POEMS FOR THE FINAL STAGE [F, 12-30-22]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter: POEMS FOR THE FINAL STAGE   [F, 12-30-22]

 

[As we move from one year to another, it seems appropriate to reflect on the final stage of all those years, so here are entries from various days of my poetry journal.]

OVERNIGHT DELIVERY

I got so very old

so very quickly

I blame Amazon

 

PRACTICALITY

If this is

the day I die

I don’t want

to be tired

so I’d better

take a nap

 

WINTER VISION

Being good at being old

means seeing the beauty

in bare limbs

  against gray skies

in the way grass hunches

  its shoulders up

  against cold rain

in memories of color

  as twilight darkens

 

LEARNING TO BE GOOD

I so much wanted

to be good at…

 

Tying my shoes so I wouldn’t trip

Subtracting nineteen from seventy-three

Reading faster than Jimmy or Carol

Knowing the words to Down in the Valley

Spelling amphibious as well as cat

 

Plowing a furrow straight and true

Hitting a pitch that curved

Changing the oil in a Chevrolet

Putting my arm around a girl

Writing one true word, and then another

 

Riding the circuit from church to church

Making them laugh, making them think

Three points, a poem, and benediction

Offering bread to eat and wine to drink

Life in joy with God and self

 

Listening with my heart for love

Balancing a baby on my knee

Being a friend to all who stumbled

Baptizing prisoners who yearn to be free

Storming the gates of injustice

 

Hearing the Word, saying the words

Leading the way to the promised land

Listening for bassoons in the silent night

Clarion call for the carnival band

Singing a marching song

 

Now I want to be good at being old

Slipping away so quietly

that folks must search the internet

to know on which side of eternity

I’m trying to learn to be good

 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

THE YOUNG PREACHER’S COMEUPPANCE [T, 12-27-22]

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

THE YOUNG PREACHER’S COMEUPPANCE [T, 12-27-22]

 

Now is the day

of my comeuppance

for all those years

of preaching

that love is a verb

and life is

too much trouble

unless you live

for something big

and Christ has no hands

but my hands

[Actually, I never liked

that one, but I said

the same thing

in different ways]

Now I can live for nothing

more than remembering

why I am in this room

even when it is the bathroom

If Christ has no hands

but my hands

we’re both in bad shape

I live no verbs

Even my nouns

are passive

So I ask forgiveness

of all those old people

  “puny & feeble”

  marked beside their names

  in the Solsberry member roll

who heard me proclaim

that they must go

do great things

when they could barely

find the mouth with the spoon

or remember what comes after

Our Father…

 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

BETTER THAN SANTA [Sa, 12-24-22]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter: BETTER THAN SANTA [Sa, 12-24-22]

 

I post this every Christmas, not just because it features my favorite granddaughter--although that is enough reason for a grandpa--but because it is the best explanation of Christmas that I know.

As Christmas approached when Brigid was four years old, she said to her mother, “You know, Santa and Grandpa are a lot alike. Santa has a bald head, and Grandpa has a bald head. Santa has a white beard, and Grandpa has a white beard. Santa brings toys, and Grandpa brings toys. But Grandpa is better, because he stays and plays.”

That is the message of Christmas, the birth of Christ into the world. God is not just some Santa, hurrying across the roof of the world, stopping long enough to throw some goodies down the chimney. In Jesus, the Christ, God stays, and plays.

John Robert McFarland

The pic is from the web, even though it does look quite a bit like Brigid and me.

The Human Face of God

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections On Faith & Life For The Years Of Winter: The Human Face of God [W, 12-21-22]

 

When I was the ten-year-old new kid on the school bus, one of my fellow riders, about my age, said, “My father says that the worst white man is still better than the best black man.”

He said it like he wanted to believe his father, but as though it didn’t sound quite right. I didn’t say anything, even though I knew it wasn’t right, because I was afraid to talk in those days. I knew it was wrong, though, because I lived in the real world, the world of facts and knowledge and logic and common sense. I knew what was going on.

That surprised my teachers during my first 4 school years in Indianapolis, because in their report card comments, they noted that I could not spell and I could not write and I could not read and I could not talk, including the obligatory reading aloud.

They also all commented, however, on how well-informed I was in social studies and current events. How could a kid who couldn’t read or write or spell or talk know that much?

I think that was because those were WWII years, and my beloved uncles, the younger brothers of my parents, were in the army and air force and navy and marines. The whole family listened each night to H.V. Kaltenborn on the radio, to the news of all the theaters of the war.

That led me to seek out news of the world in other places. I listened, and I learned. So I was not taken in by that “any white man is better” stuff. I knew about George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington. And I knew how to think.

That school bus experience was 20 years before the Civil Rights movement. I learned that a lot of people believed the same way as my school bus friend’s father, as non-sensical as it was. They wanted to believe it because it meant that they always had someone they could look down on, regardless of how miserable and unsuccessful their own lives were.

That’s why Trump is so appealing to many people, despite the common sense that he is a charlatan and scammer. Trump claims he is successful and wealthy when he isn’t. We identify with that. We want to think we are successful even though we aren’t. Trump claims that he gets cheated out of what is rightfully his. We identify with that. We feel like we get cheated out of ours, too. Trump claims that he is better and more deserving that others just because of who he is, not because of merit. We identify with that. We want to believe that about ourselves, too.

It is easier for us to relate to a person than to a theory or to reason. Christians should understand that. After all, we say that Jesus of Nazareth is the human face of God. He’s easier to relate to than some distant deity. The more out of control your life is, the more you need to simplify. The easiest simplification is through relating to a person. “Heil, Trump!" “Save me, Jesus! Come, Lord Jesus!”

That’s why so many people claim that Hitler or Elvis or whoever their savior is still lives. We want, need, some PERSON, who can go with us through the valley of the shadow of death…without any of those black people or gay people or educated people who think they’re better than we are. When we look into the mirror, we want to see the face of God.

But here’s the crux, and the point of Christmas: Jesus says that you’ll never see the face of God when you look into the mirror. You’ll only see the human face of God when you look into the face of your neighbor, your fellow human being.

I suppose my grade school teachers would be surprised that I lived my life as a talker, and as a writer. I hope they would not be surprised that most of that talking and writing was to say that we do have a Person to whom we can hitch our wagons, and that Persons says that the best white man and the best black man should walk together to help everyone be better.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

IT HAPPENED OVERNIGHT [Su, 12-18-22]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections On Faith & Life For The Years Of Winter: IT HAPPENED OVERNIGHT [Su, 12-18-22]

 

The first time I can remember it was when I went down to breakfast one hot June morning at Howell Neighborhood House in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. I was a social worker at HNH that summer, before my senior year in college, and also the Sunday preacher at the Wycliffe and Halstead Street Methodist Churches. Randy Robertson and I lived in the back room on the fourth floor. The summer social work girls and the professional staff lived on the third floor, closer to our common living room and kitchen.

That morning, I walked down the stairs and into the kitchen and thought, “What in the world happened overnight?”

There sat a vision of loveliness, a beautiful blond girl in short white shorts. “Oh,” she said, “I’m Marian. I just got in from California last night after everyone had gone to bed. I’m hungry, but I didn’t know what it’s okay to eat…”

I was used to being first up and fixing breakfast for everyone anyway, and she was pretty, so she ate well.

Then there was that time that I woke up in the hospital. They had taken me into the operating room at midnight, on my birthday. They told me to count back from one hundred and I think I got to 99 before I went out.

The next morning I woke up and counted the tubes going in and out of my body. There were more tubes than I had body openings for tubes! I thought, “What in the world happened overnight?”

The older we get, the more of those overnight changes there are. We’re going along just fine, and suddenly, everything is different. Some are pleasant, like having to eat breakfast with a California girl. Some are not so pleasant, like Nazi nurses coming into your room and making you get up to walk before you even know what’s happened to you.

And some will be like that inn-keeper, going out to the stable to check on his lowly guests the next morning, and finding a bunch of dirty shepherds and pristine angels hanging out together around a crib with a little baby in it. “What in the world happened overnight?”

You’ll be forever marked. You’ll always wonder what happened to Marian after that summer in Chicago, and you’ll always wonder what happened to that part of you, both physical and emotional, that the surgeons cut out. You’ll always wonder what became of that baby who was born with so much promise.

I think maybe heaven will happen that way. You’ll wake up and say, “What in the world happened overnight?” You’ll always wonder…

John Robert McFarland

 

REMEMBERING TOM [R, 12-15-22]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter: REMEMBERING TOM [R, 12-15-22]

 

C. Thomas Cone, Esq, died this morning, Dec. 15, 2022.

When I write a eulogy for a friend, I try to find some theme, something that can be used to explain their whole life. The only theme I have for Tom Cone is this: I never understood him. I don’t feel bad about that; I don’t think anyone else ever understood him, either.

Sometimes, people you don’t ever know do you the greatest favors. So it was with some anonymous clerk in the housing office at IU,

In September of 1955, the IU housing office put into the same room in Linden Hall, in the long-defunct Trees Center, a naïve farm boy from a very small high school and a brilliant city kid from the biggest high school in the state, only because neither of us smoked. From that came a 67-year unique friendship. I am reluctant to say that Tom and I were best friends, for I don’t want to compete with his other friends, but our friendship is, I think, one-of-a-kind.

Although I never understood him, living with him as college students, and enjoying his friendship over the rest of these years, has allowed me a few insights…

Tom was a fundamentalist. The fundamentals for him were law, family, knowledge, friends, the Red Sox, and bridge, not always in the same order. He loved justice more than law, competition more than winning.

Tom was a rascal. He loved practical jokes, and they sometimes backfired, like the gardening competition when the police got the idea that someone was threatening to murder one of Hancock county’s elected officials. Tom was never the favorite person of the local police, and so he never admitted that he was the guilty party who had lost the contest and so had hung dead flowers on her door with a note that said, “I’ll get you next time.”

He did not suffer fools gladly, but he could be remarkably patient with people like me, who were never up to his intellectual level, but who shared his fundamentalist values.

For 67 years we have had nothing in common, except values.

One shared value was family. He loved Helen, and was sure she could have done better. I know that, because, on our wedding day, he told me that. He loved my children and grandchildren, and taught them math shortcuts, and wondered why they turned out so well. I love Sally, and was sure she could have done better, and I told him that many times. I love the Cone children and grandchildren, and while I could not teach them any math, I have been able to do weddings for them. I’m sure that Sally is the only reason they turned out so well.

Another shared value was justice. It pained him that the adversarial system so often required him to defend people he knew were guilty. He did not like the system in which guilty people got off simply because he was smarter than the lawyers he was up against. [Although he did revel in being better than any lawyer he had to face.]  But he knew that justice could not be done if everyone in the system did not do their best.

A third shared value was learning. Tom was always the smartest guy in the room, which both pleased him and irritated him. He loved being smarter, but he also loved competition, and he wanted people to be smart enough to challenge his mind. Few of us could. Starting out as the smartest guy in the room did not keep him from wanting to keep learning, though. Throughout his life he loved ideas, and debating them.

I am a preacher by profession and a theologian by education, so I think in religious terms. Thus, I shall say that God and Tom have a lot in common. For one thing, they are both good at testing your patience. More importantly, I’m never going to understand either one. If you are going to love either one of them, you have to do it by faith, acceptance. I learned that earlier about Tom than about God.          

The last time we had lunch together, he had trouble with speech because of his stroke. At one point he tried to ask me if I were still preaching and couldn’t quite get the thought right. Finally, he said, “Do you still say the words?”

Well, yes, my old friend, I do, so I’ll say these words: I love you. Thank you, for being my friend, for being incomprehensible, for being you.

John Robert McFarland

The photo is of Linden Hall. Tom and I lived in the middle, upper floor.

 

 

 

 

 

The Satisfaction Of Absent Things [W, 12-14-22]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter: The Satisfaction Of Absent Things [W, 12-14-22]

 

Old people face the coming of Christmas with a particular sort of dread. I’m going to get presents! There is nothing wrong with presents, of course. They are signs that people care about us. Sometimes they are useful. Sometimes fun. Sometimes chocolate. But they add to our supply of stuff. Stuff that we don’t need.

My mother was an especially bad gift receiver. We were young enough when she was old that we did not understand why she did not want stuff, because she needed stuff. One day, about this time of the month of December, Helen and I went to do our usual errands and such for my parents, and Helen took the occasion to try to sneak some gifts in while Mother wasn’t looking. Mother could be observant, though. “What is that?” she demanded. “Stuff,” Helen said. My father, who liked to push Mother’s buttons almost as much as she liked to push his, said, “Don’t you recognize stuff when you see it?

Well, yes, we old people do recognize stuff, and we have too much of it already, and we don’t want more. So, at Christmas we are a real problem to our children, who want to give us stuff. For several years I’ve said, “Stuff we can read or eat, that’s all.” This year I asked for underwear for boys age 4 to 6. The MUSH tree at church {Mittens, Underwear, Sox, Hats} always needs more of that kind of stuff. It also allows me to yell to other old men, “I brought my underwear to church today.”

 

So, here’s an entry from my poetry journal:

THE JOY OF ABSENT STUFF

I gave away some

books this week

a tie and a suit coat

a radio, cassette tapes

a toy bank, a cap

I rejoice in their absence

John Robert McFarland

The above seems a rather short reward for taking the trouble to find your way here, so I’ll repeat one of my favorite stories about daughter Katie Kennedy, the author, [1] since she came to visit us recently and got lost only once. [That she told us about]

I mention that because she is not averse to getting lost. At age 20 she got lost in Moscow intentionally to see if her half semester of Russian language was enough. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t.

But she encountered a young Russian man who wanted to try out his English. He got her back to her hotel. This was in Cold War days, before “Glasnost.” Being a provocateur, she wore a cross around her neck. The young man pointed it out and asked if she were a Christian. When she said she was, he reached into his shirt and pulled out the Russian Orthodox cross around his neck. “Is that why you helped me?” Katie asked, “because I’m a Christian?” “No,” he said. “I helped you because I’m a Christian.”

John Robert McFarland

1] The Constitution Decoded; What Goes Up; Learning to Swear in America.