THE LAST ONE… ? [Su, 6-14-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

THE LAST ONE… ? [Su, 6-14-21]

At a conference on pastoral counseling, I heard Prof. Wayne Oates mention people who “chew more than they bit off.” I’m afraid I am at that point. I’m out of material. There is nothing more to bite off.

I refuse to bore you, being Rev. Obvious, writing bromides like: It’s better to be kind than to be mean, or insipid columns that go nowhere. Many folks do that. We don’t need me to, also.

I feel comfortable telling a story, and then, mostly, letting you make of it what you will. But I’m out of stories. I’ve simply used them all up.

New stories used to appear in my life once in a while. But now I do nothing and hear nothing and see nothing. There aren’t any stories in nothing.

I don’t really mind a life of nothing. It fits my current brain well. But it does not provide any reflections on faith and life for the years of winter. Nor for a “Daily” Devotional.

I’ll probably write a CIW once in a while, because sometimes I hear, or live, a new story that is worth telling, and occasionally I write a poem I want to share, or, unfortunately, a friend dies, and I want to honor them by telling their story. But, spoiler alert, it won’t be every day.

Thank you for being one of the 127,961 readers of this blog over its dozen or so years. That’s a statistic from Blogspot. Of course, it’s possible that 127,961 people have each read the blog one time, or that one person has read it 127,961 times. Blogspot doesn’t differentiate. Anyway, thank you for past reading. And if you come back some time to see if I’ve heard another story worth sharing, thank you for returning, too. Until then, a poem…

It is good

To have the chance

To say farewell

Unless all those

To whom you wish

To say that word

Have slipped from view

Then you stand alone

In the middle

Of the field

No one close

To hear that last

Wistful exclamation

That you now know

The truth

John Robert McFarland