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lenten journal: quotidian quixote

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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0

In my search for a writing prompt after a long, busy, and good day at the restaurant (we served more people than we ever have: 108 – in 180 minutes) I stopped by The Writer’s Almanac and learned today would have been John Updike’s seventy-seventh birthday had he lived only a few weeks longer. In the description of him and of his writing, he was quoted as saying, “My only duty was to describe reality as it had come to me — to give the mundane its beautiful due.”

I looked up mundane just to see what I might find. We use the word to mean the boring, routine stuff, yet the roots of the word go back centuries and find their first meaning as “belonging to the world.” Mundane things are the stuff every day is made of. Related words include everyday, routine, unremarkable, workaday, quotidian.

I love that word: quotidian. For reasons that have nothing to do with etymology, quotidian always makes me think of quixotic, which derives its meaning from Don Quixote, one of the great characters of literature and an extravagant romantic.

A quotidian Quixote, then, would be an everyday romantic, I suppose.

Wait – I have a picture of one:


And now he must rest; tomorrow holds the promise of another everyday.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: heart worm

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3

I must begin with an update on James, our music director, who was in a car accident a week ago last Saturday in which he escaped from a burning car and sustained smoke inhalation injuries. The doctors kept him heavily sedated and intubated for much of the week while they, for lack of a better term, vacuumed out his lungs. They called it a bronchoscopy. They were able to clean out his lungs and they began regenerating quickly. He was released over the weekend and is spending time with both his family and his in-laws. We are relieved and thankful.

________________________________

On Sunday nights I work at the Durham restaurant my chef owns, rather than at Duke. From time to time, the house manager and I pass the evening by trading ear worms – those songs (usually bad ones) that get inside your head and won’t go away. You know what I mean:

we had joy we had fun
we had seasons in the sun
but the stars we could reach
were just starfish on the beach

Sorry about that. Really.

This morning, I was reading email and blog posts and came across what turned out to be a heart worm for me, if you will, because it has stuck with me all day. And that has been a good thing. The poem came from a post at Maggi Dawn’s blog and was written by Hafiz, a 14th century Sufi mystic.

Even after all this time
the sun never says
to the earth,
“you owe me.”
Look what happens
to a love like that,
it lights up the whole
sky.

Here’s why the poem bored in and stayed with me.

On three very specific occasions over the last week and a half I have had the same choice to make, a choice that is not easy for me. I’ve been standing in line – once at Petco (where the pets go), once at Food Lion, and once in Old Navy – and the line, from my perspective, was longer than it needed to be. The reasons were different in each case, yet some of the circumstances were similar: there were registers not open, other employees around. It ‘s the kind of needless inefficiency and inconvenience that drives me nuts. No – it makes me mad. I don’t understand why people whose businesses depend on customers don’t pay much heed to customer service. In most cases I can work myself into quite a state in the time it takes – usually a long time, it seems – for me to finally get my turn at the register.

To get what I’m owed.

I went into Petco to get a new harness for Ella, who chewed through hers – for the second or third time. She’s also chewed through five leashes, but they have a lifetime guarantee and the store keeps replacing them. Not so with the $30 harness. When I got to the front of the store, six people were already in line and the employee at the register was paging the manager. I was not close enough to hear what was going on, but we stood there about five minutes before anyone came to open another register. The rest of us moved to the other line and things were going along swimmingly until the guy in front of me pulled out a coupon the computer didn’t recognize. Seven minutes later, it was my turn.

At some point in the first line, I could feel myself begin to get, shall we say, edgy. I had some other errands to run. I didn’t like them wasting my time. (As if it were mine to begin with.) On this particular day, however, I had the wherewithal to hear another voice. I decided I had time to wait. I wasn’t going to let it get to me. Maybe it was the guy in front of me (that’s right: the guy with the coupons) who began grumbling and gave me some sense of myself. Maybe Hafiz’ poem was already working its way to me somehow. But I relaxed and the time passed quickly. When I finally got to the register, the man behind apologized for my having to wait.

“That’s alright,” I said. “It’s not like the last ten minutes were going to change my life.” He laughed; I did, too.

Then he handed me my receipt and said, “I gave you twenty percent off because you were kind to me. I wish there were more people like you.”

“You have no idea,” I wanted to say. I thanked him instead and wished him well, and I went on my way thinking I wish I was more like the me I saw in that moment, or at least more consistently me in the incidental interactions of life where I am most capable of feeling I am owed something. I have found myself in the other two interactions I mentioned. I haven’t gotten any more discounts, but the woman at the Food Lion did call me, “Honey.” Then again, I think she did that to everyone in the store.

“Look what happens to a love like that,” Hafiz wrote. “It lights up the whole sky.”

His words stick in my heart because when I allow love like that to break through me in the billiard ball moments of life, where we bump into one another and go our separate ways, I’ve seen how kindness can illuminate. I’ve also seen how hard darkness can fall when I choose to demand what I think is due me. Trust me, I know how to bring down a room. Tonight, with the poem close at hand, I found an old song by an old friend, Bob Bennett,

I’ve no need to be reminded
of all my failures and my sins
for I can write my own indictment
of who I am and who I’ve been
I know that grace by definition
is something I can never earn
but for all the things that I may have missed
there’s a lesson I believe that I have learned

there’s a hand of kindness holding me
holding on to me

I am not owed; I am the debtor. Here’s hoping my heart worm doesn’t go away.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: still in the temple

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3

When I first started writing my blog a little over three years ago, one of the nicest surprises was the comment window. I am by nature a collaborator. I love the give and take of working with somebody, so the responses to my posts fed me and kept me writing. Over the past year or so, even as my readership has grown, I’ve noticed fewer people commenting. I’ve also read other bloggers talking about the same dynamic; perhaps there is some sort of shift in how all of this works. All of that is to say last night’s post was fun for me because I got comments – thoughtful, conversational comments – that have given me more to think about. Here’s a sample:

I can’t read John without remembering its purpose, as we understand it: to differentiate between Jewish Christians and the other Jewish people of a later era. Right from the beginning then, or from Chapter 2 verse, anyway, Jesus sets himself into opposition with the Way Things Are Done. (Martha)

What a scene it must have been: whip cracking, tables upended, money on the ground, doves circling, animals panicked, men cursing and screaming and scrambling for safety while the onlookers wondered what in the name of God was going on. And to think it was all set in motion by the anger of our precious Lord, blessed Jesus of Nazareth. Sweet Jesus. Righteous anger, brothers and sisters. Anger in the service of what it means to have a God who is bloody well determined to save us from sin and death. (Ray, from his sermon)

Preached from this passage yesterday. I’ve discovered something interesting recently. Nowhere does the text say that the people involved were cheating the poor. In fact, their law required the changing of currency so the Temple Tax could be paid. And if every family in Jerusalem for Passover is to sacrifice an animal, they have to buy them somewhere.

The text seems to indicate that Jesus drove the animals out with the whip. But he did overturn the tables of the moneychangers. My take this year: This is where a spirituality based on laws brought them. To the inevitable place where the complexity of their rules has turned their worship into something ridiculous. I think the key for me is Jesus’ response. If this is where our temple worship has brought us, then maybe it is time for a new temple. (Gordon)

Yesterday at church, our pastor ended his sermon on this passage, which he wrestled with much as you are, by saying that Jesus wants to drive out of us all those things like greed and self-focus and hard-heartedness toward the poor that get in the way of our relationship with others and with God. “But,” he said as he ended the sermon, “if you look into Jesus’ eyes as he is doing this, what you will see is love.” (Todd)

Also, when we think of peacemakers, we unfortunately think of folks who are meek and mild. Perhaps this is a case for strong-armed peace, a peace that lives off the yin-yang of creation and destruction rather than mediation. (David)

No, I don’t plan to respond here to everything that comes to mind and heart reading their thoughts and feelings. (I suppose I could and take care of my Lenten Journal for several more days . . .) The creative tension in the comments reminds me of The Mission, one of my all-time favorite movies. Jeremy Irons and Robert DeNiro play priests trying to figure out how to take a stand against Spanish aggression and colonization, which was brutal and violent. One chose to turn the other cheek, as it were, and the other chose to organize the villagers to fight for their freedom. Both made compelling emotional and theological arguments for their stance. Both also ended up dying for the stand they took.

Neither stopped the Spanish.

It’s interesting where our minds take us. David’s words about peacemakers made me realize I don’t think of peacemakers as meek and mild; I think of them as strong, though not particularly strong armed: Gandhi, King, Romero – to name a few. I’m not so sure, however, Jesus is playing the role of peacemaker in this story. I think he intended to disrupt, disquiet, and disturb. The other quote that came to mind, though I have no idea where I first heard it, was, “Responding to violence with violence is not a solution.” One note I saw somewhere (not in my comments) pointed out Jesus wasn’t responding to violence (unless we read it metaphorically), he was instigating it. So violence is a solution if you start the fight?

Though I’ve spent most of this post talking about the passage again, what moves me most tonight is the conversation that has swirled around it. Some of the commenters are people I count as friends; others are those I only know in cyberspace by screen names and blogs. The exchange between us gives me hope.

And fills me with gratitude.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: jesus goes postal

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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6

I’ve been struggling with a story today.

“Jesus cleansing the Temple” is the way it usually gets titled for those of us who know the story. It shows up in all four gospels and I’ve heard it over and over; it’s not new to me. Jesus was going into the Temple in Jerusalem during Passover and saw the mall-like atmosphere that had grown up in the outer court where people could exchange money for Temple currency (to the profit of the money changers) and buy animals for sacrifice (also at a serious markup, I’m sure). He made a whip out of some cords and sent the money changers and merchants running for their collective lives, leaving tables turned and everyone wondering what the hell happened.

We read John’s version this morning, being good lectionary followers, which comes early in his gospel – Chapter Two, to be exact. The first chapter is full of the poetry I dearly love – the Word became flesh and dwelt among us – and the second begins with Jesus at the wedding at Cana, which is a story I love because of the interaction between Jesus and his mother.

On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” 5His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

First, who gets away with calling his mother, “Woman”? Second and speaking of performance criticism, wouldn’t you love to be able to hear the tone in the voices of both Jesus and Mary? Third, we get a picture of a pretty cool Messiah in this opening miracle. Drinks are on him.

A sentence later – that’s right one sentence, however much time actually passed –he’s in the Temple going off on the moneychangers like Chuck Norris on a drug dealer. Two sentences after that, before the dust can even clear or anyone straighten the tables, Jesus is quietly talking to Nicodemus about being born again.

One of the ways I was taught to look at Bible passages was to begin by noticing what came before and after the story of interest. How do I make sense of stories that show Jesus going from wedding to warrior to welcomer? More than that, and regardless of what comes before and after, what do I do with a story where Jesus responds with violence? He made a whip out of cords, which I’m assuming was intended to be more than symbolic, and he stormed the Temple, turning over tables and chasing everyone from the sellers to the sheep out of the room. Whatever his motivation, whatever prophecy he fulfilled, he was violent and he did damage. The blessed-are-the-peacemakers-turn-the-other-cheek guy was whipping people to get his point across.

As I said, I’ve been struggling with the story.

I went back to the beginning of John and looked at the order of things once again:

  • the Prologue
  • John the Baptist points him out
  • Jesus chooses his disciples
  • the wedding at Cana
  • Jesus clears the Temple
  • Nicodemus comes to see Jesus
  • some more John the Baptist stuff

Chapter Four opens with Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman, which is one of my favorite stories. At the end of their conversation, he told her he was the Messiah. Could it be John was giving us an account of how Jesus grew into his identity? Could he be showing us how Jesus got started and found his way to a true sense of his calling?

(By the way, these questions are not rhetorical. And, yes, I understand the are problematic since the other gospels place the story late in Jesus’ ministry because they only record one Passover where John records three. And I’m not trying to get into a theological debate here; I’m trying to figure out what to do with a violent Messiah. This blows my mind.)

To say Jesus lost his temper doesn’t satisfy me because I don’t think he is out of control in his actions. We don’t need to retitle the section, “Jesus Goes Postal.” The recent church shooting is too fresh in my mind to think that Jesus was just freaking out. He knew what he was doing. He seemed full of righteous indignation, as Ginger says. The main victims of the merchants and moneychangers would have been the poor because of the price gouging. Jesus came to liberate the poor, to turn the world upside down; we see that over and over. Yet, only this once does his defense of the poor come in the shape of a fist.

Years ago, I heard Tony Campolo speak and he said, “Everyday, over and over, we have to make a choice of how we are going to respond to the world around us, and we are always choosing between whether we will respond with love or with power.” Here is a story of the One who incarnated Love responding to a situation with power, not love. Jesus took the strong hand and slapped me silly.

Part of my struggle is with myself. I have heard this story my whole life in church and never let myself see what troubles me about it until today. I allowed myself to be blinded by familiarity; I wasn’t looking for anything new. Jesus chased the bad guys out of the Temple, which is what good guys do. But he did it violently. This can’t be one of the go-and-do-likewise kind of stories. Had Jesus made it a pattern, he never would have gone through the Cross to the Resurrection.

I suppose this would be the paragraph where I tie it all together and tell you have I’ve come to terms with the story in some new and insightful way. It’s not. And I think that’s OK. My struggle is not a crisis of faith, as though I somehow think Jesus is not who he said he was. My struggle is to have the wherewithal to think and feel through my new understanding of the story (new to me, anyway) and see what it has to say about my faith and my growth as a human being.

As we say in the UCC, there is more light yet to break forth.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: march fourteenth

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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0

The tale of my day is less
story than scrapbook:
a stop at the supermarket,
the tire store, Chik-fil-a.
Here’s the smile I brought
home from the young
woman who surprised
me with the joy she found
serving my sandwich:
“My pleasure,” she said
I still have a piece of
conversation, I found
worth keeping, with the
young man at Sears who
sold me two new tires
and called me “Buddy.”
But it was in the line
at Old Navy, where
I had gone to return
two pairs of pants, that
I realized my place on
the page that is today;
the line was ten deep
and there were only two
(too few) cashiers;
I chose patience over
pugnacity and waited
my turn to turn in my
merchandise. The man,
not so young this time,
apologized for the wait.
“That’s OK,” I said, “Buddy.”

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: show me a story

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2

I guess because I grew up hearing sermons in church, I spent a large part of my life thinking of a sermon as primarily an oral presentation, rather than a written document first. When I began to preach with some regularity that perspective changed. I found I was a better preacher once I learned a sermon was a written document first – I needed to have worked out what I was going to say – and then an oral presentation.

When I was teaching high school in Boston to classes with seventy percent or more nonnative English speakers, I was daunted by the fact that Shakespeare was part of the curriculum. Most of the kids had trouble with modern English; how were they going to understand what Will wrote? I went to a workshop on teaching Shakespeare and was reminded that, though we were handing the play to the kids in book form, a play is intended to be performed, not read. Over the years, I taught the kids how to choreograph a swordfight on stage, how to figure out what was happening in a scene. From the opening line, we acted the play out in class and the language came alive. They got it. I did, too.

This morning, Ginger and I drove to Greensboro for a meeting of Baptist professors of religion who were gathering prior to a larger convention. Dalen Jackson, president of the group, had invited Ginger to do the devotion for the group at the beginning of their session. I went along for the ride. After the devotion, we hung around to hear Dalen’s paper, “’Clumsy Mark’ Again? Mark’s Gospel as the Transcription of Peter’s Public Performance of the Gospel Story.” It has been awhile since I got to be in on an academic discussion, and I learned something.

At the heart of Dalen’s paper was a discussion of performance criticism, which was new to me. He used a quote to describe the idea:

A performance was an integral part of every early Christian experience of the compositions that now comprise the writings of the New Testament. The New Testament writings were either written “transcriptions” of oral narratives composed in performance or they were composed in writing (perhaps orally by dictation) for use in oral performance.

I’ve always thought of the Bible as a book (more of an anthology, I guess). My experience with it is primarily in print. What Dalen taught me today was the gospels, along with most of the rest of it, were just the opposite of my sermons: oral before they were written. They were more like Shakespeare’s plays: intended to be performed, because that is how they were created.

Reading the gospels, for me, is sometimes like reading email messages in that tone is often hard to convey. Here’s one of the passages from Mark that I wonder about, for instance, Mark 3:31-35:

Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”

“Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

How did Jesus ask who his family was? It’s not an easy answer – by that I mean this doesn’t feel much like a Hallmark card moment to me. The tone we infuse into the words makes a difference in how they can be interpreted. If the words stay in the two dimensional world of the page, tone stays out of reach, because it needs the three dimensional world of performance to have room to move. In a time before books, that’s how the stories got told. If we want to get to the heart of the stories, then we have to let them live off of the page; we have to incarnate them, if you will – perform them.

My favorite liturgist at church is a person named Suzanne. When she reads scripture she does It from memory. She tells us the story. She is a part of the Network of Biblical Storytellers who already know what Dalen is talking about, though they get to it down a different path. Rather than connecting back with long ago, they are looking at present trends. They describe themselves by saying, “We bring God’s stories to life for a post-literate, digital age.” Whatever the age, they are on to something: the gospel story is a living, breathing thing, not something static trapped between book covers. These are stories to be read (aloud) and wrestled with, to be talked about and talked through, to be performed and remembered.

My friend Beth is an actor in California. She wrote me the other day about a character she is going to play in an upcoming performance because there were some theological issues in her character’s background that were more akin to mine as a Christian than to Beth’s, who is Jewish. Our discussion was both fun and meaningful to me, in part, because I got to learn something about how Beth, as an actor, goes through the process of becoming a character, learning about her and then climbing inside her skin for the two hours she is on stage. It reminds me of one of the earliest and still most meaningful explanations of the Incarnation given to me along the way: Jesus was God with skin on. Jesus stepped into the human story as one of us.

Dalen’s invitation, as I heard it today, was for us to step into Jesus’ story by climbing inside its skin, if you will. The dictionary says the word perform comes from old words that mean to alter and to accomplish. When we tell the story – when we perform it – we alter it by breathing life into it again and we accomplish the task of letting it come alive in us.

I had fun learning today.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: don’t just do something

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3

The music director at our church, James, was in a car accident and severely injured last weekend. He has an old Cadillac that he was driving to see some friends in another state. Unknown to him, the car had some sort of carbon monoxide leak and he passed out at the wheel. The car crossed the median and dove into a cornfield, setting the corn and the car on fire. He was able, somehow, to get out of the car, get to the road, and flag down help that got him to a hospital. He did not have skin burns, but inhaled a great deal of soot and smoke that burned his lungs. Since Sunday he has been in the hospital in another city, intubated and heavily sedated while they daily go in and try to clean out his lungs. The news today is they have made good progress and the lungs are becoming clear and appear to be healing themselves. There are other questions still to be answered, but we are grateful for the hopeful words.

But being far away, waiting for the next word sucks.

The question bouncing around in my mind and also within our congregation is, “What should we do for him?” It’s an honest question with an answer that is hard to hear: right now all we can do is let him and his wife, Amanda, know we are with them. The feeling reminds me of advice I got from my Director when I began my Clinical Pastoral Education internship. “Sometimes,” he said, “you have to live be words from Alice in Wonderland: ‘Don’t just do something; stand there.’”

I understand and I struggle with trusting a “ministry of presence” is enough.

No, that’s not it. I know from experience that having someone who stays through tough times without doing anything other than not leaving is more than enough. It’s just damn hard work. And it doesn’t feel like enough.

I need to do something tangible to make me feel like I’m helping. To make me feel not helpless. The hard reality I must face is doing something so I feel less helpless is not necessarily doing something that truly ministers to them. Our congregation has done a good job finding things that do help. The choir, for example, has come together to pay to board the couple’s pup while they are away. That’s good work. We have some family connections in the other city that have brought meals and support. But, as Ginger said in her email note to our congregation today, what we can best do is pray and support one another in “this difficult waiting room of life.”

And so we wait. And pray. Together.

Please join us.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: routine

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2

Duke is on spring break this week, which means my restaurant has been closed and I’ve been a day worker at our catering shop, getting food ready for various catering gigs and also doing some other prep, or background, work. The shop is quiet, too, so our crew there has been small: our pastry chef, Tony the dishwasher, me, and one additional cook each day. The pace is deliberate, but doesn’t carry the same sense of deadline that getting ready for dinner service and working the kitchen line carries. I have a list of stuff to do, I do it, and I come home.

The hardest part has been trying to reorient my sleep schedule. My normal schedule – or what passes for normal at our house – is I work from 11 am to about 9 pm, then I come home and see Ginger and the pups, and then I write, and then I go to bed in the one or two range. I haven’t been able to break that habit, even though I’ve been getting up at 6:30 to get to work by 7:30. I’ve ended up sleeping a split shift: four hours at night and two or three when I get home from work. I ought to be able to get my days and night straight about the time I have to go back to Duke on Monday. Duke only has about five more weeks of classes, so about April 20 I will have to reorient my schedule again.

As tired as I am, I’m grateful that my routine changes because I’m quite capable of becoming tied to a routine. I’m a creature of habit. Hannah, our beloved Schnauzer who has been gone many, many years, always had to walk on Ginger’s right side when we were out strolling. Though the little dog is no longer walking with us, I still walk on Ginger’s right. It is far to easy for life to become an exercise in muscle memory.

Since we’ve been at Pilgrim I’ve done something I’ve not done in any church I’ve ever been a part of. I make a point of sitting somewhere different in the sanctuary from one week to the next. It wasn’t my idea. Ginger suggested it in a sermon, so I decided to take her suggestion. What I have learned is there are parts of the room where I can hear much better than others. I’ve also learned different parts of the sanctuary have a different feel. Sitting up close to the front helps me hear, but it also puts me in front of everyone, so I can’t see who else is in worship very well. Sitting in the back gives me the panoramic view, but makes me feel distant from the altar. I’ve found a couple of dark spots in the sanctuary that make it difficult to read; I’ve also learned we have boxes of tissues at the end of several rows.

The best part of the moving has been getting to sit with different people. I don’t just pick a pew, I pick a pew I can share with someone. I’ve gotten better acquainted with some folks and gotten to greet people I had not seen before when we pass the Peace since I was on the other side of the room. It is a small gesture that has had large implications. It has helped me think less about a particular pew and more about those with whom I am worshipping.

When we lived in Marshfield, I used to go walking down the beach looking for sea glass. When the tide was out, the beach was wide; there was no way to cover all of it. I had to choose a path and work my way across the sand. I learned that if I were more precise in my path I looked more closely and found more glass. If I tried to cover too much ground, my gaze was not focused enough to be productive. I also realized that when I chose a path that particular I was leaving most of the beach unexamined. Over the years I found a lot of sea glass; I missed more, I’m sure.

We follow the routines that shape our days because there’s a payoff. We get stuff done, we know where we’re going, we get a good night’s rest. But our little path through life does not afford a view of the whole beach. I need to make changes – little, one step to the left kind of changes – to help myself see a bigger picture of the world.

Sit in a new pew.
Drive home a different way.
Go to a different grocery store.
Walk on the left side.

I see new things, even with tired eyes.

Peace
Milton

lenten journal: improvisational faith

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1

Thanks to a gift certificate I’ve kept since Christmas, I added to my cookbook library this week. I bought The Improvisational Cook by Sally Schneider. To call it a cookbook is to sell it short because the author is really asking the reader to think about how he or she cooks as much as giving instruction about particular dishes. Even the recipes she does give are intended as jumping off places – cooking prompts, if you will:

Improvisational cooking demands that you shift your thinking, or at least temporarily put rigid notions and fears aside. This is true learning: gaining information and, more than not, successes from being willing to make mistakes and a mess or two . . . . Asking yourself What would happen if? and the attendant Why not? can challenge the fiercest inhibition: fear of listening to your own senses and of expressing your unique sensibility or “voice.” . . . Creativity involves relinquishing total control and allowing an idea to develop organically. Often this means that you start out with one thing in mind but, as you cook, the idea shifts and evolves until you find yourself on a different path than the one you started on. (9)

Richard Thompson was on stage by himself last night at the Arts Center in Carrboro. The venue was small and intimate; he was conversational and interactive with an audience full of devoted and long-time followers. We were not too many songs into his set when people began to call out the names of songs they wanted to hear. More than once, I could tell he changed his mind about what he was going to sing based on the requests that came his way. His willingness to improvise – starting with one thing and letting the evening shift – made the concert even better. As many concerts as he has done, he was able to look at the unique ingredients offered him by those of us gathered in that particular room on that particular night and make something new out of familiar ingredients.

Schneider talks about inspiration for improvisation from “a mostly uncharitable confluence of associations, hungers, and memories, a mysterious process that is open to us all.” As I read the sentence it struck me that I could say the same of what it means to walk through Lent, a season of preparation handed down across the centuries that pulls from all of those influences. The same could also be said of church beyond just this one season. There’s not just one recipe for what it means to be a community of faith, but we have common ingredients, hungers, memories, and we all are born of the same Mystery.

Improvisation is also central to the world of acting, which is quite akin to cooking, I think. A couple of years ago, I came across the five common principles of improvisational theater, which seem worth repeating tonight:

  • yes and
  • make everyone else look good
  • be changed by what is said and what happens
  • shared agenda and shared focus
  • serve the good of the whole

We are walking a well worn path through these days and we are walking a new path at the very same time with the very same steps. We share the ingredients of humanity with all those who have come before us and we have to see what we can make of today, which will not be the same as any day that has come before it. How we combine the flavors of our lives will determine what we make of them.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: beatitude

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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I had a chance to see Richard Thompson in concert tonight in a solo acoustic performance. His songs were well crafted and beautiful, his stage presence was engaging, and his guitar playing was magnificent, evidence of someone who has spent his life determined to be a great guitar player. He has accomplished his goal. Watching him brought two statements to mind, one a Beatitude of Jesus and the other a book title:

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” – Jesus

“Purity in heart is to will one thing.” – Soren Kierkegaard

I remember reading Kierkegaard in seminary and contemplating the book title as an explanation of Jesus’ words. Both statements are problematic for me because I am not a person of singular interest or effort. I play guitar, but I play like someone who also likes to cook and write and, well, do just about anything I come across, including writing poetry. This one’s for Richard.

beatitude

you played me a blues song
and brought down the house
I sat in the dark with my heart
torn open by your hands
on the strings, making music
I could not even imagine

can I afford for my response
to such beauty be to fret –
I am not one to will one thing
still, I could see the divine
in the way your hands moved

practiced hands at home
with the frets and strings –
and you’ve been home there
for a long, long time
while I have wandered

and wondered with dreams
of my own, less practiced
perhaps, less familiar
with focus, but still
hoping to see God.

Peace,
Milton

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