CAMO GOD

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…

Dave and Maggie Lamb came UP from IL to see us a month or so ago. I officiated at their wedding fifty years ago, and they apparently wanted me to know that I had done a good job.

Dave and I were high school friends. He was the Art Editor of “Oak Barks,” the mimeographed [1] newspaper of Oakland City, IN, High School, when I was the Editor. We were part of a group, along with Bob Robling and Donald Gene Taylor, that occasionally filled in on Sundays for absent preachers. We sang as a quartet, and I preached. I was very proud when Dave and Maggie asked me, while still in seminary, to officiate at their wedding.

I went to IN U to become a newspaper reporter. He went to U of IL to become a graphic artist. I ended up as a preacher, and he ended up as the premier “mad man” of the last third of the 20th century.

It was Dave who gave the name of “The Me Generation” to the 1970s. He didn’t cause it, but he recognized it, and so he named it, starting the decade with his “Me and My RC” ad campaign. He created the “Bring out your best” ads for Bud Light, plus their Olympic ads, that won awards at the Cannes film festival, plus many of the other iconic ads of the latter part of the 20th century.

When I have talked about him in the past, I always started with those ads. When they were UP to visit, though, Maggie told us about how he once explained to Frank Sinatra, calling on those old quartet days, how to sing. He was directing an ad for Michelob that featured Sinatra, and explained to Old Blueyes, who was acting more like Old Jerkface, “Then you walk over here, singing as you go, Just the way you look tonight…” Dave himself singing it, to be sure that Frank, as Dave calls him, got it. [I was going to say that he had to take Frank by the arm and lead him to his spot, since Frank may have been using the sponsor’s product already, while explaining how to sing, but Dave doesn’t want anyone to think he was pushing Frank around, as The Chairman of the Board still has friends in low places.]

Now I start my stories of Dave with “I have a friend who taught Sinatra how to sing.” [2]

Dave recently mused about the name of this blog. He said…


In the fall season about two years ago we took our grand kids in Arizona to a Pro Bass store. You know, the frozen zoo, with a hundred stuffed animals and fish in giant glass tanks being leered at by would be anglers. Close to the front door to the right was a book section. (Not very complicated types of reading material...mostly pictures.) But as I examined it closer something attracted, or un-attracted my attention. It was a camouflaged book almost causing it’s 9x12 x 2 and1/2 dimensions to disappear in the overall Pro Bass ambiance.

It drew me closer. What great hunter’s secrets were worth this effort?
What price would be put on something of such intellectual importance,
that obviously was meant to not gather dust but become at peace with it?
Drawing closer there was the glint of a small sophisticated font embossed in gold. The title said “HOLY BIBLE”.

Christ not in just Winter, but camouflaged! Along with Job, Moses and Mary! My first thought was of the “boys” out there in the blind reading it between beers waiting for their appointed task of obliterating mother nature. Such comfort.

I refuse to go to Pro Bass now. It has made me feel so undeserving of my Lord’s grace. I am also afraid to go to church . One never knows what might really be in there.

Dave Lamb
***
True to his persuasive abilities, Dave has made me afraid to go to church, too. I’m too old to encounter grace face to face, and our pastor seems determined to take the camo off the Gospel.

JRMcF

1] Recently Helen and I were eating with a couple of nineteen-year-olds at a family gathering. Have you ever tried to explain a mimeograph machine to someone who’s never heard of them?

2] OK, so I didn’t start with that this time, but I will from now on.

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!

You are always welcome to Forward or Repost or Reprint. It’s okay to acknowledge the source, unless it embarrasses you too much. It is okay to refer the link to older folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin.

{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

(If you would prefer to receive either “Christ In Winter” or “Periwinkle Chronicles” via email, just let me know at jmcfarland1721@charter.net, and I’ll put you on the email list.)

Sweet Sixteen & a Profile in Courage

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…

The Martin Luther King, Jr Memorial was dedicated this week. Granddaughter Brigid turns sixteen this week. Two important events that for me go together.

Last year, as a high school freshman, Brigid wrote an essay for a Profiles in Courage assignment. It’s excellent, which isn’t surprising, since her mother is the best writer I know. [1]

I had told Brigid at some time in the past, the way grandparents do, about the "open housing" controversy in Normal, IL shortly after we had moved there in 1966. So when the assignment came up, she chose as her profile in courage, Bill Hammit, Sr.

We moved to Normal in 1966. Civil rights for Negroes, the polite and accepted term at the time, was not yet the law of the land. Many people were committed to keeping civil rights away from Negroes forever. It wasn’t just in the South. That included the otherwise civilized town of Normal, the home of IL State U [2], the chief educating institution for teachers in IL since before the Civil War.

There are some folks who thrive on controversy, but most people don’t like it. There was a lot of resistance to civil rights just because the issue created discomfort. Of course, it had been mighty uncomfortable for black folks for a long time, but when white people had to be discomfited, they just wanted the issue to go away. Another Methodist minister who lived in Normal remonstrated with me that “The country and this town aren’t ready for this yet. You just have to give people time.” I pointed out that it had been over 100 years since the Civil War; that seemed like plenty of time. He was not persuaded. [3]

Open housing became an issue because Charles Morris was hired as a math professor at ISU. Apparently the presence of someone with a PhD from the U of Illinois would drive property rates down, as well as creating other disasters. I agreed publicly, noting if we admitted U of I PhDs, we’d have to admit Purdue people, too, and we all knew what they were like. [4] It turned out, though, that the provenance of his doctorate was not the issue; it was the color of his skin.

There were Normal people who wanted the Morris family to be able to buy a home, but Negroes were legally barred from living in Normal. An open housing ordinance was presented to the seven-man town council. A support movement started. Students led marches. Women, including Helen, hosted coffees for neighbors. Three members of the town council indicated they would vote for the ordinance, but three were against. That left Bill Hammitt, Sr., a Methodist minister, Director of The Baby Fold, a Methodist child care agency [5], as the deciding vote.

Bill asked Gordon White and Clarence Young, the ministers at First Methodist Church, and me, the Methodist campus minister, to meet with him. “You’re my pastors,” he said. “Tell me how I should vote.” Without hesitation, with one voice, we said, “You’ve got to vote for open housing.” “But people will say, ‘Your pastors live in parsonages, houses the churches own. They don’t stand to lose property value.’” Indeed, parsonage life was the rule then, and still is, but none of us lived in a parsonage. All three of us were buying our own homes. “That settles it,” said Bill.

Bill was the deciding vote, and open housing became the Normal law. Over a 30 year career, Charles Morris became a highly valued member of the community and vice-president of the university.

When you are old, it’s nice to remember people of courage, people who stood against those powerful forces that try to deny rights to others, like MLK and Bill Hammit, Sr. Bill doesn’t have a statue, but his profile is up there on that MLK memorial, along with a million other folks who had the courage to say “We shall overcome.” The opportunity to present a profile in courage is always with us, even if the profile is bald and has a double chin.

Even better is to stand with those who are presenting profiles in courage right now, occupying the high ground against injustice, even if the profile is just sixteen.

JRMcF

1] When I was the graduate assistant to James Spalding, the Director of The School of Religion at the U of Iowa, I graded the papers for the class he taught. Brigid’s mother, Katie, was then in 5th grade at Longfellow School, and I also read the papers she wrote. I thought, “Good grief, this fifth grader writes better than these college students!” Later, when she was at Indiana U, Robert Ferrell, the distinguished history professor, asked her, “Where did you learn to write?” “From my father,” she said. “Where did he learn to write?” he asked. “From you,” she said. Needless to say, she was forever after his favorite student.

2] Originally Illinois State Normal College, “normal” meaning a teacher training institution. The college came first, on land a few miles north of Bloomington, so the town that grew up around it became Normal.

3] When I interrupted an Official Board meeting at First Methodist in Normal to tell them that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated, several people broke out in applause.

4] Needless to say, Purdue is the chief rival of Indiana U, my alma mater.

5] The Baby Fold was originally a retirement home for deaconesses and gradually became an orphanage and then expanded to encompass adoption and care for children with all kinds of needs, especially severe mental and emotional problems. The name is from the image of Jesus as the good shepherd. A fold is a shelter for sheep. Of course, there are still many jokes about how to fold a baby.
***
The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!

You are always welcome to Forward or Repost or Reprint. It’s okay to acknowledge the source, unless it embarrasses you too much. It is okay to refer the link to folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin.

{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

(If you would prefer to receive either “Christ In Winter” or “Periwinkle Chronicles” via email, just let me know at jmcfarland1721@charter.net, and I’ll put you on the email list.)

ON HATING HELEN

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…

Barbara followed me into the kitchen. She was almost in tears. “I hate your wife,” she blurted out.

We were hosting a pot-luck in our parsonage in Hoopeston, IL for the other ministers and their wives. It was a good fellowship. We were a wide range theologically, conservative and liberal and everything in between, but only one minister in town boycotted the Hoopeston Area Ministerial Association. Everybody in the HAMA came to our potlucks.

Barbara was the wife of Dirk, the Lutheran pastor. She looked like a super model, and Dirk was a George Clooney type, except younger and good looking. I figured Helen and I had more reason to hate them than the other way around.

We didn’t hate them, though. In fact, when their church building burned, we invited them to share ours.

We had enough empty classrooms that we could accommodate their Sunday School at the same time as ours, and we worshipped at the same time, too, with Lutherans in the fellowship hall while Methodists were in the sanctuary. It was quite unusual for Missouri Synod Lutherans.

We loved it. There were so many people in the building, so much activity. The way you know your church is a going concern is whether you have to stand in line for the rest room. We felt bereft when their building was rebuilt and they moved out.

I couldn’t believe that Barbara hated Helen. There were people in the churches and towns where I pastored who hated me, but everyone always loved Helen.

Barbara blew who super-model nose into the napkin from the plate she was placing on the counter and said, “She makes being a preacher’s wife look so easy, and it’s not.”

“That’s because she doesn’t try to be a preacher’s wife,” I told Barbara. “She is just herself. That’s a lot easier.”

I don’t know if Barbara ever got to be herself. The Lutherans moved out of our building, and the bishop moved us to Charleston. No more HAMA potlucks at our house. But it’s Sunday morning, and I always pray for my preacher friends on Sunday morning, including all the wives who hated Helen for making it look easy.

JRMcF

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!

You are always welcome to Forward or Repost or Reprint. It’s okay to acknowledge the source, unless it embarrasses you too much. It is okay to refer the link to older folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin.

{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

(If you would prefer to receive either “Christ In Winter” or “Periwinkle Chronicles” via email, just let me know at jmcfarland1721@charter.net, and I’ll put you on the email list.)

After the Game Is Over

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…

There were other folks involved, of course, but since baseball poetry traditionally deals with male intergenerational bonding…

AFTER THE GAME IS OVER

It was the major leagues, almost
The Pirates and the Cubs
But names that fit them best at most
Were the 1.75rates and the Flubs [1]

Hot dogs were twenty smackers
Ice cream was even more
When they saw the price of young Jack’s Crackers
Every chin dropped to the floor.

Each player made a million each
For working half a day
But every ball was out of reach
No one dared to shout “Say hey!” [2]

Every bat let out a sigh
When they saw who came to hit
None of their kind would have to die
Since every pitch was missed

Every pitch was wild as sin
The managers prayed for rain
Home plate doesn’t have to take you in [3]
There was no Spahn or Sain [4]

But for a boy up in the bleachers
With a grandpa old as Never
Watching on the field those wretched creatures
It was the best day in Forever.

JRMcF

1] 1.75 is half of pi, if we accept pi as 3.14 without the “to infinity,” making half-rate Pirates 1.75rates. You can say “half-rates” in that line if the meter offends you.

2] The signature exultation of Willie Mays, for whom no ball was ever out of reach.

3] Poet Robert Frost said that “home is where they have to take you in.” Home plate is where they try to keep you out.

4] The battle cry of the 1948 National League Boston Braves, who became the Milwaukee Braves and later, and currently, the Atlanta Braves, was “Spahn and Sain and pray for rain,” reflecting the abilities of Hall of Fame lefthander Warren Spahn and his pitching rotation partner, Johnny Sain, compared to the rest of the rotation, who pitched best if rained out. Based on a poem by Boston Post sports editor Gerald Hern: “First we’ll use Spahn, and then we’ll use Sain, then an off day, followed by rain. Back will come Spahn, followed by Sain, and followed we hope by two days of rain.”

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!

You are always welcome to Forward or Repost or Reprint. It’s okay to acknowledge the source, unless it embarrasses you too much. It is okay to refer the link to older folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin.

{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

(If you would prefer to receive either “Christ In Winter” or “Periwinkle Chronicles” via email, just let me know at jmcfarland1721@charter.net, and I’ll put you on the email list.)

THE 5TH STAGE

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…


Schools in general, and colleges in particular, used to start classes after harvest season. So it was in this week on the calendar of 1955 that I matriculated at Indiana University.

During Orientation Week of that freshman year, men’s and women’s dorms were paired up for mixers. The point of the mixer was to hook up with a girl, hook up in those days being a benign term that simply meant finding a date, and then going to the campus-wide dance in Alumni Hall in the Union Building, the largest student union building in the world, we are always proud to say. Normally Linden Hall would have been paired with Pine Hall, since the Pine Hall girls, known as Pine Swine for no reason other than the rhyme, were on The Residence Scholarship Plan [for poor but motivated students], as were the boys of Linden Hall-East, boys and girls being what we called boys and girls in those days, instead of men and women, as college boys and girls are called now. For some reason, though, probably because the Pine Hall girls rejected the idea, Linden Hall was paired with Oak Hall instead.

All the Ahaywehs, as the denizens of Linden East were later called, referring to Dante’s abandon hope, all ye who enter here, dutifully trooped over to Oak and began to mix. Somehow I ended up with a slender brunette.

I don’t remember much about that night. We walked to the Union, and I suppose I tried to dance, although it is more likely that I made many trips to the punch bowl to avoid dancing, and then we walked back to Oak Hall. I must have made a better impression than I thought, because as soon as we got inside the door to Oak Hall, she grabbed me in a passionate embrace and began to kiss me like my face was sweet corn and she had missed supper.

I have no idea why she did that. We had known each other for about three hours. I was skinny and awkward and about as average-looking as they came. Maybe it was because she didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of her friends, since all of them were doing the same thing, and she didn’t want to admit she had hooked one that should have been thrown back. Maybe she was just curious to see how a farm boy would react and knew she had nothing to lose, since the Head Resident would soon blow her whistle to indicate visiting hours were over and all of the frustrated lotharios had to go home. I never saw her again after that night, except at a distance in the Arbutus Dining Hall, where all the people who lived in Trees ate. [1]

The fifth of the eight stages of psycho-social adjustment, as outlined by Erik Erikson, is Intimacy vs. Isolation, coinciding with the late teens and early twenties. The eighth stage, in the final years of life, is Integrity vs. Despair, which asks the question: Did my life through the other stages have meaning? Did I negotiate those stages successfully and grow into a mature person?

The way we successfully negotiate Integrity vs. Despair is by going back through the earlier stages, reviewing them so that we can accept them as necessary parts of who we are. I hope as that Oak Hall girl reviews her fifth stage, she doesn’t feel she never made it through Intimacy vs. Isolation because of that awkward boy in that mixer in her freshman year, for I still remember her name, after fifty-six years.

JRMcF

1] Trees Center had 8 wooden two-story dorms that had been built as temporary housing for military personnel during WWII. All were named for trees. I recall Laurel and Hickory as well as those named above. We were “men in trees” long before the TV show of that name.

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!

You are always welcome to Forward or Repost or Reprint. It’s okay to acknowledge the source, unless it embarrasses you too much. It is okay to refer the link to older folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin.

{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

(If you would prefer to receive either “Christ In Winter” or “Periwinkle Chronicles” via email, just let me know at jmcfarland1721@charter.net, and I’ll put you on the email list.)

Norway & The Will of God

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…


I have been struggling with the most recent mass murder, the one in Norway. Trying to understand. Trying to pray. Trying to re-channel my own rage into something constructive.

As usual, I am not being very successful.

I’m not helped by an abcessed tooth. There is this dull, constant, throbbing pain in my head. It beats in disharmony with the dull, constant, throbbing pain in my soul. Why is there so much evil in the world? Why are we so evil?

I have lived a long time, and I am supposed to be wise because of it, but I have no answers, no wisdom. Indeed, one of the worst things about living in the years of winter is the accumulation of evil. When I was twenty, an evil act of destruction was new in my experience. I thought I could do something about it. Now I have observed countless acts of destruction, singular and mass, and I have not been able to do anything about them.

So why not curse God and die? That was the advice Job’s wife gave him. [Job 2:9]

At the end of her life, Isabella Beecher Hooker, the social activist among the thirteen remarkable children of Lyman and Roxana (& Harriet) Beecher [1], was bemoaning the state of the world. “Well, at least you have the satisfaction of knowing you did all you could about the world’s evil during your lifetime,” said her granddaughter. “That’s the problem,” said Isabella. “When I was young, I could do something about it. Now I can’t do anything.”

When Steve and Tony, the 18 and 19 year old sons of my older sister were killed in a car crash, I said at their funeral that this was NOT the will of God. “God does not will that beautiful young men should be cut down before they’ve even really started growing. It is the law of physics that when a small car and a large truck collide, the people in the small car will get hurt, but God does not pull strings to cause these things to happen. This was NOT the will of God.” I must have said it ten times in one way or another.

That night, as Dick, their father, and I sat in his darkened study in masculine silence, the president of the sports booster club came by. [Tony was quarterback on the football team.] “Well, as you said earlier,” he said to me, “it was the will of God.”

I was astonished. I know I’m not the world’s best preacher, but I’m a pretty accurate communicator. How could he turn my words around to say the exact opposite of what I had preached? Then it came to me: he wasn’t saying God caused this. He was just saying that in the midst of the tragedy, God was still in charge, that the everlasting arms are still upholding, even in the midst of evil, perhaps especially there, God is the only reason, the only hope, the only cause worth serving.

JRMcF

1] Lyman had 9 children with Roxana Foote. When she died, he married Harriet Porter and had four more. Harriet was Isabella’s mother. The most famous of the children were Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Arthur is my favorite. The first month he was the Presbyterian pastor in Elmira, NY, he was thrown out of the ministerial association for heresy. For the next 37 years he never missed a meeting of the association, although he was never readmitted to membership. Think about that—he got free coffee every month but never had to pay dues or be an officer or serve on a committee!

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!

You are always welcome to Forward or Repost or Reprint. It’s okay to acknowledge the source, unless it embarrasses you too much. It is okay to refer the link to older folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin.

{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

(If you would prefer to receive either “Christ In Winter” or “Periwinkle Chronicles” via email, just let me know at jmcfarland1721@charter.net, and I’ll put you on the email list.)

Blowin' In the Wind

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…

Recently I have followed an online discussion about the different recorded versions of Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In the Wind. The discussion was sparked by the publication of Milt Okun’s memoir Along the Cherry Lane. [1]

Okun was the musical director for both The Chad Mitchell Trio [CMT] and Peter, Paul, and Mary. [PPM] The song was originally offered to CMT, but their record company at the time--Okun had not yet established his own record company--said no one would listen to a song that contained a reference to death and so turned it down. Okun then took it to PPM, which had a huge hit with it. Strangely, CMT--having changed companies--actually recorded it first, on an album with the title, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” but it was already associated so strongly with PPM that most people have always thought it was only a PPM recording.

You can hear both versions on YouTube. They are quite different, but most folk music aficionados refuse to compare them, saying that each is perfect in its own way.

Why so different, when Okun was musical director for both groups? Because Okun was a musical genius. He tailored each arrangement to the musical strengths of each group. The PPM version is wistful, yearning, hoping that there is an answer, and if we listen to the wind, perhaps we can find it. The CMT version is urgent, forceful, proclaiming that there IS an answer, and that it is important to listen to that wind, now. [2]

For Christians, I think the two versions complement each other to make a whole.

The PPM version represents Hope. The wind of the Spirit will continue to blow. [3] The answer will always be there, and whenever you have “ears to hear,” [4] as Jesus put it, you can hear those answers. The CMT version represents “realized eschatology,” [5] the faith that the Kingdom of God—the place where God rather than the greed-of-self reigns—is right here, right now.

The wind in winter can blow very cold, but there is still an answer there, if one has ears to hear. Regardless of age, the place is always here, the time is always now. For hope. For salvation, from fragmentation into wholeness. The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, yearningly, urgently.

JRMcF

1] Cherry Lane was the name of Okun’s record production company, because when it started, he lived next to the Cherry Lane Theater. He was the musical director for PPM, but he says it’s just an accident that Leonard Lipton’s and Peter Yarrow’s “Puff, the Magic Dragon” contains the line, “Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane.”

2] Paul Prestopino plays backup on both recordings. It is interesting to hear how he plays the same song differently according to the way Okun has arranged for each group.

3] In both biblical languages of Greek and Hebrew, the words for wind and spirit are the same word, ruach in Hebrew and pneuma in Greek.

4] I haven’t counted the times Jesus used this phrase, but one site I consulted says he used it 7 times. I know it is in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Mark.

5] The term “realized eschatology” is most closely associated with British biblical scholar C.H. Dodd.

***
The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!

You are always welcome to Forward or Repost or Reprint. It’s okay to acknowledge the source, unless it embarrasses you too much. It is okay to refer the link to older folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin.

{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

(If you would prefer to receive either “Christ In Winter” or “Periwinkle Chronicles” via email, just let me know at jmcfarland1721@charter.net, and I’ll put you on the email list.)