PERILOUS PROM [F, 5-22-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man—PERILOUS PROM [F, 5-22-26]

 

Yes, I’ve told this story before, but it’s prom season, and, as I have also said before, this column no longer makes any pretense of being useful to anyone but me…

I think it was Mike who first told me that I was taking Judith to the prom at Ft. Branch, 20 miles from my home town of Oakland City. It was news to me. I had never heard of her.

Judith was the only child in a wealthy family. Her father was a judge. Her parents had given her a new Chrysler convertible at the start of the school year. That guaranteed that no Ft. Branch boy would date her, since no Ft. Branch boy had a car that could compete. So as prom time approached, she was dateless.

Judith’s mother was a friend of Ann’s mother. Ann was in my high school class. Judith’s mother told Ann’s mother of the prom date problem. Ann’s mother asked what Judith was interested in.

“Journalism. She’s editor of the school newspaper.

“Have I got a deal for you,” said Ann’s mother. “My daughter is in class with the editor of our school newspaper. He’s a nice boy.”

That’s the curse all the mothers always put on me: He’s a nice boy.

So Ann’s mother and Judith’s mother decided I would take Judith to the prom. The irony is that I was poorer and further out of my league than any boy in Ft. Branch. My family didn’t have a car of any kind.

Judith’s mother told her that she had a prom date with me, a boy she’d never heard of. Ann’s mother told Ann, and Ann told Mike, and Mike told me.

I had no way to get to Ft. Branch, to take Judith to the prom, so the mothers arranged for Mike and Ann to get invitations to that prom, too. How, I have no idea, but in a small town, the mother of the judge’s daughter can usually get whatever she wants.

I had nothing to wear to a prom, so my sister, who had graduated and was working fulltime, bought me a suit, and a pink and gray tie, which I still have. [You don’t outgrow ties.] Ann’s mother, of course, knew all about Judith’s dress, so she bought a corsage that would coordinate with it.

When the great night came, Mike and Ann drove down the gravel roads to our farm to pick me up, and I rode to Ft. Branch in the back seat of Mike’s two-door hardtop Pontiac. Since Ann’s mother had bought the corsage for Judith, it rode in the front seat beside Ann. When we arrived at Judith’s house, Ann scrunched up toward the dashboard so that I could push the seat down to get out…forgetting about the corsage, which got flatly crushed.

It was a big house, fronted by a high porch with a dim light. I carried the crushed corsage up the long walk and climbed the creaking steps to the shadowed front door. I knocked. The door opened. A classy blond girl in a formal stood there. I spoke one of the best opening lines in the annals of blind prom dates: “It looks like I’ve come to the right place.”

I pushed the crushed corsage at her. She looked at it and was speechless. An older blond appeared over her shoulder, took the corsage away to the kitchen, where she performed voodoo on it. Judith and I stood there and tried not to look at each other. “That’s my father,” she said, indicating a man sitting in a dark corner of the living room, peeling an apple, with a butcher knife, one long peel sliding off the apple with surgical precision. He didn’t say anything.

Judith’s mother returned with the sort-of repaired corsage, and taking no chances that her daughter might get crushed, too, pinned it on Judith herself. She handed Judith a boutonniere. Judith tried to slip it through the button-hole of my new lapel. It wouldn’t go. The mother tried. “It’s not cut,” she said. [What farm boy knows you have to slit the buttonhole in a new suit yourself?]

“I’ll take care of him,” her father said, jumping up and advancing on me with the butcher knife. He grabbed my lapel and began to saw at it, the knife an inch from my throat. He was really good with that thing. The slit was perfect, and Judith slipped the flower into it.

I don’t remember much from that point. I assumed my job was to make the Ft. Branch boys jealous, since Judith must have gotten such a much better date, because she had to go out of town to get one, and out-of-town is always better, so I acted mysterious, which meant I spent the evening telling Judith stories of editing our school newspaper, while Mike and Ann danced. The only thing I remember for sure was that I mispronounced the word “intricate,” while explaining my reasons for eschewing all dances but the “bunny hop.”

I never saw or heard of Judith again.

It’s important when looking back on such experiences to find the good in an otherwise disastrous event. I have done so, and it’s this:  I’m sure Judith won the contest among the Sisters of Perpetual Responsibility for who had the best reason to become a nun.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

AFTER THE PILL [W, 5-20-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Observations of An Old Optimist—AFTER THE PILL [W, 5-20-26]

 

Of all the major changes/inventions of the last 70 years, I think that the birth control pill is the most significant—yes, more than computers and the internet and nuclear bombs and toaster ovens. The birth control pill changed the very basis of society—marriage and family.

I was a campus minister when the Stonewall Uprising occurred in 1969, and gay folks began to proclaim, “We’re people, too.” It didn’t make much difference to college students. They were too busy with sex in general to care about gay sex.

Everybody got all hot and bothered in 1975 when Loretta Lynn sang her paean of praise to “The Pill,” but that was fifteen years behind the times to college students.

I began to say to anyone who would listen—and there weren’t many who wanted to—that homosexual sex wasn’t the problem. The real problem was promiscuous sex, recreational sex, meaningless sex, disrespectful sex, which was at least as prevalent among straights as gays.

Nothing wrong with sex, I said. Plenty wrong with using and dehumanizing people, including yourself. Plenty wrong with turning sex upside down, and using the quality that nature gives us to lead us to intimacy in order to avoid intimacy.

The church, I said, needed to develop a sexual ethic beyond “no sex at all except in marriage,” because that horse had left the barn, in 1960, when the FDA approved “the pill.”

Of course, the church’s response was, “Let’s ignore that issue and concentrate on gay stuff, because we can all agree on that, right?” Oh, yes, right.

I first tried preaching a sexual ethic of commitment. No, you didn’t have to be married, but you should be faithful and committed to your partner. That was much too narrow for college students, who figured they needed [wanted] time to experiment before committing, so I went through several other stages until I settled, more or less, on an ethic of respect—we should respect sex, meaning respecting ourselves [Your body is a temple, I Cors 6], respecting the temples of others, and respecting the Creator of sex.

That was too complicated. And cerebral. Sex is not a thought-centered activity. College students liked the idea of respectful sex, as long as it didn’t get in the way of casual lustful promiscuous recreational sex.

And, as I said in the column for May 14, if you want to find out what society in general is going to think and do next, look at what college students are thinking and doing now.

I’m not a campus minister anymore, but I live in a town with 48,626 college students. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I get the impression that they are starting to get bored with sexual promiscuity. Maybe they really are the brightest generation…

John Robert McFarland

 

 

COUSINS [Late in the day on M, 5-18-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Family Reminiscences of An Old Man—COUSINS [Late in the day on M, 5-18-20]

 

[We ended up staying at the reunion longer than planned, so I did not post early today because I didn’t have my computer with me.]

As we planned the memorial service for my “little” brother, Jim, I invited all our cousins. I realized that it would be the last time I would ever see a cousin. I’m glad that Natalie, oldest daughter of Uncle Bob McFarland, from whom I get my middle name, was the only one who was able to come.

We cousins, on both sides of the family, have always been close. Now, those of us left, we live too far apart. We can’t get on an airplane. We can’t drive. We can’t walk. We can’t remember which color is ours on the Chinese Checkers board. We shall never see each other again.

That seems so strange, for I once had 26 cousins, ten on the Pond side of the family, and sixteen McFarlands.

I said above that I invited all our cousins, but that wasn’t accurate. There are some for whom I have no address. As our adult years went along, some cousins dropped out of the family, either by death or by geography, or by choice. I mourned each time I lost a cousin, especially those who dropped out, because being part of that generation was so important to me.

We cousins were much involved with one another, from the time we were little kids. We visited in each other’s homes, stayed overnight, slept on the floor because there weren’t enough beds. We played tag and baseball. We played Parcheesi and Chinese Cheekers and never-ending games of Monopoly.

I made no distinction between Ponds and McFarlands. To me, the aunts and uncles and cousins were just one family, where I was accepted, where I was encouraged to be a good person.

That was probably aided by my status as the oldest grandson on either side. I never thought of myself more highly than I should have thought, though, because I had an older sister and four older female cousins who made sure I understood there was no primogeniture in our generation.

When my parents reached fifty years of marriage, I decided that we should celebrate by getting the whole family—both sides—together in one place. I rented a church camp in southern Indiana, the place where both families got their start, and invited all their brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews for two days of eating and talking. Almost everyone came. A lot of good relationships got started or expanded, especially among the cousins, some by Ponds who had little previous contact with McFarlands, and vice versa.

In retrospect, I realized I did that as much for me as for my parents. I never thought of myself as just part of my immediate family. Indeed, our immediate family life was so chaotic that I think I always felt a bit outside it; I felt that I was the social worker who needed to solve the family problems rather than being a part of that family. The family that gave me identity was that conglomerate of McFarlands and Ponds who played that eternal game of Chinese Checkers, who gathered that weekend at Temple Hills.

When I first started preaching, at nineteen, I was not surprised that folks in those churches, even older people, thought that I was a competent preacher, because I had so many relatives who had always treated me that way, from the time I was a child. They assumed that I was a good person—not just a good boy-- who was capable of doing good things.

I’ve had to give up almost all of those aunts and uncles. Only Edna, Uncle Mike’s widow, is left, out of that wonderful phalanx of 24 [counting spouses]. But cousins…those are young people…except, now we are not. No more cousins, but so many good memories.

I think a big extended family is a little like heaven. I wonder if they play Chinese Checkers there. I wonder if God cheats, like Grandma Mac did…

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

MY ‘LITTLE’ BROTHER [Sat, 5-16-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Grieving Remembrances of A Big Brother—MY ‘LITTLE’ BROTHER [Sat, 5-16-26]

 

All in all, my brother, Jim, was a strange man. Weird, even. I like to think that he got that from me.

He grew to be two inches taller than I, but he was nine years younger, so, my “little” brother.

He was Jimmy, until he got old enough to be called Jim. I always thought of him, though, as Jimmy. Especially since his death, at the age of 79.

In the photo above, Helen and I are on the left, Jim’s wife, Millie, in the middle, and our daughter, Mary Beth, between Millie and Jim. Notice that Jim is looking at things from a different angle. That was always the way he looked at things.

Even when very young, he showed a different face to the world. We have photos of us four siblings posing together in front of our farm house, for Aunt Dorothy’s box camera, where three of us are smiling, but Jimmy is twisting his face into some contorted mask. Even as a little guy, he didn’t want anyone to see the real him.

That was understandable. He had four “parents,” including a sister 14 years older [Mary Virginia] and a brother 9 years older, telling him what to do, and a sister [Margaret Ann] 18 months older, whose cuteness factor was off the charts. She was hard to compete with for attention. His only chance for individual identity was to draw into himself. He did that his whole life.

His humor was sardonic, a little sarcastic, a little silly, always a bit sideways. He wanted to be different from everyone else, but he didn’t want to be noticed, sort of like a sideline commentator who is off-camera, as is Jim Day on the Cincinnati Reds broadcasts.

He had the great, good fortune to find one of the two women in the world—Milicent Ellard & Helen Karr--who were able to put up with the strange ways of the McFarland brothers, even think those ways were endearing and attractive. Or maybe they thought it was a duty beyond the ability of other women. As the old saying goes, “It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.”

Jim died last Nov. 1. Tomorrow, Millie, and Helen and our children and grandchildren, and Margey’s children and grandchildren, will gather for a memorial service, along with the few friends and cousins and nieces and nephews who are still alive and able to travel.

I’ll wear the little wooden cross necklace that I bought at Jim’s health food store. He had a friend who made them. I don’t think Jim believed much about the cross, but he tried to help his friend by selling them at the store.

I’ll read the funeral service from the same Book of Worship that I used when I officiated at the marriage service for Jim and Millie, some 60 years ago. Then we’ll share our memories of a man who never wanted to be noticed, who wanted to hide behind a funny face. We’ll honor that.

John Robert McFarland

 

BEYOND THE HALLS OF IVY [R, 5-14-26]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Observations of An Old Trouble Maker—BEYOND THE HALLS OF IVY [R, 5-14-26]

 

Methodist annual conferences will soon meet. The pastoral appointments for the next year will be read out. When I started going to Conference, in 1957, no pastor knew until that reading where they would be the next year. I assumed, though, that my appointment would always be to some congregation.

I never intended to become a campus minister, even though I held campus ministry in high regard. After all, I met Helen at The Wesley Foundation at IU. And I liked universities in general. I loved learning. I loved songs like The Halls of Ivy and Sweetheart of Sigma Chi.

While I was a college student, though, in my sophomore year, I became a parish preacher. Church was as important to me as campus. I assumed that life as a local church pastor would be my career.

Campus ministers were not respected much back then. They were called “student workers.” They were trouble makers who preached about social justice and were always wanting “change.” They were guys [all men, then] who didn’t fit in local churches, so they weren’t real preachers. Many times during my campus ministry years, colleagues would ask me, “When are you going to come back to the ministry?”

Their question was not criticism, but concern, because as a campus minister, you lost your place on the appointment ladder. The “ladder” meant that, as long as you didn’t cause any trouble, each time you were moved to a different church, it would be a little larger and more prestigious. Campus ministry years didn’t count on the ladder. If you “came back to the ministry,” you had to start over at the bottom of the ladder.

Because no one wanted to lose his place on the ladder, the bishop had trouble finding someone willing to be a campus minister.

But I owed Bishop Richard Raines, for getting me out of trouble numerous times, and he knew that I owed him, so when he asked/told me to be the campus minister in Terre Haute [Indiana State U and Rose Polytechnic], I figured I should do that, for a year or two, as payment to him. Also, I was never very smart about anticipating the consequences of my choices.

Campus ministry, though, turned out to be a more significant ministry than I would have had as a local church pastor, for two primary reasons.

First, my influence was much wider than it would have been as a parish pastor. Every year some of my students graduated and scattered to various jobs and towns and churches. They took with them the ideas they had gotten on campus. Even while they were still in school, they went home on the weekends and vacations and enjoyed upsetting their parents and pastors with all the radical stuff they got through their time on campus—stuff about civil rights and voting rights and women’s rights and gay rights and saving the planet and Viet Nam and situational ethics and “contemporary” worship and prayer and faith and Bible interpretation and sacrificial service and the church as the place to have a really good time.

Second, I learned before anyone else what was going to happen next. Whatever society was going to do next, college students were already doing it.

So, if you want to know what’s coming up, look on campus. Strangely, the social observers say that students are going to church more and drinking less. That doesn’t sound right…

John Robert McFarland

UNTOUCHABLES [T, 5-12-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Ramblings of An Old Man—UNTOUCHABLES [T, 5-12-26]

 

It was our soph or junior year in high school. As I approached a group of boys in the hallway, Louis Simpson looked up and said, quite good-naturedly, “We’ve got to stop telling dirty jokes now; John’s here.”

I don’t think they were actually telling dirty jokes. It was just a way of acknowledging me as an untouchable, someone who didn’t belong in the real world.

Of course, the very fact that to this day I think they were not telling dirty jokes may tell you why I was an untouchable. Untouchables are naive. That’s part of how we are set aside from the real world.

Some real-world people try to take advantage of untouchables, use our naiveite against us. But—if you’re lucky, as I’ve always been—folks protect you, because they know you need it 

I remember seeing movies and TV shows called “The Untouchables,” about America in the 1920s, when politics and the economy were much as they are now, when enough bribe money can get you anything, regardless of the law. Enter Eliot Ness and his special police, called unofficially “The Untouchables,” because they could not be bought or bribed.

I guess I was that sort of untouchable, in a minor way, except no one ever tried to bribe me, anyway. No, I wasn’t an Eliot Ness sort of untouchable. I was not pure of heart, like Ness. I didn’t even need to be pure of heart. I was untouchable because people protected me. I was in a tiny niche of society that not only did not get its hands dirty but that didn’t even know how to get dirty hands.

I am part of the 2%. Not the way that is usually used, the 2% that has all the money and power, and abhors the rest of us as untouchable because we are, compared to them, poor and powerless.

No, I’m in that 2% that has always, without knowing it, led a charmed life. Because others protected us from the real world.

That does not mean, of course, that we two-percenters have no bad days. I’ve had cancer. People I love have had cancer. Good friends have suffered, and died too soon. I’ve had to be a comfort in tragedy when the tragedy was so bad that comfort wasn’t even possible; that’s hard.

Friend Kathy Roberts says that she has a face that says, “Tell me weird things.” I think I have a face that says, “Don’t tell me bad things.”

Now, again, that isn’t literally true. Indeed, my profession was listening to people tell me bad things. But it was bad things about themselves. it wasn’t bad things that involved me. I was just a listener, not a participant.

That distance, though, was one of the traits that made me a fairly good pastor. In that sense, I was a Ness type of untouchable. Since folks knew I wasn’t going to get lost in the jungle with them, I might be able to show them a way out.

Sometimes I feel a conflicted about being an untouchable. I didn’t like being excluded from that group of laughing boys, the ones telling the dirty jokes. But I feel grateful that they protected me. Being an untouchable has made my life so easy. I hope you are an untouchable, too.

John Robert McFarland

“Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.” Fred Astaire, via The Writer’s Almanack.

 

 

MOTHER’S’ DAY [Su, 5-10-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reflections of A Doddering Old Man—MOTHER’S’ DAY [Su, 5-10-26]

 

Today is Mother’s Day, or Mothers’ Day, according to how many mothers you are trying to honor. Both singular and plural were always a problem for me. Not a life-shaking problem, but a problem I had trouble solving.

Mothers’ Day I dealt with primarily as a preacher. I looked out on the congregation on this special day and saw mothers whom I knew were not going to have a happy day. And I saw others, of so many ages, who felt guilt or anger about their mothers. If I were sensitive at all, I didn’t plow ahead with a Hallmark Mothers’ Day sermon. But what else to do?

I was relieved of my guilt, slightly, in my early churches, because the women of the church who were in charge of such things--either by tradition or acceptance or audacity—decided how we would celebrate the day.

I was disconcerted at my first Mothers’ Day Sunday, when I was 20 years old, when flowers were passed out to the mothers at the door following the service, but only mothers. I mean, all churches back then had lots of women who were not mothers. They were reminded of that as they left the church without a flower.

By the time I retired, usually flowers were pressed into the hands of every woman as she left worship on Mothers’ Day, whether she wanted one or not. An adequate solution… well, not really. They/we justified that on the premise that every woman has a mother, even if she is not one. But so does every man there, so where does that leave us? Still kind of up in the air.

As far as Mother’s Day is concerned, I never had any trouble honoring my mother. I loved her. She loved me. But she was a puzzle and trial to me all sixty years we shared. The problem was inconsistency. As a child, the rules of conduct changed all the time, sometimes within the minute. As an adult, she would ask for help and then at the last minute veto everything we had agreed on, always for some fallacious and ridiculous reason.

Don’t worry; I know she did the best she could to be a good mother, and I did the best I could [with a lot of help from Helen] to be a good son.

The mother-child relationship is fraught with… well, everything. No relationship more important, or more difficult and complex. A flower hardly does justice to the depth of that relationship. Neither does Red Lobster shrimp. But they are good symbols. They represent beauty and nourishment. Those are the things that are necessary for life. Just as mothers are.

John Robert McFarland