SAYING WORDS IN PUBLIC {W, 10-23-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—SAYING WORDS IN PUBLIC {W, 10-23-24]

 

When I was a young man, there was a well-known public speaker by the name of John McFarland. I recall that maybe he was a college president, too, but he was known primarily for being a public speaker, what today we call a motivational speaker. I never heard him. I didn’t want to. I knew there was more than one of us John McFarlands. After all, my own father was one. But the public speaker guy was so well known. People would often mention him to me. It felt to me like he was stealing my identity.

Maybe it was because of him that I once aspired to be a public speaker myself. Perhaps it was just because all preachers assume that since they are public speakers already, albeit a rather specific slice of the public, that they can switch the pulpit for a lectern and have the fame and fortune that accompanies secular public speakers. Well, being a public speaker wasn’t actually an ambition for me. It was more like an assumption—I could outdo that other John McFarland and win back my name.

So when Jack Newsome was on the program committee of his service club [Lions? Kiwanis?] and asked me to speak at a noon meeting, I gladly accepted, both because it was Jack asking, and I was glad to do a friend a favor, but also because I was finally going to be a public speaker.

Oh, I’d done “public” speaking before, mostly when I was in campus ministry, but they were less formal occasions--chatting with students in dorm lounges, talking to a town council meeting abut liquor laws, welcoming a group of foreign students, etc. Or occasions that were just other forms of preaching, like at community race relations events.

Jack and I were in our early forties. So were most of the members of his service club, all of us in some stage of midlife crisis. It was to this group of distracted men, as they ate plates of unhealthy food and wondered about what they had to do that afternoon, that I was called on to motivate with some secular gospel.

It was okay. I told funny stories. They laughed. I explained theories of humor, and why we laughed at jokes. They looked mildly interested. We ended by singing, not well, some patriotic songs. All in all, a totally… unnecessary time.

Oh, I know. Service clubs do actual service. That’s good. They also make it possible to identify potential drinking buddies. Not quite so good. Friendship? Good, but pretty shallow. Like church groups without much religion. 

Don’t misunderstand. They really do good work. One good work was Jack’s group convincing me that I didn’t want to be a public speaker. That was good. For me, and for the public.

My college roommate, Tom Cone, Indiana’s foremost criminal attorney, was a faithful friend to me all his life. He had trouble speaking after a stroke. When we had lunch together, he mostly listened while his wife, Sally, and Helen and I did the talking. Afterward, though, he tried hard to say something to me. He finally got out, “Do you still…say the words?”

Preachers and public speakers both say words. But Tom knew that I never could say only words. I had to say the words.

John Robert McFarland