EVERYBODY’S HOMETOWN [Sa, 12-21-24]

 BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Theology of An Old Man—EVERYBODY’S HOMETOWN [Sa, 12-21-24]

 

When our daughters were in high school and college, and asked where they were from, they replied: “The Central Illinois Conference of The United Methodist Church.”

In my 40 years as a Methodist preacher before retirement, my longest appointment was 8 years. Most of my appointments were 2 or 3 years. That was standard in those years. Our hometown was wherever we lived.

Most of us, though, have a place where we grew up that we designate as a home town. For me, that is Oakland City, Indiana. We lived on a farm, three miles outside of town, but I went to school in OC, fifth grade through high school. It was the place where I first made friends, some of whom lasted for a whole lifetime.

I was accepted there. I was even loved, especially in Forsythe Church, in the open country outside of Oakland City. Your hometown is where you belong because you are loved. OC is my hometown, but it is not yours.

We do have a common hometown, though, because Bethlehem is everybody’s home town.

Bethlehem was Joseph’s hometown, so that’s where he and Mary had to go to get counted for the taxation census. When Jesus was born there, it became everybody’s hometown.

Bethlehem is the hometown of Christmas, the celebration of the presence of God with us. It is the most important town in history, at least for Christians. It is our hometown.

“Love came down at Christmas.” In your home town. You don’t have to go back there to be at home. Wherever you are, that is Bethlehem.

The hopes and fear of all the years are met…in your hometown.

 

John Robert McFarland

Today we go to the deepest darkness of the year. Tomorrow, we turn the corner on darkness. The day will have just a little more light. I take that as a good sign.

 

THE COMATOSE WARD [R, 12-19-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Christmas Stories of An Old Preacher—THE COMATOSE WARD [R, 12-19-24]

 

Rachel Remen says that when she was a young doctor, she was always assigned to work in the hospital on Christmas because she was single and childless and Jewish. She understood. She was glad for others to get to celebrate with their families. But it was like she didn’t count. It made her feel bad. But then it didn’t. She found lonely people in the hospital on Christmas. They told her their stories. She began to realize that she had received a Christmas gift, to get to spend that day with those people.

I felt the same way as a pastor. I almost always spent part of Christmas Eve day and part of Christmas day visiting my church members in hospitals. As I did, I would include the folks who had no other visitors. It was probably the best pastoral calling I did all year.

So, that’s how I came to write The Comatose Ward, imagining what it might be like if I myself were in the hospital on Christmas day…

Warning: It’s a repeat, and it’s long. Almost 3,000 words. I could tighten it up…well, maybe next year.

THE COMATOSE WARD

            He had never seen Jesus like this before. There he was, standing beside the bed, looking very unlike the pictures in the Sunday School papers.

            The Rev. Dr. Jackson Peter Taylor lay flat on his back in what he thought of as “the comatose ward.” It did not surprise him that Jesus had appeared there. Ever since he came across the theory of “the messianic secret” in the Gospel of Mark, during theological school, he realized that Jesus had a fondness for showing up in unexpected places. Jesus especially liked to reveal himself to people who would keep their mouths shut about it. The comatose ward was perfect. Of course, Christmas eve was the perfect time to pull something like this; hardly anyone was around.

            The Rev. Taylor liked being in the ward. When the stroke first hit, they put him in a private room. That was a joke. The last person who needed privacy was a paralyzed comatose stroke victim. He assumed it was really to give his family privacy to mourn his approaching demise. But J. P. Taylor knew he was not going to die yet. He still owed God, and he was sure God would make him drop his coins in the turnstile before allowing him into the big-top. That was something most Christians, with their “cheap grace” ideas, would never understand. This Jesus, who was standing beside his bed now, had said it: “Of the one to whom much is given, is much expected.” Jack Taylor wished to high heaven that Jesus had never said it. He preferred to go ahead and die and get this over with, but he knew that he had been given far more than he had yet paid the expectations on.

            Once the people in the white coats had realized he was not going to “check out” right away, and the people in the suits had found out that the insurance policy his church had provided him was not as comprehensive as the salesman—a member of the congregation—had claimed, he was moved to the ward. There were six beds, each with a breathing lump of flesh like himself. J.P. thought it was a great arrangement. It was shared privacy, which was better than lonely privacy or forced fellowship. He hoped his ward-mates were getting a good look at Jesus standing beside his bed. It would be a great event for them not to talk about with one another.

            The Rev. Dr. Taylor was sure that it was wonderful irony that the congregation that had stroked him so little in all the years he served it had finally given him a stroke to last a lifetime, just three months before retirement. The Christmas Eve services were to be his last, and then it was four months off around the world, with just Molly. The trip was a present from their sons and daughters-in-law. Well, now he would make a trip around the universe, assuming that God would ever let him get at it, and Molly would make the trip around the world with her sister.

            In one of those unknowingly prescient moments that seem to come more frequently with age, he had told her that if anything happened to him, he wanted her to take her sister and go ahead and make the trip. “OK,” she had replied, with a shrug. He remembered that shrug now with such pride that his shrinking chest expanded until his sheets quivered. That was their type of love—made of steel. It could take whatever came and go right on without missing a beat. He knew it was the gift of that love that put him into debt to God, even now.

            Good grief! Maybe Jesus had come to collect. It has never before occurred to the Rev. Dr. Taylor that Jesus might be God’s bag man. What else would he be doing here? But how could Jesus insist that the beleaguered minister continue to answer the call here in the comatose ward?

            “Oh, no,” groaned the parson, silently, of course. “Don’t tell me I have to be a good example. That’s too much to ask of anybody.”

            The Rev. Taylor was always good at doing, but the thought of doing by being is enough to strike terror even in those in whose brain waves “the rough places are made smooth.”

            Seeing Jesus in the flesh, as it were, was a very different experience for the preacher. He had often spoken to others, in pulpit and out, of how God had become in-car-nate, “in the flesh,” in the person of Jesus. He had never really thought, however, that it was supposed to happen more than once. Yet, no doubt about it, here was Jesus, beside his bed. What a fantastic illustration for his Christmas Eve sermon…and then he realized…he was not going to get to preach about this at all. He was in the comatose ward.

            “Damn,” he thought. “Every time you get a good illustration, there’s some reason you can’t use it.”

            It was like the other day when his associate pastor had come to serve him communion. That had always been The Rev. Dr. Jackson P. Turner’s job in the past—to take Advent communion to all the patients and shut-ins. He loved doing it, even more than he loved preaching, and he loved preaching almost as much as chocolate-covered graham crackers. He would sit and chat, letting the other person steer the conversation, listening to their fears, coaxing forth their joys, just being there as the representative of the Body of Christ. In the course of their conversation, he pulled the packet of wafers and the flask of wine and the little glasses from his pockets. He worked the words of the communion liturgy naturally into their conversation as they went along, talking of old times and the problems of children and hopes for the church. Then he broke the wafers and poured the wine. They shared as three friends having lunch together—the person, the parson, and the Christ.

            Now here was this nincompoop, Charles Compton, who had apparently learned absolutely nothing in nine years as his associate. He bustled into the room, The Rev. Mr. Efficiency, himself. He did not even remove his overcoat, a black cape, with a fuzzy yellow cross on each lapel. He carried a fitted valise, which he plopped onto the end of the bed, snapped it open, and then proceeded to pull out the most godawful assortment of religious bric-a-brac that Jack Taylor had seen in forty years of ministry.

            There was a plastic cross. Charles snapped it together and set it on the rolling tray table. There was a purple stole, with gold scroll work, which he draped around his neck. There was a tray for the wafers and a flagon for the wine and a three-footed stand on which to put them. There were two candles with electric switches on their bases. Jack Taylor was sure that Charles Compton even had spare batteries for them. There was a purple banner, with a misspelling of “Hallelujah” worked into it in gold, which The Rev. Compton hung on the IV pole. There was a bell, which The Rev. Mr. Ridiculous—as Jack Taylor was now calling him in a rage under his totally bland exterior—actually rang before he broke the wafers.

            Charley Compton grabbed his leather-bound, India-paper ritual book from an inside pocket of his cloak, raced through the communion service, grabbed a wafer, ate it, and drank the wine.

            “Hey, where’s mine?” yelled Jack Taylor, but of course the offensive right pastor didn’t hear a thing, did not even realize that J.P. Taylor, who had talked to him every day for nine years was trying to say a thing to him now.

            “Come on, Charley, you idiot. Give me the bread and wine. You can’t do communion by yourself. We wouldn’t call it communion if you could. We’d call it ecclesiastical solitaire. You’re doing it all wrong. Pour some of the blood of Christ down me so I can choke and get the hell out of here.”

            The Rev. Mr. Compton, of course, simply left. Watching him, J.P. Taylor remembered why he had always insisted on taking communion to the sick himself. He did feel a pang of sympathy for his long-time associate, though. Charley was trying to do the work of two pastors in a church that should have had four anyway. Naturally he was in a hurry. He knew that he was next in line for the bed his old mentor held down now. In Charley’s case, it would be a heart attack, of that his senior pastor was sure. No wonder that Charley did not even want to look at him. It was too much like peering into the mirror of the future.

            Well, that was Charley’s problem. Now Jackson P. Turner had to deal with his own problem, which happened to be standing beside his bed. He wondered briefly if Jesus had simply come to get him, swinging low to swoop up a favorite son and take him on home. That would be nice. It was so nice it was highly unlikely. That only happened to lay people. Ministers were subject to law, not grace. When they answered “the call,” they forfeited all claims to grace, even to salvation, of that J.P. Taylor had been sure for years. Lay people rode to heaven on the backs of ministers who themselves were not allowed through the pearly gates; they were just sent back for another load.

            “And good Lord—pardon the expression, Jesus—they have been coming in here looking for a ride even when my back has been sticking out of this heathen hospital gown. If I can’t go to heaven, can’t you at least send me to hell and get me out of the comatose ward? It’s almost Christmas. Can’t I have just this one little present? I can’t go around the world with Molly, I know, but can’t I at least get out of here? People come in here, and they think I can’t hear a thing, because I can’t say a thing, and they babble on so.”

            “So what do they say?”

            J.P. Taylor was answering before he realized there was something a bit unusual about Jesus standing beside his bed and asking questions like that.

            “Well, like the time Charley Compton was trying to comfort Molly. He said, I don’t know what to say. Molly knows Charley well enough that she doesn’t have to be reminded of how stupid he is. And the other day, this cleaning lady was in, and she looked at me said, I understands you used to be a preacher. I wanted to be a preacher once, but they said girls couldn’t do that. Then big tears began to run down her face, and she wiped them on my sheet. Sam Mason, the chairman of the trustees at church, was in. He ought to be chairman of the trusties at jail. You know what he did? He stood right there, where you are now, and he whispered, Jack, you’re the only person I can tell this to. I’ve been embezzling at the bank. I had to do it to pay the bills for my mistress. She’s twenty-three years younger than I am, and nobody knows about her. Isn’t that a fine howdy-doo?

            “What did you tell him?”

            “Well, nothing! You know I can’t say anything. I’ve had a stroke, for Pete’s sake…no offense to St. Peter, of course. I’ve been to his church in Rome, and all…”

            J.P. Taylor knew he was babbling and getting in deeper all the time, but Jesus did not seem all that interested in his peccadilloes, not nearly like the people in church who claimed they were following Jesus all the time. That struck the Rev. Mr. Taylor as being not a little strange.

            “What did Sam Mason do then?” asked Jesus.

            “Well, he got down beside the bed on his knees. Began to cry and beg my forgiveness. Darndest thing I’ve ever seen. Then he stood up, and he dried his eyes on my sheet, and he took my hand and said he knew he’d done wrong, and he was going to repent and fly right. Walked out of here like a new man. I wish Charley Compton was an embezzler. Might get a new start for him, too. Well, I don’t mean I really want Charley to sin, you know…”

            This talking with Jesus was tricky business, thought Jack Taylor, but he seems to sort out the wheat from the chaff pretty well…but Jesus was continuing…

            “You still owe, you know,” said Jesus.

            “Well, yes, I was thinking about that when I first saw you standing there. It’s because of Molly, isn’t it??

            “Yes, no man deserves love like hers, or like mine, either. Besides, you’re a minister. You have to pay thrice for all your sins.”

            The Rev. Dr. Taylor was almost sure that Jesus was hiding a smirk in his beard, but what if he was not? What if he were serious? This pay-back for both blessings and sins was double jeopardy.

            “So you’ve come to collect, huh?”

            “You’ve got it. However, the collection is that I’m not collecting. You have to stay a while longer.”

            “Oh, no,” groaned the weary pastor. “Can’t we work out a deal or something? You know, like when I was little, and I told you I would never do it again, whatever it was?”   

            “By your definition of little, you were little up to the age of sixty-three, since that was the most recent time you made that promise.”

            The Rev. Mr. Taylor knew he’d been had.

            “Okay, give it to me straight. I’m not going to die, right?”

            “Right, but it’s only for a little while. You can die soon, but not quite yet. There are too many people who need you yet.”

            “Need me? Unless you intend to work a miracle, and I’m not saying you can’t, of course, I’m not going to be any good to anyone. I’m stuck here in so much white I feel like I’m in one of those little glass Christmas houses that you shake up and there’s snow all over the place.”

            “Don’t you see, Jack? That’s the point. Would Sam Mason have confessed to you if you could talk back? He’s been embezzling and womanizing for years while you’ve been his pastor, and he never said anything to you before. Would that cleaning lady have shared her broken dream with you if you’d been bustling down the hall like the elder version of that ass, my servant, Charles Compton?”

            Ouch! That hurt, thought the increasingly less Reverend Jackson Peter Taylor.

            “And what about Charley himself? He doesn’t say anything because he has nothing to say. But he’ll eventually figure out what he should say, because, for the first time in nine years, you won’t be supplying him with better lines than he can think up on his own. With you silent, maybe he’ll be able to think up what he needs to say, in his own words.”

            “But I was called to preach, not to lie here in the comatose ward!”

            “I was born to preach, not to die on a cross. When I was born in that stable, Jack, was that for crucifixion? I didn’t want the cross anymore than you want this bed, but it came with the territory. Do you think you can follow me, Jack, and only have the shepherds and the wise men, and gold and frankincense and myrrh, which really is a Lutheran hot dish, and not the cross, too? Sometimes the best preaching is done by listening, Jack. Sometimes the best giving is done just by being quiet and taking.”

            The words were gentle but they reached deep.

            “Okay, boss,” breathed J.P. Taylor. “You’ve got me as long as you want me. Whenever you want to change the deal, you know where to find me.”

            “Right,” said Jesus. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Merry Christmas, Reverend Dr. Taylor, and get back to work.”

            Jesus was already gone when the nurse flung the door open and marched in to do bed check on the six residents of the comatose ward. She came to Jack Taylor’s bed last.

            “What in the world? Who’s been in here, anyway? Some ninny nurse took your arms and stretched them straight out and forgot to put them back. Well, Christmas eve, and you can’t get decent help, I can tell you that!”

            “Go ahead, tell me,” sighed Pastor Taylor, as the nurse pulled up a chair.

John Robert McFarland

 

SOUL WORK WITH CHILDREN [T, 12-17-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Memories of An Old Preacher—SOUL WORK WITH CHILDREN [T, 12-17-24]

At coffee time of my first Sunday as pastor at the Arcola, IL UMC, a four-year-old walked up to me, announced, “I’m Wobbiebigs,” and held out his arms. I grasped his wrists. He started to run around me. I got the idea and twirled him in a circle. He smiled and went on his way. That happened every Sunday until his legs got too long and my arms got too short. I learned that my predecessor, Glen Bocox, had started that ritual with him. Wobbiebigs assumed that was part of the job of the preacher, whoever had that position at the time.

 

At the all-church birthday party, when we sat at the table of our birth month, regardless of age or family, four-year-old Wobbiebigs and 84-year-old Art Harry would carry on long and involved conversations that the rest of us at the table did not understand. It was fascinating to watch the two of them listen so intently to each other.

I doubt that Dr. Robert Biggs. M.D. remembers Glen Bocox or Art Harry. He remembers me a little, because he was 12 when I retired. I suspect, however, that even if he does not remember how he was treated by Glen or Art or me, his soul remembers how he was treated in that church. He could expect to get a twirl from the preacher just by holding out his arms, he could expect that an old curmudgeon would pay attention to him when he talked. That’s good soul work with a child.

 

I have long felt that the main reason that old people exist is for doing soul work with children.

Well, not just old people, but all Christians and churches.

I remember once at a continuing ed conference for preachers--when there were not many women pastors yet, and clergy women felt like that had to justify their calling--a young woman said that it was good to have women in the ministry because they were more sensitive to children. “I know the names of all the children in my church,” she announced proudly.

I was stunned. I knew the names of all the children in my church, and my church had five times more kids than hers did. It never occurred to me that any pastor, male or female, would not know the names of all the children. That was only the start of doing soul work with them, but it was a necessary start.

Most churches don’t have many children anymore. There are more kids in Sunday morning traveling bowling leagues than there are in church. You don’t get much soul work done in a bowling alley.

Basically, nobody in society is doing soul work with children. And it shows.

Yes, food pantries do stomach work, and teachers do brain work, but someone needs to do soul work with kids.

So, when that kid comes to visit you in Shady Pines, as part of the Gerontology class in the Home Ec Department [1], remember they there are there so that you can do soul work with them. First, ask their name…

 

John Robert McFarland

1] I refuse to call Home Economics by its new name of Domestic & Consumer Sciences. Not everything has to be a science, nor be “run like a business.” You don’t do soul work that way.

 

 

 

WING-WALKING TOWARD CHRISTMAS [Sun, 12-15-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Christmas Stories of An Old Man--WING-WALKING TOWARD CHRISTMAS [Sun, 12-15-24]

Warning: This column is very long, almost 2000 words, because I wrote it originally as a story rather than as a column. It is part of my Years of Christmas collection. I don’t think I have posted it here before.

 

WING-WALKING TOWARD CHRISTMAS--1921

            Some days make you think. That was the kind of day it was, a thinker's kind of day, a philosopher's kind of day.

            Farmers tend to be philosophers, anyway, and Walter Reinhardt was a farmer. Walter understood about philosophy, that farmers were philosophers. Sometimes he philsophized about that. 

            "Maybe it's the daily closeness to life and death, of plants and animals, and sometimes humans," thought Walter.

            Then his special eye clicked into place, as it almost always did when he began to think. He could actually see philosophy, a tall woman with long legs, in a feed-sack dress, striding through his fields, dropping seeds and pushing them in deep.

            That was the kind of early December day it was, a thinking kind of day, a seeing kind of day, as Walter rode on the wagon seat, his wife, Elna, beside him, their children bouncing in the wagon-bed behind, Prince and Fanny calmly clopping ahead on the hard dirt road.

            He didn't know why his thoughts turned to the day itself, but a warm, sunny day in early December is unusual enough to pull all the attention it can get. It seemed to Walter that it was the sort of day pilgrims would use to make their way to a shrine, singing as they went.  

            Walter lifted up his special eye to the low, pleasant hills around him. He could see himself as a pilgrim, on his way to some unique destination.

            "Keep on toiling up that hill, pilgrim," Walter said to himself. "Once in your life you ought to make it into the holy city, regardless of where you live the rest of the time. Soon or late, you need to do something that is out of the ordinary, that you're not going to do every day or every week, that isn't practice or rehearsal for something else, but just needs to be done for its own sake, something for which once is good enough."

             It seemed like that kind of day.

            "Walter, for heaven's sake, wake up. You're gonna run over somebody."

            Elna's voice flipped down the shade on his special eye.

            "You've been day-dreamin' agin, haven't you? I don't know what to do. It's like havin' another child."

            Walter kept looking right where he had been staring, into the middle of the road, but his eyes were different now. The special eye was closed. Instead of seeing his fellow pilgrims toiling up the slopes toward the holy city, he saw his fellow citizens rolling down the streets of Bloomington. It wasn't quite the same.

            "I guess I'm never going to go any place special, not for real," sighed Walter to himself.

            There was a peculiar quality about the day, though, even in Bloomington. It was a Saturday, and everyone came to town on Saturday. It was warm and sunny even though it was early December. The Christmas decorations were on the streets and in the windows of the stores. Any of those by itself would have given the day a quality of expectation.

            Today, though, the barnstormers were coming to town.

            Normally the flying barnstormers ended their Midwest season long before December. The autumn had stayed warm for so long. though, that they were hanging on until the cold weather blew in from the high plains and they were forced to fly south, along with the geese.

            They had flown their little open cockpit bi-planes into Dunn Meadow, and that was where Walter Reinhardt was heading first. How many chances did a person have to see a real airplane, anyway? Even Elna was excited about that.

            The pilots had planned to do some acrobatics, cause the clod-hoppers to pop their eyes, then make some money by taking people up for rides. Their plans hit some snags, though. Actually, their planes hit some trees. The first pilot lost power and crashed into the woods. A second pilot lost a truss and crashed into a corn field.          

Neither one was hurt. They both came walking back to Dunn Meadow. There were more pilots and more planes, but the enthusiasm of the locals for flying wasn't in much better shape than the first two planes. They started back down Kirkwood Avenue to the square, to do some shopping.

            That was when Earl Flynn, one of the foremost barn-stormers of the era, grabbed the megaphone.

            Earl was known as "Fly-Boy Flynn." He didn't barn-storm for the money. He didn't need it. He was the heir to a brewery fortune in Cincinnati. He flew just for the love of flying and for the love of people. He was sure and certain that airplanes would bring peace to earth. That was why he had persuaded the other pilots to do this late-autumn fly-through of the Midwest, to do a Christmas tour to honor "The Prince of Peace."

            "Just think," he used to say to his father, who thought Earl ought to give up this fly-boy nonsense and stick to his kreusening, "think how the flying machine will bring people closer. We'll be able to fly over barriers. We'll get help to people so much more quickly in times of natural disaster. We'll be able to visit people in other lands, and we'll learn that they're just people, too. As we understand one another better, there will no longer be a need for war."

            "Earl," his father replied, "the only way to prevent wars is to keep people drunk enough that they can't shoot straight. That's the mission of this brewery. Just think of the rent riots five years ago. Why, those squatters were gonna kill the land-lords, and the police, too. If I hadn't sent those three wagons of free beer down there and gotten them all soused, the streets would have run red with blood. As it was, they just frothed a little around the gutters."

            Fly-Boy Flynn never knew how to answer his father's reasoning, because it was so reasonable and so unreasonable at the same time. He had no trouble talking about flying when he had a megaphone in his hand, though.

            "Ladies and gentlemen," he shouted. "Don't go now! The pilots were just demonstrating how safe flying is even when you crash. But I realize you might have misunderstood their intentions. Consequently, I am prepared to put up $100 of my own money to anyone who will stand on the top wing of my plane, hold onto this wing-walker's bar, and go up with me for just five minutes. Why, you'll see there's nothing to it."

            One hundred dollars! One hundred dollars was a lot of money. You could work three months for that much cash.

            Nobody ran forward to grab those greenbacks Fly-Boy Flynn was holding high above his leather helmet, though. They knew malarky when they heard it. Those other pilots were not demonstrating safety; they were demonstrating stupidity.

            It looked like no one was going to take up Flynn's offer, not until Walter Reinhardt muttered, "I always wanted ta ride on one of them wings."

            Mrs. Reinhardt could not believe what she heard.

            "Walter," she cried, "You can't do that. You'll git killed. That Fly-Boy fella is crazy. He don't haff ta worry. His father owns a big brewery. No one depends on him. But you, Walter, you got responsibilities. Who'd work the fields? What would become of me and the children? And Christmas almost here. I always knew that silly day-dreaming of yours would get us in trouble sooner or later. That hundred dollars ain't worth it!"

            "The Lord knows we could use a hundred dollars, especially with Christmas comin' on," said Walter, "but that ain't why I'm gonna do it. I just gotta stand up and ride on one of them things."

            His children looked at him in amazement. They had never seen their father any higher than the seat of the farm wagon. It never occurred to them that he could get any higher than that. Now he was the only man in the whole crowd who would even think about going up in the air with Fly-Boy Flynn.

            The people nearby overheard Mrs. Reinhardt. They began to pass the word through the crowd.

            "Reinhardt's gonna do it. Crazy Reinhardt's gonna go up on that wing with that fella wearin' a white scarf 'round his neck."

            No one had ever referred to Walter Reinhardt as "Crazy" Reinhardt before. His neighbors knew nothing of Walter's special eye. From what they could see of him, he was as sober and plodding as Prince and Fanny, his one-horse, one-mule team. But even the thought of doing something like going up on that wing was enough to give him a nickname that you can still see today on a gravestone in the Methodist cemetery.

            Mrs. Reinhardt wrung her hands and jumped from one foot to the other.

            "I know you always wanted ta be a balloon man when you was growin' up, Walter, but this is crazy. You're too old ta be changin' jobs and doin' somethin' different. You can't become a pilot or some crazy wing-walker now."

            "I ain't figurin' on doin' this but once, Elna," said the man now known forever as "Crazy." "Sometimes, though, a person's gotta do somethin' even if it's the only time in his whole life he does it."

            With that, Walter Reinhardt walked up to Fly-Boy Flynn and said, "Show me how ta hang onta this thing."

            As they mounted up into the bright December sky, Walter sang a little song, a song for pilgrims who are going up the slopes to a special place. No one heard it, not even Fly-Boy, because of the sounds of the wind and the plane's motor.

            "The Lord is your guardian. As you mount up toward the sun, it is God who is your shade on your right hand. You can soar up into the sky and God won't let the sun get you. You can fly by night and the moon won't get you. The Lord will guard your goings out and your comings in, your take-offs and your landings, from this time forth and for evermore," he sang.

            Walter wasn't getting the words exactly, the way he'd heard them in church. As he sang, though, it seemed that he was getting the words right for the first time in his life.

            They flew over the square and around the court house, over the university and clear out to the edge of town. Walter could see it all, and he loved it, even in the sun-bright bleakness of the leafless winter.

            "So this is why You did it!" the philosopher shouted, where no one below could hear.

            Walter looked down. With his special eye, he could see God striding up the hill toward the city, cradling the baby in the everlasting arms, going to meet Mary and Joseph at the barn on the edge of town. In the wind on the wing, Walter had a special ear, too. He heard God singing, the same song Walter himself had just sung.

            "Keep on toiling up that hill, pilgrim," Walter shouted. "Once in your life you ought to make it into the holy city, regardless of where you live the rest of the time. Soon or late, you need to do something that's out of the ordinary, that you're not going to do every day or every week, that isn't practice or rehearsal for something else but just needs to be done for its own sake, something for which once is good enough."

            God looked up at Walter and winked.

            Walter threw back his head and laughed.

            "That crazy God," he muttered.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

MIRACLES [F, 12-13-24—Happy Friday, the 13th]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—MIRACLES [F, 12-13-24—Happy Friday, the 13^th]

 

I don’t know why I’m going to write about miracle here, because I can’t say anything intelligible about miracle. Miracle is ineffable, unexplainable. But we use the word miracle a lot at Christmas time, like every sappy TV show or movie has someone exclaiming, “It was a Christmas miracle!” Well, yes, it’s probably accurate to describe Christmas, itself, as miracle.

I don’t mean the appearance of angels or of a navigational star or why the cookies left for Santa disappeared. The presence of God incarnate is miracle. 

I do believe in miracles. I just don’t think we can understand them. We know that God is involved with them somehow, but we don’t understand that, either.

Miracles are not like tube sox. One size does not fit all. That is probably the only thing that can be said about miracles, for each one stands alone and cannot be explained.

Please don’t give me that talk about every sunrise being a miracle, and every day I’m alive is a miracle, and every rose petal is a miracle. I understand. We need to be reminded of how precious each moment of life is. But that’s just flattening out the word “miracle.”

Miracle is singular, even when plural.

Because we are people, though, we try to organize miracles. We talk about different categories of miracles. Miracles of healing. [So why did God heal you and not someone else?] Miracles of nature. [The tornado flattened every other house but spared mine; it was a miracle. Yeah, tell that to the neighbors with the flattened houses.] Miracles of chance. [If I’d been there two seconds later…] Miracles of clarity. [Suddenly I understood the meaning of life…] Miracles of…

No, there is not category of Miracle, nor are there miracles. There is only miracle, something that stands alone. It can’t be explained. It can’t even be talked about intelligibly.

Imagine that you are going through the woods and find a cairn. You wonder who piled those rocks up, and why. You call in the cops to dust for finger prints. You call in the anthropologists to determine if it bears the marks of the Ojibway who once lived here. You call in the geologists to look at the rain wear patterns to determine how long it’s been there. You call in the sociologists, who say it’s from a period in history when people liked rocks. You call in the psychologists who say, Yes, that’s the work of a rebellious teen girl who is mad because only boys get to pile rocks up.

You get all sorts of information, but you still don’t know who did it, or why.

That’s the way with a miracle. It stands alone. We don’t know who or why. And that just rankles, doesn’t it? As soon as I’ve said that, I want to go on, to explain in words why we can’t understand it in words.

I have myself been part of two incidents which I describe as miracles. I want so much to explain them, put them into context, place them in proper theological and psychological setting. In that desire, I have written about them and told their story…

That’s what you can do with a miracle—tell its story. You can’t explain it, but stories don’t require explanation. They require only presence.

Well, don’t blame me for wasting your time. I warned you at the top that I can’t say anything about miracles.

John Robert McFarland

N THE BLEAK MIDWINTER—[W, 12-11-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man—IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER—[W, 12-11-24]

 

I’m so glad that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and not in Arcola, Illinois, at least not in 1993. Those swaddling clothes would not even be close to keeping a baby warm that Christmas Eve.

We had a farmer in the congregation who had added some llamas to his sheep field. At Christmas time, they looked sort of like camels, the ones from Orientar, where the wise men hailed from. So someone said, “Let’s have a live nativity scene on the church lawn! We’ve got sheep and pseudo-camels, and there’s no reason a pig couldn’t have been there when Jesus was born.” [Yes, there was; haven’t you heard about Jews and pork? At least we got that idea off the table before people showed up in bath robes with dish towels on their heads and actually started unloading a garden shed for a stable, and hay bales, and a menagerie that included a cat.]

Authenticity in a live nativity isn’t really an issue, because no one knows what that scene in Bethlehem really amounted to, except that it probably bore no resemblance at all to the ones we put on Christmas cards and wrapping paper. Cold, however, is an issue!

I can’t remember exactly how cold it got that night, but 80 below zero, F, is probably a good guess. The angels didn’t even bother to appear. I have never been so cold, and I lived in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for eight years. No one could take it for long. First Joseph headed to the church basement, for hot chocolate. Then the cat. Then Mary and the baby. Then the wise men, who were not really wise or they would not have waited that long. The shepherds followed… but that left the “camels” and sheep on their own.

The "camels" could see that the Baptists down the alley to the north looked warm, and so did the Catholics, down the alley to the south, who were also sort of Baptist, since their church was called St. John the Baptist. The animals went in both directions, so to spread the news of the holy birth more quickly, to those “lesser breeds without the law.”

I tell this story only because it is a story about Christmas, and this is the Christmas season. Yes, it was an attempt to be a witness to the whole town. But this story is really without a “point.” Except for the obvious one.

Just because you have something that looks like a camel…

John Robert McFarland

PREGNANT PREACHING, [Sun, 12-8-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Stories of An Old Man—PREGNANT PREACHING, [Sun, 12-8-24]

 

On the second Sunday of Advent last year, Peace Sunday according to the Advent wreath, our daughter, Katie Kennedy, preached at her church in Iowa. Her son said that she had a particularly difficult time coming up with a sermon on peace because of her personal “bellicose nature.” I’m so proud of that boy.

We got to hear Katie’s sermon via live stream. It was great. That’s not surprising. She has taught college history for years, and made presentations at writer’s conferences and such. Also, for the first eighteen years of her life, she heard outstanding sermons every Sunday!

Katie was secretly thinking that Pastor Dani was “auditioning” various folks in the congregation, finding out who can adequately “fill the pulpit,” since she was pregnant. As the time came for her delivery, she’d need some folks she could count on to step in without much warning. [1]

The whole congregation--this bunch of plain farming folks in the middle of Trump-loving Iowa--was quite excited that their pastor was pregnant. Of course, an announcement at the beginning of Advent that a baby is coming has a lot of automatic joy in Christian circles.

But it was only forty years or so ago that attitudes about such things were quite different. I choose forty years ago, because that is when I was a doctoral student one summer at St. Andrews University in Scotland. My wife and young teen daughters were with me.

One of my professors was the famous Bible scholar, William Barclay. One day in chapel, he made the statement that the worst thing the Church of England ever did was let a pregnant woman preach in church.

That night we were at a nice reception for students and faculty in a large and very pleasant old-fashioned lounge. I noticed that Helen and Mary Beth, age 14, were chatting with Dr. Barclay. “Chatting” wasn’t exactly correct. They had him pinned against the wall. I decided to stay out of it, but I asked about it later.

“That was ridiculous, what he said about a pregnant woman being allowed to preach,” they informed me. “We were just setting him straight.”

I got a lot of respect for Barclay the next day when he gave the prayer in chapel and prayed fervently for those whose minds are closed to new possibilities. I knew he was praying for himself. I knew why he was.

I’m personally sort of sympathetic to Barclay on this issue. I certainly would not have wanted that pregnant Mary preaching in my church, considering what she was likely to say…

…He has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has put down the mighty from their seat and exalted the meek. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich and mighty away empty.

That kind of preaching would upset lots of people.

John Robert McFarland

1] Junie Joy, named for the title character in Barbara Parks’ Junie B. Jones books, is looking forward to her first Christmas.

 

 

DISAPPOINTMENT [Sat, 12-7-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—DISAPPOINTMENT [Sat, 12-7-24]

 

I was once disappointed by my closest friend. He was also at that time my supervisor. We were in a meeting. I was under fire. He had the authority to do something to help, but he didn’t.

Another person present later said to me, “I felt so sorry for you. I know how close you two are. He had the opportunity to support you, but he didn’t. That must have been so disappointing for you.”

Well, yes, it was, but I assumed there was a good reason for his silence. Maybe he wanted to be supportive but didn’t know how. Perhaps he felt he might make things worse. Maybe he just didn’t understand the situation. Maybe he was so afraid of others there that he was willing to back away from his friend.

Reason or no reason, it was disappointing, but that did not change the way I felt about him, my love for him, my appreciation for him, for I know that if we stay friends only with those who never disappoint us, we’ll have no friends at all.

Sooner or later, disappointment comes with every person, including Jesus. “What a friend we have in Jesus?” Yes, except for the disappointments. Or, more accurately, including the disappointments.

During the “days of rage” on campus, following the killings at Kent State U in 1970, I was so disappointed in my fellow campus ministers. University President Sam Braden, Student Body President and Viet Nam vet Chuck Witte, Dean of Students Dick Hulet and his staff, and I—we were the only ones working the streets at night, literally pushing students away from police, trying to prevent violence and destruction, trying to keep people safe.

At the monthly meeting of the campus ministers, about half a dozen, the others talked about why they had been missing in action. They had lame excuses, and were a bit embarrassed by using them. Except for Fred, the campus minister for a quite large denomination. He said he had gone fishing, adding, self-righteously, “I just got out of town. I wasn’t about to have anything to do with something like that.” I was disappointed in Fred.

The followers of Jesus were disappointed in him, even his inner circle. They had expected a leader who would “restore the Kingdom to Israel.” They wanted a worldly savior. They wanted someone who would bless their worldly success, but the rich young ruler “went away sorrowful.” They were so disappointed that people who had heard him gladly mocked him as he died. “He saved others. Let him save himself.” They wanted a Messiah of power, not one of sacrifice.

This is Advent season. We are looking forward to the coming of Jesus. And we’re going to be disappointed. As my mother in law used to say, “There’s nothing as over as Christmas.”

Jesus still disappoints. Shouldn’t his resurrection mean that now we’ll get the power? That now he’ll tell us that we’re okay the way we are, instead of telling us to turn the other cheek, and go the extra mile, and all that impossible, disappointing stuff?

If you can’t learn to deal with disappointment, even from Jesus, especially in yourself, you’re in the wrong world. So…what can we do?

You keep on loving the ones who disappoint you. And you “take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.” God understands. God is used to disappointment.

 

John Robert McFarland

Happy Birthday to the world’s best mother-in-law; she was never disappointed in me. Georgia Mary Heltzel Karr, however, never forgave the Japanese for making her birthday “…a day that will live in infamy.” She would be 117 years old today.

 

 

 

 

 

WHAT IS A GOOD DEATH? [R, 12-5-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—WHAT IS A GOOD DEATH? [R, 12-5-24]

 

“It was definitely not a good death,” Al told me.

We met Al and Ann [1] a number of years ago. They were new in town and wanted to get acquainted so invited us over for a meal. We had a lot in common, so that became a regular occurrence. Sometimes, Ann and Helen would go off to hunt for new dessert plate patterns, and Al and I would just sit and talk, and I learned their story.

They met by accident. Both were divorced and middle-aged. Both were afraid to try marriage again. But they fell in love, and managed to meld five teenagers into a good family, so much so that as those children got married and produced grandchildren, they had trouble remembering which baby came from the line of which grandparent.

Then Cy, Ann’s father, showed up.

He just appeared one day. Christmas was coming. He was dying and alone. He wanted Ann to take care of him. She did not want to, but Al persuaded her to take her father in. Cy had no other family, and Al and Ann were good Christians, the real kind, not the sappy or “prosperous” kind. Besides…Christmas.

Cy was a whiny manipulator. Yes, he was dying, but he would not do for himself even the things he could do. He wanted Ann to give up everything else and just stay with him. One day, Ann left his room and broke down. That was when she told Al of how her father had sexually abused her as a girl. “I’ve tried to forgive him. I really have,” she wept. “But I can’t. I can’t even look at him anymore.”

Al was stuck. He was the one who insisted they take Cy in. So he was now the caretaker of a man who was unlikable anyway, and was now revealed to be a really bad person. Very close to death. And unrepentant. Al tried to get him to confess his sins, to “get right with God,” but all he would do was whimper and call for Ann to come back. Frustrated, Al told him, “Cy, be a man for once. Die like a man.”

“It was definitely not a good death,” Al said. “Not for Cy. Not for me. Not for Ann. Not for anybody.”

I’ve thought about that ever since.

The obits I read--for the same reason Mark Twain did, to see if I’m in them—often say “She died peacefully, surrounded by her loving family.” That sounds like a good death.

I don’t know how old Dylan Thomas was when he wrote, to his dying father, “Do not go gentle…” but he had to be young, for he himself died when only 39. What did he know about how one should die in old age?

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should rave and burn at close of day;

Rage, rage, against the dying of the light. [2]

Notice, though, that even though it sounds like Thomas is a Jean Paul Satre [3] sort of existentialist--trying for every second of bodily life, because there is nothing else—he calls death “that good night.” If it’s “good,” why should we rage against it?

Is it necessary to die “peacefully” for it to be a “good” death, to enter the “good” night? I hope not, for I’ll probably be telling the nurse a joke and die just before the punch line.

I suspect that a death is good if it comes at the right time. The right time is before you have outlived life.

But don’t worry; I can tell all about it in the column after... Oh, wait a minute… well, that’s a bummer!

 

John Robert McFarland

1] I learned the hard way, by writing novels, to use short fictional names. Al and Ann instead of Alfredo and Annabella saves a lot of strokes when you’re writing 106,000 words [standard novel length].

2] The first of six stanzas.

3] I don’t know Sartre’s existentialism all that well. I just like to be able to point out that I read Les Jeux Sont Fait in a yellow, beat-up old paperback copy in French. Very existential.

THE THEOLOGY OF THE NOSE [T, 12-3-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man--THE THEOLOGY OF THE NOSE [T, 12-3-24]

 

Where I grew up, you had to watch your nose very carefully, or it could get you into trouble. For one thing, your nose might keep you from visiting a neighbor. The standard response when you knocked on a door was, “Come in if your nose is clean.” That’s a high bar to clear.

When you are a kid, there are so many nose requirements. You’re supposed to follow your nose. Put your nose to the grindstone. Get your nose out of the air. Keep your nose out of other people’s business. Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. And, most important of all, you must not have your nose in a book!

It seemed so illogical. Who could read a book with their nose stuck in it? [When in a book, the nose is always “stuck” there.] Very difficult to read like that. I learned early, though, that one should not point out the illogic of such a demand as “Get your nose out of that book.” That got other parts of one’s anatomy into trouble.

I like the smell of books, but I never really put my nose in so that I could get the aroma. That was just a bonus attraction. It is important for different reasons not to get your nose stuck in a book these days. You might get electrocuted if you stick your nose in a Kindle. 

The real reason I followed my nose to a book was because it contained stories. Reading became the grindstone to which I put my nose. And it kept my nose out of other people’s business. If others did not read, that was their business, and no skin off my nose.

We are now in Advent, known more widely as The Christmas Shopping Season. Books are an important part of this season, for books contain stories, and Christmas is the story of Emmanuel, God with us. I hope someone gives you a book for Christmas.

It is important, though, that you not get your nose up in the air, for one does not need to read to pray. Like everyone else, God enjoys good smells, and the prayers of the righteous are like a sweet aroma in the nostrils of God. [1]

 

I learned that from getting my nose stuck in a book.

John Robert McFarland

 

1] II Corinthians 2:15.