a breeze blows 
across the front
porch of the heart —
the song settles
like an old dog
circling until
it’s just right
the sadness hangs
like the ferns
we will put up
once it gets warmer
the last aromas
of dinner have
followed us out
and will find
their way into
the darkness once
we go in to sleep
but not just yet . . .
there’s still
another verse
to sing another
star to fall
not just yet . . .
Peace,
Milton
We gathered around our table for Thursday Night Dinner, which is a weekly occurrence at our house. We have a 
fairly regular group around the table, along with others who come occasionally, to eat and talk and laugh and be friends. For me, it is a chance to go exploring the culinary landscape to see what I can find. Tonight, the menu was:
Strawberry salad with mixed greens, cheddar cheese, and fried green beans
Roasted chicken with a orange-coffee sauce over cocoa pasta
Guinness gingerbread with passion fruit mousse
The menu came about because of a cookbook
I love cooking good food. I love getting to use my imagination in the kitchen. Yet what I love most of all is eating 
together around the table: laughing, talking, telling stories, being friends. The food is fuel for something far more significant. We are changing the world on Thursday nights. I love it.
I just need to figure out how to get a bigger table. And a bigger kitchen.
Peace,
Milton
The end of March carries much significance. These are the days of March Madness when we watch basketball more than any other time of year. These are the days that mark at least the promise of Spring. These days are the gentle base path to Opening Day of the baseball season. And these last days of March give way to April: National Poetry Month.
In our Tuesday night gatherings at Fullsteam, we have talked a bit about the difference between faith and religion, the latter being more of the institutional variety often used more like a club than an invitation to grace and love. Faith, as I wrote about yesterday, works itself out in the relationships of life and in our trust of God and one another. Religion makes the news. Lawyers are arguing before the Supreme Court about whether or not a corporation being required to offer contraceptives as a part of health care coverage for their employees violates their religious freedom. Over the past few days, World Vision International has made the news by first saying they would hire gay and lesbian married couples and then, under enormous religious and financial pressure, reversing their decision. Reading the articles about both reminded me of one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets, Naomi Shihab Nye:
I Feel Sorry for Jesus
People won’t leave Him alone.
I know He said, wherever two or more
are gathered in my name…
But I bet some days He regrets it.Cozily they tell you what he wants
and doesn’t want
as if they just got an e-mail.
Remember “Telephone,” that pass-it-on gamewhere the message changed dramatically
by the time it rounded the circle?
Well.
People blame terrible pieties on Jesus.They want to be his special pet.
Jesus deserves better.
I think He’s been exhausted
for a very long time.He went into the desert, friends.
He didn’t go into the pomp.
He didn’t go into
the golden chandeliersand say, the truth tastes better here.
See? I’m talking like I know.
It’s dangerous talking for Jesus.
You get carried away almost immediately.I stood in the spot where He was born.
I closed my eyes where He died and didn’t die.
Every twist of the Via Dolorosa
was written on my skin.And that makes me feel like being silent
for Him, you know? A secret pouch
of listening. You won’t hear me
mention this again.
“A secret pouch of listening. “ Wow.
That poem kept me reading on and led me to another of hers, which I have quoted before, but which seems a good partner for the first one tonight:
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
It is only kindness that makes sense anymore.
Peace,
Milton
Today was a quintessential Durham Day.
I started by dropping off cookies at Cocoa Cinnamon where I met Sarah, a member of our church, to talk about a fundraising dinner I am going to cater this summer for her nonprofit organization. Then I went to lunch with Leon, who owns Cocoa Cinnamon along with his wife Areli. We ate at Ninth Street Bakery (an amazing bowl of Thai Curry) and fed our friendship with a discussion of dreams and hopes and faith. I rested a bit this afternoon and then went down to Fullsteam Brewery for our church Lenten Study (an adult confirmation class of sorts) and continued my Lenten ritual of an awesome grilled cheese from Paul and the crew on the American Meltdown truck (tonight’s was a “Dirty South” — pimento cheese and andouille sausage) and a Fearington Winter Ale from Jordan and Zack at the bar. Eight Pilgrims (that’s what we call ourselves) — Ginger, Mandy, Brad, Cat, Katie, Bev, Laura, and I — sat around one of the tables in the big room talking theology as the Middle Eastern band warmed up in preparation for the monthly belly dancing demonstration. I managed to finish our session just as the dancers began.
It was quite a segue. The room filled up with people who had come to support and encourage those who were dancing. Each group appeared to be a class — from different places, I imagine — who had worked hard on their routines. Some were more advanced than others, some had fancier props or makeup, and all of them danced with abandon. The crowd was energetic in their enthusiasm, the whole scene a beautiful picture of community.
In the hour before the dancing began, we talked Theology: capital T, stained glass words and all, and in that discussion we came to the Trinity. We talked a bit about different metaphors people had offered over the centuries, such as St. Patrick’s clover, to explain the way Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit manage to be the three-in-one God, and we talked about how metaphors both help and often break down. I went on to say what I find most meaningful in the Trinity is the image of God in community with God’s self: the image of the triune God is an example of the kind of community we are called to be. We had to keep talking louder and louder because the Middle Eastern instruments were competing with our voices, one room holding us all.
The image of the Godhead weaving in and out of one another, negotiating their collective existence, interacting without resonance rather than relegation, hope rather than hierarchy, mutuality rather than manipulation, a living picture of Life Together. In her sermon on Sunday, Ginger reminded us we are called to choose relationships over rules, norms, and doctrine. We are called to choose each other, to say, “This is my beloved . . .” every chance we get, to be our own incarnation of the togetherness we see in the Trinity. Faith and life, as I have said on more than one occasion, are team sports, not individual events. Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with God. None of those happens alone.
While I was waiting for my sandwich before the group from church arrived, Paul, who owns American Meltdown with his wife, Alysha, and I were talking about the sense of camaraderie among the food truck folks in town. Much of that has to do with what Nick and Rochelle have done at The Cookery, which is the commissary kitchen where many of the trucks do their prep work. The common kitchen helped to create a sense of community among them; they pull for each other, help each other out, and even collaborate for special events. We agreed that one day someone will look back and want to tell the story of what if felt like to live in Durham during these days. We live in an encouraging and exciting place. Togetherness was happening all around us. We ate together. We drank together. We talked and laughed and prayed together. And some of us even danced. A couple of weeks ago, as we were beginning our Lenten study, I pointed out that faith is a verb in Greek and a noun in English. For most of the history of biblical translation, we have used the word believe, but I think it falls short because it turns it into intellectual assent. Trust is a better translation because faith carries with it some idea of risk, of relationship, of vulnerability. Trusting God is different than believing. Through the sweeps and turns of my Durham Day, trust was the common currency. We are in this together and trusting one another to see what we can do next as we weave in and out of each other’s lives.
We didn’t need clovers to get a picture of the Trinity tonight.
Peace,
Milton
I have walked with a limp all day
my ankle bandaged, cane in hand,
no great story — I sprained it with
one simple step off of a crumpled
concrete sidewalk; the same ankle
I turned twice carrying our sick dog
down the stairs a few years ago,
and then again missing the last
marble steps our on first afternoon
in Florence. I crossed the grocery
store parking lot tonight thinking
about Jacob wrestling the angel
grasping for grace, crying for love,
and learning to walk wounded like
everyone from Penuel to the Piedmont;
I have wrestled mostly with myself
and stumbled in both fear and faith . . .
this is just the wound that shows
Peace,
Milton
My offering today consists of parts of our worship service at Pilgrim: the call to worship, the prayer of confession, 
and our benediction. I was moved by the words and wanted to pass them along.
Call to Worship
Lent is the journey into the acceptance of mystery, a time of self discovery designed to lead us to face the division within us: between what God calls us to be and what, in fact, we are. During these days we grow towards integrating these two truths.
It is a journey about homecoming: coming home to selfhood; and coming home once again to the call to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.
It is a journey inside through spiritual exercises. They stretch us, they tone us up. God invites our total involvement through an interplay of all that we are: through our bodies, heads, hearts, wills; through the coming together of all our scatteredness and fragmentation.
It is a journey done in stages: stages of time, stages of experience, stagers allowing ourselves to be open to God’s grace, which brings us to new attitudes and to new hearts.
It is a journey about growing in mystery. To walk in mystery, we have to look for hidden depths. As we continue to question more deeply, mystery grows stronger. We come in touch with “a light that shines in the dark, a light the darkness cannot overpower.”
In this journey of self discovery, as we come to be in touch with our deepest longings and open ourselves to God, to others, and to the world, two longings meet: ours and God’s.
Prayer of Confession
I confess my sin because I believe sin is real. I believe sin is the real brokenness of relationship with others, with the earth, with myself, and with God.
I confess my sins because I participate in systems that break people. I participate in systems that break our environment. I participate in systems that break our relationship with God. And I believe sin is more than passive participation in systems.
I confess my sins because, consciously and unconsciously, I cause brokenness. Sometimes, I sin because the choice I make is the lesser of two evils. Sometimes I sin because I’m just selfish, jealous, lazy, proud, impatient, scared, or just too tired to care. I confess my sins because that act of confession — that act of prayer — calls me to accountability and reminds me I am not just a sinner. I am also a reconciler, a peacemaker, a healer.
I have a responsibility to try and heal what I have broken, which is often hard to do and that’s why I also confess my sings to remind me I cannot do it on my own. I need help. I need grace, community; I need God.
I confess my sins to be homes before God about who I am. I confess my sins, not to make myself feel guilty, not to put on sackcloth and cover myself in ashes. I confess my sins so I can learn to love myself in all my wholeness, so I can learn to love others in all their wholeness as God loves us.
Benediction
(written by Michael Josephson) — Ginger used this recently at the funeral of a lifelong friend.
Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end.
There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours, or days.
All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else.
Your wealth, fame, and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.
It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.
Your grudges, resentments, frustrations, and jealousies will finally disappear.
So, too, your hopes, ambitions, plans, and to-do lists will expire.
The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.
It won’t matter where you came from or what side of the tracks you lived on at the end.
It won’t matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.
Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.
So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured? What will matter is not what you bought but what you built; not what you got but what you gave.
What will matter is not your success but your significance.
What will matter is not what you learned but what you taught.
What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage,
or sacrifice that enriched, empowered, or encouraged others to emulate your example.
What will matter is not your competence but your character.
What will matter is not how many people you knew but how many will feel a lasting loss when you’re gone.
What will matter is not your memories but the memories that live in those who loved you.
What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom, and for what.
Living a life that matters doesn’t happen by accident.
It’s not a matter of circumstance but of choice.
Choose to live a life that matters.
I hope you find something in these words that speaks to you.
Peace,
Milton
We took a long walk this morning through downtown Durham working to prepare for our walk of part of the 
Camino de Santiago coming up this summer. While we walked, a bunch of folks ran a 25K to commemorate twenty-five years of Merge Records. We were walking to end up at the end of the race where the food trucks were. I stepped off the sidewalk to go around a couple walking in front of us, hit an uneven piece of pavement and rolled my ankle; nothing dramatic. I took one step and felt it go — and it’s ankle which has been sprained before. Tonight, my picture will have to be my thousand words; I’m wrapped up and ready to sleep.
Peace,
Milton
Like many people in America, I’ve spent as much time as I could find the last two days watching the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. I enjoy the competition, whether I know the teams or not. And I would love for everyone to come down to the last shot, perhaps even overtime. The ability of these young men to do what they do, much less do it under such intense pressure is awesome. As arguably the world’s worst basketball player, I can only imagine what it must feel like to shoot with such confidence.
At the same time the tournament was kicking into gear, I began receiving email messages from several folks who work with nonprofits in our area inviting me to vote for their organizations who are being pitted against one another for money. In this age of social media, it has become fashionable to make people or groups bring out the vote in order to get the resources they need. I’ve made a point of voting everyday this week — because part of the idea is you’re supposed to come back and vote everyday — and I don’t get it. I don’t understand the logic behind creating a competition out of compassion. They all need the money. Why make them fight and beg for it?
It makes my wonder how Jesus might have delivered the Beatitudes in this age of social media: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, but the kingdom of heaven will only be theirs if you vote for them over the meek, the mourning, and the peacemakers.” How does that make sense? These are organizations for whom fundraising is not a game. They work hard to not only raise money but spend it well — and they are dealing with issues and causes we should be paying for: literacy, homelessness, environmental stewardship. If we want to challenge them, why not offer a matching grant for votes: get five hundred votes in three days and we’ll give you $5000. If everyone gets five hundred votes, then everybody gets the money, making it a social media take on a matching grant. Why ask them to spend their own valuable resources to drum up votes in a winner-take-all competition that may mean they could have used their resources more effectively?
I think I’m finding different ways to ask the same question over and over because I am so incredulous. I’m not sure the semantic difference I am about to make holds up in anyone’s dictionary, but I have come to see a difference between being generous and being philanthropic. Generous, to me, is straight out of Jesus: you need something, I have something, here. In America we talk a great deal about philanthropy, which I have come to see as giving with agendas attached. So McDonald’s says every time you buy a Shamrock Shake they will give a dime to the Muscular Dystrophy Association. That’s product promotion disguised as philanthropy. They could write any sized check they want without selling one shake, which says to me the point of the whole promotion is to sell shakes and let the MDA pick up a little change in the process.
My take on the compassion competitions, therefore, is there’s more going on here than everyone trying to get their constituencies to vote. Underneath the philanthropy is an agenda. The nonprofits are getting used so someone can collect email addresses or publicity or something. If that’s too cynical a perspective, I’m willing to be convinced otherwise because, as I said, I don’t get it.
Peace,
Milton
I woke up this morning thinking about music not only because of my post yesterday but because I had tickets 
tonight to see Shawn Colvin and Steve Earle. Front row seats, thanks to my friend, Jay. So Ginger and I walked in the cool of this very first spring evening the half mile from our front door to our front row seats and shared an amazing evening of music and stories.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
As I was fixing breakfast this morning I heard a music story on NPR’s Morning Edition about a band out of Birmingham, Alabama called St. Paul and the Broken Bones. They are a knockout R&B band — I mean serious soul — and they don’t look like an R&B band. Here’s the way the bass player described the lead singer:
Paul [Janeway], according to all the reviews and stuff that are written of the band, he looks like yourhigh school history teacher, or he looks like Drew Carey. Bottom line is that we’re a bunch of kind of nerdy-looking white guys, and when this sort of earth-shaking soul roar comes out of his mouth for the first time, you can always hear the air being sucked out of the room.
Paul grew up in a very strict, conservative Christian household and, the interviewer went on to say, “religion is still part of Janeway’s life — but the relationship remains complicated.” I smiled when she said that. I liked that she said that. I thought, “What an honest expression of faith. No wonder the guy sings with soul.”
I bought Steve Earle’s first record, Guitar Town, the week it came out. In fact, I think I’ve bought most of his 
records on that same schedule. He is a poster child from redemption and hope, having almost killed himself with heroin and other drugs, served time for those very drugs, and then gotten clean and stayed that way for almost twenty years and becoming an articulate and vibrant protest singer and activist. And he’s complicated. Tonight, he and Shawn sang one of the songs from that first record called “Fearless Heart.” The chorus says,
I got me a fearless heart
strong enough to get you through the scary part
it’s been broken many times before
a fearless heart just comes back for more
What was written as a song of bravado from a young man was sung tonight by someone with a lot of miles on him who understands what broken bones and broken hearts are all about. Then Shawn sang,
every now and then
I can see that I’m getting somewhere
where I have to go is so deep
I was angry back then and you
know I still am
I have lost too much sleep
but I’m gonna find it
Like she says, it’s complicated. And wonderful. And excruciating. And joyful. The power of a great song is that it names our feelings, our experiences. It doesn’t explain them, or solve them, or even heal them, for that matter, but it names them.
I’m riding shotgun down the avalanche . . .
Yes. I understand. I’m grateful tonight for those who write and sing and name what is complicated about life and faith and invite us to join in on the harmonies.
And, for those of you keeping score at home, here is the set list.
Wake Up, Little Suzy — Duet
The Devil’s Right Hand — Steve
Trouble — Shawn
Goodbye — Steve
Matter of Minutes — Shawn
Crazy (Gnarls Barkley cover) — Shawn
Pancho and Lefty — Steve
Another Long One — Shawn
Someday — Duet
Fearless Heart — Duet
Diamond in the Rough — Shawn; Steve — bazuki
City of Immigrants — Steve
Burn the Walmart Down — Duet
Sunny Came Home — Shawn; Steve, mandolin
Galway Girl — Steve; Shawn, guitar
You’re Still Standing There — Duet
Encore:
Baby’s in Black (Beatles’ cover) — Duet
Copperhead Road — Steve; Shawn, guitar
Peace
Milton
As I was walking into work this morning, I found myself singing this song:
many’s the time I’ve been mistaken
and many times confused
yes, and I’ve often felt forsaken
and certainly misused
oh, but I’m all right, I’m all right
I’m just weary to my bones
still, you don’t expect to be
bright and bon vivant
so far away from home,
so far away from home
I guess it got me thinking about some other songs that are soundtrack for these days. So, tonight I’ll start off with how I started my day. Here’s Paul Simon.
Dougie Maclean is a Scottish songwriter who has an amazing collection of songs. Here’s one for this part of the journey: “Ready for the Storm” (Kathy Mattea is singing) —
Give me mercy for my dreams
for every confrontation seems
to tell me what it really means
to be this lonely sailor
but when the sky begins to clear
and the sun it melts away my fear
I’ll cry a silent weary tear
for those that need to love me
“Hard Times Come Again No More” has been a favorite song of mine for many years. As Spring appears to be approaching, it’s not a bad time to sing it again. This time, James Taylor will lead us.
As I left work this evening, this next song appeared out of nowhere. After my last music post, someone wrote and reminded me of Peter Mayer and his music; perhaps it just took a few days for this song to bubble up.
God is a river, not just a stone
God is a wild, raging rapids
And a slow, meandering flow
God is a deep and narrow passage
And a peaceful, sandy shoal
God is the river, swimmer
So let go
Even in Lent, we should go out with a little joy. Here is Sarah Jarosz’ excellent cover of Tom Waits’ “Come on Up to the House” —
There’s no light in the tunnel
No irons in the fire
Come on up to the house
And your singin lead soprano
In a junkman’s choir
You gotta come on up to the house
Can you hear the music through the circumstance?
Peace,
Milton