MORE LIKE OURSELVES

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

An old friend told me a story of his mother, who had been in an Alzheimer’s unit for several years. I had known his mother since I was a kid. She was always a lady, in the old-fashioned, good sense. She was not “prim and proper,” but “neat,” in all the meanings of that word. So I was not surprised by this story, because mostly as we age we become more like ourselves.

Dave and his wife, Maggie, were visiting with Beulah in the lounge off the office one day when a middle-aged woman came in and signed her mother in. The mother was fine until they came out of the office and the daughter was getting ready to leave and it was clear the mother wasn’t going with her. When the mother found out that she had been consigned to an Alzheimer’s unit, she threw a fit.

Beulah leaned over to Dave and said, “If I ever have to live in a place like this, I’m certainly not going to act like that.”

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I became disturbed by the huge number of military suicides, both veterans and active duty, so I wrote VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans accused of murdering a VA doctor. It’s a darn good tootin’ adventure mystery story. My royalties go to helping prevent veteran suicides. You can buy it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.

I tweet as yooper1721.

SAYING THE WORDS

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

My old college roommate, Tom Cone, had a stroke, sixty years after we were put into the same dorm room just because neither of us smoked. We had nothing else in common, but we became fast friends, and so we remain.

The first prognosis was that he would never walk or talk again. They did not know Tom. He is back to doing everything he has ever done, except with some short term memory loss. At least, we think that’s what it is. If a man claims he can’t remember from one mowing to the next how to start the mower, he may just want to watch baseball instead of cutting the grass.

And finding words. He understands everything, but often cannot find the words to say what he wants. Recently he spent quite a bit of time trying to find the right word to ask me a question and then settled for, “Do you still say words… at the services?”

That’s a pretty good definition of preaching.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721. I’m not a Yooper [inhabitant of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula] anymore, but I don’t know how to change my “handle.”

WISDOM AND STORIES

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

I pray for all my preaching friends each Sunday morning, wishing I had words of wisdom to share with them. They don’t need my words of wisdom, but I feel uneasy if I’m not sharing words of wisdom, since I seem to have so many, and younger preachers seem to have so few.

That’s not true, of course, on either count. I don’t have wisdom just because I am old, and younger people don’t lack it just because they are young. One of the frustrations of old age, though, is wanting to share what wisdom we do have and finding that no one wants it.

I recall an older man in one of my churches. I’ll call him “Harry.” He thought he was the elder statesman and that whenever he spoke, that was the end of the discussion. I sometimes did not think his word was adequate as the last word, and so I would keep the discussion going. This bothered Harry, enough that he began to give me those “distant” signals that church people give, meaning he would not talk with me about his dis-ease with me, but he told other people in the church, and each year he led a movement to deny me a salary raise.

At one of those “no salary” church conferences, Harry was especially distraught because one of the younger men in the church, in his 30s, had openly opposed him. The next morning Harry was in my living room, bemoaning the lack of respect that younger people had for their elders, and presumably betters.

One fascinating part of that scene was that he still thought of me as his pastor. Even though he disliked me and my unwillingness to acknowledge him as the only wise person in the church, and just the night before had tried to deny me a salary raise, when he wanted to complain about others who not adequately respect his wisdom, he came to me, a younger man, and expected me to sympathize.

I did sympathize with him, of course, in part just because I was his pastor, but also because I could anticipate that time when I would be in his chair, in his years, wanting to share wisdom and not finding many takers.

The task of old age is not delivering wisdom but telling stories. I tell me stories to those who want to listen, or feel they have to, and if there is any wisdom there, they can find it on their own.

A woman recently said to me, “You’re so full of stories.” That was gratifying, mostly because “You’re so full of…” is not always followed by “…of stories.”

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

My youthful ambition was to be a journalist, and write a column for a newspaper. So I think of this blog as an online column. I started it 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.] We no longer live in “the place of winter.” The grandchildren grew 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 continue to work at understanding what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter…

I tweet as yooper1721.

The Way & The End & The Way... A poem

Jesus was all about the way

Not the end

The way is narrow

The way is steep

And yet his burden

On the way is light

Following Jesus is about the way

Not the end of what was done

That sounds right

But Of course, it is not true

That Jesus was all about the way,

Narrow or not

The truth is this

Jesus was all about the end

On the cross

Except that was not the end…

In the end was his beginning

Which is all about the way,

Not the end…

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

IN PRAISE OF RITUAL

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

We did not understand a single word that was said in that worship service, yet Helen and I agree that it was one of the most powerful and moving worship experiences we’ve ever had. No, not our worship at St. Mark’s UMC last Sunday, or today. That’s good worship, powerful and moving, but I do understand the words.

The time I did not understand the words was in Budapest, Hungary, before the end of the Cold War. It was a big old Catholic cathedral. Most of the other people there were “security,” sullen men in cheap suits who stood and slouched against the pillars and tried to look menacing. They were there mostly for intimidation, to try to make people afraid to worship at all. It didn’t work, not against the priest, nor against the small group of Hungarians gathered for worship, nor against us.

We did not understand a single word, but we worshipped. We understood the meaning of the words even though we did not understand the words.

Methodism is a direct descendent of Anglicanism, which is Roman Catholicism without the Pope. John Wesley, the originator of Methodism, was a priest of England. He did not change the ritual of the worship, just made it available for poor people, and put a greater emphasis upon preaching. So for Helen and me, that Budapest worship, in the dark shadow of Communist malevolence, was “our” worship. We knew the ritual even though we did not know the language.

That is one of the values of ritual.

Nadia Bolz-Weber, the founder and pastor of the Lutheran House for All Sinners and Saints, says that what her congregation likes most is that they don’t have a praise band. Almost her entire congregation is people not welcome in traditional churches, junkies and drunks and transvestites and parolees and gays and homeless, some of them all those things. Their lives are chaotic. When they come to church, they want something that they can count on, something the same from week to week, the Lutheran ritual straight out of the Lutheran hymnal.

Most of us have less chaotic lives than the folks at House for All, but we need ritual. When the sermon misses the mark, when the hymn melodies are unsingable or their theology untenable, we can count on the words of the ritual to recount God’s action in the world in a way that pulls us toward the altar as a magnet pulls iron filings.

C.S. Lewis said the purpose of ritual is to set our minds free so the Holy Spirit can work in them.

I like new stuff in worship. I like praise bands and praise songs, if they do good music and have good theology. I like drama and liturgical dance and impromptu dance and all the other stuff. But there are days when none of that speaks to me. Then the ritual is a gift. “Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I started this blog several years ago, when we lived in the “place of winter” in the title, 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.] May 18, 2015 we started moving “home,” to Bloomington, IN.

I tweet as yooper1721.

MY ONE REGRET

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

I don’t have many regrets, but I am sorry I did not play softball that late afternoon in the autumn of 1972.

I was walking between the union building and the library on the U of Iowa campus. There was an open field beside the union. Some guys had a softball game going. One of them yelled at me, “Hey, John, come and play.”

It sounded like he knew me, but I didn’t know him. I assumed he was yelling at some other John.

It’s a common name, so common that when I go to one of those restaurants that asks for your name so they can call it when they finally have your food ready, I say that my name is either Ambrose or Oscar, according to whether I’m in a theological or cinematic mood. If I tell them it’s John, when they yell that out, half the old men in the place jump up and try to get my food.

I looked around for another John. Nobody else around. He called again, waved his arm. Yes, they definitely wanted me to play.

I love to play ball. All kinds. Always have. Don’t know why. I think it’s a sickness. I play pickleball even now, and I’m twice as old as creaky ancient players who can barely stand up. Yes, a sickness, which is why I regret missing that opportunity so long ago.

But I was working on a doctorate. I had only one year of free ride via a Danforth grant. I had children in grade school. I needed to get my terminal degree out of the way so I could go back to work and make money to send my kids to college. I had made a careful schedule for my days, using every minute so that I could get all my course requirements and both language exams done the first year. The schedule had no room for softball.

So I waved back, and thanked them for the invitation, and stayed on schedule.

Now, that is among my regrets. I suspect that playing ball would have done me more good than reading the theologies of Karl Rahner or Hans Kung, or even George Forrell.

I don’t want any more regrets. I play ball first, and read theology later.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I’m going to be away from the computer for a couple of days. Probably won’t post again until Sunday.

I became disturbed by the huge number of military suicides, both veterans and active duty, so I wrote VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans accused of murdering a VA doctor. It’s a darn good tootin’ adventure mystery story. My royalties go to helping prevent veteran suicides. You can buy it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. Both print and ebook.

I tweet as yooper1721.

COTTAGE LESSONS

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

The idea was ridiculous, but we inquired about the price. The price was ridiculous, but we bought the cottage anyway. It was priceless.

Waggs and I would drive over to the cottage on Friday afternoon. Helen would come after school. We would eat frozen burritos and read until we fell asleep. The next morning Waggs would get us up to wander the shore looking for fish-heads. On Saturday afternoon we would reluctantly drive back to the land of work. But that weekly overnight in the cottage made it possible for us to stay alive by being ourselves.

Then I took a sabbatical. Helen continued to teach. The cottage wasn’t big enough to live in, so we moved to a town ten miles away, so that I would not be in the way of the new pastor. The cottage became a burden. Rather than a retreat, it was just a place where we had to go to mow the lawn and do other maintenance, just like our house. We didn’t need a cottage because we had nothing to get away from.

Old age is like a cottage. It can be a hideaway, where you get to be yourself at last, or a burden because it’s just more of the same old you. I’ve paid a lot for this present priceless opportunity. I intend to make the most of it.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

My youthful ambition was to be a journalist, and write a column for a newspaper. So I think of this blog as an online column. I started it 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.] We no longer live in “the place of winter.” The grandchildren grew 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 continue to work at understanding what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter…

I tweet as yooper1721.