CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter… ©
I did a lot of dreaming
last night. There are many theories and even some evidence about where dreams
come from, but mine jump around from scene to scene, and I can usually remember
only bits and pieces when I wake up.
I do recall that Archie
Miller, the new basketball coach at IU, was leading me through a workout,
helping me to make the IU team. I needed a lot of help, but he was patient,
even though we kept moving from one gym to another, some of them outside.
I’m pretty sure that dream
was the result of having supper with Bob and Julie Hammel at Red Lobster. Bob
is a Hall of Fame, retired sports writer, who was noted especially for his
coverage of IU basketball.
Then came a church dream.
I was helping out in the church kitchen. A church lady was washing dishes in
one sink, and I had to get the used water out of the sink beside it, but it
wouldn’t drain, so I was using a small tumbler, apparently the only thing at
hand, to empty it, one glassful at a time.
At the same time, some
people were complaining about the preacher not staying “Hello” to them, and I
was trying to explain why preachers were sometimes so distracted before worship
on Sunday morning that they could not even say hello.
Those included: It was
communion Sunday and the steward had forgotten to get the elements ready.
Someone had fallen and broken a hip. A strange man had entered and the ushers
thought he had a gun. Two Sunday School teachers were having a fight in front
of the children. A young man was having a drug-induced seizure in the
vestibule. A little child had gotten locked into the elevator and was now
clinging to the preacher’s leg and hiding under his robe.
Those were not just in a
dream. They really happened. But I was talking about them in the dream.
Then I woke up, and strangely,
it seemed to me at the time, I started thinking about Harold and Roma Peterson.
We met Harold and Roma
when they were about the age we are now.
The context: In the 1920s,
they were a young married couple. In the 1920s, cars were few, and most travel
was by train. Even in cities, not many folks had telephones. And medicine and
its practitioners were still quite primitive.
Roma became suddenly and
deathly ill. Harold took her to the hospital, where the doctors could not
figure out anything to do for her.
In another city, where
Harold’s parents lived, his father came home, walked up onto the porch of his
house, stopped, said to his wife, “Harold and Roma need me,” set down his
briefcase, turned and walked to the train station, where he hopped the train to
go to his son and his new wife.
Roma took up the story: “I
was just about to go. I wasn’t sure where it was that I was going, but it was
so beautiful. I really wanted to go there. But I looked up. There was a young
man staring down at me. He looked familiar, and he seemed so worried. I
thought, ‘He looks like he needs me.’ So I decided to stay.”
The red thread of the
story is need. When someone you love needs you, you go to them, or you stay
with them, but either way, you meet the need.
I have not been feeling
much needed lately. Not much for me to do. But, I figure, since I’m here
anyway, I might as well do some good.
JRMcF
I say “again” in the
title, because I have written about Harold and Roma’s experience in this column
before. But also because deciding to stay, to meet a need, is a decision we
have to make more than once.
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…
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