WHEN THE SERVICEBERRY BLOOMS [T, 3-24-26]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—WHEN THE SERVICEBERRY BLOOMS [T, 3-24-26]

 

The serviceberry bush/tree is basically a northern plant, from Maine to Iowa. It has beautiful spring buds and bright red and orange leaves in the autumn. Its berries are important to plants and animals and can be used by humans to make jellies and jams.

Oh, and you can’t get married or baptized until it blooms.

Two hundred years ago, in many places even just a hundred, if you lived in Maine or Iowa or in-between, when roads were dirt tracks, or mud tracks, or snow-covered tracks, you were shut-in from the rest of the world from November to May.

Finally, though, after that long, hard, isolated winter, the serviceberry bloomed, and you were part of the world again. The serviceberry’s bloom meant that the preacher could get back in to your world, and hold services. That’s why the Amelanchier is called the serviceberry. When it bloomed, it was time for services, again.

Sunday morning worship services, yes, but also marriage services for those who sought warmth with another in the cold and lonely months of winter, and baptismal services for the babies born to warmth-seekers.

And not just the services. The bloom of the serviceberry meant that the preacher--the one with both spiritual and legal authority--could sign the documents that proved you were a part of society, getting married and having a family.

In these modern days of snowplows and SUVs, the preacher can get through at any time. But nobody cares if there are services. Nobody cares if the preacher signs the documents, even if there are documents to sign. No need to wait for the serviceberry to bloom.

Still, isn’t it nice when it does?

John Robert McFarland

Thanks to Phyllis Carlson, the Yooper flower lady, for telling me about the serviceberry.

HERE IS THE RIGHT PLACE [SUN, 3-22-26]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—HERE IS THE RIGHT PLACE [SUN, 3-22-26]

 

Bill Linneman, distinguished professor emeritus of English at ILSU, wrote a column in which he announced that he was giving up driving. “I live in a retirement community,” he said, “and they have a bus that takes me anywhere I need to go. It’s much more fun and relaxing to watch the sights and scenes instead of the town instead of trying to avoid wild and stupid drivers. That’s the reason I’m giving up driving. Also, I failed the exam.”

What if I fail the driving exam? What shall I do if I can’t drive? That is always a looming problem as we age in this gasoline-driven America,

My late beloved friend, Bob Butts, drove a whole lot of cars a whole lot of miles over a whole lot of topography, even though he never passed a driver’s license exam, until he was 70.

He grew up in Mississippi. As a teen, he was riding around one day with a friend who said, “Hey, you want to go get your license?” “Sure,” said Bob, even though he couldn’t drive, since his family didn’t have a car.

But he went to the BMV, and he took the test. He failed. But the examiner must have checked the wrong box on the form. A couple of weeks later Bob received a license in the mail. He did not return it.

After that he lived in several different states, all of which have different laws for getting driver’s licenses, and renewing them, and he hit all of them just right, like hitting all the lights just as they turn green. All the states assumed that the one before it knew what it was doing and kept renewing his license. He did not have to take another license exam until he was 70.

My father lost almost all his sight in an industrial accident when he was 35. He had been driving since he was 12. He was a car guy, an excellent amateur mechanic, a perfect fit for the burgeoning automobile society of America. He was the most independent-minded man I have ever known, and suddenly he couldn’t drive. It changed him. He was no longer able to get out and about, so he withdrew into himself.

I think that driving a car is a spiritual thing. At least, God is involved. God invented cars to help kids separate from their parents, according to Anne Lamott.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? Cars allow us to go some place else, and we thus assume that some place else is a good place to be. And it is, because God is there. But God is also right here. We don’t have to go some place else. Perhaps the end of traveling in cars can be the start of traveling in the soul.

I think a key to carlessness comes from something Henry David Thoreau of Walden Pond said. When asked if he had traveled much, he said, “I have traveled a great deal…in Concord.”

Travel is good, but wherever you are, that place has all you need. Here is the right place to be.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

WATCHMAN, WATCHMAN [F, 3-20-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Time Keeping of An Old Man—WATCHMAN, WATCHMAN [F, 3-20-26]

 

Now, this column has no redeeming value at all. It is simply the follow-up to the 3-12 column entitled It’s Not Simple to Be Simple, the one about my attempt to find a simple wrist watch to replace the complicated watch that keeps changing modes, and which will not acknowledge Daylight Savings Time.                                   

Well, that’s not exactly true, that this column has no redeeming value, because there is a life lesson at the end: If you wish hard enough, your wishes will come true. But you already know that, for you’ve seen “Pinocchio.”

Anyway, fellow Crumble Bum Ron Walker found a simple watch for me, the exact one I needed. The problem is that it was at Amazon, and yes, their delivery is quick, but Helen said I should get a watch with an expansion band, since I’ll probably become senile soon and won’t be able to manage a band that requires getting that little metal tongue into a hole into the leather strap, and I figured I would have to try an expansion band on, to be sure it fits, since I am old and my wrists are now elegant…meaning skinny, which meant actually [shudder, shudder] going into a store.

So I decided that after the Physical Therapy for my balance issue, I would venture across The Great Divide, I-69, to Walmart, where their web site declared that they had the same time device that Ron found on Amazon.

That would have worked better if I had remembered where Walmart is located. It had been several years since I last shopped there. For a huge store, it is very easy to hide. It was none of the places I went for the first few hours.

I’ll note that the war with Iran has nothing to do with the high price of gas. It will soon be $5 per gallon because of all the gas I used in my wandering attempt to find the secretive Walmart.

Once there, though, a little old white-haired lady in a Walmart vest, who must have been 80 [I know her age because she flirted with me, and no woman under 80 does that] helped me find the wrist watch [jewelry] department. Another old lady who must have been 85 helped me find the correct watch.

She took it out of its box so I could try to expansion band. Way too loose! I would have to get a jewelry store to resize it, she said. No way! After all that driving around, I wanted that watch right now. Get me the same thing with a regular band, I said. She did.

It’s a great watch, a simple watch, with a big hand and a little hand, the way we learned to tell time as children. It has a face as big as the full moon. Neighbors can look at it from across our yard and tell what time it is.

The only problem is, the one with the leather band was not exactly like the one with the expansion band. It didn’t have a second hand. I don’t need a second hand, but Helen told me two things when I started this quest: Get a watch that works [some folks would take that for granted], and get one with a second hand.

Okay, to the wishing part. I was disappointed that my new watch did not have a second hand. I didn’t want to admit to Helen that I could did not remember her instructions. I wished and wished that my new watch had a second hand.

Then three days later, as I was strapping my new watch onto my arm, there it was, going smoothly all around the circle: a second hand! I had wished it into being. That’s amazing.

Or, maybe not so amazing. Perhaps the life lesson is not so much about wishing as it is about paying attention. If you get distracted and don’t pay attention to what you’re buying, in a watch or in a politician, all sorts of things will show up later when you least expect them. Yes, I’m going to go with that.

John Robert McFarland

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