don't eat alone

I love bathrobe shepherds.

For all the pageants and grand tellings, there’s something about our kids in wonderfully makeshift costumes gathering together around the manger at the front of the church that tells the story best of all. I mean that last sentence with as little sentimentality as possible. They get it right, as they did yesterday at Pilgrim.

Our telling involves a small parade of characters — from shepherds to soldiers to magi — who walk in to the verse of a carol and then carry on a conversation with the somewhat irritable innkeepers until we are all at the front in tableau and everyone sings “Joy to the World!” This year, I was one of the Wise Men (irony intended), though the speaking parts went to the younger ones in our band of magi. The dialogue went back and forth until one of the boys said, “You don’t understand. What if God was in that stable — wouldn’t that change everything?”

What a question. In one sense, it feels rhetorical and yet, in another — as in when I think of my friends dealing with grief and cancer and unemployment and who-knows-what-else — I hear it in a different light. Still light, but a different light. The “what if” of it all reminds me there is more going on than it seems and that I have to pay attention. I love that phrase because of the action involved: pay attention. Mr. Berry enlightens:

We speak of “paying attention” because of a correct perception that attention is owed — that without our attention and our attending our subjects, including ourselves, are endangered. (83)

The subjects of which he was speaking are those things we write and speak and paint and sing about. His call to art and attending means understanding, as I spoke of before, they are not “raw materials” but the stuff of life that matters most. When we pay attention to one another we strengthen the ties that bind, we become community. When we pay attention to the story unfolding at the stable, we find ourselves along with God.

We use the verb attending when we talk about serving: attendants are those who take care of those around them. A key part of service is listening. To attend — to pay attention — means to listen. Listen well and our subjects are not endangered.

I met one who I hope is becoming a new friend a couple of weeks ago. He’s an artist here in town who does metal sculpture. We met at Cocoa Cinnamon (of course) and talked about the creative process. As he spoke about his painting and drawing and sculpting, he said he saw what he did as “abstracting,” but he had a twist on the way he defined the word. Till that moment, abstract art meant “not easily understandable,” but Jim said, “In academic life, an abstract of a dissertation distills the whole document down to a paragraph or two; it offers the essence of the thing. That’s the way I want to use the verb: abstracting, for me, means distilling life into the work of art: offering the essence of what I see around me.”

Very little of our pageant on Sunday was authentic or historically accurate, but what we did well was abstract the story: what if God was in that stable — wouldn’t it change everything.” That’s it. Let’s keep moving to the manger.

Peace,

Milton

I’ve spent another hour or two this evening sitting my writing spot in our house trying to find words to all that is swirling around inside. For a fair part of the time I have been listening to some of the songs that make up the soundtrack of my life. Similar to last night, I found myself landing on an old song I wrote with my friend Billy about what it means to be friends, one of our recurring themes. The opening verse of the song was a snapshot of our first meeting at a youth camp in the Ozark mountains where we did sit at the top of the cliff outside the dining hall and look down into the canyon at the river below. More than twenty years later, the question in the song pulls at me still.

are you

 

put on the coffee

and I’ll tell you a memory

we stood on the edge of time

as the river flowed silently by

we looked up at the stars

I still remember

and talked of what your life could be

you’re an old friend

so won’t you tell me

 

are you as sure of the dream

that you had on the way

finding enough of the truth

at the end of the day

caught now and then

by something like grace are you

are you still keeping a light on inside

shimmer of hope against the tide

finding that life is worth the ride

tell me — are you

 

remember the summer

we told one another

how we could change this world of ours

and quoted our heroes by heart

but here in this moment

we watch the way the river bends

you’re an old friend

I’m going to ask you again . . .

 

are you as sure of the dream

that you had on the way

finding enough of the truth

at the end of the day

caught now and then

by something like grace are you

are you still keeping a light on inside

shimmer of hope against the tide

finding that life is worth the ride

tell me — are you

Thanks for listening. Keep the light on.

Peace,

Milton

The last couple of days have left me overwhelmed by and grateful for all of the affection and attention that has come my way. I am a fortunate man. Sitting tonight in the upstairs room that is my “office” and going through the pockets of my mind trying to find words to describe at least some of what I’m feeling, I was pulled to a song my friend Billy and I wrote many years ago. Tonight seems a good night to sing them again.

friends at last

 

night and the phone rings pretty late

I need to talk are you still awake

you still awake

pride freezes the words we try to say

how did you get so far away

you’re far away

facing a day that’s too much to bear

never need never bleed

on the face that we wear

 

but when the snow falls on your roof

and my world feels colder

when you know without any proof

that you have my shoulder

when the fear of pain comes to break us

it’s the years of strain that will make us

friends at last

 

eyes just a glance and look away

how is your life and have a nice day

hey have a good day

so hard to pay what it costs to share

drop a line and it’s fine

but does anyone care

 

but when the snow falls on your roof

and my world feels colder

when you know without any proof

that you have my shoulder

when the fear of pain comes to break us

it’s the years of strain that will make us

friends at last

 

facing a day that’s too much to bear

never need never bleed

on the face that we wear

 

but when the snow falls on your roof

and my world feels colder

when you know without any proof

that you have my shoulder

when the fear of pain comes to break us

it’s the years of strain that will make us

friends at last

Peace

Milton

the road between here and there
is familiar; we’ve taken it so many times
the car could drive itself, as they say —

we’ve come this way so often
I no longer think in the chapter
and verse of exit signs . . .

instead, I mark our progress
by landmarks — mostly song, food,
and fuel: what it takes to keep going

some time this morning we passed
halfway without much fanfare, except
for Joni singing about cutting down trees —

for now that’s as close as I can get
to carols; i sing along and trust the road
and the stars that call my heart

like a homing beacon; I don’t feel much
like a wise man, but I know this
is the road between here and there

paved with stories and sorrows,
the climbing way we know all to well . . .
oh, my — look at all the stars

Peace
Milton

I’ve been sitting here for an hour or so trying to figure out what to write today. I’ve finally decided to just sing a long.

Peace
Milton

At certain intersections of my life I have been aware of a clear memory of my father at my age. When I turned forty-one, I could remember Dad at that age because of one the persistent fragments of memory was the birthday card I wrote for him that year:

life begins at forty

at least that’s what they say

so look on the bright side of things

you’re one year old today

Yes, I’ve always been a poet. Tomorrow I turn fifty-seven and this memory of my father is perhaps clearest of all because of what that birthday meant to him: his father died at fifty-seven as the longest living Cunningham male to date. All of them had died young and died of heart attacks. Dad could hear the bell tolling. That fall he drove up to Fort Worth by himself to visit me, which was not a regular occurrence. He traveled to places that mattered to him and to see people he loved as though he was on a farewell tour. Fifty-seven came and went, as did fifty-eight and sixty; he died a little over a month shy of his eighty-fifth birthday. I am grateful on many levels.

That all the Cunningham males died so early meant I never knew any of my relatives beyond the generation that preceded me. My dad’s mother, Bertha, died a month after he was born; my grandfather (Milton I) died two years before I arrived. To this day I don’t know where either of them is buried. My dad had some great almost Paul Bunyanesque stories about his father, but even he knew little about his mother. When my folks moved from their house in Waco into an apartment, Ginger and I became the recipients of dishes and glasses, which now grace our table as often as possible, which feeds me in ways I had not expected. I try to imagine what it must have been like for my grandfather at my age, eating off dishes meant to be shared with his wife who had been gone for years and years and years. He did remarry. Marie, the woman I knew as “Grandma C” was a good woman who managed to live to be one hundred, but, as the stories go, they struggled in their lives together. Yet she is the one who saved everything of Bertha’s to pass down. Her fingerprints are on the glasses and plates as well. Family is often a difficult recipe to describe.

If my dad were still here, he would call me today and say, “Well, this is the last day in your fifty-seventh year,” making sure to remind me the birthday number marked the end of a year rather than the beginning. Then he would ask, “How does it feel to start your fifty-eighth year?” as a way of sending me off on a new adventure. His Fifty-Seven Farewell Tour not withstanding, he never seems to fear growing old; I think he just saw it as growing. Over the past several years, we had a recurring conversation where he would tell me he was going somewhere as an interim pastor and he would say, “I think this may be the last time I do this. I’m getting old.” Before too long, he would be telling me of his next church. He preached up until the Sunday before he had his stroke.

If it weren’t for my family history, Fifty-Seven would come and go as one of those birthdays that matter most as markers but don’t call for the kind of notice that the ones that end in fives and zeros demand. It’s a Rest Stop Birthday: relax, enjoy, keep going. Though my father is not here to see my turn fifty-seven, I’m grateful that he took the sting out it by living as long as he did. It is no longer a wall to be climbed, but simply a day to mark and, as I said, keep moving. I’m also grateful I like feel I’m on the cusp of new things and not making the club house turn. I’m grateful. More than ever.

Sing a long, won’t you?

for the harvests of the spirit, thanks be to God

for the good we all inherit, thanks be to God

for the wonders that astound us

for the truth that still confounds us

most of all, that love has found us

thanks be to God 

Peace,

Milton

The day has been grey, cold, and rainy here in Durham. If I were in Boston, there would be snow on the ground, adding a little poetry to the gloom. When I arrived at Cocoa Cinnamon I had a hard time finding a seat because the little room was packed with people who had brought each other in out of the cold for coffee and conversation. There was one empty chair at the table, so I was able to find my place.

I wanted to come here in particular today because it felt like the best place to come to continue my conversation with Wendell Berry’s book What Are People For?. (At this rate, perhaps, I should start wishing you a very Berry Christmas.) Since the book is a collection of essays, I’ve bounced around a bit, rather than reading cover to cover, and I have been struck by the recurring themes, even though the collection was written over a number of years and for a variety of publications, as far as I can tell. He answers the question in the title by describing how we thrive in community, which includes not only one another but the rest of creation and those who have come before us. The purpose of our existence is to connect.

In three different essays, Berry pushes hard against the tendency for a writer to see the surrounding world as “raw material” for whatever he or she wants to do rather than the real thing. He bounces off of a quote from an article written by William Matthews who says,

A poet beginning to make something needs raw material, something to transform. . . . For [the poet] subject matter is not important, except that it gives her the opportunity to speak about something that engages her passions. What is important instead is what she can discover to say. It is not, of course, the subject that is or isn’t dull, but the quality of attention we do or do not pay to it, and the strength of our will to transform. Dull subjects are those we have failed.

And Berry replies,

This assumes that for the animals and humans who are not fine artists, who have discovered nothing to say,the world is dull, which is not true. It assumes also that attention is of interest in itself, which is not true either. . . . Mr. Matthews’s trivializing of subjects in the interest of poetry industrializes the art. He is talking about an art oriented exclusively to production, like coal mining. Like an industrial entrepreneur, he regards the places and creatures and experiences of the world as “raw material,” valueless until exploited. (84)

Berry goes on to say whatever we say with our art —words, paints, you name it — has to be connected to real life, to “the territory underfoot.” Art for the sake of art misses the point, even as I may have lost you by this point in the post.

Here’s why I was taken by his discussion of “raw material”: I find art to be a meaningful metaphor for faith. I think of God as an artist when I look at all the wonders of creation around us; I think God calls us to be artists, filled with the imagination of the One in whose image we are made. What hit me today in my reading during Advent are the ways in which the Incarnation provides an example of “the territory underfoot” that Berry describes. To read Genesis is to see a Master Designer at work who first creates the raw material and then breathes and speaks and shapes things into existence. The birth of Jesus puts God right in the middle of things, down in the dullness, in the middle of what Berry calls “the beloved community”:

common experience and common effort on a common ground to which one willingly belongs. (85)

As much as anything else, the birth of Jesus is God’s way of saying being human is a good thing, or as Ginger says every chance she gets: we are wonderfully and uniquely created in the image of God and worthy to be loved. We were not put here as props for God’s special effects, or so Jesus would have someone to save; we were created to live in beloved community with God, created to tell the story of our days in whatever way we can as an invitation to one another to share both the blessings and the burdens.

Life and art and faith are all team sports.

This post, I fear, is headier than I hoped or intended. I feel what Berry is saying in ways I struggle to get on the page. At the heart of the picture of a poor teenage girl giving birth to a baby boy in a barn behind a motel in a town that wasn’t her own is God right down in the middle of us saying, “You are not alone; you are loved and you are not alone. We are in this together.”

Gloria in excelsis deo.

Peace,

Milton