ROTATING THE BOOKS

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

Moving mixes things up. After eight years in one place, the longest we have ever lived in one spot, my books were all nicely organized and categorized on the shelves in my study and the living room. But moving 600 miles to a condo got the books confused. The condo is much smaller than our northern exposure house, so now my study has only one book case instead of two, and the living room has only two instead of three. The books lost many companions in the downsizing, and they don’t know where they belong.

So now MSWord for Dummies stands side by side with Wally Mead’s Extremism and Cognition. My NRSV Bible is sandwiched between Kierkegaard’s Attack Upon Christendom and John Pollack’s The Pun Also Rises. Elaine Palencia’s Small Caucasian Woman is to the right of Wayne Oates’ The Christian Pastor. I know some small Caucasian women who are Christian pastors, but Elaine doesn’t write much about them. Paul Tillich seems to be strangely interested in Bob Hammel’s books on basketball. The same is true with Reinhold Niebuhr and the history of the Cincinnati Reds. And the United Methodist Hymnal… well, if osmosis works with books, soon we’ll be singing “Go Tell Aunt Rosie On the Mountain That It Was a Very Good Year.”

I think the books are onto something. One reason we make so little progress in human relations is that we stick too much to our own kind, read and see and hear only the books and magazines and blogs and TV radio shows of those who tell us only what we want to know, who enforce only what we already believe, who never challenge us to look at things in a new and possibly better way.

I’m going to leave the books alone, let them take the places they have chosen, with their new companions. It will be interesting to see what grows as the result of this new crop rotation.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I started this blog several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] The grandchildren, though, are grown up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the life cycle, so...

I tweet as yooper1721.

TOUCHSTONES

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

[The moving van comes on Monday, so this is probably my last post for the next week or so.]

A young woman recently told me that I am one of her “touchstone people.” [1]

That’s a wonderful compliment. It means she thinks of me as a “small tablet of dark stone, such as fieldstone or lydite, used for assaying precious metals.” In other words, you rub gold on a touchstone and can tell how pure the gold is by the marks it leaves on the stone.

Or she might mean that I’m one of those persons who is a “measure by which the validity of a concept can be tested.”

Helen had a high school student once whose test paper she used to grade the tests of the other students. She said that Amy’s answers were more accurate than those in the text book. Amy was a touchstone.

It’s humbling to be a touchstone. I’m not sure I want anyone using my life as a measuring stick. I doubt that I’m more accurate than the text book.

We all need touchstone people, though. That’s the whole point of Jesus. God is just too far away, too transient, for we mere mortals to get the point. But Jesus is a human being, just like us. We can look at him and get the point. WWJD? He’s he touchstone.

I’ve mentioned before how Helen uses WWAGD? She says, “Sometimes it’s hard even to understand Jesus, so WWJD? doesn’t work. So I ask, What would Aunt Gertrude do?” AG is a touchstone.

I’ve had and have a lot of touchstone people. I give thanks for them. They’ve helped me get the point when I wasn’t able to do it on my own.

One of these was my high school principal, Marlin Kell. He was a severe looking man, and very stern, but he understood people. If you chose to do wrong, he was very strict and made you pay the price. If you were trying to do right, though, and just messed up, he was very compassionate. He made you pay the price for your mistake, but he would go out of his way to help you get the point so you could do it right the next time, be it geometry, his teaching subject, or life.

It was exciting on those rare lunch times when he would shed his brown suit coat, put on a pair of sneakers, and join us on the basketball court, still in his suit pants and white shirt and tie. He would line us up on both sides of the court and take his place at the free throw line. The boy first in line on his right would pass Mr. Kell the ball and break for the basket. At just the right moment, our principal would throw a no-look, one-bounce pass behind his back just as the boy got to the basket, where he would grab the ball and lay it in. At the same moment that Mr. Kell threw that pass, the boy first in line on his left would throw the second ball to him and break for the basket. At just the right moment, Mr. Kell would throw that patented no-look, one-bounce pass behind his back, and the process would start with the second boy in each line.

That’s how it worked, technically. We tried to do it right, but sometimes we messed up, the pass going through our hands, or missing the layup. But sometimes Mr. Kell messed up, too, throwing the pass too soon or too late. He understood that even when trying to do it right, we sometimes got it wrong, but we could still work together and have fun.

I think he made those forays onto the court primarily because he liked them, and because it made it easy for him to keep the trouble-makers under observation and control. But I suspect he was also teaching, showing us that it was more fun if you did things right, but if you made a mistake, what you did was go get back in line and do it better next time.

I think God for the touchstones. And the touchbasketballs.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] Okay, so Mary is in her 60s and retired, but she was 18 when I met her, and I’m still much older than she is, so she’ll always be a “young” woman to me.

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I tweet as yooper1721.

ENDANGERED SPECIES

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

When emergency surgery revealed I had cancer, my first oncologist told me “a year or two.” I wrote the following poem, which won some contest prizes and was published in various places. That was 25 years ago. When a new transition comes up, like the one now, as we move from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, since the grandchildren are grown up now, to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married 56 years ago, I like to revisit this poem, to remind me that… well, you can read the poem and decide for yourself…

ENDANGERED SPECIES

At final dusk, the rhino came,

the last one, mateless,

thus by definition, last,

and last by nature’s way;

Sipped at the water in

the pool we share, and said:

“It must be me. I am

so ugly, short of sight,

so thick of brain and breath.

God might have let us live,

except for me.”

It bowed its head and turned

to go wherever last things go,

but I said, “Wait! Not so!”

Fierce whisper, “Look at me,

I’m beautiful, far-sighted, bright.

We stand at poles, apart,

In all but this:

We are both in danger’s way;

hunters’ shells and cancer cells.

That which holds us fast,

Yes, Death,

grips us tight in one

uniting fist.

So why then, if we’re so different, us?”

It smiled, as rhinos can, you know.

I grasped its ugly horn

and held on close.

Into the dark we charged.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I tweet as yooper1721.

I SHALL NOT BE MOVED

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

One of my favorite hymns, more a Gospel chorus, actually, is “I Shall Not Be Moved.” It comes from the lectionary Psalm for this Sunday, May 17, Psalm 1:3.

“Like a tree that’s planted by the waters, I shall not be moved.” We sang it a lot in the Civil Rights movement.

It always calls to mind a story from my friend, Ed Tucker, the famous “Friar Tuck” who drew cartoons for church publications. Ed was a Chicago boy and had a friend who took training to work for the CTA, the Chicago Transit Authority.

Their trainer asked them, “What is the one promise the CTA makes to its customers?” Sober drivers? Hardly. Clean buses? You’ve got to be kidding. On time? What universe to you live in?

“The one promise we make is this: If you are in the right place, and you stay there long enough, a bus will come.”

Friends, in the church, in the Spirit, we know we are in the right place. Now is the time for patience. Stay here. The Gospel bus is coming…

Here’s a little chorus I wrote about that. You can sing it to the tune of Folsom Prison Blues…

The Gospel bus is coming, coming after while, all the folks are singing, and the driver wears a smile, yes, the Gospel bus is coming, we need have no fear, the Gospel bus is coming, so let’s all stay right here…

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I tweet as yooper1721.

TAKE GRANDMA TO THE PROM-NOT

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

[Reader alert: This is twice as long as a “high concept” blog post is supposed to be. I apologize.]

This is prom season. If you don’t have a date for the prom, you can do some strange things.

I found out that I had no date quite by accident. I was the editor of the school newspaper. My girlfriend was editor of the year book. We shared a desk in the typing room. I was at the desk one day and noticed a sheet of paper in the yearbook tray. Phyllis was compiling a list of the prom couples. Her name was listed with a name that was not mine. It was bad enough to realize I had no prom date, but to make things worse, Vance was better looking than I. She had traded up.

I was mortified. It was a small school. Everyone was going to find out that I could not hold onto a girl I had been dating for a year and a half. We were not “going steady,” but neither of us had dated anyone else during that time, and we had gone to the prom as juniors, and…

Perhaps her fickleness had something to do with the fact that I had not asked her, just assumed. Women! Take them for granted just one time and they accept a date with some good-looking guy who actually pays attention to them. Her fickleness might also have stemmed from the fact that I was a horrible on dates in general. 

I have no ability at small talk. The simplest sentences can confound me. In fact, the simpler they are, the more trouble I have with them. Part of that is my dysnomia, the inability to think of nouns. Recently I could not think of the word “graves” and referred to them as “cemetery holes.” I was proud of my work-around. Our friends thought it was hilarious. [Note to Paul and Kathy: It is not nice to make fun of the nominatively challenged.]

If it were an actual subject, like in what universe y = x, or how to cut a chicken’s head off, or if Vince Dimaggio would ever be as good as Dom or Joe, I could hold my own. Unfortunately, none of those was an apt subject for discussion on a date. Unable to do small talk, I often said nothing, which probably came across as disinterest. If I could have just found enough nouns to say something stupid, I would have been okay. Girls prove every day that they are not put off enough by stupidity to refuse a date.

Through the years I have managed to pay my way in social conversation by telling stories, but at that time, I had not lived long enough to have any stories, only sophomoric jokes, which were way beneath seniors.

Phyllis had traded up. Who could blame her? I, for one

It was humiliating to have no prom date, and too late to find another girl who was willing to put up with my inability to talk on a date. If you can’t talk to a girl, she gets the impression that you are ignoring her.

There have been news reports recently of a high school boy, lacking a prom date, who took his great-grandmother to the prom. My Grandma Mac, five feet and ninety pounds of dynamite, would have been a hoot at a prom, for she made things fun wherever she was, but I did not know that taking Grandma was an option.

So I did the only logical thing. I dropped out of school and went to work on the night shift in a factory. That way everyone would think I could not come to the prom because I had to work, and the reason Phyllis went with a better-looking guy was that she had no choice. Perfect.

Except I didn’t get to go to the prom. And I wanted to. I had been class president for three years. This was our last hurrah together. I told my line boss at the factory of my woes. She was very perceptive for an elderly woman, almost forty. “I can get my daughter to go with you,” she said.

Normally a boy would be hesitant to accept such a date. Maybe her daughter was a spaniel. But she lived in Ft. Branch. All the guys knew the Ft. Branch girls were the best, in part because it was seventeen miles from Oakland City, and everyone is prettier at a distance, but also because the only drive-in in the county was the Dog ‘n Suds in Ft. Branch, where girls could not ignore you, the way they did in lesser places, since they had to come to your car to take your order. There is no girl more alluring than one in bobby sox and saddle shoes, with a little change apron around her waist that makes her jingle when she walks, and who wafts the aroma of root beer wherever she goes.

Needless to say, I had no trouble getting the night off. I borrowed Uncle Johnny’s new Chevy and drove the seventeen miles to Ft. Branch. Talk about Ft. Branch girls! This one was not just pretty, or even Ft. Branch pretty, she was prom pretty!

And she was unknown in Oakland City. When I walked into the prom with this vision of mysterious loveliness on my arm, everyone had to reassess me. Oh, I think my classmates had always respected me. They had been remarkably kind and accepting from the time I was the new kid in fifth grade. They knew I was okay in the classroom and in extra-curricular stuff. They had not known, however, that I was capable of getting a Ft. Branch-girl prom date.

If your grandson asks you to the prom, say “No.” Tell him to go to work in a factory and ask the boss to get him a date. Their friends will have to reclassify him into the chick magnet category. That’s what I’m going to remind my classmates at our 60 year reunion this summer.

I hope I did not use that nice Ft. Branch girl just to get credibility with my classmates. I’ll always appreciate her and her mother for their kindness to an awkward boy with no nouns.

I’ll take a different girl to the class reunion. I never got to take this one to the prom, but I have taken her most every place else, and now I’m taking her home.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] Come May 21, we’ll be living in the place of persimmons, Bloomington, IN, where we met and married, 56 years ago.

I tweet as yooper1721.

THE FIRST SHALL BE LAST...

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

When you are preparing to move, you think about firsts and lasts. This is our last Sunday at our church in Iron Mountain, in MI’s UP, the Upper Peninsula, before moving to SoInd, Southern Indiana, the site of my first Sunday as a preacher. [1]

When I was nineteen, the summer after my first year at Indiana University, I realized I had to keep my fourteen-year-old bargain with God, to become a preacher, if “He” would save my sister’s life. I made the mistake of telling Aunt Nora. She said I should go tell the District Superintendent. I did.

“You get good grades?” “All ‘A’s last semester,” I said, not mentioning my below B first semester, which was over before I noticed it had begun, that being the way of a moon-struck freshman.

“Good,” he said. “I’ve got three churches that need a preacher until Ellis Hukill graduates seminary in January and will be appointed there. You can start this Sunday.” He handed me a little piece of blue paper. “That’s the name of the people you should contact when you get there.”

“But…” I began. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking. You’re supposed to have a License to Preach.” He pulled a sheet of paper out of a drawer and wrote my name on it and then wrote his name on it. “You’re supposed to go to License School and pass the tests on Bible and polity and such to get a License, but you can do that later.”

I was a preacher.

I didn’t know it then, but it was my first experience with learning that administrators are not there to solve your problems; they are there to solve their problems, and they’ll gladly use you to solve their problems for them.

The three-church Chrisney circuit was a hundred miles south of IU. I did not have a car. My very healthy sister and her Navy husband were in Antigua, and Dick had left his old Olds up on blocks in our barn yard pending his routine. It had been there a long time. I sent Dick and Mary V fifty dollars. My father and I got the Olds off the blocks. He was blind, but he could make anything run. I did, however, have to carry a five gallon can of oil in the trunk, and every 50 miles had to pull off on the grassy shoulder of Highway 231 to replenish the engine’s oil, as I drove to and from my first pastoral appointment.

I drove down to Chrisney after classes on Friday, went to the address on the blue paper, the home of Bob and Catherine Adams, and got a key to the parsonage. It was empty save for a metal camp bed and a folding metal church-basement chair. I put my red Samsonite suitcase on end to use as a desk and set my Smith-Corona portable typewriter on it to write my sermon, actually just some reminder notes.

On Sunday morning, I went to the Adams’ house to get directions to Crossroads, the first service of the morning, about five miles from Chrisney in one direction, and to Bloomfield, three miles in the other direction, the third worship service of the morning. Chrisney, the big church, almost a hundred members, was sandwiched between.

It was my first experience with preaching the same sermon three times and finding that it was three different sermons. That has helped me a great deal as a writer, to be able to picture the faces of my readers as I write, to realize that each is looking at my words with a different expression, and to try to write in such a way that each of them, regardless of their place in life at the moment, can say, “Ah, yes…”

That’s why I think the best compliment I ever get on my writing is, “I can hear you as I read.”

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] If Southern California can be SoCal, I see no reason why Southern Indiana can’t be SoInd.

You can read more about my “call” in The Strange Calling.

My pickle ball pal, Vicky, who has read The Strange Calling, pointed out to me that the first church I went to that first morning preaching was Crossroads, and that my last day of pickle ball is in the gym of a church called Crossroads. “The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.”

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I tweet as yooper1721.

NAMES THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

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

When the famous Hoosier poet, James Whitcomb Riley, for whom the children’s hospital in Indianapolis is named, was a little boy, an orphan girl, age 12, came to live with his family. She was basically a maid, but at least she had a place to live. Little James and his brothers and sisters loved her, especially since she told them ghost and goblin stories, about “things that go bump in the night.” Her name was Allie. Later Riley wrote a famous poem about her: “Little orphan Allie’s come to our house to stay…” But when the newspaper printed it, the type setter grabbed the “n” instead of “l”. She became Little Orphan Annie. So she has remained.

Gil Hodge grew up in Petersburg, IN, 13 miles up IN Hwy 57 from my home town of Oakland City. He attended Oakland City College for a while, but his baseball skills were too great to be ignored. He signed a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers. The secretary who typed up the contract let a little finger drag, and his name on the contract got an s. Gil could crush a baseball, but he was far too gentlemanly to point out a mistake to a woman. He is the only Hodges in his family. Everyone else remained a Hodge. They didn’t have contracts with the Dodgers. Gil is not in The Hall of Fame despite a career worthy of the Hall. Perhaps the HOF is too cheap to pay for the extra s on his plaque. If he ever does get to the Hall, it will be as Hodges, not Hodge. [1]

I wonder about Allie. When she was grown up, when she said to the other women as they worked in the church kitchen, “You know, Mr. Riley, the famous poet, wrote about me,” Did they roll their eyes and say, “Oh, yeah,” but then think to themselves, “He never wrote a word about anybody named Allie.”

Too often we become and keep on being the wrong person because someone else makes a mistake and misnames us. You can drag around another’s mistake for a long time. It may even keep you out of some hall of fame. If someone misnames you, it’s okay to say, “No, you made a mistake. That’s not who I am.”

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] One boy from the area did make it to the Hall, Oakland City’s Edd Roush, the Reds’ center fielder, who played from 1913 to 1931. I wrote his biography for Scribners’ American Lives. His twin brother, Fred, was one of my coaches when I was a kid playing church league ball, which was our version of Little League.

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I tweet as yooper1721.