IQ, PI, and NPD [Sat, 10-18-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Insights of An Old Man—IQ, PI, and NPD [Sat, 10-18-24]

 

Narcissists live in a world of one. I’ve dealt with quite a few narcissists professionally. They are very simple to read, but difficult to know. We once had a narcissist in the family, though. Since our relationship was familial instead of professional, I got to know him very well, “up close and personal.”

When he wanted to defend his self-indulgence, he would point out that he had a degree from an Ivy League university, and that he could recite a lot of facts about many things. He was intelligent, far more than other people, according to him, and so, automatically, he had to be right. The fact that all he did was to his advantage, regardless of who was disadvantaged, was simply the result of superior intelligence.

He was right about being intelligent. He had a high IQ. Being a narcissist, though, he had no PI, no personal intelligence, no psychological intelligence.

To a narcissist, lying isn’t lying. Hypocrisy isn’t hypocrisy. Logic does not exist. Facts do not exist. Truth is only what he wants it to be. Other people exist only to get him what he wants. There is only one thing in his world, and that is himself. Everyone else and everything else exists only for his use. A narcissist can be quite “intelligent,” but that does not mean he is smart.

Anyone who knows even a little psychology understands that Donald Trump has NPD, Narcissistic Personality Disorder. So I really don’t blame Mr. Trump for the wildly inaccurate and immoral things he says and does. Narcissists don’t have a moral compass. Their brains are simply deficient. To blame a narcissist for having a bad brain is like blaming someone born deaf for not hearing.

How do you deal with a narcissist? The usual methods of persuasion—truth, facts, logic—mean nothing to him. You can’t reason with him. He has no shame or embarrassment about lying or hypocrisy or abusive behavior.

The only thing you can do is make him uncomfortable. And show him a way to get comfortable.

By that, I mean personal comfort. The world exists for him. If what he is doing is not getting him what he wants, he will change, not because he thinks his former behavior is wrong, but because it isn’t getting him what he wants.

Just make him uncomfortable when he does wrong and make him comfortable when he does right. Simple, isn’t it? No, because someone with NPD rarely does right, especially if he has enablers who will tell him that wrong is right.

I think that the only way to deal with NPD folks is to say “No” to them. Keep them at a distance from the levers of family and society, so that they can’t pull those levers, since they can’t reach them.

Too late for dealing with Donald Trump, but, at least, he is a cautionary tale for the future…if there is one.

John Robert McFarland

“People who believe in absurdities will eventually commit atrocities.” Voltaire 

 

 

FLOWERS FOR PIE [W, 10-15-25]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Irrelevant Reflections of An Old Man—FLOWERS FOR PIE [W, 10-15-25]

 

Some might say it is because we’ve been married 66 years. Maybe…

After Crumble Bums—a coffee-drinking consortium of retired quasi-intellectuals--I went to the post office to mail some art to our granddaughter. She is turning her apartment into an art gallery for her birthday, inviting all her friends and family to provide art as well as to attend the gallery opening. We live about two thousand miles too far away to grace the opening with our presence, but since the post office is still doing what Benjamin Franklin intended—making it possible for all citizens to be in community with one another, rather than the current idea that every government service should be “privatized” so a few can make money off the many while excluding from community those who have no money—I was able to send art pieces.

I am not an artist, of course, except for a severely limited ability to do a line drawing of a cat sitting, facing away, on a one-rail fence. The ears are no problem, but I can never decide whether the cat’s tail should curl to the left or to the right.

So, for my art, I claim community-building. Thus, I sent Brigid the letter from my high school class sweater, since it was in the Oakland City High School Class of 1955 that I began my community-building efforts, and I think of her as the heir of my particular artistic ability.

 

At the post office, there were three young women standing in line in front of me. I was prepared for this; I had brought my cane. I can walk just fine, but if I have to stand straight for a while, like in a wait line, it’s hard on my back and hip. Leaning on the cane helps.

Naturally, I said, “Oh, I’m in the wrong line. Clearly this is the line where the good-looking people are supposed to stand.”

Now, there are people, mostly in my family, who say, not exactly because of intellectual curiosity, “Why do you always say weird things to strangers?” Well, because it builds community. All three of those women turned and smiled and assured me that it was okay for me to be in line with them.

So, I was feeling good as I drove home. Along about where Staples used to be [This is how you prove you belong; you use places that no longer exist as landmarks for directions.], I realized that with just a little bit of dangerous maneuvering through a parking lot, where no one knows, or cares, who has the right-of-way, I would be passing directly by Fresh Thyme, where they have a varied selection of pies. When you’ve been busy building community, a pie is a nice reward.

 

In the store, I had to pass the flower department to get to the pies. But a pleasant man, who looked homeless except for his name tag, asked me if he could help. “Yes,” I said, “if you know what my wife would like.”

I meant which flavor of pie, but the woman at the flower cart heard me and stuck out a rather glorious handful of multi-colored cut flowers and said, “She would like these.”

So, I bought flowers instead of a pie. As I checked out, I assured the cashier that I had done nothing wrong, that these were not apology flowers. Yes, remember, community building.

When I got home with the flowers, I discovered that while I was out building community, Helen had baked a pie.

 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

A ROOM OF MY OWN [Sun, 10-12-25]

 BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—A ROOM OF MY OWN [Sun, 10-12-25]

I did not have a room of my own until I was a senior in college. I had always wanted a room of my own, but it seemed strange when I actually got one. I was not used to living by myself.

Of course, dormitory living is never an isolated experience. There were guys up and down the hall in other rooms. I had known most of them for three years. The walls in our old BOQ building were so thin you could hear guys in the next room dealing cards. But, still, living in that single room was a bit strange 

When I was small, my parents and older sister and I shared a room in Cedar Crest, the big old farmhouse on the outskirts of Oxford, OH. My grandparents’ house had a lot of rooms, and during The Great Depression, there were plenty of people to fill them. I thought having lots of people in the house was not only normal but a good thing—always someone to pay attention to me, to play with me.

When we moved to Indianapolis, when I was four, I shared a room, first with my parents and then with my sister. When we moved to the farm near Oakland City, when I was ten, the house had only two bedrooms. My fourteen-year-old sister and my two-year-old sister shared one of them, and my parents were in the other. My one-year-old brother was in a crib with my parents, and I slept on a pullout sofa in the living room. As soon as Jimmy was out of his crib, he started sharing the sofa bed with me.

We did not have a car, so I walked many miles on dirt and gravel roads to go to church or to 4H or to a friend’s house, or even to town. I liked those walks. They were the only times I was by myself.

I liked my first roommate at IU, Tom Cone, and I liked Jim Barrett when Tom got a single after our sophomore year. Having a roommate in college was normal. So when I went to a single as a senior, even though I had yearned for years for my own space, it was a strange feeling, to live alone.

At the end of that senior year, Helen and I married, so I’ve had a roommate for 66 years. We had an extra room in our house in Dallas, where we directed a community center when I was a student in the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. I thought I would use that as a study, my room, but IU friend Bob Parsons, also at Perkins, had no place to live, so we put him into that room.

Then little daughters came alone and always took up the extra rooms. When they finally we went off to college, I got a room of my own again. But it was too late…

…because I no longer need a room. All I need now is my laptop computer

I have a beautiful room of my own now. It has a desk and lamp and swivel chair and book shelves and metal filing cabinets. The shelves are crammed with wonderful unused books that have been superseded by Google. On the desk are a stapler and scotch tape dispenser and rolodex and paper clips and… well, all kinds of neat stuff I used to need but never use anymore.

I have a room of my own, and I don’t need it.

John Robert McFarland

Jesus said, “In my father’s house are many rooms.” [John 14:2] I hope mine is not a single.

 I have no idea why blogspot decided to underline some words above.

FROM MY POETRY JOURNAL [R, 10-9-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Poems of an Old Man—FROM MY POETRY JOURNAL [R, 10-9-25]

Remember, it’s a journal. I don’t write it for others, so read at your own peril…

 

THE GIRLS OF SUMMER

The girls of summer

push balky walkers

along mean corridors

at Shady Pines

and wonder

where they left

their summer hats

 

VALLEY OF LOST POEMS

I have never been there

although it is where

many of my verses have gone

a sort of nursing home for poems

 Shady Phrases, or EYS

  Extra Years of Schmaltz

They need not cook for themselves

look in the thesaurus for better

words. There is a white-clad chef

for that, one with a pin

to roll out creases

in long vowel phrases

And a nurse to wipe their bottoms

where the ellipses collide…

with semicolons;

All in all, a rather wordly place

I receive, from time to time,

an invitation, to visit

I politely decline

 

YEARNING

Now it is only yearning

that remains

in the dust of hopes

and dreams and days of work

Perhaps the only meaning

was always in the yearning

 

THE MUSEUM OF UNDONE THINGS

I have much now that I must do

It is not frantic doing, though

If it is not done when I die

it shall take up its place

in the museum of undone things

where others can contemplate

the message of its completeness

 

YOU’RE AN OLD MAN NOW

[Sung to the tune of “He’s In the Jailhouse Now”]

You’re an old man now

Yes, you’re an old man now

God’s told me once or twice

You’re irrelevant so just be nice

You’re an old man now

 

THE NIGHT I HAD A NAME

Lying there in pain

hunger, uncertainty

I heard the nurses at their station

their nightly party commencing

as we in their care gave up for the day

The crackling of popcorn

The aroma of brownies baking

So nostalgic and yet so desperate

for one denied all food

for one marooned on a deserted island

They chatted about the patients

identifying them by room and malady

  The leg in 219

  The kidney in 246

how they were settling us

so that our call buttons would not interfere

as they shared their snacks and laughter

Then I heard them say that I was ready, too,

I did not feel ready, for the night

or for life

but instead of room number or disease

they called me by my name

And I began to heal

John Robert McFarland

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” E.B. White 

IT’S A STORY, FOLKS [10-6-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of A Narrative Theologian—IT’S A STORY, FOLKS [10-6-25]

 

The Bible is not God’s World Book of Facts, or God’s Book of Science History, or God’s Book of Helpful Hints for Easy Living. Definitely not God’s Book of Theological Propositions. It is God’s story book. Not God’s Book of Stories, but God’s Story Book. One story.

The Bible creates all sorts of problems and divisions when we don’t understand that. Well, no. It’s not the Bible that creates those problems. It’s the way we misunderstand God’s purpose for the Bible that is the problem.

I did a lot of counseling throughout my ministry, not because I was good at it, but because people need counselors, and I had credentials, and I was cheap.

Especially in my campus ministry days, the counseling was non-stop. Young people like to talk about their problems.

One girl came to see me because she could not decide between Roy and Stan. I used my best counseling technique, helping her compare and contrast the two. Roy had every attribute a girl could possibly want. Stan was a total loser. She said, “Well, the decision is clear, isn’t it? I felt quite smug; good counseling had brought her there. “Yes, it’s Stan,” she said, with a satisfied sigh.

What? No! It’s not Stan! Weren’t you even here?

I didn’t say any of that, of course. I just watched as she made her dreamy exit out my door to go devote herself to the biggest loser I’d ever heard of.

I don’t think I put it into those words right then, but I began to understand: it’s the story that matters. She was telling herself a story, a story of romance that needed no facts. I was dealing with a list of categories.

I already knew that was true in preaching. I don’t know why it took me so long to understand that story is foundation and center to all the other tasks of ministry, because it is the foundation and center of life.

After campus ministry, I went to the University of Iowa to do a doctorate in theology. I wanted to be a preaching professor in a seminary, and I needed the union card, a PhD.

I quickly ran into trouble. I had already done graduate work in communication theory, and I wanted to concentrate my dissertation on the interface between communication theory and theological methodology. But my professors thought that was frivolous. Theologians had to compare and contrast the soteriology of Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard. And then the teleology of Augustine and Kant. And then the Christology of Barth and Bultmann…

But I had begun to read people like Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. And James William McClendon, Biography as Theology. They were putting into words what I already knew: God is telling a story, and the task of preachers and the church is to help people find their place in it.

Fortunately for me, the U of Iowa was in a consortium, “The Schools of Theology in Iowa,” that also included Wartburg [Lutheran], U of Dubuque [Presbyterian], and Aquinas [Roman Catholic]. I was able to find professors who let me write my own narrative theology.

I suppose that in some ways, all those years of graduate work were wasted. I taught in a lot of short education conferences for preachers, but I was never a prof in a seminary. In the process of all that schooling, though, I learned the reality that has centered all my work, and my life. It you want to know it, read the first paragraph again…

John Robert McFarland

"The future belongs not to those who have the best story, but to those who tell their story best."

CAN I MAKE IT THROUGH THE WINTER? [10-3-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—CAN I MAKE IT THROUGH THE WINTER? [10-3-25]

 

October is a dying month. Can I make it through the winter? That is what old people ask. If they do not want to try it, they die in October, before winter gets started. Ministers and funeral directors know this. 

Unfortunately, by asking if we can make it through the winter, we lose the joy of October, by dreading the advent of winter. October should be a joy in itself,

Yes, October is a joy in itself, but also a joy that winter is coming, because winter is a privilege. If you give up in October, you don’t get to have a winter, and winters can be fun. I am glad if I can make it to winter, whether I make it through winter or not.

Yes, winters can be fun. No, I don’t mean skiing and ski jumping and snow shoeing and ice fishing dancing the parka polka. What? You’ve never danced the parka polka?

Lace up your boots and zip up your coat, let’s do the parka polka. Pull on your ski mask and grab your wool scarf, let’s do the parka polka. Pull on your mittens and your flannel-lined pants, until not an inch of skin shows. The only way I know you’re female, is by the way you do the parka polka. [The tune of The Pennsylvania Polka, of course.]

Winter is fun because it is a gift. Not everyone gets to experience the winter years of life, those years when you have time to forgive trespasses and make peace with what has been. Those extra years of trying to make the world a better place. If you can no longer climb up on the barricades and march in the streets, you can try for a better world through prayer and hope and faith. The world always needs more folks who can pray and hope and keep the faith. 

I think I can make it through the winter. I’ll put on my warm winter faith. I may not be able to dance the parka polka, but I can sing We shall overcome…

Until winter comes, though, I’m going to enjoy October.

John Robert McFarland

Recently I heard this statement by Confucius: We have two lives. The second one starts when we realize that we have only one life.

 

 

 

COMMUNITY IN WINTER [T, 9-30-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Communities of An Old Man—COMMUNITY IN WINTER [T, 9-30-25]

 

I went to the dentist last week. I do that whenever we have too much money in our bank account and I need to get rid of a bunch. I had a new hygienist, the delightful young Erin. I told her that Claudia Byers had been my hygienist for such a long time—in the office of Alejandra Haddad, before both Dr. Haddad and Claudia decided to retire—that it was strange seeing dark hair hovering over me, instead of white.

“Oh, Claudia,” Erin said. “She’s a legend in the dental hygiene community. I met her recently and told her, ‘I feel like I already know you, because I’ve heard so much about you.’”

 

Isn’t that interesting? It never occurred to me that there is a ‘dental hygiene community,’ but, of course, every job and activity category has an automatic community. It may be unorganized, but it exists, because people need community, and the quickest and most comfortable community is with folks who do the same things we do.

I think I felt that most keenly in my cancer support group. Automatic community. Every person there was an old-timer, from the moment they walked through the door, because it was a community of emotions as well as activities. We shared the same fears and hopes and anxieties. That’s deep community.

One of the things I like best about being a preacher, even now, when I no longer “share the practice,” [1] is simply being a part of “the goodly fellowship of the prophets.”

My home church never had an ordained, educated preacher. We just had a lay preacher who showed up on Sunday morning—sometimes Gene Matthews, a factory worker from Evansville, or Kenwood Bryant, a school teacher from Evansville, or Paul Burns, the local post master. They were good people, and I learned from them some useful lessons in what makes a sermon helpful, but I never saw anyone dealing with all the other stuff that comes up in a pastor’s week

So, throughout my career, even now, I watch other preacher/pastors carefully. I still want to learn from them. That community is still important to my identity.

Community can be an elusive thing for folks in their winter years, especially those who are so old that they are beyond winter. When we are young [under 85] and out in the world, going to a job or church or gym or book club, there are automatic communities. When we are “puny and feeble,” stuck at home most of the time, community is more elusive, so we need to work a little harder at taking care of cultivating possible communities.

Helen and I have a community of young men who come to do our quarterly pest control. We’ve seen them long enough and talked with them as they go about their duties that we know their names and know all about their children and dogs and frustrations.

And we have a community at the dentist’s office. This week my dentist had a couple of students shadowing him, so—after asking, “Why? Were all the places in Janitorial School already taken?”-- I took the opportunity to instruct them in dental practice from the patient’s point of view. Hygienists and assistants came from all the other rooms to listen.

Up front, after cooling off my credit card, I grabbed a couple of pens from the reception desk, and Emme said, “Oh, yes, take those. I know Helen loves them.” That’s good community.

As I went out the door, I could hear them talking about the community there that we help create. One said, “He’s so…” I couldn’t hear the rest of it.

John Robert McFarland

 

1] “Excellence in Ministry Through Sharing the Practice,” was the motto of The Academy of Parish Clergy, of which I was a Fellow and past-president.

THE BIG STORY [Sat, 9-27-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscing of An Old Man—THE BIG STORY [Sat, 9-27-25]

 

[Another personal reminiscence story, 765 words instead of my usual 500, so do something else if you’re pressed for time.]

Helen and I have coffee and muffins and talk for an hour or two at mid-morning. Recently she asked me how I knew so early that I wanted to be a newspaper man. This is what I told her…

It was because of newspapers themselves, and WWII, and Ernie Pyle, and the radio, and my big sister, Mary V.

 

NEWSPAPERS IN THE CITY

            We moved to Indianapolis when I was four. The Times was an evening paper and delivered to our front porch by an impressive grown-up of thirteen or fourteen years of age. That was my first inkling that I wanted to be a newspaper man. I wanted to be a grown-up and deliver the paper, because…

            …I knew the newspaper was important, because as soon as it hit the front porch, everyone wanted to see it. Including me, when I learned that there were comic pages. You didn’t even have to be able to read to enjoy them.

            More importantly, it was the source of news about my beloved uncles, who were fighting the fascists and dictators around the world. Most of the time, we weren’t even sure where they were, which meant we needed news from every front in the war.

            In my quest to be a news boy, I made a deal, when I was about eight, with the news girl—a real rarity then—who delivered The Times on East Oakland Ave. In the winter, it was dark by the time she got to our street, the last one on her route. I would meet her at the New York Street end and take the requisite number of papers for my side of the street. I knew every house that got a Times. She delivered on the other side. When we got to Washington Street, if she had an extra, she would give it to me. I would go across Washington St. to where the day shift was leaving the Mallory plant and sell my paper to the Mallory’s office lady in the red coat, for a nickel. Journalism was obviously the way to get rich!

           

NEWSPAPERS IN THE COUNTRY

            When I was ten, we moved to a primitive farm three miles outside Oakland City. No newspaper delivery there. I think it was The Courier that we got, the day after publication, brought in the mail by the rural route carrier. Yes, it was a day late, sometimes two, but so what? It was news to us, and the source of baseball statistics that allowed me to argue with the Cardinals and Cubs fans on the school bus.

            More importantly, it was contact with the outside world. I desperately wanted a life that was more than hoeing weeds and gathering eggs and chopping kindling. Yes, I still wanted news of The Phantom in the comic section, but I wanted to be part of that world the newspaper told about.

 

ERNIE PYLE

            Ernie was from Indiana. We were proud of him. We were told that he wrote the truth about the real soldiers, the ones fighting every day, like my uncles. I wanted to be a war correspondent who told the truth about men like my uncles. I wanted to be Ernie Pyle.

 

THE BIG STORY

            A radio program from 1947-55, each week it dramatized how some newspaper reporter had gotten his [always “his” in those days] big story. It was so heroic and romantic. I knew I’d never get to the major leagues [too slow] or med school [too squeamish] but I could write. I wanted to be the guy who got the big story.

 

MARY V

            My sister, four and a half years older than I, was the most important person in my world. In a family that was chaotic at best, she was an oasis of calm. Anything she did, I wanted to do, and she was on the staff of the high school newspaper, Oak Barks.

Since high school in Oakland City started with 8^th grade, and since I was a mid-year kid [starting in January instead of September because of my birthday] I got to share one semester with Mary V before she graduated. When Alva Cato and Grace Robb, our class sponsors, asked if anyone wanted to be the 8^th grade reporter for Oak Barks, my hand was up first [and probably alone]. 

I think I would have been a good reporter, and I would have gotten retired, just barely, before newspapers became extinct. Yes, I got sidetracked into being a preacher, but I still got to tell The Big Story.

John Robert McFarland

“If I had to choose between newspapers and government, I’d take newspapers.” Thomas Jefferson

 

 

AN EISENHOWER EDUCATION [W, 9-24-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Out-of-date Reflections of An Old Man—AN EISENHOWER EDUCATION [W, 9-24-25]

 

[Continuing my reflections on the 70^th anniversary of my college matriculation… Remember that you read at your own peril since I am now so old I just write for myself instead of trying to be inspirational or efficacious…that’s why I now use the sub-title of “Beyond winter…”]

I had the good fortune to go to college when a college education was primarily to help you be an educated person, not as a path to a particular job.

Yes, there were courses of study that were designed for certain professions—business, music, theater, pre-med, pre-law, etc--but a bachelor’s degree was designed first to give everyone the same “liberal” [general, broad] education.

To that end, there were a lot of required courses that were designed not to fit you for a particular job but to help you be a person who could think well, and be a good citizen, regardless of what vocation you pursued.

Majors and minors at Indiana University required remarkably few credit hours, in part, I think, because there were so many required courses that took up a lot of hours. A major was only 25 hours, and a minor, I think, only 12. So I had a history major with minimum courses in the History Dept, because I also took courses in Folklore and Religion [History of Christian Thought] that counted toward a history major.

As a freshman, I was a journalism major, but frosh didn’t take courses in their major back then. Freshmen were all in “The Junior Division,” which was a bit confusing, since “junior” was also used for students in their third year.

That Junior Division year was dedicated entirely to required, basic, and “intro” courses, such as basic psych, English comp, “Intro to Lit,” etc. and a foreign language [almost always French or German]. The foreign language courses were hours heavy—five per semester—and didn’t count toward a major.

As sophomores, we started working on “majors.” In the summer between my frosh and sophomore years, I had decided that I had to honor my deal with God--to be a preacher if “He” would save my sister’s life--so I was no longer a journalism major, as I had expected to be. I was either a pre-theology major [like pre-med or pre-law] or a religion major, except that IU, being a “Godless state university,” had neither. It didn’t even have a Religion Dept. So I had to do majors and minors that were available, and still do what the seminaries said in their catalogs was necessary for a good pre-theological education, a little bit of everything—philosophy, history, psychology, sociology, foreign language, composition, literature, music, art, speech, science… thankfully, math was never mentioned.

I got an English minor because, in addition to required courses in English, in my pursuit of a religion major, I took courses like The Bible as Literature. It didn’t take many courses to add up to 12 hours.

Even though I had 15 hours of French, I don’t think that was considered a minor.

IU had no religion dept. It did, however, have the Indiana School of Religion, a separate institution that offered courses in religion at IU. They counted as regular IU courses. But the ISR had its own board, building, professors, and budget, so IU could legitimately say it was not spending any tax money on religion. The Director of the ISR, D.J. Bowden, became my de facto mentor and major advisor.

Between his time as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in WWII, and his time as President of The United States, Dwight Eisenhower was the President of Columbia University. As he took that university presidency, he said, “The principal purpose of education is to prepare the student for effective personal and social life in a free society. From the school at the crossroads to a university as great as Columbia, general education for citizenship must be the common and first purpose of them all.”

That was at the start of his university presidency. At the end of his political presidency, he said, “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, either sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

His words are prophetic now. Universities have traded their ideals for money, given up their role in education-for-citizenship to be vocational schools, “training” workers for the military-industrial complex, doing away with general education, especially history, lest anyone be reminded of the words of Eisenhower.

Yes, I’m disillusioned by the current state of education, but I know there are teachers and professors, and maybe even a few administrators, who are trying to keep the flame of liberal education alive. I applaud them. And I’m reminded of what a privilege it was to be a student in the Eisenhower years. Yes, we were “The Quiet Generation,” but we were quiet because we didn’t have to shout at people to remind them that they should be good citizens instead of cogs in the military-industrial machine.

John Robert McFarland

Just after I finished writing this, I received an email, sent to all alums, from The Executive Dean of my university, touting a new undergrad educational experience, not only new to IU but the first in the nation. The first word he used to describe it is “career-focused.”

 

 

 

WHY I PRAY FOR OTHERS [Sunday, 9-21-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Hopeful Praying of An Old Man—WHY I PRAY FOR OTHERS [Sunday, 9-21-25]

 

Because I refuse to admit that I am helpless, even in the most hopeless circumstances, that’s why I pray. One of them, anyway. The main reason in my old age.

God has given me a brain and a will. If I can’t use my legs or my hands, I can still use my prayers. If you’re in trouble, I’m going to pray for you, dagnabit! As long as I have breath, even if I’ve got nothing else, I’m not giving up. On life… On God… On you…

Okay, that’s the first reason I pray for others: I refuse to give up.

Now, there are a lot of other reasons for intercessory prayer. For one, it works! That’s the second reason.

Yes, not always, but as Larry Dossey, MD, says, in Healing Words, “Surgery doesn’t always work, but we keep using it. Chemo doesn’t always work, but we don’t give up on it. Why should we give up on prayer just because it doesn’t always work?” He is so convinced of the efficacy of prayer that he said, “I would be guilty of malpractice if I did not pray for my patients.”

All the research into the usefulness of intercessory prayer—yes, double-blind research that accounts for all the variables—says that such prayer makes a difference.

Not only intercessory prayer, but also prayer in itself. Research shows that the patients who do best with cancer are those whose first reaction, upon hearing their diagnosis, is to pray.

And there are other reasons to pray…like the third one: it’s good for the one who prays, good for our spiritual and mental health. I suspect that is true because it does what I said at the top…it shows the whole durn world that we are not helpless, that we are not giving up. It’s important for your health to have control of your own life. Praying may be the last bit of control you have, but it’s still control.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember about prayer, the fourth reason for doing it, is community. Its main purpose is not results, but presence.

Intercessory prayer builds community. We kiss the booboo not so much to take away the pain but to take away the loneliness. [I think I got that from Rachel Naomi Remen.]

People are almost always helped by knowing that someone is praying for them.

There are exceptions. When I was in college, the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship decided to pray for me because I was not “saved.” I’d be walking across campus with friends and some IV kid would yell at me, “We’re praying for you, John.” That did not make me feel better.

But if you know an honest person is honestly praying for you, without judgment, only with concern, that is a great uplift. That is great community.

Well, yes, there are other reasons for prayer, but I’m at my word limit, so I’ll just be satisfied for now with: I pray because 1] I’m not giving up. I want the universe to know I’m still here. 2] It works. Not always the way we want, but it works. 3] It’s good for the one who prays. 4] It’s good for those prayed for. 5] It builds community.

John Robert McFarland

“Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the community must enter every day.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

THE TIE THAT BINDS [R, 9-18-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Experiences of An Old Man—THE TIE THAT BINDS [R, 9-18-25]

 

Two experiences converged for me this week. I no longer remembered how to tie a tie, and former IL Gov. Jim Edgar died, at age 79. Ties tie the two together. So does church.

John Huff has been our pastor only a little over two months, so he does not know how decrepit I am. So he asked me to give the pastoral prayer at worship last Sunday. I had told him when he came that, even though “puny and feeble,” [1] I could probably fill in for him in an emergency. I’m not sure a pastoral prayer is an emergency. Anyone can do it. As an old woman once told a struggling young preacher, “It ain’t hard. Just call him Father, ask him for something, and sit down.” [2]

Anyway, I did it, and enjoyed it, but it was almost prayed by a tieless preacher. Yes, most preachers these days wear jeans and “Grateful Dead” t-shirts as they preach, but I’m old school. I wear a tie or clerical collar when I lead worship. Since Helen and I have been puny and feeble ever since covid19, we have livestreamed worship for five years. I wear shorts and a Cincinnati Reds t-shirt for worship. I had forgotten how to tie a tie. Took five tries, because I couldn’t remember how Jim Edgar did it.

I’m sure Jim Edgar never forgot how to tie a tie. Probably wore one on his death bed. He was that kind of guy. But he did have to change one at a party at the home of the Eastern IL U president, and it wasn’t my fault. In fact, he was the one who got me into trouble.

It was one of those stand around and talk parties. I was the new pastor at Wesley UMC in Charleston, IL, Jim’s home church. He was a state legislator who had just been promoted to be the executive assistant to IL Governor “Big Jim” Thompson. Jim and I were chatting in the dining room. We did not realize everyone else had gone into the living room and were being informally addressed by the EIU president. Apparently our conversation was too loud, so Brenda, Jim’s wife, came in to tell us to shut up. She didn’t do it that way. She was invariably classy. But it startled Jim. He was holding a plate of party food. He spilled some on his tie.

Unlike my Sunday morning tie experience, this one became an emergency, for we were all going to some performance at the EIU auditorium after the party [I think it was a concert by Andy Williams] and Jim felt that the new exec assistant to the governor could not be seen in public with a stained tie. [3] He was about to melt down when Brenda said, calmly, “I put another tie in the car. I’ll go get it for you.”

So I watched Jim Edgar tie his tie, but last Sunday Morning, I couldn’t remember how he did it.

John Robert McFarland

1] “Puny and feeble” is what folks wrote in the membership book beside the names of old folks in the Solsberry, IN Methodist Church when I was their nineteen-year-old college student preacher, to let me know who I should call on since they could not come to church.

2] No, although I was once a struggling young preacher, I’m not the one in that episode. It’s just an old preacher story.]

3] Jim could have just done like Richard Leonard, a Methodist preacher who was a PhD history professor at IL Wesleyan U when we lived in Normal, IL. It was said that he kept his ties in the refrigerator because they had so much food on them.

Here is the link to Jim Edgar’s obit in his hometown Charleston, IL newspaper. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/jg-tc/name/jim-edgar-obituary?pid=209834305

 

 

 

SEPTEMBER JOYS [T, 9-16-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man—SEPTEMBER JOYS [T, 9-16-25]

 

As I walked this morning, I watched the leaves rustle restlessly in the trees. They know something is coming. For them, it means death. I’m sorry for them, but for me, it means life.

This morning there was more yellow in the leaves, less green.

I think moving to Oakland City when I was ten was what gave me my love of baseball and of school. And why I’m happy when I see the leaves turn from summer to autumn. They mean the World Series, the fulfillment of the baseball season, and school, the end of a long hot boring summer. The chance, at last, to see my friends.

Until age ten I had been a city boy in the near-east inner-city of Indianapolis, running from bullies, walking to the store to do errands for Mother or Mrs. Dickerson, who lived next door, the only black person for blocks around, and riding the street car downtown to Cadle Tabernacle with my sister to see some “uplifting” drama or concert.

Then we moved to a farm with no indoor plumbing but with a whole lot of chores that my parents thought were perfect for a ten-year-old boy…

…mowing, milking, hoeing, feeding [chickens, pigs, etc], chopping [wood, weeds], chasing [horse, cows, pigs, chickens—anything that got where it shouldn’t be], throwing [hay-up onto the wagon, or down from the loft], plowing, picking [vegetables, berries, fruit], gathering [eggs], carrying [water in, used water out], shucking [corn], harnessing [horse to plow or wagon], plucking [feathers off the chicken so it could be fried], digging [potatoes, beets, graves for anything that died]…

Is it any wonder that I decided I’d rather play baseball or go to school? Or that I went into a profession that is all about relating to people rather than to animals or tools or nature?

September is a season for joy, and I hope you feel September joys, even if, incomprehensibly, you don’t like baseball or school.

John Robert McFarland

“If I were a bird, I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.” George Eliot

IN THE DAYS OF LINDEN HALL [Sat, 9-13-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man—IN THE DAYS OF LINDEN HALL [Sat, 9-13-25]

 

Today is the 70^th anniversary of my first day at Indiana University, the start of orientation week in 1955. The 13^th was a Monday that year.

As we get really old, and are less able to do things that make memories, we depend upon memories we’ve already stored up, especially the memories of the hinge times in our lives—a wedding, the birth of a child or grandchild, taking a courageous stand, the moment we felt called to a vocation, the first day of college…

There are very few people left for whom the song below will make sense, but some of my best memories are from the first week, orientation week, of my freshman year at IU, Sept 1955, especially working in the dining room at Rogers Center, where grad students lived, and even more especially “…walking back to good old Linden Hall.”

There are some new dorms named for trees now, even a Linden, but the old Trees Center--hurriedly-built officer training barracks left over from WWII--has been long since demolished. The Education Building stands there now.

Linden and Pine were the dorms for kids on The Residence Scholarship Plan, smart kids who wanted to go to college but didn’t have the money to do so. Unlike kids in the other dorms, we furnished our own sheets and pillows and such, and did our own maid and janitorial work, and worked at least ten hours per week, and maintained a B grade average. [Jon, am I right about that grade average?]

After working breakfast or lunch, we denizens of The Residence Scholarship Program who worked at the Rogers Center dining cafeteria, would walk “home” together: Mary Winstead, Phyllis Brown [I officiated at her wedding to Henry Oakes], Susie [Sara] Hayes, Bill Ridge, Jon Stroble.

The girls had donned their yellow uniform dresses before going over to work. The boys slipped on short white jackets once we got there.

This is to the tune of Love Letters in the Sand.

IN THE DAYS OF LINDEN HALL

On a day like today, when skies were never gray

Walking back to good old Linden Hall

The girls were dressed in yellow

Our hearts were young and mellow

Walking back to good old linden hall

 

The air was full of hopes and dreams that fall

As we walked, we always had a ball

Now that I can barely stand

Wouldn’t it be grand

To be walking back to good old Linden Hall

 

The days were always fair, there was romance in the air

Walking back to good old Linden Hall

Only the sky was blue

There was nothing we couldn’t do

Walking back to good old Linden Hall

 

Our hearts back then were always young and free

We gave no thought to what might come to be

Now as I live in memory

It is so sweet to be

Walking back to good old Linden Hall

 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

BEST & WORST OF TIMES [R, 9-11-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Times of An Old Man—BEST & WORST OF TIMES [R, 9-11-25]

 

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” That’s the famous opening line of Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities.

It has taken me more than two cities, more like eighteen, but I live in the best of times and in the worst of times. The 1950s is the best of times. The 1960s is the worst of times. I live in them both. Nothing since then makes much sense to me.

That doesn’t mean that good things didn’t happen for me in other decades. In the 1970s and ‘80s I got to wear leisure suits and a mint-green tuxedo. [1] In the ‘90s my daughters got married and my grandchildren were born. In the 21^st century, I’ve gotten to live in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where the winters are 13 months long, thus preserving us old people with cold, the way hamburger spoils less rapidly in the refrigerator or at room temperature.

It’s easy to see why anyone would want to live in the best of times. But the 1960s, the worst of times?

Okay, I probably don’t have to go back to the ‘60s to live in the worst of times. It’s quite possible that right now is the worst of times, at least for America. Democracy is under siege and almost gone. Culture is vulgar. Hate is patriotic. Education is propaganda. The world is heating at an unsustainable rate. Yes, one could make a very good case for right now being the worst of times…

…but all these current bad times had their seeds in the 1960s. To make it even worse, we were warned about them, right then, by folks as disparate as Rachel Carson and Dwight Eisenhower, and we paid no attention.

Failing to pay attention to the warning signs always produces the worst of times.

The 1960s gave us the Viet Nam War, which in turn gave us drugs and an abiding mistrust of government and public institutions. The 1960s gave us new insight into the deep roots of racism and the perils of global warming. The assassinations of JFK and RFK and MLK showed us where a gun culture would lead. The 1960s gave us Barry Goldwater and the anti-communist domino theory, and the corruptions of Richard Nixon. The 1960s gave us Ronald Reagan and the “trickle down” economic theory and the start of the great wealth divide. [2]

In each new generation, each of these problems has gotten worse.

I live in the present age, but the present age doesn’t live in me.

On my good days, I live in the 1950s, with the joy of “Oh, What A Beautiful Morning” and the innocence of “I Believe.”

On my bad days, I live in the 1960s, with the sarcasm of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” and the warning of “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

Yes, here I should provide a note of optimism, but I have outlived optimism. The best I can offer is… well, it’s from the ‘60s…

Keep the faith, baby.

John Robert McFarland

1]I didn’t choose the mint green tux with the ruffled shirt. I had to fill in as a groomsman at the last minute when my associate pastor, Bob Morgan, married Nina Cogswell--thus becoming the Morwells--and the tuxedo was part of the position.

 2] Yes, Reagan was not president in the 1960s, but he was honing his war on the middle class then as governor of California.

ON BEING OPEN [T, 9-9-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—ON BEING OPEN [T, 9-9-25]

 

Recently, on two successive days, with two different groups of friends, I was asked, “How did you handle telling other people about it when you had cancer?”

This arose because each group was concerned about someone who has significant health problems but is secretive about it. “Isn’t that bad for their health?” they asked.

The answer is “Yes.” We have a better chance of getting well if we are open about our difficulties. But…

…there are problems with being open, especially for women, who are often accused of being hypochondriacs if they are open about their symptoms, and accused of being hysterical if they are open about their feelings.

When I was going through cancer, I was totally open about my disease and treatments, and about my feelings. I think it was an important part of my healing. Some folks, though, thought I was too open, and I probably was. I undoubtedly talked too much about throwing up, but that was a regular part of chemotherapy in those days, before the great new anti-nausea drugs were developed, and I felt I needed to be honest about it.

Also, I tried for humor in my openness, because a laugh, or even a smile, makes folks more comfortable, and “puking” or “calling Ralph on the big white phone” or “tossing cookies” is in the humor division, at least the groaning sub-division.

As I contemplated what my first oncologist indicated, that I’d be dead in “a year or two,” I read that cancer patients who kept a journal of their feelings had a 50% better chance of getting well. I read someplace else that patients who went to support group had a 50% better chance of getting well. I’m no dummy; that’s 100%! So I kept a feelings journal and went to support group.

You can be open automatically in a support group, because everyone else has the same problems. No judgment, just understanding.

I had no intention of writing a book about my experience, being that open, with the whole world, but as I wrote in my journal each day, it began to read like a book. I thought, “Okay, this is a way I can be open and be helpful to others, and help with my own healing, too.” [1]

Yes, I think people need to be open about their maladies and feelings. But sometimes that is dangerous. One of the great things about keeping a feelings journal, or just a daily journal, is that you can be totally open, because nobody else sees that openness. Actually writing, on a page or a screen, “I feel like crap,” does something for you that just thinking it does not.

[My great, late friend, Bob Butts, once said to our mutual physician, Dr. Raluca Vucescu, “I feel like crap.” She said, “Bob, you’ve got to give me a symptom I can work with.”]

I was once asked to be the program for a group of old people in my church. I went through Erik Erikson’s 8 stages of psycho-social growth with them.

Erikson points out that each time we enter a new stage, such as moving from intimacy vs isolation to generativity vs stagnation, we have the opportunity to rework all the previous stages. Anything we did not get done at industry vs inferiority, for instance, we have a chance to go back and get right when we start final integrity vs despair, the last stage, the old people stage.

A dignified and intellectual woman approached me after the program. “When I was three,” she said, “my infant brother died. No one talked to me about it. I just knew that I had a little brother, and then I didn’t. I think I’ve carried that as a secret weight in my soul for 77 years. I need to be honest with myself about that. I need, finally, to grieve his loss…”

Old people have some particular problems in trying to be open. Writing, either with a pen or keyboard, might be difficult because of recalcitrant eyes and arthritic fingers. But I recommend trying it. Just do the best you can. Old age is not a disease, but it is our final chance to be open, to ourselves, about who we are.

John Robert McFarland

1] Now That I Have Cancer I Am Whole: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel]