Though we have still have a few days before the feast, I thought I would point to a few recipes that have served me well in the past. Many of them will make a repeat appearance this year. Follow the links to the recipes.
Pimento cheese stuffed sweet potatoes
Green bean casserole (from scratch)
Chipotle sweet potato and pecan gratin
Mashed potatoes with cauliflower and cheddar
Honey and spice roasted potatoes
That should get you started. Pies to follow tomorrow.
Peace,
Milton
If you have followed this blog for very long, you have heard me make reference to my songwriting days with my friend, Billy Crockett. This week, his wife Dodee posted a video of him singing what is perhaps my favorite song we wrote together. The idea grew out of our reading Paul Bowles’ amazing novel The Sheltering Sky
Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It’s that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don’t know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.
Our conversation led us to this song. Here is Billy offering a wonderful performance. I have also included the lyrics below.
twenty-one times
she saw the sun go down
twenty-one times
twenty-one times
in thirty-five years
she saw the sun go down
she thought there’d be a million
and she thought that she would see them
she saw the sun go down
twenty-one times
she stayed and danced all night
only one time
only one time
in thirty-five years
she stayed and danced all night
the moonlight fell like laughter
on her happy ever after
but she stayed and danced all night
only one time
and over new england
geese are flying south
a november nightfall
settles round about
while a lighthouse
calls another home
she walked away from love
so many times
so many times in thirty-five years
she walked away from love
and hearing lesser voices
she turned them into choices
she walked away from love
so many times
and over new england
geese are flying south
a november nightfall
settles round about
while a lighthouse
calls another home
hearing lesser voices
she turned them into choices
she walked away from love
she stayed and danced all night
she saw the sun go down
twenty-one times
Peace,
Milton
One of the most enduring stories in scripture, for me, comes from Joshua 4, where Joshua is explaining to the people how they were to mark what had happened in their lives.
When the entire nation had finished crossing over the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua: “Select twelve men from the people, one from each tribe, and command them, ‘Take twelve stones from here out of the middle of the Jordan, from the place where the priests’ feet stood, carry them over with you, and lay them down in the place where you camp tonight.’” Then Joshua summoned the twelve men from the Israelites, whom he had appointed, one from each tribe. Joshua said to them, “Pass on before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan, and each of you take up a stone on his shoulder, one for each of the tribes of the Israelites, so that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off in front of the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the Israelites a memorial forever.” (1-7)
The stone-stacking metaphor has offered meaning in most every direction in my life. I use it as a way to explain why I think wedding ceremonies matter, to talk about what it means to gather around the Communion table, and also to mark more personal memories. As Bob Bennett sings,
I built an altar in the field
So I’ll remember
Back to this time when it’s so real
That I am loved and not alone
And if I pass by here again
I’ll be able to see
My life was scattered like these stones,
Until the Lord began to gather me.
I built an altar in the field
So I’ll remember.
But what if there are no stones?
In early October, I had a chance to drop in on my friend, Billy, who lives outside of Wimberley, Texas. He and his wife Dodee have a wonderful place there called Blue Rock, which is, among other things a recording studio and artists’ retreat.
“We don’t know if the water will be back,” Billy said. Their home found its name in the big blue rock that lived in the riverbed down below, ten feet high and fourteen feet wide. Billy and I sat drinking coffee on their big back porch, looking out over the rock and riverbed, and we talked about the drought that had the Hill Country by the throat.
Last week, the water returned, with a vengeance, and when the storm was over, there was a noticeable change in the valley below. Blue Rock — the stone that named them — was gone.
To paraphrase Joshua, when your children ask in time to come, “Where did the stones go?” What will we tell them?
We must tell them stories of grief. Tell them of the floods that break boulders into pebbles, of the sicknesses that take loved ones, of the circumstances that kill dreams. We must tell them of the darkness that is heavy as sorrow, of the hunger that devours so many, of the despair that appears as endless as the stars. And then we must begin to gather new stones and stack them up again while we still remember that love is stronger than death, that grace defies gravity, that hope cannot be washed away. It is the stories, not the stones, that matter most.
Peace,
Milton
forty-seven octobers ago
i was eleven
dad was thirty-nine
and we lived in a shotgun
apartment for missionaries
who had come home
from the field . . .
I didn’t know much
about america, but
I loved the boston red sox
though we had never been
to boston in the fall
and I was not much
of a baseball player . . .
forty-seven octobers ago
the sox made it to
the world series — when they
still played afternoon games
and as I left for school
dad said, “do you want to come
home early and watch with me?”
he wrote me a note for every
afternoon game
I walked home and
we sat on the couch
together while the red sox
raised my hopes and
broke my heart . . .
the favorite memory
of my childhood
is crisp and alive
in the autumn air
and the leaves letting go
like dad did this summer
let’s go red sox . . .
Peace,
Milton
One of my dad’s favorite songs was “You Never Even Call Me By My Name,” which was written by John Prine and Steve Goodman and most famously recorded by David Allen Coe. I don’t know the story of how my dad came to find the song, much less love it, but during some of his early days in the hospital we would play the song on my mom’s phone and sing along:
you don’t have to call me darlin’, darlin’
you never even call me by my name.
My name. I am named after the one I was singing with that afternoon, even as he was named after his father. When we here in America speak of someone else, we often say, “Her name is ___________ .” Across the Pond, they say, “She is called ____________.”
Called. Named. An interesting pair of verbs.
Ginger preached on the story of Jacob on Sunday, and from Genesis 32 in particular where Jacob wrestles with God even as he tries to come to terms with facing his brother whom he had so egregiously wronged. Jacob, whose name meant “heel grabber,” referring to the way he followed his slightly older twin brother out of the womb, had built a life based on deception, power grabbing, and manipulation. He played on his brother’s hunger to extract the birthright for a bowl of oatmeal and then tricked his father into giving him the blessing due the same hungry brother. And, yet, it was not enough because he was still a heel grabber, still one chasing what was just out of his reach.
He fled his family at his mother’s bidding because she was afraid his brother Esau was angry enough to kill him, so Jacob ended up living with relatives, which is where he met Rachel and fell in love. Laban, Rachel’s father, saw a chance to make sure both of his daughters were taken care of and tricked Jacob into marrying both of them; the plot took fourteen years to play out, and then there were children.
By the time we find Jacob on the wrestling mat, he has left what had become home to find a new life and had sent word to Esau that he wanted to meet. After two decades of deception and distance, the dawn would bring them face to face. As night fell, Jacob came to terms with himself and his God, perhaps not in that order.
In the darkness of the desert, the story moves between actuality and poetry. All the story says is “a man” came and wrestled with Jacob, and yet it was not just an average passer-by. The wrestling was both physical and metaphorical — at the same time, and both were very real. That which is most essential to us also becomes our working metaphor for life. I love to cook, and coming to the table
is a primary metaphor. I led a retreat last week for a gathering of music ministers who conduct choirs and for whom music is the metaphor. Jacob had been a trickster and deceiver his whole life, wrestling from others what was not his, and how he was flat on his back in the sand, fighting for his life.
As I listened to Ginger on Sunday, I smiled because the first thing that came to mind was God as a luchador. I pictured the stranger in the brightly colored mask, jumping down from the rocks and into the middle of Jacob’s struggle. Jacob kept up the best he could, but the stranger knocked his hip out of the socket, and Jacob ended up clinging for his life. All he could do was not let go. “Let me go,” the stranger said, “for daylight is coming.”
“Not until you bless me,” answered Jacob.
“What is your name?”
“Jacob.”
“You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”
In faith circles, we talk about being called to mean, as Frederick Buechner says, to find the place where our deepest desire and the world’s deepest need intersect. We are called, we sing, to be God’s people. The relentless wrestler told Jacob he would be called Israel, that he would have a new name, a hew sense of being after their encounter. So Jacob gave the place a new name as well, saying “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”
And then he limped off to meet his brother and ask for forgiveness.
One of the biggest struggles my father and I had centered around my name. When Ginger and I decided to get married, we also decided we would both take each other’s name: we would be called Brasher-Cunningham. My father struggled with my no longer being Milton Cunningham III. We wrestled back and forth, trying to find each other. One day I said, “Here’s the way I look at it. In the Bible, when someone has a significant encounter with God, they get a new name. That’s what I’m doing. Marrying Ginger is the best thing I can do with my life; this is a significant encounter with God and I am getting a new name.” He didn’t agree, but somehow he understood and began his own slow walk to understanding and acceptance of us and our calling to one another.
Jacob spent much of his life named by his circumstance, which led him to a life of manipulation and self-preservation. Perhaps, most all of us can find ourselves in him in one way or another. That night at Bethel, he was named — renamed — by Love, by Grace, By God. His history had not changed, but he limped into his future more informed and more compassionate, called to forgive and be forgiven.
I know that road as well.
Peace,
Milton
P. S. — There’s a new recipe.
october is warming up
like august — two months ago
where we stood in a summer
cemetery singing gospel songs
and saying goodbye
goodbye
grief, I think, is hot — not cold
a burning, swarming absence
that gets under your skin
and won’t let you find
a cool place to relax
these feelings are as old as
the weather; the heaviness
is humbling when I see others
who have carried the weight
far longer than I . . .
and this is my story
I am the last one left with
the name we both carried
the family resemblance
even through changes
in this season little feels
reliable beyond loss and love
still we keep moving
through the deceptive heat
and the warm shadows
Peace
Milton
these are my favorite days
when the summer’s shellacking
is painted over by fall’s crisp palette
of expectancy and comfort
I want to match the colors
with aromas savory and sweet —
layers of flavor and hope that
sustain as the nights grow longer
and winter hangs on the horizon
barren branches and grey mornings
the chill that goes bone-deep
as the world curls up and falls asleep
on my best wide awake days I see
the trees — each one a burning bush
their leaves flaring up and letting go
letting go and falling to earth
I turn on the lights in the kitchen
and stir the same reds and oranges
in the pan relishing the sound of the
squash and peppers — suppertime
yes, these are my favorite days
when we eat supper in the early dark
and remember we too are falling
falling — and love will catch us
Peace
Milton
I was driving to work yesterday and saw a sign in front of one of the storefront churches that inhabit our downtown neighborhood that said, “This is the year of great grace and great growth.” The rhythm of the words, when I said them out loud so I could remember them, pulled me towards writing a villanelle, which is a very specific form of rhymed poetry. (Think Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night” or Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art.”) Here is what came from my encounter and effort.
Reminder
Caught by surprise by this statement of faith,
Drive-by wisdom from a church-front sign:
“This is the year of great growth and great grace” —A slogan of hope I’m compelled to embrace,
As my grief-colored life undergoes redesign . . .
I’m caught by surprise by this statement of faith,Black plastic letters, declarative case,
I hear more invitation than I do bottom line:
“This is the year of great growth and great grace.”Though the scars left by sorrow are never erased,
My heart, ached with absence, can choose to incline
To be caught by surprise by this statement of faith,Even as I keep driving, feeling lost and misplaced,
Somehow I am pulled by the simple punch line:
“This is the year of great growth and great grace,”Which reminds me that grief is a gathering place,
Where we call one another to do more than resign
And be caught by surprise by this statement of faith:
“This is the year of great growth and great grace.”
Peace
Milton
During the days I was in Texas before my dad died, my friend Christy sent me a record by Darden Smith called Love Calling
some days the heart beats the rhythm of the falling tear.
What he was saying in the song was different than what I heard, I think, but in the context of my grief I found comfort in the rhythm of life (and death) that he described. I could feel the drumbeat, sometimes quiet and slow and at other times hard and exhausting; in both cases, it was the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out, of emptying and filling out, of holding on and letting go. The lightness and the weight, the relief and then the pain, felt like breathing without being able to get enough oxygen.
Trying to live on thin air.
My acupuncturist, Shea, says that in Chinese medicine they talk about how we carry our grief in our lungs, which makes more sense with each passing day. When the sadness settles, I feel like my breaths are shallow, as though I have over-extended myself, and my lungs are full, but full of empty and absence. I walked home from my appointment with an unexpected song in my head: the Hollies:
sometimes all I need
is the air that I breathe
and to love you
And I thought of Ginger’s invitation to worship each Sunday at our church:
Open your hands and relax
Breathe in the breath of God
Breathe out the love of God
The rhythm of life. And death. Alongside our inhaling and exhaling is the beat of our hearts, the pulse of our existence, the quiet drum of grace that keeps us going. In these days of grief, the beating of the heart takes on a new meaning. The syncopation of sadness is excruciating. At the risk of mixing metaphors, grief feels like improvisational jazz: there is a form, even a pattern, but it is difficult to follow for the uninitiated, leaving us to be surprised, if not sideswiped, by its seeming randomness.
Yet there is rhythm. The rhythm of the falling tear, or the breaking heart; the rhythm of memory, of absence, of getting up and going on. By the beat and breath of life and death we keep time (we don’t make time, or tell time) — sometimes we don’t know what we keep it for or from, but we breathe as best we can and keep going.
Today marks a month since both my father and Gracie, our eldest Schnauzer, died.
As one who lives with depression — and who has had three relatively light years of late — his death opened the doors in the floor in many ways. The one saving grace is at least this time I know why I’m depressed. And, I trust, it has not come to stay indefinitely. The sadness sits on me like a lead coat; I can feel the weight. I find relief in the doing of daily things: going to work, going down my to do list, and cooking.
I have one main recurring thought. I find that I want to contact friends who have lost parents and spouses and siblings and children over the years and say, “I had no idea what you have been through.” My seminary training, my years as a hospital chaplain, or even my years just living on the planet did not inform me well. I don’t know how I could have done it differently, but I understand things now I did not before. I feel a rhythm I had only heard described. The initiated around me have offered profound comfort because they know they cannot fix it. There are no words, no actions, only the rhythm of the falling tear
. And unending love. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” So, it might be said of the arc of grief. This is going to take time.
One of the biggest surprises for me is how painful it is to be in worship on Sunday morning. Being there is heavy and hard. Sunday, I didn’t go to church. I stayed home and cooked and spent time in the garden and basked in the companionship of Ella, our remaining Schnauzer. I’ve worked not to over-analyze what makes it so hard. Mostly, I feel as though the relationship between faith and grief, between sadness and grace, is more complicated and layered than simply saying, “God will make it better.” One of my favorite songs is “His Eye Is On The Sparrow.” The chorus says,
his eye is on the sparrow
and I know he watches me
Watches. Not catches. Nothing separates us from the love of God and there is much, including death, that separates us from those we love. Some days the heart beats the rhythm of the falling tear. Many days in fact. Breathe in the breath of God; breathe out the love of God. That will have to do for now.
Peace
Milton
One of the traditions in church I don’t take easily is that of changing the lyrics of hymns — for whatever reasons. Down the years, however, those who have served on the committees who have collected and compiled the hymns have felt free to alter the texts (as they call them) and move on by simply adding an “alt.” next to the composer’s name. I understand that they may have their reasons, but as one who has written lyrics for songs and hymns, it leaves me a bit unnerved not only for personal reasons, but also because there’s no particular standard by which the changes are made. In our hymnal, for instance, the second verse of “Come,Thou Fount of Every Blessing” has gone from “here I raise mine Ebenezer” to “here I am on my sojourning,” which doesn’t feel like much of an improvement. If Ebenezer needs explaining, then explain it; don’t just dumb down the lyric. That said, as we sang in church Sunday I found myself wanting to change the words.
The song we were singing is embedded deep in my spiritual DNA going back to my days in youth groups: “I’ve got peace like a river, I’ve got peace like a river, I’ve got peace like a river in my soul . . . .” As we sang I could see faces from both past and present and my hands wished for a guitar. We continued through the other verses:
I’ve got joy like a fountain . . .
I’ve got love like an ocean . . .
and then we sang, “I’ve got faith like an anchor” and I thought, “These words are wrong.” I don’t mean they were printed wrong. I’ve heard and sang them before. I mean they missed the mark, mixed the metaphor. They needed to be changed — and I knew the change to make:
I’ve got faith like a row boat. The first three verses are all about water — river, fountain, and then ocean — each one building a bit until we are singing of the great expanse of God’s love in much the same way that Paul talked about it in Ephesians 3:15-19:
I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, God may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
In the middle of the ocean, an anchor won’t do a thing. The point of an anchor is to hold you safe in the harbor, to keep you in place, and there are ways of looking at like where faith is an anchor, in much the same way that we can talk about God’s love as a rock and a refuge, but if love is an ocean, then faith is what keeps us afloat. And by faith I mean trust. The ocean that is God’s love calls us out of the harbor, out into the open sea, out beyond our comfort zones, and we set out in the frailest of vessels — the row boat of faith — trusting we will not ever reach a place where we will run out of love.
As I sat in church writing as fast as I could think (while other stuff was going on), another song came to mind: “Rowing Song,” from Patty Griffin (my favorite hymn writer), which still astounds me with its profound simplicity.
as I row row row
going so slow slow slow
just down below me is the old sea
just down below me is the old sea
nobody knows knows knows
so many things things so
so out of range sometimes so strange
sometimes so sweet sometimes so lonely
the further I go more letters from home never arrive
and I’m alone all of the way all of the way alone and alive
Faith like a row boat. Faith: the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Faith: trust that love will not let us go, that there’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea, that the deep deep love of Jesus is underneath and around us. Whatever these days may hold, whatever might have been, whatever has yet to happen, I’ve got love like an ocean — deeper and wider than any circumstance or loneliness — and that is what will keep me afloat in my little boat of faith.
Since my father’s death, the heaviest hour of the week for me has been Sunday morning worship. The thin place that is grief hits me hardest there, and the music plays a big part in both the weight and the comfort. Perhaps that’s what sent me searching for options when the anchor dropped in the fourth verse last Sunday. I’m not looking to sink anymore; I want to know what will keep us afloat. This is not a period of safe harbor in my life. I am not looking to stay put. I am at sea, far away from much of what I have known for sure, following those who have charted this course ahead of me, wondering what will happen next. In the midst of it all, I was reminded by my singing congregation that we’ve got Love like an ocean.
If that’s true, then I’ve got faith like a row boat.
Peace
Milton
