don't eat alone

In the waning minutes of this Easter night that will slip into a day that will mark, among other things, the running of the Boston Marathon and our twenty-fourth wedding anniversary, I am grateful for life, for the signs of resurrection, for the indefatigable light that refuses to be extinguished. I am grateful for another Lenten journey that has brought me tired and hopeful to the empty tomb.

As my friend Bob Bennett sings so beautifully, “still rolls the stone . . .”

Peace,
Milton

These two lines greeted me in an email from a dear friend today:

Go to the edge of a cliff and jump off.
Build your wings  on the way down.
— Ray Bradbury

My first connection was to my favorite Guy Clark song, “The Cape” —

he’s one of those who knows
that life is just a leap of faith
close your eyes, hold your breath,
and always trust your cape

I find deep comfort in both. Sing yourself to sleep, my friends.

Peace,
Milton

In our Adult Confirmation Class that has met during Lent, we talked about writing a statement of faith. We also discussed how inadequate the verb believe is as a translation of the Greek word for faith, which is a verb. Trust would be a better choice, as far as English goes. With that in mind, in the waning hours of this Good Friday . . .

I don’t believe in Jesus; I trust him.
I trust the darkness of today is not the last word.
I trust that the story doesn’t end with the Resurrection.
I trust God never quits looking for us.
I trust God finds some people in different ways than I was found.
I trust there are times when God speaks and I’m the one hearing nothing but the wind.
I trust Jesus is who he said he was.
I trust there is more to Jesus than what I see.
I trust my faith makes my life worth it, regardless of what comes next.
I trust it is more important to be loving than it is to be right.
I trust that God is still speaking.
I trust God is speaking to more than just me.
I trust God’s love is the final word, no matter what else is said.
I trust it will be a word we all can hear.

Peace,
Milton

One of the joys of living in the South is a big front porch, and one of the traditions of our porch is we populate it with Boston ferns every Spring, leaving them up until well into the fall (or winter) until they make our place look a little like Boo Radley’s house. A week or two after the ferns are hung, a bird manages to build a nest — usually in the one second from the left, if you’re standing at the front door facing the yard, which means that fern doesn’t get watered as well and we often have to replace it.

This year, our hanging Christmas lights stayed on the hooks where the ferns go until today. Since outlets are few on the front porch, hanging the seven large lighted balls around the porch requires several extension cords, lots of hooks, and a fair amount of ingenuity. Yesterday, Ginger noticed that, in lieu of a fern, the birds had built their nest on top of a bunch of wires up in the corner of the porch ceiling. When I started taking the lights down today, she asked if the nest would be alright. I was careful, gentle. The wires I needed to move came out easily and the nest seemed to be back in place. I put the lights back in their boxes and the boxes back in the basement, hung the ferns, and went on with my day.

Soon after we got home from our Maundy Thursday service at church, a choir of sirens began singing through our downtown neighborhood. We went out on the porch to see what was going on since about six police cars were within sight and learned there had been a carjacking attempt a couple of blocks away and the police were in pursuit of a suspect. While we were on the porch, Ella, our oldest Schnauzer, noticed the nest had fallen and the little newly hatched babies were scattered across the floor in that corner of the porch. When we realized what she was picking up, we did our best to stop her. She was puzzled, because she didn’t know what she had stumbled upon, and I was troubled because I had moved the wires. It was my fault.

As I was reading the Writer’s Almanac earlier today, I noticed today marks Thornton WIlder’s birthday. Though he’s probably best known for Our Town, one of my favorites is a small book called The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Here’s how Booklist describes the novel:

Few novels identify their basic plot line as succinctly and forthrightly as the opening line of Thornton Wilder’s 1927 novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey: “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.” The novel’s conceit is this: a certain Brother Juniper was himself about to step out onto the bridge when it broke and subsequently witnessed the plunge of five people into the abyss below. Brother Juniper wonders if the tragedy happened according to a divine plan or was simply a random instance of misfortune. His curiosity leads him to investigate the lives of the five victims to prove that the bridge collapse and the resulting deaths were indeed divine intervention—that God intended for them to die then and there. But, of course, the point of the novel is that there is no commonality among them, other than the fact that they are all simply human, with their own frailties.

While the cops looked for whoever was doing damage in our neighborhood, I was cleaning up the damage I caused, picking up the tiny featherless carcasses that were not as big as one knuckle of my little finger, who could not have been alive for very long, and whose lives where now over only because I moved the wires. And I know people tonight who are hurting over deaths and losses in their lives far more profound that feel as unnecessary as they are unexplainable.

What then shall we say on this darkest of nights, as we wait now for Easter daylight?

Hear Wilder’s closing words:

But soon we shall die and all memory of these five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

And love is a bridge whose wires will never give way.

Peace
Milton

One of the highlights of my Lenten season has been my repeated listening to the new Jackson Browne tribute project, Looking Into You. Most of the songs have been a part of the soundtrack of my life for as long as they have been public record and I love to hear him sing them, still this collection is beautiful and engaging. Many tribute projects these days look to younger performers to interpret the songs of those who came before them. On this record, the songs are covered by many of Browne’s contemporaries, even friends, offering a creative and relational resonance that offers more than just words and music. It is the sound of friendship, of people that matter to one another.

Tuesday nights during Lent have been significant because of a group of us who have gathered to talk about faith. We have called it our “Adult Confirmation Class” and we have looked together at the Bible, church history, the UCC, and then talked about how we might articulate our statements of faith — what we trust (not believe) about who God is and what God would do in our lives. The discussions have been thoughtful and meaningful and full of great questions and a growing trust between us. As I was puttering around the kitchen tonight, thinking about the evening, the band Venice sang their cover of “For a Dancer,” and I heard a hymn for a night such as this:

keep a fire burring in your eye
pay attention to the open sky
you never know what will be coming down . . .

As I sang along, I began to see the folks who have sat around the table at Fullsteam, and tonight at Geer Street Garden. One of the creative tensions we have tried to hold is between the history handed down to us — from various directions — and the faith we are working to live out in these days. These lines stuck out to me:

just do the steps that you’ve been shown
by everyone you’ve ever known
until the dance becomes your very own

The choreography of faith means both learning the old steps and coming up with some new combinations. To act as though we are without history, or that what and who have come before us hold no sway is to cut ourselves off at the roots (sorry to change metaphors); to live as though what matters most is to repeat what has already been said is to shut ourselves off from the lives behind everything from the eclipse to the empty tomb. As we sat around the table tonight, we found the freedom and safety to talk about our questions, our wounds, and the faith growing out of both, which feels as though we are sitting beside Peter and Thomas, Mary, Martha, even Judas in this week of grief and failure.

Living on this side of Easter means we want to move quickly to proclaiming “victory.” Yes, the Resurrection offers hope, but hope and certainty are not the same thing. We still have to live this thing through: as though we can trust the Story Handed Down To Us; as though we can trust each other.

Let’s sing the last verse:

keep a fire for the human race
let your prayers go drifting into space
you never know what will be coming down
perhaps a better world is drawing near
and just as easily it could all disappear
along with whatever meaning you might have found
don’t let the uncertainty turn you around
(the world keeps turning around and around)
go on and make a joyful sound

I know. It’s not easy to hear that it could all disappear, and then I have known times when the meaning I thought I had found went missing. The writer of Hebrews described faith as “the substance of things not seen.” Not certainty. Trust.

Today has been a cold and rainy day in our town. Tonight, as we got up from the table, was no different. We hugged and laughed in the parking lot and then went out into the dark to find our way home, trusting, as one who came before us once proclaimed, “there is still more light to break forth.”

Peace,
Milton