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don\'t eat alone

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Home Blog Page 195

building bridges

October 4, 2007

One of the ideas that continues to intrigue and haunt me is that most of the world lives their lives without knowing or knowing of me and they don’t miss me either. I even posted a poem about it called “Spokane.” This morning, I’m sitting in Foster’s Market and Café in Durham, which has been not-knowing-or-missing-Milton territory until recently. I flew down yesterday to begin looking for work and to look at houses, trying to find a way to begin to make a place for myself in a place that doesn’t know they need to make room for me. It’s a little like trying to get in sync with a jump rope that is already going in circles, something I never quite got the hang of.

And it’s not like that. The last twenty-four hours, my journey has been fueled by the incredible kindness of those who are determined to make it seem as if there has always been a place for me here. I talked to a one chef who not only talked about the possibility of my working in his restaurant, but also gave me the name of another guy he thought would be worth contacting. The interim minister at the church where Ginger will pastor picked me up at the airport and gave me her car to use while I’m here. The realtor we have been working with here changed her schedule to show me some houses and also spent a great deal of time creating conversations with people to help us figure out what to do since our house in Marshfield has not sold. And, of course, the members of the Triangle Red Sox Nation were more than welcoming as we gathered to watch the Sox beat the Angels last night.

I had two extended interviews/conversations about cooking gigs yesterday at two of Durham’s best offerings as far as restaurants go. At the first, the kitchen was bustling and informal. The Sous Chef who interviewed me, was wearing a t-shirt and shorts. He moved to Durham a few years back and understood what it feels like to try and break into to a new place.

“We don’t have anything right now, but you know this business. I have a full kitchen today and might have an empty one tomorrow. But when you get here, if you haven’t found anything, let me know. I’ll find a way to throw you a couple of shifts until you get your feet on the ground.” He then gave me the name of a couple of guys he had met when he first came to town that helped him get started.

The second interview was quite a contrast. On Tuesday I sent my resume in an email note to the chef of a fine dining restaurant here telling him I was coming to town. He wrote back and asked me to stop by and talk to him. This is a guy who trained with Emeril before he was a celebrity chef and worked alongside Charlie Trotter, who easily makes the top five list nationally. When I got to his place, everyone was in chef whites and focused. He changes the entire menu monthly and they were getting ready for a tasting for the wait staff so they could be informed as they served people that evening. The conversation with him was much more focused and intense. I think I intrigued him because I was much older than the usual applicant and not fresh out of culinary school. He was not off-putting and he maintained a professional distance. As I watched him interact with his staff, I could see the distance was more about him than me. As we talked he said, “I don’t have anything right now, but you know this business: the kitchen is full now but might be empty tomorrow.” He also said, “I imagine this is not your only interview. If you would like my take on some of the other places in town as you talk to them, I would be glad to give you some feedback.” He told me to keep in touch and then invited me to come and observe the tasting so I could see some of the food. He took nearly a half an hour to describe the twelve or fourteen offerings on the new menu; he talked as the wait staff descended on the food like hungry hyenas, chewing and laughing at the same time. His collection and combinations of ingredients were both imaginative and brilliant. (Baked oysters with smoked vanilla cream!)

As I was drinking my coffee this morning, I browsed through Bridge to the Soul, Coleman Barks’ new collection of translations of Rumi’s poetry in honor of Rumi’s eight hundredth birthday. In the introductory essay, Barks talks about his love of bridges and focuses on a bridge somewhere in Iran (I think) of which it is said the concrete was made with a mixture of sand and egg whites. He went on to talk about the imagination it takes to build a bridge, and to build a bridge that lasts.

Each step of the way on this journey from Marshfield to Durham reveals another ingredient in the bridge required to get from there to here. Each step lifts just enough of the fog for us to see the next step, and to see the bridge is there, though we cannot take in the entire span. Much like the mixture of stone and egg white, we are called to step out on the combination of resolve and faith that reveals all that connects our lives to one another.

Peace,
Milton

drinking beer with bob dylan

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

October 2, 2007

The prompt from Writers’ Island this week was “The Journey.” I have no idea how I got from there to here, but here’s the poem — and I couldn’t pass up the video.

drinking beer with bob dylan

It’s late and we are sitting in a tavern
I know well but can’t name.
“Oh, where have you been my brown-eyed son?”
he asks and smiles – I think it’s a smile.
I laugh a little and look at my shoes,
the ones I wear to work each day,
black and wrinkled, with specks
of something on one of the toes.

“I’ve lived in the darkness they call my depression.
I’ve cooked for a living and cooked out of loving.
I come home to a woman who makes me feel wanted.
I’ve written and planted and broken and hoped for.
I’ve traveled the world without leaving my city.
I’ve let myself dream what just might never happen.
I’ve staked my whole life on a faith that’s elusive.
I’ve stood under the stars to give thanks that I’m breathing.”

He turns up his mug and wipes
his mouth with his sleeve.
“You would think, after forty-five years,
I would have a new question,” he says,
“but there’s seems nothing else to ask.”
I look at his hands, now arthritic and unable
to play the guitar; only the piano.
Still, he plays and sings.

He is sixty-six; I, soon, will be fifty-one;
both of us just past the five and dime
birthdays that are so heartily celebrated.
Between us, we have over a century
of stories and so we sit long into the night
telling them, until the bartender
tells us he has a journey of his own
and sends us out into what is left of it.

It would have been perfect
if a hard rain had begun to fall,
but it didn’t. We stood there in the chill
of a petulant night resisting the dawn,
and realized we would not see each other again.
He’s not much of a hugger, so I didn’t even try.
“Thanks for the beers,” he said, as the lights went out.
I stood and watched as he slipped into the darkness.

Peace,
Milton

cdl

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

September 28, 2007

Yesterday was our Schnauzer Lola’s seventh birthday and my brother’s forty-ninth. (I suppose that makes them the same age.) Today, my friend Doug is fifty years old. By coincidence, today also marks my four hundred and fiftieth post since beginning this blog on December 27, 2005. Eliot said we measure our life in coffee spoons; I’ve measured mine in recipes and blog posts for the past couple of years. I think of the posts a little like the marks my dad used to make on the door jamb to let us see how we had grown. I didn’t always feel taller, but the marks gave me external evidence that I was growing and changing.

Marking this milestone borders on being overly self-congratulatory, I think, and is also worthy of note, for me at least. Like Doug’s birthday, my blog count marks a place on the journey I have never been before. As much as measurements are about what has been, they are perhaps even more about what is possible. Doug has never been on the planet as long as he has today. I’ve never written as much as I have now. Each new moment is uncharted territory for us all.

The Romans’ numbering system grew out of notches they made as they counted. They weren’t thinking in letters; they were making marks to show their progress. Now we use them for tombstones, the periodic table of elements, the Super Bowl, and Wrestlemania. Go figure.

One of the books I go back to from time to time is Dag Hammarskjöld’s Markings. He was Secretary General of the United Nations, among other things in his life, as well as a man of deep faith and integrity. Here are a few of the marks he left for us:

He who has surrendered himself to it knows that the Way ends on the Cross — even when it is leading him through the jubilation of Gennesaret or the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.

Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible — not to have run away.

Never, “for the sake of peace and quiet,” deny your own experience or convictions.
Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.

Respect for the word is the first commandment in the discipline by which a man can be educated to maturity — intellectual, emotional, and moral. Respect for the word — to employ it with scrupulous care and in incorruptible heartfelt love of truth — is essential if there is to be any growth in a society or in the human race.

We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.

For all that has been — Thanks. For all that shall be — Yes.

Peace,
Milton

down the long road

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

September 26, 2007

One of my tasks in preparing to move is to go through my CDs and transfer the bulk of them to my MacBook instead of boxing them all up to head south. I’ve invested a lot of money in CDs over the years, collecting a good bit of interest, though not of the monetary kind. I’ve spent the better part of the day in the D through G section of our collection and have downloaded music from almost one hundred of the silver discs, finding some old friends, bringing up some wonderful memories, and raising some interesting questions. (Who is the Willard Grant Conspiracy and why do I have one of their records?)

Cliff Eberhardt is a singer/songwriter I learned about soon after moving to Boston, thanks to David Wilcox’s covers of a couple of his songs. I hadn’t listened to The Long Road in a long time. The title track is a wonderful duet with Richie Havens (one of the best voices ever) and the lyric says:

There are the ones that you call friends.
There are the ones that you call late at night.
There are the ones who sweep away your past
With one wave of their hand.

There are the ones that you call family.
There are the ones that you hold close to your heart.
They are the ones who see the danger in you
Who won’t understand.

I can hear your voice in the wind.
Are you calling to me, down the long road?
Do you really think there’s an end?
I have followed my dream
Down the long road.

You are the one that I met long ago.
You are the one who saw my dream.
You are the one, took me from my home
And left me off somewhere.

Somehow I feel you are here
And you are waiting in that dream.
And somewhere down this road we will awake
And be at the start again.

I can hear your voice in the wind.
Are you calling to me, down the long road?
Do you really think there’s an end?
I have lived my whole life
Down the long road.

I gotta find you tonight.
Are you waiting for me, down the long road?
Do you really think there’s an end?
I have lived my whole life
Down the long road.

Are you waiting for me?
I can hear your voice in the wind.
Are you calling to me, down the long road?
Do you really think there’s an end?
I have lived my whole life
Down the long road.

In these days of change, when some things are moving faster than we can keep up with and others not moving at all (anyone want to buy a house at the beach?), the question in the song is haunting:

Do you really think there’s an end?

I think I have lived my whole life down the long road. Now, it stretches out again and turns so quickly and so sharply that we can’t see much more than a few steps ahead. We are going to have to make some important and difficult choices without knowing how the terrain is going as we make the turn.

Ginger did a great job on Sunday shedding fresh light on Peter and John’s encounter with the man at the gate. “We don’t have any money,” they said (I’m with them so far), “but what we have we’ll gladly give. In the name of Jesus, get up and walk.”

What healing work can we do in Jesus’ name, is the way I heard what she was saying.

When I was in seminary and John Claypool was preaching, I heard someone criticize him by saying, “The only people who relate to him are the walking wounded and those trapped in adolescent rebellion.”

Without really thinking, I looked at the guy and said, “Who’s left?”

We have all spent our whole lives on the long road. The most consistent daily act of healing we can do in Jesus’ name is to get up and walk: walk into the middle of our families and friends and work places and schools and wherever else we walk and offer ourselves.

I can hear God calling our names.

Peace,
Milton

fall

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

September 25, 2007

Our burning bush
is just starting
to singe around
the edges.
Before long
without smoke
or fire, the leaves
will blaze brilliantly
without burning up
and fall to the earth.

We talk about
colors, yet name
this season
for the letting go,
the breeze-ride
down from life
into death.

How can it be
so energizing
to see what was
once verdant
and vibrant
flame and die?

I try to listen.
I want to hear
what the leaves
are saying
as they burn
and fall.

All I can do
is go barefoot.

Peace,
Milton

This poem was written in response to prompts at Abbey of the Arts and Writers’ Island.

red dirt girl

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

September 24, 2007

On the way home from church to go to work, I heard the end of this interview with Emmylou Harris on NPR. She has a new boxed set out of rare tracks and unreleased material that I am now coveting in the worst way. One of the songs she sang during the interview (accompanied by Buddy Miller) was “Boy from Tupelo”:

You don’t love me this I know
Don’t need a Bible to tell me so
I hung around a little too long
I was good but now I’m gone

Like the buffalo
That boy from Tupelo
Any way the wind can blow
That’s where I’m gonna go
I’ll be gone like a five and dime
It’ll be the perfect crime
Just ask the boy from Tupelo
He’s the king and he ought to know

The shoulder I’ve been leaning on
Is the coldest place I’ve ever known
There’s nothing left for me round here
Looks like it’s time to dissapear

Like the buffalo
That boy from Tupelo
The old wall down in Jericho
Maybelle on the radio
I’ll be gone like the five and dime
It’ll be the perfect crime
Just ask the boy from Tupelo
He’s the king and he ought to know

You don’t love me, this I know
Don’t need a Bible to tell me so
It’s a shame and it’s a sin
Everything I could have been to you

Your last chance Texaco
Your sweetheart of the rodeo
A Juliet to your Romeo
The border you cross into Mexico
I’ll never understand why or how
Oh but baby its too late now
Just ask the boy from Tupelo
He’s the king and he ought to know

In looking at the play list for the songs on the CDs, I found this one, which seems worth passing along. It’s called “Prayer in Open D.”

There’s a valley of sorrow in my soul
Where every night I hear the thunder roll
Like the sound of a distant gun
Over all the damage I have done
And the shadows filling up this land
Are the ones I built with my own hand
There is no comfort from the cold
Of this valley of sorrow in my soul

There’s a river of darkness in my blood
And through every vein I feel the flood
I can find no bridge for me to cross
No way to bring back what is lost
Into the night it soon will sweep
Down where all my grievances I keep
But it won’t wash away the years
Or one single hard and bitter tear

And the rock of ages I have known
Is a weariness down in the bone
I use to ride it like a rolling stone
Now just carry it alone

There’s a highway risin’ from my dreams
Deep in the heart I know it gleams
For I have seen it stretching wide
Clear across to the other side
Beyond the river and the flood
And the valley where for so long I’ve stood
With the rock of ages in my bones
Someday I know it will lead me home

Amen.

Peace,
Milton

a day of peace

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

September 21, 2007

Thanks to Tess at Anchors and Masts, I saw the video below and learned about the work of Peace Direct and that today, September 21, is the United Nations International Day of Peace.

At one point in the short film, as Gill is putting on her artificial legs, the text reads, “Gill believes in the power of the individual and that everyone can make a difference.” What struck me as I worked on this post is the strength to be peace builders comes not from individuals, but individuals committed to community. I’ll demonstrate what I mean.

As I said, Tess led me to Peace Direct and to the UN Peace Day site. In a parallel journey, Randy’s post on scorn led me to Bill and Grant’s words on the same subject, all of them speaking in their way to what it means to learn to wage peace. Bill defines scorn as the feeling or belief that someone or something is worthless or despicable; the verb, is to feel or express contempt or derision for someone or something.

Randy confesses:

It is all too easy for me to take a position of scorn relative to someone else. If I think he is dumb, I express scorn. If I think he is obtuse, I express scorn. If he doesn’t agree with me, I express scorn. If he doesn’t drive like I want him to, I express scorn. If he makes my job more difficult, I express scorn. If I don’t like the way he looks, I express scorn.

Scorn makes me ugly.

Me, too. As long as I was dealing with definitions, I looked up peace and was struck by one word in two of the definitions:

the normal, nonwarring condition of a nation, group of nations, or the world;
the normal freedom from civil commotion and violence of a community.

Peace as normal. What a concept.

Again, still dealing with words and borrowing ideas from those around me, I remembered my friend Don pointing out in a Bible study that our words listen and obey come from the same root.

c.1290, from O.Fr. obeir, from L. oboedire “obey, pay attention to, give ear,” lit. “listen to,” from ob “to” + audire “listen, hear” (see audience). Same sense development is in cognate O.E. hiersumnian.

I’ve also been reading the blog of a former student who is enrolled in the University for Peace in Costa Rica.

I had just sat down to write this morning with peace swirling all around me when the wheels fell off. We got word that our realtor had scheduled two home invasions (as I like to call them), one today and one tomorrow. She also suggested we rearrange the furniture in the large room that is both our living and dining area because the way we have chosen to live is “too unconventional” for most folks who are looking to buy a house.

I knew nothing of these people who are looking for a new home, but I felt scorn nonetheless. I felt better than them. We walked into this house seven years ago and it was a mess. The colors were atrocious, the house was a mess, and there were holes in the kitchen floor dug by the two large dogs who lived here along with the woman who owned it. To even think about buying it required at least enough imagination to see beyond her living in the space. And now our house won’t sell because the dullards who are looking can’t get past the dining table and the couch being placed in a less than conventional manner?

Screw peace. I wanted to open a can of whupass on somebody. It was time to beat some imagination into these idiots. (Now I understand why realtors don’t want you to be home when people come by.) When we got through moving the furniture, I came back to the computer to find all the peace links I had already saved in preparation for writing. I read what Randy and Bill and Grant and Jane and Tess had to say. I watched Gill climb up on the block seat and attach her artificial legs. I looked into what is now the living room to see Lola climb up in her usual perch on top of the couch cushions, nonplussed that she had been moved. And I felt silly, small, and sinful.

My anger is about being displaced. I don’t get to live in my home anymore; I live in a house that’s for sale. I don’t get to feel settled anymore because we are moving. The apparent lack of imagination that exists in the minds of today’s homebuyer is not the source of my rage, just an easy target. If I’m going to be a peacemaker, then easy targets can’t be a part of the equation. It can’t be about targets at all. Somehow, it’s about moving beyond the scorn and the rage and all the types of violence that pervade my life and listening to the solidarity of our humanity. Rather than seeing them as idiots, I’m called to listen and learn to see those folks who will walk our floors this afternoon as people traveling the same road we walked seven years ago and will walk again across floors in Durham in the weeks ahead. I’m called to listen to a larger world where my sense of displacement pales by comparison with those in Sudan and Iraq and Gaza and Indonesia and Burma and New Orleans who have been cut off from home and history by violence I know nothing of on a personal level. If I listen well, my rage can become resonance, which is something peace can be built upon. Bill quotes Paul from Philippians 4:8:

Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.

In the Peace Direct video, the text says, “For us, peace is about strength, courage, determination, and action.” We are all crippled by the violence done by and to us. Everyday, it seems, feels like International Violence Day. We were not created to destroy one another, but to listen and to love, which both matter most in the most basic of relationships.

I heard the call to peace today while reading blogs and moving furniture. I’m praying for the courage to listen and obey.

Peace,
Milton

hope and heartbreak

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

September 20, 2007

Somewhere around April 20, give or take a couple of days, the Red Sox moved into first place in the American League East. On April 20, we were two games ahead of the Yankees. Today, September 20, we have a game and a half lead over the Evil Empire with nine games left to play. All season long it has looked like we were going to win our division for the first time in a decade; now, even though we are going to make the playoffs, our first place finish is not a given. Don’t get me wrong – I still think we’re going to win it, but we’re just going to have to sweat more than we imagined doing so.

One of the things the Sox gave up with their loss last night was their claim to the best record in baseball. The Angels and the Indians now lead them by a half a game and yet those teams have lost four out of every ten games they have played this season. Baseball is as much about losing as it is about winning; that’s why I love the game.

In six months, the Sox, like all the major league teams, have had only eighteen days when they weren’t playing a game. That’s less than a day off a week. The game requires they show up night after night, inning after inning, and pay attention to every ball and strike. After one hundred and fifty three games, they lead the Yankees because of the scores of two games. Two games. Life hinges on the details. There’s the big picture, the leagues standings, the playoffs and then there are the balls and strikes.

As October brings the baseball season to its glorious finish, so it will end our time here in Massachusetts. I long for the poetry of a Red Sox World Series Championship to send us on our way, but who knows. Lots of things have to fall in place for that to happen, just as lots of things need to fall in place, both big and small, for us to get out of town. Our timing is way off on needing to sell our house, which makes some of our other decisions hard to make. All we can do, for now, is show up everyday, just like the Sox, and take our swings.

Out of thirty major league teams, only nine have any real hope of making the playoffs, yet all thirty still have a week and a half of the season to play. Some of those games will figure into the final outcomes, but many will not. Yet, the Orioles and the Rangers will still play, and play hard. Beyond October glory, there’s something that matters about showing up and doing your job. (Yes, their ridiculous salaries make it easier to show up, I suppose, but the hope I find in baseball transcends the capitalism.)

I got to go to Fenway last week and was in the park when Big Papi hit a walkoff homerun to win the game. Two nights later, I watched him pop out in the same situation. Based on the Red Sox’ history and baseball in general, chances are I’ll get my heart broken again this October and will then start counting the days until Spring Training. It’s never over. It is, however, about baseball.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve not given up. We have a great team. I’m counting on them sending us off with a World Series win. And, whatever happens, I’m a lifelong citizen of Red Sox Nation.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — There’s a new recipe.

skip the oj for breakfast

Milton Brasher-Cunningham

September 19, 2007

Gracie, our youngest Schnauzer, woke me up early this morning and I turned on the television as I was trying to gain consciousness just as all three morning shows were cranking up. The lead story on all of them was about O. J. Simpson. In fact, over half of the first thirty minutes of Today was about him. I kept watching, thinking they would actually tell me what was happening in the world sooner or later. No such luck.

I don’t care how much they talk about him, it’s not news.

Things are happening and they are things we don’t hear about, such as these stories I found on several international news outlets. These things actually matter and yet our media choose not to tell us much, if anything at all.

The situation in Darfur continues to deteriorate. For all the supportive rhetoric that has come from Western governments, the genocide continues.

The Israeli government has declared Gaza a “hostile area,” which could lead to Israel cutting off electricity and water to the region.

Severe floods all across Africa have devastated several countries, leaving many homeless, cut off, and threatened by disease.