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enough

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
12

I have a job interview tomorrow.

Last Saturday I made a cold call on a restaurant that happens to be across the parking lot from the Unemployment Office (excuse me – the Career Center). It’s a funky little place with a really cool menu that runs ads on cable from time to time. As I was walking up, one of the cooks was picking fresh herbs from the bed planted in front of the restaurant. I asked if the chef was in and he told me to speak to the manager because the chef was on vacation. The manager and I had a nice conversation. He took my resume and told me the chef would be back Wednesday and to come back Thursday if no one had called. Later on that afternoon, he called me at home to say he thought I should call the chef at home, which I did. The chef called me back today. He sounds like a great guy and he knows his stuff; he trained at the CIA (that’s Culinary Institute of America, not the spy place). I go in to talk to him tomorrow about a sous chef position.

Six summers ago, I drove around trying to talk my way into a cooking gig. The chef at the little place where I started asked about my experience and I talked about church suppers and pancake breakfasts. A couple of jobs later, I hooked up with a friend who is also a chef and followed him to a couple of places. He is the one I worked with at The Inn. I’ve worked hard to learn my craft and improve my skills and I have still felt like I should put an asterisk at the end of the sentence where I talk about being a chef: (*his friend got him in the door). I am a mixture of confidence and insecurity when it comes to vocational things. I think I always have been.

As much as I know I have the chops to work in any kitchen, the work ethic to do things well, and the willingness to learn what I don’t know, I am surprised that a chef called me about being his assistant because of how I look on paper – not because I know someone who called in a favor, or he’s desperate to fill a position, or he’s feeling unusually compassionate. He thinks I can do the job because I have the experience to do it. I’m not a beginner anymore. I think I have a harder time convincing myself than I do anyone else.

He asked me two questions I found interesting. First, he said, “What area of the kitchen do you feel is your strong point?”

I thought for a few seconds and told him I felt I was a fast learner and I was good at keeping up with details in figuring out how to get the orders out and done well. I know how to look beyond the task that is in front of my face to see what needs to happen next to make things run smoothly. And then I said, “I also love being a part of a team. Working together to make things go well is really fun for me.”

Then he asked, “Are you self-taught?”

Professional cooking is made up of those who went through formal training and those who learned as apprentices without sitting in a classroom. Both are legitimate paths as far as the restaurant business is concerned. He, as I mentioned, was formally trained at the CIA. I would be one of the apprentices.

“Yes,” I answered.

He went on to talk about how most all of the folks in his kitchen were self-taught – and most of them had been with him five or six years. He also talked about how he enjoyed training and teaching people. (I think he must be one of the good guys.) As I’ve reflected on his question as my evening has worn on, I want to go back and answer differently. I’m not self-taught; I’ve been taught by everyone I’ve worked with.

Joao taught me how to make foccacia bread.
Carlos taught me how to make soups.
Kevin taught me how to flip eggs.
Sunichi taught me how to make maki rolls.
Eric taught me how to make a beurre blanc.
Jason taught me how to make Chicken Marsala.
Bill taught me how to test how well a steak is done.
Gigi taught me how to use the Fry-o-lator.
Jose taught me how to run the big dishwasher.
Alfonso taught me how to cut fruit with flair.
Pedro taught me how to make mashed potatoes for 300.
Robert taught me how to run a kitchen . . . and so on.

I’m not self-taught; I just like to learn.

Kasey Chambers is an Australian singer I came across a few years ago. On her album Barricades and Brickwalls she has a song that begins:

Am I not pretty enough
Is my heart to broken
Do I cry too much
Am I too outspoken
Don’t I make you laugh
Should I try it harder
Why do you see right through me

Enough is a hard word for me, something that stays mostly out of reach, particularly if I think I’m responsible for proving my value. Very few times in my life have I felt like enough on my own. OK, probably never. If, however, I think of myself as not alone but as standing with my teachers and those whom I have taught, then I can begin to feel differently.

I am enough because I am not alone.

Peace,
Milton

q and a

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

Ginger and I had a conversation with our friend Jay over coffee Saturday afternoon as we talked about the questions that shape our faith. Often, when people talk theology, the vocabulary centers on issues, which is ultimately polarizing, I think, because they end up doing things like taking a stand and defending a position. Neither of those verbs facilitates discussion or relationship, both of which are crucial to faith. Questions, on the other hand, are invitations to conversation, if they are asked honestly.

As someone has said, our answers are only as good as our questions.

Maggi Dawn has a great post asking about the word “missional” as an adjective churches use to describe themselves. The growing list of comments shows how important it was that she framed her thoughts as a question rather than an issue. She was clear about her thoughts and feelings, but in a way that invited others to do the same where we could all learn from one another.

My friend Gene pastors a church in Plano, Texas. One of the ways they choose to talk about faith is with “Life Mission Questions,” which they describe as follows:

  • How do I live as a Christ-follower?
  • How does your life express your worship of God?
  • How do you partner with God to rescue those around you?
  • What have you done to strengthen your core relationships today?
  • How do you act more like Jesus than when you first met him?
  • How do you invest your time, talents and treasures to serve God and others?

Though I understand the value of our creeds has they have been handed down, I find much more resonance in faith expressed as interrogative rather than declarative or even imperative. Several years ago, my friend Billy and I wrote a song in which we tried to ask questions that matter. Here are the lyrics to “The Question Pool”:

where did I leave my plastic halo
why can’t I speak to my good friend
am I sleepwalking through the best years of my life
how long is too long to pretend

what do I owe my parents’ generation
what do I want and who would know
can I live on answers that were handed down to me
do I just hold on or just let go

I am drinking from the water blue
down at the question pool

what is lying over my horizon
what am I afraid of going through
if whatever happens come to push me past the edge
will all I believe in still be true

I am drinking from the water blue
down at the question pool
I wonder what it all comes to

why am I moved by stories of Eden
what does its lovely sadness mean
am I a traveler who cannot remember home
why do I cry sometimes in dreams

I am drinking from the water blue
laying down at the question pool

The final lyric took shape as we poured over page after page of questions we had written down or solicited from friends or read along the way. When life is distilled to a set of principles, we begin to set as though we were made of plaster of paris, becoming more and more rigid and brittle as time passes. If our faith is fed by questions, we have the chance to keep growing and changing as we learn more about our God, our world, and ourselves. My seminary ethics professor began the semester in the fall of 1978 by saying, “The issues that will be at the forefront during your ministry are probably not even in sight right now. Therefore, you have to learn how to think and question so you will have a framework to deal with what is to come.”

Our answers are only as good as our questions.

In The Return of the Pink Panther, Clouseau sees a man on the street with a dog next to him. “Does your dog bite?” he asks.
“No,” says the man.
Clouseau reaches down to pet the dog and the pooch almost rips his hand off.
“I thought you said your dog did not bite,” Clouseau exclaims.
“It’s not my dog,” the man replies.

Let me say again, our answers are only as good as our questions.

As we talked together on Saturday, the question that intrigued me most was, how do we live out our faith without it exhausting us? We know we are called to live out our faith in our world. We don’t know how to deal with life in both the micro and macro. How do we ask questions about Darfur that will energize us to creativity rather than futility? How do we do church in a way that feeds the community instead of church life being an endless stream of committee meetings? How do we learn to say, “This is the day our God has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” and really mean it? How do we live so that when we are asked how we are doing we can answer something other than “I’m really busy” or “I’m really tired”?

When Billy and I came up with the metaphor of the question pool, we imagined a place that fed and invigorated us: to drink from the question pool would be to drink the Water of Life. If we really asked what we owed our parents’ generation, or what the Eden story really had to say beyond the creation wars, or how our faith was changing as it was tested, we thought we would be on a journey worth taking. Over a decade later, I still feel that way.

Truth grows in the face of questions the way my tomato plants are responding to the summer sun. Questions cause love to grow: that’s how the uncharted territory or a relationship becomes a home. Faith grows with questions because the point was never the answers anyway.

“I will give you water and you will never be thirsty again,” Jesus said to the Samaritan woman as they stood by the well in the heat of the day.
“What kind of water is that?” she asked.
“Exactly,” Jesus replied. And then he smiled.

Peace,
Milton

stacking up stones

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
6

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is Joshua telling the people to stack up twelve stones from the Jordan River for an altar after they had crossed through the river on dry ground.

And then he told the People of Israel, “In the days to come, when your children ask, ‘What are these stones doing here?’ tell your children this: ‘Israel crossed over this Jordan on dry ground.'” (The Message)

What speaks most to that story is the idea of marking a place to come back to as a way of remembering, as the old adage goes, who we are and whose we are. Bob Bennett sang about what I’m talking about in a great song called “Altar in the Field”:

I’ll build an altar in the field
Where I’ll remember

Understanding stacks of stones mean different things to different people as they find them along the way, I want to stack up a few of my own. Today marks my 401st post since I began my blog on December 27, 2005. I started writing about “food, faith, family, and friends” as a way to help me learn how to live with my depression and to connect beyond myself, both of which are inextricably tied together in my life. Stacking up the stones right now helps me because my depression is a rising tide these days.

For many years I’ve said I wanted to be a writer. Until I started writing this blog, I had a hard time feeling like one. Stacking up the posts like stones helps me remember I am a writer. It’s an altar to which I plan to return again and again.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — There’s a new recipe.

tonight

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
5

we walked the beach in the dark.
I feel like I’ve walked all day in light
that’s been retreating like the end
of a silent movie, shrinking to a pin spot
and then disappearing into the certain
defeat of the black screen.

Sometimes I imagine a hand reaching out
of the shrinking circle, halting the darkness.
Then a second hand, and a third break away
the sides of the circle, as though it were
a thin facade and the light floods in
like a rain-swollen river.

Most of the time, however there are no
such hands; the light disappears and
the darkness remains. I’m left standing
as we were tonight, under a moonless sky,
with only your hand to hold,the consequence
of the love you’ve chosen to give.

Just before we turned for home you said,
“Say some love words — you’re the writer.”
I had no words. All I could do was pull you close
and hold you, the dark hanging heavy
as humidity and the shallow waves of low tide
keeping rhythm with the night,

marking time till daybreak.

Peace,
Milton

what’s cookin’

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
7

I went looking for a job today.

I’ve made only a marginal effort since I was fired from The Inn because I knew I was going on mission trip and had a couple of other things on the calendar and I couldn’t see starting a new gig by saying, “Oh – and I need the next two weekends off.” The summer stretches out from here, however, and it’s time to get back to work. My first stop was a small pub in our neighborhood that had been recommended to me by a guy who used to tend bar at The Inn. I talked with the owner and left a resume, but he said the kitchen was staffed right now.

“But you never know in this business,” he said and laughed.

My second stop was a high end restaurant on the other end of town. When I was laid off back in January I had a promising conversation with the chef there and almost went to work for him, but then The Inn called me back. I entered through the kitchen and asked to if Chef was available. The guy cutting the swordfish went to check and then said, “He’s busy. You wait three minutes.”

The chef I met back in January was not the guy who came to find me, but he was someone I knew. Two summers ago, when I was working in Kingston, he was the sous chef, biding his time until he could open his own restaurant in Cambridge, which he did. He got good press, took his best shot, and ran out of money. The former chef moved to a local country club and this guy took over. I told him what had happened to me and we had a good chat. If nothing else, I think it will turn into a weekend gig. We’ll see.

Someone told me once that there are a handful of people that staff the kitchens of restaurants on the South Shore and they just keep trading places with each other. After today, I’m willing to give that theory a little more credence. And I’m thankful that’s how life is here. Selling myself is hard for me to do, much less making cold calls. I got my other restaurant jobs because Chef called and said, “Come work for me.” This time, I on my own, marketing my skills, acting like I know what I’m doing. Though I’m confident when I’m cooking, I’m much less so when I’m job hunting. Flirting with rejection is not much fun. It’s easy for me to hear “We don’t need anyone in the kitchen right now” as “I’m a failure.” I know better, but I have to consciously work not to let my insecurities get the best of me. After all, the New Chef took a shot at his dream of owning his own place and failed gloriously.

“Hey,” he said smiling, “that was the first one.”

He wants his own place more than anything and enough to know it’s going to take some time and a lot of patience. For now, he’s continuing to hone his craft and nurture his dream. His day will come.

Mine, too. (I’m saying that mostly for my benefit.)

I know enough about how the business works to know I’ll need to go back again on Thursday afternoon and “check in.” I will either walk out of there with a job, or I’ll come home and print more copies of my resume and try again next week.

That’s what’s cookin’.

Peace,
Milton

I am a patriot

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
11

I do a fair amount of listening to country music, but I’m always a little gun shy of my radio this time of year (no pun intended) because the closer we get to the fireworks the more often they play Toby Keith singing about putting a boot up anyone’s ass who disagrees with our government, or – inevitably – I’ll hear Lee Greenwood sing about being proud to be an American.

I’m not proud to be an American.

I can’t be since I had nothing to do with my being an American. I can take pride in things I’ve cooked or written because I did those things, but I’m an American by circumstance, by geography, by fortune. I feel grateful. I feel responsible. But I’m not proud.

Another way to think about pride is to define it as arrogance: rather than it being a sense of accomplishment, it is a sense of entitlement. I’m concerned for our country because I think the latter is the image we project to much of the world, whether we intend to or not. We come across as though we see ourselves as The One Who Know Everything or The Ones Who Are Convinced Everyone Wants To Be Just Like Us.

The analogy that comes to mind is a scene from The Breakfast Club after all the kids (Brian the science nerd, Andrew the athlete, John the angry kid, Allison the outcast, and Claire the popular girl) have become vulnerable with one another:

BRIAN: Um, I was just thinking, I mean. I know it’s kind of a weird time, but I was just wondering, um, what is gonna happen to us on Monday? When we’re all together again? I mean I consider you guys my friends, I’m not wrong, am I?
ANDREW: No…
BRIAN: So, so on Monday…what happens?
CLAIRE: Are we still friends, you mean? If we’re friends now, that is?
BRIAN: Yeah…
CLAIRE: Do you want the truth?
BRIAN: Yeah, I want the truth…
CLAIRE: I don’t think so…
ALLISON: Well, do you mean all of us or just John?
CLAIRE: With all of you…
ANDREW: That’s a real nice attitude, Claire!

The scene continues:

BRIAN: I just wanna tell, each of you, that I wouldn’t do that…I wouldn’t and I will not! ‘Cause I think that’s real shitty…
CLAIRE: Your friends wouldn’t mind because they look up to us…

Brian laughs at her.

BRIAN: You’re so conceited, Claire. You’re so conceited. You’re so, like, full of yourself, why are you like that?

To turn the world into a high school detention hall may seem simplistic, but hear me out. We are a lot like Claire: she’s not mean or vindictive; she is uninformed and arrogant. She has been taught she’s better than others and has not heard voices telling her otherwise until that Saturday in detention. (Wouldn’t that make a great Security Council ice-breaker: OK, if your country was a character in The Breakfast Club, which one would it be?)

When we were in Greece and Turkey last year, almost every hotel had CNN International on the television. The same alleged news organization that fills our homes with endless teen drama queens and pontificating pundits has an international channel that is informative and articulate. I can only assume they don’t want us to see it lest we become informed and realize the world is not what we think it is. We are being taught not to question, not to act, even not to care.

Almost twenty five years ago Little Steven Van Zandt, of E Street Band and Sopranos fame, wrote a song called “I am a Patriot,” which I first heard on Jackson Browne’s wonderful 1989 record, World in Motion. In the video clip I found of Little Steven, he makes an impassioned and linguistically colorful introduction to the song, imploring his audience to question everything and then he sings:

And the river opens for the righteous, someday

I was walking with my brother
And he wondered what was on my mind
I said what I believe in my soul
It ain’t what I see with my eyes
And we can’t turn our backs this time

I am a patriot and I love my country
Because my country is all I know
I want to be with my family
With people who understand me
I got nowhere else to go
I am a patriot

And the river opens for the righteous, someday

I was talking with my sister
She looked so fine
I said baby what’s on your mind
She said I want to run like the lion
Released from the cages
Released from the rages
Burning in my heart tonight

I am a patriot and I love my country
Because my country is all I know

And I ain’t no communist,
And I ain’t no capitalist
And I ain’t no socialist
and I sure ain’t no imperialist
And I ain’t no democrat
And I ain’t no republican either
And I only know one party
and its name is freedom
I am a patriot

And the river opens for the righteous, someday

I love the honesty of the song: “I am a patriot and I love my country because my country is all I know.” Van Zandt names our love of family and want of security right along with our call to question what is going on and work for justice. My friend Gene pastors a church that talks about Life Mission Questions, which I find wonderfully resonant. The answers we find, my friends, are only as good as our questions. In that spirit, I have a few I think we need to ask more emphatically.

  • How can we hold people indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay without telling them or anyone else why and then talk about human rights to other countries?
  • How can we complain about countries seeking nuclear power and/or weapons, even threatening war if they continue, when we have them and intend to keep them?
  • How can we continue to staff military bases in countries all over the world when we would never let anyone set up a base on our soil?
  • How can we spend a billion dollars a week on war and not have universal health care our citizens?
  • How can we work to end terrorism without working passionately and relentlessly to end poverty?
  • Why do our presidential candidates have to raise millions of dollars to get elected?
  • Why don’t we think of the other countries of the world as colleagues rather than subordinates?
  • Why aren’t the voices of healthy dissent louder in our country?
  • Why are all our issues described as polarities?
  • Why must everything be either red or blue?
  • Where are the courageous leaders who are willing to do something other than raise money, worry about being electable, and pander to multinational corporations?
  • Where are the real journalists?

Feel free to add your own.

I am a patriot and I do love my country, even though it’s not all I know. I do think the river will open for the righteous someday and, as Martin said, justice will roll down like water. Liberty and justice for all – all the world.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — There’s a new recipe.

thanking an old friend

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
8

“It was a dark and stormy night.”

So goes the opening sentence to Snoopy’s always-in-process novel back in the Peanuts days. He sat at his typewriter, ready to be the next great American novelist and that was the best he could do.

“It was a dark and stormy night.”

George Bulwer-Lytton used the sentence to open his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Scott Rice, a professor at San Jose State University, was inspired by the heinous nature of the sentence to begin a contest to find the best worst opening line in fiction that has been going now for twenty-five years. Liane Hansen talked to him this morning on NPR. Though Bulwer-Lytton wrote some impressive books of history, his legacy lives on as a bad beginner of fiction, thanks to those who enter the contest. Here are some of the past winners:

As the fading light of a dying day filtered through the window blinds, Roger stood over his victim with a smoking .45, surprised at the serenity that filled him after pumping six slugs into the bloodless tyrant that mocked him day after day, and then he shuffled out of the office with one last look back at the shattered computer terminal lying there like a silicon armadillo left to rot on the information superhighway.
Larry Brill, Austin, Texas (1994 Winner)

On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs crooked and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree of annoyance that Angela had now almost attained.
Rephah Berg, Oakland CA (2002 Winner)

They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably being a bland Cheddar and the white . . . Mozzarella, although it could possibly be Provolone or just plain American, as it really doesn’t taste distinctly dissimilar from the orange, yet they would have you believe it does by coloring it differently.
Mariann Simms, Wetumpka, AL (2003 Winner)

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you’ve had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.
Jim GuigliCarmichael, CA (2006 Winner)

“It was a dark and stormy night.”

So begins one of the books that has shaped my life: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.

When I was a fourth grader at the Lusaka International School, Mrs. Reedy motivated us by promising a story at the end of the day – if we got our work finished. A Wrinkle In Time was the book she read to us. We surprised her with our work ethic because we loved the story so much. The book grabbed me in those days and has never let go. The next two books in the series came out when I was in high school, the third my senior year in college, and the last two in the late eighties. I’ve read them all more than once, but I still keep coming back to that dark and stormy night.

L’Engle will turn eighty-nine this year and is still writing.

About the time the fourth book came out, I sat down one day and wrote her a letter that began something like, “Dear Madeleine, you’ve been my friend for a long time even though we have never met.” I told her about Mrs. Reedy and all that her writing had meant to me and I sent it to Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux without much expectation of it ever finding her. A month or so later, I got a handwritten response that sounded like a letter from an old friend. We wrote back and forth for a short while. Once, when I was thought I was going to New York, I wrote and asked to meet her and she sent me her home phone number. I didn’t get to make the trip. When her husband Hugh died (he used to be Dr. Tyler on All My Children); I received a form letter that marked his passing and that was the last time we corresponded. Even in that letter, I learned from her: it was my introduction to the power of keeping time by the church year.

“He got sick just after Epiphany,” she said, “and he was gone by Pentecost.”

Her words were full of holy and heavier things than to say, “He got sick in January and died in May.” She is also someone who relishes belonging to an untamed God. In an MSNBC interview, she was asked, “So to you, faith is not a comfort?” and she answered:

“Good heavens, no. It’s a challenge: I dare you to believe in God. I dare you to think [our existence] wasn’t an accident.”

In her Newbery Medal acceptance speech, she said,

Very few children have any problem with the world of the imagination; it’s their own world, the world of their daily life, and it’s our loss that so many of us grow out of it. Probably this group here tonight is the least grown-out-of-it group that could be gathered together in one place, simply by the nature of our work. We, too, can understand how Alice could walk through the mirror into the country on the other side; how often have our children almost done this themselves? And we all understand princesses, of course. Haven’t we all been badly bruised by peas? And what about the princess who spat forth toads and snakes whenever she opened her mouth to speak, and the other whose lips issued forth pieces of pure gold? We all have had days when everything we’ve said has seemed to turn to toads. The days of gold, alas, don’t come nearly as often.

What a child doesn’t realize until he is grown is that in responding to fantasy, fairly tale, and myth he is responding to what Erich Fromm calls the one universal language, the one and only language in the world that cuts across all barriers of time, place, race, and culture.

(As you can tell, her writing runs in more directions than fantasy. Walking on Water, A Circle of Quiet, and That Irrational Season are all worth reading and re-reading.)

On this bright and sunny day, an old friend came to mind thanks to a dark and stormy night. We have yet to meet, but my life – particularly my writing life – has her fingerprints all over it.

Thank you, Madeleine.

Peace,
Milton

cry wolf

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
6

“Forget about fairy tales,” she said
as we entered Wolf Hollow.
“They will make you frightened
of the wolves,” she said, as though
we were looking at docile dogs
through two layers of tall fence.

Gracie our youngest, descendant
of the wolves I’m told, is frightened
by the early freedom thunder
of fireworks a couple of blocks away.
She shakes as though she might
wear out her skin from the inside
and lays down on my feet

while I’m trying to write.
“Forget about the fireworks,” I say.
“They are too far away to hurt you.”
She is not convinced and flinches
with every rocket red roar. I can’t
fence out bombs bursting in air.

Fear can look foolish on the face
of another. Incredulity can incite
insensitivity. “Be not afraid,”
we say, like Gabriel to Mary,
an unmarried, pregnant teenager
who hid his words in her heart.

Faith can look foolish, too.
Making believe was hard work
in the face of her fears, both real
and imagined. It looks easy
when we tell the story now
because the angels are long gone.

I can’t forget about fairy tales or fear
anymore than I can stop making
believe. That woman knows her wolves
as well as Mary did her angels.
Gracie and I can only hear the boom
in the distance and wonder what’s next.

living in time

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
8

I am more and more convinced that time doesn’t move in a line.

Even as I make that statement, I can recall one of my seminary professors waxing eloquent about the linear view of time being something that made the Judeo-Christian worldview stand apart from the others: history was going somewhere rather than going in circles.

But here’s the deal: in the middle of our youth mission trip this past week, I got an email message from, Deana, who was in my youth group twenty years ago catching me up on her life and saying thanks for helping her through some hard times. Two decades later, how I feel about teenagers and how I interact with them is not so different. Time has moved, yes, but not in a line. I need a different metaphor. The idea that history, whether public or personal, simply moves from Point A to Point B makes something with more layers than lasagna sound two dimensional. Time is a dimension of its own, with room to move, as the old Sesame Street song used to say,

around and around
around and around
over under and through

In the summer of 1984, my friend Gene (who can be found here) invited me to go to youth camp with his church as camp pastor. One of the things we did was to set up a sound system so we could make announcements and provide a soundtrack for the week. Each morning, he and I got up early and found our way to the microphone to sing an intentionally irritating version of “Morning Has Broken,” which is probably the reason Cat Stevens quit singing and converted to Islam. In the twenty-odd summers since, I’ve kept waking kids with that songs and others, such as this (with apologies to Minnie Ripperton)

waking you is easy ‘cause I’m beautiful
and every time that I do
I just love waking you

And yes, I hit the high notes – which leads me to one of my favorite moments on our trip. The last morning everyone was moving particularly slowly, so I kept singing as I went about my tasks. One of the kids, who woke up not feeling well, came up to me and said, “Your voice is magnified like ten times in my head.”

“Wow!” I answered. “That must be awesome.”

Sometimes I crack myself up. One of the other things I learned from Gene that summer that has stayed with me was the practice of writing affirmation cards. He showed up at camp with enough cards for everyone to write everyone else at least once (and there were three hundred of us), and we did. I’ve parted with a lot of things over the years, but I still have almost every card I’ve ever received. They are treasures.

One of the kids on our trip built an outdoor labyrinth at his church for his Eagle Scout project. The spiritual practice of walking the labyrinth is something that speaks to me and something I’m still learning about.
The use of the labyrinth is older than Christianity and carries in it a sense of time that can carry all the layers. The first time I walked one, I was struck by how I moved all over the circle as I worked my way to the center. I would be walking next to someone and then we would both make turns and be on opposite sides of the circle, moving both together and separately, both ultimately aimed at the center. As long ago and far away as those days at Camp Ozark seem to me, all it takes is one turn singing in the morning and Gene and I are walking side by side once again. Writing affirmation cards draws me close to Deana and others with whom I have shared love and encouragement. To walk a straight line on our planet would bring me back to where I started; I’m not sure time is any different. Whether we’re spending time, saving time, making time, marking time, losing time, or finding time, we go out where we came in: ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

One of my favorite singer-songwriters from my college days was B. W. Stevenson. His self-titled album is still one of the best things I own, even if it’s still only on vinyl. When I lived in Fort Worth in the mid-eighties, I saw he was playing in a little club called The Hop. His few radio songs were long gone and he made a living doing small gigs, mostly in Texas. It was a weeknight and I was one of only a handful of people in the room, but he sang like it was a sellout. During a break between sets, he sat down at a booth by himself with a beer and I walked over to say a few words of affirmation. “I’ve been following you since college,” I said.

“Oh!” he replied. “You’re the guy.”

We talked for a bit and I got to say thanks for the songs that meant so much to me. I stayed until he wouldn’t sing anymore and went home. I never saw him again. He died a couple of years later, at 38, of complications after heart surgery. Here’s what he said about time:

well, sorrow brings you loneliness
and pain can bring disgrace
at twenty-one the world
is written on your face
got no one to turn to –
the road is long and low
just look on up to Jesus,
and He can let you know.

you’ve got to save a little time,
save a little time,
save a little time for love.
save a little time, save a little time,
save a little time for love.

life can bring misfortune
and it can bring you strife,
your mind may want to lash out
at the friends you find in life.
take hold of your senses,
the devil takes his toll
just look on up to Jesus,
and He can let you know.

you’ve got to save a little time,
save a little time,
save a little time for love.
save a little time, save a little time,
save a little time for love.

well, if you see your brother,
and he’s without a friend
take hold of his heart and soul
and walk him to the end.
take his mind and try
to make him understand
that man is only man,
but he does the best he can.

you’ve got to save a little time,
save a little time,
save a little time for love.
save a little time, save a little time,
save a little time for love.

Time is, most of all, the dimension in which love thrives.

Peace,
Milton

artful analogies

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
2

One of the things I have been turning over in my mind for the last couple of days is this post from Back Road Journey:

This past Sunday in worship we were asked the question, “What is the opposite of war?” and before I could even think of the standard response of “peace,” we were offered a refreshing response, “art is the opposite of war.” Art. Art… How does this work? The pastor continued, “the opposite of destruction is creativity.” Well of course. I rather like this way of thinking.

The analogy takes me back to SAT days:

war : violence :: peace : creativity

Whatever violence is, it is not creative. As I wrote in response to the post, creativity begats life; violence begats violence. Whatever shape it takes – war, destruction, personal attacks, abuse, power plays (the list is by no means exhaustive) – violence doesn’t offer hope or humanity. War is destruction, regardless of the reasons for waging it or the spoils collected from winning it. When we fight, we become cannibals, feeding on ourselves. The people on the receiving end of our destruction are not “them”; they are us. The only way the enemy stays an enemy is for us to give them a caricature rather than a face.

We are created in the image of God, the Bible tells us almost from the first, which means we are spitting images of the One who dreamed up whales and wallabies and gave us minds to dream up whipped cream, wall paper, and wine. (I was trying to stick with w’s.) I realize there are several stories in the books that follow that tell of God telling the people to invade other lands (Canaan in particular). I’ve often wondered if what they heard and what was said was the same thing. Even if they heard right, the violence was not creative for very long. Finding the lineage from life in Gaza these days back to those biblical scenes is not so far fetched. But I digress: I’m not trying to write a treatise on nonviolence as much as I want to talk about how the post intersected my life this week.

One of the realities of any youth camp or mission trip is there is going to be a Last Night. Our group had worked hard and had endured several days of temperatures in the nineties and they were tired, but that didn’t stop them from planning to stay up as late as they could last night. We, as the adults on said trip, had to decide how to respond factoring in we were staying in someone else’s church, we had to drive the vehicles home this morning, and the kids would be able to stay up later than we could. That may seem a far cry from war and violence, but bear with me. If creativity is the opposite of destruction and violence, then we are talking about more than war: to teach creatively, speak creatively, work creatively, relate creatively, even write creatively means to do so without violence, without doing damage.

We could have waged war against the all-nighter, as have many youth workers over the years, but Ginger had a more creative idea: why not take everybody out to eat at an all night diner? It’s a pattern we have followed on many youth trips: take the thing that carries the most potential for destruction and turn it into a creative act. If they were going to be up late (and they were), why not make a memory out of it. When we had finished our evening session and completed the beginnings of our packing and cleanup, we piled in the vans and drove to the Goldroc Diner, an 24/7 Hartford institution. (We did call and tell them we were coming.) At fifteen minutes after midnight, thirty-five of us sat down to breakfast, lunch, or dinner, depending on the person and we ate and talked and laughed until nearly two o’clock when we go back to the church. Though some still wanted to watch a movie, no one stayed awake long and no one had to play night watchman.

creativity : destruction :: all night diner : last night of trip

During the Balkan war, I remember hearing a story about cellist Vedran Smajlovic:

In the spring of 1992, a mortar shell hit a bread line in Sarajevo, killing 22 people. The next day, Smajlovic put on his work clothes – black tie and tails – and took his cello to the bomb crater and played Albinoni’s Adagio. He continued to play one day for each of the dead. After that, he played at sites of bombings throughout Sarajevo.

creativity : destruction :: cellist : bomb

One of the best things about getting away on a trip as we did is you get some days where being together is the primary way of being. The news that mattered to us was what we did together that day. We worked together, played together, ate together, lived together. Creativity thrives in community. As the various cars pulled out of the church parking lot taking the kids back to their various homes, the bond we forged couldn’t help but unravel somewhat. We are no longer together. We are back in our lives, bombarded with violence. Creativity can still thrive, but not without intentional commitment. We are still together if we choose to be, and we have room for others to join the circle. If we allow ourselves to believe that separating violence is the status quo, then we lose sight of the One in whose image we are created and we lose sight of ourselves.

Violence is a far easier path to take than the creative road because it’s what we think of first. Creativity is not a knee jerk reaction. It is thoughtful, intentional, tenacious, resilient, inclusive, inviting, faithful, and foolish. In a world full of violence, it’s hard to believe that which way the world goes depends on an all night diner or a cellist.

The best way to get through the night together is to go to breakfast.
The only way to play in a bomb crater is to believe it makes a difference.

diner : cello :: love : hope

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — Creativity also surprises. I have a new recipe that grew out of a mistake.

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