CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter… ©
The
Rev. Dr. William Luther White, Bill, always lived in the present moment, but in
that constantly present moment, he was a citizen of all of time. We were
friends through almost 60 years of that time. He ended one of his last emails to
us with “Life is fun.”
We
were students together at Garrett Seminary, at Northwestern U, when I was
working on what was then called a BD degree and Bill was gaining his PhD. We
were among the brown bag commuters who ate lunch together, including grad
students like James Cone and Ron Goetz and Tom Tredway, who, like Bill, went on
to distinguished careers melding theology and church and university as college and
seminary professors and presidents.
We
were young ministers to the university together in the 1960-70s, Bill to Illinois
Wesleyan University in Bloomington and me to Illinois State University, a mile
down the Franklin Street in Normal. He had gone to IWU as chaplain in 1962, and
when Don Ruthenberg, the president of the board of The Wesley Foundation at
ILSU told Bill that the WF was looking for a new minister, Bill immediately
said, “You need to get John McFarland.” So we became colleagues in ministry in
Bloomington-Normal, often sharing student retreats and chapel worship services.
My
career took me many other places after I left ILSU, but Bill remained a
steadfast intellectual and spiritual presence at IWU and in Bloomington-Normal.
Throughout that time, we remained close and grew closer, attending conferences
together, visiting in each other’s homes, even traveling overseas together.
He
died on Sunday, June 28, 2015, just nine days short of his 84th
birthday. His funeral will be in a few weeks, when far-flung family can all be
present. Ann has asked me to do that funeral, and so I shall write more then. I
do, though, want to tell now what I learned from Bill about touching.
We
were Great Depression boys, from Southern Indiana. Unlike today, when everyone
hugs everyone, for any reason or none, in that era and place, people did not
hug. Especially men. A man hugged no one, except his wife, on special occasions,
when no one was looking. If you had no wife, you were out of hugging luck. I
like today a lot better.
Bill
came to see me after emergency surgery revealed I had cancer, and after my
first oncologist told me “a year or two.” Here is what I wrote in my book, Now That I Have Cancer I Am Whole:
Reflections On Life And Healing For Cancer Patients And Those Who Love Them, pages
108-9:
***
My friend Bill came to see me, a week
after I was out of the hospital. He drove a hundred miles each way to spend an
hour with me. We’ve been friends for almost thirty years. Between us we’ve had
three wives and seven children. We don’t see each other often, but we don’t
need to; our friendship is always still there. Bill’s first wife left him ten
years ago. Just told him one day that she was leaving. No previous symptoms,
even in retrospect. Just like my cancer. We share that kind of surprised
grieving—he in his first marriage, me in my body.
When he was ready to leave, he sat on the
sofa beside me and put his arm around me. I held onto his leg, like a little
boy might wrap himself around his father’s knee. We prayed together. He told me
he loved me. I tried to tell him I loved him, too, but I couldn’t get it out. I
believe he understood, though. Other than shaking hands, I believe that’s the
first time we’ve touched, in thirty years.
Now that I have cancer there seems
to be an unspoken word of permission for people to touch me, for me to touch
them. It’s funny, that a broken body should somehow be more touchable than one
that’s whole. Or am I more touchable because my spirit is broken? “The
sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit. A broken and a contrite heart,
O God, you will not despise.” [Psalm 51:17]
It is interesting that in all the stories of Jesus, there is only one
instance of anyone touching him while he was alive in the body. He, of course,
touched many: a leper, a hand to raise Simon’s mother-in-law or Jairus’s
daughter up from beds of illness and death, deaf ears, blind eyes, the feet of
the disciples, children. The woman with the hemorrhage reached only as far as
the edge of his robe. The woman who broke the alabaster jar of ointment on his
feet wiped it off with her hair—no touch. The only time anyone reached out to
touch Jesus was to betray him, Judas with a kiss, the authorities of his own
faith and people with a slap.
Maybe that’s why “doubting” Thomas insisted
on his famous touch-and-feel session after the crucifixion. Perhaps he was
really “knowing” Thomas. Because no one had touched Jesus while he was alive,
Thomas knew the real proof of the resurrection was that he could be touched,
his body was broken. It’s only after the breaking of the crucifixion that
resurrection, the touching time, comes.
Somehow we seem able to touch one
another in our brokenness in ways we never can in wholeness. God uses broken
things: broken bread, broken ointment jars, broken bodies, even relationships
broken with a kiss.
My
body and my spirit have been broken by cancer. That means I can touch and be
touched. I’m thankful for the cancer.
***
Helen
and I went to see Bill for the last time the day before he died. He was in
hospice care, on a strong morphine drip, and unaware. I touched him, though. I
sat beside his bed and held his hand and told him how fortunate I had been to
have his friendship all these years. Friendship is always a touching time, even
when it’s not.
John
Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com
I
started this blog several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the
“place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put
that in the sub-title, Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for
the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This
phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] The grandchildren, though,
are grown up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met
and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of
the life cycle, so I am still trying to understand what it means to be a
follower of Christ in winter.
I
tweet as yooper1721.
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