HOW WE LAUGH [W, 10-10-18]

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

About two hours into the six hour drive home, after the four days in Chicago culminating in Mary Beth’s and Bill’s wedding, I made some clever remark to Helen. She laughed and laughed. It wasn’t really that funny. I can’t even remember what I said now. Maybe she laughed so much just because we were tired from all the festivities--even though it was a delightful time with family and friends--and relieved to be going home. You laugh harder when you’re punchy.

Regardless of the reason, it wasn’t the sort of fake excess laughter that you do to show someone you are paying attention, or to ingratiate yourself. After 60 years of marriage, we’re way past that.

Helen has often said that we don’t remember what people say, but we remember how they make us feel. What I remember most about anyone is the way they laughed.

I can’t remember what I said to Helen on the way home, but I remember her laughter. Isn’t that what life is all about, bringing laughter to those you love?

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

“God’s forgiveness is more than a blessing; it’s a challenge.” Wm. Sloane Coffin

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…

My new novel is VETS, about four homeless Iraqistan veterans accused of murdering a VA doctor, is available from your local independent book store, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BOKO, Books-A-Million, Black Opal Books, and almost any place else that sells books. It’s regularly $12.99 for paperback, and $3.99 for ebook, but only 99 cents for a limited time nw. Free if you can get your library to buy one.

THE RADICAL PRAYER [T, 10-9-18]

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

Holy Spirit, if this is right for me, let if become more firmly rooted and established in my life. If this is wrong for me, let it become less important to me, and let it become increasingly removed from my life.

Flora Slosson Wuellner calls this “the radical prayer.” [1]

When I first read it, I thought, “Well, that’s not radical.” In fact, it’s rather prosaic. It certainly does not have the beauty of Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer” or St. Francis of Assisi’s “Instrument of Peace” prayer.

Wuellner means it mostly for addicts, and it seems incredibly insipid for an addict. I mean, if you are praying about an addiction, to say “If this is right for me…” Well, you already know it’s not right for you. Why give God the option of getting it more firmly rooted in your life when it is already too firmly rooted?

Because the first and last job of life—the same job for the first and last stages of human development--is trust. If we don’t learn to trust at first, in the womb and in infancy, we’ll have a hard problem trusting all the way through life. But then at the end, whether because we have “aged out” or been given a terminal diagnosis, trust becomes a factor again. Can we trust God for what will come?

That doesn’t mean “believing” certain things, like what “heaven” is like, or who we’ll see there, etc. Trust and belief are very different.

Wuellner’s “radical” prayer really is, because trust is the most radical thing we can ever do. “Radical” comes from the Latin word for “root.” Trust is the root; it goes all the way down into the soul. Wuellner’s prayer is saying to God: I trust in You. So…

Holy Spirit, if this is right for me, let if become more firmly rooted and established in my life. If this is wrong for me, let it become less important to me, and let it become increasingly removed from my life.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] P. 78,   PRAYER, STRESS, AND OUR INNER WOUNDS [1985, The Upper Room]

“All we ask [in old age] is to be allowed to remain the authors of our own story.” Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p. 140.

“Evil is a soul hiding from itself.” Wm. Sloane Coffin

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.

MARTY CLOSES THE CIRCLE [M, 10-8-18]

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

Fittingly, Marty Pattin died in Charleston, Illinois. It wasn’t designed that way. He was just visiting, from Lawrence, Kansas, where he had lived since he had become the coach of the U of Kansas baseball team.

Before that, though, from the time he was born, he had always lived in Charleston, IL, through his college years at Eastern IL U, and even throughout his thirteen year career pitching in the major leagues.

He pitched for five different teams, including the CA Angels, Seattle Pilots, Milwaukee Brewers, and Boston Red Sox. He made the All Star team as a Brewer--and pitched in the game when Reggie Jackson famously hit the lights above the outfield stands with a towering home run--but he is remembered as a member of the Kansas City Royals, for whom he pitched the last seven years of his career. His final appearance in a major league baseball uniform came when he pitched a perfect 7^th inning, with two strike outs, in the 1980 World Series to help the Royals clinch the title against the Phillies.

In 2016, the baseball field at EIU was named for him.

For a small town with a small university, Charleston-EIU produced a whole lot of professional athletes, including Kevin Seitzer, also a Royal [I baptized the Seitzer’s baby], and Stan Royer, in baseball, and Jeff Gossett, Tony Romo, Sean Payton, Mike Shanahan, and others in football.

Marty was a member of Wesley United Methodist Church in Charleston during the time I was the pastor there. He and his wife came to one of the neighborhood coffees the church sponsored to help folks get acquainted with their new pastor. It was the only time in many such coffees in three different churches that anyone did a Donald Duck impersonation to welcome us.  

Other than getting to point out that I knew a relatively famous person, and I love baseball, why should I write about Marty Pattin in a blog for old people? After all, Marty was only 75 when he died.

Well, because the task of old people is to close the circle. Marty did that, starting in Charleston and ending in Charleston. Not all circle closings will be that obvious or geographical, but, if we are fortunate, we get to circle back, seeing all that happened on the way out.

When I was a long distance runner, I hated out-and-back courses, because while I was still going out, the younger and faster gals and guys were on the way back in. They were working hard, sweating and gasping, looking bad, so to encourage them, those of us still on the way out would call “Lookin’ good” to them as they streaked by.

Now, though, I’m one of those on the way back in. I’m still slow, and tired, and as I meet those on the way out, I call to them, “Lookin’ good,” because they’re going to need all the encouragement they can get to close the circle.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

“All we ask [in old age] is to be allowed to remain the authors of our own story.” Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p. 140.

COME OUT THE WILDERNESS-poem [Su, 10-7-18]

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith and Life for the Years of Winter…  

The boredom of the bleak

gray morning drapes

its stole around my shoulders

and says, Preach. The congregation

of the ancient sins, and slow

to answer, waits with hairless

ears, to hear, with sleep-

slunk answers before deep drunk

questions, and Is this not why

you came out the wilderness?

John Robert McFarland

His disciples could not really see Jesus until he was gone. [A quote, but I have forgotten from whom]

CHORES & ERRANDS-a poem [Sat, 10-6-18]

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter…

Chores and errands

These keep me sane

When winds are high

And the boat is swamped

I walk serenely into the gale

Holding firmly my mop and pail

As winds fly high

And waves meet sky

I swab the decks

Until they’re dry

When the night is dark

And the lamps gone out

And every good intent is dead

I go to the store to buy some bread

When the world’s deceit

Has gobbled the meat

I use my feet

So all can eat

Chores and errands…

John Robert McFarland

“Uncertainty is the mind’s greatest need, and no one thinks to thank God for it.” Emily Dickinson

EVERYTHING IS NOW [F, 10-5-18]

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

An Indiana University tweet shows “the legendary Frank Zappa appeared at IU in 1978.” But isn’t Frank performing now? And isn’t 1978 contemporary? What’s this “legendary” and “1978” business, as though they’re in the past?

When you’ve lived a long time, everything seems like now. Of course, everything seems like past, too, and that’s the same thing. Stick with me on this…

The beauty of old age is that you’re always in the present, just as the psychologists and the bingo parlors tell us we need to be. [You must be present to win.]

When my wife taught high school—I think this particular incident was in the 1980s—one of her students asked her, “What was Hitler really like?” “How old do you think I am?” she replied, She was sorry she did so.

But the kid understood. She’s always been in every moment. Every old person has been in every moment. Every really young person, too.

When our granddaughter was about two, if we told a story about some past family event, long before she was born, she would say, “I was there, too.” Kids understand what old people actually live--we are there all the time, in every moment, past and present.

It’s only as we get into school and then start working up and wearing down through one decade after another that time starts dividing into past and present. We get broken into fragments of time, some past, some present, none of them now.

The gift of new life and of old life—and sometimes they are the same—is to be always in the fullness of now.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

“All we ask [in old age] is to be allowed to remain the authors of our own story.” Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p. 140.

I learned a lot about the eternal now by having cancer. NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them is published by AndrewsMcmeel. It is available in paperback, ebook, audio, Czech, and Japanese.

SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER [R, 10-4-18]

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter…

I was once having a conversation with the governor of Illinois. It was a small gathering, in a private home. The governor and I and the university president were the only men there. At some point, I caught my wife’s eye. It was the evil eye—the one that says, “Listen up, dummy.” So I listened up.

There were only three people talking, the governor and I, standing at the end of the dining room table, and a woman in the living room, holding the attention of all the other women there, plus the university president. Apparently she was an appointed speaker, and while the governor and I were not talking loudly, or even arguing, which might have been expected, since I did not approve of much of what he did as governor, even though I did approve of him as a person and member of my church, we were not paying attention to the speaker, and distracting the listeners by our noise and inattention.

There were reasons for my inattention. I thought it was just a gathering at the home of the university president; no one told me there was a “program.” I was enjoying interacting with the governor, thinking “Someday I’ll be able to write about this.”

When my wife caught my attention, and informed me with her facial expressions that we needed to shut up, I thought about passing that along to the governor. I did not, though. I didn’t continue the conversation myself, but I did not tell him that the conversation we were having without problem earlier had now become an issue. I waited until his wife caught his eye, at which time the conversations stopped in the middle of a word.

The governor’s wife was not afraid to speak truth to power; she was used to it. To her, I’m sure, the governor was not “power.” Just someone she had to shush from time to time.

Not so for me. I could have whispered, “Oh, wait, Governor. We need to stop talking now.” Not a big deal. Except he was the governor! I had known him before he was governor, when he was just “Jim,” but now he was governor. I have told many powerful people to shut up, including the President of the United States. Granted, they were inside the television set at the time, but still… Face to face, though, I could not tell Jim Edgar, even gently, to put a sock in it, as Archie Bunker always so gently told Edith.

So I understand how hard it is to speak truth to power, and thus why the powerful so often do not know the truth. Thus, I admire all the more those who are willing to speak truth to power, even when they know it will lash back on them in unpleasant and even vicious and brutal ways.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com