don't eat alone

I’ve sat here longer than usual tonight staring at the empty page, not because I don’t have ideas but because I’ve been trying to figure out what is best to say. Like many of you, I’m sure, I’ve read my share of blog posts and editorials and the like talking about what the Supreme Court Justices asked and said today as they listened to arguments over the case involving California’s Proposition 8. Tomorrow they will hear arguments related to the Defense of Marriage Act.

It’s not that I have trouble knowing where I stand, or taking a stand. I wore my red Chuck Taylors to work today and joined in the avalanche of Facebook friends who posted red flags as their profile pictures. I’m a strong GLBT ally and I want to see equal marriage become the law. But that’s not news.

My guess is most everyone who wrote on either side of the issue today was repeating themselves, however. I didn’t read one article or post that began, “I’ve changed my mind” or “I’ve never said this before.” Most all of them seem written as though they are trying to convince those who disagree with them. I came close to doing the same thing — and then I changed my mind because I keep wondering what I most need to say. I could write an open letter to Justice Roberts or try to answer one of the big conservative bloggers or try to combat the vitriol that gets erroneously labeled as Christian, but I’m not sure that would do much but contribute a little more to the shouting and shoving already going on.

The more I sat here, the more I thought about a conversation I had today with one of my coworkers who is lesbian. I sent her a picture I found on Facebook of the HRC red flag with bacon stripes titled, “Equality and Bacon for All.” We had a good laugh and then I said, “Whatever happens when the decisions come down, remember love wins. We win.”

And she said, “I really never believed we would get to this day in my lifetime. Really.”

She didn’t even hold out the hope that we would have the discussion, much less that we choose to take another step in our maturing as humans to love one another equally. She thought she would live her whole life being treated as less than a person and yet she chooses to be one of the most loving, determined, and compassionate people I know. As the straight white Christian male — that’s four for four, if you’re counting dominant groups — I have never had to deal with a day in my life where I faced what she lives with everyday. And she is not alone.

So here’s what I want to say: I’m with her.

She inspires me, as do the veritable army of gay and lesbian people who have loved me and shaped my life down through the years from my days as a youth minister to my time as a hospital chaplain and a high school teacher to those who helped me in the darkest days of my depression to church members and coffee buddies and coworkers and on members of our chosen family and folks here in our city who have loved us and given us room to begin to grow roots here.

I’m with them.

No, let me say it a different way so it doesn’t sound like one of those conversations where you talk about someone in the third person even though they’re sitting right there.

I’m with you. I love you. Thank you.

That’s the best I have to offer.

Peace,
Milton

One of the small memories of my senior year at Baylor is sitting talking to a friend in the Student Union Building as people walked by. Those who recognized us would inevitably ask, “How are you?” as they passed. My friend looked at me and said, “No one really wants to wait for the answer. Watch.” And she proceeded to toss funny and even tragic answers as they tossed their drive-by question and, as long as she smiled, not one of them heard a word she said.

I thought of that afternoon this evening because I am grateful for friends who ask how I am with the expectation I will feel free to answer honestly. I was lucky enough to get asked twice — once by Claudia and once by Leon, both at Cocoa Cinnamon. My answer to both was something along the lines of “Life is good and weighty. These days are heavy and important.” Lent has been hard to carry this year to the point that I have dropped several days in my writing discipline. The weight comes from the season, for life’s circumstances, and from trying to figure out what lies on beyond Easter.

One of the other voices I heard in my afternoon travels was that of Chinua Achebe, the noted Nigerian writer who died last week. In his memory, Terry Gross played a Fresh Air interview from 1988, which centered around his novel Anthills of the Savannah. Thanks to NPR, I was able to find the transcript of what I heard as I drove.

GROSS: One of the characters in your new novel says that writers shouldn’t stop at documenting social problems. They should give prescriptions. And another character, who is a writer, says in response: Writers don’t give prescriptions. They give headaches. Is that how you feel, too?

ACHEBE: Yes. Yes. I think that’s one of the few instances in the novel where you can identify what the characters are saying with the way I feel. And that comes from the pressure which is mounting on us, on…

GROSS: On writers?

ACHEBE: …creative writers, yes – especially in post-colonial areas of the world – to tell their people what they should do to be saved and to tell them not in the way that great stories have told, but in specific detail, almost ideological ways. And I think it is the duty of artists to resist. This is why the artist and the poet in the novel is resisting, and, of course, exaggerating, because this is part of the whole business of teaching. The whole business of prophecy is, in fact, to exaggerate. And so when he says it’s my duty to give headaches, you know, this fixes it in the mind, which is why we use extreme images like that.

Though I didn’t remember the exchange word for word, what I heard was him speaking of the poet, the novelist, the teacher, and the prophet as if they were one and the same,  or at least inextricably linked. And out loud in the car I said, “Yes.”

This morning I learned from Garrison Keillor that today is Flannery O’Connor’s birthday. One of my favorite of her quotes is, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.” Both writers were describing the trajectory of Holy Week, if not all that we call faith: a life lived in disquietude, in creative tension, in the cacophony of community, in the revolution that is the Resurrection. This week is about Jesus walking through the injustice and betrayal and humiliation and pain and blowing right through the tomb to come out on the other side a brighter shade of grace than anyone could have imagined. This week has less to do with the paying off of some strange cosmic debt than it does nothing but love gets the last word.

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

Here’s where the metaphor breaks down.

Poets, writers, prophets, and teachers, for the most part are solo gigs. They create by themselves; they offer their individual work. They may unite a following, or incite a revolution, but they are keep to themselves. The headache of faith is we are called to make great art of this life together. We are called to incite, to listen, to engage, to tear down, to build up — together. The only way anyone is going to know the truth that nothing can separate any of us from the love of God is if we are out there loving the hell out of everyone.

Everyone. From Fred Phelps to the hunger strikers at Guantanamo. From the Supreme Court Justices to the members of Congress. (The biggest stretch for me, perhaps.) From the greed-driven on Wall Street to the hungry folks down on the corner. From those who are like us to those who are not.

Everyone. Achebe’s words remind me I think of God as much more of an artist than an accountant (with apologies to any accountants out there). The theories of the atonement that talk about Jesus’s death being required, as though God has to balance some kind of ledger in blood have never resonated for me. But our God of awesome whimsy, of grandeur and generosity, of color and splash and serious subversiveness, came as a kid and grew up, told stories that weren’t readily understandable, hung out with the undesirables even as he ate with the rich folks, and painted Palestine with love and grace and healing like nobody’s business.

The layers of Lent lie heavy because we are being called to come to life again this week as we march through death once more. We march through death every week. But this week we remind ourselves in ways we often forget that death is not the last word. What kills us and divides us and damages us does not tell the whole story. Yet if we lose sight of our calling as poets and prophets, the art and oddness stop here.

the weight of these sad times we must obey
speak what we feel not what we ought to say
(King Lear, V, 3:17)

Rise up, poets, and follow.

Peace,
Milton

I haven’t written for a couple of days because we shipped up to Boston to surprise our foster daughter for her thirtieth birthday. We pulled off the surprise and had a wonderful whirlwind of a celebration. We awoke this morning to the Durham version of the stormy weather covering a good part of the country, though ours has been all rain rather than snow.

In our church, this Sunday has to carry both the Palm and Passion parts of the Lenten story, and so our service begins with palm fronds and ends with Jesus going to Golgotha. To help us make the transition, Ginger and Carla changed all the vestments on the altar from purple to red and also changed their stoles. Two songs ran through my head as we moved from hosannas to heartache, if you will — and neither were hymns.

The first was Gordon Lightfoot’s “Rainy Day People,” which I will admit I have not thought of in a long, long time. The gist of the song is those who know how to appreciate a rainy day understand it’s part of life:

rainy day people always seem to know when it’s time to call
rainy day people don’t talk, they just listen till they’ve heard it all
rainy day lovers don’t lie when they tell ‘ya they’ve been down like you
rainy day people don’t mind if you’re cryin’ a tear or two
if you get lonely, all you really need is that rainy day love
rainy day people all know there’s no sorrow they can’t rise above
rainy day lovers don’t love any others, that would not be kind
rainy day people all know how it hangs on a piece of mind

The second song came out of my remembrance of the first, only because I kept thinking about our call to follow Christ being a “rainy day way” — one acquainted with sorrow and grief, which reminded me of Julie Miller’s song, “Way of Sorrow.”

you’ve been taken by the wind,
you have known the kiss of sorrow,
doors that would not take you in,
outcast and a stranger.
you have come by way of sorrow
you have come by way of tears,
but you’ll reach the destiny
meant to find you all these years,
meant to find you all these years.

The hope we know is informed, even fed, by the rain and the sorrow and all we live through on the way to the empty tomb. Here’s to walking the road together.

Peace,
Milton

This morning I watched the ESPN documentary on Jim Valvano and the 1983 NCAA Men’s Basketball Champion team from North Carolina State. For those of you who don’t know, NC State was the longest of long shots that year and Valvano’s life was cut short by cancer. Part of the documentary included his acceptance speech upon receiving the Arthur Ashe Courage Award in 1993. You can find the full speech here. Early on, he tells the crowd the three things everyone should do everyday are to laugh, think (do something to work your mind), and find something that moves you to tears.

Think about it: if you laugh and you think and you cry, that’s a full day. Do that seven days a week and you’re going to have something special.

Not a bad agenda for tomorrow.

Peace
Milton

we’re a couple hours past our solstice sunset
and tucked into the delicate balance of
light and dark that make our old house hum
my heart sings along with all it remembers

one of our porch lights appears to have given
up and left the lighting to the other one
while we carry on behind their lopsided wink
among alternating rooms of bright and dim

so this is life slipping between sunshine and
shadows turning off lights to welcome the dawn
dancing with shadows we know all too well
and reaching to find each other in the dark

once again night settles in like an old friend
as the candle of another day flickers out
the house is still humming as is my heart
I need you in the dimming of the day

Peace,
Milton

My semi-regular Sunday synthesis of NPR and morning worship began in my kitchen and a segment on Weekend Edition Sunday called “Reminder: Our Memories are Less Reliable Than We Think.” Charles Fernyhough, a researcher from England, has written a book called Pieces of Light that looks at how memory works and what we carry with us as we go. As he talked about what scientists are learning about memory — and that often we remember things from a third person point of view, he said,

There’s something weird going on with memory. The scientists are telling us that memory is a reconstruction, and yet we, as people, tend to stick to our old-fashioned ideas that memory works like a video camera, for example, that it just records, and it files things away in mental DVDs that we can pull down and set playing. And in a way, that’s not surprising, because we see memories as foundational for who we are. We commonly feel that we are our memories; our memories define us. So something needs to change. … Accepting that memories are not literal representations of the past as it happened doesn’t mean that we have to forget about them or start disbelieving them all. But they’re shaped by who we are now. They’re shaped by what we feel, what we believe, what our biases are.

His words came back into view as I listened to the gospel reading in church, John 12:1-8, which is the account — the memory, if you will — of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet.

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

Scholars wrestle over when the gospels were written, but no matter when one dates the documents it stands to reason Jesus was long gone before anyone started writing anything down. Jesus didn’t have an official biographer; no one made transcripts of his sermons and parables. They remembered. And when they remembered scenes like the one described above, they looked through all that had happened in between. In recalling Judas’ words, for example, John couldn’t help but also remember Judas betraying Jesus to the authorities. All the gospel writers have their moments where they remind us Judas was no good from the start. Whether they knew it in real time is indiscernible; when they re-membered the events — when they put the pieces back together — they couldn’t do it without recalling the damage he did that last night in the Garden, and so most every time he is mentioned the writers insert, “the one who betrayed Jesus.”

When I was in high school, I remember my father preaching a series of sermons on the disciples. The one on Judas was titled, “What Have You Done to My Name?” The quote that sticks with me was Dad saying, “He so defiled the name that no one would even name their dog Judas.” Of course, my brother and I tried to name the next three dogs we got after the disgraced disciple. Down two millennia of Christian memories, we have put him back together not as one of the twelve, or the treasurer, or anything else but the one who betrayed Jesus.

Here’s the thing. He wasn’t the only one. Peter denied Jesus three times, even cursing his name, yet he wasn’t remembered as a betrayer. Almost every last one of them deserted Jesus in his final moments on the cross. But when those stories were re-membered, they became wonderful tales of grace and redemption. Peter dove out of the boat and swam to breakfast; Judas jumped from a tree limb and hung himself. I don’t think it’s as simple as, “he was rotten from the start.” Fernyhough said our memories are “by what we feel, what we believe, what our biases are.” Such seems to be the case even among the gospel writers.

I realize none of them was writing an exhaustive biography of Jesus, much less the disciples. We get but glimpses of all of the twelve, not full character development. Yet, as I have ruminated during the day, I’ve wondered why Peter thought he could return and Judas didn’t. And then it took me to thinking about a couple of old friends who have gotten written out of my story, though in far less dramatic fashion. Through some recent discussions, I’ve been thinking about friends — close friends — who are not so close anymore. No, that’s too much of an understatement. I’ve wondered what to do about once vital friendships that have grown unessential. I guess I should say I’ve been wondering about my part in the distance. After hearing the NPR segment this morning, I’ve been wondering if how I remember the past creates any possibility for us to find each other or chooses instead to learn to live without them. In a couple of cases, we just drifted apart; in a couple of others, we have some damage to deal with. The task, it seems either way, is whether I want to remember them as a relic of the past or a relationship that matters.

When I read John’s words about  “the betrayer,” I wonder how the story would read had Judas had a chance to tell it. And then I imagine Judas walking up on the beach not long after Peter had climbed out of the water. With all my heart I believe Jesus would have fed him and then said, “Judas, do you love me? — Feed my sheep.”

Peace,
Milton

For most of the past week I’ve been looking forward to a surprise.

Ginger told me she had an adventure planned for this morning. Last night she told me I needed to be ready to walk out the door at eight. I was, even though I had no earthly idea where we were going. We drove out highway 70 and then to I-540, which wraps north of Raleigh, following it until it ended into another state highway that took us down Lizard Lick Road and then one more turn that brought us into the heart of Zebulon, North Carolina.

As we drove, she would intermittently start laughing and say, “This may be the craziest thing I’ve ever taken you to do.”

I was the navigator looking for 410 W. Gannon Street. Downtown was slipping by: the Family Dollar Store, the Dollar General, the Dollar Tree. As we approached a shopping center that was located about where I had discerned the  number of the address would be, I said, “Well, there’s a Piggly Wiggly.”

She started laughing again. “I’m taking you to the Piggly Wiggly.” We had driven an hour to join in the celebration of the store’s second anniversary. She had heard it advertised on a drive home from Charlotte last week. I’ve always been rather fascinated with the store. Most of it, I think is because of the name. I love the name. Two Christmases ago, she gave me a t-shirt. This morning she took me to an actual store. I was elated. And amused. My wife is awesome.

In the parking lot in front of the store was a big Trailways type bus tricked out to advertise North Carolina agriculture, a giant grocery cart that had an engine in it, a tent for a local radio station that was giving away all kinds of swag, a fire truck, two food tents that had hot dogs and ham biscuits, and a refrigerated semi-truck with a “Truckload Meat Deals” banner down the side. Inside the store there were people at the end of almost every aisle with some sort of barbecue meat or sauce.

Trust me, it was worth the drive.

The assistant store manager was standing on the back of the meat truck when we walked up. He greeted us and gave us a tour of what was inside and told us about the store and their plans for the day. He was pride and enthusiasm were contagious. Inside the store, which still seemed shiny and new, the employees were engaging and fun. They seemed a little fascinated that we had driven up from Durham to take part in the festivities and they were happy to include us in what was mostly a hometown happening.

After we finished there, Ginger and I walked over to the Old Town Cafe across the street. As we drank our coffee, I said, “There’s something wonderful about a town small enough to make a big deal about a grocery store’s birthday.” As my day went on, my words kept circling back and I began to realize those kind of personal connections are what matter most, regardless of how big the town is. I thought about how much fun we have had celebrating the opening of Cocoa Cinnamon or standing in line the first morning that Monuts was open — we were our own little Zebulon, gathered around our friends and sharing in seeing their dreams come true.

One of the things I learned about the folks from Midtown Fellowship in Nashville was they had decided the best way to grow in real community was not to see how big they could get, but to figure out ways to grow new connected congregations that let everyone be in a sort of small town church — not more than about 300 people. When they get bigger than that, they break off and start new neighborhood congregations to make being together a face to face proposition.

I’m a city guy. I love busy streets and bustling activity. I like living downtown and walking through the middle of everyone else’s life, whether it be Boston or Durham. Much of what engages me is finding the community that exists in the midst of the apparent anonymity. The names we remember. The rituals we share. The way life becomes personal and connected. The way we learn to celebrate openings and anniversaries and other things that matter only to us. The best of life is built on parking lot celebrations and neighborhood block parties and things no one else knows about — unless of course, you’re married to the amazing kind of person that thinks driving through Lizard Lick to get to the Piggly Wiggly Party is the stuff dreams are made of.

During our Poverty in Durham series, one of the presenters offered a familiar quote by Margaret Mead:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

Even though we are still a couple of weeks away from the end of Lent and the return of our alleluias, I offer a paraphrase: never miss a chance to share in the joy of a small group of celebrating, enthusiastic people, because it’s how we remember we were made to pull for each other. Let’s look for reasons to throw a party, to offer an affirmation, and to cook hot dogs in the parking lot. Let’s do all we can to foster and feed joy in one another, and to look for the small connections that keep the overwhelming nature of existence in perspective. And let’s give thanks for those who will wake us up early to go to the Piggly Wiggly for no other reason than it seems like fun.

Peace,
Milton

About two weeks after I started substitute teaching at Charlestown High School — over twenty years ago — the assistant headmaster called me into her office one day after school and said, “You like English, right?” By the time the conversation ended, I was filling in for one of the English teachers who hurt his back. “He’ll be out about a month,” she said. He came back in April. I went up to the room to see what he had left and there was one file folder with attendance sheets for his five classes with thirty-two students each. Thus began the Year of No Sleep and Great Learning. (Wait — I’ve had several of those.)

I quickly developed a routine. I got up about 4:30 so I could be in the building at 5:30 when it opened — that meant I could get to the copier without facing a line. The school day ran from 7:15 until 2:30; I would stay and work for an hour or so, come home and work on lesson plans and do what else needed to be done, and then get what sleep I could so I could get up and do it again. I held on to two pieces of advice that saved me in those early days. The first was from Ginger. Everyday as I left for school, she would say, “Remember not to take their behavior personally.” My school was made up of urban kids, most of them poor and seventy percent of them nonnative English speakers. All but about fifteen percent of them lived in another part of the city and had to negotiate trains and buses to get to school by 7:15. And they were teenagers. Their angst and anger spewed out all over the place and often I was the one who got caught in the crosshairs. When I did remember what was getting thrown at me had nothing to do with me I was able to do more than exacerbate the problem by joining in the power struggle.

The second thing came from Jeter Basden, who was a seminary professor, friend, and member of University Baptist Church in Fort Worth when I was youth minister there. I asked him to do some teacher training for my Sunday School teachers. He began by writing a sentence on the board:

I teach students the Bible.

“You tell me the direct object of the verb teach and I’ll tell you what kind of teacher you are going to be,” he said. After a short discussion, he continued, “If you think the Bible is the direct object, you are going to be frustrated and ineffective. If you think students is the direct object, you can read from the phone book and change lives.”

I didn’t know how to teach English, but I did know how to teach kids. So I asked them to write their stories and then I looked for stories to read together that would help us all communicate better. After a couple of weeks, we found an equilibrium that allowed me to not operate in constant crisis mode. The problem for me was I had never been in a high school English classroom as a teacher. I didn’t know if what was happening in our room was normal or effective or awesome or ridiculous. There were three other English teachers — all veterans — on my floor, so I went to each one and asked if I could come by on my off period and just sit in the back of the room to observe and see if what happened in my room bore any resemblance. All three said, “No.”

The science teacher across the hall befriended me and offered me a seat in the back of his room. His kindness allowed me room to develop the courage to ask him to cross the hall into my room: “Come, tell me what you see,” I asked.

The story came back to mind last week as I looked back over some of my travels with the book. I have been in several different flavors of churches, if you will, and I have been struck by how little we talk to each other outside of our closest circles, how little we ask to sit in the back of the room. We have much to learn from those who don’t do it the way we do. I love that many mainline churches are working to be more evangelistic, but often it seems they tend to consult one another about how to do it rather than ask those who have been doing evangelism for years. In the same way, the energy of the emergent movement is exciting as they embrace the inclusive power of the gospel and they aren’t the first ones to discover it; some of their mainline friends could offer words of wisdom and encouragement. And it’s not just with churches. In everything from local city councils to state legislatures to big nonprofits to families, we aren’t very practiced at saying, “Tell me how you handle this issue. I need help.”

I would love to be able to tell you that every year I taught I went and asked if I could sit in the back of the room during my planning period, but I only did it my first year, and only that one time. I found my rhythm and developed my way of doing things. As an extrovert, I thrive on connectedness, so I have always liked to collaborate, yet I continue to realize I need more conversations about sharing our “best practices.” One of the great things about working in a restaurant kitchen is sharing knowledge is essential to success. At the computer store, one of the first things they told us in training was to not be afraid to admit we don’t know something. If a customer stumps us, the best thing we can say is, “I don’t know, but let’s find out together.”

At the core of what both Jeter and Ginger taught me is the truth — whether in the classroom or sanctuary or any other room in life — that I am not called to be the expert; I am called to be a participant, or perhaps a facilitator, which means sharing and listening are at the heart of the deal. I am both teacher and student, depending on the moment, which has less to do with a power structure and more to do with the question at hand. Sometimes I am both simultaneously. In either case, my world is as big or as small as my questions.

And there’s always something to learn if I am willing to ask, “Come, tell me what you see.”

Peace,
Milton