don't eat alone

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

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 unkind

all 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

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 read while I was eating breakfast. It was given to me for Christmas by my good friend, Jay. My idea for the chicken I served came from a duck recipe in the book. The gingerbread dessert went back to a night Ginger and I ate something similar at Six Plates, a local winebar. The salad happened because a local farmer has figured out how to grow great strawberries in his greenhouse (and Whole Foods sells them) and I had green beans I needed to use. So I cooked a good part of the day and we called it dinner.

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