ANGER II [W, 3-18-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Random Thoughts of An Angry Old Man—ANGER II [W, 3-18-26]

 

Remember the smile on the face of Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Gallaraga when umpire Jim Joyce called the 27^th batter of the June 2^nd , 2010 game “safe” when he was clearly “out,” costing Galarraga a “perfect” game? It would have put the relatively unknown Galarraga into the record books forever. Only 20 other pitchers had ever thrown perfect games. He had a “right” to be mad, didn’t he? Other people, with less “right,” got mad about it. But Galarraga smiled and went back to the mound and pitched to the next batter. Instead of getting mad, he said, “People make mistakes sometimes.”

Umpire Jim Joyce later admitted, after he had seen the tape, that he simply got the call wrong.

Anger comes when we have exhausted all our coping mechanisms. Galarraga had other ways to cope.

Some folks, of course, have very few coping mechanisms. They anger easily. Or their only coping mechanism is suppression, and when that runs out, their anger is explosive. My father had two emotional states: silence and rage. When his anger had steeped long enough in the silence, it broke out in rage.

There are various biblical suggestions for dealing with anger. “Put it away quickly.” “Don’t let it go down on your head.”

The problem with any such suggestion is that it tells you what to do but now how. When I was young, people could still remember The Grange, an organization dedicated to helping farmers, so I was able to use the story in preaching of the two farmers who met on the road. “You coming to the Grange meeting tonight? They’ll teach you how to farm better.” one asked. “No,” said the other, “I already know how to farm better than I am.”

Most of us know better ways to deal with frustration, better ways to cope than anger, but we get angry anyway. It’s easier.

As a pastor I learned about anger in three ways: 1] People got angry at me. 2] I got angry at them. 3] In counseling people, listening to their problems, I saw that at least part of any problem was misplaced anger.

People got angry with me for the silliest reasons, such as “using too many illustrations from sports.” That wasn’t just a criticism, it was anger; the person who said it foamed at the mouth and tried to get me fired. There is a lot of anger in people, for many reasons. If we express anger at people we work with or family members, we have to pay a price, perhaps even lose a job. Anger with a preacher is usually misplaced, but it’s much safer, because s/he is required to be nice to you anyway, and nobody will make you be accountable for that anger.

So much of the anger we see today in politics, on TV, in general incivility, is misplaced. It’s much easier to shake your fist at a politician than at your mother-in-law.

People often choose as anger targets, those who least deserve it, just because they are available. It’s the equivalent of a four-year-old’s tantrum at his mother for refusing to let him play with razor blades and matches.

Bishop Leroy Hodapp and I used to meet in Bloomington, IN for lunch and then go to IU basketball practice. Coach Bob Knight always referred to Leroy as his pastor. Indeed, Leroy had officiated at his second wedding. They were close friends. One day when we went to practice, though, IU was in a bad losing streak.  

Knight was sitting at a table beside the basketball floor. Hodapp went up to him and put his hand on his back and asked him how he was. Knight jumped up and started cursing the bishop in the loud string of invectives that he always used. He was very angry. He jumped up and grabbed his metal folding chair and threw it behind him without looking. It barely missed me. One of Knight’s greatest flaws was that he went to anger first, even if it meant being exceptionally rude to a friend. He related primarily to his own emotions, not to people. Anger always happens when you do that.

Remember Bob Parsons the school bus driver who started the column before this one? He has quoted “I don’t need anger management; I just need for people to stop pissing me off.” And Bob Hammel tells how one day when his daughter, Jane, around 8^th grade, was angry with her mother. He had explained to her that no one but she could make herself angry, that was her choice. One day, though, she called him and said, “Daddy, I know you said no one else could make me mad, but Mother is trying awfully hard.”

Well, you should be angry at me by now, for talking about anger and not providing any alternatives. So I’ll recommend The Enigma of Anger, by Garrett Keizer. I’m prejudiced, because he wrote a nice blurb for the jacket of my book, The Strange Calling. I think he’s an excellent thinker and writer, regardless.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

ANGER-PART I [M, 3-16-26]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Angry Old Man—ANGER-PART I [M, 3-16-26]

 

Old friend and colleague, Bob Parsons, became a school bus driver when he retired from being a preacher. He tells of another driver who lost his cool because of unruly students and slammed on his brakes. They had to call EMTs to attend to the injuries of some of the kids.

This brings up two issues: 1] Why don’t school buses have seat belts? 2] How should we deal with anger?

I have no answers for the first, and probably none for the second, but I’m going to write about anger anyway. In fact, I’m going to write about it at such length and in such a disorganized way that it’s going to take two columns. Reader beware…

Besides, this is Lent, a season that is dedicated to self-discipline and self-sacrifice, to remind us of the sacrifice of Christ. So, a good time to talk about anger. [An even better time would be when Jesus turned over the tables of the money changers in the temple, but I have other plans for that story…]

We can understand that bus driver. We’re all going to get mad sometimes, especially at children, who can be so uncooperative, because, after all, they are kids, and that’s how they get some control. Anger is a way to get control, for anyone. It sounds strange, but we get control by getting out of control.

Anger is real. We usually blame someone else, or some event, for it. “She made me mad.” Sometimes it just boils up. We don’t know where it comes from. We get mad way out of proportion to some little slight. I’ve heard people say that they had beaten someone else down into the ground “because he looked at me funny.”

 

I suspect that anger, especially that kind of anger, is part of original sin. It’s just there, anger about life. St. Augustine said that “the so-called innocence of children is more a matter of weakness of limb than purity of heart.” Anyone who has ever cared for a child understands what he was saying. Kids get mad just because they get frustrated.

Herman Melville has Ishmael speak of this original sin/non-rational root of anger in Moby Dick when he says “…especially when my hypos get such an upper hand on me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”

Anger means we have reached the limits of our ability to cope.

Ishmael, of course, is a “root” name. The original Ishmael was Abraham’s eldest son, though born of Hagar, the maid of Abraham’s wife, Sarah. Isaac, though, the biological son of Sarah, is claimed to be the true heir of Abraham, and thus of Jews and Christians, with his first-born half-brother left out. That’s enough to make anyone angry, so Melville’s Ishmael in some ways represents the non-rational side of human nature, the half-breed side, the angry side that just wants to knock people’s hats off for no reason. He is the original sin/anger part of Jung’s “collective unconscious.”

Also anger is probably a derivative of the biological imperative to stay alive, a way of getting up enough energy to fight for existence.

Bernie Siegel says that those who have the best chance to survive cancer are the automatic fighters, those whose first thought at any challenge is to fight back.

Anger at the cancer is part of the fight. It’s certainly understandable if someone gets angry with the insurance company that denies them treatment for the cancer, too.

Anger, though, at the doctors, at your spouse, at your children, at the neighbors, at your pastor, because you have cancer, is misplaced. It happens, though, because they are there and available, like the four-year-old tantrum is at the parents or the dog because there’s nobody else in the house.

But anger is also a choice, sometimes a largely unconscious choice, but it’s not the only possible reaction to any person or occasion.

My sister-in-law Millie was a great junior high special needs teacher. When she had to discipline a student, she would say, “Your punishment will be this because you decided to do that.” The kid would always protest. “I didn’t decide to do it.” “Yes,” Millie would say, “you did.”

Probably the best thing any of us can learn about anger: Regardless of how emotional we are, anger is always a decision. We have a choice. That is freedom.

John Robert McFarland

More next column.

Please pray for Judith Unger, who is having surgery today.

 

PAT AND THE BIG VICIOUS DOG [Sat, 3-14-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Friends and Dogs, by an Old Story Teller—PAT AND THE BIG VICIOUS DOG [Sat, 3-14-26]

 

Our friend, Pat, was a school teacher, thus she was a break-of-dawn jogger, so that she could get home and cleaned up and settled down before she had to face a room of thirty third graders.

Because of where she lived, she had to jog through downtown. That was no problem at first light. No stores or offices open, so no people on the sidewalks or cars on the streets. Unfortunately, the big, vicious dog didn’t worry about open hours.

Pat Is a small woman. Not much over five feet. Still as petite as she was in high school.

I didn’t know her well in high school. She was a year ahead of me. We did not have the same friends. I lived in the country, and she lived in town. We went to different churches. We didn’t do the same extra-curriculars. But I knew all the cute girls enough to say hello to them in the halls.

So it was a wonderful surprise, 25 years after high school, 25 years of different states and colleges and jobs and spouses [only one each], 25 years of no contact, that I was appointed to a new church and found that Pat and her husband were members there. We had a delightful time, establishing a new friendship, at the same time recalling high school days.

And Pat and I shared running. I think Roy and Helen got a bit bored when we talked about our running experiences. Until the day of the big, vicious dog. That was a running experience worth hearing about.

Pat was at the edge of downtown when the dog started chasing her, snarling all the way. She picked up the pace. So did the dog. She set some new land speed records. So did the dog. She mentally ran through all the businesses downtown, to see if one might be open, so she could take refuge. Nothing.

But then she remembered the police station. She would be running right beside it. It had a side door that opened directly onto the sidewalk. She was at full speed. So was the dog. She desperately yanked at the grab bar handle to open the door. The dog was almost upon her. It lunged at her. But Pat was on the other side of the long, glass door. The dog ran into the open door, bounced off of it, into the police station. Pat pushed the door shut and jogged home.

No account of the event ever made the news, but I don’t think we need to worry about the police. They are trained to handle emergencies, and they have weapons. They were probably quite surprised, though.

The point of a story is to see yourself in it, so that you can ask what you would do. Who are you in this story? Pat? The dog? The police? What would you do?

Or the Jesus story. Who are you? A disciple? An onlooker? Herod? Peter? The cock that crowed three times? The woman taken in adultery? The prodigal son? The man who went away sorrowful… What would you do?

Or maybe the point of a good story is simply to enjoy it.

Or sing a song about it. “Where, oh where, has my little dog gone…”

John Robert McFarland

 

IT’S NOT SIMPLE TO BE SIMPLE [R, 3-12-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Shopping of a Simple Man—IT’S NOT SIMPLE TO BE SIMPLE [R, 3-12-26]

 

I started buying Casio G-SHOCK wrist watches a long time ago, when I was a runner. They have many modes a runner needs, even an alarm. But my current one has gotten old. I don’t know how to make any of the modes work. Neither does anyone else. I have a manual. It’s one inch by an inch and a half and 40 pages printed in minus-3 point type. Probably in Chinese, but who can tell?

For several years I have not been able to change the watch when Standard and Daylight times switch places, but it’s still right half the year. The other half I just make the adjustment mentally.

That’s a bit more complicated since it started gaining time. Now I have to adjust each time I look at it by one hour and six minutes. Keeps me on my toes. That’s good.

But it’s become more complicated still because it has recently started changing modes on its own. When I look at it, I’m never sure which mode it’s in so I push all the little recessed buttons, one on each corner, until a number comes up that looks like it’s probably the correct time, if adjusted by an hour and six minutes. That’s becoming a bit more trying.

Today, Kathy was here to help Helen set up for their joint birthday tea party tomorrow. That sounded like a good time for me to go to Target, the only general store left on our side of town, to buy a new watch.

I’m an old man. I no longer run. I don’t need an alarm, or any of the other interesting modes on a Casio G-SHOCK. I’ll get a simple watch, I said, with an expansion band, with a round face, just a big hand and a little hand and a second hand. If it doesn’t have a battery, I can wind it each day, the way we did in Medieval times. A simple watch, that’s what I need, to lead a simple life.

A young man in a red Target shirt said the watches were in the middle of the Men’s Dept. The old woman in the red Target shirt in the Men’s Dept said they no longer sell watches, that 2 years before, “they” stopped sending watches to them. She did not know why. She did not sound interested in finding out why.

As I left the store, I ran into the young man in the red Target shirt. “Did you find them?” he asked rather cheerfully. When I explained what the old woman in the red shirt had said, he exclaimed, “Well, that’s silly. Everyone needs a wrist watch.” I noticed that he was not wearing a wrist watch, although he had several interesting tattoos where a watch might have gone, so maybe he hadn’t noticed that he has no wrist watch.

I was back in my sedan, now wedged between two behemoth mobiles, formerly known as pickup trucks, when it occurred to me that there are two jewelry stores in the mall, and there is a back door from Target right into the mall. I went back in.

I walk one to two miles per day for exercise. Target is a big store. I shall not have to walk for exercise again for several days. I finally arrived at the exit to the mall. It was not only closed, but barricaded, by some construction project on the mall side.

I walked back to my car, shimmied in between the behemoth mobiles, and started to drive across the great divide [I-69] to the other half of town, to go to Walmart, my least favorite place in the world, but when I got to High Street, I thought, “You know, this street will lead me home. It will be simple to go there. And I’ve gotten used to this good old Casio G-SHOCK. It’s right half the year, and it’s right 54 minutes out of each hour.”

How much simpler could you get?

John Robert McFarland

ABANDONMENT ISSUES [T, 3-10-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Somewhat Relevant Stories of An Old Friend—ABANDONMENT ISSUES [T, 3-10-26]

 

We heard our friend, Suzanne, tell this story in a public setting of a hundred or more people, and I’m sure she has told it more than once, so I’m not revealing anything private…

Suzanne was an Anglophile. She loved all things English. Cricket, tea, royalty, the whole nine yards. Especially the music of the Anglican Church. She is an excellent singer. So when she graduated college, she moved to London to work. There she joined an Anglican congregation and sang in the choir.

One day, in a parking garage, a man grabbed her and raped her. She is a small woman. Five foot-three, then not much more than a hundred pounds. The man who raped her, over and over, was huge—six foot-seven, and 300 lbs. Each time he raped her, he told her than when he was done using her, he was going to kill her.

She said, “I had no doubt he would do it. But throughout that whole time, I prayed, saying silently to God: Just don’t leave me. I can take the pain and the misery and the injustice and the indignity and even the death, as long as you don’t leave me.”

But he didn’t kill her. Someone intervened. He was stopped. He was sent to prison.

But, later, she learned she was pregnant. She had an abortion.

As a true Anglophile, she loved the liturgy of the Anglican Church, and she loved her priest, a little white-haired man with rosy cheeks and twinkling eyes.

As fate would have it, on the Sunday after her abortion, her priest preached an anti-abortion sermon. She approached him tentatively after the service and said, “You know, if abortion is outlawed, many women will die at the hands of backstreet abortionists.” He replied, with vigor, “Good! They should!”

She said, “I felt more alone right then than I had at any time during my ordeal. When I was being raped, when I was told I’d be murdered, I was sure God was with me. In the church, it seemed like God had abandoned me.”

She knew better, of course. In a life-long attempt to correct that wrong, she came back home and went to seminary and was ordained and is preaching and pastoring to this day, trying to listen and respond to the voices that are afraid to speak their needs.

A prayer for Lent: God, don’t leave us. We can take this world, its pains and injustices and indignities, and even the failings of the church, as long as you don’t leave us. Amen.

John Robert McFarland

LYING FOR PROFIT [Su, 3-8-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Curmudgeon—LYING FOR PROFIT [Su, 3-8-26]

 

I guess it was my mother who instilled in me not just a preference for telling the truth, but a fear of lying. 

I was little—age 5 or 6—and I can actually remember occasionally trying to tell a lie and having to back off. Before the falsehood was even concluded, I would hang my head and say, “That’s a lie.”

We tell lies for three reasons. 1, To make ourselves look better than we are, like folks who pad their resumes. 2, To stay out of trouble. “I’m not the one who broke the lamp…or spilled the milk…” 3, Because our brains are warped 4, Arrogance. 5, To make a profit.

Okay, I told a lie. It’s five reasons instead of three.

But is that a lie? Not really. That’s a mistake. When I started typing, I hadn’t thought of two of the reasons. But if I had said “three,” knowing full well that there are really five, in order to get you to buy my unwritten book, The Three Reasons to Lie for Fun and Profit, well, that would be a lie.

Of course, some folks are just serial prevaricators. Either they can’t tell the difference between truth and falsehood, or they get some satisfaction out of lying, thinking they are more clever than others because they can pull the wool over your eyes.

A good example is the recent Republican Congressman George Santos. He would tell you it was raining even if you were standing in the sunshine. And was outraged when you didn’t believe him.

That’s a pretty good tell is someone is lying—if they are outraged when called on it.

I once knew a man of whom it was said, “He would like even when it was to his profit to tell the truth.” He was a preacher.

The people who lie for profit are the most insidious, I think, because they consider not whether a statement is true or false, but if it is good or bad, as in “It’s a good lie, because our profits went up.”

I remember a TV show when folks were talking about advertising. They all agreed, and the audience clapped enthusiastically, when someone lauded the old shampoo bottle and commercial that said to wash, rinse, repeat. “Whoever thought up ‘repeat’ was brilliant. There is no need to wash more than once, but by adding that simple word, they doubled profits.”

Businesses lie with gusto, knowing we don’t believe them, but hoping, assuming, that somewhere there is a gullible soul who will buy stuff they don’t need. Just make up anything and throw it against the wall and see if it sticks. If it doesn’t, think up something else.

Like those folks who keep trying to get me to extend our auto maintenance warranty. They say all sorts of things they don’t mean. This is the only time we’ll contact you. This is your last chance. We won’t contact you anymore. We reserve the right to deny coverage if you don’t respond within 5 days.

The last one is okay, except they don’t mean it, because I get the same pitch next week.

We are told, “It’s not lying. It’s just advertising.”

I think that’s why Donald Trump gets by with lying so blatantly and often. He’s a business guy. We accept lying from business people. We don’t even think of it as lying anymore, especially from someone like Trump who lies all the time. It’s just the way he talks.

Accepting that kind of lying as normal is why the world is going to hell in a hand basket. And that’s the truth.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

COFFEE WITH HELEN AND GOD [3-6-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Coffee Talk of An Old Man—COFFEE WITH HELEN AND GOD [3-6-26]

 

Helen and I have “coffee with” together each morning at ten. “Coffee with” is an old Amish saying, that we picked up while living in Amish territory. It means simply that our coffee is accompanied by a muffin or scone, usually something Helen has baked, sometimes a gift from a friend’s oven or a delivery ordered by a daughter.

Our “coffee with” is an hour, maybe two, depending on how much we have to talk about.

You’d think we’d have everything already talked out by now. After all, we’ve been married almost 67 years. And we spend 24 hours per day with each other, with only occasional interludes that include other people, either in person or on the phone or via Zoom.

For two people together in a small house, every day is an endless string of talking. “Have you seen my glasses?” “What did Millie say when she called?” “I don’t know why I’m so tired.” “It’s because you’re old.” “I need to change the decorations on the mantle.” “We have a mantle?” Etc.

But “coffee with” time is different. Oh, yes, we do some calendaring. That’s necessary hour by hour. “Did you…?” “No, I forgot; I’ll do it tomorrow…” “What’s a tommrow?”

The real substance, though, of “coffee with,” is remembrance…children and grandchildren when they were little…friends now gone…jobs rejoiced and regretted…days of stove pipes and rug beaters…times of advocacy for social justice…children and grandchildren all grown up…and the constant amazement that we found each other at all…

All this comes up today because it’s Helen’s birthday. Maybe “coffee with” will be a little fancier, but the talk won’t be much different from usual.

Except today we’ll talk especially about folks we know who must do their “coffee with” alone. The “with” of “coffee with” is really about the memories, not the muffins.

We know so many folks who are “alone” now. Some never had a “coffee with” partner. Some are widowed or divorced. Except as we talk about them, and pray for them, we know that they are not alone. Lonely, yes. Alone, no. Because of the Presence of God.

 

Yes, I’ve said it often, but I don’t apologize for saying it again. The most important quality of God is not action or answers, but Presence. We don’t understand the actions or inactions of God, the responses or non-responses to prayer, etc. but on the final day, and on any lonely day, they are all irrelevant. Underneath are the everlasting arms. We are never abandoned, never alone. Have a cup of “coffee with” God.

John Robert McFarland