HOW TO BE A DIGNIFED OLD MAN [T, 11-19-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man—HOW TO BE A DIGNIFED OLD MAN [T, 11-19-24]

 

Daughter Katie Kennedy, the author, was recently recalling one of our family reunions when she was a college student. The McFarlands are a big clan, eight in my father’s generation, and this particular reunion was larger than usual, because the Smiths, my Grandma Mac’s family, were included. Most of the Smiths had not come before, and one of the older Smiths picked Katie to help with identifications. She pointed at me. “Who is that man?” “That’s John McFarland.” She laughed. “Yes, I know that’s John McFarland, but who is he?”

It took quite a while before they figured out that Viola Smith thought I, in my late 40s, looked just like my great-grandfather, John White McFarland, and she thought that is what Katie meant by calling me John McFarland.

When Katie figured it out, she explained, “That’s John Robert McFarland, son of John Francis and Mildred McFarland.” “Oh,” said Aunt Viola. [1]

I’m not sure I’d heard that story before, but I’m glad I have now. I’m glad that I looked like my great-grandfather, for he was an interesting man.

He was fourteen when The Civil War broke out. He lied about his age and joined the Union navy, serving on a gun boat on the Ohio River. He got some fatal disease and was mustered out with a pension “for life.” The government assumed he would die soon. Too bad. They didn’t realize what it meant to deal with a John McFarland. He lived to be 104.

He was a farmer, but because he had a pension--not really very big, but big enough--his real vocation was reading. Books were hard to come by, but he would borrow from anybody who had one. Books were precious, though, so it was a point of honor with him, that he would return a borrowed book the very next day. He would walk to some near-by town to borrow a book, read it as he walked home, sit up with fire light or lamp light and read through the night, and finish his reading as he walked the book back home the next day. [2]

I met him once, when he was the age I am now, and I was about four. He was a dignified old man in a black suit and tie and shoes, and white shirt.

Without intending to copy my great-grandfather, I always assumed I would be a dignified old man, the kind who has a black cane with a silver knob on top, who wears a fedora that he tips to ladies, who speaks kindly and politely to women and children, and wisely to younger men, and who leaves a cloud of gentle good cheer in his wake.

To this point I have been asking children to trade hair with me, since they have so much and I have so little. I have been telling old ladies on walkers that they are clogging up the aisle at church. I tell young men that the secret to a good marriage is the absence of communication. When wait persons ask if we have any questions, I say, “Yes; what is the meaning of life?” I leave a cloud of confusion in my wake.

I may look like John McFarland, but so far, I’m a lot more like John Robert McFarland than John White McFarland. If I am going to be a dignified gentleman in my old age, I need to get started on it very soon now. First, I need a fedora…

John Robert McFarland

1] My father was named for both his grandfathers—John White McFarland and Francis Marion Smith. He was the second son, but the first was named Arthur Glenn, for his father, Arthur Harrison, so John and Francis were both still available when my father was born. Strangely, neither my grandfather nor his first-born son went by Arthur. They were Harry and Glenn. Uncle Glenn was known as a great berry-picker. When he visited us on our farm shortly after we moved there, when I was ten or eleven, he took me berry-picking and taught this city boy to tie kerosene-soaked strings around my ankles to keep chiggers from crawling up my legs and getting into places where you don’t want an itchy chigger bite.

2] He was the model for the character named John White in my Christmas story, “Sheets for Christmas,” about how walking reader John White fools a KKK bunch into providing Christmas for a black family.

 

IT’S IN THE BIBLE…MAYBE [Sun, 11-17-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—IT’S IN THE BIBLE…MAYBE [Sun, 11-17-24]

 

I looked for my Arndt & Gingrich Greek-English lexicon this morning. I wanted to look up the use of some New Testament word. Of course I couldn’t find the lexicon. I don’t have any of my Greek and Hebrew language helps anymore. There was a time when I had a whole shelf full. They have gradually disappeared, just as those languages in my brain have gradually disappeared.

I miss those books. I was never a very good scholar of the Bible languages, but I got satisfaction from working at it. It seemed like what a serious preacher should do, exegete the scriptures of the coming sermon in their original languages.

Well, I do I have an inter-linear, Greek & English [KJV] New Testament, that I use once in a while for break-of-day Bible study, when I’m suspicious of the paraphrasers, especially the jargon “translators.” My Ethics professor, Henry Kolbe, used to say, “The surest way to be irrelevant tomorrow is to be too relevant today.” Jargon is too relevant. It changes so rapidly. What is “dope” today becomes “sick” tomorrow and is almost immediately replace by “brat.” [1] But jargon translations usually get a laugh when used for the scripture reading in Sunday worship, so they are popular. And they really are easier to understand.

The question, though, is: are they accurate? Are we understanding what the Bible writer said in the original language, or are we understanding what some jargon repeater thinks? Or, more importantly, what some jargon listener hears?

The Living Bible [1971]is a paraphrase, not a translation, done by Kenneth N. Taylor for good reasons, so that his children could better understand the Bible passages they used in family devotions. It has been criticized for being both too conservative and too Arminian [free will, 2]. The first criticism is probably valid, since in the original printing, the introduction even said it was written to make it more conservative. That was dropped in later printings. I have to recuse myself on the charge of too Arminian, since I am myself a Wesleyan Arminian.

More than any other type of language, jargon is open to the interpretation of the hearer. Especially when a word that already has a common meaning is appropriated to mean something else.  Dope and sick and brat are probably going to mean something quite different to me than they mean to anyone else.

Jargon is fun. If I say something silly, and a friend says, “Get out of here,” I know it is not meant literally. At least, I hope not. If my friend answers with “Twenty-three skidoo,” well, you know they’re really old!

Jargon is probably necessary as well as fun. But not for the Bible. Best, I think, to stick with the translations of someone who still has an Arndt & Gingrich.

John Robert McFarland

1] “Brat” is the name of the new album by Charli XCX, released just this recent June 7, so it is the current word for the Gen Z and millennial lifestyle, which according to Ms MCX is “…very honest, very blunt, a little bit volatile.” [I had no idea that such a lifestyle is new.]

2] Arminian means free will, [what you do on earth makes a difference about where you’ll spend eternity] as expressed by Jacobus Arminius, rather than predestinarian, [what you do on earth makes no difference since God already knows whether you’ll go to heaven or hell] as espoused by John Calvin, in the Protestant Reformation.

MANAGING OLD PEOPLE [F, 11-15-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—MANAGING OLD PEOPLE [F, 11-15-24]

 

Long-time friend Bob Hammel, the great Hoosier sports writer, had to move recently, with wife Julie, to a retirement home, because neither of them can drive now. Bob and I have always shared coffee and conversation together, so I go out for a morning each week, to drink from the cup that never runs dry, continuing that eternal conversation. [Which is more upbeat this year since Indiana U actually has a football team, rather than a bunch of guys who run around the field doing football-like activities without actually playing football.]

Bob and I often talk about the changes that old age brings, and how old people don’t need as much help as younger people think we do. Well, we might need it, but we don’t want it.

Younger people think that what we need most is security; we should sit in a chair and never move, so that we don’t fall. We don’t want to fall, but we don’t want just to sit in that chair, either. Unless we feel like it. Then we want to be left alone instead of doing the “socializing” that younger people think we need. [I don’t think younger people are going to come out very well in this column, regardless of what they do.]

I was touting independence in one of our conversations, on the theory that any skills and knowledge we suspend, we’ll end up being unable to do at all, so that it’s important to keep doing it so we don’t lose it. Bob, who is a truly wise man, said, “More importantly is the sense of self-worth you get by being able to keep doing things for yourself.”

Well, yes, and that’s where I had the most trouble when I was doing things for my parents when they were in their 80s and 90s, and I was a younger person, in my 50s and 60s.

The problem was: my parents wanted to do for themselves, and they couldn’t. My father was blind and my mother was basically an invalid. Helen and I would work out some plan for them, sometimes at their request, and at the last minute, they’d play fruit-basket-upset. They became both a frustration and a management problem.

Even though it wasn’t exactly my fault—because they really were a management problem—I still feel bad about treating them as such. They probably did not even notice, because they were wrapped up in their own emotions and relationships, and I was surprisingly patient. [And my wife was unsurprisingly competent.] But I knew that I was treating them like a management problem rather than like my parents. I was treating them like I would treat any other cantankerous old person, and, as a pastor, I had plenty of experience with cantankerous old people.

Is there a life lesson here for old people? One I can apply myself? Yes. Don’t be a management problem for your children… oh, wait, that doesn’t sound quite right… oh, here we go… Don’t be a management problem…

John Robert McFarland

THE GREAT ASSUMER [W, 11-13-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Lyrics of An Old Man—THE GREAT ASSUMER [W, 11-13-24]

 

I have been asked several times recently how people can go on these days, in the midst of great disappointments, with little hope. Well, do what I do, and assume that everything will be okay. Just be an assumer…

Remember The Great Pretender song? Buck Ram wrote it as a classic lost love song; he pretends he’s okay, even though she has left him. The Platters had a big hit with it in November of 1955.

Being a hopeless romantic myself, it spoke to me. As it hit the airwaves, I was in my first semester at IU. I had just had a disastrous experience with my first college girlfriend, and also with first semester mid-terms. I realized that I was pretending to be a college guy, able to win the affection of girls and the plaudits of professors, when I didn’t know how.

My biggest problem, though, was not pretending. It was assuming. I assumed I knew more than I really did. Assuming has dogged me my whole life, so this is my theme song…

[You can hear The Platters sing The Great Pretender on You Tube to get the melody.]

THE GREAT ASSUMER

Oh, yes, I’m the great assumer

Assuming I know what to do

Directions I eschew

I already know what to do

At least, I assume that is true

Assuming I know what to do

 

Oh, yes I’m the great assumer

I’m sure that I know where it is

I drive up and down

All ‘round the town

Enclosed in a great cloud of bliss

Even though I don’t know where it is

 

I look for your face

But it’s not in this place

 

Oh, yes, I’m the great assumer

I’m sure the parts are all there

I forge on ahead

Instructions I can’t bear

So where does this last thing go

I really have no way to know

 

Oh, yes, I’m the great assumer

Baby, a hard rain won’t fall

Although prognosticated

It is now belated

Surely it won’t be coming

Oh, I’d better start running

 

To the church I drive

But it’s no longer alive…

 

Oh, yes, I’m the great assumer

Dreaming of heaven above

I know I’ll go there

Eternal bliss I shall share

Until they see my sins on a scroll

Then they’ll tell me where else I can go

 

John Robert McFarland

 

VETERAN’S DAY REGRET [M, 11-11-24]

 BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—VETERAN’S DAY REGRET [M, 11-11-24]

 

One of my semi-regrets is that I did not serve in the military. No, I did not have bone spurs, like some people claimed to get out of military service.

I certainly expected to be in one military branch or another. I grew up during the draft. Unless you had some excuse, like a bad heart, or you were a preacher, you automatically had to serve two years. I was in good health, and certainly didn’t intend to be a preacher.

If you didn’t volunteer for the branch you wanted, the Selective Service just told you where to go. My eyesight wasn’t bad, but I wore glasses, so I figured the Air Force was out. Also the Navy, since I couldn’t swim and didn’t want to. Probably the Marines, since my beloved Uncle Johnny had been a Marine in WWII. But the Army would be okay. Uncles Randall and Bob and Mike had been in hard combat in WWII.

Those WWII guys were real heroes. Not the way we say "hero" now, just anyone who wears a uniform, but men, some very young, who asked not what their country could do for them, but did what they could for their country, regardless of the cost. I wanted to be like them. I think all boys did.

When I was starting high school, several of the junior and senior guys joined the National Guard. They said it was easy money. They just drove thirty miles to the armory at Evansville once in a while and marched around. Then Korea. Their Guard unit was activated. They went to Korea. Hadn’t finished high school. Some just seventeen. Some did not return, and those who did became criminals and wife beaters.

I was too young for Korea and too old for Viet Nam. Besides, by the time Nam came up, I was married, with two children. And I was a preacher.

In high school, I thought I had totally suppressed my promise to God that I would be a preacher if “He” would save my sister’s life. “He” did. I didn’t. So I went to college to become a newspaper reporter.

In my college, though, all male students had to take two years of ROTC. IU had both Air Force and Army ROTC, but we didn’t get to choose. I was assigned to the Army.

I liked it. Uniforms and ranks and orders were right up my alley. I was gung ho. I became the ROTC unit’s DFMS, Distinguished Freshman Military Student. I joined the elite Pershing Rifles. I was going to do four years of ROTC and be an officer in the regular army. Career man. RA all the way.

Then, in the summer before my sophomore year, my deal with God caught up with me. By the time I returned to IU for my second year of ROTC, I was a preacher with three churches. I was no longer interested in a military career, or even ROTC.

The cadre, the teaching officers, didn’t understand, and I didn’t want to tell them. It seemed a bit shameful to drop out of the military, because that’s what it was—dropping out. Even my Selective Service status changed. I was no longer draftable.

Sure, I could have volunteered, but we were without a war then. Korea was done. So what was the point? I was headed for three years of graduate theological school after IU. Besides, I had met a really cute girl. My future was marriage, not military.

I have always honored military folks, active and retired. I tried to be a helpful and understanding pastor to veterans. Sometimes I tried to support soldiers by opposing wars, In the words of Pete Seeger, “Support our boys in Viet Nam, bring them home, bring them home.”

I’ve always been a realist follower of Reinhold Niebuhr about war, though. I’d like to be a pacifist, but I can’t. There are times when you have to oppose evil with force.

On a day like today, though, at all the concerts, the band will play the songs of each of the military branches, and those who served in that branch will stand. I will hum along. I know all the words to all those songs, the WWII words and the more modern versions, too. I say a word of thanks for all who have served, especially those, like the older high school boys I admired, who did not return from war. And I feel a bit of regret that I can’t stand during one of those songs.

John Robert McFarland

THANKS FOR THE THORN [Sat, 11-9-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—THANKS FOR THE THORN [Sat, 11-9-24]

 

My first reaction is the same, every time—irritation, frustration, disgust.

For the last 36 years, my surgically-reduced semi-colon has required me, every day, to stop what I’m doing, with no more than 30 seconds notice, and dash to the toilet. Usually during my early morning hours, my best hours for thinking and writing. When that short notice starts, as I have just ascertained the meaning of the universe but have not yet had time to write it down, I think, Not again! But that is a notice that will not be denied, and by the time I have gotten back to my keyboard, the meaning of life is no longer remembered.

It's my cross to bear. Well, no, it isn’t. It’s not a cross. It’s a blessing. It’s a reminder, of how blessed I am.

It’s similar to the thorn in the apostle Paul’s flesh. [II Corinthians 12:7-9] It certainly started in the same way. I had a pain in my flesh that the surgeon discovered was a tumor penetrating my bowel wall. Had I not had the thorn in the flesh, that sent me to the operating room at midnight on my birthday, I would probably not be alive today.

Paul’s thorn? We’re not sure what it was. He obviously was not speaking of a literal thorn, but it was something—either physical or emotional—that caused him real pain, so much so that he had repeatedly asked God to remove it from him. But God said, “My grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in weakness.” So, Paul counted his pain as a blessing. It kept him humble, a constant reminder that he was the same as everyone else, that he needed the grace of God.

So, I have learned to ignore that initial frustration and anger at my semi-colon, for interrupting my great thoughts, for I know that it is actually a blessing. For one thing, that semi-colon, although decreased in size and controls, has given me 34 years, when my first oncologist said I’d have only one or two. In those 34 years, I’ve gotten to walk my daughters down the aisle, and play with my grandchildren as they have grown up, and go from 31 years of marriage to 65. And preach the Gospel of Good News. And live it.

There are other thorns we must deal with these days, thorns in the soul as well as the flesh. And yes, my first reaction is still the same, every time—irritation, frustration, disgust. That’s being human. Don’t sweat it if you react that way to your thorn. Just ask God to remove it, and you’ll get the same answer Paul did: “My grace is sufficient for you…”

Go forth in pain, giving thanks for your thorn, to live in love.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

ELECTION POST MORTEM [R, 11-7-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—ELECTION POST MORTEM [R, 11-7-24]

 

In the aftermath of the election, I am thinking of Augustine of Hippo--who by the time he died was Augustine of Rome, and who became St. Augustine--because he was the James Madison of Christian theology. Yes, it was Madison who was the primary writer of The Constitution, and Augustine was the primary theologian who gave us Substitutionary Atonement, The Trinity, and Original Sin, with the transmission of said Original Sin through sex.

 

When Augustine died, he could hear the shouts of the barbarians at the gates of Rome. He knew that the Pax Romana of the great Roman Empire was at an end. He had given his life to making Christianity both palatable and primary in the Roman Empire, and he died knowing that all his work was for naught. The vandals, those without the law, were taking over.

As a young man in Hippo, Augie had no interest in theology, or anything but his own pleasure. His mother, Monica, was a Christian, though, and she prayed devoutly for her son to be converted. Instead, he decided to go to Rome, because there were many and better fleshpots there. Monica prayed even more devoutly. “Don’t let him go to Rome, God. He’ll be lost forever.” Augie went anyway, and there, by chance, he heard Anselm preach his famous bee hive sermon. [2] He was converted, and set about making Christianity acceptable to the legalistic Roman culture and philosophy, which is why the simple belief “…in Jesus Christ, and him crucified” became a huge and impenetrable edifice of conflicting legalisms.

Two points: Monica’s prayer was answered the way she wanted, conversion for her son, even though it wasn’t answered the way she prayed. If Aug had not gone to Rome, he would not have heard Anselm and become a Christian.

And he would not have developed the theology that was so completely in sync with Roman philosophy and culture and government that it became The Roman Catholic [universal] Church—not The Jesus Universal Church.

Second Point: Augustine was a serious and devoted Christian. He really wanted everyone in the Roman Empire to be able to become Christian. He worked to that end. But as he died, he heard the barbarians at the gate. Original sin was going to overwhelm from without rather than from within, and all the work of his life was completely useless.

But the church went on. Lots of bad times along the way, some periods were so bad they were called the dark ages. And Augustine’s theology is triumphant, available for a Hoosier hillbilly to take issue with it.

The bottom line, I think, was said by John Wesley as he died: “The best thing is, God is with us.”

There are plenty of times that we don’t know the way or the will of God, but we can still know the presence of God.

John Robert McFarland

1] He died twelve years younger than I am now.

2] The church is like a bee hive, with one queen bee, and lots of workers, etc. It’s why the sports teams at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, IA are called The Bees, and why I give “Ambrose” as my pickup name at restaurants. [Don’t spend too much time thinking about that last part.]