RAGE WITHIN [F, 1-17-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Psychology of An Old Man—RAGE WITHIN [F, 1-17-25]

 

There is a rage deep within each of us. It is because we know life is futile, because we shall die, so what’s the point?

That undifferentiated rage is down at the bottom, below a lot of other layers, but it is there. It is what motivates everything else we do. Without conscious knowledge of it.

It is not just anger. Anger is at the upper levels. Rage is at the foundation. We recognize anger, can even “manage” it. Rage is beneath consciousness.

Adler said all that we do is motivated by the desire for power. Freud said it was sex. Jung said it was the collective unconscious.

 

Adler is right. The desire for power is the attempt to counter the deep rage. If I can just get power, I can hold death off. My world of power might be very small, perhaps just one other person, but if I can have that power, I am invincible. This is the source of rape, especially the most common rape, men against women. It is from the wombs of women that life, and thus death, comes. If I can have power against the life source, even in the life source, I can have power against death.

 

Freud is right for the same reason. Sex is the power to create life. If I can create life, I can hold off death. This is why poor people refuse to stop having babies, even when they cannot afford them. This is why pro-birth advocates are so often paradoxical, being only pro-birth, not really pro-life. They are also pro-gun and pro-capital punishment, sources of power over death.

 

Jung is right. In the collective unconscious is the deep rage against the futility of life.

 

John S. Dunne, SJ, says there are three strangers that come to us in life: the world, sexuality, and mortality. We experience “the world” mostly in other people, but it is also nature and its ways. Come puberty, sexuality jumps on us like a tiger. Mortality is always lurking. Dunne says that life depends upon whether we make friends or enemies of these three strangers.

I add a fourth stranger. I call that stranger Christ, but I do so knowing that other people call that stranger--the Word of God in the world, the Presence of God in the world--by other names.

 

If we make friends with God through Christ, all else follows into wholeness, including the world and sexuality and mortality. If we are enemies with God, the deep rage conquers, and we are enemies with the world and sexuality and mortality, enemies of the world and other people and our own true selves.

Jesus said, “I call you friends.” [John 15:15]

The Wisdom Literature of The Bible [Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon] says Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. I was quite taken with the Wisdom Lit when I was young. Now that I am old, I am not sure that the Wisdom Literature is all that wise.

Vanity, vanity, all is vanity? No, all is God.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

I’VE BEEN SICK IS NO EXCUSE [W, 1-15-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—I’VE BEEN SICK IS NO EXCUSE [W, 1-15-25]

 

I think I’ve told before of the lion who went through the jungle beating on his chest and yelling at each animal, “Why aren’t you big and strong like me?” The zebras and giraffes ran away. So did the tigers and rhinos. He finally came to the monkey. “Why aren’t you big and strong like me?” the lion roared. The monkey replied, “I’ve been sick.” [It’s better if you can hear me do it in my pitiful, pathetic monkey voice.”

I’ve been thinking of that ever since the column of Jan. 9, where I tell about my adventures at Morgenstern’s book store and Krogucci grocery store, because I picked up some germs at one of those places, and my body has been coughing and sneezing ever since, trying to get those germs to vacate the premises. Naturally, when the germs left me, they took up residence in Helen, so the sounds of coughing are heard throughout our small home, even though I started sleeping on the sofa to try to keep the germs away from her.

We are over the hump. The coughs now sound only like left-over coughs. We aren’t scrabbling for the cough medicine bottle in the dark. But it was such a surprise that we got sick at all.

But now I’m old. Apparently, I should have worn a mask on my old man’s day out, even though no one else was in the venues I visited. Perhaps especially because no one else was.

 

We haven’t entertained germs, not the kind that let you know they are there, for several years. The covid shutdown kept us from germs, but even before then, we had done all the vaccinations and germ precautions, like hand washing.

More recently, we’ve just not had much contact with germy people, because we’ve had little contact with people at all. We order groceries and pick them up in the Krotucky parking lot. We go to church via livestream. When people want to visit, we give them the wrong address.

It seems that our current germs are only for a cold, but there are worse germs out there, including RSV and bird flu. If you’re old and vulnerable, or your natural immunity has waned because your body is not used to dealing with germs, better double your efforts at mask-wearing and hand-washing.

But back to that monkey… The point of that story is that if you are a monkey, you can’t be big and strong like a lion, because you’re not a lion. If you’re a monkey, you don’t have to come up with an excuse for not being a lion.

If you’re a teen, you don’t need an excuse for not having the wisdom of old age. If you’re old and slow, you don’t’ need an excuse for not being young and nimble. Just be the best monkey you can be. If that involves a barrel and some other monkeys, wear a mask.

 

John Robert McFarland

 

SAFE IN THE DARK [M, 1-13-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—SAFE IN THE DARK [M, 1-13-25]

 

Now that the light is lingering a bit longer each day, I’m not sure that’s a good thing. As a child, when it was dark, I was not as afraid. Oh, yes, I knew there could be dangers hidden in the dark, but I was hidden in the dark, too. In the light, it was easier to see the dangers, but they could see me, too. I was safer in the dark. There were dangers in the darkness, but the darkness itself was a friend

So I roamed the dark, winter streets of Indianapolis, when I was 8 and 9, extending trips to Cub Scout den meetings or to a grocery, staying on familiar streets, but going where no one knew me as the scared little kid. It gave me control in a world that seemed out of control. Later, as an older child and as a teen, I walked back and forth to Oakland City from our farm, in ditches beside the highway, on narrow dirt roads, afraid but confident. I could see the lights of town in the distance, but I was safe in the dark.

In the light of town, I could say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing. In the darkness, I might not be safe from the monsters that hide in the dark, but I was safe from my own discomfort and inadequacies.

I have gone to several psychological therapists over the years. Usually because I was unsure of my call to ministry. I wanted someone to tell me it was okay to quit ministry so that I could actually make some money. I think the counselors saw through that, though. I had no skills for anything but preaching, so they weren’t willing to agree to the illusion that I could do something else.

When I had cancer, Vernie Barnett, the head of our pension and health system, said that there was provision in our health insurance to get counseling, so…why not?

I had a friend who was a therapist, and I enjoyed talking to her, so I went. She didn’t enjoy it as much as I did. “You are so good at using words to avoid… I’m exhausted by the time I’ve spent an hour with you.” I took that as a compliment, because I had managed to stay in the dark. I don’t think she meant it that way.

It was kind of like the time we heard one of our young daughters say to the other, “I was so bad Mommy had to get out the child psychology book.” Something to be proud of.

The point of therapy is to get you to come into the light. Looking back, I realize my modus with counselors was to try to make them think I was spilling my guts while telling them nothing. I felt safe in the dark.

At the same time, I would tell a group of total strangers about anything and everything in my life. Even in high school, but later, I’d be at some professional conference, and we’d be divided into small groups, and I’d start by telling about all my fears and hopes. People would be astounded at my openness, but it caused them to open up, too. Soon, they’d forget about me, so eager were they to tell their own stories.

In the early days in those settings, I didn’t know why I was so open. It wasn’t a plan to create a better group experience, even though it worked that way. Being open seemed the opposite of what a person who was safest in the darkness should do. Then I realized that I had created so much light that I was in the dark…and safe.

I concluded that the point of counseling was not to get people to face reality but to help people feel safe, be it in the light or in the dark. It took me too long to stop trying to solve people’s problems for them, but eventually I felt comfortable if the other person wanted to come into the light, but I also felt comfortable just sitting in the dark with them.

If I were to give you counsel, I would say: when things get to be too much, just go to where you feel safe. Not the false safety of addictions and anger, but the real safety of your own darkness.

You don’t necessarily need to “know yourself.” That might be disappointing, anyway. You do need to know where you feel safe.

John Robert McFarland

“The safest place to be is in the center of God’s will.” Corrie ten Boom

 

 

 

 

DEW ON THE ROSES [Sa, 1-11-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—DEW ON THE ROSES [Sa, 1-11-25]

 

There is no dew on roses in the days of winter.

 

In seminary, we made fun of C. Austin Miles’ 1912 song, “In the Garden.” We laughed and called it “Andy.” “Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me, Andy tells me I am his own.”

Someone told us that it had been composed as a popular love song but had not made it, so the composer went to the religious market with it, where it became one of the great all-time hits. That was not true, but truth has little weight when we want to ridicule something. 

I enjoyed making fun of the hymn, in the same way children enjoy making fun of the odd kid at school. It was a love song, not a theological song. It was romantic. It carried nothing of the realism and suffering and sacrifice and scandal of the real Gospel. I was convinced that Christian faith was about blood on a cross, not dew on roses.

Back then, I thought that faith was verified through misery. I had not yet suffered enough to realize that faith is verified through joy.

But in seminary, we thought that “In the Garden” was the worst of self-centered Protestant individualism: “The joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.” Talk about exclusive!

Miles intended it as a hymn from the beginning, but it is also clearly a romantic love song. By Miles’ own account, it is a depiction of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, after Jesus’ resurrection, meeting “in the garden,” to share a joy that “none other has ever known.”

 

It is popular, and not unreasonable, to think that the time after the Resurrection was springtime for Jesus. After all, he was going home, to “reign in glory,” and all that. But if you are the savior of the world, can you sit in heaven and be content with the world as it has been for these past two thousand years? No, this is a long hard bitter winter time for Jesus.

In this barren time of our cultural winter, we have removed romance from sexuality. Sex is physical contact, only. It has little, if anything, to do with relationship, with love, with romance. People who look at Jesus and Magdalene assume either that they had a conventionally modern physical relationship, or that Jesus was beyond all that sexuality stuff. They forget about romance. No roses and gardens, just panting and sweat.

One of the great things about “In the Garden” is its romanticism. Considering this long despairing two-thousand-year winter Jesus has had to endure, mostly at the hands of those who invoke his name as savior, I cherish for him that short romantic time with Mary Magdalene in the garden. One remembered moment of true romance, of a time when there was dew on the roses, can sustain a body, even a resurrected one, through the cold of winter.

John Robert McFarland

BONUS OBSERVATION: “Living is like licking honey off a thorn.” [Attributed to both Louis Adamic and Holly Black]

 

 

HOW TO ASK FOR A BOOK [R, 1-9-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Adventures of An Old Man—HOW TO ASK FOR A BOOK [R, 1-9-25]

 

Daughter Katie Kennedy, the author, [1] got me Benjamin Stevenson’s Everyone on This Train is a Suspect, for Christmas. It is a sequel. The narrator, Ernest Cunningham, claims to be a reliable narrator, but that is the sort of thing an unreliable narrator would say [2], and in an era of unreliable narrators, I decided I should go to Morgenstern’s book store to get Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone, to read the first book first.

A book store is a popular place after Christmas. I got the very last parking place, a handicapped slot, as far from the door as possible, which seems an odd place to put the handicapped parking places. I guess it’s because there is a cut in the curb there for folks who can’t do high stepping anymore. Like me.

 

Whenever I can, I practice “possibility communication” rather than phatic communication.  I try to say something that fits the situation but elicits a response that tells me something about the other person. So, I said to the young woman at the counter, “Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone.” She said, “But are you a reliable narrator?”

Which reminds me, of course, of the time I wanted Elaine Palencia’s new book. I went to the Lincoln Square Walden’s in Urbana, IL and told the woman at the counter, “I want A Small Caucasian Woman.” Then I realized she was a large, non-Caucasian woman. She spread out her arms, and said, “Honey, why you want a small, Caucasian woman?”

The Morgenstern’s clerk laughed so hard when I told her about that she almost lost her retainer. It was very gratifying.

Then there was the time when Pages For All Ages was still in the Round Barn Center in Champaign, IL and I wanted the book by my clergy colleague, Dick Watts, written with Dom Crossan. I said to the clerk, “Who Is Jesus?” He perked up and said, “I know the answer to that!” I was afraid he might try to evangelize me, but he led me straight away to the proper shelf. [3]

As I waited for quite a while, as two clerks, communicating on tiny walkie-talkies hung around their necks, looked in every nook and cranny [4] for Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone—no problem, since Morgenstern’s is a great atmosphere, and I was in a red leather chair—I saw a very handsome man [Looks a lot like me] with wispy white hair and beard, on a walker, its basket full of big books, accompanied by a young, 70ish woman, who looked both proud and exasperated and said to me, “That’s my father. He’s 101 years old. He still buys long books.” He smirked a smirk that said, “I buy green bananas, too.”

The peripatetic clerks finally found Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone on the table just inside the front door. I was a bit disappointed. It meant I would have to get up out of that comfortable chair. As the clerk got into her cash register/computer to check me out, she asked, a bit suspiciously, “Is Helen McFarland your wife?” When I admitted it, she said, “Then you get a discount.”

Gotta love indie book stores.

John Robert McFarland

1] Hearts on Thin Ice, What Goes Up, Learning to Swear in America, The Constitution Decoded, The Presidents Decoded, etc

2] In my own books and blogs, I have tried to be a reliable narrator, but my family says I have not always succeeded.

3] Which reminds me of the preacher who was trying to make a call in a lakeside community where the streets had no names and most of them dead-ended. He asked several people for directions, but they were all like “Go to where the laundromat was before it burned, and take the alley behind the tavern, and…” He remained lost, until one guy in a pickup said, “Follow me and I’ll lead you there.” The preacher reported, “For the first time in my life, I understood the difference between good advice and a savior.”

4] One of our daughters said, “Because of you, I was thirty years old before I found out that it is not true that nooks are for left-handed people and crannies for the right-handed.”

 

 

 

 

 

WINTER SHELTER [T, 1-7-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Preacher—WINTER SHELTER [T, 1-7-25]

 

There was a time when preachers always lived next door to the church building. That’s where the parsonage was. We didn’t always live in a next-door parsonage, but when we did, in winter I would slip over to the church building after dark to unlock the doors. If I lived next door to a church right now, I would have gone over there last night, as soon as it was dark, and unlocked the doors, because here we have ten inches of snow and single digit temps.

I didn’t tell anyone, of course, that I unlocked the doors. I went over first thing the next morning and relocked them.

There was a time, even when I first started preaching, that church buildings were always left unlocked. When our daughters were babies, and we traveled long distances to take them to see grandparents at Christmas, we would stop at church buildings to heat up bottles, change diapers, use the bathroom. No one saw. No one cared. Church buildings belonged to anyone who needed one.

But times changed. Teens went in to make out. Drunks went in to sleep it off. Church buildings were no longer community help centers. Holy people would come in the morning and find unholy things on the floors. So, church buildings needed to be kept locked to keep the unholy stuff out. Yes, church buildings should be sanctuaries if needy people came to them for shelter, but they couldn’t be kept clean that way. And didn’t holy people have a right to a holy building?

Janitors believe church buildings exist to be kept clean. The best way to do that is never to use them, for anything. Trustees believe they exist to be maintained. Religious people believe they exist to be kept holy. No one believes they exist so that homeless people or runaway kids or drug addicts or drunks can get out of the winter cold. But sometimes a drunk or a run-away teen tries a church door in desperation, and if I had secretly unlocked that door, they would find a place to shelter for the night.

Winter is a time when people go outside to get away from what is inside and are then afraid to go back. They need some sanctuary from the cold, but they cannot go home again. I left the doors unlocked for those people, sometimes old, often young.

Winter is a hard time to be indoors if you are young.

One night, two boys, young teens, knocked frantically on the door of our house. It was dark outside. The temperature was ten degrees below zero. They had run two blocks in stocking feet and t-shirts to escape from the violence in their house to the safety in our house. They weren’t part of our church, but they knew who we were. They thought they could find shelter with us. They didn’t know that I had unlocked the doors of the church building, so that they could go there. So that I would not be bothered by needy people coming to my own home.

I had thought that I unlocked the doors of the church building so that people could go there, in the dark, with their winter fears, to escape the winter fright in their homes. I had not understood, until those boys stood huddling inside our front door, in the warmth of our house, that I had opened the church building to them so I would not have to open the Church to them, my own home, my own heart.

John Robert McFarland

“We are always moving toward mystery. So we are much closer to what is real if we cannot see our destination too clearly.” Rachel Naomi Remen

 

JIMMY CARTER [Su, 1-5-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—JIMMY CARTER [Su, 1-5-25]

 

Jimmy Carter was not a great president. In most surveys of historians, he ranks 26^th out of 44, a bit below the middle. There seems to be little doubt, though, that he ranks first as a post-president citizen.

Ever since his death, at a remarkable 100, I have thought I should write about him, but there is nothing I can say that others have not already said better.

I can, though, tell about our trip to Plains, Georgia while he was president.

I had voted for Carter, but not with great enthusiasm. It was more a vote against Gerald Ford. I was not really opposed to Ford, and I admired his wife, Betty for the courage she showed in using her own breast cancer as a means of gaining support for cancer patients, and supporting the ERA, and later admitting her alcohol addiction and publicly getting help for it, and founding her own eponymous rehab clinic. I felt that Ford was a good man and an honorable politician, even though Lyndon Johnson famously said that Ford had played too much football before the helmet had been invented. [Ford had been a football star at the U of MI, which was another good reason for an IU fan to vote against him.]

I voted against Ford, primarily, though, because he pardoned Nixon. I wasn’t particularly interested in punishing Nixon, but I thought that pardoning him was a bad precedent and would lead to other bad consequences. I think that the time since has proved me right on that.

Anyway, my wife and teen daughters and I were on our way to a winter’s week in Florida, because a nice layperson had given us a free week in her cottage there, and we decided to go through Plains.

 

The highlight of the trip was getting cokes out of a machine at Billy Carter’s service station. It reminded me a lot of the service station part of Moe’s convenience store where I worked during high school. It was basically a greasy hangout for chubby, overalled rednecks like Billy, who was not really happy to have tourists coming to gawk at him.

We were planning to use Billy’s rest rooms, but Billy wasn’t very hospitable, and once our teen daughters saw them, that plan went south…to the Plains Baptist Church. It was open, as church buildings usually were in those days, especially in small towns. No one else was there. We used the rest rooms, went to the Sunday School room where Jimmy taught a class when he was in town, sat for a while in the sanctuary. I stood in the pulpit, getting a feel for what it would be like to preach to the president in his home church.

 

The thing about Jimmy Carter, I think… he tried to do the right thing, even when he didn’t know how. I think that always deserves a number one ranking.

 

John Robert McFarland