don't eat alone

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

I was a history major in college.

I love the stories. And the history department at Baylor had some great story tellers. Robert Reid told of the rise and fall of the Greeks and Romans, Pat Ward appropriately skeptical insight on American foreign policy, and Wallace Daniel knew both Russian folktales as well as the tales of Russian folk. For all of the battles and boundaries, charters and cheaters, what I learned most was the real history of humanity happened around dinner tables and in factories, in churches and union halls; what connects us across the chapters and epochs is our being human.

I’ve been thinking about history today because I’m helping to facilitate an “adult confirmation class” for our church on Tuesday nights during Lent. We have a number of folks in our congregation who have asked for such an offering and I’m always happy to teach. My task tonight was to give an overview of church history. I prepared some timelines and my list of councils and copies of creeds, and the more I went over the material the more I wanted to distinguish between church history and the story of faith because it seemed the history of the church as an institution has had more to do with money and power and less with, well, living like Jesus.

I don’t mean that as cynically as it might sound. Whatever the group or cause, life beyond the first generation means dealing with an institution. No way around it. One of the challenges in that is the institution takes on a life of its own: it demands energy, resources, administration beyond the reason that gave it birth, so we end up spending a good deal of time focused on self-perpetuation for reasons of self-perpetuation. On beyond Jesus, those who had followed him had to begin to figure out how to be the church. Some things they could control, others they could not. I mean, if the emperor decides to convert, you hit the big time without having much say. And, certainly, over the course of Christian history there are any number of things we could have done better, to put it mildly. The Crusades. The Inquisition. You get my drift.

The fifteen of us gathered around the table at Fullsteam Brewery for our class tonight reminded me why both my faith and my church matter to me. Even our small group was not uniform in our theology or perspectives. We got to Pilgrim by different roads, carrying different baggage, even using different language — and yet here were are: together. For me, that’s church. Life. Together. In Jesus’ name. When I read the stories of Jesus, I see him connecting with people and connecting people to one another, whether by introduction or by reminding us we are called to take those around us into the circles of our lives.

One of the folks around the table tonight noticed the Apostles’ Creed used “I” language and the Nicaean Creed used “we.” He wondered if they were making theological statements. I didn’t know. I said I found the difference in language to be the creative tension within which the church must live, between the I and the we, the individual and the community, figuring out life together. As much as I don’t understand about the Trinity, it helps me to see the same creative tension in a God whose very nature is somehow communal, another picture of life together.
When we think of the church as an institution, it becomes something we have to protect. When we understand the story of faith as a pilgrimage together, it becomes a story of love, of how we risk ourselves for one another. As I said last night, Jesus is the risk.

One of my favorite statements of faith comes from the United Church of Canada:

We are not alone,
we live in God’s world.
We believe in God:
who has created and is creating,
who has come in Jesus,
the Word made flesh,
to reconcile and make new,
who works in us and others
by the Spirit.
We trust in God.
We are called to be the Church:
to celebrate God’s presence,
to live with respect in Creation,
to love and serve others,
to seek justice and resist evil,
to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,
our judge and our hope.
In life, in death, in life beyond death,
God is with us.
We are not alone.
Thanks be to God.

We are not alone. Good news. Hard news. Hopeful news. We are in this together — every last one of us. That’s the story of faith at its best.

Peace,
Milton

I’m excited the NCAA basketball tournaments begin this week because that means baseball is not far behind. I do love watching baseball. When my book came out, one reviewer commented that I must have included the chapter titled “Striking Out” just because I loved baseball and wanted to write about it. As I reflected on his comment, I decided what I didn’t do well was explain the connection I saw between the ball park and the kitchen because I see them both as places that are home to faith, failure, and forgiveness.

I failed today.

I had a certification test to take today at work that will let me move on to my next level of training and expertise. No, the world didn’t swing on its passing. Still, I have been studying for it and I want to keep learning and growing, so it mattered to me whether or not I passed. And I didn’t pass — by one question. One question. But I didn’t and the notice came back on the computer screen: “You did not pass the exam.” My coworkers were great in rallying around and encouraging me. My supervisor was quick to point out that I could take the test again next week and that I would do well. I walked next door and got a cup of coffee, shaking off the disappointment the way a dog shakes off fleas, and then I went back to work. It was not, as I said, an earth-shattering defeat.

The point of the certification exam is more about me actually learning the application than it is passing the test. If it were simply a matter of parroting material to pass, the test wouldn’t be worth much. I spent a half an hour before I left this afternoon going back over the application to see what I had missed. I know more now than I did before I failed. Next week, I’ll take another shot.

I don’t mean to romanticize failure. It hurts — and some failures more than others. Today I was reminded that many of the moments when we strike out are not bottom-of-the-ninth-two-outs-get-this-hit-and-we-win kind of situations, any more than our successes are all grand slams. A great deal of life is like the middle of the fourth inning when no one is on base and there is little urgency attached to what happens beyond our walking, head down, back to the dugout or when we connect and send the ball past the shortstop and on into centerfield for a solid single.

As I was getting ready for work this morning, I heard part of a story on NPR about teaching “grit” in education: resilience in the face of failure. One of the professors said,

I’m not saying that we have the secret solution to all of education’s problems. But you can create a classroom culture in which struggle and risk taking is valued more than just being able to get the right answer.

My oldest nephew is studying to take his ordination exams in April so he can become a Presbyterian minister, officially. He is already a minister in the way he lives his life, but in a few weeks he will be expected to get the answers right to move on. My next door neighbor is one of the smartest people I have ever met. He defends his doctoral dissertation in cultural anthropology about the same time my nephew will be taking his tests. They both know their stuff. They both know way more than they need to. And they have to pass the tests, take the risk, so they can go on to what they want to do. The stakes are high because they are both reaching for once-in-a-lifetime kind of moments. I can take my test as many times as it takes, so I would do well to spend a good bit of time encouraging both of them.

The basketball tournament that starts tomorrow is a one and done affair: win or go home. Sixty-eight teams will begin and one will be called champion. As much as I find grace on the baseball diamond, the season is aimed at seeing who will win the World Series. As much as I love the game, here is where the metaphor breaks down. The point of life is not to win, but to live. What rides on our every swing is not success, but our solidarity. There’s an old gospel song that says, “Jesus is the answer.” I think not. Jesus is the risk. To live like him is to incarnate what the prophet Micah articulated: “Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.”

Henry James said, “Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.” To embody kindness is to understand failure, even grief. To be resilient is not to triumph over others, but to bless the ties that bind. True grit requires a good dose of grace both for ourselves and for each other. Such is the lesson I keep learning again and again.

Peace
Milton

I spent some time in the yard today. Weeding. We were promised more rain this afternoon, so I tried to get out ahead of it to weed the side of the front yard around the dogwood we planted a little over two years ago in memory of Reuben, my father-in-law. I learned the hard way last year that if what looks like little clover leaves get too big they have these nasty, sticky seed pods that almost require you throw away whatever you’re wearing when you pull them up. This year I was determined to get them early. And I did.

My plan was to do more than pull them up. Once the ground was cleared, I put down a layer of cardboard and then I covered them with about four inches of mulch. The result was happy trees and a good looking yard, even though I know the weeds are already plotting their response, for, you see, I did good work, but I did nothing permanent.

When I started back in therapy after my depression hit in the fall of 2001, my therapist asked if I liked to garden. I had not done much of it to that point other than fill container boxes around our row house in Charlestown, but by then we had moved to Marshfield and we had a yard. That next spring, Reuben and I dug holes and planted trees in the front yard, moved a stand of lilac bushes from the back to the front, clearing the way for a vegetable garden. I found pleasure and meaning in the work — a reminder of my finitude and a connection with something more eternal all in the dirt under my fingernails.

What my therapist explained (with some scientific backing) was there was something physiological as well as spiritual that happened in my digging in the dirt. Whether it was the chance to get close enough to the ground to ingest some of the minerals and bacteria from which I was mostly removed, or simply to connect to the stuff I was made of (dust to dust, remember?), weeding and planting raised the floor on my depression and lowered my blood pressure.

There’s more. To pay attention to what I was planting meant I had to tell time in seasons, to listen to the weather for more reasons than what I should wear, and to understand I was doing nothing permanent. Whatever I was doing was going to be undone or covered over. The vegetables live only for a season; others have to be pruned and fertilized. And then, of course, there is the weeding. Something is always growing even as something also is dying or fading away.

This summer will mark four years in our house, which means close to that many layers of cardboard and mulch in the yard. I use cardboard because it turns into soil, along with the mulch, which means every layer improves the soil and makes it better for other things to grow. Many of the cardboard layers have come from the computer store where I work because we have loads of it all the time and they are happy for me to take it with me. The cardboard layer this year came from boxes I saved from last summer when I drove a U-Haul truck from Waco packed with stuff handed down from my parents and grandparents that needed to find a new home because my parents and moved into a smaller place. It also happened that the day I packed the truck was the day after my dad had his stroke.

I began unfolding the boxes and couldn’t help but read the labels as I laid them down on the ground:

“Milton — Kitchen”
“Milton — Books”
“Milton — Fragile.”

Indeed. For a fair part of the fall, a good portion of our living room was full of the very boxes I was putting down in the dirt. We unpacked layers of family history: blankets Mom had crocheted for me in Africa, cufflinks Dad had bought in Africa, old sermons, all kinds of kitchen things, my grandmothers’ cookbooks, my dad’s parents’ wedding gifts. These were the layers that have fed my life, helped to make me, well, me.

And today those boxes became a layer of preparation, of protection, of perpetuation. They will decompose and go back into the ground, an undetected layer of memory and meaning, something through which new things will grow, something that will be layered over. While I was working, a little girl kept riding up and down the sidewalk on our street, complete with pink bike helmet and training wheels. At first, she just stopped and watched. About the time I started spreading the cardboard she showed up again and this time she talked to me. I don’t know her name. I know she lives a couple of houses down. I loved that she felt safe riding on our street and I felt a little worried at the same time. She asked why I was putting boxes in my yard and I did my best to explain what I was doing. She returned to inquire again when I began dumping the mulch and I described what the layer of smelly brown stuff would do.

I didn’t give her the whole story about faith and futility, about weeding and wondering how long before the weeds come up again. She’ll find out soon enough once the training wheels come off. And she’ll learn, I hope, how to tell time by dust and ashes, by seasons and seas, by friends and family, and by mornings when the best there was to do was ride your bike down the sidewalk and wait for the rain.

Peace,
Milton

Tonight marked the Second Annual Pi(e) Night here at our house. Last year 3.14 fell on a Thursday, so the inaugural event (please remember there is no such thing as a “first annual”) fell on our regular dinner night and we had a blast. Eleven of us gathered this evening — some veterans, some rookies — and we ate and laughed an talked our way through seven different kinds of pie, since each course had to be a pie of some sort. The menu was:

• BLT Tart (bacon, smoked mozzarella, tomato tart; greens tossed with ranch dressing along side)
• Pork Chile Relleno Pie (ground pork, corn, roasted poblanos, cheddar cheese, with avocado puree)
• Caribbean Shepherd’s Pie (Caribbean pot roast, roasted plantains, grilled pineapple, topped with mashed purple sweet potatoes)
• Fig Marmalade and Marscapone Pop Tarts
• Chocolate Pecan Tartlets
• Goat Cheese Tartlets with Blackberries and Basil

I had the best day making pies and an amazing evening sharing them. Now the day is done and I spent most of my words around the dinner table rather than writing here. This has been the kind of night that reminds me how much it matters that we come to the table to share our lives, pass the pie, and remember we belong together, to each other.

Oh — I will post recipes.

Peace
Milton

This has been one of those days when I have had music running through my head. It has also been a day of doing — of carrying out quotidian tasks — rather than reading or contemplating. So I offer songs tonight — a Lenten soundtrack of sorts — drawn from songs that have spoken to me or spoken for me over the last several months. In the spirit of the Psalms, these are songs than name feelings more than anything else, to acknowledge what is difficult and painful alongside of all that gives us hope.

First, a song of lament. Patty Griffin’s “Wild Old Dog,” which begins:

God is a wild old dog
someone left out on the highway . . .

What I hear in the song is the ache of grief. (She wrote the album after the death of her father.)

it’s lonely on the highway
sometimes a heart can turn to dust
get whittled down to nothing
broken down and crushed
in with the bones of
wild old dogs
wild old dogs

The honesty of our lament opens our hearts to the possibility of comfort and even healing. I love this song.

I suppose there are several Indigo Girls’ songs that would make my all-time playlist, but one to which I keep returning in these days is “All That We Let In.”

I pass the cemetery, walk my dog down there
I read the names in stone and say a silent prayer
when I get home, you’re cooking supper on the stove
and the greatest gift of life is to know love

Mavis Staples has so many songs of faith and feeling that we could rewrite the Psalms using just her stuff. Here she is singing Jeff Tweedy’s song, “You’re Not Alone.” (He’s the one playing guitar.) I find deep encouragement here.

a broken dream
a broken heart
isolated and afraid
open up this is a raid
I wanna get it through to you
you’re not alone

John David Souther has written his fair share of the songs that make up the soundtrack of my life. This one, however, I didn’t know until just a couple of years ago: “Little Victories”

little victories
I know you need one
little victories
of the heart

they say that these are not the best of times

but they’re the only times I’ve ever known
and I believe there is a time for meditation

in cathedrals of our own

I’ll let Billy Joel’s “Summer Highland Falls” finish today’s playlist. The words in the first verse I found meaningful at several different stages of my life. I love that this video is a fresh recording. Both he and the song have aged fairly well.

The path through Lent is one of focus and faith, of trust and temerity, of wonder and weariness. It’s good to have songs to sing as we go.

Peace,
Milton

I love it when I get caught by surprise.

I got up this morning a little early so I could read a little more Niebuhr and perhaps plant a seed tha

t would grow into my blog post for tonight. I came away well fed by a sermon on 1 Corinthians 13:

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part, but then shall I know even as I am known. And now abide faith, hope, and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

I marked up the margins with notes to go along with his challenging words about the pace of change we face andhow we keep some sense of ourselves and our connectedness, both globally and close up, and how we are to embrace the uncertainty of life in order for our faith to be substantial.

Trust in God also means trust in life itself, despite the obvious patches of meaninglessness which sometimes drive us to the edge of despair. If we do not admit that these patches of meaninglessness are there, then our faith becomes sentimental. (32-33)

Where was I? Oh, yes — getting caught by surprise.

I finished reading, finished my breakfast, and headed for work. Our mornings at the computer store often begin with a word of challenge or encouragement; this morning, I arrived to find everyone gathered around a computer monitor to watch a TED Talk by a guy named Drew Dudley. The talk was almost over when I got there, and I arrived in time to hear him say,

There is no world only 6 billion understandings of it. And if you change one person’s understanding of it, you’ve changed the whole thing.

I’d been sitting and scribbling at the computer for about an hour tonight when I remembered I had written down that quote, and so I found his talk and watched the whole thing. He calls for a new definition of leadership that teeters on the same precipice of sentimentality and is also wonderfully challenging. Here’s the talk:

After listening to Dudley, my mind and heart are filled with lollipop moments, with the faces of people I need to call or write and say thank you because those encounters are the ones that encouraged me to trust God and trust life; to stare down the meaninglessness, or even embrace it; to trust the Love will not let us go.

I’m carrying these words with me:

We need to redefine leadership as being about lollipop moments, how many of them we create, how many of them we acknowledge, how many of them we pay forward, and how many of them we say thank you for. Because we’ve made leadership about changing the world, and there is no world. There’s only six billion understandings of it, and if you change one person’s understanding of it, one person’s understanding of what they’re capable of, one person’s understanding of how much people care about them, one person’s understanding of how powerful an agent for change they can be in this world, you’ve changed the whole thing.

. . . and the greatest of these is love.

Peace
Milton