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tell me a story

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3

I come from a family of storytellers.

Actually, I come from a family of slightly exaggerated storytellers. We tell good stories and we feel free to alter the details to spice it up a little, too. I love to listen to a story, or read one, or even watch one, almost as much as I like to tell them. A great story leaves an indelible mark on our hearts. Like a great melody, it inhabits and haunts and pulls up feelings with a simple phrase, reminding us we have been changed by our listening. We are no longer the same.

Today was “Mountain Sunday” at our church (as well as Stewardship Sunday and Thanksgiving Sunday and the Last Sunday in Ordinary Time). The title refers to the music we sang and heard today, which came mostly from Appalachian and gospel traditions, both of which know of and speak from a deep acquaintance with both suffering and gratitude. And so, our service began

I am a poor wayfaring stranger
traveling through this world of woe
but there’s no sickness toil or danger
in that bright land to where I go

From there we wandered across rivers and up and down mountains through our songs and scriptures, until it was time for Carla, our associate pastor, to preach. She began her sermon by talking about stories and then saying she was going to tell part of hers, I leaned in. She told us about how her family settled in Charlotte and survived the coming and going of the textile mill, and how they built homes to be close to one another. As she talked about their Thanksgiving traditions, she told of one tragedy that had befallen the family – the death of a child – and how that marked the holiday for all the years after. As she described one of her relatives, she used a descriptive phrase that turned the story from information to incarnation as she spoke of the “sacred sorrow so bound up with his gratitude.”

Her words landed on me with resonance and power. In the same moment, I knew she was right and I wondered how it is the two are so inextricably tied together. From my English teacher days I remember a story needs conflict or suffering to move it along and to move it toward redemption or reconciliation or even disappointment. What the stories tell us is we were built to learn from our suffering, not simply to endure it. Perhaps that is how stories were born in the first place – the good ones, anyway. Carla had a phrase for that as well: good stories are those that shape our souls into vessels to hold our gratitude.

Her words made me wonder what kind of story I’m telling and how well the stories I hear and tell mold my soul into a thanksgiving tank, if you will. So many of the gospel hymns tell stories of heaven. We even closed our service with a rocking rendition of

some glad morning wihen this life is o’er
I’ll fly away . . .

Many of those songs were born out of suffering, yet their response is more than asking for relief. It’s not about getting out, it’s about getting through. Gratitude grows when we trust that suffering is not the last word.

The story is not yet over.

Suffering that doesn’t breed thankfulness turns to despair. Gratitude that is not informed by grief may quench our souls only briefly, but quickly evaporates. Memory – remembrance is the thing that binds the two so essentially and stories remind us to remember, as the saying goes, who we are and whose we are.

And I remembered this morning, thank you.

Peace,
Milton

the lord’s sukiyaki

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

A group from our church got together tonight for dinner – actually, for a Japanese dinner. Of the eight of us gathered around the table, three had lived in Japan (one of them teaches Japanese at a local high school) and one had Japanese relatives. We had an authentic Japanese meal: sukiyaki and nabe. I’ve cooked a lot of different things, but I know very little about Japanese cooking other than I’m a big fan of the eel roll at our supermarket’s sushi bar.

When I got to the house where we were eating, people were in the kitchen chopping the vegetables that were going into the dinner: daikon, bok choy, Napa cabbage, a variation on a scallion whose name I forget, and a couple of very cool kinds of mushrooms (enokitake and something translated as crab mushrooms). There were also some jelly-like noodles, cubed tofu, and thinly sliced beef. (The nabe was the vegetarian version of the dish.

At the meat-eating end of the table, where I was sitting, there was an electric skillet. The chief cook began by adding a little oil and then sautéing some of the meat. The she added the daikon, the bok choy, and the cabbage to let them soften a bit. She then began building the sauce, adding vegetable broth, soy sauce, sugar, and aji mirin. As we watched and talked, she added the rest of the ingredients and let them simmer in the sauce for a bit as she cooked the meal right in front of us. We then filled our bowls and ate until the skillet was empty.

A year ago, on this very Saturday before Thanksgiving, I finished my drive from Marshfield to Birmingham, my Cherokee packed with all the things that wouldn’t fit in the Pod for our move to Durham. We spent Thanksgiving at my in-laws and made the final leg of our journey the week following. This year has been a lot like the dish tonight: a collection of ingredients, some cooking faster than others, somehow coming together to create, well, something that is feeding us here.

Besides going to enjoy the meal, I also went as a liaison from the deacons to this group of young adults in our church who wanted to talk about Communion. And so we sat at table together, sharing our food and our stories and contemplating the Lord’s Supper. I did some prep work of my own this afternoon, looking for quotes and information. The most interesting discovery I made had to do with intinction. I’m fairly clear about the fact that it is my least favorite way to receive Communion. I can identify two reasons why. First, my introduction to it was from a minister who saw it as expedient – two courses delivered at once – and I don’t think Communion is about expedience. Second, if I’m going to have a meal, I want both courses, thank you. In my searching this afternoon, I learned intinction became part of American Christian practice primarily because of the tuberculosis epidemic in the 1930s. Rather than expedience, it grew out of a response to the very real fear of disease and death; the church had to figure out how to serve the elements in a way that wasn’t life threatening. There was more theology and ministry going on there than I realized. Though I still want to eat and drink, I will move forward in a different spirit the next time we celebrate in that manner.

As we shared our feelings and opinions with one another, we all had some things that were more taste than theology and we talked about why they mattered to us. The discussion ultimately ended up with our talking about why we are glad to be together in our church. Around the table tonight, we re-membered the body of Christ.

In my searching this afternoon, I came across a quote from A. W. Tozer that spoke to me:

Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshippers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become “unity” conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified.

Communion is that tuning fork for me. I’ve been a part of churches in Africa and Texas and Massachusetts and now Durham and celebrated Communion in all of them. Though the meal might not have been served in the same way, it was the same meal – the same meal shared by Christians across the centuries, to be shared for the centuries to come, each morsel of bread and sip of wine echoing the resounding tone that tunes our hearts to God’s key of life.

The gifts of God for the people of God.

Peace,
Milton

mix and stir friday five

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
4

I’ve been a part of a blogging group called RevGalBlogPals for a couple of years now. Every Friday they do a thing called The Friday Five, where someone poses five questions for everyone to answer. I read them, but I’ve never joined in before. This week the questions were about kitchen stuff, so I couldn’t help myself.

1) Do you have a food processor? Can you recommend it? Which is to say, do you actually use it?

I’m still using the Cuisinart food processor we got as a wedding gift. After almost nineteen years it’s still going strong. I use the blade mostly; the julienne and shredding blades less often. This time of year, I use it to mix my pie crust dough.

2) And if so, do you use the fancy things on it? (Mine came with a mini-blender (used a lot and long ago broken) and these scary disks you used to julienne things (used once).)

I started answering this in the last question. I’m mostly a blade guy. Though the julienne blade is great for shredding cheese and the slicing blade gets apples nice and thin for pie.

3) Do you use a standing mixer? Or one of the hand-held varieties?

I have one of these KitchenAid beauties (in white) that’s almost as old as my Cuisinart. I love it. I even bought the pasta attachment, which is awesome.

The other mixer I have is a Braun hand mixer that is the coolest thing ever. It is hand held and can be put right into the pot for pureeing. Also has a whisk and a chopper attachment.

4) How about a blender? Do you have one? Use it much?

I have a blender as well. It is newer than the other appliances because I learned the hard way to find one with metal gears (and a glass bowl. of course). Primary use: frozen drinks for Ginger.

5) Finally, what old-fashioned, non-electric kitchen tool do you enjoy using the most?

I just got this, but I can already tell it is going to be my favorite thing this Thanksgiving. It is a layered cooling rack and it only costs twenty bucks.

Bonus: Is there a kitchen appliance or utensil you ONLY use at Thanksgiving or some other holiday? If so, what is it?

My electric knife to carve the turkey. Yes, also a wedding present.

Peace,
Milton

great, with child

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
2

I know it’s not even Thanksgiving yet and I’m one of those who wish the stores could wait just one more week before putting out the decorations and I’ve been thinking about Mary preparing herself to give birth, even though we aren’t quite done with the Pilgrims just yet. I think what set me to thinking about it was a note from my friend, Heather, saying her water had broken and she would be giving birth some time between now and tomorrow morning. Thinking of her also reminded me of why I like to read Luke 2 just the way Linus quoted it: from the King James version. No other version gives you language like this (trust me, I’ve looked):

And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David) to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

She was great with child. The words are full of illustration, animation, and metaphor. I love the image of this young, poor, humble, and pregnant girl being (read this in your best Tony the Tiger voice) grrreat, as though she was both things. You know: great, with child. She apparently must have been a pretty good mother, so as Jesus grew (in wisdom and stature), perhaps they said in a different way that she was great with (her) child. Of course, if someone feels the need to point out great has to do with girth, then some of us have to come to terms with being great without child, but that’s another post.

The verses hold a companion phrase that also speaks to me: the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. (I picture the translators in a room somewhere coming up with that phrase and saying to one another, “That’s smashing, old boy. Jolly good show.”)

I’m captured by the verbs: accomplished and delivered.

Even as I prepare to spend the weekend getting ready to feed those who will gather with us for Thanksgiving, and that this is one of those years when Advent doesn’t begin the Sunday after the turkey, I find the animals in the stable of my heart getting restless, waiting for the days to be accomplished, or whatever needs to be accomplished, so we can gather around the manger. Tonight, as I wait for word that Heather has welcomed her new son, I give thanks for them and for the KJV guys and Linus and all those who sweep the barn clean so the baby can be born and we can all be delivered.

Peace,
Milton

P.S. — There’s a new recipe.

celebrate me hone

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
4

I had a little time this morning before I left for church and I began reading the new issue of Harpers that arrived over the weekend. What caught my eye was a full page ad of new books from Harvard University Press, and, in particular, one title: Loneliness as a Way of Life by Thomas Dumm. The resonance of the title sent me looking for more about both the book and author, and I found this:

“What does it mean to be lonely?” Thomas Dumm asks. His inquiry, documented in this book, takes us beyond social circumstances and into the deeper forces that shape our very existence as modern individuals. The modern individual, Dumm suggests, is fundamentally a lonely self. Through reflections on philosophy, political theory, literature, and tragic drama, he proceeds to illuminate a hidden dimension of the human condition. His book shows how loneliness shapes the contemporary division between public and private, our inability to live with each other honestly and in comity, the estranged forms that our intimate relationships assume, and the weakness of our common bonds.

A reading of the relationship between Cordelia and her father in Shakespeare’s King Lear points to the most basic dynamic of modern loneliness—how it is a response to the problem of the “missing mother.” Dumm goes on to explore the most important dimensions of lonely experience—Being, Having, Loving, and Grieving. As the book unfolds, he juxtaposes new interpretations of iconic cultural texts—Moby-Dick, Death of a Salesman, the film Paris, Texas, Emerson’s “Experience,” to name a few—with his own experiences of loneliness, as a son, as a father, and as a grieving husband and widower.

Written with deceptive simplicity, Loneliness as a Way of Life is something rare—an intellectual study that is passionately personal. It challenges us, not to overcome our loneliness, but to learn how to re-inhabit it in a better way. To fail to do so, this book reveals, will only intensify the power that it holds over us.

But I need to back up for a minute. The journey my thoughts took today began yesterday when Choralgirl mentioned the movie Home for the Holidays in her post, which is one of our must-see-again movies during the holidays. Which is to say, I’ve been thinking about home. Seeing the book title this morning just pushed me farther down the road.

I got to church a little early, so I went into our newly renovated church library and, after a little browsing, picked up Frederick Buechner’s The Longing for Home (big surprise), a book I read many years ago but didn’t retain. Something about the days growing colder pulls me to Buechner. The mention of King Lear in the description of Dumm’s book was also a connector. The first Buechner book I ever read was Telling the Truth: The Gospel, as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale, in which he referenced one particular line from Lear:

The weight of these sad times we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.

Those words have never let go of me. At the risk of being overly quoteful, I want to pass along the words that grabbed me before I went into worship this morning.

In a novel called Treasure Hunt, which I wrote some years ago, there is a scene of homecoming. The narrator, a young man named Antonio Parr, has been away for some weeks and on his return finds that his small son and some other children have made a sign for him that reads WELCOME HONE with the last little leg of the m in home missing so that it turns it into a n. “It seemed oddly fitting,” Antonio Parr says when he first sees it. “It was good to get home, but it was home with something missing or out of whack about it. It wasn’t much, to be sure, just some minor stroke or serif, but even a minor stroke can make a major difference.” And then a little while later he remembers it a second time and goes on to add, “WELCOME HONE, the sign said, and I can’t help thinking again of Gideon and Barak, of Samson and David and all the rest of the crowd . . . who, because some small but crucial thing was missing, kept looking for it come hell or high water wherever they went till their eyes were dim and their arches fallen . . .In the long run I suppose it would be to think of everybody if you knew enough about them to think straight.” (17)

Buechner goes on to say Parr was referencing Hebrews 11:13, 14:

These all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth, for people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.

Strangers and exiles: those acquainted with loneliness; those who are always headed for, looking for, longing for home.

November, for me, is the clubhouse turn towards home. Thanksgiving means I go on a pie-baking binge and hand them out to the neighbors, wherever our neighborhood has been, and that we do our best to fill our table with those who need to be at home for the holidays. We don’t have our final count for this year, but the table is filling up. Thanksgiving is also the precursor for Advent, the season of longing that takes us home for the holidays in a more permanent sense. Though I’ve still got a couple of weeks, something about the words that found me let me know I’m heading home a little earlier than usual.

Bewteen Buechner and the boys holding up the misspelled sign, I found myself humming a homecoming song I haven’t thought about in awhile, but gives soundtrack to my feelings today.

please celebrate me home
give me a number
please celebrate me home
play me one more song
I can always remember
and I can recall whenever
I find myself too all alone
I can sing me home

From Dumm to Buechner to Loggins and all of us in between, home is the place we long for and look for and occasionally stumble into. The address is often elusive, but we know it by the smells or the tastes or the melodies or the faces looking back at us when we walk in. And, if the song were playing, everyone from Samson and David to King Lear and Cordelia to Antoine Parr might sing:

well, I’m finally here
but I’m bound to roam
come on, celebrate me home

Yes. Please. Celebrate me hone.

Peace,
Milton

comedy is empathy

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
5

Ginger and I agree on most things in life, but one of the places where we differ is our disparate opinions of The Office. She can’t stand it and it cracks me up. I’m late to the show, actually, catching up these days with through cable reruns and well aware that the original British version is probably even funnier. I thought about the show today because I heard part of an NPR interview with Ricky Gervais, the creator of both series and the star of the British version. I stepped out between two catering gigs to grab a cup of coffee and a shot of thoughtfulness thrown in for free.

Gervais has just finished a US stand up tour and was promoting an HBO special that is coming up. In the part of the interview I got to hear, he was talking a bit more philosophically about what comedy means and where it comes from. I’m fortunate that npr.org has a transcript of the part of the interview that I heard:

“America is my mecca for entertainment. Everything I have ever loved has come out of America,” Gervais says. Those comics “taught me that you have to be at the bottom rung of the ladder. No one wants to see unfeasibly handsome, clever people doing things brilliantly; they want to see a putz struggling and falling over, and the important thing is getting back up again.”

Gervais insists there is no place for a peacock in comedy. He says it’s all about being the everyman and maintaining a fallible persona that people can relate to. “There should be no machismo in a comedian because comedy is about empathy,” he says. “I think the audience doesn’t need to be told that your life is better than theirs.”

In Out of England, Gervais comes onstage with a king’s crown and a rock star’s pomp, accompanied by fireworks and Queen’s “One World, One Vision.” His ostentatious entrance is a tongue-in-cheek jab at production values and the idea of celebrity.

“Soon you find out that all my anecdotes of fame are about me being the underdog, me being embarrassed socially, depressed, everyone getting the better of me,” he says.

Gervais says returning to stand-up has allowed him to discover the importance of physical comedy. He realized “what people liked was me acting out a scenario as opposed to just telling jokes,” he says. “Because comedy is empathy, most of the things we identify with are probably nonverbal. Body language and the way that you feel things are are more important than what you hear.”

Comedy is empathy. He said it twice. Comedy is empathy.

One of my favorite movies is an offbeat little comedy that was one of Luke and Owen Wilson’s first films: Bottle Rocket. The tag line to the movie was, They’re not really criminals, but everybody’s got to have a dream.” Owen plays Dignan, a lovable goof who thinks his seventy-five year plan to criminal success is the key to life. Luke plays his friend Andrew who has just been released from a psychiatric hospital. Dignan sees his plan as salvation for them both and begins to put together a team. In the scene below, he’s interviewing Bob for the position of getaway driver.

“That’s good. That’s good. ‘Cause it hits me right there.” Empathy.

In another one of my favorite movies, Dead Poets Society, Mr. Keating (Robin Williams) says to one of his students, “We’re not laughing at you; we’re laughing near you.” Comedy is empathy.

Empathy is identifying with the feelings and actions of someone else so much, as one dictionary put it, that when the batter swings the bat your muscles tense. It is identification, connectedness. The comic is not saying, “You’re like me,” but rather, “This is what it feels like to be in your skin.” Comedy is incarnational.

I loved what he said and I thought about it as I was helping to prepare dinner tonight for a roomful of people I didn’t even see. I ran through several comedians in my mind and soon realized Gervais was not describing all of the comedy there is, but what he saw as comedy at its best. He was making a bold statement in a world filled with biting and cynical satire where comedy is mostly target practice. He was offering a powerful and gentle alternative.

Though his words sent me thinking more metaphorically about comedy, particularly related to faith – Jesus as the original stand up comic – I wanted to pass along what I heard because it’s worth regarding someone who takes the time to think about what they do, about what they mean, and then moves to embody those thoughts with intentionality.

That’s good. That’s good. ‘Cause it hits me right there.

Peace,
Milton

a story for christmas

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
1

Several years ago, Ginger asked me to write a story for Christmas Eve. What came out of me was a Dr. Suess-ish sort of tale that has found a life in many places on Christmas Eves since. The story begins this way:

As we gather together on this Silent Night,
To sing ‘round the tree in the soft candlelight,

From a Faraway Christmas, from time that’s grown cold,
Comes a story, you see, that has seldom been told.

Of all of the legends, the best and the worst,
From Christmases all the way back to the first,

This little tale isn’t often remembered
From then until now, down through all those Decembers.

But I found an old copy tucked away on a shelf,
And I turned through the pages, and I thought to myself,

Of all of the times between now and then,
This is the Christmas to hear it again.

This year, you can hear the story in a different way — on audio CD. My friend Terry Allebaugh added a wonderful harmonica soundtrack, my friend Claudia Fulshaw created beautiful artwork for the cover and the insert, and I read the story and added a couple of other touches. I’m proud of what we did and excited to share it.

In the sidebar to the left is the PayPal button that will make your purchase possible. The CD is $10.00, plus $2.00 for shipping. If your order is over $50.00, shipping is free. (That’s in the U.S.) I will sign, seal, and deliver (or at least mail) the CDs myself.

Entrepreneurship is not my gift. I’m grateful to Gordon Atkinson for his encouragement and technical advice, to Claudia and Terry, and to Ginger for calling the story out of me in the first place.

The story runs on several different levels and is appropriate for most any age. I hope you enjoy it.

Peace,
Milton

a quick update

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

I talked to my dad this morning as I was going into work. They had just taken my mother into surgery and we were getting ready for a long day of waiting. I did not expect to hear from him until at least four o’clock. Two and a half hours later, he called to say the surgeons found things much less complicated than they expected and they were finished. Mom was already in recovery. Dad called tonight to say she is in a step down room from the ICU and is expected to go home on Monday or Tuesday.

I am grateful.

Peace,
Milton

god is for us

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
5

Sometimes life drifts apart; sometimes it comes together.

Within the last week, several members of my former youth group in Texas found me via Facebook. I still haven’t figured out how to navigate that rather formidable universe, but I am enjoying finding old friends. One of the things we shared in our years together were the songs my friend Billy Crockett and I wrote for youth camp each summer. One chorus didn’t require much work lyrically, on our part, but came together quite well:

God is for us who can be against us
God is for us we are not alone
God is for us we are for each other
hallelujah he is for us

Some years later, Billy was thinking about recording the song (which he did on the CD Red Bird Blue Sky) and decided we needed to write verses. At the time, my father had a serious case of pneumonia and I was really worried about him. And the verses we wrote carried both that concern and the hope that carried us. When we finished, the whole song looked like this:

God is for us who can be against us
God is for us we are not alone
God is for us we are for each other
Hallelujah he is for us

for all the damage done
still won’t turn and run
hearts have been broken
dreams have been stolen
but nothing takes these words away

God is for us who can be against us
God is for us we are not alone
God is for us we are for each other
Hallelujah he is for us

the places that we go
so many different roads
no present danger
no distant future
will take us where we cannot know

God is for us who can be against us
God is for us we are not alone
God is for us we are for each other
Hallelujah he is for us

Tonight I talked to my mother as I walked to my car after work. She had had a hard day and sounded worn out. Her surgery is at nine o’clock tomorrow morning and is expected to take most of the day. Like so many years ago, I am concerned and feeling the distance between us. Tonight, pieces of my past came back together to remind me of what I know is true underneath the uncertainty.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — I tried, unsuccessfully, to figure out how to imbed an audio file so you could hear the song. If anyone knows how to do that on Blogger, please let me know.

thank you, mama africa

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

I turned one year old on a ship sailing across the Atlantic Ocean for Africa.

My parents were going to be missionaries in Southern Rhodesia and I was along for the ride. In 1957, the only way to get from Texas to Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia was by ship, and then car. We were thirty-two days at sea, leaving New York harbor and stopping only once on the island of St. Helena before docking in Beira, Mozambique. Somewhere in the open water I celebrated my first birthday.

The first task of a missionary in those days was language school. Sindabele was the native tongue (one of the Bantu languages) and my parents were told that the first six weeks of their new life would involve nothing but language classes. They hired a woman named Salina to stay with me while they went about their lessons. One of the favorites stories my father tells is getting one of their first vocabulary lists and finding the word “isikwapa” and it’s translation: armpit. My father was livid and said, “I came halfway around the world to tell people about Jesus and the first word you teach me is armpit!”

Fifty years on, it’s the only Sindabele word any of my family remembers.

Sindabele is one of the “click languages,” meaning there are actual clicking sounds connected to the consonants. You don’t just say the letter, you pop your tongue in one of several ways to make the sound. As a little one, who learned the language faster from Salina than my parents did at school, I couldn’t say the word and the click, I would do one and then the other. No wonder I was fascinated when Miriam Makeba recorded “The Click Song” just a couple of years later.

I tell that story because Miriam Makeba died today at 76. Beyond “The Click Song,” the woman known as “Mama Africa” was one of those voices of freedom that has resonance across generations. She is South African who lived through apartheid and saw her Nelson Mandela become president. She died after singing a concert in Italy in support of another artist taking a stand for what matters. She had a long and full life, far beyond what I knew about it. I didn’t follow her career or know too much more of her music than the song that captured me as a child. And that connection is enough to stop, take notice, and give thanks she sang as she did.

Peace,
Milton

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