Christ In Winter: Thoughts
for the Years of Winter--
I read Marilynn Robinson’s
beautifully written novel, Gilead,
shortly after it was published, in 2004. I was living in Iowa, and the novel
was set in Iowa, and it was about a preacher, and Robinson is Iowa’s foremost
writer. So, it was a natural read for me.
It was not natural, however,
for me to think she was telling my story, because the outward story of her John
Ames and my outward story are very different. Strangely, though, I did feel
that she was telling my story. Maybe that’s because a good story-teller makes
you think s/he’s telling your story, regardless of the story.
I think there’s more to the congruence of John
Ames and me than just good story-telling, though.
On the face of it, Ames and I
have only two things in common: We are both preachers, and in 2004, I was the
same age Rev. Ames is in the novel.
Ostensibly, our differences
are much greater than our similarities. He was widowed in middle age, and
childless, until he married again in his mid-sixties, to a woman forty years
younger, who gave him a son. He has a bad heart and is dying, knows that he
might keel over at any time. His life and pastorate are ending in the 1950s,
the time when my pastoral days were beginning. Most importantly, though, except
for seminary days, he has lived in Gilead, Iowa his entire life, in the same
parsonage, even, since his father and grandfather served that church before
him. In my 50 years in ministry, I served 13 appointments, of 18 churches, plus
five interims in retirement.
So why do I think John Ames
and I have the same story? Because my 18 churches were really one.
When I think of churches I
have served, I see the congregations. I don’t see the worship center, the
altar, the chancel, the part the congregation sees when it worships, because I
was always looking in the other direction, at the congregation.
Perhaps that is why it seems
to me that John Ames and I have the same story. In my memory, all my churches
meld into one. I don’t see different altars and different stained glass and
different organ pipes and different banners and different wall crosses and
different palm processions. I see nothing but one congregation of hopeful
faces. John Ames had one church, and so did I. So do we.
John Robert McFarland
“Religion has always kept
earth time. Liturgy only gives sanction to what the heart already knows.”
Phyllis Tickle
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