THE WORLD IS MY FIELDHOUSE [M, 4-28-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Janitor—THE WORLD IS MY FIELDHOUSE [M, 4-28-25]

 

There was an article recently [4-22-25], in The Indiana Daily Student, about the dirty and disgusting conditions student athletes have to put up with in The Harry Gladstein Fieldhouse, the home of Indiana University track and field sports. I took that personally, since I was once the custodian there.

It wasn’t The Harry Gladstein Fieldhouse then. It was just the “new” field house, a stopping place between the “old” fieldhouse-- --and Assembly Hall, “The house that Bob Knight built.”

The “old” fieldhouse--where I did the required PE course in my frosh year, and where we all filled out fourteen 3x5 cards and stood in long lines to register for classes--is now named for Bill Garrett, All-American IU basketball player and the first black to play regularly in the Big 10

When Assembly Hall, now named for philanthropist Simon Skjodt, was completed, the track and field teams felt good about inheriting the “new” fieldhouse, because it was a clean, beautiful facility. I know it was, because that is the way I left it.

Apparently, the new janitor didn’t do as good a job as I did. Of course, it was 64 years ago that I left the job, and so maybe the deterioration wasn’t just because of my custodial replacements.

I had worked for George McClain, the director of the IU buildings and grounds division, during summers, when I was an undergrad student. When Helen and I got thrown out of Dallas for letting black kids come to the community center we directed, and I could not continue at the Perkins School of Theology at SMU, we moved back to Bloomington. George put me back on his payroll as the custodian for the new fieldhouse.

I assumed that I was done with ministry at that point. I was good at janitorial work, and I got to hang around the basketball team. I had to use one of those wide dry mops on the playing floor each day before practice. I’d make a point of finishing just before the arrival of the players and coach Lou Watson, the former assistant and successor to the great Branch McCraken, thinking that if they were ever a player short for scrimmaging, Lou would do the logical thing and have me play. Turns out that Lou wasn’t all that logical.  

There was a sort of combination office and supply room in that fieldhouse where I ate the lunch Helen had packed for me. It was a lonesome time, eating my carrot sticks and spam sandwich by myself in the midst of mops and brooms, so I took a book to read. I selected which book the same way I do now when I want a book for a doctor’s waiting room—by size, something to fit a coat pocket or a lunch sack.

One day, I pulled from my lunch sack the small book I had grabbed from our bricks and boards book shelves on my way out the door and started reading…about how to be a better preacher, as extolled by Alexander Mackay.

I thought…wait a minute. I don’t need this book anymore… but I kept on reading. I began to compare what Mackay was saying with my three years as a preacher while I had been an IU undergrad.

When it came time to go back to my mopping and sweeping, I wanted to continue that conversation with Mackay instead. I realized that I wasn’t through with the ministry yet. Or maybe, the ministry wasn’t through with me yet.

I was a bit disappointed when I told George McClain that I had to give up my career as custodian at the new fieldhouse so that I could go back to seminary, this time at Garrett, at Northwestern U. George didn’t seem disappointed that I was giving up janitorial work. “You’ll be a great preacher,” he said.

Maybe I didn’t leave the new fieldhouse as clean as I thought I did.

John Robert McFarland

I decided on The World Is My Fieldhouse as the title for this column, because of John Wesley’s phrase, “The world is my parish.” Too cute? Not relevant enough? Well, sometimes, titles that communicate clearly just don’t come easily.

ASLEEP AT THE VATICAN [F, 4-25-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memorials of an FOF [1] —ASLEEP AT THE VATICAN [F, 4-25-25]

 

Daughter Katie Kennedy sent the following to me:

 

As a father, I know that is true. Of course, in my case, it was because I knew they could create no more havoc for me if they were asleep. Come to think of it, that’s probably the way God views it, too.

Except maybe for Francis. I doubt that God ever worried about Francis causing havoc, the way God had to worry about a couple of other guys named Francis—my father and brother, both with the middle name of Francis.

I feel that I should write about Francis, as his soul makes the transition from an earthly body to a spiritual body [I Corinthians 15]. but there is very little that this Methodist can say about the leader of the Roman Catholic Church that others have not said better.

Except I don’t think of Francis as the leader of all those people. I think of him simply as a fellow Christian, because that is the way he thought of himself. He seemed to me to be the kind of man who would have sat down with a commoner like me—we are the same age, after all--and had a cup of coffee and chatted about our mutual concerns for The Body of Christ, the church. I would have felt comfortable telling him about all my ideas for how he could renew the church, and he would have listened respectfully and humbly, and then been smart enough to ignore me.

 

Because he was smart, for real. So many leaders these days, unlike Francis, are so stupid that they think they are smart when they are not. Because, even more importantly than being smart, he was humble, as befits one who shares a name with the prophet and church reformer of Assisi. In a time when most religious leaders, and leaders of all sorts, claim to be infallible, Francis was a model of humility. Other leaders of today want to be feared. Francis wanted to be trusted.

One of the stupidest things we do in America, especially in the media, is talk about “the transfer of power” as we go from one president to another. No, in a democracy, there is no power to transfer. There is only a transfer of responsibility.

Francis understood that for his church to move into position to be useful in proclaiming Christ in the modern world, it needed to move from its old hierarchical power approach into a lateral responsibility commitment. He saw his own role not as power but service.

Francis started a new reformation in his church, moving it toward greater acceptance of the people normally left outside the walls of the basilica.

 

No reformation lasts without pushback. Some conservative folks have always criticized Francis for being too liberal, Be assured that as a new pope is elected, there will be forces that want to forget Francis, to return to the excluding ways of the past, to the power approach where a few get to lord it over the masses. [Pun intended.]

Now he is being criticized by liberals for saying the right things but not actually changing the structures of the church. Damned by both right and left, he must have been doing something right.

I think that “something right” is this: Francis made it clear, through example if not rubrics, that inclusion and exclusion are human choices, not divine commands. Once that is so clearly stated, it cannot ever be totally obscured.

Now, brother Francis, rest in peace, upheld by the everlasting arms.

John Robert McFarland

1] FOF – Friend Of Francis

EASTER vs easter [T, 4-22-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Mutterings of An Old Man—EASTER vs easter [T, 4-22-25]

 

I like to find a helpful picture to post at the head of my columns, either something that represents the subject, or one that brings up relevant questions, like What in the world is he writing about now?

So, on Holy Saturday, I searched Google and Bing image categories to find something like He Lives, maybe with an empty tomb. But I put only Easter into the search line. That produced rows and rows of pictures of bunnies and baskets and chocolate and ham buffets and colored eggs!! Not a thing about Jesus or resurrection.

But one of the search categories at the top [Bing is better than Google for these.] was Christian Easter. You mean there is a Buddhist Easter? Or Jewish Easter? When did Christian Easter become a sub-category of easter?

I clicked on Christian Easter. Indeed, there were empty crosses and empty tombs, pale white Christs standing in midair, etc. There really is a Christian Easter.

The arbiters of current culture—the tech companies—assume that anyone who searches for Easter is thinking about secular easter, commercial easter, Hallmark easter, not Easter easter. Yes, they acknowledge that there is a Christian Easter, but only on the third line of images, and then only one bare cross, which is about Good Friday, not Easter.

Makes sense, those images of bunnies and eggs and chocolate. Most everybody celebrates easter. Family cookouts, where drunken uncles tell us how religious the current presidential administration is, for they are focused on putting The Ten Commandments [That’s Hebrew, not Christian] into court houses, and improving the economy, because Jesus wants us to be rich.

You can make money off of easter. Not so much from Easter. And money is the only value of current culture, and current politics. As it says in the Declaration of Independence the purpose of it all is, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Money.

 

Oh, sure, there is an occasional story on Tik Tok about someone who has discovered that money is only second in importance--after self-knowledge, or some other psychobabble category--but even a new psychobabble genre is soon monetized, through books and podcasts and graphic novels and video games and gambling.

The psychobabble people say that I should accept the moment, embrace whatever is and make it into what I want it to be, that I can make easter into Easter if I want to. Well, okay, but I think I’d better start with Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer, the way he originally wrote it, according to a search of the same internet that thinks resurrection is a sub-category of colored eggs:

O God and heavenly father, grant us the serenity of mind to accept the things that cannot be changed, courage to change that which can be changed, and the wisdom to know one from the other, through Jesus Christ, Our Lord.

So, what do you think of the picture I put at the top of this screed…column?

John Robert McFarland

For what it’s worth, I’m going to an every-third-day posting schedule for a while, instead of the every-other-day schedule I have been using. Maybe an extra day will make me less acerbic.

THE THREE PERSONS OF EASTER [Easter Sunday, 4-20-25]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—THE THREE PERSONS OF EASTER [Easter Sunday, 4-20-25]

 

The only thing I know for sure about Easter is… He lives!

Easter always makes me think of three people: Jesus, Jane Jenkins, and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy.

Jesus was the Christ, who got resurrected. Jane was the church Lay Leader, who didn’t believe it. Eugen was the theologian, who taught Jane where to start believing.

Jane was perhaps the best church member I have ever known. She totally lived the total faith. Except for believing in the resurrection. She told me that one Easter morning. “I just can’t believe in the resurrection.”

My first thought, as always, was self-centered. “I’ve been her preacher for lo, these many Easters, and she hasn’t listened to me.”

Well, no, she had listened, listened well. But she heard Easter sermons that started in the wrong place.

Eugen taught me that. I only regret that I did not meet him, through his writings, until so late in my preaching life

Resurrection means that death is not the end, but the beginning. We don’t start with Christmas, we start with Easter. The cross is not the start of death but the start of life. We understand life only by starting at the end. We understand backwards. We don’t start with “once upon a time.” We start with “they lived happily ever after.”

The only thing I know for sure about Easter is… He lives!

John Robert McFarland

GOD’S ALARM CLOCK [Good Friday, 4-18-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man--GOD’S ALARM CLOCK [Good Friday, 4-18-25]

 

Old people spend a lot of time in waiting rooms, and those are good places for overhearing. So I heard a couple of men discussing sleep patterns. “I slept only three hours last night,” one of them said. “If I sleep too much at night, I can’t sleep after work.” I do not understand what that means. It sounds like a very strange sleeping pattern

Most of us, during our working years, have to get up at a certain time, either to get to the job or school on time, or to get others to jobs or school on time. We set an alarm clock, or we are so used to it that we automatically get up at the right time.

Helen was so used to getting up at five a.m. when she was a teacher that she woke up at that early hour for several years after she retired. It really griped her. She finally had the chance to sleep in, and she couldn’t. At last, though, her brain adjusted. Now she can sleep until eight if her body needs extra rest.

I don’t have a job sleep pattern anymore, a time when I have to sleep, so that I can get up at a certain time, so now my body can fall into its natural rhythm. In retirement, no regular alarm clock is necessary. I don’t have to be any place at a certain time. I just sleep until I wake up. Then I get up.

Occasionally, though, I still have a required rising time. Because so much of my insides was removed by surgery, I have to hang close to the bathroom the first four hours after I get up. If I must be some place by nine, I have to get up at five. When I have one of those alarm clock mornings, it is harder for me to fall asleep and stay that way.

It is hard to sleep if you are looking forward to something, either with joy or with dread. It is hard to sleep if you are angry or in pain or worried or guilty or excited. Good sleep requires a clear conscience or a dead one.

Some old people don’t need much sleep. My late friend, Bill White, slept only a few hours each night. I think he had a clear conscience.

The “aging right” people tell us that sleep is very important for old people.

Purpose of sleep is regeneration. Dreaming is part of that. It’s part of the rhythm of the body and the brain. Perhaps death, which we often liken to sleep, is just part of the rhythm.

Maybe that is why so many old people have trouble sleeping out the night. Our consciences are not all that bad, but we’re just excited about what the morning will bring.

That is part of Christian faith, that death is sleep, part of the rhythm. We fall asleep in death, but the day of resurrection will come, when we shall be awakened by the alarm clock of God, those trumpeting angels.

I’m not sure about the trumpeting angels part, and even though Easter is upon us, I’m not sure what resurrection means. I am sure that we shall all die, and that we can trust God for what comes next.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

SING THE THIRD VERSE [W, 4-16-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—SING THE THIRD VERSE [W, 4-16-25]

 

Quite a few years ago now, my wife attended a worship service in which the sermon was entitled, “Sing the Third Verse.” She thought, “Oh, how interesting. He’s going to talk about some part of the Gospel we usually omit.” It was all the more intriguing because this particular preacher had a reputation for curing insomnia.

She said to herself, “I wonder what the ‘third verse’ represents?” Well, nothing. He just excoriated the people for 20 minutes for not singing the third verse of a hymn, when he himself was the person who usually said, “We’ll sing the first, second, and fourth verses, because time is short.” He was also the one who caused the time to be short in the first place.

She shook her head in dismay as she told me about it. “It was really just about singing the third verse. And he shouted it! Over and over! Sing the third verse! Sing the third verse!”

Reminds me of the preacher who was known to write in the margin of his manuscript, “Shout here, because the point is weak.”

It made me wonder about the dullest sermon I have ever heard. Nothing came to mind right away. I guess that is not surprising. By definition, a dull sermon won’t be very memorable.

I do remember hearing about one, though, that would surely qualify, if you only heard the first part of the story. A man told the preacher, “Your sermon last week changed my life.” The preacher was surprised and delighted. Even he knew that his sermons were plodders. “It changed your life?”

“Yes. You know when you said, “I have now ended the first part of my sermon, and I shall go on to the second part?”

“That changed your life?”

 “Yes. I thought, ‘I have ended the first part of my life. I need to go on to the second part!’”

Will Barrett, Walker Percy’s character in the novel, The Second Coming, is a retired lawyer who says you need to listen to bad preachers because they will always say something by accident that you need to hear. “Good preachers know how to leave the accidents out.”

Well, I’m not saying we should seek out dull preaching, even though Will Barrett has a good point. I do think we should sing the third verse, though. Otherwise, we’ll miss these words of Robert Robinson…

O to grace, how great a debtor, daily I’m constrained to be.

Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.

Here’s my heart, O take and seal it. Seal it for thy courts above.

John Robert McFarland

“Come, Thou Fount, of Every Blessing.” Written by Robert Robinson, 1758, when he was 22.

EFFICIENCY AND LOVE [M, 4-14-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—EFFICIENCY AND LOVE [M, 4-14-25]

 

I don’t pick up my feet very well as I walk. Mostly I shuffle and scrape.

It’s not just because I’m old. I never was good at picking up my feet, even as a child. I know because I remember well my parents saying, “Pick up your feet! You’ll wear out your shoes! We can’t afford any more! You’ll have to go barefoot.”

I liked having shoes. I never enjoyed going barefoot. In part, that was because my mother often told the story of her uncle who stepped on a rusty nail and died of tetanus. So I didn’t mind taking care of my shoes. I tried to pick up my feet.

Never got any good at it. Even in basketball, and baseball, and pickle ball, and long-distance running. The friends of our teen daughters called me “The Red Phantom,” because I wore red running shoes and just glided along, barely above the ground.

I liked shoes, but I never wanted a lot of them. I was never a “shoes horse,” although when I was a kid on the farm, we had a horse that got new shoes more often than I did. Too many shoes, or too much of anything, requires too many decisions. That defeats efficiency.

Sister Mary Jean of St. Mary of the Woods bemoaned the modernization of the Sisters of Providence in the 1960s. In addition to their traditional black habit, they added a dark blue version and even a light blue habit. “It’s awful,” Sister Mary Jean moaned, “having to decide every day which color to wear. It’s not efficient at all.”

That resonated with me. I preferred to think of my low gait not as laziness or inability but as efficiency. Maybe that’s why personal efficiency has always been a hobby for me. I try to take a shower, get dressed, pick up the mail, drive the car… whatever… in the most efficient way possible.

Now my learning to shuffle and scrape along with minimal outlay of energy is really paying off, since the old person shuffle is about the only way my feet will move

The problem with efficiency, though, according to psychiatrist Gerald May, is that it gets in the way of love. We become so fixated on efficiency that we don’t recognize love when someone offers love to us, since love usually isn’t very efficient.

May says that efficiency is the how of life, love is the why of life. That sounds like absolute truth, something to remember. Now, what’s the most efficient way to remember that?

John Robert McFarland

1] We were friends with the nuns of St. Mary of the Woods when I was the Methodist campus minister in Terre Haute, at Indiana State U and Rose Polytechnic Institute, now Rose-Hulman University. We did so many programs and adventures together, I felt that I was the Methodist campus minister at St. Mary of the Woods, too,

 

 

 

 

ASKING FOR PRAYER [Sat, 4-12-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—ASKING FOR PRAYER [Sat, 4-12-25]

 

Recently an old friend—I’ll call him Jerry--did something that surprised me. He’s an off-the-wall kind of guy, but we’ve been so close for so long, through major life upheavals together, that I’m usually not surprised at anything Jerry does. But this one surprised me. He asked me to pray for someone.

It’s not unusual for people to ask me for prayer, especially for someone they care about, because I’m known to be a praying man. But they are people who believe in prayer. Jerry doesn’t believe in prayer, but he asked me to pray, anyway.

Jerry is a reverse believer. He was a faithful believer/church guy, until some bad stuff happened in church. It turned him around. Now, he actively dislikes the church. He doesn’t believe in God. He doesn’t believe in prayer. But, still, he asked me to pray for someone who is dear to him and is dealing with a debilitating disease.

Because that is one thing he can do as he contemplates what his friend is suffering, and he does not want to ignore any possibility of doing something for his friend.

I don’t think that I have really considered before that one of the values of intercessory prayer is asking for it. Not just the prayer, but the request for it.

We are usually so focused on whether prayer “works” for the one prayed for that we forget about the other things intercessory prayer does. There is the possibility of “working” not only for the recipient of the prayers, but for the one praying, and for the one who asks for prayers,

Prayer is a means of grace to the one prayed for. But it also a means of grace for the one praying and the one asking for prayer for others.

As far as prayer “working,” I am always reminded of what Larry Dossey, MD, says in his book, Healing Words.

Sometimes chemo doesn’t work, but we don’t give up on it. We keep using it. Sometimes surgery doesn’t work, but we don’t give up on it. We keep using it. So why, when prayer doesn’t work, should we give up on it? [1]

Asking for prayer for someone gives us something to do for them, even if we don’t “believe in prayer.” That request is something we can do. Sometimes the only thing we can do.

John Robert McFarland

1] No quote marks because I did not look this up to get the words exact.

 

 

WOULD YOU CHOOSE MARRIAGE OR SINGING? [R, 4-10-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man—WOULD YOU CHOOSE MARRIAGE OR SINGING? [R, 4-10-25]

 [This is follow-up column to the one of 4-8 on revivals]

 

Oh, yes, those early revivals. Old Harley Woolridge, pastor at Worthington, IN, was conducting a revival at Garrison Chapel, a few miles outside of Bloomington, in the fall of 1957. Norma Sullivan thought it would be good if town kids in the I.U. Wesley Foundation could go to an old-fashioned revival to see what it was like. I had a car, and was sort of interested in Norma, so I agreed to drive a load out to take in the show.

I had the impression that Karen Rosenthal was going, too, along, maybe with Judy Thornburg, and maybe Joan Auble, as well as Norma and her roommate, Helen Karr. When I got to Memorial Hall women’s dorm, the agreed pickup point, the only one who came to get in the car was Helen. She was embarrassed. She said Norma claimed she could not go after all and that none of the others could, either.

It was awkward for both of us. Helen was beginning to get the idea that Norma was setting her up with me [true], probably to be able to get rid of me herself [true?].

We were slightly late, and slipped in and sat in the back row. District Superintendent FT Johnson was a huge fan of mine—he often referred to me as the son he never had—and liked to show me off the young preacher he had “discovered” and appointed to the Solsberry circuit, like having me do devotions for the monthly district minister’s meetings, so Harley knew who I was. In the free-floating style of revivals in those days, when he saw Helen and me, he called out, “Let’s have this young preacher and his wife come up and sing a duet.”

Wife? We’d never even had a date! Was this a date? Sing? We weren’t singers! I have no idea what I said to reject old Harley at that moment, but I do know we did not then, or at any other time, sing a duet at a revival. [1]

That should have been a warning, to Helen about marrying a preacher, and to me about having revivals, but neither of us was very smart back then. She married me, and I had revivals in my early churches, with other pastors coming over from some nearby town, with about the same results, or lack of same, that old Harley got.

Strangely, despite that awkward start, I was once an “Approved Conference Evangelist,” for the simple reason I was on sabbatical and wanted to extend it for another year, so that I could write for the Prairie Home Companion radio show, and Approved Conference Evangelist was the only appointment Bishop Woodie White was willing to let me have.

I was amazed at how much business I got. I thought I’d have a free year because nobody did revivals anymore, and those that did certainly did not want an evangelist who just told stories instead of whipping people up emotionally to get them saved.

Everybody knew that socially I was so liberal that I was radical, and that personally, I was as conservative as you can get. [“I don’t smoke, drink, or chew, or go with girls who do.”] So, despite my social justice rabble rousing, it was the conservative preachers of the conference who thought my Conference Evangelist appointment was great. They were always under pressure from their congregations to have revivals, but were afraid of professional evangelists. As one said, “We know you. We know you won’t run off with the offering or the organist, you won’t get people jumping up and down, and you won’t tell people what to believe; you’ll just tell jokes and inspirational stories and let folks figure things out for themselves.”

I was very proud of that analysis, but I was getting invited to do so many “spiritual renewal” weeks that I had no time to write, so figured I might as well go back to regular preaching.

As a preacher, I wasn’t a revivalist, but I was always an evangelist, meaning I asked anybody and everybody to join the church. I figured the best thing I could do for a person was to invite them into a community of renewing love, to help them get saved, get whole, not just once, but every day.

John Robert McFarland

1] Helen is not as bad a singer as she claims, but she does say that if she’d had to choose right then between “wife” and “sing a duet,” she would have married me on the spot.

 

 

 

DOING LENT [4-8-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—DOING LENT [4-8-25]

 

Are ye able said the master, to be crucified with me? Yea, the sturdy dreamers answered, to the death we follow thee…

I’ve told you before about my posse of young Lutheran women pastors who followed me around at a spiritual direction retreat, but, in case you’ve forgotten…

I’d had lunch one day with our leader, Lorraine Brugh, a Lutheran music professor. Lorraine got a doctorate in organ at Northwestern U and decided she could not interpret church music adequately without understanding its theology, so, although a committed Lutheran, she also got a doctorate in theology from the Methodist Garrett Theological Seminary, at Northwestern.

After lunch, the posse arrived to chat with us. Curious about this strange old Methodist who treated them like full colleagues, unlike the older Lutheran pastors--one asked, “What is the quintessential Methodist hymn?” I said, O, for a thousand tongues to sing, because it’s a Charles Wesley hymn, and always first in our hymnal. Lorraine accepted that, but as a Lutheran who studied with Methodists, she said, “I think for American Methodism, it’s more Are Ye Able, Said the Master. Methodists want to do their faith.”

That’s why Lent has never been very important to American Methodism. We’re not big on taking time out from doing good stuff to practice self-discipline and denial. We want every religious experience, including salvation, to be a jump-up doing, not just a sit-there thinking about it.

Hence revivals. Old-time revivals were active, something you did.

Salvation—getting right with God and one’s own true self—is not a one-time thing. It’s a day-to-day thing. Sometimes it is a moment-to-moment thing. It has to be renewed. In the midst of the toils and troubles of the world, we have to be reminded of who we really are. We have to be revived.

In a revival meeting, with loud exhortations to get saved, you did something, and Methodists want to do. You jumped up. you danced. You wept. You screamed. You shouted. You got saved. You got revived.

Salvation meant you had an experience of salvation. Over the years, the definition of experience was expanded, from a moment of external emotion--weeping, shouting, dancing—but it remains to some extent, even to this day, in those places where revivalism is still part of church life.

Because the emotions of revivals could get out of bounds—my long-time friend and clergy colleague, Bob Parsons, recently reminded me-- Methodists on the frontier used singing to give folks an emotional outlet so that they didn’t have to shout and dance and faint. The hymns and camp songs also taught…well, I’m not sure what “My father says that it’s the best, to live and die a Methodist” teaches. [One of the verses of “There’s a Meeting Here Tonight.”]

Revivals were so much a part of the frontier religious experience that Methodists—of course—felt the need to organize the whole thing. Yes, ordained pastors could preach revivals, but in addition to approval through ordination, there were folks approved for evangelism through licenses. Not only licensed evangelists, but also there was a license for exhorters. Those were the people who—while the evangelist was still carrying on and maybe praying with repenting sinners at the altar—would exhort the rest of the congregation—often over the tinkling of the piano-- to come forward, repent of their sins, and be saved.

Even though I grew up in a revivalistic culture, and started my preaching career in that culture, I never felt comfortable with the emotionalism of revival meetings. I like singing, though, and I know I need constant reviving. So… Are ye able, said the master, to be crucified with me? Yea, the study dreamers answered, to the death we follow thee. Lord, we are able, our spirits are thine. Remold them, make us, like thee, divine. Thy guiding radiance above us shall be, a beacon to God, to love and loyalty.

John Robert McFarland

“Are Ye Able” is by Earl Marlatt

 

 

 

WHERE 2 OR 3 ARE GATHERED [4-6-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Forgotten Memories of An Old Man—WHERE 2 OR 3 ARE GATHERED [4-6-25]

 

It was Sunday morning, 7:00 o’clock. The phone rang. My first thought was that someone was calling about one of my parents. They were old. There was always something about to go wrong with one or the other. [They were several years younger then than I am now.]

No, it was Paul Sellers, my District Superintendent. It’s always a bit of an adrenaline rush when the DS calls at this time of year, when the Cabinet [Bishop and DSs together] is fixing pastoral appointments for the coming year. It took me a couple of moments to remember that a DS would not be calling on a Sunday morning to tell me I would be appointed to the Raccoon Circuit. I had retired the year before.

The call was indeed about a problem with an old person’s health, but it was not about my parents. It was Paul’s mother-in-law. He and Diana had to leave immediately to go to her. That meant I had an hour to get presentable and eat breakfast and get on the road to Beecher City and Shumway, where Paul was scheduled to preach.

Paul seemed to think that I owed him, since he had not thrown me out of the ministry when he wanted to. I hadn’t actually done anything to get tossed during his years as DS, at least nothing he knew about, but my District Superintendents were always sure that I was just about to do something that would cause them trouble. As I closed in on retirement, Paul and I were chatting after a district meeting, and he mused, “If we can just get through one more month without you doing something…”

Also, Paul had sold me his father-in-law’s car when he could no longer drive, and he seemed to think that meant I should drive it to where he needed it to go. It’s a good thing we had that car, because that morning Helen was joining the church in the town we had moved to in retirement. [1] She would have to take our other car and sit in church by herself. She was used to that, but she had thought that it would be different in retirement.

 

I didn’t know where Beecher City and Shumway were, but I had a map. Remember those? They had never seen me before, but the folks at those churches took my presence in stride. Whatev. As long as somebody is here to preach…

At least, I assume they took me in stride, for I can remember nothing at all about the Beecher City and Shumway churches. I can’t even remember being there. But I know I was, for just now I came across some notes from a day-long retreat I led for the clergy of The Okaw River District shortly after. I told them this story.

If I can’t remember the churches of Beecher City and Shumway, I’m sure no one there can remember me, either. But we worshipped together that morning, and we helped one another get our spirits ready for another week.

I have worshipped with others approximately five thousand times in my lifetime. I preached at about three thousand of them. I can remember only a few moments from those occasions with my fellow-seekers. But each time, one way or another, we got renewed to face the world for another week, because Christ was there. [Mt 18:20]

That’s why we worship together, to be reminded of Christ, to be reminded that Christ is love, to get ready for what comes next.

John Robert McFarland

1] Methodist clergy do not belong to the local church where they live, or the one in which they are appointed to preach. We belong to the Conference, the amalgam of everything Methodist in a geographical area. My membership is in The Illinois Great Rivers Conference.

 

POTHOLES ON THE ROAD TO WISDOM [F, 4-4-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—POTHOLES ON THE ROAD TO WISDOM [F, 4-4-25]

 

St. Augustine said that “the so-called innocence of children is more a matter of weakness of limb than purity of heart.”

Anyone who is a parent, school teacher, or church nursery worker will verify that observation.

I think that the so-called wisdom of old people is more a matter of slowness of mind than increase of understanding.

When I look thoughtful, preparing to dispense some sagacious perception, I’m really trying to remember what the conversation is about, or trying to recall the name of the person I intend to quote… “Was it Dudley Moore, or Paul Baker, or Kowalski, on The Penguins of Madagascar, who created The Serenity Prayer?”

By the time I figure out that it was Reinhold Niebuhr, the conversation has gone onto something about Paris, but I’m not sure if it’s Hilton, France, or Illinois, so I just keep looking thoughtful.

In former days, when I decided to do something stupid, I went from thought to action in a nanosecond. Now when I decide to commit some egregious sin, by the time I’m able to get off the sofa, I can’t remember which sin I had in mind. I can’t even remember what “egregious” means.

I read The Road to Wisdom by Francis Collins, MD, PhD. It’s a good book. I recommend it. But it’s primarily useful because his personal story is interesting. There’s no special road to wisdom, just as Euclid said to the king that “there is no royal road to geometry.” You get wise by paying attention as you grow older. If you don’t pay attention, you just keep being stupid.

Will Rogers said “A man’s just about as happy as he makes up his mind to be.” That’s true. It’s also true that a person’s just about as wise as they make up their mind to be. If you want to be stupid, it don’t make no difference which road you take; they all lead to stupid.

We are not wiser just because we are older. Sometimes aging just means we have made the same mistakes so long that we’ve become used to them and think they are normal.

But maybe wisdom isn’t really necessary. Maybe all we need to know has been with us all along. Paul Tournier, the Swiss physician, said: “You’re never too young or too old to commit your life to Christ, and after that, what more is there to do?”

I spent my life trying to explain to other people what it means to commit one’s life to Christ. I have never attained enough wisdom to explain it to myself. The great thing about old age is that you don’t need wisdom, even if you look old enough that you ought to have some. You can be wise or stupid. Either way, what you really need is God. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” [Proverbs 9:10 and Psalm 111:10.]

Getting in touch with God is real easy, since God is already there… wherever “there” is.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

INSPIRATION VS EXPIRATION [W, 4-2-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Observations of An Old Man—INSPIRATION VS EXPIRATION [W, 4-2-25]

 

I’ve told you this story before, but since the new baseball season is here…

It was in the days when the Athletics had moved from Philadelphia to Kansas City on their way to Oakland to Sacramento to Las Vegas. They had not yet built a major league level ball park in Kansas City, so they played in a more “porous” minor league park, the kind where a dog might just wander in.

That’s what happened one day. It ran out to home plate. The fans began to yell at it. “Go for first.” “Take a walk.” “Bite the umpire.” It ran to first. “Go for second,” they shouted. It ran to second base. “Run to third.” It ran to third base.

There it stopped. People continued to clamor. “Go for home.” “Get a run.” “It’s the only run they’ll get.” Louder and louder. But the dog just sat on third base, until the grounds keepers came and carried it away.

A sports writer, reporting on the dog’s adventure, said, “It never got to home, because in all that shouting, it couldn’t recognize the voice of a master.”

From as long as I can remember, I went to church to be inspired, to hear the voice of the master, one that would lead me home. That’s what I wanted, needed, expected--preachers who inspired me to be an authentic person, a follower of Jesus, a respecter of others, one open to the leading of the Spirit. They told stories of others who lived authentically. They made me laugh. They made me feel lighter. They made me feel that I could do it, that I could conquer the demons and dilemmas of life.

I was inspired not only by preachers in church. I was inspired to be a good person by seeing goodness in action, in the lives of relatives and neighbors and friends and teachers.

Church, though, seemed to be a special place for inspiration, a place, a community, where that was the main task, to be inspired, to have fun, to spread joy, to sing and pray together.

So when I became a preacher that’s what I tried to do—inspire, in my preaching, in the rest of the worship service, in the rest of the church life.

There is more to life than inspiration, of course, and more to church. Preachers need to provide opportunities for education and fellowship and service. “Faith without works is dead.” [James 2:14-26]

Some would say that inspiration is encouragement toward anything, including lives of hate. There are orators who speak with mighty tongues encouraging people to hate. But that is not inspiration. That is expiration. Inspiration is for life. Expiration encourages death.

There is no joy in expiration. If humor is attempted, it is laughter at, not laughter with. It is bullying, hating, disrespecting. It is not making fun, but making fun of.

Many preachers, many churches, now preach not an inspiring gospel of good news but an expiring gospel of bad news, a gospel that extols greed and hate. It is sad.

So many churches, so many people, shout and run, but they never get to home, because in all the chaos and clamor, they never hear the voice of the master.

John Robert McFarland