INSPIRATION VS EXPIRATION [W, 4-2-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Observations of An Old Man—INSPIRATION VS EXPIRATION [W, 4-2-25]

 

I’ve told you this story before, but since the new baseball season is here…

It was in the days when the Athletics had moved from Philadelphia to Kansas City on their way to Oakland to Sacramento to Las Vegas. They had not yet built a major league level ball park in Kansas City, so they played in a more “porous” minor league park, the kind where a dog might just wander in.

That’s what happened one day. It ran out to home plate. The fans began to yell at it. “Go for first.” “Take a walk.” “Bite the umpire.” It ran to first. “Go for second,” they shouted. It ran to second base. “Run to third.” It ran to third base.

There it stopped. People continued to clamor. “Go for home.” “Get a run.” “It’s the only run they’ll get.” Louder and louder. But the dog just sat on third base, until the grounds keepers came and carried it away.

A sports writer, reporting on the dog’s adventure, said, “It never got to home, because in all that shouting, it couldn’t recognize the voice of a master.”

From as long as I can remember, I went to church to be inspired, to hear the voice of the master, one that would lead me home. That’s what I wanted, needed, expected--preachers who inspired me to be an authentic person, a follower of Jesus, a respecter of others, one open to the leading of the Spirit. They told stories of others who lived authentically. They made me laugh. They made me feel lighter. They made me feel that I could do it, that I could conquer the demons and dilemmas of life.

I was inspired not only by preachers in church. I was inspired to be a good person by seeing goodness in action, in the lives of relatives and neighbors and friends and teachers.

Church, though, seemed to be a special place for inspiration, a place, a community, where that was the main task, to be inspired, to have fun, to spread joy, to sing and pray together.

So when I became a preacher that’s what I tried to do—inspire, in my preaching, in the rest of the worship service, in the rest of the church life.

There is more to life than inspiration, of course, and more to church. Preachers need to provide opportunities for education and fellowship and service. “Faith without works is dead.” [James 2:14-26]

Some would say that inspiration is encouragement toward anything, including lives of hate. There are orators who speak with mighty tongues encouraging people to hate. But that is not inspiration. That is expiration. Inspiration is for life. Expiration encourages death.

There is no joy in expiration. If humor is attempted, it is laughter at, not laughter with. It is bullying, hating, disrespecting. It is not making fun, but making fun of.

Many preachers, many churches, now preach not an inspiring gospel of good news but an expiring gospel of bad news, a gospel that extols greed and hate. It is sad.

So many churches, so many people, shout and run, but they never get to home, because in all the chaos and clamor, they never hear the voice of the master.

John Robert McFarland

ANSWERING THE CALL WHEN THERE IS NO CALL [M, 3-31-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—ANSWERING THE CALL WHEN THERE IS NO CALL [M, 3-31-25]

 

Our pastor is preaching his last Lent. Well, at St. Mark’s. He’s retiring at the end of June. He’s a good preacher, though. It’s unlikely that the bishop will let him get by without some part-time work. [1]

He’s earned his retirement. He has the looks and energy of a well-preserved fifty-year-old, but he’s seventy.

I was once chatting with a middle-aged, second-career Episcopal priest. He told me that when he was being ordained, he said to his bishop that his only regret was that he spent so many years as a business man before going to seminary and becoming a priest. “How many years will you be a priest before retirement?” the bishop asked him. “Only twenty.” “My God, man, that’s enough!”

Our pastor has put in 44 years all together, so that’s twice enough.

Social research has concluded that the Episcopal bishop was right. Twenty years is plenty for any job. Actually, these days, if you can get twenty in before technology or culture eliminates your job, you are doing pretty well.

Rapid cultural change causes many problems, because the basic needs of humans remain the same, even though the means of fulfilling them change. One of those basic needs is satisfying work, work that at least comes close to being a vocation, a calling.

When I felt the call to preach, the ministry was referred to as “the high calling.” I think the title was called high so that we wouldn’t notice that the pay was low.

Calling, though--the feeling that you are doing what you are supposed to do--does not necessarily go with job title. The job might be called high, but if you don’t fit in it, your life is low. I have known homemakers and teachers and farmers and bus drivers and cooks and gardeners and carpenters and so many others who experienced their lives as a calling, even if they didn’t use that language. They fit their job.

Even then, though, you probably need some sort of renewal. And these days, that twenty-year rule seems to apply. I knew a plumber who said, “The first seventeen years, I thought I had the best job in the world. I didn’t mind the yucky parts of plumbing because I enjoyed so much diagnosing problems and fixing them. But then there were no new problems, only old ones, ones I’d seen before. It wasn’t satisfying anymore.”

Well, you’re right. What can someone my age know about this? I haven’t worked in a long time. Even more, since this column is for old people, why bother? We don’t have jobs to get tired of.

But we do have lives to get tired of. That’s the point—satisfaction with job means satisfaction with life. After twenty years of not having a job, we can get dissatisfied with retirement. When you get dissatisfied with retirement, it’s a short time before we are dissatisfied with life itself. As Charles Albert Tinley put it in his great hymn, “Stand By Me,” when my life becomes a burden… stand by me.

We have a calling only if there is a call. A call from God is a call to trust. Trust depends on neither work nor age.

John Robert McFarland

1] After I wrote this, I learned that he is already slated to be the interim pastor in a nearby congregation.

 

 

 

THE REPAIR OF THE EARTH [Sat, 8-29-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—THE REPAIR OF THE EARTH [Sat, 8-29-25]

 

For as long as I can remember, I felt that I was responsible for the life of anyone I met, making sure they were safe and happy and… well, alive.

Strangely, even after I had acquired a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge about such things, I was remarkably unaware of that motivation, probably because of my profession. I mean, preachers are supposed to take care of everyone, aren’t they, all the way into eternity?

If I thought about it consciously, I charged my obsession with creating a life for everyone to my call from God and to my ordination vows.

No, I think my feeling of responsibility for others, my charge, if you will, preceded my call to preach. So where did that obligation to create life for everyone I met, where did it come from?

One of the frustrating things about old age is that every time you gain a significant insight about yourself, the origin is shrouded in mystery, almost always before your conscious awareness. But I think there is an answer in the Kabbalah.

Kabbalah is the mystical expression of Judaism, mystical meaning direct contact with the holy. In the Kabbalah, this feeling of obligation to others is referred to as Tikun Olam, the repair of the world.

It’s not surprising to me that my original and continuing impulse is Tikun Olam, which in the Kabbalah is the restoration of life to wholeness, the re-creation of life as it is meant to be, in Love. I have always been aware of the presence of God, not in a touchy-feely way, not in a surrounded by light way, not in a hearing voices way, but simply as awareness, like someone beside me, and just a little behind, just out of my peripheral vision, is looking with me through the window at the world. [Yes, I talked about this in the column for 2-24-25]

I think we are all born with Tikkun Olam, just as we are all born with its opposite, Original Sin. John Wesley called it Prevenient [preventing] Grace. Popularly, we refer to it simply as “conscience.”

Original Sin is the concern for self, over all others, the desire to satisfy our own needs and wants without regard to others. It has many sub-categories: greed, lust, rapacity, gluttony, etc. Preventing Grace and conscience are good words to express the force within that opposes Original Sin, but I like Tikkun Olam because it is translated as “the repair of the earth.”

Tikkun Olam isn’t just doing good, like prevenient grace and conscience urge us to do. It is the repair of what is already broken.

Repair is such a visual, hands-on word. It’s what a carpenter does…oh, wasn’t Jesus a carpenter…

John Robert McFarland

Just a reminder that I now call this column Beyond Winter because I’m so old, I’m not even in the winter years anymore.

BETWEEN THE LINES [R, 3-27-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Confessions of An Old Man—BETWEEN THE LINES [R, 3-27-25]

 

I am excited, far more than I should be. But it’s Opening Day! The very first professional baseball team, my team, the Cincinnati Reds team, is starting the season! They’re still in first place! “In the spring, a young man’s fancy turns to… baseball!”

I am embarrassed by the amount of time I spend on sports. Well, no, I’m not really embarrassed, but I should be, because it borders on obsession. In fact, my Rubicon is far back in the rear-view mirror. [1]

When we lived in Iron Mountain, MI, I had a dentist who is a MI State U fan. Chris Selden is as sports-obsessed as I. We talked about it. We concluded that there is something wrong with us. His hygienist, Kyra Scott, agreed. When I apologized one day for refusing to let her start scraping on my teeth because Chris and I were talking sports, she sighed and said, “It’s okay. I schedule extra time when I know you are coming in.”

I once cancelled a TV service because it did not have the Big Ten Network. When I was nominated as a “distinguished alum” at Garrett Theological Seminary, my love of baseball was mentioned before my love of theology. I have an honorary contract with The Cincinnati Reds; I didn’t ask for it, owner Marge Schott just sent it.

When daughter Katie and her husband taught history at Auburn U, and granddaughter Brigid was born there, Perry & Sue Biddle were gracious enough to let us spend the night with them in Nashville on our way from IL to AL. They usually had a party for us, inviting old friends we had met in Scotland, Amos & Etta Wilson, with other folks they thought we might enjoy. One man, as he left one night, said, either with admiration or bewilderment, “I’ve never before met a minister who knew so much about sports.”

I don’t know why I have this obsession. I don’t come from an athletic family. I hardly knew sports existed until we moved to Oakland City, IN, when I was 10.

Maybe it was the isolation of the farm. We didn’t have a car. From the last day of school in May until the first day in September, I didn’t have any playmates, unless my Uncle Johnny [John H. Pond, my mother’s youngest brother, 15 years older than I] drove over from Francisco, five miles away, after he had closed his hardware store, and hit flies to me. He was single and lived with his mother in a town of 600. There wasn’t much for him to do in the evenings. I so looked forward to those moments with him. He was the best friend of my childhood and the best man at our wedding. To this day, when I am at loose ends, in my mind I go to that field and chase those fly balls.

I was able to justify my obsession, at least in my own mind, by participating in sports. It’s good exercise. It keeps one healthy. But my sports activity came to a screeching halt, unless you count walking as a sport, when I was 70 and we moved to Iron Mt and there was no softball league for old people, and where the only sport is strapping a couple of sticks to your feet and sliding down a long slope and then hanging in the air, buffeted by blizzard winds, until crashing into the tops of red pines several miles away.

Now, though, I just watch. It’s hard to justify sitting in front of the TV several hours a day, watching field hockey and water polo if there is no football or basketball or baseball, relieved only by Big Bang Theory re-runs, and claim that’s good for one’s health.

There is more than one answer to this sports obsession, and I’ll look at some of the others later this week, but right now, in this time of political turmoil, I’m aware that sports provide an oasis. It’s called “between the lines.”

When you are “between the lines” on a baseball field, you have to concentrate so hard on the game that you can’t think about anything else. In the chaos of family life as a child and puberty as an adolescent and stupidity [mine as well as that of others] as an adult, sports has allowed me to drop all concern except the next pitch, the next snap, the next shot.

Everybody needs a spot “between the lines,” be it knitting or carving or… You name it. You’re never too old to find a spot between the lines.

John Robert McFarland

1] I don’t want to insult anyone by suggesting you don’t already know this, but the Rubicon was the border [river] that Caesar crossed and was thus irrevocably committed to civil war. When you’ve “crossed the Rubicon,” there’s no turning back.

RIP, GEORGE FOREMAN [T, 3-25-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man—RIP, GEORGE FOREMAN [T, 3-25-25]

 

I have been trying to stick to the Lenten theme for these 40 days before Easter, but I can’t ignore the death of George Foreman. The children in the pediatric cancer unit of MD Anderson in Houston have lost a true friend.

He’s better known, of course, as a heavyweight boxing champ, and for naming all 12 of his children George, regardless of gender. When asked why, he would reply, “Who would you expect me to name them after, Muhamad Ali?”

Helen and I met George once, sort of. I was invited to speak at a cancer conference at MD Anderson, along with Steve Allen, Jr and Scott Burton and, of course, George. It was a two-day conference [three?], and all of the speakers were there for the whole conference, doing break-out sessions and book signings and such as well as speaking. Except for George, who appeared only for his one speaking occasion.

Helen and I were invited to the conference by Judy Gerner, who had heard me speak at a previous conference in Denver. Judy was the director of MD Anderson’s patient services.

In telling us about the other speakers, Judy said that it was fairly well known that George visited the children in the hospital’s cancer ward, but no one know how much. Many days he would show up completely unannounced, just going from room to room, with that big smile that always made everyone smile back and feel better.

Now, the purpose of this column is to give credit and appreciation to George for his active commitment to cancer kids, but I must repeat a story about that conference that is more about Helen…

We were in a huge room, seated around tables, about 500 people. When it came time for George, Judy led him through a door at the back of the room. As they threaded their way amongst the tables to get up to the stage, people jumped up from their tables and crowded around and began to take pictures of George. So did Helen.

I was amazed. Helen is not a big sports fan. As a teen, she and her mother would go to pro wrestling matches in Gary, Indiana, to see Don Eagle and Gorgeous George. Helen even got their autographs and to this day mourns the theft of her autograph book. But that wasn’t really a sport. That was just what you did in Gary because “the mob” didn’t allow anything else.

Nonetheless, there she was, elbowing her way through the throng to get several pictures of George.

When she got back to our table, I said, “I didn’t think you even knew who George Foreman is. Why were you so eager to take his picture?”

“Oh, you mean that nice bald man with Judy? I wasn’t taking his picture. I want my hairdresser to fix my hair like Judy’s when we get home, and I needed a picture of it. But if I just took a photo of Judy’s hair, that would be weird. I figured if I got the pic while everyone else was taking photos of that big man…”

John Robert McFarland

 

 

THE BURNISHED OBIT [Sun, 3-23-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man--THE BURNISHED OBIT [Sun, 3-23-25]

 

Our pastor, Jimmy Moore, told this story in a sermon. Guiseppi Verdi [1813-1901], the great composer, hated the organ grinders who, along with their monkeys, cluttered the streets of Milan with their raucous sounds and coarse ways. They were dirty and rude, and their monkeys were even worse. It is said that when he died, they found 300 street organs in his basement, units he had bought just to get them off the streets.

One day he was passing a particularly dirty pair--grinder and monkey--and the grinder was especially languorous. Verdi couldn’t stand it. “Tempo, man, tempo,” he cried as he passed.

The next day he saw that pair again. They were bathed, and the grinder was wearing a tuxedo. Beside his donation box was a sign that read, “Master Musician. Studied Under Verdi.”

I once pointed out to our grandchildren that we lie for two reasons. Half our lies are to keep out of trouble. Half are to make us look better than we are. As we “mature,” there are other reasons, like trying to take advantage of others for our own ends, but for a discussion with kids, that was good enough. Certainly, we continue to lie for those two reasons throughout our lives. Sometimes right up to the end…

We saw the obit for a long-time friend. It was clear she had written it herself, for we recognized her style, and it included minutiae that not many others would know. Minutiae that made her look as good as possible. Irrelevant minutiae, burnished to a false shine. It was sad.

She was a highly intelligent and accomplished woman. If she had just stuck to the facts, instead of burnishing them on every side, it would have been so much better. She wanted so much to be remembered as better than she was. She wanted to justify her faults and minimize her failures. To those who knew her best, the ones who really cared about her, all she did was call attention to them, reminding us of her faults and failures. If she had let us remember without the burnishing, we would have remembered her virtues and successes. She would have looked so much better.

If I look better in my obit than you remember me being, rest assured I did not write it. The one I’m writing starts, “After a lot of kicks and misses, he finally connected with the bucket…”

John Robert McFarland

 

 

SPIRITUAL WITHOUT EMOTION [F, 3-21-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—SPIRITUAL WITHOUT EMOTION [F, 3-21-25]

 

One hope of Lent is that by practicing “holy disciplines”—giving up meat or something else important to us, daily worship, etc—we shall grow spiritually, grow in relationship to God. I admire folks for whom that works, but discipline has never made me more spiritual. It has made me more disciplined.

The same is true with emotion, which is important to the spirituality of many people. Emotion has never made me more spiritual.

One of my life projects has been, and still is, being spiritual without being emotional. To many people, and in the culture in general, they are the same.

I, however, cannot be both spiritual and emotional, for I do not trust emotions, for the simple reason that they are not lasting. Emotions are ephemeral, fleeing. Spirit endures.

As a young person in a revivalistic church culture, I saw many people “get saved.” It was usually a highly emotional experience—crying, shouting, hugging. But the newly saved individual rarely changed their ways. Indeed, they were often back at the altar rail at the next revival, confessing the same old sins.

It seemed to me that if you became more spiritual, closer to God, “led by the Spirit,” you should become a better person.

Of course, my distrust of emotion started personally, not theologically. The basic emotions of my parents were sorrow and anger. Sorrow was a downer, and made me feel incompetent, because I could do nothing to lessen their sorrow. Anger was frightful. I could do nothing about their anger, either, except try to avoid it.

Fear, anger, sorrow… the great emotions were all states to be avoided. I did not become a stoic, though. I was able to empathize. I cried at movies, especially about the plight of dogs. I laughed at shows, especially at the antics of dogs. But emotions that overwhelmed, those I distrusted.

I’ll tell once again about Sandra. She grew up in a tiny town. There was one small, fundamentalist church in town. Her parents were mainstays there, so Sandra grew up in that church. It was all she knew.  A few miles outside of her town was a small a city that had a small state university, so even to go to college, Sandra didn’t leave home, or her church.

Then, though, she went to a neighboring state for grad school. Her first Sunday, she went off to the church she that had heard was just like her church at home. But she made a wrong turn. She ended up at the big university Methodist Church. She didn’t know it, though, because churches are rarely adequately signed.

She went in. It was huge. And high. A modern Gothic building. Many rows of pews. Some people were standing around inside the door, talking to one another, but not to her. One of them pushed a piece of paper at her. She wandered in, took a seat, looked at the paper. Good grief; they had decided ahead of time what they were going to do.

She said, “I didn’t know any of the hymns. The choir wore robes and they sang different words at different times. The preacher didn’t shout at us or tell us about our sins but just stood there and talked. They passed a plate for money but it was all in little envelopes. Nobody said anything to me. It was over. I went outside and looked up at that high cross spire on top and I said, ‘Thank God. I’m home!’”

For someone like me, and Sandra, that sort of church is home. That’s where we can grow spiritually, because emotion doesn’t get in the way. Please don’t misunderstand; I’m not opposed to emotion in church, or generally. I’m just saying we can’t rely on it. The dailyness of just being there, for one another, that is a way to grow toward God.

John Robert McFarland