don't eat alone

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

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

today there was not enough light

to light the morning sky
before I got to work

to help my student see
the error of his ways

to last till the end of the afternoon
for me to get home before dark

to burn away the clouds
of grief that cover our house

so we sat together on the couch
surrounded by schnauzers

and watched the little tree lights
do their best to shine

Peace,
Milton

Sunday night I went over to the Pinhook, one of local bars, for the Fifth Birthday Celebration for Bountiful Backyards, our friends who helped create our little urban foodscape at our house. They do awesome work and I was happy to go and celebrate with them. The other reason for the evening is they are working to raise money to buy land to create a real urban farm in East Durham, one of our poorer neighborhoods. You can read about their Kickstarter campaign here (and chip in, too, if you like).

Besides food and drink and information, the evening was full of music. Midtown Dickens, one of our cool local bands, played along with Phil Cook and his Feat, as Phil calls himself when he is playing solo rather than with his great band, Megafaun. Phil is one of the most talented and genuine people I have met here in Durham, with a smile as wide as his heart is open to those around him — and he’s a hell of a musician. All those things together make him someone I enjoy getting to be around when I have the chance.

Sunday night I had the good fortune of walking up on a conversation between Phil and one of the guys in Midtown Dickens as they were talking about the band’s new album, which is due out in February. Phil had had a chance to hear the mixes and was quite impressed. He gave wonderful and specific feedback about how the record not only sounded but also how it showed the band’s progression. Then he said, “One of my favorite things in life is when you get to see your friends grow.”

And I thought, “Now that’s a perspective worth remembering.”

I spent a good part of the last couple of days writing up interim reports on my students to send home to parents the end of the week. These reports, different from the semester grades, have a narrative component where we have a chance to write a short paragraph about what we see happening in the lives of our students. For whatever reason, the inclination in writing such things always seems to tilt towards where the kids are falling short. Some of that is necessary. After Phil’s comment, I found myself working to find ways to invite the parents to see how their son or daughter was growing and learning. In some cases, that was quite a challenge. I do well when I can approach of my classes much the same way I go out into our bountiful backyard to see what is growing and blossoming, and what needs some extra care.

Since Sunday night, as I have ruminated on Phil’s words, I have given thanks for friends over the years who have expected, and continue to expect, me to grow. As the years go by, it is perhaps harder to find those friends and to be one of them as well. When we were kids, we marked our growth on the door frame. When we were students, we counted out life in semesters and degrees. When life moves on beyond semesters and course work it doesn’t appear to offer as many benchmarks to measure our progress. Part of it is, perhaps, there aren’t as many. For my high schoolers, every year means a new name – sophomore, junior, senior – even as specific ages offer their own sense of accomplishment: eighteen, twenty-one. Midlife sort of lumps the years together. We make the most out of the decades, but mostly to tell each other we are getting older as though getting there was achievement enough. We too easily let it slip from our mind that we would do well to encourage each other to grow.

One of the great things about life is that we get to do things more than once. Yet, phrased another way, life can become repetitious, sometimes deadeningly so. (Did I just make up a word?) We have Communion the first Sunday of every month at our church, for instance. What determines whether our ritual is a way to mark time or is our simply going through the motions? The answer might lie in Phil’s words. As we come to do again what we have done before, do we expect one another to have grown? Even if we repeat the same words and actions, we are not the same people we were a month, a year, a day ago. As we break bread and pray and sing together, let us take time to notice and appreciate how one another has grown.

As we draw closer to Bethlehem, let us take stock not of how we have aged, but how we have grown, even as we come expecting Jesus to do more than be the baby in the manger.

Peace,
Milton

My father-in-law, Reuben Brasher, would have been eighty-one tomorrow; Wednesday marks eight weeks since he died.  I miss him.

poem, too

I think the Spirit
liked to dress up like Reuben:
every ounce of his being saying welcome,
a full-body smile that beamed love;
cobalt eyes as deep as the sky,
and a heart that stayed unlocked
no matter who entered.

his mind disappeared,
but his heart stayed the same –
his heart, and his eyes
the Spirit loved those eyes
because they could see
beyond our mountains of shame
to the clear blue morning in us all.

Peace,
Milton

Look wherever you can find the information and you will find that our Sunday morning service at Pilgrim United Church of Christ begins at 10:30. Though it is not written down anywhere, most everyone in the room knows the service ends at 11:30, which is when it is time for coffee hour and whatever else the day holds. Our second hands are the metronome that too often sets the pace of our spiritual practice. And we are far from alone. Every church I have ever been a part of knew what time church was supposed to be over.

At ten-thirty this morning, the worship leaders processed in and Ginger asked those who had announcements to come forward and do them as briefly as possible. Those of us who had information to share followed her instructions, but the announcements didn’t finish until 10:45. After our opening hymn, several members of the Church Council made a very necessary and well done presentation about our budget, which took four minutes. We also welcomed a new member today, which added an extra litany to our time. In between those things, we lighted the Advent candles, confessed our sins, sang fragments of several hymns, followed our children as they led us in giving as they do on Communion Sundays, offered our joys and concerns during prayer time, took up the offering, and listened to Ginger’s meditation. By the time we got to the Communion Table the hour was all used up.

11:34.

Ginger and the other worship leaders did a great job of not keeping time and not allowing our time at the Table to become the spiritual equivalent of hitting the drive through window and eating in the car because we were running late. We took our time, ate and drank and sang and prayed together, and then we went out to the Fellowship Hall and the rest of the day – at 11:49. Amen.

In all three UCC churches to which I have belonged we made a distinction, and an important one, between gathering and preparing for worship. The flow moves from the prelude to the announcements to some gathering word and then the introit, which means worship has begun. I find the distinction meaningful and important because it calls us to particular focus and reverence and yet, this morning I found myself wondering how the divide affects our sense of time.

Though only one of the announcements pertained to worship specifically, the others had to do with our daily life together and all the mundane details and activities that go into being church. And it all takes time. When I sat down to write tonight, I looked up the origins of the word mundane:

mundane
late 15c., from M.Fr. mondain (12c.), from L. mundanus “belonging to the world” (as distinct from the Church), from mundus “universe, world,” lit. “clean, elegant”; used as a transl. of Gk. khosmos (see cosmos) in its Pythagorean sense of “the physical universe” (the original sense of the Gk. word was “orderly arrangement”).

A word that began as something that carried the idea of elegance along side of the sense of belonging to the world has evolved into a word that means banal and imaginative, as though being of this world takes heaven out of the equation. Yet, as we retell the story of the Incarnation, the truth is it is filled with mundane details. What it took to get Mary and Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem was one mundane step after another. By the time the herald angels sang to the shepherds they had already finished a day full of tasks belonging to the world. Can it not be that the mudane things of life – theirs and ours – are as significant as the magnificent and the mysterious, should we choose to have eyes to see that God is in those very details?

We are beginning our second week of Advent: of waiting, of patience, of wondering, of making room, of preparing. It all takes time. Precious time.

One of my tasks this afternoon was to make a soup for the week. I made minestrone, which meant there was a good deal of preparing to do. I spent a good half hour dicing bacon and onions and carrots and celery and zucchini, and then straining the can of whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes and crushing them by hand before I added them to the other vegetables and added the homemade turkey stock from the bones of our Thanksgiving bird that had simmered on the stove for about eight hours one day last week.

Any dish that is well done depends on the most mundane of preparations. The cutting and dicing and peeling are all married to the heart and art of the chef’s inspiration and his or her commitment to take time, or make time, or make room for the dish to be all that it can be. Good cooking takes time, as does good worship, good fellowship, and good living.

The life God has called us to live is far more both/and than it is either/or. Rather than divide our lives into what is worldly and what is transcendent, let us live in the creative tension at the heart of the Incarnation that saw this mundane human existence as something worth becoming.

Peace,
Milton

Tomorrow I will play the prophet for the second time this Advent, and for something like the twentieth Advent in a row. Since our church follows the Common Lectionary (does that mean there’s an “uncommon” one?), the scripture passages ascribed to each Sunday follow a three year cycle. This is Year B, which is my favorite when it comes to the prophetic scriptures, and I think tomorrow’s passage is the best one of all from Isaiah 40. As I have thought about these verses, several songs from several chapters of my life slipped in as soundtrack behind them, so tonight I offer words and music.

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her
that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Cue “Messiah” clip:

A voice says, “Cry!”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.

Peace,
Milton

it began as a ploy
to get them to finish
their vocabulary
who could blame me
on a high school
friday afternoon

“if you finish
your assignment
we’ll go to caribou” –
they made quick
work of exercises
already past due

and we walked
across the parking
lot to our lattes
with the novels
we carried as cover
to fool the front desk

we sat in a square
sipping our way
through the dregs
of a long week
taking in the aroma
of fleeting freedom

and I asked
“what do you think
of the book?”
and we conversed
like people who had
gone out for coffee

God put on skin
and wore it to death
to love and to listen
as a human being
I dropped my guard
for thirty minutes

left my question
unloaded as I asked it
and found the coffee
and cookie samples
communion enough
to remember

Peace,
Milton

This afternoon, I went with our math teacher and the twelve kids that make up our little high school to a machine shop which is owned by the parents of one of the students. The teacher wanted the kids to go so they could see that math gets used in the real world. I went because I like seeing cool stuff and it meant I didn’t have to teach fifth and sixth periods.

I had never been in a machine shop before. The owner took us all through the 25,000 square foot plant, explaining what they did and showing us a bunch of pretty amazing machines and the amazing people who ran them. One machine, which was twenty feet long, had a tray into which they fed fifteen foot long stainless steel rods, which were about an inch and a half in diameter. The rods met up with a rotating head that held twenty different tools. Every minute and a half, the machine would produce a finished piece, about two inches long, that had a flat top, a threaded side, and a hollow core; it was used in fire suppression equipment on the underside of buses. They make about 10,000 of them a month. The little piece was a work of art.

Later on, we were in the room where they cleaned and packaged the various pieces for shipment to their customers. There was a box of the same pieces we had seen made.

“We are washing these by hand right now,” he said, “but you’ll see in a minute what we are making so we can clean them in our sonic bath” (it used sound waves in the water to do the cleaning). Sure enough, in the next room there was a guy operating a big machine that was drilling holes in a piece of half-inch plastic to make a tray to hold the first pieces so they could go in the sonic bath. I asked why they needed to do that. The owner went on to explain that at the company that uses them there are a group of about fifteen women who put the parts together by hand. They expect the pieces to be a certain way and, if they are not, they women get upset. Recently, it seems, there had been some problems with the consistency of cleanliness, at least to the women who were receiving the parts.

“I’ve known the owner of that company for twenty years,” he said, “and we’ve had that account a long time. But if I don’t make sure those women who deal with the parts are happy, it doesn’t matter who I know. We’ll lose the account.”

I was glad to hear who had his ear.

In the last couple of days, the news has come that our government has passed a law allowing horses to be slaughtered and sold for human consumption and another allowing the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens without charges. Even this week, Congress is flinching at extending the payroll tax holiday though they had no problem making sure their tax breaks for the elite rich in our country were extended last year. The Occupy protesters have been run out of their camps in parks around the country as though they were some kind of threat, and many arrested, though not one of the bankers and financial people who brought the country to the point that people had to protest have even been charged. In this machine shop that is our country, no one is listening to the women, or the men, in the supply room. Our leaders appear to hear and see no one but themselves and those who write big checks.

Too political for Advent? Sorry. The connection for me is that the entire drama of the Incarnation unfolded in the supply room. From Mary to Elizabeth to Joseph to shepherds to innkeepers and immigrant star-gazers, Jesus was born among those who were not policy makers or job creators or people too big to fail. I know I am far from the first to make this observation, nor is it the first Advent it has crossed my mind, but something about thinking of that one woman complaining to the point that it changed the way the companies did business gave me hope, even as I sometimes despair at the lack of leadership and vision in our country.

I don’t think America will save the world or that it is essential for us to stay “the greatest” for the world to survive. I do think the love of God that had the audacity to become incarnate in a poor couple’s kid will save us all if we are willing to find our way to the manger. Whatever happens in our world, more will be changed by people camping in parks together and eating dinners together and sharing food with one another and looking out for each other than by any grandiose gesture of government or multinational conglomerate.

The Bible tells me so.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — After I posted this I read that the Senate killed the proposal in the bill that would have allowed for indefinite detention of US citizens outside of the country (as in Guantanamo) but the Senate defeated an amendment that explicitly said it was illegal to do so.

public instruction

as I drove yesterday to the
Department of Public Instruction
I imagined a building filled
with finger-pointing people
telling other people what
to do and how to do it
I was going to be told
what I needed to do to get
my state teacher’s license
the security guard instructed
me to take the first left
the man in the licensure office
instructed me to wait
sixty working days
(I had to do math)
for their response
I found my own way out
and back to my car where
the GPS voice instructed me
how to get back home
though she did lead me
down Peace Street . . .
the dictionary says
instruction is a synonym
for teaching — I don’t think so
telling people what to do or
how to do it or to sit up straight
is not the same as teaching
trust me I’ve tried them both

Peace,
Milton