SOME GOOD MEMORY

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter… ©

Yesterday we went to a family mini-reunion. Lots of good conversations with 2 aunts and 15 cousins. We shared lots of memories. It reminded me of this post from 2010…

When we are old, we have a great deal more past to remember than we have future to anticipate. [There is a future beyond death to anticipate, but no way to imagine it.]

I like remembering. Some days I just run through the list of all my good friends and relatives, many of whom are no longer in this world, just enjoying the memories of them.

Memory is a great gift of God.

So why, when we have so much to remember, does God also arrange to have our brains go numb in the winter of our years, just as they get numb with cold in the winter of the year? Just when there is the most to remember, our rememberers begin to stutter and backfire like old cars.

Jo Hershberger has written a lovely story of four young girls who become friends in junior high and continue to support one another in old age. [Jo’s mother was one of my all-time favorite church members and used to stay with our girls when Helen was away tending to her own mother as she died.] The story is set in the imaginary town of Rockwell, IL, but it certainly looks a lot like Hoopeston, IL, where Jo grew up. The title is Some Good Memory. [1]

It’s a quote from Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov.

“You must know that there is nothing stronger, or higher, or sounder, or more useful afterwards in life, than some good memory, especially a memory from childhood, from the personal home…If a man stores up many such stories to take into life, then he is saved for his whole life. And even if only one good memory remains with us in our hearts, that alone may serve some day for our salvation.”

There are many methods by which old people are supposed to keep our memories working. I’ve most recently read that the best memory help is three brisk forty minute walks per week. I like that, since I already walk and have no intention of doing Sudoku or learning Chinese.

I suspect, though, that God gives us these failing brains to make us work harder at bringing back those good memories, so that we’ll appreciate them more. As you take that walk, run those good memories through the screen behind your eyes. Even if only one remains, that is enough.

Isaac Watts, in the third verse of “I’ll Praise My Maker While I’ve Breath,” writes “the Lord supports the fainting mind”

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

[1] “Some Good Memory” is published by Outskirts Press. Its ISBN is 978-1-4327-2513-6

The picture is of the Pine Mountain ski jump in Iron Mountain, MI, the highest man-made ski jump in the world. I started this blog several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] The grandchildren, though, are grown up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the life cycle, so I am still trying to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter. I have a picture that is more appropriate now for Indiana, boys playing basketball in winter snow, but I have not yet figured out how to replace the ski jump picture with the basketball picture.

I tweet as yooper1721

The Penultimate Move-a poem

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter… ©

The rain is steady and hard this morning, and promises to be that way all day. We are going to drive two hours for a family mini-reunion. Given the realities of age and distance, it will be the last time we see some of those folks who have been so important to us for so long. It makes me think of this little “poem” I wrote as a “daily” poem last February…

FEBRUARY 19

We bought the final place today.

Not the one that’s in the ground.

called our final resting place.

The one just before it.

The place where life is pleasant,

“not far from the pool,”

where no little children pester,

or memories intrude.

It’s surely “close to shopping”

and far from all that matters.

the place to wind it down

until we hurt so much

we are willing to move on…

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

THE RIGHT PICTURE

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter… ©

Our daughter, Kathleen “Katie” Kennedy, is choosing an author photo for the jacket of her upcoming YA book, Learning to Swear in America, published by Bloomsbury, which also publishes J.K. Rowling. She asked us to help her choose which photo among the many proofs should go on the book. Her mother chose # 32, because “It looks most like you.” Katie protested, “That’s not what we’re going for.”

What we’re going for, of course, any of us, is something that makes us look better than we are.

I recently had to provide a jacket photo for my upcoming novel, VETS, about four homeless and handicapped veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor. I suggested they use a photo of Robert Redford. Much to my surprise and chagrin, they took it seriously, and explained all the legal ramifications, but suggested they could have an artist do a rendering that would look like Redford but not so much that we could be sued. I don’t know why that would be a problem, since Redford always uses my photo.

I recently read the obit of a woman I knew well. She had written the obit herself. If I had not seen her photo and name, I would have had no idea it was she. [I know “she” sounds wrong there, but it’s a predicate nominative.] Her achievements were burnished, and her failures were omitted. Even in death, she did not want people to know the real her. [Okay, now she can be “her.”]

I once heard an interview with Robert Redford. He wanted to be Paul Newman. “He’s a great actor, he loves his wife, he does good works, he’s got all the money in the world. Who wouldn’t want to be him?” None of us, even Redford, is satisfied being who we are.

We want people to think we are better looking, better educated, and better connected than we are. I understand that. Maybe they won’t like us, won’t respect us, if they find out we’re just… well, ordinary. I think God understands it, too. God doesn’t rat us out, point at us with that celestial finger and say, “Hey, everybody, he’s only pretending to be Robert Redford.” God knows the truth, though. That is the good news, that Someone knows us exactly as we are and loves us anyway. I do worry a little bit, though, because I’m told on good authority that God uses Newman’s picture.

 John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The picture is of the Pine Mountain ski jump in Iron Mountain, MI, the highest man-made ski jump in the world. I started this blog several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] The grandchildren, though, are grown up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the life cycle, so I am still trying to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter. I have a picture that is more appropriate now for Indiana, boys playing basketball in winter snow, but I have not yet figured out how to replace the ski jump picture with the basketball picture.

I tweet as yooper1721.

ONE TRUE SENTENCE

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter… ©

[In the aftermath of moving, I am looking over a lot of old stuff. This old meditation was first posted 9-21-10.]

In the years and places of winter, life becomes both simpler and more complicated.

That is my one true sentence for today.

Helen and I just returned from a cruise that started in NYC and ended in Quebec City, so I’ve been away from my computer for two weeks. We’re not cruise people, but this was a special cruise with the Chad Mitchell Trio, our favorite folk group from the 1960s. We got off the ship each day and poked around in the places we docked, Bar Harbor and Halifax and such, but our reason for shipping out was to hear the CMT in concert [they did two] and to sit around with them in the evenings after supper and sing folk songs.

When folk music gave way to rock and roll in the late ‘60s, the trio broke up. The previously unknown John Denver had taken Chad Mitchell’s place when he left the trio for a solo career earlier, and he went on to a remarkable solo career of his own.  Mike Kobluk, the bass, went back to Spokane, where the trio had formed out of the glee club at Gonzaga U, and directed cultural events for the city for 35 years. Joe Frazier, the baritone, went to Yale Divinity School and became an Episcopal priest. In recent years, Joe and Mike and Chad have reunited occasionally for concerts, especially those reunion concerts you see on PBS.

Joe likes my book about ministry, “The Strange Calling,” and asked me to help him get started writing a similar book of his own, so we worked on that most afternoons on the cruise.

One afternoon I told him that it is my habit to write one sentence, hopefully one true sentence, as the first thing I do each day, to remind me of who I am.

Hemingway said that is the secret of writing: write one true sentence, and then follow it with another.

Today, my one true sentence was: In the years and places of winter, life becomes both simpler and more complicated.

Perhaps later I’ll follow it with another.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The picture is of the Pine Mountain ski jump in Iron Mountain, MI, the highest man-made ski jump in the world. I started this blog several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] The grandchildren, though, are grown up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the life cycle, so I am still trying to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter. I have a picture that is more appropriate now for Indiana, boys playing basketball in winter snow, but I have not yet figured out how to replace the ski jump picture with the basketball picture.

I tweet as yooper1721.

PHOTOS OF ANCESTORS

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter… ©

We went to see Bill [1] in the hospital. He was on his back, hooked up to many machines, weak. Nonetheless, he recited for us one of his poems which was recently published. The first lines were, “One of my ancestors was a fish, I’m told, but I have no photographs…”

It’s hilarious and insightful, in many ways. Most of us have photos of various ancestors, but the technology, even for a painting, let alone a photo, does not go back that far. We carry the genes of ancestors long gone, but we have no direct evidence that they even existed.

Helen was so taken with the poem, though, and with Bill’s ability to be himself, the thoughtful and lyrical man we have known for oh, so many years, even in the crucible of weakness and pain, that she decided to honor him by getting out one of the pretty, tiny fish-shaped bowls she prizes, no small feat just to find it in the aftermath of a house move, to use for her teabag. Bill is part of her life each day, back to his earliest ancestor, even though he himself has no photographs.

We did not spring full-grown, like Athena from the head of Zeus. We are the result of a long line of folks who struggled to live. By their struggle, they have made our lives possible. I am the photo of my ancestors. Perhaps that’s what the writer of Genesis is reporting when God says, “Let’s make people in our image.” [1:26] Even before the fish, God had a photo of you.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] More properly, The Rev. Dr. William Luther White, Chaplain and Professor of Religion, Illinois Wesleyan University, Retired

The picture is of the Pine Mountain ski jump in Iron Mountain, MI, the highest man-made ski jump in the world. I started this blog several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] The grandchildren, though, are grown up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the life cycle, so I am still trying to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter. I have a picture that is more appropriate now for Indiana, boys playing basketball in winter snow, but I have not yet figured out how to replace the ski jump picture with the basketball picture.

I tweet as yooper1721.

AT-ONE-MENT

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter… ©

[I posted this the first time on 8-15-10.]

In the last few years I have begun to reread books that were important to me when I was new in the ministry. Some have held up very well, like Paul Tillich’s books of sermons. Some have been very disappointing, like Wm. Stringfellow’s Free in Obedience. [The title is still good, though.]

One in particular has been very humbling, Reuel Howe’s Man’s Need and God’s Action. As I reread it, I find that every good idea I’ve had along the way, that I thought was mine, actually comes from that book. The language is a bit formal and stilted, typical of its time. [The copyright is 1953. I read it in seminary in the early 1960s.] The insights, however, are, if anything, even more accurate today.

I had the good fortune, some time in the late 1980s or early 1990s, to be in a continuing education seminar with Reuel at Garrett-Evangelical Seminary. He was retired then, but just as insightful, and quite delightful in person.

In that seminar, he told the story of how, when he was a teenager, his father decided to take the family into the forests of Washington state to homestead. They went deep into the forest with their tents and supplies. Before they had really gotten started, a fire wiped out everything they had. Reuel and his father walked back out to get more supplies, leaving his mother and younger siblings behind. When they returned, they saw that his mother had found a rusted old tin can, picked wild flowers, and placed the bouquet on an old stump. The little children were playing “ring” around it. “She took a tragic incident and recycled it to make something beautiful,” he said. “I learned what was perhaps the only lesson I would ever need on that day.”

All this is leading up to his reflection on atonement in his book. It is the perfect word for what Christ is all about, at-one-ment, to make us at one with God, with the world and our neighbors, and with our own true self.

I, and all the people who have heard me say almost daily for the past 50 years, “Christ came to make us whole, with God, with self, and with the world,” owe a great debt to Reuel Howe.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

[There was no English word for this Biblical idea of making whole, so one of the early English Bible translators created “atonement,” to get across the idea of being restored to wholeness.] (I think I learned this from In the Beginning: The Making of the King James Bible, by Alister McGrath.)

The picture is of the Pine Mountain ski jump in Iron Mountain, MI, the highest man-made ski jump in the world. I started this blog several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] The grandchildren, though, are grown up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the life cycle, so I am still trying to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter. I have a picture that is more appropriate now for Indiana, boys playing basketball in winter snow, but I have not yet figured out how to replace the ski jump picture with the basketball picture.

I tweet as yooper1721.

Staying in the Moment-a poem, sort of

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter… ©

The reason it is good

to stay in the moment

is that there is so much more

in the moment

than just me…

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.