This has been an important week in North Carolina, and our church has been at the center of things here in Durham. Here is a story that ran on our local NPR station, WUNC.
Peace,
Milton
what love looks like
I wish you could have been with me this weekend.
It was end-of-summer-trying-to-be-fall weather in our little City of Encouragement, and it was the thirtieth North Carolina Pride Festival, which Durham has hosted for all three decades. One of the roles our church plays in the fe
stivities is to host the Ecumenical Communion Service that takes place in a beautiful stone gazebo on Duke’s East Campus in the middle of the vendors’ tents. Four or five years ago we began singing fifteen or twenty minutes before the service was to begin as a way to invite people to gather, and we sang old gospel hymns: “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior,” “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” “I’ll Fly Away.” By the time we finished singing four or five songs, about forty people had gathered and we came to the Table in earnest.
Each year as the Bread and Cup are passed, I have sung Billy Crockett’s song, “The Depth of God’s Love,” because those words say it as well as any I know:
and the depth of God’s love reaches down down down
to where we are until we’re found found found
a quiet word or none at all
pursues the heart behind the wall
and to those who wait with darkness all around
the depth of God’s love reaches down
Almost every year as I look around the circle of those gathered, I see people crying as we sing. For many, the songs were ones they grew up with in church until they came out and those churches told them they were no longer welcome. Singing in our makeshift stone chapel allows them to reclaim both the songs and their place at the Table. It is perhaps my favorite service of the year.
Our church has a float in the parade — and by float I mean a big red pickup filled with people and a few of us walking in front with a banner — because we are an “open and affirming” church, which means everyone belongs in Jesus’ name. We had hardly made the turn on to Main Street when we saw the first of several protesters scattered among those who were clapping and cheering. One man was dressed in dark slacks and a short-sleeved white shirt and red tie and had on dark wrap-around sunglasses. I don’t remember what his sign said, only that he kept shouting, “You’re going to hell” over and over and over. As we walked away, it struck me: Jesus never said that to anyone.
The only direct encounter I had with a protester was near the end of the route. This time, a man stood with a giant sign that said, “Homosexuals are bastards.” Next to him stood his maybe eight year old son holding a hateful sign of his own. When I passed the man I said, “You’re not helping.”
“What?” he asked.
“You’re not helping Jesus,” I said.
And he exploded. The best way I can describe it was he vomited anger on me. I kept walking. I wasn’t trying to create a scene. I meant what I said. His sign was damaging to my friends who were beside me, not to mention the hatred he was teaching his son. As the parade ended and we continued the afternoon back at our house, I kept thinking of those two men so consumed with anger, so convinced they were right and we were wrong. No, not wrong. Damned. I wished they could have been at the Communion Service.
Sunday morning, a young man named Kyle spoke to our church during worship. He is a transgender person, meaning he was born a girl but his physical appearance and his sense of identity didn’t match. He was a boy inside. He gracefully and articulately told his story and Ginger masterfully wove the worship service around him. He began at the floor mic and talked of coming to some sense of himself as a kid in middle school and how his parents and his church struggled to understand. As he moved to the lectern, Ginger asked me to sing a song Billy and I wrote together:
I have a fingerprint
it’s like no other one
I leave my fingerprint
on this world
God has a fingerprint
it is a mark of love
God’s leave that fingerprint
all over me and this world
After Kyle continued his story up until he entered college, he moved from the lectern to the pulpit and we read in unison:
In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek,
male nor female . . .
The verses hit my heart with freshness and wonder. Kyle ended his talk by reminding us we are all beautiful to God just as we are and then the choir sang,
there’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
like the wideness of the sea;
there’s a kindness in God’s justice,
which is more than liberty.
for the love of God is broader
than the measure of our minds;
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
God is Love. God is kind. In one of life’s little ironies, there is a stanza to the hymn I used to sing in Baptist churches that didn’t make it in the UCC version:
but we make God’s love too narrow
by false limits of our own;
and we magnify God’s strictness
with a zeal He will not own.
God doesn’t need defenders. God needs those who will love one another, those who will go out and find those who need to be found. Love found me again this weekend in ways I was not expecting. I wish you had been here.
Peace,
Milton
don’t lean back
I am old enough to remember when it was fun to fly, which, of course, makes me old. The experience of getting in and out of an airport, much less the time spent on board the airplane
have not been very enjoyable for a long, long time.
The “legacy carriers,” as they are often called, are a metaphor for much of what is wrong with society. Besides the shady fare structure that makes it impossible for anyone to figure out what a ticket actually costs and the plethora of extra fees for everything from bags to breakfast, they have created a class structure that rewards only the wealthiest of passengers. Before those of us who make up the Great Unwashed are invited to board, the gate agents go through a litany of Platinum, Gold, Silver, Brass, and Bauxite members who get to go before us, reminding us all we are only being allowed on because they ran out of rich people. When we finally get to our seats we find out they were built for people with retractable legs — except for the seats with more room that cost extra.
Part of the reason the metaphor works for me is it is far too easy to blame the airlines for our actions once we take our place in the Flying Caste System. Faced with our cramped quarters, it is tempting to think our only alternative is to lean back and give ourselves some space.
Don’t do it.
Don’t lean back. Yes, the system is inequitable and uncomfortable and we deserve to be treated better, and when I choose to recline my seat I am choosing my comfort at the expense of whoever is sitting behind me. When it comes down to me or them, I choose me. The very essence of community is found in our commitment to not forget or overlook one another. Once any of us decide someone else’s comfort is worth less, things fall apart.
Here in North Carolina, our legislature is proving my point again and again, making sure the corporations get bigger and bigger breaks even as they make it more and more difficult for people with low incomes to get affordable health care or make a living wage or even vote easily. Then again, our state government is as easy a target as the airlines. As I said, I can’t just blame the system. When I begin to pay closer attention to my life, I realize how many people feel the back of my chair reclining into their lives. Most of the folks who make my life possible — from the dry cleaners to the grocery store to the gas station to many restaurants — don’t make a living wage.
The point of life is not merely for me to be happy, or even for those I love to be happy. The basic purpose of our existence is to take care of each other, to foster the common good. Maybe it won’t change the world, but it’s a good start:
Don’t lean back.
Peace,
Milton
confession
There is no them.
Only us:
across the table,
behind the wall,
sharing coffee,
passing the green beans,
throwing stones,
breaking curfew;
armed to the teeth
biting back with rubber bullets,
cheering for little leaguers,
praying for peace,
marching in the night,
hiding behind official jargon;
joining in song,
crying out for explanations,
flying drones in acts
of faceless violence,
dousing ourselves with ice water,
struggling to learn
that life is more than
a series of self-inflicted wounds.
There is no them. Only us.
Peace,
Milton
brisket night and other delights
My friend John moved to Okinawa for a year. He’s on an academic sabbatical. He is also a master meat smoker. When he left
he gave me a whole frozen packer brisket, ready for me to try my hand at smoking it. My friend Roberto, who owns Old Havana Sandwich Shop along with his wife Elizabeth, may cook meat better than anyone I know. Between the tips I learned from the two of them, the brisket came out tasting really good.
You will notice in the links below I don’t have a brisket recipe. That’s because I’m still figuring it out. But what I did yesterday was rub the brisket with equal parts salt, pepper, and brown sugar. I preheated the smoker to 225˚ and put the meat in, keeping track of the internal temperature. When it reached 160˚, I wrapped the brisket in foil and lowered the smoker temp to 205˚ and let it cook several more hours until the internal temperature of the meat was about 195˚.
Then we cut it and ate it.
Here’s the rest of what we had for dinner this past Thursday Night:
Peach and Cherry Tomato Caprese Salad
Brisket with Guinness BBQ Sauce and Creamed Corn Casserole
Peanut Butter Sriracha Cookies with Chocolate Ice Cream and Guinness Chocolate Sauce
And it was good. Amen.
Peace,
Milton
thursday night dinner
For almost as many years as we have been married Thursday Night Dinner has been a significant ritual in our lives. We invite
folks over for dinner, I cook, and then we sit around and talk until we get tired. Over the past couple of years, thanks to Facebook and Twitter and my iPhone camera, I’ve been able to share pictures of my food. I’m not sure why it took me so long to think of this, but one day this week it also dawned on me I could use this blog to share the recipes. I have a recipe blog where they will actually live, but I will print the menu here and link to all of them on one page.
I hope you enjoy them.
This week’s menu:
beer battered fairy tale eggplant with summer peach marinara
baby beets, grilled romaine, and warm goat cheese croutons
roasted pork tenderloin with peach-fig compote and a summer salad of asparagus, corn, and cherry tomatoes with a basil vinaigrette
ginger molasses cookies with lemon buttermilk ice cream
Peace,
Milton
some kind words . . .
. . . from Norman Jameson for Associated Baptist Press.
‘Don’t eat alone’ is metaphor for healthy Christian life, says minister-chef
By Norman Jameson
Forty-two years ago Milton Brasher-Cunningham first heard the words that rescued him, like a strong arm lifting a drowning person to safety.
He was 16 and the new missionary kid from Africa in a big Houston school, plopped into the middle of his junior year. His family came to Houston to lead a Baptist church, but details had not been finalized so Brasher-Cunningham — ordinarily an extrovert — could not connect in school with youth from that church.
He didn’t talk to a single other student outside of a classroom for two weeks, dreading every lunch hour sitting alone in a boisterous cafeteria, a stone in the river of laughter flowing around him.
Until one day he heard, “Here’s the guy I’ve been looking for.” A missionary-kid friend from Africa, whom he hadn’t seen for years, scooped up Brasher-Cunningham’s tray and set it down in the midst of others from his home church.
“That changed my whole world. Someone knew my name. I started being greeted in the halls. It changed everything.”
summersong
It’s been a while since I did a music post. Tonight, at the end of a hot summer day, I thought I might offer some of the songs that have been the soundtrack of my summer — mostly old friends, and certainly worth a listen.
First is Mark Knopfler singing “A Night in Summer Long Ago.” The wistfulness of the Irish instruments makes this a beautiful lullaby for a summer evening.
Nanci Griffith’s “Love at the Five and Dime” has played in our house more times than I can count. Here it is again.
The title of Amos Lee’s “Windows Are Rolled Down” makes me want to do just that. I love the hopeful drive of this tune.
The Indigo Girls gave us our camp theme song this summer: “Get Out the Map.” I can’t help but sing along.
James Taylor sings, “Never give up, never slow down, never grow old, never ever die young,” and life is just better.
The Decembrists have become a favorite band over the last couple of years and “June Hymn” is one of the best.
When my dad died last year, Patty Griffin’s “Go Wherever You Want to Go” was bread for the journey. This summer it has made a return and let me sing along as we observed the first anniversary. The more I hear it, I find deep hope in this song.
Here’s hoping you find something with which you can sing along.
Peace,
Milton
a marked man
After my father died last year, Ginger and I were at my mother’s apartment and we saw two or three bags of little white
powdered donuts in the pantry. When we asked about them,my mother said, “Every morning we got up and I made a pot of coffee and we had a couple of donuts and talked about what we were going to have for breakfast.”
This morning — the first anniversary of my father’s death — Ginger left the house early and returned with two sleeves of little white donuts from our local convenience store. I made a pot of coffee and we, too, ate our don
uts and talked about what we wanted for breakfast. All my food today has been in his memory: cornbread and milk for breakfast, BBQ ribs and sausage for lunch, peach pie for dinner. I remembered him well.
I am the last of three Cunninghams who were given the name Milton. The first, my grandfather, was a big, determined, and sometimes divisive man who died before I was born. I know him only in stories. My dad was a shorter man than his father, more diplomatic, and with a better sense of humor. I split the difference between them, height wise. All three of us bear a physical resemblance along with our common name. I was born in Corpus Christi, Texas. My mom tells of Pop Soles, who was one of the laundry men at the hospital and a member at Second Baptist Church, where my parents attended. Everyday as he made his rounds, he would stop and look through the window at the newborn babies. The morn
ing after I was born he said to the nurse, “I didn’t know Barbara Cunningham had her baby.”
The nurse said, “Now Pop, you can’t tell whose baby is who the first day.”
“Oh, yes I can,” he said. “That is Milton Cunningham right there. I wou
ld put money on it.” The nurse didn’t believe him and went in to check. He was right. I was Milton.
One of the lectionary passages in church today was the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel — or whomever he wrestled that night. The story is one of the most evocative and mysterious stories in the Bible, and one to which I continue to return. I have always loved the idea of taking on a new name when we meet God in a significant way. That part of the story gave me vocabulary to describe why it mattered to me to change my name to Brasher-Cunningham when Ginger and I married. The most compelling part of the story for me, however, is Jacob’s desperate holding on until he got a blessing. The blessing. From his childhood he had manipulated and cheated and cajoled and there beside the river, aware that come morning he would have to face his brother whom he had so deeply wounded, he hung on for dear life that he might feel blessed. Forgiven. Validated. Loved.
He got the blessing, along with a wound. The man touched him, as the older versions say, in the hollow of his thigh and left him to limp the rest of his life. He had a new gait to accompany his new name. With every twinge came the memory of his blessing. The two were inseparable. His limp, I imagine, also made him recognizable. Someone would look down the road to see the sort of stumble in his walk and say, “There comes Jacob.”
Along with our names and our physical resemblance, the three Miltons have all shared a quest for blessing: some sort of validation that we were enough, that we mattered, that we were worthy to be loved. All of us preached grace better than we appropriated it. When I look at the two who preceded me, I also see that each offered his namesake less of a burden. My grandfather gave his son a better life than he had known; my dad did the same for me. I still remember looking in the coffin a year ago and saying, “Well, Dad, you finally know what it feels like to be enough.” That thought still makes me smile.
My father and I spent more than a couple of nights wrestling with each other as I tried to figure out what it meant to be Milton and we both tried to sort out what it meant to be Miltons together and who we were to each other. We left some scars and we figured some stuff out as well. For most of my life, particularly during my days in Texas, I was often recognized as my father’s son before I even had a chance to introduce myself. Sometimes that opened doors and sometimes it annoyed me. It never closed a door. It often led to a story: “I remember when your dad was here . . . .”
I’m a marked man: marked by my name, by my appearance, and by the legacy of my father who did the best he could. Part of grief appears to be coming to terms with the fact that the things you hoped might happen will not. Marking this day, however, reminds me of the ways I am marked by him; even as I miss him being here, I feel him in my limp, if you will — I incarnate the legacy handed down to me in the way I look, the way I repeat stories, the way I look for humor, the way I love to read, the way I feel called to make a difference in the world, the way I love a good piece of pie.
I am blessed, and I will keep my name. I am Milton.
Peace,
Milton
summer storm
I can see them
coming over the tops
of the trees
the lights at the
old ball park
the roof tops of
the old warehouses
the clouds pile up
some white as anger
behind them a grey wall
as deep as darkness
here comes the rain again
falling on my head like a memory
what I can’t see
is when the storm
will be over
if I am living through
a flash flood of
feelings and grief
or if the darkness
is settling in to stay
all I can do is keep
looking past the ball park
for any sign of light
Peace,
Milton