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lenten journal: song about the moon

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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4

The path from the restaurant to my car leads me across the heart of Duke’s West Campus five nights a week. Most of the time, not too many folks are out walking when I am, but tonight the Quad was rather well populated with students all standing and facing in the same direction and staring up into the sky. My first thought was they were waiting to see if the Pentagon was going to be able to shoot down its own spy satellite before it fell to earth. I finally asked a girl and guy who were standing near to the sidewalk.

“It’s a lunar eclipse,” she answered, “but it’s behind the cloud now.”

I had no idea that was even happening today. My NPR time gave me nothing but stuff about Castro and the primaries – at least those were the stories I got to hear during prep time. But as I kept walking and trying to look up to see if the clouds might part, I thought of Psalm 8:

I look up at your heavens, shaped by your fingers,
at the moon and the stars you set firm –
what are human beings that you spare a thought for them?

When I sat down to write tonight, I still had the moon on my mind. Ella came in and barked to be taken outside one last time before she went to bed and we stood out under what was by then a clear sky and a moon free of the shadow.

And I started thinking about songs. While Ella trotted in the dark carrying a pine cone in her mouth, I sang softly,

I’m being followed by a moonshadow
moonshadow, moonshadow
leaping and hopping on a moonshadow
moonshadow, moonshadow

My favorite part is the bridge:

will it take long to find me
I asked the faithful light
will it take long to find me
and are you gonna stay the night

Italo Calvino has a wonderful short story called, “The Distance of the Moon” (in Cosmicomics) in which he describes the time near the beginning of human history when the moon was close enough to touch. At high tide, people could reach the moon by ladder; they would visit and then get back before the tide went back out. The natural flow of the universe was to expand, so each night the distance became a little greater, as did the risk of climbing to the moon, until finally it was no longer in reach.

Perhaps we keep singing because we can’t get there so easily. And so Shawn Colvin sings (with Ernie)

So if I should visit the moon
Well, I’ll dance on a moonbeam and then
I will make a wish on a star
And I’ll wish I was home once again
Though I’d like to look down at the earth from above
I would miss all the places and people I love
So although I may go I’ll be coming home soon
‘Cause I don’t want to live on the moon
No, I don’t want to live on the moon

There are probably enough moon songs to line the lyrics end to end and reach the cold hearted orb that rules the night, but I think my favorite is Paul Simon’s “Song About the Moon” (from my favorite Paul Simon record, Hearts and Bones):

If you want to write a song about the moon
Walk along the craters in the afternoon
When the shadows are deep
And the light is alien
And gravity leaps like a knife off the pavement
And you want to write a song about the moon
You want to write a spiritual tune
Then nah nah nah
Presto
Song about the moon

If you want to write a song about the heart
Think about the moon before you start
Because the heart will howl
Like a dog in the moonlight
And the heart can explode
Like a pistol on a June night
So if you want to write a song about the heart
And its ever-longing for a counterpart
Write a song about the moon
The laughing boy
He laughed so hard
He fell down from his place
The laughing girl
She laughed so hard
The tears rolled down her face

Hey Songwriter
If you want to write a song about
A face
Think about a photograph
That you really can’t remember
But you can’t erase
Wash your hands in dreams and lightning
Cut off your hair
And whatever is frightening
If you want to write a song
About a face
If you want to write a song about
The human race
Write a song about the moon
If you want to write a song about the moon
You want to write a spiritual tune
Then do it
Write a song about the moon

Tonight was a good night at work. We were busy again – which is great news – and everyone did well. I reworked the dish the critic had maligned and it was better, too. As hard as I worked today, I came out into the night somewhat energized. Maybe the moon’s game of hide and seek and the folks staring together up into the clouds and stars was contagious. Maybe we were all a little bit washed in dreams and lightning. What I came to tell is the clouds passed and our shadow left the moon unscathed. I know because it didn’t take long to find me and send a shadow of its own while Ella searched for pine cones in its soft glow.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: listening and learning

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
4

As I was driving to work yesterday, I called Chef because I had a couple of questions. We talked about some of the changes I’ve been making at the restaurant at Duke, and I got to tell her I noticed the check average had gone up a dollar, which means we’re making some progress toward not losing money. As we were ending our conversation, she said, “You’re really doing a good job, Milton.”

Last night was our busiest night yet at the restaurant and I was also starting a new expanded menu, which meant Ramon and I had our work cut out for us. When I first took over the kitchen a little over a month ago, I knew there were only going to be two of us on the line and Ramon was just learning how to be a line cook. I cut the menu down to about four appetizers (soup, salad, fried calamari, hummus) and five entrées (steak, salmon, chicken stir-fry, veggie stir-fry, chicken sandwich). I changed how I presented the meat and fish every couple of days, but the menu stayed small.

Ramon and I have both gotten a better handle on the kitchen and he’s come a long way as a cook. The biggest problem to his progress is his lack of English vocabulary, not his culinary prowess. He has three or four dishes that have become his station and his learning more everyday. With that in mind, I was ready to up the ante on what we were doing, so our new menu includes:

appetizers

  • homemade soup
  • small salad
  • fried calamari
  • cheese and fruit plate
  • hummus platter

salads (entrée sized)

  • eggplant salad: entrée-sized salad of crispy eggplant rounds topped with mixed greens, granny smith apples, feta cheese, toasted pine nuts, and artichoke vinaigrette
  • steak salad: slices of grilled steak over mixed greens tossed with dried cherries, bleu cheese crumbles, granny smith apples, spiced pecans, and balsamic vinaigrette
  • grilled chicken salad: grilled chicken breast on a bed of mixed greens tossed with honey-roasted peanuts, golden raisins, parmesan cheese & raspberry vinaigrette

entrées

  • honey chipotle glazed salmon served on a bed of mixed greens and coconut-raisin rice and topped with pineapple salsa
  • grilled ribeye steak with sweet and white scalloped potatoes, seasonal vegetable, and caramelized onions
  • cocnut curry shrimp sautéed with julienne peppers and snow peas in a coconut curry sauce tossed with linguine
  • eggplant parmigiana: layers of crispy breaded eggplant and cheese topped with homemade marinara sauce over linguine
  • chicken parmigiana: breaded chicken breast topped with homemade marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese served over linguine
  • tuscan chicken sandwich: grilled chicken breast topped with portabella mushroom and melted cheese with basil pesto mayonnaise on sourdough bread with fries or side salad
  • teriyaki stir-fry: chicken or vegetable

We had a little bit of a rush right at the beginning of service and things never let up. When all was said and done, the two of us served seventy-six dinners in about three and a half hours. Ramon and I were both running around and we were keeping up, even with the new dishes. A little after seven, one of the servers put up a ticket – fried calamari and coconut curry shrimp – and said, “I know this guy; we’re getting reviewed.”

Duke Dining Services sends people around to all of the restaurants on campus to grade and report on everything from the service to the meal to the look and feel of the place. The calamari is Ramon’s dish. He was getting hit pretty hard, but I saw no reason to step in. He does good work. I had my own set of tickets to deal with before I got to the shrimp. The dish took longer getting out than usual because we were busier than usual, but it went out just like all the other dinners. About eight, the server came back and said, “Here’s the review. You ain’t gonna like the comments.”

Here’s a tip: never bring bad news about the food to the chef when there’s still an hour of dinner service left. We were busy already and I tried hard not to pick up the paper and read it; I knew better. I couldn’t help myself and then I had to work hard to stay in the game until we finally stopped cooking a little after nine.

Under “Food Quality” he wrote: “I thought the food was disappointing and needed better execution. Use hotter oil to fry the calamari so it’s crisp. Season the food. Everything needed salt. Main dish was very bland.”

The grade he gave the food was G: Good.

One of other servers came back and could see my disappointment. I was wearing it like a chef’s coat. “Don’t let it get to you,” he said. “I know the reviewer. He’s an ass. You’re doing well. Forget about him.”

When I got home and sent my nightly email to Chef, I quoted the reviewer much the same as I have here. When she wrote back this morning, she said, “The guy is a snob; don’t let him get to you. Do go through the review and find the kernels of truth you can learn from.”

My two choices as I stood at the fork in the kitchen could not have been better delineated.

There are other comments on the page that make it clear the guy is not going to win Miss Congeniality. The tone of his writing carries more than an overtone of superiority and, in the heat of battle, Ramon’s calamari last night was not his best work. As for me, I’m still trying to figure out the coconut curry sauce for the shrimp. It hasn’t had the punch I’ve wanted. I tasted it when I got to work this afternoon. It was bland. The other entrées are in pretty good shape. He picked the one that is still in development, if you will, and it showed. He may be an ass, but he was right on this one.

I heard two things from Chef today that mattered to me. One was that I was doing a good job. I’m a person who responds to affirmation. Her words mean a great deal to me. The second was when she told me to look for what I could learn from the review and then – then let it roll off. Don’t take the feedback personally, just take it and go on.

We made some changes in the way we do the calamari this afternoon and they were nice and crispy tonight. I worked on the sauce, too. It isn’t there yet, but it wasn’t bland, I can tell you that. As we got to the parking lot tonight, I said, “Ramon, you did a really good job tonight.”

I’m not the only one who needs to hear it.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: a good place to be

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
4

You will write about the sermon, right? Maybe on Monday? What it was like to mount the pulpit once again. How long has it been?
(Gordon, in a comment on my blog)

The last time I preached was October 1, 2006. It was World Communion Sunday, the fifth anniversary of the beginning of our bombing of Afghanistan after September 11, and my last day as associate pastor at First Congregational Church of Hanover, where I served for three years. Yesterday was the second Sunday in Lent, the anniversary of the day Pope Pius XXII declared Saint Claire of Assisi as the patron saint of television, and my first time to preach at Pilgrim UCC.

Part of leaving the church in Hanover was also choosing to no longer be a vocational minister. I was even listed as “retired clergy” in the Mass. Conference directory, a label I choose over that of my friend Joy who reminds me I’ve “left the ministry.” I feel called to cook professionally, to write as if it were a profession, and to be the spouse of the pastor on a personal level. Being Ginger’s husband is my favorite thing.

When Ginger asked me to preach because she and Carla, our associate pastor, would be on the Women’s Retreat, I was happy to accept. Part of the reason was, of course, because Ginger asked me. Part of the reason is I like getting a chance to say what’s going through my mind and heart. Most of the reason was I love worship and I love getting to help lead in worship.

I love being a part of the church and The Church.

Since we’re still not unpacked completely and my clerical robe is still in the Pod, I wore a suit to preach yesterday (an event in and of itself). I’m glad it worked out that way. I didn’t feel as though I was stepping back into a role I had chosen to no longer play. Instead, I felt more like it was just me doing my part in the service along with the liturgist and the choir and the other worship leaders. I don’t feel like a Reverend anymore. (Did I ever?) I do feel like a contributing church member. Yesterday, my contribution was the sermon.

Worship requires a recipe, much like cooking dinner. You have to figure out the ingredients and how they are going to mix together to make something compelling and comforting at the same time. The sermon, even as a part of the total mix, requires a recipe of it’s own: text, thoughts, connections, and people. Many years ago, Gene, one of my friends from seminary, was talking about what he was learning about preaching. He said when he tried to preach to everyone, he got to nobody. When he thought of five or six specific people in the congregation and wrote his sermon to speak to them, it felt like everyone came out of church saying, “I felt like you were talking straight to me.”

I’m grateful that we have been in Durham long enough for me to feel something other than brand new here and to have a few relationships that have moved past introductions to allow me to preach with specific people in mind. I’m also grateful that I think of the sermon as a conversation starter in the context of a community of ongoing conversation rather than a Word From The Lord.

As I’m writing, two things come to mind.

When I was growing up in Baptist churches, people who felt God calling them into ministry either “surrendered to preach” or “surrendered for special service.” There are a couple of blog posts at least dealing with that vocabulary, but I’ll have to do that another time. As a youth minister, I began to realize that the only time we made a big deal about someone following God’s call on their lives was when they “surrendered” for ministry. I don’t remember ever being a part of a service when we celebrated a young person feeling called to be a physical therapist or a carpenter or an accountant, an actor, a teacher, or a chef.

The other story probably happened not long after Gene made his comments about preaching. I was in a church in Central Texas where Miss America was scheduled to come and give her testimony. One of the men in the church said, “Why is it when we have someone special come to speak they have to be someone famous? Aren’t there any plumbers who want to talk about Jesus?”

I’m not saying ministry, as a vocation is something that is no big deal or doesn’t require special gifts and skills. One of the reasons I’m retired is I don’t have the gifts or skills to do the job in a way that didn’t eat me alive. The story is told of Margaret Atwood, the Canadian novelist and poet, being at a cocktail party when a physician approached her and said, “You know, when I finish my career as a neurologist, I think I’ll write a novel.”

“And,” Atwood replied, “when I finish my career as a novelist, I think I’ll take up brain surgery.”

I am saying there was something redemptive for me to step into the pulpit, not as a minister, but as a church member, as the spouse of the pastor, as Milton to speak my part of the conversation.

After church, Dewitt and Alice, two wonderful people I am getting to know, asked me to go to lunch with them before I had to go to work at the restaurant. While we ate, Dewitt was wonderfully specific about the things that had spoken to him in the sermon. He obviously listens better than I do on most Sundays.

The conversation continues.

I’m not sure if that answers your questions, Gordon, so let me try a bit more succinctly. Sunday was a good day. I stepped into the pulpit with those who have been church for me in the past holding me up and those who are becoming church for me sitting in front of me and calling me on.

It was a good place to be.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: how do I get there from here?

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

Genesis 12:1-4; John 3:1-17
A Sermon for Pilgrim United Church of Christ, Durham

It’s written matter of factly in our scripture passage this morning:

“Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you,”

as though God and Abram were having a conversation. If they were, we aren’t privy to it. The chapter starts with God talking and gives us no background or context. If we back up into Chapter 11, we learn about Abram’s family tree, that he was originally from Ur (which is modern day Iraq), and that Terah, his father, had actually set out from there for Canaan, but only made it as far as Haran before he settled down to live out his two hundred years. We don’t know why.

Abram had been in Haran a hundred and twenty-five years or so when God spoke to him about moving on. He was settled and secure. God offered him promises and unsettledness – pack up everything, leave your family and friends and the land you know as home – for a reason: “and I will make you a blessing.”

Nicodemus was a settled man as well. He was a religious leader, which meant he both power and money. He heard Jesus speaking and came to find him to ask more questions, I think, but began with a statement instead:

“Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

Jesus’ response – also in a matter of fact tone — seems to indicate that he wasn’t interested in some sort of esoteric theological discussion. He wanted to make it personal:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Nicodemus got to hear the phrase “born again” before it was road weary and politically laden. He took it at face value, wondering how he could climb back into his mother’s womb and come back once more as a bouncing baby boy. The image is not a sentimental one, but a painful, messy, even bloody image. How could something as visceral as childbirth be repeated? And why would you want to do that?

After listening to Ginger’s sermon last week on the temptations of Jesus, I told her I thought they could all be summed up in one phrase: I matter most. The Tempter was trying to get Jesus to live as though he mattered most. From that perspective, these two stories could be summed up in an opposite way: God matters most. God is where things start and finish, God is the Alpha and Omega, the First and Last Word.

The other thing that struck me was something I remembered from a New Testament class many years ago. The temptations were not a one time thing for Jesus. Deciding whether to feed people to gain allegiance, or to use the miracles as a way to gain popularity, or to see the world as belonging to him were things Jesus had to stare down everyday. Our stories today are no different.

Abram left Haran and made it all the way to Canaan. He even built an altar at Bethel. Then a famine came and he and Sarai were forced to go to Egypt to find food. The man who had trusted God on the first part of the journey lost his nerve. As they got close, Abram told his wife he was afraid, when the Egyptians saw how beautiful she was, that they would kill him and take her to be with the Pharoah. His plan was to say they were brother and sister. Abram made himself safer, but he didn’t prove himself more faithful in what he did to himself and his wife.

I don’t mean to be too hard on the guy. Maybe he thought the journey to Canaan would be a one time thing: he would unpack at Bethel and then he would get to live two hundred years in the same place. He had hardly taken the saddlebags off the camels when it was time to go again.

Nicodemus shows up two more times in the gospels. In one scene, he asks a rather innocuous question as the other Pharisees are plotting to kill Jesus. Then he shows up at the tomb with oil and spices to pour on Jesus’ body. Perhaps the thought of outing himself as a “born again believer” was too much.

The sentence closest to the heart of our denomination over the last few years I, “God is still speaking.” Those are dangerous words. If God is still speaking – and saying the kind of things Abram and Nicodemus heard — then the Bible is not an expanded version of Life’s Little Instruction Book or Robert Fulghum’s Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. God’s words to us are incendiary, and intentionally so. If we listen, ours are also. When the children lead us in prayer each week, here’s what we say:

Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

The trip from Iraq to Israel was less complicated in Abram’s day and Nicodemus didn’t have to contend with globalization and climate change and a world as large as the one we know. So will we ever get to settle in the Promised Land or be born once and for all?

The short answer is no.

If birth is our working metaphor, then it is God’s womb we climb into over and over, and with each birth we see another way we are called to be the people of God, whether it’s figuring out how to respond to Darfur or Kenya, or how to meet the needs of the poor and homeless in our city and our nation, or how to hold our government accountable when they torture and abuse people, or how to handle our finances as a church so that we are faithful and generous stewards of what we have been given, or how to deal ethically in our business practices, or how to live with honesty and integrity as a church community. We are called to be born again and again and again, each time a fuller incarnation of the God who gives birth to us over and over and over.

John 3:16 is the first verse I memorized as a child. It begins, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son . . .” Not only is God still speaking, but God is still so loving the world that God continues to live in a constant state of labor, giving birth to us, the children of God, again and again, that we might be a blessing so the world may know how deeply that love runs. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: I don’t want to be nice

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1

Curious George has gone to Africa.

Sorry. I couldn’t resist. Bush is making a whirlwind tour of The Largely Ignored Continent, visiting countries not in crisis where he can point to what he has done to help them. Yes, my cynical sap is definitely rising. Kofi Annan has been in Kenya for a couple of weeks trying to do something to stem the violence firsthand, but Bush chose to go next door to Tanzania and let his Secretary of State go to Nairobi. None of them is going to Darfur.

Before you skip to wherever you’re going next, this is not going to be a rant. I’m headed to one particular thing I heard today on NPR related to the $19 billion Bush pledged five years ago to help fight AIDS in Africa. The money has been spent on AIDS and also to try and lessen the damage done by malaria and tuberculosis, and the money has helped. The NPR reporter noted before the aid was pledged, less than two percent of people with AIDS were able to get any help. That number has now risen to over thirty percent. Yes, that’s good news and . . .

We’ve spent twenty-six times that much on the war in Iraq, a number that is truly impossible for me to fathom. Over twenty million dollars clicked by on the counter here on the blog in the time it took me to write this post. It will only take five months to spend $19 billion in Iraq, not five years. Beyond feeling frustrated and helpless at the way the government spends money, I’m pulled by the numbers in a more personal way that makes me contemplate my generosity and values.

Some years ago, when the news still talked about Brad and Jennifer, Ginger talked in one of her sermons about the big deal that had been made because they gave a hundred thousand dollars to something. For the organization receiving the money, a $100K was a big deal, but when Ginger did the math as far as the gift as a percentage of income, it was the equivalent of she and I giving about five bucks to the cause.

All of it flows together for me when I look at the story of Abram because I keep thinking about what was at stake for him, and for Sarai, even though she doesn’t get equal billing. Genesis 12 opens with God telling Abram to pack up and move – no context or explanation. I looked back into the previous chapter to find that Abraham’s father, Terah, had been the one who originally left Ur (Iraq!) for Canaan, but only made it as far as Haran and settled there. We aren’t told why; he just stopped. Who knows if the prospect of taking up the journey was ever the topic of discussion over dinner, if Terah was going because God told him to go, or if he just felt like moving west and then got tired like the guide in Waiting for Guffman.

Abram and Sarai got to the land they were promised and built an altar of thanksgiving, but a famine came, so they went south to Egypt, as did Moses and Mary and Joseph, to name a few. As they came into the Negev, Abram got a little nervous. His wife was beautiful and he didn’t fancy himself much of a fighter, so he told her to say she was his sister so they wouldn’t kill him to get to her. She “went to live” with the Pharoah and Abram became a wealthy farmer, getting comfortable in Egypt the same way his father settled in Haran.

Abram’s plan worked well, I suppose, if you’re Abram. Sarai was the one who had to pay the bill. I imagine “going to live with” the Pharoah was a euphemism for more than doing housework and looking pretty at dinnertime. Sarai, who was barren and wanted children, was being forced to have sex with the Pharoah so Abram could get set up in business and not get killed. He probably thought he was doing her a favor.

Being compassionate is not the same thing as doing someone a favor or doing something nice for those in need. Being philanthropic – making sure we spread things out so everyone gets a little something – is not the same as being generous. One of our folks in Marshfield was so deeply moved by the plight of the victims of Katrina in Mississippi (who, FEMA said today, were given trailers contaminated with formaldehyde) that he continues to figure out how to get down there as often as he can to help people rebuild their homes. He isn’t being nice; he identifies with those folks, hurts with them, and hardly goes a day without thinking about what he can do to help. One of these days, we’re going to get a call and find out he retired as a CPA and moved to the Delta.

It wasn’t Abram’s idea to leave Egypt. Left to his own devices, I think he might have been the same sort of settled footnote as his father had Pharoah not found out he had been fooled and told them both to get out of the country. Abram made sure to take all of his wealth and comfort with them. But God’s promise wasn’t that Abram would be rich and comfortable.

“I’ll make you a blessing,” God said. Abram may have stopped listening after, “I’ll make of you a great nation.” (I like the way The Message puts it: “I’ll make you famous.”)

Being an American Christian means, for most of us, growing up with Abram’s sense of comfort and wealth, particularly compared to the rest of the world. We like feeling as though we are the chosen ones, God’s celebrities, able to do nice things for those in need from time to time without really grasping what our choices are costing those around us.

I say, “we.” I should begin by saying, “I.”

I’m thankful this story and others shows God works with and loves flawed people, otherwise I don’t know I could say, “I’m bound for the promised land.”

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: answering invitations

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

In getting to preach this Sunday, since Ginger is away on our church’s women’s retreat, I’ve been thinking about Abram and Nicodemus, the two stars of the lectionary readings this week, and tonight that’s led me to thinking about invitations.

As one who grew up Southern Baptist, invitation is a loaded word, tied to the altar call at the end of every service, calling people to conversion, church membership, or (as we often said) to “redecorate” their lives. As we sang the final hymn, the pastor stood at the front of the church and waited for people to step out into the aisle and come forward. On many occasions, the pastor would signal to the organist to pause and he (they were all men in those days) would implore us to not let the song end without responding to God’s call. For the most part, we all stood still and sang.

The hymns we sang were ones that spoke to our desire to be changed by our encounter with God.

All to Jesus I surrender, all to him I freely give
I will ever love and trust him, in his presence daily live

I surrender all, I surrender all
All to thee, my blessed savior, I surrender all

The songs were filled with imagery of transformation:

Have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way
Thou art the potter, I am the clay
Mold me and make me after thy will
While I am waiting yielded and still

The one I remember as the pinnacle of invitation hymns was

Just as I am without one plea
But that thy blood was shed for me
And that thou bidst me come to thee
O, Lamb of God, I come

Thanks to YouTube, I’ve spent the better part of my evening alone flipping through gospel videos, listening to songs full of invitations to follow and calls to come home. I think about Abram, who hailed from what we know as Iraq, hearing God tell him to pack up and head west. The story is told in only a few verses because Abram didn’t do much talking; he packed up and left.

Nicodemus’ question to Jesus – and Jesus’ answer – unwittingly created one of the great dividing lines in Christianity, as some cling to the idea of being born again as label more than metaphor. Both were trying to come to terms with how we are changed when we encounter God. Neither had any idea how their words and actions would alter the landscape for those who came after them.

The story of our faith is a collection of short stories of individuals and communities of faithful followers who have answered God’s call to move and grow, or to be born anew into a world that needs a fresh incarnation of God’s love. Some of the stories are rich and full; some are tragic and some are laced with laughter.

In my musical journey this evening, I came across Mark Heard’s song, “Heart of Hearts”:

Tears in the city
But nobody’s really surprised, you know
My heart’s taking a beating
Existence is bleeding me dry, you know

But way down in my heart of hearts
Way down in my soul of souls
Way down I know that I am a fortunate man
To have known divine love

The world is in shambles
I’m just a young man but it’s been getting a little bit old to me
I’m already aching
The years have been taking a little bit of a toll on me

But way down in my heart of hearts
Way down in my soul of souls
Way down I know that I am a fortunate man
To have known Divine love

Two in the morning
The siren is a warning that everything is not quite alright
The city is sleeping
I’m down on my knees in the night tonight

But way down in my heart of hearts
Way down in my soul of souls
Way down I know that I am a fortunate man
To have known Divine love

I still don’t know exactly where the sermon is going, any more than Abram knew how to get to Canaan. What I do know is I can sing a few more verses and prepare myself to be changed, converted, even born again once more.

Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind;
sight, riches, healing of the mind,
yea, all I need in thee to find,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, thou wilt receive,
wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;
because thy promise I believe,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, thy love unknown
hath broken every barrier down;
now, to be thine, yea thine alone,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

As the old preachers used to say, close your eyes and make it a prayer.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: an open window

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
4

from the beginning, I suppose
the point of Lent was to do
something, or do without,
for forty days – but when they
started counting, they skipped
the Sundays (“Little Easters”)
so folks could catch their
collective breaths, or find
forgiveness, or just rest.

I knew one person who
called Sundays and Saint
days “windows in Lent,”
as though we needed fresh
air and light to seep into
these deep days of devotion.

whether Saint Valentine is
a window or a greeting card
is of no consequence to me.
With restaurant tables as our
bookends to the day, we began
over coffee and pancakes and
finished with late night snacks.
Because I’m in love I won’t write
a thousand words tonight

on purpose. I wanted to
keep my promise to practice
and I wasn’t going to miss
the breeze the blew in
the open lenten window
tonight when she smiled at me.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: kite juggling

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

I had no idea who Barbara Crooker was until a few days ago and now she’s made The Writer’s Almanac twice in the span of a week and her poetry is speaking to me. Here’s the one from yesterday:

In The Middle

of a life that’s as complicated as everyone else’s,
struggling for balance, juggling time.
The mantle clock that was my grandfather’s
has stopped at 9:20; we haven’t had time
to get it repaired. The brass pendulum is still,
the chimes don’t ring. One day I look out the window,
green summer, the next, the leaves have already fallen,
and a grey sky lowers the horizon. Our children almost grown,
our parents gone, it happened so fast. Each day, we must learn
again how to love, between morning’s quick coffee
and evening’s slow return. Steam from a pot of soup rises,
mixing with the yeasty smell of baking bread. Our bodies
twine, and the big black dog pushes his great head between;
his tail, a metronome, 3/4 time. We’ll never get there,
Time is always ahead of us, running down the beach, urging
us on faster, faster, but sometimes we take off our watches,
sometimes we lie in the hammock, caught between the mesh
of rope and the net of stars, suspended, tangled up
in love, running out of time.

About a week into Lent every year I have to come to terms with time because writing a thousand words a night that make at least some sense takes so much of it. I started writing last Wednesday determined to write in the morning so I wouldn’t face the empty page when I got home from work at ten or ten-thirty. I kept that routine for about three days and ended up back in nocturnal mode because late at night appears to be where I can find the space and silence to write. The tradeoff is I don’t get to sleep as much. I think that’s why the first couple of lines resonated so much:

struggling for balance, juggling time

Some years back, one of Ginger’s colleagues from her doctoral program taught them how to juggle with scarves. The mechanics were easier to teach because the scarves floated more than they fell and, as Ginger pointed out, they looked pretty, too. It was my first encounter with kindler, gentler, juggling. At Quincy Market in downtown Boston, a tourist area, I watched a street performer juggle a bowling ball, an apple, and a chain saw that was running at the time. I wondered, first, how he learned to compensate for the differences in shape and weight as he threw the items up and down; I wondered second how he practiced. There had to be a first time, a time when he had no idea how it was going to go when he threw the chainsaw into the air and lived to try it a second and third and forty-fifth time. How long do you have to practice to be able to do this?

I’ve tried to learn to juggle and done OK at it, but both the prospect and the reality that I can’t always catch the balls makes it more stressful than satisfying for me.

When I was in sixth grade, my grandfather taught my brother and I how to build our own kites out of newspaper strips, flour paste, and wooden dowels. Once we had our masterpieces, he gave us each a mile of string, coiled up on a stick and ready to use. One appropriately windy afternoon, I went out into the big field beside our house (I think it was actually the back of a railroad yard) and set my kite sailing. I don’t know how long it took me to get the kite all the way out to the end of the string, my masterpiece flying a full mile away from me, but I remember getting to the end because it was then I discovered my grandfather had not tied the string around the stick. I stood in the field and watched my kite go on its own adventure.

That story popped into my head because I was about to write this sentence: life is a little like juggling with helium-filled balloons – sooner or later they’re going to get away. I told the kite story instead because, the reality of the juggling metaphor notwithstanding, the feeling I had watching my kite sail away wasn’t mostly about losing it. I felt pretty good about standing out there and working the kite until it had flown a mile away from me. As many times as I’ve told that story (and I repeat my stories, just ask Ginger), it feels somehow hopeful. I just stood there till the string ran out, flying my kite.

Today was going to be one of those days that I went all J. Alfred Prufrock on Durham and measured out my life in coffee spoons. I was to meet a group from the church for breakfast to plan our upcoming men’s retreat, then I was to meet Chef for our weekly coffee to talk about how things were going at the restaurant, and then I was to meet Ginger at the house of one of our church members for coffee with some of the other UCC ministers in the area. I suppose you can tell what I didn’t give up for Lent. What any of this has to do with juggling or kite flying begins with my sleeping through the alarm and missing the breakfast gathering. There just was not enough night for me to write and sleep and make it to Elmo’s. My choice was to see it as struggle and juggle or surrender.

Crooker traded in her timepiece to “caught between the mesh of rope and the net of stars” that was her backyard hammock where she could run out of time by lying still. I found moments in my encounters today when we were far more aware of the lines that connect us than we were where we needed to be next. I wasn’t juggling. I was being. As another of my favorite poets, Patty Griffin, wrote and recorded “The Kite Song”:

Little sister just remember
As you wander through the blue
The little kite that you sent flying
On a sunny afternoon
Made of something light as nothing
Made of joy that matters too
How the little dreams we dream
Are all we can really do

In the middle of the night
The world turns with all of it’s might
A little diamond colored blue
In the middle of the night
We keep sending little kites
Until a little light gets through

It is the middle of the night and I am letting my words loose like little kites before golden slumbers fill my eyes. How can I help but wake up smiling?

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: joy and jesus

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
4

I don’t really understand surly.

I get depression because I live with it, but surly – the toxic kind — is a different matter. The two servers who worked tonight, mother and daughter, make a good case for toxic surliness as a psychiatric diagnosis, again, in the same way I needed to see my depression as more than just being overwhelmingly sad. I say all of that not to judge them, but to try and learn something about how to work with them and how to understand them better.

One of the ministries of our church is working with ex-inmates as they try to assimilate back into society. A team of our church members meets with our “partner,” as he is called, once a month to listen, to encourage, and to hold his feet to the fire, as well. As a part of that effort, Ginger went to a training session tonight (that has a name I can’t remember right now) that had to do with understanding how we understand things – cognitive something or other. The woman who led the training used a dropped wallet as an example, going around the room and asking people what they would do if they saw someone drop their wallet. The different answers raised various ethical questions and revealed differing points of view. The leader went on to say in her experience with prisoners that they almost all saw the wallet as at least “finders, keepers,” if not a gift. We can rarely assume we share a common understanding of any situation or issue, which means, among other things, that we have to listen harder to each other.

What I know about the two women I work with, beyond our little restaurant is one important thing: the husband/father in the family died last April. Beyond that, I know they’ve worked at Duke for a good while and the restaurant where we work has pretty much been their domain. I also know I’m the new guy.

Tonight was one of those nights when I saw clearly that we don’t look at life the same way, fundamentally. The first therapist I ever saw told me, “There are two things in life you can change: how you feel and how you act and speak. You can’t change anything else.” His words have always proven true. Applied here, they mean my task is less about figuring them out and more about deciding what I am going to say and do and what I am going to choose to feel about it all.

Man, it would be a hell of a lot easier to just fix them.

My friend Joy Jordan-Lake has a new book called Why Jesus Makes Me Nervous: Ten Alarming Words of Faith, which is well worth the read, I’m proud to say, even though I’m only through about word five. As I’ve been thinking about the two women at work, I went back to something I read in the first chapter, “Resurrection”:

It turns out that the only people who can speak of resurrection with authenticity are the ones who’ve had a good whiff of the inside of a tomb. Resurrection is not a word you can tease and hold hands with for fun unless you’re informed of the risks. Because to talk about resurrection like a personal friend is to talk first about your close acquaintance with death. (3)

When I can be human enough to get over being annoyed and frustrated by their surliness, I see two people who know death far too well and are, like Jesus, acquainted with grief. You don’t learn to put up shields like that unless you were getting beaten a lot. In the process of learning to protect yourself, you learn to lash out as well and get in some good licks before the tide turns against you. I can’t change any of what was done to them or how they’ve learned to survive. I can change my being annoyed or frustrated as a result.

This following Jesus to the Cross thing is easier when it’s about special worship services and giving up something rather than having the road run right through the middle of my job. Joy, again:

“Holiness,” said Walter Rauschenbusch, “is goodness on fire.” This captures well the holiness – and danger – of Jesus, his power to attract and disturb, and even to destroy, before re-creation or redemption can occur. . . . Holiness, real holiness, the kind Jesus presents, is not about chains and checklists but hunger. And longing. Finding ourselves desperate for meaning, for purpose, for something bigger and richer and beyond the tawdry this-world that we let define us. Wishing to wipe down the slates of our pasts, clean up our acts, start over again. To live this time for something higher and wider and deeper. More wild. More dangerous. More destructive and creative. More holy. (44, 46)

When I think about being creative in the kitchen, I think about making something tasty out of what I can find there. This week, I’m serving a chipotle-mango glazed salmon over coconut-raisin rice with a pineapple-mango salsa, all because I found mangoes and pineapples and shredded coconut in the walk-in, a small can of chipotle peppers hiding on the spice shelf, and we over ordered on the golden raisins. A dish like that and it’s pretty easy to feel proud of myself.

But a night like tonight and some words from Joy and Jesus – remind me of the true creative and redemptive work I’m being called to do that has less to do with salmon and more to do with surly. When I was in seminary, entertaining delusions of doctoral work, I took a class where we read the Bible in French. The one thing I remember is the translation of “Blessed are the Peacemakers,” when we took the French word for word: “Blessed are those who make peace around them.”

Funny I should remember that now.

I don’t know what the days ahead will hold. I don’t expect to be sitting around in the dining room singing “Kum Ba Ya” anytime soon. I don’t expect them to change.

I’m trusting that I will, with God’s help.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: random and radiant

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
1

It’s far later into the night than I intended to have to stay up to complete my daily practice. The thoughts running through my head are not original; in fact, all I can hear are borrowed words. There’s Barbara Crooker’s poem, “All That Is Glorious Around Us,” featured The Writer’s Almanac last week. Here’s an excerpt where she quotes Mary Oliver:

It is the nature
of stone / to be satisfied / writes Mary Oliver, It is the nature
of water / to want to be somewhere else, rushing down
a rocky tor or high escarpment, the panoramic landscape
boundless behind it. But everything glorious is around
us already: black and blue graffiti shining in the rain’s
bright glaze, the small rainbows of oil on the pavement,
where the last car to park has left its mark on the glistening
street, this radiant world.

I went looking to learn a little more about Crooker and found out she’s doing a poetry reading in Durham a week from Friday. I guess I know what I’ll be doing for lunch that day. I kept coming back to the Oliver lines because it struck me that we talk about God as the Rock of our salvation and Jesus talked about himself as the Water of Life.

I’m preaching this Sunday because Ginger is going to be leading our church’s women’s retreat. The two passages are Abraham being called by God to go find home and Nicodemus being told by Jesus he needed to be born again for faith to really take hold of him. I guess it was Abraham’s leaving home to find it that sent me on my next tangent. I remembered Frederick Buechner talking about a homecoming in his novel, Treasure Hunt. The narrator, Anton Parr, is coming back home after being gone for some time and his children have made a banner saying, “Welcome Home,” except one of the legs of the M doesn’t really show up, so the sign reads, “WELCOME HONE.”

“It seemed oddly fitting,” Parr says. “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.”

I don’t know how it happened tonight, but a minor stroke of some sort shut down the computer in the restaurant that allows the servers to charge the meals on the students’ meal cards. Our lead server, Tabitha, got the computer back on, but the numbers had to be entered by hand. Those minor strokes completely took her out of the game. She was seething to the point of hardly being able to converse. She was not even open to expressions of solidarity or compassion.

There was nothing to do on my part except to make sure the food was done well and done on time. The other server on duty made sure it got to the tables hot. Tab kept dealing with the mess and steaming with rage.

I couldn’t do anything to help.

We sold our house in Massachusetts (or we are in the process of selling it), but we didn’t sell it for as much as we owe on the mortgage. We’ve been in a bit of a quandary trying to figure out what to do and we weren’t sure how anyone could help. Today Ginger met with a man at a local bank and he knew exactly what he could do to help, and he did it. She called me at work to tell me the news. His minor stroke made a big difference for us to continue to move toward feeling at hone here.

While my day improved, Tab’s fell apart. We would both do well to read all of Barbara Crooker’s poem:

All That Is Glorious Around Us
(title of an exhibit on The Hudson River School)

is not, for me, these grand vistas, sublime peaks, mist-filled
overlooks, towering clouds, but doing errands on a day
of driving rain, staying dry inside the silver skin of the car,
160,000 miles, still running just fine. Or later,
sitting in a café warmed by the steam
from white chicken chili, two cups of dark coffee,
watching the red and gold leaves race down the street,
confetti from autumn’s bright parade. And I think
of how my mother struggles to breathe, how few good days
she has now, how we never think about the glories
of breath, oxygen cascading down our throats to the lungs,
simple as the journey of water over a rock. It is the nature
of stone / to be satisfied / writes Mary Oliver, It is the nature
of water / to want to be somewhere else, rushing down
a rocky tor or high escarpment, the panoramic landscape
boundless behind it. But everything glorious is around
us already: black and blue graffiti shining in the rain’s
bright glaze, the small rainbows of oil on the pavement,
where the last car to park has left its mark on the glistening
street, this radiant world.

I may read that poem again tomorrow.

Peace,
Milton

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