THE LUTHERAN SHOP OF HORRORS F, 9-8-17

{You need to read the column for yesterday, R, 9-7-17, before reading today’s instalment.}

“The Lutheran Shop of Horrors” [LSH] was not the only script I wrote for Prairie Home Companion [PHC]. There were others also, like “Walleye Dundee,” which was a take-off on “Crocodile Dundee,” about an ice fisherman in the “upback” of MN instead of a crocodile hunter in the “outback” of Australia. I was especially proud, though, of LSH.

Since PHC was set in MN, a heavily Lutheran area, Garrison Keillor featured Lutherans a great deal in the PHC skits, Pastor Ingqvist ant all, although GK was not himself a Lutheran, until much later in life. [1] His favorite trait of Lutherans was guilt, “the gift that keeps on giving.”

As I recall, the man-eating plant in “The Little Shop of Horrors,” was there mistakenly. It ate folks just because it was hungry, and kept getting bigger with each meal, and thus hungrier, and thus wanted and needed more folks to eat. Exactly like guilt, which will just eat a person up… without forgiveness. For the sake of a PHC skit, it was easy for me to turn that general man-eating plant in the little shop of horrors into the guilt plant in the Lutheran shop of horrors.

There was only one subject Jesus talked about more than guilt. That was money. Actually, he didn’t talk about guilt; he talked about forgiveness, for that’s where the action is.

We feel guilt because we have wronged someone—God, another person, the whole community, the world, our own true selves. We are estranged. We can’t bridge that gulf of estrangement by ourselves. It takes forgiveness.

One of the neatest promises in scripture is Romans 12:19, “Vengeance is mine,” says the Lord. That doesn’t mean God is going to “get” your enemies for you, the way Maude, in the eponymous TV sitcom, used to say, “God will get you for that.” It means that we don’t have to do vengeance or to suffer it. We are not responsible for bridging all the gaps. God will take care of that. We don’t have to feel guilty… if we accept forgiveness.

“Ask and you shall receive…” Forgiveness is available. We don’t have to be an entrée in the Lutheran Shop of Horrors.

JRMcF

Johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

1] He grew up in the small Plymouth Brethren denomination, which he referred to in PHC skits as “The Sanctified Brethren.”

As I noted yesterday, my PHC writing stint was quite short. Only a month or so after Margaret Moos asked me for more scripts, GK announced that he was ending the show and marrying the former exchange student and moving to Denmark. That didn’t last, but it ended my radio writing career.

Katie Kennedy is the rising star in YA lit. [She is also our daughter.] She is published by Bloomsbury, which also publishes lesser authors, like JK Rowling. Her latest book is, What Goes Up. It’s published in hardback, paperback, audio, and electronic, from B&N, Amazon, etc.

Speaking of writing, my most recent book, VETS, about four homeless and handicapped Iraqistan veterans, is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BOKO, Powell’s, etc. It’s published by Black Opal Books.

AUTHORITY WITHOUT CREDENTIALS 9-7-17

For a very short time, back in 1986-7, I wrote for “The Prairie Home Companion” [PHC] radio show on MN Public Radio, hosted by Garrison Keillor.

At his high school’s 25^th class reunion, GK had met again the class’s Danish exchange student and fallen in love with her. This understandably caused the producer for PHC, Margaret Moos, with whom GK was living, to move out and go to Los Angeles to produce radio programs there. Stephen Solarz took over producing PHC.

In the back pages of “The New Yorker,” I saw a small box ad that said PHC was looking for a writer and that interested parties should send their resumes to Solarz. I was sure that I could write for PHC, because I shared a brain with GK. [1]

I loved PHC. I listened to it faithfully. I demanded “radio silence” of everyone in the house so that I would not miss a single word. I knew the ends of GK’s lines before he spoke them.

I also knew that Solarz would discard without consideration a resume that said “small town Methodist preacher.” They were bound to get enough resumes from real writers that they didn’t need to consider some minor leaguer like me. That was true. I later learned they received five hundred resumes. [It may have been five thousand. I remember the “five” but not the word after. Either way, it was a big number.]

So I just wrote some scripts for skits for the show and sent them off. Put my name and address on them but otherwise didn’t identify myself. Sure enough, one afternoon I got a telephone call. From Margaret Moos.

“But, Margaret,” I said. “I thought you had left PHC.”

“I did,” she said, “but things sort of fell apart. They asked me to come back. I’ve been here in Minneapolis two weeks. I brought one suitcase. I’ve been so busy I haven’t even unpacked it yet. I read the scripts you sent. I love them. I want you to write more.”

She didn’t ask anything about who I was. At that point, it didn’t matter. My words were my credentials.

It reminds me of what his early listeners said about Jesus: He speaks as one having authority in himself, and not as those who are credentialed to teach the Torah, the Law. [2] He did not need a PhD in Bible, or in continuing education for adults, or in preaching. His words were his credentials. [3]

One of the things he spoke about most was guilt, and how to deal with it. So tomorrow I’ll tell you about a script I wrote for PHC. “The Little Shop of Horrors” was a popular movie then. It featured a little flower shop with a man eating plant. So one of the PHC “Movies on Radio” scripts I wrote was “The Lutheran Shop of Horrors,” about the man-eating guilt plant.

If your problem is trying to deal with guilt… well, just be patient until tomorrow. If your problem is impatience… well, we’ve really got a problem.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] Here I have the late and lamented George Loveland to thank. The first year we worked together, he as the Methodist campus minister at Eastern IL U, he gifted me at Christmas with a year’s subscription to “The New Yorker.” I liked it, and kept renewing the subscription.

2] Mark 1:21-28; Matthew 7:29; Luke 4:32.

3] That is why it is a bad mistake for Christians to say that the Bible is the Word of God. Christ had the Word of God directly, in himself. It is Christ who is the Word, not the Bible.

FIVE GALLONS AND INDEPENDENCE W, 9-6-17

As gas prices rise in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, and oil companies, as usual, see it as an excuse to gouge customers, I am reminded of how we are now addicted, not to oil, for there are many other fuels that could be developed if the big oil companies did not own half of our senators and congressmen, but to cars.

Bill Linneman, distinguished professor emeritus of English at ILSU, recently wrote a column in which he announced that he was giving up driving. He waxed long and eloquently about how nice it is not to have a car to maintain and how good it is not to drive. “I live in a retirement community,” he said, “and they have a bus that takes me anywhere I need to go. It’s much more fun and relaxing to watch the sights and scenes instead of the town instead of trying to avoid wild and stupid drivers. That’s the reason I’m giving up driving.” Then he added, “Also, I failed the exam.”

My friend Bob has driven a whole lot of cars a whole lot of miles over a whole lot of topography. He never passed a driver’s license exam, though, until he was 70.

He grew up in Mississippi. His family did not have a car, so he had no driving experience. As a teen, he was riding around one day with a friend who said, “Hey, you want to go get your license?”

“Sure,” said Bob.

They went to the BMV, or whatever it was called in MS, and he took the test. He failed. A couple of weeks later he received his license in the mail. He did not return it.

Apparently failing the driving test can mean either that you give up driving or you start.

Since then Bob has lived in several different states, all of which have different laws for getting driver’s licenses, and renewing them, and he hit all of them just right, like hitting all the lights just as they turn green. All the states assumed that the one before it knew what it was doing and kept renewing his license. He did not have to take another license exam until he was 70.

In our society, driving means independence. Old people want to keep driving as long as possible. My Aunt Gertrude drove Helen and me to a restaurant one day when we were visiting her. She was in her mid-80s and a very good driver. But she said us, “I have told my children: Let me know when I should stop driving, and I will.” A few years later, they did, and she did. She is a good model, for everyone else. Not for me, though. My kids are way too stupid to know when I should stop driving.

As the old song about Big John says, “If you see me coming, better step aside…”

 JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The title, “Five Gallons and Independence,” comes from a book my father read when I was little, Five Acres and Independence, about how to live adequately on a five acre farm. Most of us want independence, Daddy especially. He was blind so he could not get independence through a car. He decided to try the five acres approach. Five acres weren’t enough. When I left home, five gallons were enough to get me from that farm to college, and my form of independence.

RESPECT FOR LABOR M, 9-4-17

Today is the celebration of Labor Day in the USA. It is noteworthy because, in most places, it is the last day of the swimming season. Starting tomorrow, the public pools will be closed.

It is also worth celebrating because of its value to old people, who can say, “Good grief, in my day we didn’t start school until after Labor Day, and now they start in August, or July, even. Soon there won’t be any vacation from school at all.”

Old people don’t know it, but “soon” is already here. Even young people don’t realize how soon “soon” is coming, and not just because of year-around schooling.

Labor Day was originally a day to celebrate the achievements of the Labor Union movement—such as the 8 hour workday, the end to child labor, safety regulations, health insurance, paid vacations, overtime pay for overtime work. In many sectors of the economy, those are now hollow celebrations, as pensions, health insurance, safety regulations, minimum wages, and overtime pay are being eroded.

“Soon,” though means that there are not enough jobs to go around. Robots and computers and AI [artificial intelligence] are replacing people. Companies like Caterpillar have stated publicly that their goal is to have no human workers at all, everything done by robots.

The great achievement of the Labor Union movement was not pensions and the like, but respect, respect for laborers as an important part of the economic system. In a capitalist system, it’s easy to lose sight of that. The owner of Papajohn’s pizza has famously said that he should not have to share the fabulously wealthy profits from his business with his workers, like paying a decent wage, because “they don’t contribute anything to its success.”

Yes, adequate pay, and health care, and pensions, all those things are important, but the most important thing of all in working is respect, not just by others, but self-respect. We need to feel that we are making a contribution to the society with our work, that what we are doing is important, even if it’s baking pizzas.

If there are no jobs, there is no respect. Also, there won’t be any customers, even for pizza.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Katie Kennedy is the rising star in YA lit. [She is also our daughter.] She is published by Bloomsbury, which also publishes lesser authors, like JK Rowling. Her latest book is, What Goes Up. It’s published in hardback, paperback, audio, and electronic, from B&N, Amazon, etc.

SEPTEMBER LIGHT-a poem Su, 9-3-17

In September the days are cooler

and I can walk in the woods

while luncheon dishes wait.

In summer I must walk as early

as my body and the day allow,

for then the days are hot with

sweat.

I puff and wheeze.

I grow weak and am not steady.

Those days make me think

that I am old.

In autumn I can wait

to walk in the woods until

the sun is slanting

through the tall pines

and yellowing birches,

neither sharp nor mottled.

I move smoothly

tacking only slightly

from side to side

to keep the world from tilting.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

THE DAY OF MY NAME-a poem Sa, 9-2-17

The sun does not always shine

on Sundays,

and weddings are rarely

on Wednesday.

Each week the days,

and their names,

come and go,

as farmers on parade,

scythes on shoulders.

I watch the parade,

looking for the day

that bears my name.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

THE AGING STRANGER F, 9-1-17

John S. Dunne, the Jesuit writer, says that we meet three strangers in life. Whether we live successfully depends upon whether we make friends of these strangers, or if they become enemies.

The first stranger is the world. When we are conceived, we are totally connected to the world as we know it, our mother’s womb, her body and psyche. After we are born, we still don’t think of ourselves as separate. We are solipsists, we don’t know the difference between our own skin and the blanket we are wrapped in or the bed we lie on. Gradually, we make the distinction. We are separate from the world. Now the world is a stranger…

The second stranger is sexuality. We are going along very nicely, riding our bikes, playing with our friends, and suddenly Adam’s apples and breasts develop, hormones kick in, we are sexual people, driven by nature to reproduce, although we experience it, really, as just feeling a need for sex. Will we control our sexuality, or will it control us? Will it be a friend or an enemy?

The third stranger is mortality. There is a maxim that in grade school years, we learn that others die. In high school, we learn that we shall die. That’s one of the reasons for the major identity crisis of adolescence. If we’re going to die anyway, what’s the use of life?

I suppose “aging” can be thought of as part of mortality, but to me, it seems separate. When we get old enough that we are no longer producers, that the world does not need us, except as decorative items at family gatherings, how do we make peace with that? Will this fourth stranger of aging be a friend, as we make peace with our past and our current nothingness, as well as with our impending death, or will this stranger become an enemy of despair?

Over and through all, there is the first and final stranger, the Alpha and the Omega, God. We make friends with the world and sexuality and mortality and aging by making friends with God. We make friends with God by making friends of the world and sexuality and mortality and aging.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com