When Bad Proms Happen to Good People

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

The Question of Theodicy: Why does God allow evil, like tornadoes and wars and high school proms?

I think it was Mike who first told me that I was taking Judith to the prom at a place I’ll call Fort McCracken, 17 miles from our town. I had never heard of her.

Judith was the only child in a wealthy family. Her father was a judge. Her parents had given her a new Chrysler convertible at the start of her junior year. That guaranteed that no Fort McCracken boy would date her, since no Fort McCracken boy had a car that could compete. So when prom time came that year, she was dateless.

Her mother was a friend of Ann’s mother. Ann was in my high school class. Judith’s mother told Ann’s mother of the problem. Ann’s mother asked what Judith was interested in.

“Journalism. She’s editor of the school newspaper.”


“Have I got a deal for you,” said Ann’s mother. “My daughter is in class with the editor of our school newspaper. He’s a nice boy.”

That’s the curse mothers always put on me: He’s a nice boy.

So Ann’s mother and Judith’s mother decided I would take Judith to the prom. The irony is that I was further out of my league than any boy in Fort McCracken.

I had no car and no suit, so the mothers arranged for my friend Mike, who was dating Ann, to get invitations to their prom, too, and my sister, who had graduated and was working fulltime, bought me a suit, and a pink and gray tie, which I still have. [You don’t outgrow ties.] Ann’s mother, of course, knew all about Judith’s dress, so she bought a corsage that would coordinate with it.

Mike and Ann drove down the gravel roads to our farm and I rode to Fort McCracken in the back seat of Mike’s two-door hardtop Pontiac, with Judith’s corsage in the front seat beside Ann. When we arrived at Judith’s house, it was almost dark. Ann scrunched up toward the dashboard and I pushed the seat forward to get out, thus crushing the corsage.

It was a big house, fronted by a high porch with a dim light. I carried the crushed corsage up the long walk and climbed the creaking steps to the shadowed front door. I knocked. The door opened. A classy blond girl in a formal stood there. I spoke one of the best opening lines in the annals of blind prom dates: “It looks like I’ve come to the right place.”

I pushed the crushed corsage at her. She looked at it and was speechless. An older blond appeared over her shoulder, took the corsage away to the kitchen, where she performed voodoo on it. Judith and I stood there and tried not to look at each other. “That’s my father,” she said, indicating a man sitting in a dark corner of the living room, peeling an apple, with a butcher knife, one long peel sliding off the apple with surgical precision. He didn’t say anything.

Judith’s mother returned with the corsage, and taking no chances that her daughter might get crushed, too, pinned it on Judith herself. She handed Judith a boutonniere. Judith tried to slip it through the button-hole of my new lapel. It wouldn’t go. The mother tried. “It’s not cut,” she said. [What farm boy knows you have to slit the buttonhole in a new suit yourself?]

“I’ll take care of him,” her father said, jumping up and advancing on me with the butcher knife. He grabbed my lapel and began to saw at it, the knife an inch from my throat. As a judge he must have used the Solomonic solution, because he was really good with that thing. The slit was perfect, and Judith slipped the flower into it.

I don’t remember much from that point. I assumed my job was to make the Fort McCracken boys jealous, since Judith had gotten such a much better date from out of town, so I acted mysterious, which meant I spent the evening doing what Helen calls my “tall silent thing” while Mike and Ann danced. The only thing I remember for sure was that I mispronounced the word “intricate,” while explaining my reasons for eschewing all dances but the “bunny hop.”

It’s important when looking back on such experiences to find the good in an otherwise disastrous event. I have done so. I’m sure Judith won the contest among the sisters for who had the best reason to become a nun.

JRMcF

Every bit of the above is true, except for the name of Fort McCracken. I named it in honor of the IU basketball coach in my days there, Branch McCracken, who coached the first two of IU’s 5 NCAA championship teams. Also I’m just making a reasonable guess about Judith’s career choice.

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, or make it into a movie or TV series.

{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/}

The Big Bang Theory

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

It is 3 a.m., and I am faced with that haunting wee-hours question that we all must answer sooner or later: why am I interested in the big bang theory? No, not the world creation theory; I settled the question of loop quantum gravity vs. string theory a long time ago. [1]

It’s the Big Bang Theory TV show [BBT] that fascinates me.

Sheldon Cooper [the amazing Jim parsons], Leonard Hofstader [Johnny Galecki, who can nerd you out just by wrinkling his face], Raj Koothrapalli [whom Helen wants to keep as a pet, Kunal Nayyar], and Howard Wolowitz [Simon Helberg], are brilliant physics profs at Cal Poly. Except for Sheldon, who lives entirely in his mind and whose only goal is a Nobel Prize, their only interest is sex. And, occasionally, a bigger office, or a paint-ball victory over the Anthropology Dept, or winning first prize at the comic book store’s Halloween and New Year’s costume contests.

Of course, that’s why they supposedly don’t get sex [although it’s amazing how many otherwise intelligent and attractive women get involved with them ]. When they are not being brilliant, they live in the nerd world of SciFi and fantasy movies and action figures, comic books, Renaissance fairs. They have no clue how the rest of the world works.

Each character is limited by partialness. Howard “is an ass,” [and lacks a Phd]. Raj can’t even speak to a woman without booze, and then he becomes as much of an ass as Howard. Leonard was raised by a mother [Christine Beranski] who is a child psychiatrist with less warmth than a frozen salamander. Sheldon lives entirely in his mind and fantasy.

Still, women who are just as hampered try them out. The short, naive Catholic microbiology PhD candidate, Bernadette Rostenkowski [the adorable Melissa Rauch] falls for Howard, who lives with his mother and can’t leave her. Totally needy nerd Leonard is clueless and is always amazed when Penny [Kaley Cuoco], their next door neighbor and waitress/actress-wannabe, or the voluptuous medical doctor, Stephanie Barnett [Sara Rue], or Raj’s beautiful and talented lawyer sister, Priya [Aarti Mann] or fellow physics prof Leslie Winkle [Sarah Gilbert], who uses men like a… well, like a man uses women, comes on to him. Prof Amy Farrah Fowler [Mayim Bialek] is just as one-dimensional [brain only] as Sheldon, but is also desperate for love and negotiates with Sheldon for affection by starting out with a request for wild all-night animal coitus [Sheldon’s preferred word] and eventually manages to get him to agree to a hug.

 

There are only three nods to religion in the BBT. Howard is a totally secular Jew. Raj is a superstitious Hindu. Sheldon’s mother [the delightful Lori Metcalf] is an E. TX fundamentalist who believes in religious string theory, that Jesus pulls strings. But she is quite pragmatic if it turns out that she’s wrong about which way the strings are pulled.

On the face of it, I have little in common with the folks of the BBT, but I love Sheldon and his little group because they remind me of the church in which I have lived my life. [2] They want love but settle for attention. They want joy but settle for pleasure. They want friendship but settle for competition. They want truth but settle for knowledge. They want Spirit but settle for spirits. They want communion but settle for theories. [3]

At the end of the day, though, they care about one another. They take care of one another. If someone is sick, someone sings “Soft Kitty.” And the next day they get up and try again for love and truth and joy and friendship and communion.

Which is what I think I’ll do now that the day has started. Besides, the BBT re-runs don’t start for another 18 minutes.

JRMcF

1] Bazinga! What Sheldon says when he thinks he’s pulled a fast one on you.

2] The BBT and UMC [General Conference] both end their seasons this week, BBT on CBS at 7 PM, CDT. The end of GC of UMC is a good deal less predictable.

3] Their communion service [The Sheldor’s Supper ?] is fascinating. The remarkably patient Leonard is always the steward because Sheldon won’t partake if the elements are not prepared correctly [diced, not shredded], or if they have been sacrificed to an idol [purchased at the wrong place]. They argue about who gets the best seat. They argue about who gets the last dumpling. They argue about which movie they’ll watch. The same problems Paul had with the church in Corinth. The same problems we’ve had ever since.

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 Integrity of Keeping Quiet

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter…

About two years before he died, at age 96, when I was an old man of 68 myself, my father called me on the telephone. He was crying, a very unusual activity for that extremely tough and totally independent man.

“Are you the one who was born in Ohio?” he asked in a breaking voice.

I acknowledged that I was. My sisters and brother were born in Indiana.

“I hate to tell you this,” he choked out, “but you’re not really my child…”

My first reaction was to think: If I’m the one who is not your child, how come I’m the one who takes care of you all the time instead of your non-bastard children? [1]

Then I felt guilty because it was really my wife, Helen, who did the bulk of the caring for him. By the time I had gotten that settled in my mind, he had choked up and could not talk anymore and hung up.

He never said anything about it again. Neither did I, at least to him. I told Helen and our daughters, though. After Helen stopped laughing, she said, “That’s so ridiculous. Just look at you and your brother and father together. Except for the height difference, you’re three peas in a pod.”

I never said anything to him about it, never asked him about it, both because it was a tearful subject for him, and because Helen and I agreed that it must have been some sort of old-age forgetfulness or crossing of brain wires, maybe something he had picked up from somewhere else and mistakenly incorporated into his own memories. I also figured that it was his subject to raise, not mine.

There was just one problem with the “One of those old age memory-dementia things” theory. It was the one and only time that Dad ever exhibited an “old age-dementia” problem. Up until the day he died, both before and after that call, he was very sharp mentally.

So what was going on when he called that day? Probably nothing that had anything to do with me, something internal to him. From time to time, though, when I remember that my mother always insisted that I was named for her brother, John Hubert Pond, instead of my father, John Francis McFarland, or something reminds me of Dad--I hear the birds sing, or look at a garden, or at a piece of furniture he made--I wonder…

The memory of that telephone call does not haunt me. Sometimes, though, I recall my mother explaining that I was the least favorite child because I was the only one Dad had actually seen born, in that era before fathers were routinely in delivery rooms. I know that seeing a birth would probably jaundice my view of a kid, too.

There is no question that he was my father and I his son, in all the ways that really count, but could it be that…

If so, do I really need to know? No.

I didn’t need to know the day he called, either. If there were something about his relationship to me, or to my mother, then deceased, that was bothering him, it would have been best for him to talk to someone outside the family about it, or just to be as quiet about it as he had been for all his other years.

The task of our last years is what Erik Erikson called Final Integrity vs Despair. We think back over our lives and ask, “Was it okay to be me?” To be able to say yes, sometimes we have to acknowledge mistakes. Sometimes we have broken relationships that we need to mend to make life whole.

Sometimes, though, honesty becomes a breaker instead of a healer. As we try to put things right in winter, there is a good tendency to try to be honest, to tell the truth about the past. Sometimes, though, it is best to tell that truth where only we, the tellers, and God, can hear it. The deciding rule should be, Does telling this not only make me feel right about my life, but does it also benefit the ones who hear, or does it hurt them?

If I hurt someone as I try for final integrity, it will lead instead to despair. Sometimes, integrity is just keeping your mouth shut.

Once, when I was 2 or 3, Dad ran away. It was the Great Depression. He didn’t have a job. He couldn’t support his family. We lived with his parents and several siblings. It was too much. Many young men left home and wife and children during the Great Depression under those circumstances. He had gotten a lot of miles away when, he told Mother, who told me many years later, he saw a little boy playing in a yard. “He looked like Johnny,” he said. He turned around and started back. Maybe he thought I wasn’t really his child, but I was the reason he came home.

JRMcF

1] It wasn’t that my siblings were unwilling to care for our parents, but they had moved to CA, FL, NM, Canada. I was in IL. Dad was in IN.

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.)

A Thought for Good Friday, The Touching Time

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

I wrote the following in 1990, after my first oncologist told me I’d be dead “in a year or two.” It appears on page 108 of the second edition of NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel, 2007]

My friend Bill came to see me, a week after I got out of the hospital. He drove a hundred miles each way to spend an hour with me. We’ve been friends for almost thirty years. Between us we’ve had three wives and seven children. We don’t see each other often, but we don’t need to; our friendship is always still there. Bill’s first wife left him ten years ago. Just told him one day she was leaving. No previous symptoms, even in retrospect. Just like my cancer. We share that kind of surprised grieving—he in his marriage, me in my body.

When he was ready to leave, he sat on the sofa beside me and put his arm around me. I held onto his leg, the way a little boy might wrap his arm around a father’s knee. We prayed together. He told me he loved me. I tried to tell him I loved him, too, but I couldn’t get it out. I believe he understood, though. Other than shaking hands, I think that’s the first time we’ve touched, in thirty years.

Now that I have cancer, there seems to be an unspoken word of permission for people to touch me, for me to touch them. It’s funny, that a broken body should somehow be more touchable than one that’s whole. Or am I more touchable because my spirit is broken? “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” [Psalm 51:17.]

It is interesting that in all the stories of Jesus, there is only one instance of anyone touching him while he was alive in the body. He, of course, touched many. A leper, a hand to raise Simon’s mother-in-law or Jairus’ daughter up from beds of illness and death, deaf ears, blind eyes, the feet of the disciples, children. The woman with the hemorrhage reached only as far as the hem of his robe. The woman who broke the alabaster jar of ointment on his feet wiped it off with her hair—no touch. The only time anyone reached out to touch Jesus was to betray him, Judas with a kiss, the authorities of his own faith and people with a slap.

Maybe that’s why “doubting” Thomas insisted on his famous touch-and-feel session after the crucifixion. Maybe he was really “knowing” Thomas. Because no one had touched Jesus while he was alive, Thomas knew the real proof of the resurrection was that he could be touched, his body was broken. It’s only after the breaking of crucifixion that resurrection, the touching time, comes.

Somehow we seem able to touch one another in our brokenness in ways we never can in wholeness. God likes to use broken things: broken bread, broken ointment jars, broken bodies, even relationships broken with a kiss.

My body and my spirit have been broken by cancer. That means I can touch and be touched. I’m thankful for the cancer.

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.)

Worm Theology

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter…

WORM THEOLOGY

John Kiltinen is a Renaissance man, if the Renaissance is mathematical and Finnish. John is a Northern MI U math professor, retard, which is how we pronounce “retired” in the UP, or at least that’s what we tell him, and a translator of Finnish hymns, and the driving force behind the brand new Finnish/American opera, “Rockland.”

John suggests that a good Holy Week topic would be self-flagellation, since “feel good” religion started when Luther did away with the practice, which is not wrapping one’s self in the flag and elatedly [flag-elation] screeching that your flag is better than theirs, as Sean Hannity seems to think, but its opposite, the proclamation that you know you are no more than a worm, and that thus God’s grace [acceptance] is always a gift, never earned.

To remind themselves that we are just worms, Christians used to beat the hell out of themselves, especially during Holy Week, with ropes or chains or small tree limbs. Mrs. Kiltinen points out that the Finns, reluctant to abandon such a practice entirely, for obvious reasons, at least to Finns, still practice a minor-league form of it in the sauna. Thank God I’m a Celt. Our idea of proper worship is self-flagon-elation, which is to drink another flagon and dance elatedly.

Worm theology probably dates from a favorite Holy Week hymn, Isaac Watts’ Alas! and Did My Savior Bleed, which contains the line, “Did he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?”

Worms have always had a place in Christian Theology. There was, of course, Luther’s famous Diet of Worms, which may account for his constipation and certain parts of his theology. [1] Without worms there could be no wormwood to accompany gall in bitterness and despair. [Lamentations 3:19] That, of course, gave the junior demon in C.S. Lewis’ "The Screwtape Letters" his name of “Wormwood.”

And we know that our bodies are destined to be worm food, as we learned in that hymn from childhood, “The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout.” It’s hard to work that into a feel-good theology.

There is, however, a different sort of worm theology. Remember the story of Jonah? He didn’t want to go to Nineveh, to be a prophet, to forth-tell the truth [2] to the people there, that if they did not repent and change their ways, they were doomed. That sort of truth-telling gets a prophet into all sorts of trouble with people of high self-esteem, who feel good about themselves, who think they are good enough already, and Jonah was sure he wouldn’t get his own reality show and the celebrity and popularity that went with it that way.

So he went up on a mountain overlooking Nineveh and sat in the shade of a huge gourd vine so he could watch everybody go to hell in comfort. But God wasn’t about to give up on Nineveh because of a balky prophet. “But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered.” [Jonah 4:7.] Without his shade, Jonah had to get on with the job, and quite to his surprise, when the folks of Nineveh were confronted with the truth, they believed and changed their ways and were saved. The real prophet in this story is the worm, who accepted God’s appointment and got rid of the comforting shade so that the truth could be seen.

Yes, I’m just a worm, but that means that God has a job for even me. “Did he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?” You bet. Amen.

JRMcF

Thanks to the Kiltinens, who may feel that even though they are Finns, reading this may be adequate self-flagellation.

1] Yes, to all you historical theology addicts, I do know that Luther did not eat worms, but that a “Diet” was actually an imperial conclave and that Luther was called to such a diet in the town of Worms to answer charges that his theology was heretical.

2] Real prophets don’t foretell the truth, they forth-tell it.

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 Oral Tradition

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

Helen says that if women talked to one another the way men do, there would be much wailing and scratching with claws.

Male friends greet one another with sobriquets of affection, such as “You’re even uglier than the last time I saw you.” Try that on a woman friend and see what happens. “Oh, and your feet smell, too.”

The late Dave Goodell and I were at a conference at our theological alma mater [1] some years back. The chapel organist, a pretty and sincere young woman, ended up seated at the end of our table, probably because it was the only place left when she arrived, with Dave on her right hand and me on her left. With no one else to talk to, she did her best. She asked Dave about the church he pastored. I explained that he had retired but had not yet informed the church. She asked me about the sales of my book. Dave explained that “two” should not be decried because it was twice as many as my last book. This went on for some time, until she finally threw her fork down in exasperation and said, “Whenever I ask one of you a question, the other one answers!”

Well, of course. The only thing better than saying rude things to a friend is to say them in front of an audience.

I once was part of a theological discussion group in a foreign land, the North IL Conference of The United Methodist Church, one of the stops in our odyssey of following the grandchildren. My own land was the Central IL Conference, the border of which was thirty miles south of where we lived. Charles Sensel, a fellow pastor who had served his sentence in Central IL but had now retired to North IL, was also in the group.

Charles is one of those good-hearted people who, despite being a leading Bonhoeffer scholar, [2] or perhaps because of it, dresses differently, just enough that you’re not sure if it’s intentional or accidental. As Bill Browning said one morning when Charles arrived at a meeting of SADMOB [3], “His wife’s letting him dress himself again.”

As foreigners do, Charles and I always huddled together in the discussion group, speaking of persons and events from our past that no one else in the group shared. We also said affectionate things to each other, like “Have you been arrested for malpractice yet?” and “The Salvation Army rejected your hat again, didn’t they?”

A young woman pastor always sat with us, even though she did not share our memories or receive any of our affectionate remarks. “I just love to hear you old guys talk to each other,” she said. “You’ve been through it all, and you’ve survived.”

That’s always been one of the ways young people learn, through the oral tradition, the ways of the clan, the stories of the faith, “overhearing the Gospel.” I suspect, though, that if Rev. Sensel and Rev. McFarland had told Pastor Nancy [note how we distinguish generations by forms of titles] that she should do her ministry in this way, or her preaching in that, she would not have been interested. In fact, she would have resented it, just the way we resented it when we were young and older people tried to force on us ways and ideas that had been precious and valuable to them but were no longer relevant.

We need to tell our stories, but we need to let young people listen to us, not require them to.

Oh, and Sheila, please don’t let Charles out of that house in that hat.

JRMcF

1] We graduated from Garrett Theological Seminary. It later united with Evangelical Theological Seminary and became Garrett-Evangelical. It is located at Northwestern U, in Evanston, IL.

2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German theologian, a leading foe of the Nazis, a participant in the Abwehr’s plot to assassinate Hitler, who was hanged in prison at the age of 39, 23 days before the Nazi surrender. The established church embraced Nazism, and Bonhoeffer was the first and almost only voice for church resistance to Hitler and the Nazis, founding The Confessing Church as a means of resistance.

3] SADMOB = Senior And Directing Ministers Of Bigchurches.


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.)

Yo mama...

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

I have told you before of Helen’s necklace that reads WWAGD? She says that it’s not always easy to figure out what Jesus would do, but she can see what Aunt Gertrude does, and that’s close enough.

It turns out that in basketball season, the answer to WWAGD? is: “Talk trash.”

Aunt Gertrude loves basketball, especially IU basketball, even though she moved from Greensburg, IN to OH when she married my late Uncle Randall, and has lived there ever since. She now lives with her daughter, my cousin, Kae, and Kae’s husband, Tim. They wanted to go to FL last week for a little R&R. Aunt Gertrude refused to go along until they assured her she could see the IU-PU game and the Greensburg HS team in the state tourney on the computer. The reason WWAGD? works so well is that Aunt Gertrude’s priorities are clear.

Kae is a nurse, but not just any nurse. She’s a super-nurse. She’s the sort of nurse you get to create new departments in medical schools. So for three years, she’s been flying back and forth to the Howard U. School of Medicine in Washington, DC, creating some new program, like a school for surgical nurses, or something like that. [Give me a break. I’ve got about a hundred cousins. I can’t keep up with the details on all of them.]

When IU beat Howard in basketball earlier this year, Aunt Gertrude asked Kae to pass on some trash talk to the folks at Howard. Kae, who is very Scandinavian-looking, said the thought of transmitting the trash talk of an eighty-nine-year-old white Greensburgian Presbyterian lady to black folks in Washington, DC, almost did her in.

Just because you’re old doesn’t mean the devil gives up on you. In fact, sometimes he thinks we’re easier marks because we’re too tired to recognize or fight off his ploys. So WWAGD when the devil comes along and tries to muddy up the clarity of your priorities and get you to cheer for the wrong team? Dunk it in his face and talk a little trash.

“Hey, Devil, I’m going to continue to associate with Jesus, because your maternal parent is so overweight that she ought to attend Weight Watchers… not necessarily every week… or I could be wrong… maybe she’s just big-boned… but if you were a good son you’d at least look into it…” That’ll get him.

JRMcF

I told this story to the great Indiana and Olympics sports writer and Presbyterian layman, Bob Hammel, “retard,” which is how we pronounce “retired” in southern IN, or at least that’s what we tell him, who said it needed to be shared with a wider audience, so make your complaints to him at presbyteriantrashtalk.omg.

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.)