Kentucky from our house, and the city of Henderson was known to cater to all the vices Indiana eschewed--including pro wrestling, which was allowed only in “Da [Calumet] Region,” on the Indiana side of Chicago--and Mother was known to hitch-hike, so…

Mother would probably not have chosen “Big Weed” as her wrestling moniker, for she was allergic to weeds. The headache that sent her off by herself was usually due to ragweed. No, she would have wrestled as “The Bloody Clothes Stick.”

On wash day, I had to dip a bucket on a rope down into the cistern, that drained the roof, and then carry it into the house and put it into a big copper boiler on the stove to heat it to clothes washing temperature. It took several buckets full to fill the washing machine.

Then I had to bring in enough more water to fill two round rinse tubs, that sat on old wooden barrels that we’d gotten somewhere. When it was hot, I then transferred it to the washing machine and the rinse tubs. When the washing was completed, I had to drain the machine and the tubs and carry the used water out and throw it in the field beyond the garden. Sometimes I had to do this twice, if a special extra wash was deemed necessary, as the time when Mother wanted to dye some long-forgotten object red.

Because the water was hot, she could not put her hands into it to transfer clothes from washer to a rinse tub, or from the first rinse to the second, so she used a “clothes stick.” It was two, maybe two and one-half feet long. Round and smooth and slightly porous from all that hot water. Only big enough around to get a good grip on it, to lift wet clothes from one spot to another.

Wash day was understandably stressful for Mother. When we first moved to the farm, she had two babies in diapers, and clothes got dirty easily doing farm work and walking dirt and gravel roads. Mother’s wash day emotional survival technique was to whack me with the clothes stick whenever I got close enough. She would have whacked anyone else, too, I’m sure, but my father was always working outside, and my older sister was keeping the little ones out of the way. I was her only available stress relief.

When Mother used the clothes stick in the red dye project, naturally it turned red on the end that was used in the water to move the garment from washer to first rinse to second rinse.

So I showed it to anyone who came to our house and told them that it was my blood from all the wash day whacking.

I still have the bloody clothes stick, one of the few mementoes of my mother.

I’m only sorry that she didn’t get to use it on Gorgeous George or Don Eagle when she wrestled professionally. Yes, in our family we always go for the best story…

John Robert McFarland

 

 

THE IRRELEVANCE OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD [F, 6-14-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—THE IRRELEVANCE OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD [F, 6-14-24]

 

The existence of God is irrelevant, and so thus are arguments about that existence. What matters is the presence of God. Kind of like pecan pie; its existence is irrelevant to me if it is not present to me.

I was never much impressed by the arguments about God’s existence, either from the theological angle, such as the quinque viae [five arguments] of Aquinas, or from the “logic” of “scientists” who define “facts” in such a way as automatically to exclude anything they don’t want to deal with, kind of like the way physicists ignore the gravity field when looking for a unified field theory, because it doesn’t fit any taxonomy they can come up with.

Maybe I was never interested in the existence of God because I wasn’t pushed far enough, but I think it was because I always knew the presence of God. I never cared whether God existed, because I was always aware of God’s presence.

“Know” is the proper word there, for me. I have never “felt” the presence of God, never heard a voice. I gladly sing “I know the Lord has laid his hand on me,” and know it is true, but I have never “felt” the touch of that hand, even though I often recite “The Touch of the Master’s Hand,” by Myra Brooks Welch.

I am not decrying such experiences. Some people experience God’s presence as a bodily warmth, or a special light. These experiences establish the presence of God, not the existence of God.

Bill Pruett was one of my clergy friends. We were an unlikely pair. He was an orthodox conversative, and I was a hillbilly liberal. Because, however, we were both honest about and secure in our theological understandings, and our faith in the presence of God, we had good times together. Bill loved to introduce me as “my liberal friend,” apparently to prove that he had one.

He used to get disgusted with a good many of our conservative friends. “They trust in their feelings, and then when things go bad, and they don’t feel all happy about God anymore, they go off the tracks. Feelings are part of faith, but sometimes you just have to use your mind.”

I never worried about feeling God. Emotions come and go. I was always aware of the presence of God, though. I think that is what Bill and I shared. That is why we could be honest with each other.

John Robert McFarland

POETRY IN WINTER [R, 6-13-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—POETRY IN WINTER [R, 6-13-24]

 

Good poetry does not

slap you in the face

unless it is about a purple cow

or the shooting of Dan McGrew

A good poem works

around the edges

wording little windows open

so we can come inside…

 

Well, that’s as far as I got this morning, writing my daily poem for my poetry journal, remembering the poetry of Bryan Bowers. I never found any windows in Bryan's poems.

Bryan Bowers is an extraordinary musician. He makes his major instrument, the autoharp, sound like a whole orchestra. He is a warm and rustic performer, inviting you not just to listen to the music but be part of the music. He is a gruffly sparkling dinner guest and raconteur.

All this is doubly true in the twenty-below reality of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in January, where for many years he sang at Dean and Betty Premo’s Second Sunday Folk Concert & Dance, and then stayed over for a 2^nd Monday dinner and front parlor sing-along, during which Helen and Mountain Man Mike compared bear stew recipes.

Bryan recognized me as a fellow-traveler. He said we were “hash brothers.” I was always afraid to ask what that meant. He and I became close once-a-year friends. One year it was even twice, when his tour brought him close enough to Bloomington--after Helen and I were “back home again, in Indiana”—that I was able to book him into IU’s Old Time Music schedule at The Hoagy Carmichael Room.

I had gotten the reputation, at least among The Second Sunday crowd, as the UP’s poet in residence, primarily because I had written the lyrics for a theme song for the 2^nd Sunday dance. Since the dance was held at the Fortune Lake church camp, it started out, “It was on the second Sunday, in January’s stormy cold, that I braved the snow up to the lake, to have my fortune told…”

Yes, not great poetry, but available for understanding, which, when your brain is frozen, is what you want. This was not true with the poetry of Bryan Bowers.

Since he had heard that I was a poet, after he had sung to start the 2^nd Sunday festivities at Fortune Lake, he would lead me off into a far corner to read his poems to me. Since I hadn’t seen him for a year, there were “several.” It irritated Helen no end, since this was during the dancing part of the evening and she was left without a dance partner. But Bryan was so earnest. I didn’t know how to say no to him. I also didn’t know how to comment on his poems. It's quite possible that a real poet would have found Bryan's poems to be classics. I did not, because there were no edges where I could get in.

I nodded, and said “Hmm…,” and tried to look interested, which is what I do now when someone looks like they just said something that I should have heard…

John Robert McFarland

NOT ALWAYS TO THE SWIFT [W, 6-12-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—NOT ALWAYS TO THE SWIFT [W, 6-12-24]

 

NOT ALWAYS TO THE SWIFT

I was neither fast nor elegant

I won no medals, no ribbons

no accolades, no laurel wreaths

but I gloried in the hard

pounding of feet and heart

the simple joy of enduring

When I could no longer run

there was loss, yes

regret, even grief

but relief as well

for running is

hard sweaty work

with expectations

by those who stand

along the roadside

to watch the race unfurl

and, more, much more

to reckon with

by the one who runs

I think that must be

the way of death

Loss, regret, grief

but relief as well

No more expectations

by those who watch

or by the one who runs

Just relaxing

into the everlasting arms

 

John Robert McFarland

INTELLECTUAL REVENGE [T, 6-11-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Personal Musings of an Old Man—INTELLECTUAL REVENGE [T, 6-11-24]

 

In 1964, I was appointed as campus minister for Indiana State U and Rose Polytechnic, in Terre Haute. Early in my time there, I was invited to a faculty symposium. It wasn’t very formal. A lounge-type setting. The series was designed for faculty to learn from one another, hear what was going on in fields other than their own.

INSU was in the process of transitioning from a Normal school [teachers college] to a university. It was hiring a lot of bright young scholars who had just finished their doctorates. I had just finished seminary, the same 3 grad years on top of a bachelor’s degree that they had put in, so they saw me as one of themselves. It was a heady time, and the symposium was a heady place.

In that first symposium session, a young English prof talked about Reynolds Price. I had never heard of him. Of course not, because he was neither theologian nor Biblical scholar. The next session, a new young biology prof talked of Rachel Carson. I had never heard of her. Of course not, because she was neither theologian nor Biblical scholar.

My reading for years was all required for classes. C.H. Dodd. The Baillie brothers, John & Donald. The Niebuhr brothers, Reinhold and Richard. Reuel Howe. C.S. Lewis. George Buttrick. Schleiermacher. Kierkegaard. Barth. Tillich… I did a LOT of reading for seminary. It was interesting and useful. But it was not the reading my new friends were doing. Even worse, I found out it was not what my students were doing. If I wanted to talk with anyone on my campus, faculty or students, I needed to catch up.

I was embarrassed, of course, to admit I was so far out of it. I read at home, not in my office, where someone might see me. Reynolds Price. Rachel Carson. JRR Tolkien. J. D. Salinger. John Updike. Loren Eisley. Harper Lee. Ray Bradbury. Maya Angelou. Saul Bellow…

I learned so much from them. They are still among my favorites. I’m grateful to my new young prof friends for the introductions, even though I’m still embarrassed by how unlettered I was when we started.

I got my revenge, though. “The death of God” was the big thing in theology right then, so I brought Wm. Hamilton, the leading Death of God theologian--along with Thomas J.J. Altizer--to campus for a couple of days, including a session of the symposium. Those bright young profs had never read him!

John Robert McFarland