ODDS & ENDS III [R, 8-5-21]

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

We heard of a woman we’ll call Patty. She moved to a new city and had to go through that awful ordeal of finding new medical people. Her new gyno was running down her list, and at one question, Patty said, “Well, it’s not too bad.” The doc looked befuddled, and it took them a while to figure out that when the gyno asked, “Are you in a monogamous relationship?” Patty heard, “Are you in a monotonous relationship?”

Do you do this, too? If I get an email headed “Read this. Don’t delete,” I automatically delete it.

Going through old files, including programs and bulletins and news articles from occasions when I was the speaker, I’m pleased that I was often referred to as “a great story-teller.” As pleasing as it is, it’s not really accurate. I wasn’t a good story-teller; I just told good stories.

I always reminded myself [and sometimes other preachers]: If you’re telling a good story—and there’s no point in telling any other kind—get out of the way and let the story tell itself.

Nikki Giovanni: “Writers don’t write from experience. If they did, they’d get maybe one book and three poems. They write from empathy.” I think in any relationship—God, spouse, child, friend--it is important not so much to trust what we have learned through experience about what makes a relationship good, but simply to trust to empathy.

“As we get older, heroes are harder to find, but we still need them.” Ernest Hemmingway.

Following up on that Hemmingway quote… the remarkable Rita Moreno, a super-ager at almost 90, said that as a girl growing up, she had no role models. When she got to play Anita in “West Side Story,” though, Anita became her role model. Anita was who she wanted to be. If you need a hero, play the role.

“If a gospel is preached without opposition, it is simply not the gospel that resulted in the cross. It is not, in short, the gospel of love.” Reinhold Niebuhr, Leaves From the Notebooks of a Tamed Cynic

Working your way out of poverty either makes you compassionate toward or contemptuous of others in poverty.

“In a religion, the savior dies for the people. In a cult, the people die for the savior.”

Daughter Katie heard of an academic department that was hiring a new professor. They had it narrowed down to three candidates to interview personally. The first went fine, until supper, when the candidate’s plate of spaghetti was finished, and he lifted the plate and licked it. The second went fine, until the candidate asked if the university had a policy against having sex with students. The third went fine, until the candidate asked if the local black people behaved themselves. When the committee met, the chair said, “Well, I guess we’re hiring the plate licker.” Everybody else just nodded.

So, we have a new phrase at our house, for accepting the realities of old age: I guess we’re hiring the plate licker.

John Robert McFarland