TOUCHSTONES

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter… ©

[The moving van comes on Monday, so this is probably my last post for the next week or so.]

A young woman recently told me that I am one of her “touchstone people.” [1]

That’s a wonderful compliment. It means she thinks of me as a “small tablet of dark stone, such as fieldstone or lydite, used for assaying precious metals.” In other words, you rub gold on a touchstone and can tell how pure the gold is by the marks it leaves on the stone.

Or she might mean that I’m one of those persons who is a “measure by which the validity of a concept can be tested.”

Helen had a high school student once whose test paper she used to grade the tests of the other students. She said that Amy’s answers were more accurate than those in the text book. Amy was a touchstone.

It’s humbling to be a touchstone. I’m not sure I want anyone using my life as a measuring stick. I doubt that I’m more accurate than the text book.

We all need touchstone people, though. That’s the whole point of Jesus. God is just too far away, too transient, for we mere mortals to get the point. But Jesus is a human being, just like us. We can look at him and get the point. WWJD? He’s he touchstone.

I’ve mentioned before how Helen uses WWAGD? She says, “Sometimes it’s hard even to understand Jesus, so WWJD? doesn’t work. So I ask, What would Aunt Gertrude do?” AG is a touchstone.

I’ve had and have a lot of touchstone people. I give thanks for them. They’ve helped me get the point when I wasn’t able to do it on my own.

One of these was my high school principal, Marlin Kell. He was a severe looking man, and very stern, but he understood people. If you chose to do wrong, he was very strict and made you pay the price. If you were trying to do right, though, and just messed up, he was very compassionate. He made you pay the price for your mistake, but he would go out of his way to help you get the point so you could do it right the next time, be it geometry, his teaching subject, or life.

It was exciting on those rare lunch times when he would shed his brown suit coat, put on a pair of sneakers, and join us on the basketball court, still in his suit pants and white shirt and tie. He would line us up on both sides of the court and take his place at the free throw line. The boy first in line on his right would pass Mr. Kell the ball and break for the basket. At just the right moment, our principal would throw a no-look, one-bounce pass behind his back just as the boy got to the basket, where he would grab the ball and lay it in. At the same moment that Mr. Kell threw that pass, the boy first in line on his left would throw the second ball to him and break for the basket. At just the right moment, Mr. Kell would throw that patented no-look, one-bounce pass behind his back, and the process would start with the second boy in each line.

That’s how it worked, technically. We tried to do it right, but sometimes we messed up, the pass going through our hands, or missing the layup. But sometimes Mr. Kell messed up, too, throwing the pass too soon or too late. He understood that even when trying to do it right, we sometimes got it wrong, but we could still work together and have fun.

I think he made those forays onto the court primarily because he liked them, and because it made it easy for him to keep the trouble-makers under observation and control. But I suspect he was also teaching, showing us that it was more fun if you did things right, but if you made a mistake, what you did was go get back in line and do it better next time.

I think God for the touchstones. And the touchbasketballs.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] Okay, so Mary is in her 60s and retired, but she was 18 when I met her, and I’m still much older than she is, so she’ll always be a “young” woman to me.

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I tweet as yooper1721.

ENDANGERED SPECIES

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter… ©

When emergency surgery revealed I had cancer, my first oncologist told me “a year or two.” I wrote the following poem, which won some contest prizes and was published in various places. That was 25 years ago. When a new transition comes up, like the one now, as we move from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, since the grandchildren are grown up now, to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married 56 years ago, I like to revisit this poem, to remind me that… well, you can read the poem and decide for yourself…

ENDANGERED SPECIES

At final dusk, the rhino came,

the last one, mateless,

thus by definition, last,

and last by nature’s way;

Sipped at the water in

the pool we share, and said:

“It must be me. I am

so ugly, short of sight,

so thick of brain and breath.

God might have let us live,

except for me.”

It bowed its head and turned

to go wherever last things go,

but I said, “Wait! Not so!”

Fierce whisper, “Look at me,

I’m beautiful, far-sighted, bright.

We stand at poles, apart,

In all but this:

We are both in danger’s way;

hunters’ shells and cancer cells.

That which holds us fast,

Yes, Death,

grips us tight in one

uniting fist.

So why then, if we’re so different, us?”

It smiled, as rhinos can, you know.

I grasped its ugly horn

and held on close.

Into the dark we charged.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I tweet as yooper1721.

I SHALL NOT BE MOVED

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter… ©

One of my favorite hymns, more a Gospel chorus, actually, is “I Shall Not Be Moved.” It comes from the lectionary Psalm for this Sunday, May 17, Psalm 1:3.

“Like a tree that’s planted by the waters, I shall not be moved.” We sang it a lot in the Civil Rights movement.

It always calls to mind a story from my friend, Ed Tucker, the famous “Friar Tuck” who drew cartoons for church publications. Ed was a Chicago boy and had a friend who took training to work for the CTA, the Chicago Transit Authority.

Their trainer asked them, “What is the one promise the CTA makes to its customers?” Sober drivers? Hardly. Clean buses? You’ve got to be kidding. On time? What universe to you live in?

“The one promise we make is this: If you are in the right place, and you stay there long enough, a bus will come.”

Friends, in the church, in the Spirit, we know we are in the right place. Now is the time for patience. Stay here. The Gospel bus is coming…

Here’s a little chorus I wrote about that. You can sing it to the tune of Folsom Prison Blues…

The Gospel bus is coming, coming after while, all the folks are singing, and the driver wears a smile, yes, the Gospel bus is coming, we need have no fear, the Gospel bus is coming, so let’s all stay right here…

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I tweet as yooper1721.

TAKE GRANDMA TO THE PROM-NOT

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter… ©

[Reader alert: This is twice as long as a “high concept” blog post is supposed to be. I apologize.]

This is prom season. If you don’t have a date for the prom, you can do some strange things.

I found out that I had no date quite by accident. I was the editor of the school newspaper. My girlfriend was editor of the year book. We shared a desk in the typing room. I was at the desk one day and noticed a sheet of paper in the yearbook tray. Phyllis was compiling a list of the prom couples. Her name was listed with a name that was not mine. It was bad enough to realize I had no prom date, but to make things worse, Vance was better looking than I. She had traded up.

I was mortified. It was a small school. Everyone was going to find out that I could not hold onto a girl I had been dating for a year and a half. We were not “going steady,” but neither of us had dated anyone else during that time, and we had gone to the prom as juniors, and…

Perhaps her fickleness had something to do with the fact that I had not asked her, just assumed. Women! Take them for granted just one time and they accept a date with some good-looking guy who actually pays attention to them. Her fickleness might also have stemmed from the fact that I was a horrible on dates in general. 

I have no ability at small talk. The simplest sentences can confound me. In fact, the simpler they are, the more trouble I have with them. Part of that is my dysnomia, the inability to think of nouns. Recently I could not think of the word “graves” and referred to them as “cemetery holes.” I was proud of my work-around. Our friends thought it was hilarious. [Note to Paul and Kathy: It is not nice to make fun of the nominatively challenged.]

If it were an actual subject, like in what universe y = x, or how to cut a chicken’s head off, or if Vince Dimaggio would ever be as good as Dom or Joe, I could hold my own. Unfortunately, none of those was an apt subject for discussion on a date. Unable to do small talk, I often said nothing, which probably came across as disinterest. If I could have just found enough nouns to say something stupid, I would have been okay. Girls prove every day that they are not put off enough by stupidity to refuse a date.

Through the years I have managed to pay my way in social conversation by telling stories, but at that time, I had not lived long enough to have any stories, only sophomoric jokes, which were way beneath seniors.

Phyllis had traded up. Who could blame her? I, for one

It was humiliating to have no prom date, and too late to find another girl who was willing to put up with my inability to talk on a date. If you can’t talk to a girl, she gets the impression that you are ignoring her.

There have been news reports recently of a high school boy, lacking a prom date, who took his great-grandmother to the prom. My Grandma Mac, five feet and ninety pounds of dynamite, would have been a hoot at a prom, for she made things fun wherever she was, but I did not know that taking Grandma was an option.

So I did the only logical thing. I dropped out of school and went to work on the night shift in a factory. That way everyone would think I could not come to the prom because I had to work, and the reason Phyllis went with a better-looking guy was that she had no choice. Perfect.

Except I didn’t get to go to the prom. And I wanted to. I had been class president for three years. This was our last hurrah together. I told my line boss at the factory of my woes. She was very perceptive for an elderly woman, almost forty. “I can get my daughter to go with you,” she said.

Normally a boy would be hesitant to accept such a date. Maybe her daughter was a spaniel. But she lived in Ft. Branch. All the guys knew the Ft. Branch girls were the best, in part because it was seventeen miles from Oakland City, and everyone is prettier at a distance, but also because the only drive-in in the county was the Dog ‘n Suds in Ft. Branch, where girls could not ignore you, the way they did in lesser places, since they had to come to your car to take your order. There is no girl more alluring than one in bobby sox and saddle shoes, with a little change apron around her waist that makes her jingle when she walks, and who wafts the aroma of root beer wherever she goes.

Needless to say, I had no trouble getting the night off. I borrowed Uncle Johnny’s new Chevy and drove the seventeen miles to Ft. Branch. Talk about Ft. Branch girls! This one was not just pretty, or even Ft. Branch pretty, she was prom pretty!

And she was unknown in Oakland City. When I walked into the prom with this vision of mysterious loveliness on my arm, everyone had to reassess me. Oh, I think my classmates had always respected me. They had been remarkably kind and accepting from the time I was the new kid in fifth grade. They knew I was okay in the classroom and in extra-curricular stuff. They had not known, however, that I was capable of getting a Ft. Branch-girl prom date.

If your grandson asks you to the prom, say “No.” Tell him to go to work in a factory and ask the boss to get him a date. Their friends will have to reclassify him into the chick magnet category. That’s what I’m going to remind my classmates at our 60 year reunion this summer.

I hope I did not use that nice Ft. Branch girl just to get credibility with my classmates. I’ll always appreciate her and her mother for their kindness to an awkward boy with no nouns.

I’ll take a different girl to the class reunion. I never got to take this one to the prom, but I have taken her most every place else, and now I’m taking her home.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] Come May 21, we’ll be living in the place of persimmons, Bloomington, IN, where we met and married, 56 years ago.

I tweet as yooper1721.

THE FIRST SHALL BE LAST...

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter… ©

When you are preparing to move, you think about firsts and lasts. This is our last Sunday at our church in Iron Mountain, in MI’s UP, the Upper Peninsula, before moving to SoInd, Southern Indiana, the site of my first Sunday as a preacher. [1]

When I was nineteen, the summer after my first year at Indiana University, I realized I had to keep my fourteen-year-old bargain with God, to become a preacher, if “He” would save my sister’s life. I made the mistake of telling Aunt Nora. She said I should go tell the District Superintendent. I did.

“You get good grades?” “All ‘A’s last semester,” I said, not mentioning my below B first semester, which was over before I noticed it had begun, that being the way of a moon-struck freshman.

“Good,” he said. “I’ve got three churches that need a preacher until Ellis Hukill graduates seminary in January and will be appointed there. You can start this Sunday.” He handed me a little piece of blue paper. “That’s the name of the people you should contact when you get there.”

“But…” I began. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking. You’re supposed to have a License to Preach.” He pulled a sheet of paper out of a drawer and wrote my name on it and then wrote his name on it. “You’re supposed to go to License School and pass the tests on Bible and polity and such to get a License, but you can do that later.”

I was a preacher.

I didn’t know it then, but it was my first experience with learning that administrators are not there to solve your problems; they are there to solve their problems, and they’ll gladly use you to solve their problems for them.

The three-church Chrisney circuit was a hundred miles south of IU. I did not have a car. My very healthy sister and her Navy husband were in Antigua, and Dick had left his old Olds up on blocks in our barn yard pending his routine. It had been there a long time. I sent Dick and Mary V fifty dollars. My father and I got the Olds off the blocks. He was blind, but he could make anything run. I did, however, have to carry a five gallon can of oil in the trunk, and every 50 miles had to pull off on the grassy shoulder of Highway 231 to replenish the engine’s oil, as I drove to and from my first pastoral appointment.

I drove down to Chrisney after classes on Friday, went to the address on the blue paper, the home of Bob and Catherine Adams, and got a key to the parsonage. It was empty save for a metal camp bed and a folding metal church-basement chair. I put my red Samsonite suitcase on end to use as a desk and set my Smith-Corona portable typewriter on it to write my sermon, actually just some reminder notes.

On Sunday morning, I went to the Adams’ house to get directions to Crossroads, the first service of the morning, about five miles from Chrisney in one direction, and to Bloomfield, three miles in the other direction, the third worship service of the morning. Chrisney, the big church, almost a hundred members, was sandwiched between.

It was my first experience with preaching the same sermon three times and finding that it was three different sermons. That has helped me a great deal as a writer, to be able to picture the faces of my readers as I write, to realize that each is looking at my words with a different expression, and to try to write in such a way that each of them, regardless of their place in life at the moment, can say, “Ah, yes…”

That’s why I think the best compliment I ever get on my writing is, “I can hear you as I read.”

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] If Southern California can be SoCal, I see no reason why Southern Indiana can’t be SoInd.

You can read more about my “call” in The Strange Calling.

My pickle ball pal, Vicky, who has read The Strange Calling, pointed out to me that the first church I went to that first morning preaching was Crossroads, and that my last day of pickle ball is in the gym of a church called Crossroads. “The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.”

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I tweet as yooper1721.

NAMES THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter… ©

When the famous Hoosier poet, James Whitcomb Riley, for whom the children’s hospital in Indianapolis is named, was a little boy, an orphan girl, age 12, came to live with his family. She was basically a maid, but at least she had a place to live. Little James and his brothers and sisters loved her, especially since she told them ghost and goblin stories, about “things that go bump in the night.” Her name was Allie. Later Riley wrote a famous poem about her: “Little orphan Allie’s come to our house to stay…” But when the newspaper printed it, the type setter grabbed the “n” instead of “l”. She became Little Orphan Annie. So she has remained.

Gil Hodge grew up in Petersburg, IN, 13 miles up IN Hwy 57 from my home town of Oakland City. He attended Oakland City College for a while, but his baseball skills were too great to be ignored. He signed a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers. The secretary who typed up the contract let a little finger drag, and his name on the contract got an s. Gil could crush a baseball, but he was far too gentlemanly to point out a mistake to a woman. He is the only Hodges in his family. Everyone else remained a Hodge. They didn’t have contracts with the Dodgers. Gil is not in The Hall of Fame despite a career worthy of the Hall. Perhaps the HOF is too cheap to pay for the extra s on his plaque. If he ever does get to the Hall, it will be as Hodges, not Hodge. [1]

I wonder about Allie. When she was grown up, when she said to the other women as they worked in the church kitchen, “You know, Mr. Riley, the famous poet, wrote about me,” Did they roll their eyes and say, “Oh, yeah,” but then think to themselves, “He never wrote a word about anybody named Allie.”

Too often we become and keep on being the wrong person because someone else makes a mistake and misnames us. You can drag around another’s mistake for a long time. It may even keep you out of some hall of fame. If someone misnames you, it’s okay to say, “No, you made a mistake. That’s not who I am.”

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] One boy from the area did make it to the Hall, Oakland City’s Edd Roush, the Reds’ center fielder, who played from 1913 to 1931. I wrote his biography for Scribners’ American Lives. His twin brother, Fred, was one of my coaches when I was a kid playing church league ball, which was our version of Little League.

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I tweet as yooper1721.

FINAL EXAMS

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter… ©

This is final exams week in most colleges. Thus I overread [That is “overheard” if it’s on Facebook] professors Bob Sampson and Anne Taylor talking about the excuses students come up with to take an exam later than the scheduled time. There are always exigent circumstances, not just “I forgot to study.” Prof Taylor noted that an amazing number of grandmothers die during finals week, although grandfathers seem to get a free pass. [Prof Sampson wondered if this were the famous “grandfather clause” we always hear about.]

Being a grandfather, I was at first pleased. I’m safe at least during finals week. Then I realized that isn’t actually a good thing.

For one thing, I’m married to a grandmother, so to protect her, our activities will be curtailed during finals week.

No going to ball games. My Grandma Mac, Henrietta Ann Smith McFarland, “Retta,” and her sister-in-law, Aunt “Nellie,” Ella Blaine McFarland, were getting on a bus in Hamilton, OH two ballparks ago, to go to Ladies Day at Crosley Field, to see the Reds. My grandfather, Arthur Harrison McFarland, “Harry,” told them, “Be careful. You know what kind of people go to ball games.” We’ll need to stay away from those kinds of people during final exams.

And we can’t go to Florida during final exams week. There is a multitude of grandmothers who have gone to Florida and died there.

More importantly, though, is the insult. Apparently the death of a grandfather does not produce adequate pathos to cause a professor to reschedule an exam the way a grandmother’s death does. That’s just not right.

I’m at an age where finals week will be coming up soon, and truth be told, I have not studied for them very much. I’m in so much trouble. I don’t think I’ll be able to convince to God to give me a later exam. When you’re as old as I am, you can’t claim your grandmother just died. Besides, Grandma and God are both at the ballpark; you know what kind of people go there.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I tweet as yooper1721.

THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BRAIN

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter… ©

I have just finished Richard Rhodes’ THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB. [A Touchstone Book, 1986] It rightly won a Pulitzer, a National Book Award, and The National Book Critics Circle Award.

It was one of my page-a-day books, so it took me 788 days to read. It also has 98 pages of notes, bibliography, and index, but I didn’t read any of those.

I could have appreciated it more if I understood physics better, but even within the limits of my science knowledge, it is a fascinating story, told so well by Rhodes that both an expert physicist and a novice like myself can enjoy it.

The code name for making the bomb was The Manhattan Project. Rhodes book is, of course, as much the story of the scientists who worked on it as it is the story of the bomb. [1]

The scientists who worked on the bomb felt differently about it, one from another, especially after the fact. Was it a moral thing to do? Yes, said some, because it shortened the war and “saved American lives.” No, said others, because it wreaked horrible and often long deaths upon hundreds of thousands of people who were innocent civilians and created a world in which we are all constantly under the threat of a similar death.

It is a complicated issue. New weapons of greater destruction appear in every war. Despite attempts, like the Geneva Convention, to keep war confined to soldiers, the greatest number of casualties are usually innocent civilians. And the controlling Japanese military caste lived by an “honor” code. Better to let the nation and all its people be destroyed than to die dishonorably, even if the people disagreed. It is impossible to negotiate with people who are willing to die, and make others die, for the sake of “honor.”

The nuclear physicists, though, knew that their discovery of how to create fission was not just another step in the escalation of weapons. It was a whole new world, with the ability, unlike any other weapon, to destroy the world.  

Nils Bohr was against it from the first. Robert Oppenheimer regretted it after. Edward Teller felt it was the responsibility of scientists to discover how the world works, even if the world got blown up in the process. Enrico Fermi felt there were moral ambiguities, but basically agreed with Teller, calling it “excellent science.”

Bohr in particular felt that the only way to avoid a nuclear arms race following WWII, and the possible world destruction that would follow, was completely open science, where every nuclear scientist was totally open to every other one, sharing all knowledge, regardless of nation. No one would have an advantage, so there would be no reason to try to get ahead of the opposition.

Winston Churchill thought the nuclear secrets could be kept by the British and Americans alone, giving them a permanent advantage that would prevent other nations from starting wars against them. Churchill, for all his wisdom during the war, could not see clearly what lay ahead, and he persuaded Franklin Roosevelt to back him. Bohr could not convince him that scientific knowledge could not be bottled up, that science could not be confined behind national boundaries, that it was only a matter of time before Soviet scientists caught up, and then the race would be on.

Teller assumed there would be such an arms race, almost welcomed it, but thought that the assurance of mutual destruction would stop any national leader from using atomic weapons. He also was a backward thinker, not anticipating the time that would come, and is now, when not only nations but terrorist groups have nuclear weapons, and many of them are in the hands of crazy people who really don’t care if the world is blown up so long as they get to push the button.

I am pro-science. I don’t fear science. But I do not believe, as many scientists do, that they “owe” it to the world to find out everything they can about the world and then declare their work done and let engineers do anything that the new knowledge makes possible. “We should clone people because it is possible to do so.” “We should create robots to which we can transfer human consciousness because it is possible to do so.”

There is no such thing as “pure” science, morally neutral, divorced from ethical issues.

Politicians and despots will always co-opt scientists and theologians alike to obtain an edge, to possess the power to impose their will. We are all in this together. What all of us “owe” to the world is to think forward, to what the worldly powerful will do with the knowledge provided by the scientists and theologians. The evil among us cannot misuse knowledge they do not have.

What Rhodes does so well in this book is unlock the secrets of the minds of the scientists as they unlocked the secrets of the atom. They were not of one mind on how or what to do with their knowledge, but no one can put the genie back into the bottle.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

 1] A 2014 TV miniseries about the making of the bomb is called simply “Manhattan.”

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I tweet as yooper1721.

WISDOM & HUMILITY

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter… ©

St. Augustine said, “The so-called innocence of children is more a matter of weakness of limb than purity of heart.”

Anyone who is a parent, school teacher, or church nursery worker will verify that observation.

I think that the so-called wisdom of old people is more a matter of slowness of mind than increase of understanding.

When I look thoughtful, preparing to dispense some sagacious perception, I’m really trying to remember what the conversation is about, or trying to recall the name of the person I intend to quote… “Was it Dudley Moore or Reinhold Niebuhr or Kowalski, on The Penguins of Madagascar, who said that?” By the time I figure out that it was Paul Baker, the conversation has gone onto something about Paris, but I’m not sure if it’s Hilton, France, or Illinois, so I just keep looking thoughtful.

In former days, when I decided to do something stupid, I went from thought to action in a nanosecond. Now when I decide to sin, by the time I’m able to get off the couch, I can’t remember which sin I had in mind.

The prophet Joel 2:28 predicted, “Your old men will dream dreams.” When people think I am going to advance some wise thought, maybe I’m just fulfilling the prophecy.

We are not wiser just because we are older. Sometimes aging just means we have made the same mistakes so long that we’ve become used to them and think they are normal.

We old folks need to be humble about this wisdom we are supposed to possess. Just having opinions about everything does not equate to wisdom.

“Be humble, counting others as more significant than yourselves.” [Philippians 2:3] If we do that, maybe we are wise after all.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I tweet as yooper1721.

PRAYING TOO SOON

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter… ©

Our grandson has a driver’s license. He also has our second car, an Inferno Red PT Cruiser. He wants to paint flames on its sides. That’s scary, really scary.

Bill Schutz, the psychologist, said that when he was ten he got a bicycle. His grandmother told him so many stories about bad things that could happen on a bicycle, and gave him so many warnings, that it was a month before he realized that having a bicycle was a good thing.

Having a driver’s license is a good thing. So is a PT Cruiser. So are flames on the side. But it’s all really, really scary.

Joe is a good, careful, responsible driver. I was a good, careful, responsible driver when I was sixteen, too. It’s little short of a miracle, however, that I am alive.

When I was sixteen, I took chances driving that I did not even know were chances, because I was inexperienced. In driving, there is no substitute for experience. When my nephew, Tony, was sixteen, he took a chance while driving that killed him and his brother, Steve, and two of their friends. Learning through experience can make you a better driver, or it can kill you.

It can also kill other people.

A decade or two ago, I was pastoring in a small, thriving, industrial town. One Sunday afternoon I got a frantic call from a mother. Her son, sixteen, had just backed out of their driveway and killed the little girl who lived across the street.

The mother was a member of our church, as was her husband and the boy, but I barely knew them. I had not been in that town very long, and this family did not come to church.

I was one of the first people called, so when I got there, the scene was still chaotic. The family of the little girl was gathered in their yard with their friends, crying and pointing at the house across the street, which was ominously shut up. A car was parked haphazardly in the driveway of that house. People were talking loudly enough for me to hear the complaints that the boy across the street always backed out too fast, without looking, that after he had hit the girl he didn’t even bother to see about her, just parked his car and went back into his house. That was the house I had to go to. The mother opened the door just far enough for me to squeeze through.

The boy--a child of privilege, the only child of older parents now close to sixty if not beyond, his father a doctor--was sitting on a couch, sullen, antagonistic. The father was in an easy chair, a glazed look on his face, mentally not even there. The mother was fluttering around, saying things like, “I’ve told him and told him.” The boy was muttering things like, “She shouldn’t have been playing in the street. It was her fault.” It was going to take a lot of work to get anyone in that house to deal with reality in a helpful way. So the mother said to me, “You’ve got to pray.”

Well, yes, I had already been praying, all the way to their house, all the way up that driveway. And I prayed again, right then, as she asked me to, as the father remained far away, and the son remained sullen, and as the mother rocked from foot to foot wringing her hands.

I was experienced at that sort of prayer request. I had been asked for that kind of prayer before, a too-soon prayer, a substitute prayer, substituting for action when action, a miracle prayer, turning back time so that the awful thing never happened, so that reality could be ignored.

I was not, however, experienced enough. Later in my career, when that sort of occasion arose, when people asked for a too-soon prayer, a substitute prayer, a miracle prayer, I said, “No. The time for prayer will come, but right now prayer won’t lead us closer to God, but take us farther away. Right now let’s do what needs to be done right now.”

I would like to say that I pastored the family across the street after the too-soon prayer, that I helped the mother and the father and the boy face up to reality and do timely praying instead of too-soon praying, prayers for forgiveness, and for the little girl and her family, and for strength to do better. But they would no longer open the door to me. I had failed. My prayer did not make the little girl come back to life, or make her family forgive and not sue, or make the boy accept his responsibility, or make the father rejoin the family. I had prayed too soon. I had failed.

But right now Joe is getting ready to drive to school. And right now is a good time to pray for him, and all the other drivers, and all the other playing children, praying that we might all look out for one another, that our actions will be careful enough that we won’t need to pray later, except to give thanks.

Pray first. Pray last. In between, we need to look out for one another.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I tweet as yooper1721.

PREPARING TO TRUST

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter… ©

It is Sunday morning, and I am getting prepared for worship. Trying to, anyway. For 50 years I had to prepare to preach the Word. Now I have to prepare to hear it. I think that’s harder.

In the years of our retirement, following the grandchildren from city to town, we have been a part of four churches. Together they’ve had eight pastors. Each one required a different sort of preparation in order to hear.

Preparation is required because it is hard for a preacher to trust the congregation, and it’s hard for a congregation to trust the preacher.

When I first started preaching I read this: Someone suffers with each sermon, either the preacher as s/he prepares it, or the congregation as they listen to it.”

Sometimes, though, even if the preacher has not suffered enough in preparation, someone in the congregation is prepared to hear. I remember the story of an especially pedestrian preacher, noted for his boring style, who was confronted by a man after the service. “That sermon changed my life,” he said. The preacher was astounded. No one had ever told him that before. “When in the sermon did that happen?” he asked. “When you said, ‘I have finished the first part of my sermon and I shall now go on to the second part.’ I realized that I had finished the first part of my life and I had to go on to the second part.”

Nothing could be more boring than “I have now finished the first part and…” but that man in the pew was prepared to hear.

So preachers, in your preparation, prepare to trust us. You don’t have to harangue us. We are there because we want to hear the Word, the word about the second part. Tell us a story that allows us to find our place in it. We can do that. You don’t have to shove us. Trust us.

So listeners, in our preparation, prepare to trust the preacher. Yes, maybe s/he will be pedestrian and boring this Sunday, but if we’re prepared, we will hear the Spirit speak to us in otherwise empty words, regardless.

There is no particular way to prepare. Each person has a different way, from a mother’s hurried prayer as she gets the children out the door, to an addict’s desperate vigil in the night, to a monk’s hours of meditation, but if we prepare, whatever the method, we can trust.

Trust is not automatic, but if we prepare, the trust of the preacher and of the listeners will come, and we’ll see that we are really trusting God.

 John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I tweet as yooper1721.

TURNING MY LIGHTS OFF

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter… ©

Now that I am old, I don’t sweat the details, but I do pay attention to them.

There is a story of an old man on his death bed. He asks, “Is my wife here with me?” She assures him she is. “Are my children here with me.” Yes. “Are my grandchildren here with me.” Yes. “Are my friends here with me.” Yes. “Then why are the lights on in the kitchen?”

            Our younger daughter, Kathleen, says she intends to tell that story at my funeral. I don’t blame her. It sums me up pretty well. Some people light a candle; I switch off the bulb.

            I also turn off my car engine when I’m waiting in the drive-through. (Yes, that’s the frugal and mechanically correct thing to do; check out the research.) I have better things to do with my money than support the oil and utility companies. More importantly, every kilowatt of power I save and every gallon of gas I don’t use is one my grandchildren will have available to them. Every ounce of pollution I do not put into the air is one is one that will not add to climate change and the increasingly extreme winters and summers and tornadoes and hurricanes and floods.

            One of the major points of integrity as we face the end of our own life is whether we care not only about the nature of the world we shall face on the other side of the grave but continue to care about the nature of this world.

            Some years back I used to see a comic strip that featured a parrot. One day it was listening to the radio. A news program was detailing the extent of the destruction that would result from a nuclear war. The parrot said, “As long as they don’t touch the cracker factories.”

            I’m afraid that’s the attitude of too many old people. “Hey, I’m going to die soon anyway, so I might as well do what I want with the world’s resources because I won’t be here to pay the piper when they run out, anyway.”

            Even if you think the world will end soon, if that happens, I doubt that God will say “It was a good thing you used up everything while you had the chance.” I suspect God will ask, “How did you treat the good world I created for you? Did you respect it and take care of it, or did you use the end of the world as an excuse for not paying attention to the details?”

They say “the devil is in the details,” but so is God.

There is a story about Jesus of Nazareth healing a little girl everyone thought was dead. When she sat up, everyone in the whole neighborhood went around whooping and hollering and celebrating. But Jesus said, “Hey, give her something to eat. She’s got to be hungry by now.” Jesus turned death into life. You can’t get any bigger than that. But he paid attention to the little details, too.

            So turn off the lights in the kitchen when I’m dying. It’s the last gift I can give the world.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I tweet as yooper1721.

STILL CRAZY

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter… ©

I’ll call her Gwendolyn, which is not what I called her in The Strange Calling, but I can’t remember what I called her when I wrote that book, and all my books are packed for moving, so.. Gwen, for short.

She was on the psych floor of the hospital. When I went to call on her I was wearing my clerical collar, with a light blue Oxford cloth clergy shirt, so everyone could know that I did not take myself too seriously, despite the collar. I always wore my clerical collar in the hospital. It made getting around simpler. Also it made getting out of the psych ward easier, since the nurses there sometimes mistook me for a patient.

Over the intercom came an announcement. “Any minister in the building, please report to the nurses station on Three East.” I didn’t pay much attention. It was a good-sized hospital. There were bound to be other clergy in the building, and Gwen and I were rather deeply into her problems.

A few minutes later the same announcement was repeated on the intercom. I again ignored it. Gwen kept talking. A few minutes after that, a nurse appeared at my elbow. “Uh… I noticed your collar… a woman down on Three East is dying, and they can’t get hold of her priest, or any priest, and you seem to be the only minister here…”

“Go ahead,” Gwen said. “I’ll still be crazy when you get back.”

What followed was one of the strangest and funniest experiences of my career, as I explained to a dying woman that I was not a priest but I would give her last rites anyway, and… Well, that’s a different story. You can read about it in The Strange Calling. This story is about Gwen’s statement, “I’ll still be crazy when you get back.”

She was right. Insanity never goes away. We deal with it successfully not by getting rid of it, since we can’t, but by adding sanity over it.

That is what Charles Duhigg says in The Power of Habit. Recent brain research has revealed that a habit is never erased from the brain, but it can be covered over with a different habit.

You’ll always be the person you are. If you are compulsive, for instance, you can’t stop being compulsive. You can, however, replace a bad compulsion with a good one. Perhaps “replace” is not the right word, since the old compulsion remains, but the new one can be put on top of the old one, so that it is the one you use, the one your brain first encounters when it tells you what to do.

This is true regardless of how old your brain is. It is never too late to put a good habit on top of a bad one. You’ll always be crazy, but you don’t have to act out the craziness, and life is a lot more fun if you act out the joyfulness.

Oh, and Happy May Day, which in the UP signals the start of spring!

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I tweet as yooper1721.