don't eat alone

inconsequential

2012-01-30T22:42:00.000-05:00

How to live with the adjective inconsequential?

That’s the way John Berger posed the question as I sat with his book a couple of days ago in the coffee shop waiting for time to start my after school job. He was talking about the role of the artist and writer in the face of the violence which has dominated our world for centuries. What good does it do to write poetry and sing songs and make whatever art we can to wage peace and speak truth to power when the someday when we shall overcome never gets any closer on the calendar?

So one asks oneself: Do words count? And there must sometimes come back a reply like this: Words here are like stones put into pockets of roped prisoners before they are thrown into a river. (79)

The news talked this morning about a couple of cities, including nearby Charlotte, where the last of the Occupy campers were being evicted by police. The tone of the newscasters came across as one of the now-we-can-be-done-with-that variety. The criticism has been that the folks who lived in our parks for so long weren’t focused enough and didn’t know what they were protesting for, but I think that criticism misses the point. As Berger continues,

One protests because not to protest would be too humiliating, too diminishing, too deadly. One protests in order to save the present moment, whatever the future holds. To protest is to refuse being reduced to a zero and to an enforced silence. Therefore, at the very moment a protest is made, if it is made, there is a small victory. (79)

Though I was miles away from any of the camps, I was encouraged by those who took to the streets and the parks because they reminded me to not give into my cynicism. I have allowed the political process in this country to reduce me to feeling like a zero. I have let myself believe that the lobbyists have had the last word by buying off our alleged leaders leaving me, well, inconsequential.

And I’m not sure I’m wrong. The truth is the One Percent have most of the money and the power and they continue to tilt the game their way. The truth is, as John Stewart commented the other night on The Daily Show, “the poor have shitty lobbyists.” The truth is the candidates will spend enough money on their campaigns to fully fund Head Start programs across the country but will instead waste the cash on the political equivalent of a playground fight. Yet, the protestors in the park call me to a different view, as does John Berger. They call me to ask a better question:

How to live with the adjective inconsequential?

The adjective is temporal. Perhaps a possible and adequate response is spatial? To go closer and closer to what is being redeemed from the present within the hearts of those who refuse the present’s logic. A storyteller can sometimes do this.

The refusal of the protesters then becomes the feral cry, the rage, the humour, the illumination of the women, men, and children in a story. Narrative is another way of making a moment indelible, for stories when heard stop the unilinear flow of time and render the adjective inconsequential meaningless. (80)

As I hear the feral cry of the Occupy-ers, I wonder where are the feral Faithful? The voices crying in the wildnerness, “Prepare ye, the way of the Lord”? For those who have been called to proclaim liberty to the captives, we have been far too silent. Or, at least, I have.

Last week, I had the honor of going with Ginger to the annual meeting of Durham Congregations In Action where Ginger was installed as president for the coming year. DCIA is a strong voice of protest and promise in Durham and I’m proud of both Ginger and the group. The keynote speaker was William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP, another essential voice of faithful protest and hope in our state. He spoke with the power and poetry of a prophet, and asked a good question of his own:

Do you know who you are?

At the close of the service, Ginger was called to offer the benediction. She asked us to turn and face each other from either side of the hall and then each side took turns asking the other, “Do you know who you are?” with as much attitude as we could muster. We volleyed the question back and forth four or five times, the emphasis changing as we spoke:

Do you KNOW who you are?
Do YOU know who you are?
Do you know who YOU are?

I know who I want to be. I know, most days, what story I want to write with my life and I far too often let myself forget and fall prey to feeling inconsequential. I know it is far easier to define myself as not being one of those whose actions I hold in contempt than it is to define myself and tell my story. Jesus knew what he was doing in calling us to love our enemies because that love takes away any chance of using them as fuel for our arrogance and righteous indignation. The real story is there is no Us and Them, only Us. In that context, do I know who I am?

To you Occupy-ers, I’m sorry I am late to the game as far as speaking up and offering an encouraging word. You are speaking truth to power because you are telling a story: your story, our story. Perhaps parable would be a better word because, like the ones Jesus told, the point is not that easy to figure out yet there’s something in there worth digging for. What you are doing reminds me of words that matter from one of my favorite stories, King Lear:

The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. (V,iii,322-323)

Words count. Actions matters. Faith works.

Peace,
Milton

making mistakes

2012-01-25T21:19:00.000-05:00

Over the past few weeks I have been editing a book manuscript for someone I don’t know. When I grade student essays, I know whose paper is in front of me, which colors how I both read and comment, but this time I am not being asked to teach, only edit. The hardest part, in many ways, is not being able to picture who put down the words that are now looking back at me. Microsoft Word’s “track changes” mode has made the unfortunate choice to use red as the color of the altered text, which I fear carries all the baggage of every corrected essay the writer ever received along the way. I don’t know how she will read the red, my trail of wounds to her words, even as I struggle to find a way to infuse each stroke with some kind of encouragement.

In between editing sessions, I am still reading John Berger, who continues to amaze me. He is writing about being at the National Gallery in London on Good Friday and deciding to draw the figure of Christ in the Crucifixion by Antonello de Messina. He finds the painting, and then realizes he will have to work stealthily around the guards who wander from room to room. Here’s the paragraph that caught me:

I start drawing. Correcting error after error. Some trivial. Some not. The crucial question is the scale of the cross on the page. If this is not right, the surrounding space will exert no pressure, and there’ll be no resistance. I’m drawing with ink and wetting my index finger with spit. Bad beginning. I turn the page and restart. I won’t make the same mistake again. I’ll make others, of course. I draw, correct, draw. (52)

As I worked my way through the manuscript, I wished for a better way to explain myself, because I made lots of marks and changes. The commas are scattered across the page like confetti after a parade and I have to help sweep them up. In some places, the writer was so caught up in the emotion of the passage that they lost track of the tense and I had to call them into consistency. Then there were the places where the author moved from A to G or H without showing the reader how to follow, leaving rather philosophical potholes in the middle of the page big enough for said reader to get lost or give up. I recognized the errors because I have made them myself.

I worked in short shifts, seeking to stay fresh enough to be encouraging. I learned from my days of grading stacks of student essays that I had to pause every few pages and remind myself I needed to wield my pen with some measure of gentleness, rather than using the opportunity to demonstrate my expertise. I remembered that some days better than others. The word from which our word error comes meant wandering, as though the idea of an error or mistake carried with it the idea of having wandered off course. As I have been reading, I have carried that image, seeing the author out in the middle of a field, off the path they were shooting for, chasing an idea that had gotten away and dropping commas like bread crumbs, it seems. My choice was between correcting in a voice that sounded like a frightened parent (“Where have you been? You had us worried. Don’t ever wander off like that again.”) or a fellow traveler (“I’ve missed that turn myself; let me show you the way back to the path.”) As I edited, I became aware I was making mistakes of my own. When I got ready to send the manuscript, I spent an evening composing the letter to go with it, making sure the author understood the story didn’t belong to me and that my task was to offer suggestions and create a conversation.

As much as I wanted to throw pillows to soften the blows, I also know there is great value in failure. I took my job seriously and I mean what I wrote as I deleted and added to what had been given to me. Part of the way we find our way back from our wanderings is through those who have the courage to say, “You’ve made a mistake and have wandered off the path.” For the manuscript to be all that it can be, much needs to change. The writer needs to wrestle with what they wanted to say and what ended up on the page for the book to be ready for others to read. I expect to go through it again once the author responds, looking for more ways to improve it. To paraphrase Berger: write, correct, write.

One day, I hope, I will get to meet the author and hear the story behind how the book came to be and, perhaps, how they felt seeing my fingerprints all over their pages. Till then, I hope they can see beyond the red marks and hear my encouragement: the manuscript is worth revising.

Write, correct, write. How else will we learn?

Peace,
Milton

first followers

2012-01-22T22:20:00.000-05:00

I do wonder what was
left out of the story.
Jesus would walk up and
say, “Come follow me”
and people just walked
off from fishing boats
and families to catch
people, be puzzled by
parables, and remain
gainfully unemployed.

Part of me is curious
about what was not
worth remembering.
Most of me marvels
at their unflinching
faith, which feels far
from familiar, for
I have promises to keep.
Go ahead, Jesus –
I’ll catch up later.

Peace,
Milton

it begins like this . . . .

2012-01-19T22:32:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, I arrived early for my shift at the computer store, so I got a coffee at the Barnes and Noble next door and sat down at a table to read a little of my John Berger book. The chapter I opened to started:

It begins like this . . . .

Just as I was settling in, a woman moved between the crowded tables to the only vacant one available. She was middle aged, as best I could tell, Asian, a little tired, and quite determined to make sure she got a table. She was carrying a large satchel and a stack of documents on top of it. She pulled out one of the chairs and placed her things in it. Then she opened the bag and retrieved some paper towels and began to wipe off the table. She cleaned it like it was her job, wiping away any remnant of those who had left only moments before she had arrived.

At first, I assumed she cleaned out of fear, determined to not be exposed to any lingering germs, but there was not an iota of anxiety in her movements. The more I watched her (trying not to appear as though I were studying what she was doing), I began to see that she moved with an artist’s flair. Rather than wiping anything away, she was creating cleanliness, if you will, laying it down like paint or polish, a varnish of intention preparing the table for the moment for which it had been created when she would sit with her tea and her notebooks in the light of the last of the afternoon sun.

It begins like this . . . .

I kept rereading Berger’s opening sentence as I looked back and forth between the words on the page and the woman at the next table who had finished her preparation and had seated herself to begin that for which she had prepared a place. I took out my Moleskin notebook and began writing down details so I could repaint the picture at a later time. She opened the satchel and pulled out a stack of about ten greeting cards, all still in their plastic sheathes. She carefully opened one of the envelopes, pulled out the card, and laid it on the table. As she turned to sip her tea, I read the card:

“Thank you for being special.”

That’s all of the story I was able to get. My time was up and my shift ready to begin. I wished for the freedom to lean across the chair between us and tell her it had been fascinating to watch her lay down her layer of intention, but I would have been the only one talking across tables and she had never turned in my direction during any of her work. She was also not the only story in the room; she was the only one I noticed. I marked my place in my book with the receipt from my coffee and made my way out of the store, wondering about the beginning I had seen unfold.

When I was a kid, my brother and I used to like to make up stories about people we saw in airports and such. OK, I liked to make up the stories; Miller was kind enough to listen, since we were the only audience each other had during our family travels. As you might imagine, my image of who the strangers were leaned toward the fantastic and intriguing. Everyone was a spy or some sort of exotic vagabond. It never crossed my mind to say, “The man in the overcoat is lonely and wishing his daughter would call to see how he is doing,” or “The girl in the corner has kept a journal everyday for seven years – and it all rhymes.”

I keep thinking about the woman and the table and the card and wondering how the story played out. It begins like this: on a winter afternoon, she prepared her heart and a table to make time and room to write the filling for a card whose outside read, “Thank you for being special.” Perhaps it was an expression of unflinching gratitude. Maybe, they were words that needed to be said to span a breach or heal a wound, but they weren’t words that came easily, so she had wiped the table and laid down a layer of love and a blanket of forgiveness in which she could wrap her words and write what she felt rather than what she ought to say. Then again, maybe she was a spy and the whole thing was a brilliant cover.

It begins like this . . . .

Berger was talking about being asked to restore a painting a friend of his had found in a junk shop that was worth something, though quite deteriorated. She had asked him to see if he could repair it and he worked to find a way to connect to the moment in the past when the painter had laid brush to canvas. After a couple of days of anguish, he wrote

I paint freely, inspired by the longing of what is there on the canvas. I discover how in the corner of a small room the light, falling on two peeling walls and half a dozen throw-down flowers, is a kind of promise from some distant, unimaginable future.

The job is done. There it is, a painting by Kleber, 1922.

A moment has, for a moment, been saved. This moment occurred before I was born. Is it possible to send promises backwards?

As I look back to my recent past and the incidental encounter with the woman at the next table – an encounter known only to me – I wonder why the image of her preparing a place hangs so fresh in my memory, why it matters I tell it tonight, or why I am moved by Berger’s idea of sending promises back in time as I think of her and her table and her greeting card.

I have better questions than answers.

Peace,
Milton

an earring of hope

2012-01-17T22:44:00.002-05:00

Today is Steve Earle’s birthday.

I’ve been listening to his songs all day, which is not so different from many other days, just more purposed. I love both his music and his story: he is a living testament to hope and redemption. One of my favorite tunes is “Some Dreams,” which was used as the theme song for The Rookie and embodies his tenacity and determination.

The chorus says, simply

some dreams
they never come true
they never come true
yeah, but some dreams do

As a recovering addict, he knows of what he speaks. As I listened to it this week, the two middle lines were the ones that hung with me: some dreams never come true. Life, often, doesn’t go the way we plan or even hope for. There are dreams we can taste and see, things we know how to bring into being if things were to fall a certain way and those things don’t fall. We have worthy ideas and good plans and, still, some dreams . . . .

I know. Aren’t you glad you read this far?

Please keep going, because I did. As I kept singing the song, something hit me in a way that it had not before – and I can express it best in a paraphrase of the same chorus:

some dreams
they never come true
they never come true
yeah, but someone’s do . . . .

On the heels of MLK Day and the countless repetitions of his “I Have a Dream” speech (which never gets old), I am aware in ways I was not before that dreams come to life – and death – in community. Whatever a dream becomes is born out of togetherness. AS long as I’m paraphrasing, there is no “I” in d-r-e-a-m. (Now you will quit reading.) Dreams have a chance to come true when community congeals around them; when mine don’t, I then have the chance to find meaning and healing in a dream that belongs to someone else in this shared adventure we call life together. I get to help your dreams come true or, perhaps, we will stand together in our magnificent defeats. That’s good news all on its own.

When I was in seminary, I pastured a small rural church in Central Texas populated, mostly, by farmers and ranchers, most all of whom planted some sort of hay each spring. When it came time, harvesting was a communal exercise. We all showed up at whoever’s farm ripened first and helped them cut, bail, and haul the hay into their barn. By the time we were finished, someone else’s field was ready. Over the course of a couple of weeks, we worked our way around four or five farms. My contribution was to bring out a couple of my large seminary friends who knew how to haul hay. We worked hard, ate well, took care of each other, and came away with some good stories to tell. Occasionally, a mistimed thunder storm would mean the hay that was cut but not yet bailed was going to be lost on one of the farms. Again, I saw the power of community as the ranchers took care of one another.

And they would all plant again the next year.

John Berger is a writer and artist who inspires me. I am in the middle of his latest work, Bento’s Sketchbook: How Does the Impulse to Draw Something Begin? is stretching both my mind and heart. In a chapter that has nothing to do with what I’m talking about here, he makes this statement, describing the work of another artist:

A sense of belonging to what-has-been and to the yet-to-come is what distinguishes [us] from the other animals. Yet to face History is to face the tragic. Which is why many prefer to look away. To decide to engage oneself in History requires, even when the decision is a desperate one, hope. An earring of hope.

I smiled when I first read the last sentence. The two little silver rings that have lived in my left ear lobe for twelve or thirteen years found a new shine and significance in his words. These are days around here – and by here I am drawing a larger circle than our address – where pain and grief and loss feel as common as weather. Things we thought would happen will not. People we hoped would stay have gone. Here, in between the what-has-been and the yet-to-come, we are working hard to engage. Were it a matter of saying, “I must go on,” I’m not sure many would do so. But even as we face the tragedy that is life, we are also being offered invitations by those around us to remember we belong. Some of the invitations to dream beyond ourselves are as small as trusting we can get to lunch or carry on a conversation. Others offer the chance to see dreams come true in everything from supporting midwives in Guatemala to opening an urban farm in East Durham to making music and writing books. And that’s just here in Durham. I don’t mean to make it sound as though the strings well up at sunset and everything is hunky dunky, and yet I do catch a glimpse of something in the midst of my melancholy, a flash of promise.

An earring of hope.

Peace,
Milton

sing-a-long

2012-01-15T23:45:00.000-05:00

if I had a nickel for every song
written about how hard life is
out on the road singing I’d have
enough to buy the record and sing
along with the self-indulgence
and understand how the beat of life
(kick-drum-karma?) molds a melody
out of misery in search of a sing-a-long
to the click track of daily existence

or maybe those songs come to mind
late at night as I stare at a blank
computer screen looking for words
to describe how hard it is to write
when I have stayed away from
the page long enough to lose
confidence or any sight of the
resonance with the readers

I imagine are on the receiving end
could it be these words and music
are less self-indulgent than simile
(living my life is like real life)
offered with a hint of interrogative
verses in search of a chorus
of folks who recognize the tune
and know the words but are kind
enough to let me feel original

Peace,
Milton

six years on . . .

2011-12-27T21:57:00.002-05:00

On Tuesday, December 27, 2005, I began writing this blog with these words:

I've been staring at the "posting" screen for several days now trying to figure out how to join the world of food bloggers. Since I'm writing from a Mac and I don't know much about HTML, I'm still not sure about adding links and so forth. I wanted the blog to look less plain, but I decided to work with what I have rather than wait for everything to be perfect.

Tonight, Tuesday, December 27, 2011, I am still working with what I have rather than waiting for everything to be perfect. That train never comes. What has arrived in my life over these six years is a feast of friends and connections and experiences, along with the practice of writing which has helped me, challenged me, inspired me, and humbled me.

I am grateful for the journey.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: fifty-six christmases

2011-12-24T23:16:00.000-05:00

fifty six christmases

and it matters more than
ever that Christ is born again
in the carols round the tree
in the sharing of meals
in the gift-wrapped bits of love
in the quiet streets of the city
in the empty chair at the table
in the ache of growing
and knowing too much
in the memories that hang
on the tree and in my heart
more than ever this year
I need Jesus to be born

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: first supper

2011-12-23T22:00:00.000-05:00

we have several mangers on our mantle
made of materials from ‘round the world
each a collection of the usual suspects
along with a contingent of livestock

but there’s no food

the magi made the effort to bring
incense and offerings, but not one
covered dish made the journey
the shepherds too were empty handed

on his way out Jesus gathered
his friends and fed them a meal
to remember over and over
every time you eat he said

but for all the angels and alleluias
all the stars and promises
how can it be no one thought
mary and joseph might be hungry

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: here's how love comes to town

2011-12-22T23:54:00.000-05:00

here’s how love comes to town

on the back of a donkey
in the womb of a teenager
to a sleepy little town
without a decent hotel

on the smile of a friend
in the heart of a stranger
who shares your grief
and makes room for it

on the whisper of hope
in the ear of the darkness
calling out our names
as if we all mattered

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: god.with.us.

2011-12-21T23:20:00.000-05:00

On this longest night, we gathered in our church sanctuary for our annual “Blue Christmas” service, which is designed to offer sanctuary to those who are grieving in the midst of the festivities, no matter what the loss. Ginger had candles across the altar at the front of the church, along with those in our Advent wreath and a table set for dinner (using our Christmas dishes) at the front as well. My friend Terry and I opened the service with “I Wonder as I Wander.” I sang the first verse acapella and then he wandered and wondered on his harmonica, drawing us all deeper into the darkness and the hope.

We then sang “In the Bleak Midwinter,” which is one of my favorite carols. I love the intentional simplicity of the lyric:

in the bleak midwinter frosty winds made moan
earth stood hard as iron water like a stone
snow had fallen snow on snow snow on snow
in the bleak midwinter long ago

As we sang together on this longest night of snow stacking up, I thought about how those in the early church tied celebration of Jesus’ birth to the solstice. Some say it was to counteract, or even appropriate, pagan cultures and celebrations. But as I sat in the service tonight, thinking of Jesus who was born nowhere near either any December or snow on snow, I found a compelling pull to celebrating Christmas right now. Tomorrow night, you see, will be a little bit shorter than tonight, and the one that follows even shorter still. We sing of frozen water and snow drifts and celebrate Jesus’ birth just as the planet is turning back to the light as a way to remind ourselves that it will not always be winter or dark or painful. The tiny baby in Bethlehem, who never knew of snow or much of winter, is born in our time and in our culture just as the tide is turing.

Alleluia.

The promise of a Messiah was centuries old by the time Mary and Joseph settled in behind the inn. The Messiah that showed up was not yet fully formed, so everyone had to wait another thirty years for him to come into his own. When the angel came to tell Joseph what was going down, he comforted the carpenter by saying, “You should name him ‘Emmanuel,’ which means “God With Us.”

God. With. Us.

Whether the night is long or the day full of summer, whether the snow is stacking up or the sunshine beats down, God is with us. We are not alone.

Terry and I also performed one of my favorite hymns, “Come, Ye Disconsolate.”

come ye disconsolate
where’er ye languish
come to the mercy seat
fervently kneel
here bring your wounded hearts
here tell your anguish
earth has no sorrow
that heaven cannot heal

I learned the hymn as a child and it sounded much like this. This afternoon while I was rehearsing, my friend Jay and I found this version that changed the way I thought of the song from a great old hymn to a great old bluesy gospel number. The discovery gave me the freedom to sing a bluesier version myself. We also found an “original lyric” to the hymn that changed the third line of the second verse to sing:

joy of the desolate
light of the straying
hope when all else is dead
faithful and pure

Whatever night Jesus actually came into the world twenty centuries ago, for most it was a bleak midwinter of the heart, a season of grief that meant most everything was dead or frozen, the trees had turned to skeletons, and the dark seemed endless.

So it was tonight as it was long ago.

We finished our time together singing of the hopes and fears of all the years, yet what we felt were those that belong to this year, to pain and despair. How good to sit together, to wonder together, to sing together and remember the boy was named Emmanuel.

God. With. Us.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: penultimate

2011-12-20T23:29:00.000-05:00

penultimate

on this tuesday night
we sat around the table
as though we had
all the night we wanted
to eat and drink and
laugh and talk and hope
we even had time for pie

tomorrow night
our prodigal planet
will wander as far
as it ever does from
the light of the sun
and then start back

what a gift that we can
live out a prophetic parable
with pork chops and pecan pie
leaning into the light
even as we head deeper
into the darkness

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: advent-ku carols

2011-12-19T23:48:00.000-05:00

a midnight clear
angels bending near the earth
peaceful wings unfurled

there in a manger
little lord Jesus laid down
cattle are lowing

angels heard on high
and the mountains in reply
gloria Deo

wander as wonder
poor orn’ry people like you
and like me (not I)

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: nothing new to say

2011-12-18T22:25:00.000-05:00

Two years ago today, my good friend David Gentiles died. Losing someone that close brought new feelings for me. Yesterday marked nine weeks since we buried my father-in-law, who was the first of our parents to die. The grief of these days is new to me, but as I sat in church this morning, for reasons I don’t know, it struck me that what is new to me is not new.

What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
"See, this is new"?
It has been already in the ages before us.
(Ecclesiastes 1:9-10)

If we’re talking about grief, it shows up early on just east of Eden when Cain killed his brother Abel. Whatever else we might find in that story, grief is front and center. Death and loss show up in the first chapter and have kept repeating their performances. From the beginning, we have had to learn without all the pieces of our hearts intact. Grief entered the story early, along with jealousy and anger, but so did grace and hope and redemption. Even God’s love is not new. It is, in fact, the very raw material of all creation, the very stuff that brought the universe into existence, long before humans came on the scene convinced that we were the most essential element and nothing of great significance – or, certainly, more significance – than ourselves had ever happened.

One of my favorite readings of the Creation Story was new to me when I was in seminary, though it dated back to Irenaeus in the second century. He felt Adam and Eve were created as children and God’s admonition to stay away from the Tree was to give them time to grow up. Their sin in eating the fruit was in growing up too fast and thinking they knew better than God.

There is nothing new under the sun.

As I think about what is new to me, whatever the feeling or experience might be, I realize we go through life much like the explorers before us “discovering” things that were already there. The only people who thought Columbus discovered America were those back in Spain who thought they were the center of their very limited universe. To people already on the “undiscovered” land had known about it for centuries. As I discover new experiences, new ages, and new feelings I am stumbling on to well-trodden paths as though I am the first to walk there. What I am feeling is not new. I am, instead, connecting with a memory older than time itself, offering me the chance to feel humility, resonance, wonder, and hope alongside of my grief.

Yesterday I waited on a man at the computer store who had his daughter with him. He held her the whole time we were talking. She had jet black hair that framed her young face and black eyes that glistened they were so dark. She smiled every time I looked at her. “Your daughter is lovely,” I said. “How old is she?”

“She has a birthday tomorrow,” he replied. “She will be two.”

She was born the day David died. As one heart as big as the world left the planet, this young one found it all new. I wonder as I wander . . . .

This afternoon, I found myself singing Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game,”which describes a boy growing up from a child to adulthood. The chorus sings:

and the seasons they go round and round
and the painted ponies go up and down
we're captive on the carousel of time
we can't return we can only look
behind from where we came
and go round and round and round
in the circle game

This morning, I finished my Advent stint as the prophet. After four seasons here in Durham, some of our children don’t know of Advent without me. As I turned to face them when I reached the back of the sanctuary as the congregation and I were finishing the song, I could see the three and four year olds singing, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” Circling round the seasons to do again what we have done before, to look for new eyes and new ears, to pray for Christ to be born again in our time and our culture is at the heart of what it means to be both hopeful and human. It’s not about looking for what is new but remembering what it true.

What is true is we were created with the capacity for wonder, with the ability to be caught by surprise by what has been there all along. We sat in the theater in High Point on Friday watching Scrooge be dragged about by the three ghosts until he came to the new realization that people mattered more than things. We all knew the old, old story, just as Dickens was writing down a tale that preceded him dressed in different clothes. And it was worth repeating.

I will keep repeating these days of loss and learn how much it matters to keep remembering and listening that I might discover more of who I am and who God is.

Here’s the good news : there is nothing new under the sun. Surprise!

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: innkeepers

2011-12-17T23:15:00.000-05:00

I’ve been thinking
about the innkeeper
actually all of those
in Bethlehem who

have taken a bad rap
over two millennia for
not making room
as if no vacancy

is some sort of sin
it was after all
Jesus being born
did they not know

did they not see
than angel choir
the way the animals
all laid down

as though posing
for a nativity scene
is it that hard to notice
when Jesus shows up?

that last question
is rhetorical ---- right?

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: goo is love

2011-12-16T23:01:00.007-05:00

I love to tell the story for those who know it best
seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest . . .

We took our high school kids on a field trip to High Point, North Carolina to see a production of “A Christmas Carol” today. The 10 a. m. performance played to a hall full of school kids of varying ages. The cast did a good job telling an incredibly familiar story. It’s not as though we were going to be surprised how Scrooge responded to the three ghosts who haunted him into embracing his humanity. As familiar as it is, it’s not a story that gets old for me. I love the idea that we can learn, that even the most jaded of us can find light again, that, as Huey Lewis sings, “You don’t need money, don’t need fame, don’t need no credit card to ride this train . . . .”

That’s the power of love.

Scrooge didn’t see anything new, he just saw it with new eyes – or a new heart – and it all looked different. He’s easy to judge. Seeing and hearing the story again and again, however, somehow makes him more understandable. I don’t mean that to justify him. I mean when life leaves us weary and burdened any of us can lose perspective. Today, as we watched, I was struck by how Scrooge moved from being motivated by guilt and shame with the first ghost to finding joy with the last one, once he realized he could make a positive difference with small gestures in the same way he had made life miserable for many with small gestures.

Driving back to school we passed a cemetery. On the side of the hill facing the road someone had taken long thin boards, painted them white, and laid them out to spell a message to passers by. One of the boys riding with me, who is autistic, read the words as he saw them, “GOO IS LOVE.”

I smiled. “I think it says, ‘GOD IS LOVE.’’

“That makes more sense,” he said.

God is Love. That’s the old, old story with an ending you can see coming for miles. It has been told over and over, and we are telling it again this year as we move with Mary and Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem, as we see shepherds running into town, Magi chasing stars, and Mary hiding things in her heart. Perhaps my eyes are so weary that I am looking at my reflection in the story, but they all seem tired to me. The shepherds were out sleeping in the field, the Magi had been on camels for more days than they could remember; Mary was on the verge of giving birth and rode a donkey across the country; Joseph was as perplexed as my student trying to figure out why GOO was love. All the tired travelers found their way to the manger, to the place where God poured God’s self into our exhausted existence to help us see something more.

On this tired night, I need to be reminded.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: advent-ku, allergy edition

2011-12-15T22:55:00.002-05:00

sick with allergies
waiting for winter to come
waiting for relief

my mind is stopped up
ideas trapped behind the wall
waiting for release

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: grieving

2011-12-15T07:21:00.001-05:00

Again, with the technical difficulties. Here is my post from last night.

grieving

imagine you have a stone
the size of your sorrow
strapped to your back
imagine you and the stone
have fallen into a lake
and sunk to the bottom

you struggle to your feet
and try to carry the stone
back to the surface
but you cannot rise
the water is pressing in
you are almost out of air

you finally open your mouth
to concede your breath
as the water rushes in
yet you can still breathe
though your body feels
full and heavy, heavy

you are left to walk under
the weight of the water
unable to rise beyond
able to walk and to breathe
when you thought you
wouldn’t last the night

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: road trip

2011-12-14T07:43:00.000-05:00

road trip

here is a well-traveled
metaphor: life is a road
a highway headed west
wait -- not the interstate

think two lane blacktop
that hits all the lights
in every small town
intentional inconvenience

that fills the booths in
soul food cafés filling
stations of the heart
where whoever comes

out to the car or
up to the table is
wearing a name tag
and a big smile maybe

sadness in their eyes
either one an invitation
we are people whose lives
are drowning in details
without express lanes

waiting to see what lies
just beyond the bend
of the next sorrow
traveling side by side

on our way home full
of grief and gratitude

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: technical difficulties

2011-12-13T21:52:00.000-05:00

The post is written, but our Wifi is down. All I can do is leave this message from my phone. I will post tomorrow.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: the double nickel manifesto

2011-12-12T14:30:00.001-05:00

I had not intended to publish a manifesto today, or any day for that matter, but this post at brainpickings.com set me to thinking what my manifesto would be at this juncture of my existence. Before I could begin to answer that question, however, I wanted to figure out exactly what a manifesto was. I was familiar with the word, but in a sort of cultural sense. I wanted more specificity. I found this from the Online Etymological Dictionary:

manifesto
1644, from It. manifesto "public declaration explaining past actions and announcing the motive for forthcoming ones," originally "proof," from L. manifestus (see manifest).

I then went in search of personal manifestos and found several here. I offer some of the highlights. Frank Lloyd Wright wrote a list of “fellowship assets” for his apprentices:

An honest go in a healthy body.

An eye to see nature.

A heart for nature.

Courage to follow nature.

The sense of proportion (humor).

Appreciation of idea as work and work as idea.

Fertility of imagination.

Capacity for faith and rebellion.

Disregard for commonplace (inorganic) elegance.

Instinctive cooperation.

I love Number Eight.

John Maeda, the president of the Rhode Island School of Design offers ten laws for business, design, and life.

1. Reduce: The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
2. Organize: Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
3. Time: Savings in time feel like simplicity.
4. Learn. Knowledge makes everything simpler.
5. Differences: Simplicity and complexity need each other.
6. Context: What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.
7. Emotion: More emotions are better than less.
8. Trust: In simplicity we trust.
9. Failure: Some things can never be made simple.
10. The One: Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.

Leo Tolstoy had some interesting ideas which included:

Have a goal for your whole life, a goal for one section of your life, a goal for a shorter period and a goal for the year; a goal for every month, a goal for every week, a goal for every day, a goal for every hour and for every minute, and sacrifice the lesser goal to the greater.

I have spent the last week working on what I am calling “The Double Nickel Manifesto.” I am happy to admit that every item represents something borrowed and learned from someone else. After all, originality, as one of my preaching professors used to say, is simply knowing how to hide your sources. The point of life is not to be self-sufficient. Thanks to everyone who has contributed. I also imagine this to be a work in progress. Maybe I’ll have a “Five and Dime Manifesto” when sixty rolls around.

The Double Nickel Manifesto.

Laugh a lot.
Walk a lot.
Look for every way you can to let people know you love them.
Try new things.

Practice old things.
Be honest and truthful.
Don’t hang on to anger.
Learn about the world and inform your compassion.
Be kind because everyone is fighting a great battle.
Don’t get too comfortable.
Remember life and faith are both team sports.
Make change normal.
Fail gloriously and often.
Don’t let fear get the last word.
Talk about what hurts.
Look for ways to connect.
Live like there are no discards.
Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God.
Fall in love with a Schnauzer.
Marry out of your league.
Make music.
Be a regular somewhere.
Write it down.
Be thankful.
Make a memory out of every meal.
Don’t eat alone.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: blessed are those that mourn

2011-12-11T23:36:00.001-05:00

I looked forward to being the prophet this morning at church.

The verses that were mine to inhabit as I put on my robe and walked down the aisle of the church are some of my favorites from Isaiah 61:

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
God has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;

I love the verses because of their beauty and power, because of the way Jesus appropriated them to say what he was about, and because of their compelling call to justice that has echoed down the centuries. But that was not what caught me this morning. As I practiced before church, I had an English teacher moment as I read: I was moved by a pronoun and its antecedent.

Verse three continues the sentence from above:

to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord, that God may be glorified.
They shall build up the ancient ruins;
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations.

They – those who will be the carriers and perpetrators of love and redemption and justice are Those Who Mourn. Compassion and justice are born out of mourning, out of pain, out of woundedness. I was reminded of the definition of compassion I learned from reading Henri Nouwen many years ago: compassion is “voluntarily entering the pain of another.” And we can do that when we know what it is to hurt, to mourn, to miss.

Last night, our friend Diane took us to hear Amy Ray, one half of the Indigo Girls, who was playing a solo gig at Motorco Music Hall, a wonderful little venue here in our neighborhood. During the evening, Amy gave the mic to a woman who was calling us to action to help defeat the referendum in May that would restrict the definition of marriage in North Carolina. As she talked, she said, “Remember justice means we have to think about more than just us.” The word play hit home. I thought of Micah 6:8:

What does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

Every action he mentions calls us to notice more than just us, to open our hearts, and to share in the pain of those around us. God moved over time from the words of the prophets to the Word who became flesh: the Incarnation is a living, breathing call to compassion.

I gave into the temptation to read the article on the Huffington Post about Mitt Romney offering a $10,000 wager to Rick Perry over whatever as though $10,000 was chump change. Neither of them can count themselves among those who operate out of the their understanding of the pain people are carrying – or at least they don’t show that side in their public personas. When it comes to discussing politicians, they are far from alone. As Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke or led marches or did whatever he did, he was able to foment real change because he was living right out of Isaiah’s words. He knew mourning by name and he knew how to make meaning out of pain. Leadership in the truest sense is not about power or charisma or connections or money. It’s about compassion, about relationship. The angel’s only comfort for Joseph, whose future had been upended by the reality of a pregnant fiancée, was to say, “The child will be called Emmanuel, which means ‘God with us.’”

With. Us. Those words call me back to one of my old standards when it comes to poetry, “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

The hope of the Incarnation comes alive for me in the prophecy – and reality – that the world will be changed by the brokenhearted. Come, all who mourn, all who grieve, all who ache for loves lost, all who are acquainted with failure, all who know all too well that they are not enough, for God is calling us to proclaim liberty for the captives, to set the prisoners free, to bring good news to the disenfranchised, to comfort others who mourn, to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk side by side with God.

Power didn’t come down at Christmas. Neither did orthodoxy.

Love came down at Christmas. Love is what matters most.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. -- There's a new recipe.

advent journal: advent-ku

2011-12-10T23:45:00.006-05:00

I remain intrigued
by the prospect of angels
who must say, “fear not”

as introduction
to good tidings of great joy
that come at a cost

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: moving pictures

2011-12-09T22:59:00.024-05:00

For the last several days I have been changing the profile picture on my Facebook page as I shuffled through some pictures of my childhood. I don’t remember all of the situations, or even all the locations beyond a generality, but I do recognize myself in a more profound way than just seeing a younger version of me. Amazing.

moving pictures

I have shed enough skin
to clothe a thousand cobras
forgotten enough memories
to fill a well of lifetimes
and posed for pictures
most all of my years

whether the picture was
taken before or after,
near by or far away,
I recognize myself
like Peter Pan re-
finding the Lost Boys

I have lived enough days
to know I can’t go back in time
what a joyful surprise, then
that memories would come
forward full of grace
and call me by name

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: mash-up

2011-12-08T23:08:00.000-05:00

I am old enough to remember buying Simon and Garfunkel’s record Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme when it came out in 1966. It’s the one that had (besides the title track) “Homeward Bound” and “The 59th Street Bridge Song” and a couple of lesser known ones that became favorites of mine: “For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her” and “Cloudy.” The last track on Side Two is what made me think of the record today. It was a mash-up, in today’s jargon, of “Silent Night” and a reading of the seven o’clock news.

While I was eating lunch in my classroom I got first word of the shootings at Virginia Tech. That news came along side of John Corzine’s testimony before Congress, Rick Perry’s latest craziness, stories of European struggles, the posturing at the climate conference in Durban, among other things and I remembered being a kid in Zambia in 1966 wondering how to make any sense of the world and finding resonance with those feelings today, forty-five years later. It would be simplistic of me, however, to say not much has changed. I posted a picture on Facebook of when I was a kid in Lusaka and a guy I grew up with there made a comment about it not three minutes after the photograph went live. The world is different than it was then, but the pain and perplexity of what it means to be human seems consistent all the way back to that first Silent Night and beyond. It feels worse now because we’re the ones living these days.

I know it’s nice to imagine the night of Jesus’ birth being calm and serene, with thoughtful and attentive folks gathered round, but the truth is Jesus was born in traffic, if you will, stuck in the barn of a sold out motel in what was, I’m sure, not Bethlehem’s finest street. There was a war going on then, just as his nation was being governed by men who were more concerned with self-promotion and self-preservation than they were effective and meaningful leadership. Most everyday of Jesus’ life could have used both carol and commentator as soundtrack for the creative tension from which he called people to choose love as the ultimate value.

Another song came to mind today because this is also the thirty first anniversary of John Lennon’s death. In 1971, he released “So This is Christmas (War is Over).”

and so this is Christmas
for weak and for strong
the rich and the poor ones
the world is so wrong
and so happy Christmas . . .

When that song came out, we were living in Fort Worth, Texas and I was a sophomore at Paschal High School, getting my first taste of what it was like to be an American teenager. I was pulled by the protests against the Vietnam War, even as I am pulled by the Occupy movement today. Though I knew war wasn’t just going to be over because we wanted it to, I also knew the subversive nature of a Love that would sneak into the world as a baby on a back street wasn’t going to run and hide when the pompous and the powerful started shooting up the place.

Simon and Garfunkel were on to something. Turn on the news while you’re listening to your Christmas carols. Pipe it into church while everyone is singing. Come face to face with all that is wrong with and in our world and then sing another verse. We are waiting for Christ to be born again in our time and in our culture because, no matter what the headlines, Love will outlast the lawyers, guns, and money.

Sleep in heavenly . . .

Peace,
Milton