“I’LL PRAY FOR YOU…” [T, 8-31-21]

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

After Maggie explained to me how she was crippled from a fall, and had to be on oxygen all the time for COPD, I told her I would pray for her, and began to explain what NOT to expect from my intercessions, for, although we have known each other for 60 years, from when I officiated at her wedding to my school friend, Dave, we don’t know each other well, and I didn’t want her to think I was promising some sort of magic. But she waved me off, as much as one can wave off a do-gooder on the telephone. “I don’t care about that,” she said. “It just makes me happy when people tell me they’re praying for me.”

I think there is much more to intercessory prayer, but that part is always there, if we know people are praying for us: we are not alone in our problems and misery. We can take any pain much better if we know we are not going it alone.

I mentioned in the column of 8-29-21 the colleague group of The Academy of Parish Clergy in the Quad Cities, that cluster in IL and IA across the Mississippi River. One of the members was a Roman Catholic priest, Marv Mottet, the social action ministry director for the Davenport Diocese. As we shared our stories, Marv told about his cancer.

He was in his 40s, and the cancer got worse and worse. The doctors said there was nothing they could do, until it got bad enough, and then they could send him to M.D. Anderson in Houston, where they could use an untried therapy on hopeless patients. His strength declined so much that he was appointed to hear the confessions of a convent of cloistered nuns, since that was not strenuous, at all. There Sister Catherine told him that she would do nothing but pray for him until he was cured. He thought it was sweet but irrelevant. The cancer kept getting worse.

Finally, he was bad enough to go to M.D. Anderson. They did the intake tests and the doctor called him in. “Father Mottet, why are you here? We can find no cancer in you at all.”

He was stunned. “I was walking the sidewalk outside the hospital, unable to grasp it, when I suddenly realized that in the liturgical calendar, it was St. Catherine’s day.”

That story sustained me when, 15 years later, I got cancer. I did not know Sister Catherine, but I had lots of sisters and brothers in the faith who prayed for me. I was not alone.

Some people scoff at such stories. I mean, what could prayer have to do with it? “Spontaneous healing” we call it when we can’t understand it, as though that answers, and dismisses, the question of the spiritual dimension of healing. But it’s a given now that there is a spiritual element to all of human life, including healing, and that intercessory prayer has a part in that.

When I was doing Clinical Pastoral Education with David Belgum at the U of IA hospital, Larry Den Besten was Chief of Surgery. In those days, patients spent the night before surgery in the hospital. Larry called on each one the evening before their operation and prayed with them. The nurses said, “Most of them, they could home right then. They didn’t even need the surgery anymore.”

But, some protest, often people pray for healing and it doesn’t happen. Well, of course not. We also use chemo and surgery, and often they don’t produce healing, either, but we don’t stop using them because they are not 100% effective.

No cure lasts forever. Everybody dies. Even Marv Mottet died, in 2016, at the age of 86. Indeed, death is the final cure.

We probably should not use “healing” and “cure” interchangeably, the way we usually do, the way I already have in this column, for there is a difference between cure and healing. I think it is Bernie Siegel who says, “Not everyone will be cured, but everyone can be healed.”

Maggie is 80. She doesn’t need my prayers for cure. But she needs my prayers for healing, and I need to pray them. Both the one who prays and the one prayed for receive a gift in prayer, the gift of healing, which is the gift of knowing that we are not alone, we a part of life and death together.

John Robert McFarland

 

ETERNAL PRAISE FOR TRANSITORY GIFTS [Su, 8-29-21]

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

When I finished years of campus ministry plus doctoral work, it had been a long time since I had pastored a congregation. I knew a lot had changed in the church since I was serving student appointments during college and seminary. I knew I needed help in making the transition back to the pastorate. The Academy of Parish Clergy was brand new, and it sounded like just what I needed. It was.

Granger Westberg founded the APC as a continuing education community for pastors, in which we would learn from one another by “sharing the practice.”

I was preaching at Orion, on the IL side of the Quad Cities area [Davenport and Bettendorf in IA, Moline and Rock Island in IL], and I was so enthusiastic about APC that I formed a colleague group, with about a dozen members from most Protestant denominations and at least one Roman Catholic. One member was Bob, pastor of a large Baptist church in Moline. He was an enthusiastic member of the group. Bright, young but not new in ministry, personable, good-looking, well dressed.

We met on Tuesday mornings to do case studies and then went to lunch. One Tuesday Bob came in looking bedraggled, a way he never looked, and very sleepy. He said, “Sunday, after church, we had a regular board meeting. Somebody made a motion to fire me, and it failed by only one vote, my wife’s. I had no idea anything was wrong. I haven’t slept since.”

I was so pleased that he had that group. We’d been meeting long enough that we cared about one another personally, not just professionally. We went into “how can we help” mode. We decided to offer our services, meaning me [after all, I had just done a doctorate in theological communication], to the congregation, for learning a better process for congregation and pastor to communicate and work on problems. I actually did that, and it helped. They created a whole new pastor-parish format. [1]

The APC was “an idea whose time has come,” but its time wasn’t very long. Soon after it was founded, seminaries began to offer continuing education, too. Most congregations don’t like for their pastor to go far afield, even to get better at the job, but they understand if you want to go back to seminary for a conference once in a while. They certainly think it’s a waste of time for him/her to be hanging around with preachers from other denominations, though, and even synagogues and mosques, the way we did in APC. You got no pastoral points for APC.

But I mourn the demise of the APC. It had the brightest and most committed pastors I have ever known, and we really were able to be better pastors, and make the church better, by “sharing the practice.”

Actually, I started this as a letter to my old APC colleague, Fred Skaggs, just reminiscing, but a writer hates to get only one use out of his/her scribbles, so I’ll come up with a principle to justify making you read it, too: all church sub-groups and side-groups have limited life. Women’s circles, prayer groups, men’s breakfast groups, Bible study groups, mission organizations. That’s okay. It’s the nature of social life. But it’s okay to celebrate those groups that have given us a clearer identity within the sometimes vague reality of the church in general. [Same goes if you’re not a church person. No matter how often you sing “I love this bar,” it won’t last forever.]

John Robert McFarland

1] Bob and his wife were an excellent singing duo and did a special concert for my congregation as a thank-you to me.

 

THE INCIDENT AT SHADY REST [F, 8-27-21]

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

THE INCIDENT AT SHADY REST    [F, 8-27-21]

 

As a writer, or a preacher, or a person… when you question if you should tell a particular story, you probably should not. But this is Biblical [See Psalm 18:7] and an almost accurate account of an incident involving my father at his next-to-last nursing home… so don’t blame me!

 

I like to fart the old man said

And as he did his face turned red

Miss Primly almost dropped her crumpet

At the sounding of the trumpet

As tectonic plates went to quaking

And the foundations started shaking

But the children gladly giggled

As in his chair the old man wiggled

After all, it was their teacher who

asked him what he liked to do

 

The Gleaners Class was at Shady Rest

To bring cookies to each feeble guest

To sing a song of Jesus true

And ask them what they like to do

Which was quite clearly a mistake

As the room began to shake and quake

With reverberations loud and rumbly

That caused the cookies to get quite crumbly

 

Miss Primley cried, “Children, out of here,”

But they laughed so loud they could not hear

They pointed at her and made noises farty

Like she herself was the guilty party

For even if a teacher is pure and true

Pointing fingers is what kids do

She ran for the door with a cough and a hack

And to Shady Rest she never went back

 

So if the preacher acts real cool

And says, Would you teach in our Sunday School?

Remember the lesson of Shady Rest

And tell her you think it would be best

If instead you slit your wrists

Or hit your face with doubled fists

But if you’re stupid and if you’re new

At least don’t ask old men what they like to do

 

John Robert McFarland

There was an incident at an annual conference where a dog got in, ran up onto the stage and bit the bishop, then ran down the aisle and bit three lay people on its way out. The usher asked why it bit all those lay folk, and it said, “I just had to get the taste out of my mouth.” If you need to get shed of the taste of this CIW, you can go to glennsreflections.com. It was suggested to me by colleague-in-ministerial-mayhem and friend of CIW, John Shaffer. Glenn’s reflections are not real exciting, but they are righteous, enough to balance the incident at Shady Rest. [Also, he’ll send his columns to you via email if you sign up for them.]

 

 

 

 

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR [W, 8-25-21]

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

I received a nice note from the columnist, thanking me for my letter to the editor, correcting his mistake. He had written that it was Reinhold Niebuhr who composed what has become known as “The Serenity Prayer.” God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

That wasn’t the mistake. I thanked him for giving Niebuhr credit, for often folks act like that prayer just appeared out of nowhere. But he had gone on to say that Niebuhr had been a Nazi U-boat captain who had later become a theologian. Nothing could have been further from the truth. In his thank-you note to me, W. Lee Truman acknowledged that he must have gotten Niebuhr confused with someone else.

That was one of my several “correcting” letters over fifty years or so of “letters to the editor.” I even once corrected the Hebrew of a Bible professor! [And the editor noted under my letter that I was right.]

I know all this because I’ve been going through my file of clippings, and copies of those letters, that I wrote to a lot of different editors. It’s a thick file, but as I count them up, I see that I was not as prolific a letter writer as I remembered. Only two or three letters a year. Of course, I had a lot of other outlets for my ideas, as a preacher and speaker and writer, so Letters to the Editor was not a primary way for me to go.

Sometimes, though, it was the best way. A letter to the editor gets your idea to more people than a sermon does. And to different people.

I’m only slightly surprised that I never wrote about specific politicians. My concerns were not people but issues—apartheid, race relations, Viet Nam, the treatment of veterans, guns, booze, dope, capital punishment, abortion, Nicaragua, funding for education and children…

And approaches, especially hypocritical and illogical approaches and arguments. I never ranted in my letters. I learned that a bare statement of the facts was often the most powerful witness against injustice.

I did, however, occasionally use sarcasm, you know, taking the other side to its logical extreme so that it is shown to be hypocritical and illogical. Considering how often I think and say things to my friends sarcastically, I’m surprised it was so infrequent. My guess is that the letters that got printed were my second [or fifth] drafts.

I often wrote to commend the writer of an article, or to support a public figure who was under fire—a school principal or another clergy person. I sometimes wrote to disagree with a theological or social stance, stating complete reasons for my disagreement. Editors sometimes “edited letters for brevity” when they printed them, and I sometimes thought they changed the meaning—one time they changed a word and made it the exact opposite of what I was saying—and that required another letter.

Sometimes I wrote to the editor to question the journalistic ethics or even grammar of the publication and was surprised and pleased when editors would print those. Occasionally, though, they would say, “We stand by our story.” That’s a “weasel word.”  I learned that “stand by our story” did not mean that they still believed their story was accurate; it just meant they didn’t intend to admit they were wrong.

Most of the letters went to the editors of religion or clergy periodicals or local newspapers. Some appeared in regional or national newspapers or magazines.

One letter to the editor of Sports Illustrated started a spirited—and printed—debate with Hall of Fame writer, Frank Deford, about whether girls should play five on five basketball instead of the traditional six on six, three on offense and three on defense, and never shall they cross the center line. You may be surprised that I was on the traditionalist side. It had nothing to do with thinking girls could not play the boys’ game well, or that their bodies couldn’t stand up to it. I felt that the 6 on 6 was a more wide-open, and thus more interesting, game, and also something girls could claim as their own, rather than just being “Johnnie come latelys” to the male version of something. Needless to say, Deford’s side won, just as Bob Hammel’s will—spoiler alert-- when the Designated Hitter becomes standard in The National League, too.

I’m glad I wrote to those editors. As I read those letters now, I doubt that they made much difference, but I am reminded that at least I tried to witness to what was right.

It’s like when Uncle Jesse, a hundred years ago, scored the winning goal for the wrong team in a basketball game. I asked him if it didn’t bother him when people teased him about it. “I always knew which side I was on,” he said.

That’s what Dr. Robert Eckley, President of IL Wesleyan U, said about me as he introduced me at a conference: “You never have any trouble knowing what side this man is on.” I liked that. I think he must have read my letters to the editor.

John Robert McFarland

“Language is the only homeland.” Czeslaw Milosz

 

 

ODDS & ENDS V: SCOTS, WORK ETHIC, ETC [M, 8-23-21]

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

THE KER-HANDED CLAN: Daughter Katie Kennedy, the author and historian, came across a reference in a Scottish history book to “fighting ker-handed,” which means left-handed, for Helen’s clan, the Kerrs, were left-handed. Kerr in Scotland is pronounced Karr, as with Deborah Kerr, the actress. Helen’s family named is spelled Karr so everyone will pronounce it the right way, even though that spelling is the wrong way.

Helen isn’t left-handed, but she’s proud of her heritage. Her mother didn’t give her, or her sister, Mary, middle names, since their father, “Tank” [Earl] Karr was the last male in his family. By using Karr as their middle name, they extended the family name one more generation. Alternatively, Georgia Heltzel Karr, my great mother-in-law, says that she kept their names simple so if they turned out stupid, “they could at least spell their name.”

When we were in Scotland once, when I was doing some work for my doctorate at St. Andrew’s University, we learned that the Kerrs built their castles backwards, so if they were invaded, and swordsmen were trying to come up the stairs, the invaders would have their right hands against the stone wall while the left-handed defenders had their swords on the free-swinging side. Pretty smart for simple-named people.

CONTINUING TRADITIONS: Daughter Katie Kennedy, the author and historian, bought a new mattress this week from a store called McGregor’s. She explained that since the McFarlands and McGregors used to go marauding together, stealing cattle and such, she thought she should continue the tradition of cooperation with them. She said they seemed… surprised.

THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG-DISTANCE LIVER: I saw that Seymour Halford died. We ran around with Seymour and Beverly a lot when we lived in Sterling, IL. Later, when we lived in Iron Mountain, MI and traveled to central IL and southern IN to see family and friends, we’d stop to see them, either coming or going. So I started to do my usual, notify mutual friends so we could grieve and remember together. Then I realized… Paul Blankenship, GL & Bettie Story, Larry Dunphee, Fred Congdon… all who knew both us and the Halfords are also dead. There is no one left to tell, no one with whom to share the grief and the memories… This is the first time this has happened. I suspect it won’t be the last.

WORK ETHIC: HOF College Football coach Tommy Bowden recently died at 91. In obit type comments, he was universally hailed as one who always had time for his players and other coaches. But I once heard his son say that the only high school game his father saw him play in was when he came to scout a player on the other team. American society, in general, lauds the “work ethic” of success, especially in sports. But the work ethic can work against other values.

SINGLE GIRLS: I got a Facebook friend request from someone claiming that her name is Rebekka Streicher and who says she has started a WhatsApp group [whatever that is] for “single girls who want good sex.” I’m sort of nostalgic for the olden days, when single girls who wanted good sex just kept quiet about it. I feel sort of bad for not accepting her request; I think she might profit from reading Christ In Winter.

NEW MOUSE: There’s nothing like a new mouse to make you realize how bad your old one was working. Talking computers, of course, although I guess it would apply to a psych lab, too. My mouse in Psych 101 had a green bottom, because it was lethargic and wouldn’t run the maze or do the other tests, so my lab partner, Gunther Lengnik, kept poking it in the behind with his fountain pen that had green ink. The mouse died, disrupting out lab reports considerably. I always suspected it had ink poisonings.

John Robert McFarland

“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them but to be indifferent to them. that’s the essence of inhumanity.” George Bernard Shaw

 

 

 

MOVING ON FROM CANCER [R, 8-19-21]

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

“I read somewhere that people who went to support group had a 50% better chance of getting well. I read somewhere else that patients who kept a journal of their feelings had a 50% better chance of getting well. I’m no dummy. That’s 100%! So, I kept a journal of my feelings, and I went to support group.”

That was always part of my talk at cancer groups and conferences. I wanted to encourage cancer patients to keep journals and go to support group.

My journal became Now That I Have Cancer I Am Whole. My support group at Carle Cancer Center in Urbana, IL, became the source of so many inspiring friends. “Cancer survivor” became my identity.

When I started going to support group, it had been running for twenty years, started by Everett and Rae Endsley, when Everett was a lung cancer patient. With only a few necessary absences, they had come to every meeting for all those years, even though Everett had been declared cured long before. They always came, they said, just in case a new patient had come and no one else was there that night. They wanted to be sure every bewildered survivor had someone who would listen to their fears and hopes.

I was inspired by their commitment, their continuing part of the cancer community, their continuing identity as cancer survivors.

But I was also inspired by Lynn Ringer--the co-founder of CanSurmount, and the subject of the book, I’m A Patient, Too--who became a personal friend through a summer Helen and I spent at Iliff Theological Seminary in Denver. Lynn told us that summer that there had been a time when she had to step away from the cancer community, when she had to learn to be a person without that cancer survivor identity.

I didn’t quite understand that then. Cancer survivor was my identity! I didn’t think I could survive outside that community. It wasn’t just the support, but the affirmation. Going through old files now, I’m amazed at how that identity consumed me. Good grief, I saved a lot of cancer stuff!

I have whole file drawers of reviews of my cancer book, in all sorts of periodicals, from local to national. Whole pages from that book were often reprinted in newspapers and magazines and other books. Articles were written not just about the book but about me. I was interviewed on radio and TV stations from Texas to the Carolinas. It was translated into Czech and Japanese, and HarperAudio did a spoken edition. They were going to get Jerry Orbach to read it, but I felt it needed to be read by a cancer patient, specifically the author, and so sent them a tape. They agreed and flew Helen and me to NYC to record it.

 

I was invited to speak all over the country, and looking at the number of programs I saved from those conferences, apparently I never turned one down! There were so many that I don’t even remember some of them, but I know I went, because I also saved the airplane ticket stubs. Most of that was due to my book, but also I was listed in the speakers bureau for National Cancer Survivors Day.

I got hundreds of letters from patients, nurses, doctors, ministers, social workers, family members, writers--telling me how helpful my book or some conference presentation was, telling of their own experiences, asking me for prayers. Some were from well-known people in cancer circles: Bernie Siegel, Rachel Remen, Jim Valvano.

As time went by, I began to think more like Lynn than like Everett & Rae. My survivor identity would always be important to me, but I couldn’t live in it alone forever. I needed to move on from a cancer identity that was so exclusive of everything else, and I did.

I still needed to be in community, for we have identity only in relationships, but no community goes on forever.

Part of being old is fading out of the communities that had meaning for us in earlier times, both so that younger people can have their turn in those places, but also because it is a gift.

For a long time, I identified as a cancer survivor. I look at all the articles and fliers and programs and letters I saved, and I am reluctant to put them into the recycling bin, because that was such an important part of my life. But they don’t represent who I am now.

Now I’m a life survivor. It’s a good community to be part of. I don’t need mementoes, reminders, because I live in the eternal now.

John Robert McFarland

My pattern is to post a column every other day, but I’m not sure if I’ll be some place that I can post on Saturday, so…

 

DO YOU LOVE US AS MUCH [T, 8-17-21]

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

“That hurts my feelings,” I said, making a petulant face.

“Good,” she said. “I want to hurt you.”

Her name was Jasmine, and she was 8 years old.

The occasion was letter-writing session for the 7 to 9 year old girls at Howell Neighborhood House in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Jasmine, like the other girls, had written letters of thanks and appreciation to all the other social workers at HNH. Unlike the other girls, she had omitted me. She made sure I knew it.

I had the 7 to 9 boys, too. They called themselves The Wahoo Indian Tribe, and you could always tell where they were by their ringing cries of “Wahoooo!” The girls were quieter, and refused to give their group a name, and yelled only within our club room, but they were meaner. To one another, and to me.

I’d forgotten about how mean they were until I read the daily reports I had to write for Jon Regier and Ellsworth Shepherd, the head guys at HNH. I discovered my copies of the reports in an old file I hadn’t looked at in 63 years.

Those little girls hit me all the time. Never my face, but I think that was because I was over six feet tall and they couldn’t reach it. But they would hit my back, my arms, my legs. Whatever we were doing—making crafts, reading stories, playing table games or hopscotch—whenever one was close enough, she would take a swipe at me.

It didn’t seem to be a game or competition. They weren’t trying to one-up each other: “I can hit Mr. John more than you can.” It was just what they did.

The boys didn’t hit me. They were a wild and unruly bunch, but they evoked no particular desire to hurt, either me or one another, although they were always willing to fight if provoked.

The girls also fought one another, with great passion and nastiness, with personal animosity. It didn’t seem like they personally disliked me; they just wanted to hurt me. Why I didn’t know.

They were so mean to one new little girl that she cried and never returned. She was white, but I don’t think that was it. Lily, 9 years old and the undisputed leader of the group, was black, as was Jasmine, but there were 3 or 4 other white girls, and an equal number of Mexican and Puerto Rican girls, and another black girl occasionally. They were an equal-opportunity insult & injury organization.   

I, of course, did my best to protect that little girl that day, physically and emotionally. I tried to protect them all from one another, to foment peace, to teach them to respect one another, and everyone else. But I was only 21 years old, a farm boy college student summer social worker. Those little girls were far more experienced in the ways of the cruel world and mean streets than I was. If they wanted to hurt you, they knew how to do it.

This went on the whole summer, our little club meeting for two hours each day--mostly having fun, playing games and going places, disrespecting newcomers until they fought their way in—and me going to bed each night in my third-floor room with no air-conditioning or fan or window screen, but lots of bruises all over my body.

Then my last day. Time to return to my luxurious dorm room at IU, luxurious because there was a window screen, and nobody there tried to hurt me—except for girlfriends and professors, but their hurting did not include hitting.

 Jasmine handed me an envelope as she left that day. In it was a note. I am discarding most of the items in my old files. This one, though, I need to keep for a while. It said, “I love you. We all love you. Do you love us as much as we love you?”

John Robert McFarland

The photo above is HNH in the summer of 1958.