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lenten journal: choosing life

choosing life

when we moved to
Connecticut almost
a decade ago
I had an idea to plant
a tree each year

as a way to mark time
and to leave something
growing when we left
and so I planted two peach
trees over two summers

today I cut them down
not because they were dead
but because we also tell
time by schnauzers
and one who was not here

when I planted the trees
but has been here
when the meager harvests
fall to the ground faster
than we can pick them

and then after the fallen
fruit has rotted away
Loretta carries in the pits
as if they were prizes
to be treasured and

chewed to bits
and swallowed
which turns them into
life-threatening
schnauzer hazards

I chose one life
over two others just
as they were blooming
which gives me pause
as I await the resurrection

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: ice age

ice age

if you have to go out in
winter ice is not your friend
whether the white ridges
or the translucent layer

disguised as asphalt
ice will take you down
maybe that’s what they
had in mind when it

became the acronym for
those who knock down doors
and scour streets scraping
people into oblivion

it chills me to think that
evil appreciates metaphor
freezes me in my tracks to
watch the hail of hatred

break hearts and windows
and leave us all shivering
the arctic temperature of
such hate cannot sustain life

humanity loses its footing
in such frigid heartlessness
we need to burn things down
so we don’t all freeze to death

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: mirror image

mirror image

what is it about grief and loss that
makes life feel as if the clouded glass
through which we gaze carries the same
caution as the passenger-side mirror:
“objects may be closer than they appear”

the old songs sing of crossing rivers
and farther shores, of flying away
like a bird freed from prison bars but
life is so much more than a sentence
we are meant for more than an escape

as you travel, check your mirrors
get a sense of those fellow travelers
who have merely shifted dimensions
even if the view still feels clouded
we will understand it better by and by

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: living among the dead

living among the dead

one church member stood
during prayer time to mark
five years since his wife died

at coffee hour another said
next Sunday will be two years
since her husband died

when I checked email I saw
a request to help with a burial
of who died last night

and then at lunch Ginger
told me that my spiritual
director had died in her sleep

those are just the ones
I heard about today
no doubt there are more

not a day goes by that
isn’t attached to someone
who is no longer with us

as we are wont to say
even as we keep bumping
into their absences

and marking our calendars
so we can recognize
today’s particular ache

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: holy weak

holy weak

1.

Jesus rode into town
on a borrowed donkey
not wanting to be king.

we have a president who
thinks he’s a king and
is demanding a parade.

one is not like the other.

2.

to equate criticizing
Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza
with being antisemitic

is the same as saying
criticizing Trump for his actions
is being anti-American.

why are we scared to say so?

3.

the divider-in-chief says
Christians need to be protected
from those who choose their pronouns
even as he redefines words like
faith and freedom with impunity

If he had been in the crowd
around the woman when Jesus said,
“If you’re sinless, throw the first stone,”
I think he might have thrown his rock
and expected Jesus to be grateful

4.

contempt is not comfortable
(I’m talking to myself)

5.

I’m walking into Holy Week
assuming that I am going to die
in a country I don’t recognize

I wish I could ask the disciples
how in the world to get ready for
a resurrection you can’t see coming

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: rage room

rage room

I was in a different city
a few weeks back
and saw a rage room
a shop that invited you
to come in a break things

through the open door
we saw drop cloths and
a stack of sledgehammers
as well as sheets of glass
plates cups and televisions
stuff that would shatter

once you paid your money
you put on the coveralls
and safety googles
grabbed a hammer
and started swinging

as though destruction
had some larger purpose
or maybe it was just
to blow off some steam
either way the damage done
never left the building

which is the illusion
damage breeds damage
next time you’ll want to
put holes in the walls
or maybe take a swing
at the shopkeeper

when you’re holding
a sledgehammer
everything looks like
something to break

just ask the president
he breaks stuff everyday
like he owns the place
and rage is his right

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: remember this

remember this

this grab for power
is an act of desperation
it may seem measured
calculated deliberate
but look in their eyes
and you can see fear
behind all of the greed

the damage is real
but their frantic grasp
for permanence is not
nobody lasts forever
despot or democrat
history forgets us all
we grieve and we leave

we matter as matter
as parts of the whole
love handed down
from one age to the next
regardless of the whims
of the rich and fearful
power is not absolute

those who are diseased
are not contagious
those who climb thrones
have no lasting significance
tell them to their faces
better yet set your gaze
on those taking the blows

let their love infect you
the greed hate and whim
of deluded demagogues
don’t hold a candle to
our weathered tenacity
include yourself in that
we are all in this together

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: who counts

I preached about the prodigal son—well, mostly the older brother—today, a week late by the Lectionary Clock, but it felt like the right time to me.

_________________________

Though we didn’t go back and read the verses that begin Luke 15 when Bev read our scripture, I want to do that now to remind us of the context for Jesus telling the three parables about being lost and found:

Now the tax collectors and other wrongdoers came near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scholars were griping loudly, saying, “He welcomes wrongdoers and eats with them.”

Their comment was what precipitated Jesus’ parables.

As we looked at the first two—about the lost sheep and the lost coin—last week, I asked you to put yourself in the place of the finders—the shepherd and the woman—and think about who needed you to find them.

I kept thinking about them this week, even as I was working on what to say about the father and sons, and it struck me that what both the shepherd and the woman went through was not a one-time thing. The shepherd had to count his sheep every night to make sure they were all there. And, if the woman was anything like me, she probably left change in forgotten pockets on a regular basis. She had to count her change consistently as well in order to keep up with it.

But that is what they did. They kept counting and looking and finding because what mattered was to make things whole. They found joy—joy worthy of a party—in that sense of wholeness.

Theologian Amy-Jill Levine, who teaches here in Connecticut at the Hartford International University for Religion and Peace, is the one who set me thinking about all that. She writes,

“If the lost sheep and the lost coin are about the coming together of a group that had been separated and is now whole, perhaps that should be the model in which we understand (the parable of) the prodigal son.”

Once again, I am going to ask that we not move to quickly to assign roles to where we or God fit in this story—and by that I mean, let’s think beyond God being the waiting father and our being the petulant younger son. We all may have other roles to play.

It is not by accident that Jesus started a number of his parables by saying, “A certain man had two sons . . .” because it was a familiar way for Jewish people to think about stories of faith. Hebrew scripture has several of them: Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Aaron and Moses. If we were to break down that list a bit we would realize that the biblical lesson appears to be, “It’s better to be the younger son.”

Well, Abel might beg to differ, but the pattern is there.

But the younger son in this parable is not particularly sympathetic. (And I’m not saying that because I’m an older brother.) I mean, look at him. He was rude to his dad in asking for his inheritance early, then he wasted it all without much thought and with a great deal of recklessness, and then he was kind of sketchy in the way he comes back after he had exhausted all his options, rather deviously strategizing about how to he can wiggle his way back into the house. He was not repentant any more than he thought he had to be.

And his dad didn’t care. He welcomed him home with the same joy the shepherd and the woman showed, throwing a big party because things were whole once more.

But there is one big difference between the father and the other two finders: the dad didn’t count. The shepherd knew he had a hundred sheep, and he counted every night to make sure they were all together. The woman counted her coins to keep up with her money because she was on a tight budget.

The father stood gazing down the road because he knew he had lost one son who had wandered away, but he didn’t count the one who stayed. Based on the way the eldest son reacted, we get the sense that his resentment at feeling uncounted ran far deeper than the situation than the afternoon of his brother’s return.

When the father went to ask why he wasn’t at the party, the eldest son exploded in rage and resentment. “This son of yours,” he said describing his brother, “did nothing but take advantage of you and you are throwing a party.” The son couldn’t see beyond himself and the anger he had allowed to fester because he felt uncounted—he couldn’t even say he had a brother. He was secure and had all he needed, yet he wasn’t satisfied or able to be joyful.

The father answered, “You live here and own everything. Come be joyful because ‘this brother of yours’ was lost and is found,” reminding his first born that he was not the only born.

Like the other two parables, the last word in the story is the invitation to “come share my joy.”

Except in this case, it isn’t really an ending, or even a resolution. When we try to use our sacred imagination to look beyond the last words, we can’t tell whether the family was ever made whole again; it depended on what the father and the oldest son did next. The father needed to learn to count—to remember even the ones that stay at home need to be found as well as fed.

The older brother had to decide if he was willing to make things whole again, which makes me think he’s really the one the story is about—or at least he’s the one on whom the heart of the story swings, because he was lost in plain sight and he was also the one who had to learn to be a finder if he, himself, was going to be found.

As are we, regardless of birth order. Levine says it this way:

“I am the older son. I don’t know what he will do. I don’t know what I will do. But the parable tells me what I should do because unless I make that move of reconciliation, there will be no wholeness, and if there’s no wholeness, there’s not peace.”

I would add to her words, if there’s no peace, there’s no joy to share.

The party is happening. The unflinching love and grace of God has invited everyone and is letting them all in as if they belong because they all do. That sounds like such good news until we think about what is required of us for everyone to belong. Even those people who don’t think everyone belongs are worth finding and bringing home. That’s a hard truth for me. I have to work hard to imagine that those who don’t think everyone is welcome are also welcome at the party.

We can’t say to God, “You need to do something about ‘that child of yours,’” before we will come to the party without expecting God to say, “You mean ‘that sibling of yours’?”

We are all wonderfully and uniquely created in the image of God and worthy to be loved. Every last one of us.

I’m not saying we just gloss over things. The oldest son reminds us what happens when we stuff away our feelings. There are plenty of hard conversations that need to be had. The family in the story would have all benefited from clear and current communication, from speaking the truth in love. They were fractured by years of things that had not been said or acted upon. That’s the point the father was making when he challenged his eldest about “that brother of yours.” He would not let his son act as though the other was not family.

Wholeness is hard work.

Still, the story ends in a bit of a mess as Jesus moved on to telling other parables about how we value one another, leaving things quite unresolved, much like many relationships in our lives, leaving us with this question:

What will we do to make things whole?

Regardless of who we are in the story, that is the question. The calling. Whether we feel like sheep or shepherds, losers or finders, desperate or content, fearful or hopeful, we are not alone, which is both a comfort and a challenge in this fractured and broken world we live in.

What will we do to make things whole? Amen.

Peace,

Milton

lenten journal: gathering

gathering

tomorrow two
groups will gather
on opposite ends
or our town green

the first will be
a funeral for a gentle
man who loved people
and their pets well

the second will be
a rally of solidarity
in the wake of all that
is being destroyed

in both cases
we will gather not
fully knowing why
other than it matters

the dead will not rise
our grief will not end
nothing will be solved
and we won’t be alone

none of the roads
we walk are new
death and dictators
seem as old as history

but rubbing shoulders
with other bits of stardust
who are also struggling
re-members us

puts us back together
which means to gather
after death after loss
in the middle of life

by midafternoon
we will disperse
as will those gathered
in other places

held by the fragile
grace of futility
of being together
we can’t change much

and we are not alone

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: honest answer

honest answer

one of the traditions
that comes with aging
is most every nurse
who checks me in

for an appointment,
no matter the doctor
or the reason, asks
“Do you feel safe at home?”

the question is a part
of a perfunctory list
quickly-asked queries
with expected answers

they will expect to hear
again next week when
I go for a final follow-up
for my implant surgery

they ask the questions
the way we ask
“How are you?”
to our favorite barista

we mean to ask it
but not that much
and often they answer
in a similar spirit

I am accustomed to
answering as expected
in hopes that it gets me
to the doctor quicker

but on the heels of
tariffs and tantrums
people being disappeared
for simply disagreeing

in the face of falling
stocks and failing hearts
of broken promises
and shattered families

the weight of these days
presses me to answer
in a way that breaks
the emergency glass

“No. I don’t.”

Peace,
MIlton