BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Experiences of An Old Man—THE TIE THAT BINDS [R, 9-18-25]

 

Two experiences converged for me this week. I no longer remembered how to tie a tie, and former IL Gov. Jim Edgar died, at age 79. Ties tie the two together. So does church.

John Huff has been our pastor only a little over two months, so he does not know how decrepit I am. So he asked me to give the pastoral prayer at worship last Sunday. I had told him when he came that, even though “puny and feeble,” [1] I could probably fill in for him in an emergency. I’m not sure a pastoral prayer is an emergency. Anyone can do it. As an old woman once told a struggling young preacher, “It ain’t hard. Just call him Father, ask him for something, and sit down.” [2]

Anyway, I did it, and enjoyed it, but it was almost prayed by a tieless preacher. Yes, most preachers these days wear jeans and “Grateful Dead” t-shirts as they preach, but I’m old school. I wear a tie or clerical collar when I lead worship. Since Helen and I have been puny and feeble ever since covid19, we have livestreamed worship for five years. I wear shorts and a Cincinnati Reds t-shirt for worship. I had forgotten how to tie a tie. Took five tries, because I couldn’t remember how Jim Edgar did it.

I’m sure Jim Edgar never forgot how to tie a tie. Probably wore one on his death bed. He was that kind of guy. But he did have to change one at a party at the home of the Eastern IL U president, and it wasn’t my fault. In fact, he was the one who got me into trouble.

It was one of those stand around and talk parties. I was the new pastor at Wesley UMC in Charleston, IL, Jim’s home church. He was a state legislator who had just been promoted to be the executive assistant to IL Governor “Big Jim” Thompson. Jim and I were chatting in the dining room. We did not realize everyone else had gone into the living room and were being informally addressed by the EIU president. Apparently our conversation was too loud, so Brenda, Jim’s wife, came in to tell us to shut up. She didn’t do it that way. She was invariably classy. But it startled Jim. He was holding a plate of party food. He spilled some on his tie.

Unlike my Sunday morning tie experience, this one became an emergency, for we were all going to some performance at the EIU auditorium after the party [I think it was a concert by Andy Williams] and Jim felt that the new exec assistant to the governor could not be seen in public with a stained tie. [3] He was about to melt down when Brenda said, calmly, “I put another tie in the car. I’ll go get it for you.”

So I watched Jim Edgar tie his tie, but last Sunday Morning, I couldn’t remember how he did it.

John Robert McFarland

1] “Puny and feeble” is what folks wrote in the membership book beside the names of old folks in the Solsberry, IN Methodist Church when I was their nineteen-year-old college student preacher, to let me know who I should call on since they could not come to church.

2] No, although I was once a struggling young preacher, I’m not the one in that episode. It’s just an old preacher story.]

3] Jim could have just done like Richard Leonard, a Methodist preacher who was a PhD history professor at IL Wesleyan U when we lived in Normal, IL. It was said that he kept his ties in the refrigerator because they had so much food on them.

Here is the link to Jim Edgar’s obit in his hometown Charleston, IL newspaper. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/jg-tc/name/jim-edgar-obituary?pid=209834305

 

 

 

SEPTEMBER JOYS [T, 9-16-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man—SEPTEMBER JOYS [T, 9-16-25]

 

As I walked this morning, I watched the leaves rustle restlessly in the trees. They know something is coming. For them, it means death. I’m sorry for them, but for me, it means life.

This morning there was more yellow in the leaves, less green.

I think moving to Oakland City when I was ten was what gave me my love of baseball and of school. And why I’m happy when I see the leaves turn from summer to autumn. They mean the World Series, the fulfillment of the baseball season, and school, the end of a long hot boring summer. The chance, at last, to see my friends.

Until age ten I had been a city boy in the near-east inner-city of Indianapolis, running from bullies, walking to the store to do errands for Mother or Mrs. Dickerson, who lived next door, the only black person for blocks around, and riding the street car downtown to Cadle Tabernacle with my sister to see some “uplifting” drama or concert.

Then we moved to a farm with no indoor plumbing but with a whole lot of chores that my parents thought were perfect for a ten-year-old boy…

…mowing, milking, hoeing, feeding [chickens, pigs, etc], chopping [wood, weeds], chasing [horse, cows, pigs, chickens—anything that got where it shouldn’t be], throwing [hay-up onto the wagon, or down from the loft], plowing, picking [vegetables, berries, fruit], gathering [eggs], carrying [water in, used water out], shucking [corn], harnessing [horse to plow or wagon], plucking [feathers off the chicken so it could be fried], digging [potatoes, beets, graves for anything that died]…

Is it any wonder that I decided I’d rather play baseball or go to school? Or that I went into a profession that is all about relating to people rather than to animals or tools or nature?

September is a season for joy, and I hope you feel September joys, even if, incomprehensibly, you don’t like baseball or school.

John Robert McFarland

“If I were a bird, I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.” George Eliot

IN THE DAYS OF LINDEN HALL [Sat, 9-13-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man—IN THE DAYS OF LINDEN HALL [Sat, 9-13-25]

 

Today is the 70^th anniversary of my first day at Indiana University, the start of orientation week in 1955. The 13^th was a Monday that year.

As we get really old, and are less able to do things that make memories, we depend upon memories we’ve already stored up, especially the memories of the hinge times in our lives—a wedding, the birth of a child or grandchild, taking a courageous stand, the moment we felt called to a vocation, the first day of college…

There are very few people left for whom the song below will make sense, but some of my best memories are from the first week, orientation week, of my freshman year at IU, Sept 1955, especially working in the dining room at Rogers Center, where grad students lived, and even more especially “…walking back to good old Linden Hall.”

There are some new dorms named for trees now, even a Linden, but the old Trees Center--hurriedly-built officer training barracks left over from WWII--has been long since demolished. The Education Building stands there now.

Linden and Pine were the dorms for kids on The Residence Scholarship Plan, smart kids who wanted to go to college but didn’t have the money to do so. Unlike kids in the other dorms, we furnished our own sheets and pillows and such, and did our own maid and janitorial work, and worked at least ten hours per week, and maintained a B grade average. [Jon, am I right about that grade average?]

After working breakfast or lunch, we denizens of The Residence Scholarship Program who worked at the Rogers Center dining cafeteria, would walk “home” together: Mary Winstead, Phyllis Brown [I officiated at her wedding to Henry Oakes], Susie [Sara] Hayes, Bill Ridge, Jon Stroble.

The girls had donned their yellow uniform dresses before going over to work. The boys slipped on short white jackets once we got there.

This is to the tune of Love Letters in the Sand.

IN THE DAYS OF LINDEN HALL

On a day like today, when skies were never gray

Walking back to good old Linden Hall

The girls were dressed in yellow

Our hearts were young and mellow

Walking back to good old linden hall

 

The air was full of hopes and dreams that fall

As we walked, we always had a ball

Now that I can barely stand

Wouldn’t it be grand

To be walking back to good old Linden Hall

 

The days were always fair, there was romance in the air

Walking back to good old Linden Hall

Only the sky was blue

There was nothing we couldn’t do

Walking back to good old Linden Hall

 

Our hearts back then were always young and free

We gave no thought to what might come to be

Now as I live in memory

It is so sweet to be

Walking back to good old Linden Hall

 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

BEST & WORST OF TIMES [R, 9-11-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Times of An Old Man—BEST & WORST OF TIMES [R, 9-11-25]

 

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” That’s the famous opening line of Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities.

It has taken me more than two cities, more like eighteen, but I live in the best of times and in the worst of times. The 1950s is the best of times. The 1960s is the worst of times. I live in them both. Nothing since then makes much sense to me.

That doesn’t mean that good things didn’t happen for me in other decades. In the 1970s and ‘80s I got to wear leisure suits and a mint-green tuxedo. [1] In the ‘90s my daughters got married and my grandchildren were born. In the 21^st century, I’ve gotten to live in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where the winters are 13 months long, thus preserving us old people with cold, the way hamburger spoils less rapidly in the refrigerator or at room temperature.

It’s easy to see why anyone would want to live in the best of times. But the 1960s, the worst of times?

Okay, I probably don’t have to go back to the ‘60s to live in the worst of times. It’s quite possible that right now is the worst of times, at least for America. Democracy is under siege and almost gone. Culture is vulgar. Hate is patriotic. Education is propaganda. The world is heating at an unsustainable rate. Yes, one could make a very good case for right now being the worst of times…

…but all these current bad times had their seeds in the 1960s. To make it even worse, we were warned about them, right then, by folks as disparate as Rachel Carson and Dwight Eisenhower, and we paid no attention.

Failing to pay attention to the warning signs always produces the worst of times.

The 1960s gave us the Viet Nam War, which in turn gave us drugs and an abiding mistrust of government and public institutions. The 1960s gave us new insight into the deep roots of racism and the perils of global warming. The assassinations of JFK and RFK and MLK showed us where a gun culture would lead. The 1960s gave us Barry Goldwater and the anti-communist domino theory, and the corruptions of Richard Nixon. The 1960s gave us Ronald Reagan and the “trickle down” economic theory and the start of the great wealth divide. [2]

In each new generation, each of these problems has gotten worse.

I live in the present age, but the present age doesn’t live in me.

On my good days, I live in the 1950s, with the joy of “Oh, What A Beautiful Morning” and the innocence of “I Believe.”

On my bad days, I live in the 1960s, with the sarcasm of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” and the warning of “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

Yes, here I should provide a note of optimism, but I have outlived optimism. The best I can offer is… well, it’s from the ‘60s…

Keep the faith, baby.

John Robert McFarland

1]I didn’t choose the mint green tux with the ruffled shirt. I had to fill in as a groomsman at the last minute when my associate pastor, Bob Morgan, married Nina Cogswell--thus becoming the Morwells--and the tuxedo was part of the position.

 2] Yes, Reagan was not president in the 1960s, but he was honing his war on the middle class then as governor of California.

ON BEING OPEN [T, 9-9-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—ON BEING OPEN [T, 9-9-25]

 

Recently, on two successive days, with two different groups of friends, I was asked, “How did you handle telling other people about it when you had cancer?”

This arose because each group was concerned about someone who has significant health problems but is secretive about it. “Isn’t that bad for their health?” they asked.

The answer is “Yes.” We have a better chance of getting well if we are open about our difficulties. But…

…there are problems with being open, especially for women, who are often accused of being hypochondriacs if they are open about their symptoms, and accused of being hysterical if they are open about their feelings.

When I was going through cancer, I was totally open about my disease and treatments, and about my feelings. I think it was an important part of my healing. Some folks, though, thought I was too open, and I probably was. I undoubtedly talked too much about throwing up, but that was a regular part of chemotherapy in those days, before the great new anti-nausea drugs were developed, and I felt I needed to be honest about it.

Also, I tried for humor in my openness, because a laugh, or even a smile, makes folks more comfortable, and “puking” or “calling Ralph on the big white phone” or “tossing cookies” is in the humor division, at least the groaning sub-division.

As I contemplated what my first oncologist indicated, that I’d be dead in “a year or two,” I read that cancer patients who kept a journal of their feelings had a 50% better chance of getting well. I read someplace else that patients who went to support group had a 50% better chance of getting well. I’m no dummy; that’s 100%! So I kept a feelings journal and went to support group.

You can be open automatically in a support group, because everyone else has the same problems. No judgment, just understanding.

I had no intention of writing a book about my experience, being that open, with the whole world, but as I wrote in my journal each day, it began to read like a book. I thought, “Okay, this is a way I can be open and be helpful to others, and help with my own healing, too.” [1]

Yes, I think people need to be open about their maladies and feelings. But sometimes that is dangerous. One of the great things about keeping a feelings journal, or just a daily journal, is that you can be totally open, because nobody else sees that openness. Actually writing, on a page or a screen, “I feel like crap,” does something for you that just thinking it does not.

[My great, late friend, Bob Butts, once said to our mutual physician, Dr. Raluca Vucescu, “I feel like crap.” She said, “Bob, you’ve got to give me a symptom I can work with.”]

I was once asked to be the program for a group of old people in my church. I went through Erik Erikson’s 8 stages of psycho-social growth with them.

Erikson points out that each time we enter a new stage, such as moving from intimacy vs isolation to generativity vs stagnation, we have the opportunity to rework all the previous stages. Anything we did not get done at industry vs inferiority, for instance, we have a chance to go back and get right when we start final integrity vs despair, the last stage, the old people stage.

A dignified and intellectual woman approached me after the program. “When I was three,” she said, “my infant brother died. No one talked to me about it. I just knew that I had a little brother, and then I didn’t. I think I’ve carried that as a secret weight in my soul for 77 years. I need to be honest with myself about that. I need, finally, to grieve his loss…”

Old people have some particular problems in trying to be open. Writing, either with a pen or keyboard, might be difficult because of recalcitrant eyes and arthritic fingers. But I recommend trying it. Just do the best you can. Old age is not a disease, but it is our final chance to be open, to ourselves, about who we are.

John Robert McFarland

1] Now That I Have Cancer I Am Whole: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel]

 

HOW SHALL THEY HEAR? [Sun, 9-7-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Preacher—HOW SHALL THEY HEAR? [Sun, 9-7-25]

 

As I write this, it is early Sunday morning, and I am thinking about what I’ll preach, even though there is no chance to do so. Because preaching is important. As the Apostle, Paul, said, “How shall they hear without a preacher?” How will folks hear the Good News of Christ, and have the chance to respond to it, unless someone can present it in a helpful fashion?

Unfortunately, preaching is at a low ebb.

My theological alma mater sent all alums an invitation to mentor current students. I was intrigued. I once wanted to teach preaching in a seminary. I thought this mentoring was something I could do even in my old-age decrepitude.

The invitation listed all the areas that might be included in pastoral work and asked us to mark the ones where we could mentor. I ran through categories such as Faith & Culture, Educational Leadership, Pastoral Care, Public Ministry, LGBTQ Studies, Peace Studies, Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care, Ecological Regeneration, Evangelism & Church Planting, Social Organizing…looking for Preaching. It wasn’t there.

Not surprising, really. Very few students at my old alma mater want a career as a parish pastor, and if they do, their interest is in pastoral counseling or church administration, not in preaching.

The assumption seems to be that everyone already knows the Gospel and so, there is no need for preaching. Now we just need ways to apply the Gospel to the world.

 I don’t think that is true.

For sure, traditional forms of preaching are outmoded. One person standing up in front of others for 20 minutes, to educate and inspire… that is totally foreign to the way we do communication now. Yes, even with video clips on the now ubiquitous sanctuary screens, who can take that seriously?

Frankly, I think that the church, and the world, is ready, even yearning, for a renewal of preaching. Yes, I mean one person standing up in front of others and speaking the Word in words.

It’s actually a novel concept in this world of little screens and big screens and all screens in between. I mean, a real person? Just talking? Right to us? No filters? Telling stories? No explosions or dances or flashing lights? How intriguing!

It’s too bad that no one understands what an exciting job that can be.

John Robert McFarland

“How shall they hear without a preacher?” Romans 10:14.

RIP, MARK COX [F, 9-5-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Poignant Griefs of An Old Man—RIP, MARK COX [F, 9-5-25]

 

I don’t have any sons, boys who bear my genes or whom I raised, so I can’t really say what losing a son would be like, but I think it would be a little like losing Mark Cox, who died August 29, 2025.

It was about eight years ago that this tall [6’4”], handsome man, dressed in a three-piece suit, white shirt and silk tie, slipped into our row at church just as the prelude ended, and sat down beside Helen. He crossed his legs. Helen nudged me and nodded at his socks. They were reticulated, pictures of giraffes, his legs so long that they displayed the whole animal. Then we started singing the first hymn. He had a beautiful baritone voice and sang with gusto. Helen had him adopted even before exchanging names after the service.

Michael was with him that day. He, too, was handsome, but dressed more like a special ed teacher than the manager of a men’s clothing store. They hadn’t been together long, and were church shopping, not an easy thing to do for a gay couple. But they had come to the right church. St. Mark’s UMC accepts everyone. As Mark himself complained a few years later, “We’ll accept anyone, as long as they’re not Christian. What’s the point of being included if all you get out of it is good coffee?”

Mark was that rare Christian, gay and born again. As he said to me in an email not long ago, “It’s important to me to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is my savior.”

The church tried to keep Mark out, but he would not go, because he knew Christ was his savior. Mark understood that you can’t separate Christ and Church, because Church is the post-resurrection Body of Christ.

Not just the earthly institution/organization that we call church, although the organization is a part of Christ’s Body. So even if the institutional church treats you badly, and tries to keep you out, if you are a follower of Christ, you can’t give up on it.

Mark never gave up on the church, even though so many of its ways, and so many of its congregations, told him that he was not only a sinner but an “abomination.” They tried to keep him out, and he would not have it, because he knew that he was saved through Christ. With that salvation came membership in the Church, even if the church didn’t like it.

Mark and Michael got married at St. Mark’s. I was pleased, but a little worried. I knew that Michael didn’t share Mark’s emphasis on Christ as Savior. To him, the church was primarily a place to do good for others. He participated in all the many helping activities of our congregation, what Methodists call “social holiness.” Mark was into the moral and spiritual aspects of faith, “personal holiness.” I think that was what split them apart in the end.

We were close to both of them, emotionally and socially. Before covid isolation, when Helen and I were still able to get around, we often ate together, at our house, or theirs, or some restaurant. They came to us for a listening ear when they were down, or struggling with some personal or medical problem. When Covid 19 isolated us, they brought groceries to us. It was that kind of relationship, the kind you’d have with sons.

Indeed, one day after worship, a man there for the first time encountered Mark in the aisle and started chatting. He noticed Helen standing there and asked, “Is this your mother?” Mark just said, “Yes.”

At a Quarryland Chorus concert, where Mark was singing, Michael brought one of his teacher friends. We chatted. After we went back to our seats, another friend overheard the teacher say, "Who are those people?" Michael said, "They think they're our parents." Well...

As they were getting ready to leave Bloomington, to move to North Carolina, the late Dan Hughes, one of our Lay Leaders, said, “We’re going to miss Mark so much. He’s a beacon.”

That he was. In the words of one of those old hymns he loved so much, Let the lower lights be burning. Send a gleam across the wave. Some poor fainting, struggling saman, you may rescue, you may save. Mark was that kind of beacon, especially for other gay folks who had been hurt so badly by the church that they were frightened to keep trying. But when they saw him, towering above the crowd, singing out, they knew they had a home.

The beacon has gone out. It’s way too much like losing a son. But I trust that his salvation, in Christ, is sure.

John Robert McFarland

Mark and I talked frequently of what hymns we wanted to sing in church. We most often longed for: “He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today. He walks with me, and talks with me, along life’s narrow way. He lives! He lives! Salvation to impart. You ask me how I know he lives? He lives, within, my heart!” He wanted to lead it, making the congregation draw out that last “He lives” forever and ever…