it’s has been grey
all day as though
dawn never came
the early morning haze
of mind and matter
stayed the afternoon
rain fell like a curtain
the world played
like an empty theater
even though we
could see each other
today has been a
series of solo acts
or so it seems —
don’t believe it
by the time it gets
dark go into the night
go to dinner with
people you love
play the scene
where you remember
that you belong
and then come back
out for an encore.
Peace,
Milton
Before church this morning, I turned again to Rock of Doubt
worship. Sydney Carter was writing about the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, particularly about why we go to see movies more than once. I’ve made a point of return viewings of many movies, particularly those that caught me by surprise the first time. I went back to see how they told the story, where the clues were, what breadcrumbs they dropped along the way. The Usual Suspects comes to mind. And several of the Coen Brothers’ movies. Some I go back to so I can hear certain lines or speeches, or see particular scenes: Miss Firecracker, Moonstruck, Places in the Heart. If I keep listing movies, I won’t say anything else. You catch my drift.
The seasons of the liturgical year are a bit like going back to the same movie. We start with Advent and move through the story of the life of Christ and the early church and then go back and watch it again. As the old hymn says,
I love to tell the story for those who know it best
seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest.
The thing I find in most any return engagement is things are never quite as I remember them. What I take away is not necessarily, or at least not exactly what was there to begin with. I often find something new as well. A detail stands out in a way it did not before. As many times as I have read and reread the stories from the gospels, I continue to get surprised by things I didn’t see before: a detail I had overlooked, or one I just discovered missing. This Lent, I have been struck by how sparse the gospel accounts are in their telling. They put a high value on getting to the point — even John — such that the stories expect the reader to do some work coloring in the blank spots. Take today’s lectionary passage: the raising of Lazarus (John 11). Even though reading the whole chapter in church made it feel long, John goes from Lazarus getting sick to Jesus traveling to Lazarus walking out of the tomb dressed like a mummy in about forty-five verses. He offers up a plot worthy of a novel in about a page and a half leaving some big questions left unanswered and a good bit of back story unexplained.
From the gospel accounts, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were Jesus’ friends. They had a connection beyond disciples, which means they spent time together. That’s how friendships happen. The gospel writers give us accounts of a couple of visits, but for the two sisters to talk to Jesus as frankly as they did, leaning into their friendship, he must have spent a great deal more time there. They sent word that Lazarus was sick. All we know is Jesus didn’t go immediately. When he did get there, Lazarus was not only dead, but buried long enough that when Jesus asked for the grave to be opened, Martha said (the King James still rocks this one), “He stinketh.” As I read the story, I wrote down some of my unanswered questions:
We just don’t know. When preachers talk about this story, Lazarus’ return to the living often becomes a prelude to the resurrection, or an example of Jesus’ power, or the moment when those in power decided it was time to cut this Messiah down to size. When I look at the way Jesus treated people, I don’t think he used people to make a point politically or theologically. He went to Bethany to see his friend. He took a risk to go to a region where he was a marked man to be with those he loved. And when he got to the tomb, he wept.
Jesus wept.
The shortest verse in the Bible — and another that is offered without much explanation. When I read the story this time, I noticed something I had not seen before. Look at John 11:34-35 —
He said, “Where have you laid him?”
They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”
Jesus wept.
The three little words in the people’s response are the ones that got me: come and see. In the summer of 1990, as I was preparing to finish my years as youth minister at University Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, my friend Billy and I wrote a song
if there was a place that felt like home
would you go there
if there was a chance that you could know love
would you try
if there was a dream that would come true
would you fall asleep
if there was someone to dry your tears
would you crycome and see
come and see
take and eat
come and seeif there was a voice that would call your name
would you answer
if there was a friend who would never leave
would you stay
if there was a heart that would break for you
would you fall in love
if there was someone who was listening
would you praycome and see
come and see
take and eat
come and see
I love those three little words, both because of the song and also because of where they show up in the gospel story. When John the Baptist’s disciples came to ask if Jesus was the One They Had Been Waiting For, Jesus said, “Come and see. (John 1:39) When Philip, one of the disciples, went to get his brother Nathaniel, the latter wondered aloud if it were even possible, if anything good could come out of Nazareth. “Come and see,” was Philip’s answer. (John 1:47) When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well, she went back into the middle of the town that had regularly rejected her and invited them to the love and acceptance she had found by saying, “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did.” (John 4:29). The last time they show up is here, when Jesus got to Bethany and asked where they had buried Lazarus, they replied: “Come and see,” and took him to the tomb.
Then Jesus wept.
I have wondered most of the day if those three little words were what broke his heart. Previously, they had been invitations to discipleship, to community, to forgiveness; now they were showing him the way to a funeral for a friend. Yes, Jesus called his name — in a loud voice — and said, “Come out!” Perhaps it was the memories tied up in those words that hooked something in him. Maybe he was exhausted by the grief and dropped his guard. Or perhaps the best I can do is project on to him what my grief has felt like.
When they passed the bread for Communion this morning, I tried to tear a piece off of the main loaf and got a handful. “I took a little too much Jesus,” I thought to myself. I started writing a poem in my head, but then I stopped and let my old song find its way back from my memory.
come and see
come and see
take and eat
come and see
Peace,
Milton
Yes, I realize there is still two weeks to go until Easter. That said, I would like to share an article I wrote for Christian Reflection, a quarterly published by the Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University. The piece is titled “On Beyond Easter.” Start here and follow the link.
___________________________________________
The morning my father died, I drove to the nursing home where he was in hospice care soon after sunrise, trying to make sense of what had happened. When we left the building after we had said goodbye, all we knew to do was go eat together. Grief does strange things to the mind, not the least of which is to make random connections. For me, that goes from an egg hunt in the graveyard, to a hospice bed, to a children’s book, and then a couple of lines from an old sermon I heard a long time ago. Bear with me.
When we lived in New England, my wife Ginger pastored North Community Church in Marshfield, Massachusetts, which originally broke off from the First Church of Plymouth — as in “The First Church.” That’s right: Pilgrims and all. It was a white clapboard building with big clear windows, very few decorations except for the driftwood cross that hung at the front of the sanctuary, and a tall steeple, in keeping with good Puritan tradition. Next to it was a cemetery whose tombstones bore the names of folks who lived and died before the Revolutionary War and on down.
One of my favorite traditions at our church was the Easter Egg Hunt, which followed our Easter Sunday worship service. The young people came early to hide the eggs and then the little ones came bursting out of the sanctuary after the benediction to find the eggs—among the tombstones. Since we were just south of Boston, some of those early Easters meant they found the eggs lying in the snow as well. The whole scene was a marvelous picture of the resurrection: the children running and laughing among the silent granite slates, some with names we remembered and some long forgotten. It was not uncommon to find one of the little gatherers perched on a gravestone stuffing her face with as much candy as possible before one of her parents caught on.
The juxtaposition of cold stones and vibrant children reminds me that the transition from Good Friday to Resurrection Morning is not ‘either/or’ but ‘both/and’. We proclaim the resurrection in the middle of the cemetery that is our grief-colored existence, losing loved ones even as we welcome new people into our hearts. We are the walking wounded, the disconsolate, as the old hymn calls us, the ones who need to be reminded there is a love that will not let us go. For those who have had loved ones die, Easter is less certain, even as it is more necessary. “He is not here” carries both a tone of palpable absence and enduring hope. . . .
You can find the rest of the article here.
Peace,
Milton
I spent the better part of the day writing, but not for this blog. I was working on a proposal for the next book. (I do love writing that sentence.) Tonight I have been staring at the screen for some time looking for the words that belong here. In the middle of writing, I took time this afternoon to go to a memorial service for a woman named Ruth Lewis who was a member of our church and an wonderfully kind and courageous person. The other thing that has been on my mind is David Letterman’s announcement that he is retiring next year. Though I will say I don’t watch as often as I once did, I am going to miss him. I learned a great deal about being funny from him. In the midst of all of that, today also marked the anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. I haven’t been able to find many words of my own, but I did think of Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, “One Art” —
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Loss is not the whole story for any of us and it is part of the story for all of us. Some days it elicits great sadness in me; today it led to gratitude for Ruth’s life, for Letterman’s humor, for Martin’s courage and leadership. I am different for all of their influences. Perhaps that is the best word for today.
Peace,
Milton
I spent today
standing in kitchens
then sitting around tables
catering gig at lunch
dinner with friends
now I’m standing
baking cookies like
there is a tomorrow
I love the flow from
making to serving
a tide of thankfulness
going out and coming in
offering and receiving
listening and speaking
trusting and risking like
there is a tomorrow
Peace,
Milton
on the road to the resurrection
I will pass a marker tomorrow
eight months since dad died
they’ve planted grass now
my mother goes to water it
not so long after easter
even with an empty tomb
nine months will come and go
soon we’ll be talking years
for now I will find solace
in the sadness of this first
bluebonnet spring without
a chance to talk baseball
or to send him a snickers
egg to say Christ is risen
Peace,
Milton
It may be April Fools’ Day, but it is also the beginning of National Poetry Month. Tonight, I want to help kick it off with three of my favorites.
How To Be a Poet
by Wendell Berry(to remind myself)
iMake a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.There Is No Word
by Tony HoaglandThere isn’t a word for walking out of the grocery store
with a gallon jug of milk in a plastic sack
that should have been bagged in double layers—so that before you are even out the door
you feel the weight of the jug dragging
the bag down, stretching the thinplastic handles longer and longer
and you know it’s only a matter of time until
bottom suddenly splits.There is no single, unimpeachable word
for that vague sensation of something
moving away from youas it exceeds its elastic capacity
—which is too bad, because that is the word
I would like to use to describe standing on the streetchatting with an old friend
as the awareness grows in me that he is
no longer a friend, but only an acquaintance,a person with whom I never made the effort—
until this moment, when as we say goodbye
I think we share a feeling of relief,a recognition that we have reached
the end of a pretense,
though to tell the truthwhat I already am thinking about
is my gratitude for language—
how it will stretch just so much and no farther;how there are some holes it will not cover up;
how it will move, if not inside, then
around the circumference of almost anything—how, over the years, it has given me
back all the hours and days, all the
plodding love and faith, all themisunderstandings and secrets
I have willingly poured into it.I Am Offering this Poem
by Jimmy Santiago BacaI am offering this poem to you,
since I have nothing else to give.
Keep it like a warm coat
when winter comes to cover you,
or like a pair of thick socks
the cold cannot bite through,I love you,
I have nothing else to give you,
so it is a pot full of yellow corn
to warm your belly in winter,
it is a scarf for your head, to wear
over your hair, to tie up around your face,I love you,
Keep it, treasure this as you would
if you were lost, needing direction,
in the wilderness life becomes when mature;
and in the corner of your drawer,
tucked away like a cabin or hogan
in dense trees, come knocking,
and I will answer, give you directions,
and let you warm yourself by this fire,
rest by this fire, and make you feel safeI love you,
It’s all I have to give,
and all anyone needs to live,
and to go on living inside,
when the world outside
no longer cares if you live or die;
remember,I love you.
Amen.
Peace,
Milton
Marcia Norman: a new name to me, as of last night when an excerpt from something she had written arrived in an email from a dear friend. He didn’t offer commentary; he just knew she had something to say that I needed to hear, which was true. Now I want to pass along some of her words from a lecture at Kenyon College in 1986.
When the critics don’t like you, you fall, right there in front of everybody. But there is actually no way to do significant work of any kind without falling. Falling is, actually, the most important part of this life. If you don’t fall, then you aren’t working close enough to the edge. Then you are secretly holding on, then you’re not really flying, you just fooled everybody for a little while. . . . Falling, then, is necessary, but dangerous. People can get hurt in a fall. People can die from a fall. Well, what they die of his internal injuries, of course. . . . And we must fall. You cannot do this work if you cannot live the life. The higher you go, the further you have to fall, the stronger your nets have to be, the better your catchers have to be. The one thing you cannot be is afraid to fall. You will fall. . . . Learning to fall is looking for things you’re not even sure you have, like wings, for example. And if you don’t find them, well, at least you looked. So you fall, so what. The only way not to fall is not to move at all. I urge all of you to fall often and land hard if you have to, or gently if you can. And then show your scars to everybody.
“The better your catchers have to be” is the phrase that caught me — and sent me looking for one of my favorite passages from one of my favorite books whose title even has the word catcher in it:
“You know that song ‘If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye’? I’d like—”
“It’s ‘If a body meet a body coming through the rye’!” old Phoebe said. “It’s a poem. By Robert Burns.”
“I know it’s a poem by Robert Burns.”
She was right, though. It is “If a body meet a body coming through the rye.” I didn’t know it then, though.
“I thought it was ‘If a body catch a body,'” I said. “Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around–nobody big, I mean–except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff–I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.”
Catcher or critic — a fork in the road we come to quite often. How we respond to the offering before us, whatever it might be, could determine whether the one offering flies or falls. (Did I mention I’m preaching to myself here?) I do believe we are at our best when we make an excellent offering, whatever we’re doing. Work hard. And then work some more. Dream big. Proofread. Pay attention to the details. But what both Norman and Caulfield are talking about is not so much aimed at those offering as those of us receiving who do well to remember we all need better catchers. Perhaps correcting the punctuation or grammar doesn’t need to be the first thing we do. Or the second. What if long before we felt corrected, we felt listened to, regarded. Caught.
Thanks to my friend, Terry, who pointed me to this video I can show you what being caught looks like.
Caught like that.
Peace,
Milton
Note: I should have made mention that the father who filmed his daughter singing with him made the movie in the middle of the night when his little one couldn’t sleep because she was afraid of the fireworks she heard. That’s why she keeps stopping — and he keeps catching her.
I love it when a poem catches me by surprise.
Most of the time, I do a pretty good job looking for them, but every so often (I’m happy to say) one shows up somewhere unexpectedly, ambushes me with alliteration or metaphor, and I am the better for it. Today was one of those days. Our worship today at Pilgrim was both Children and Youth Sunday and the ordination of Jake de Nap, one of our former students who is now a hospice chaplain in St. Louis. The children led the liturgy and read scripture. They were awesome: well prepared, enthusiastic, engaged. Jake had picked out the scripture readings for the day and, I found out, had also chosen a poem. This poem by Adrienne Rich. That caught me by surprise.
For Memory
Old words: trust fidelity
Nothing new yet to take their place.
I rake leaves, clear the lawn, October grass
painfully green beneath the gold
and in this silent labor thoughts of you
start up
I hear your voice: disloyalty betrayal
stinging the wires
I stuff the old leaves into sacks
and still they fall and still
I see my work undone
One shivering rainswept afternoon
and the whole job to be done over
I can’t know what you know
unless you tell me
there are gashes in our understandings
of this world
We came together in a common
fury of direction
barely mentioning difference
(what drew our finest hairs
to fire
the deep, difficult troughs
unvoiced)
I fell through a basement railing
the first day of school and cut my forehead open—
did I ever tell you? More than forty years
and I still remember smelling my own blood
like the smell of a new schoolbook
And did you ever tell me
how your mother called you in from play
and from whom? To what? These atoms filmed by ordinary dust
that common life we each and all bent out of orbit from
to which we must return simply to say
this is where I came from
this is what I knew
The past is not a husk yet change goes on
Freedom. It isn’t once, to walk out
under the Milky Way, feeling the rivers
of light, the fields of dark—
freedom is daily, prose-bound, routine
remembering. Putting together, inch by inch
the starry worlds. From all the lost collections.
Without parsing the poem to death, I have to say there were a couple of lines that stopped me in my tracks. The first was
there are gashes in our understandings
of this world.
Not gaps. Gashes. As we endeavor to make sense of what is happening to us, much less to others around the world, there are huge tears in the fabric of our comprehension. What a powerful word picture. The second one comes at the end of the poem, in simpler language:
freedom is daily, prose-bound, routine
remembering. Putting together, inch by inch
the starry worlds. From all the lost collections.
These lines make we want to stand on my front porch and holler, “Yes!” as loudly as I can. Freedom isn’t being able to do whatever I want, it is remembering what I was called to do and doing it. The gashes in our understanding are healed by the quotidian care and compassion we offer one another.
Old words: trust fidelity
Nothing new yet to take their place.
Nothing indeed, thank God.
Peace,
Milton
We’ve had a grey and somehow hopeful day here in Durham. As the rain stopped, people seemed ready to wipe off benches and chairs and fill the sidewalks and patios for supper. Ginger and I met friends for coffee that turned into dinner and I came home humming, ready to add to my on going soundtrack for the season. First: Tom Waits singing “Time” —
and it’s time time time
and it’s time time time
and it’s time time time that you loved
and it’s time time time
David Rawlings wrote a song made popular by Old Crow Medicine Show that pulls me every time I hear it.
so while you sit and whistle Dixie with your money and your power
I can hear the flowers growing in the rubble of the tower
I hear leaders quit their lying, I hear babies quit their crying
I hear soldiers quit their dying, one and all
I hear them all, I hear them all, I hear them all
Mumord and Sons write songs that are informed by both the grace and gravity of life. “Roll Away Your Stone” is one of my favorites.
it seems that all my bridges have been burned,
but, you say that’s exactly how this grace thing works
it’s not the long walk home
that will change this heart,
but the welcome I receive with the restart
Patty Griffin is one who always seems to make my song list, and tonight is no exception. This is from her Downtown Church record, “Little Fire.”
my friend, you know me and my family
you’ve seen us wandering through these times
you’ve seen us in weakness and in power
you’ve seen us forgetful and unkindall that I want is one who knows me
a kind hand on my face when I weep
and I’d give back these things I know are meaningless
for a little fire beside me when I sleep
“Before I Go” is a deep cut from John Hiatt. I have come to love this song for it’s persistent and tenacious hope:
I will try, but I will stumble
and I will fly, he told me so
proud and high or low and humble
many miles before I go
many miles before I go
Our closing song tonight is one that has had a long history in our family: Nanci Griffith’s “These Days In An Open Book.”
these days my life is an open book
missing pages I cannot seem to find
these days your face in my memory
is in a folded hand of grace against these times
And onward through these days we go . . .
Peace,
Milton