CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…
In
the Upper Peninsula in winter, which comprises 13 months each year, you can’t
tell who is good-looking and who is not, because everyone looks the same in
boots, Duluth Fire Hose pants [stronger than a giant angry beaver], a parka,
and a ski mask.
So
the UP is a great place for old people to live. Our bodies are no saggier or
lumpy-looking than those of young people, and gray hair and wrinkles just look
like they’re part of a plaid muffler.
You
would think, thus, that all old people would move to the UP, since declining
pulchritude is a concern for the aging, as teeth go yellow, skin goes gray, and
hair goes blue—not a good color combination. Nonetheless, most senior citizens
continue to live places where they have to worry about whether they can go out
in public without frightening children and other small beasts. It’s a very
embarrassing walk back to your Desoto when a Wal-Mart greeter turns you away at
the door after you failed the “You must be this pretty to enter” test, which
involves standing next to a composite photo that includes Donald Trump’s hair,
Chris Christie’s body, and Phyllis Diller’s face.
One
of the advantages, though, of being so old that no amount of money can make you
look good, is that you learn that looking good isn’t a matter of being good
looking.
We
worry about that when we’re younger. My first theological mentor, D. J. Bowden,
the Director of The Indiana School of Religion at IU, used to call me
“Handsome,” as in “Hi, Handsome.” Since I definitely did not think of myself as
handsome, I thought maybe he was making some cruel joke. But he was never
unkind to me or anyone else, in any way, so I had to wonder what he meant.
Many
years ago I read a novel by Lin Yutang called A LEAF IN THE STORM. It included
a young woman who was very concerned with her beauty. Her world was turned
upside down, from riches to poverty, to being a leaf in the storm, as China
went through a revolution. As she fled from trouble, blown from one place to
another, she passed a peasant woman working in a sloping field. The woman was
not good looking. Her feet were in mud. Her unshapely legs strained as she toiled.
“There is beauty,” she said. “Those muddy ugly legs are doing what they have to
do. It’s not what they look like that makes the beauty. It’s what they do.”
[This is a memory, not a direct quote.]
When
our granddaughter was small, she stroked her grandmother’s face one day and
said, “I love your wrinkles.” “Why would you love wrinkles?” asked Grandma.
“Because they’re on you,” said Brigid.
Being
old gives us a chance to understand what beauty really is. When I was a runner,
when we met another runner on the road, we called out “Lookin’ good,” as a word
of encouragement. We were not good looking, though. We were sweaty and smelly.
But we were doing what we had to do to get to the finish line. I think D. J.
Bowden was giving me a word of encouragement when he called me Handsome. He was
acknowledging that even though I wasn’t very pretty, I was doing what I was
called to do.
I
don’t worry much anymore about whether I’m good looking. I understand beauty in
a different way. When I see Jesus’ broken body on the cross, I call out,
“Lookin’ good.”
John
Robert McFarland
****
The
“place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s
Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!
I
tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.
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