don't eat alone

There is not a cloud in the sky on this fall morning in Durham. Here’s where the sky took me.

sky blue
 
oh, they tell me of a home far beyond the skies . . .
oh, they tell me of an unclouded day

on this unclouded day the sky
is the color of heartache
same as the azure canopy
that sheltered us
that september morning
yes — that one

though today may prove to be
one of unremarkable
catastrophe the sky
is unrelenting
in its invitation to see
that home is

not something beyond the blue
but here in this unclouded
day in this mix of joy and pain
 in shades of blue
that color our hearts
tell me of that home

Peace,
Milton

Several years ago, NPR ran a story in which they asked several award winning photographers to describe the best photograph they never took: a moment when they saw the picture and didn’t raise the camera. Then they asked them to tell why they chose to simply hold the image in their respective memories. Most all of them, in one form or another, spoke of coming face to face with the sacredness of the moment called them to be participant rather than observer, which meant they had to put their cameras down and just be.

The Wednesday after Labor Day, Ginger and I joined friends for ten days in Italy. Just to type the sentence feels opulent. Still. We spent two days in Florence as preamble to our true purpose: a week together in a villa in Tuscany. No, we weren’t in a movie. For a week, this was our lives. Our group numbered sixteen in all. The villa was on the outskirts of the town of Lucca, which dates back a millennium. Both town and villa ere surrounded by farms and vineyards and olive groves. Walking the grounds around our temporary home I picked pears and figs. At night we gathered around a large table just outside the kitchen covered by an arbor. And it was good.

I went not only as one of the group but also to be il cuoco della villa — the chef of the house. My invitation was to create our evening meals out under the stars and arbor, and  to help create a memory. I did my research into Tuscan cooking, brought a few ideas of my own, and learned some new things once we got to town. The menus included risotto with roasted chicken and grilled vegetables, chicken limone, spaghetti bolognese, and chingiale (wild boar) stew with polenta; for dessert we had apple pie with limoncello glaze, tiramisu, and risotto al cioccolato (that’s right — chocolate risotto). Each afternoon, my designated sous chef, Terry, and anyone else who cared to join us gathered in the kitchen and we cooked and talked and laughed and shared a littler pre-prandial vino rosso. As the sun began to fall behind the trees, the others began to fill the circle of chairs next to the dining table for appetizers, and then somewhere around eight we moved to the table where we stayed long after the food was finished.

When we left to go to Italy, I had plans to blog everyday. Somewhere in the middle of the second afternoon of preparation I thought about those photographers and realized I would write about it someday, but not in real time. My job, if you will, for the week, was to share food with friends in Tuscany and remember everything I could. I was not there to write a book; I was there to cook and incarnate the very things I have written about. “As often as you do this,” Jesus said, “remember,” as he sat around a table with his friends. We have been back a week and those memories seem to just now be ripening into words I can share.

Part of the reticence in writing, I think, comes from the sheer extravagance of the trip. As soon as I write, “I spent a week in a villa in Tuscany,” I feel as though I’ve separated myself somehow. I’m old enough to feel as though Robin Leach should be bellowing it out. That feeling is mostly drowned out by gratitude. Alongside the thankfulness I’ve also returned with some disquietude. The pace of life in Tuscany — even in the cities — was kinder and more spacious. The people of Tuscany understand what the word enough means better than I do.

The housekeeper at the villa was a woman named Issa. She was in her sixties, I guess mostly because she said she had a forty-year old daughter. Her eyes sparkled with the same worn vibrancy of the Tuscan sunset and her hospitality was unflappable. She came by the house for a couple of hours each day and we had a chance to ask her some of our questions about life in Lucca and beyond. One day I asked her how to say, “Don’t eat alone.”

“Non mangiare da solo,” she answered.

I wasn’t sure how to explain the blog or why the phrase mattered and I wondered, after seeing the lives lived around us, whether it was an admonition that carried any necessity at all in Tuscan life, which seemed aimed at tables filled with people who were committed to taking time to be together. Almost seven years into this blog and on the eve of a book about what it means to be at the table together, I understand it in ways I have not before.

Peace,
Milton

On October 1, Keeping the Feast: Metaphors for the Meal will be in bookstores.

I can’t believe it. Life, for me right now, is a flurry of activity. Perhaps the biggest learning curve is understanding the fine art of self-promotion. I am proud of the book and I want to get it to as many people as possible and writing to anyone to say, “Won’t you please spend your time and energy talking about me?” is not an erasy thing to.

That said, I need your help and energy in these next few days.

I have one week left in my Kickstarter campaign to raise money to fund a book tour. We have reached our basic goal, which means the project will be funded, and I am hopeful we can raise another three or four thousand dollars to help the tour continue through the spring. Please share the link and the story with as many people as you can.

The first leg of the tour will fall somewhere between November 6-19 between Durham and Boston. Right now, we have possible events in the DC area, Philadelphia, New York City, and in and around Boston. After the first of the year, I will aim west moving through the South and on to Texas. I would  love to hear any suggestions you might have about bookstores, churches, or events. I will have a press kit available early next week that will be downloadable.

Between now and the first of October, please go into your local bookstore — particularly the independent ones — and ask if they will be stocking the book. Whether on not you order the book from Amazon, you can go to the book page and write a review. My publisher tells me this is a significant action. If you know someone in your town who reviews books for newspapers, magazines, or websites please let me know and I will send a copy to them.

Thanks for your patience and support. When I get to your town, let’s have dinner.

Peace,
Milton

In four months, this blog will be seven years old.

One of the reasons I started keeping the blog was I wanted to be a writer. I had been writing for a long time — I even had a draft of a novel that was already several years old, but none of it had anywhere to go. I had read Anne LaMott’s statement that a writer is one who writes not one who is published and, yet, I wanted to get my words out there to someone.

For me, writing alone makes about as much sense as eating alone.

As one who has never felt very adept when it comes to the skills of an entrepreneur, the blog platform was perfect. It wasn’t going to make me any money, but it wasn’t going to cost any either and I could write, put it out there, and see who found it. The words I have posted down all these days have given me a sense of purpose and accomplishment, have built relationships I never imagined possible, and have helped me claim my place as a writer. They also opened the doors for me to get a book published. Keeping the Feast: Metaphors for the Meal will be in finer bookstores everywhere and online in about a month.

In working on the book, one of the things I have had to learn is how to improve my entrepreneurial skills. I’m still learning. And I’m getting better. I’m proud of what I have written and I want to see it find a larger audience, yet I’m also learning that the task of being more self-promotional kind of calls me to live up to my own words, or at least the  quote by the Buddha that gave a title to this blog:

There is no joy in eating alone.

I’m the guy who makes a point of saying and re-saying that both life and faith are team sports. I don’t want to eat alone. I am also learning that I write best when I don’t write alone: when I remember I am surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who encourage me, teach me, read me, and love me. I trust that the reasons stories matter are they are what remind us of how much we are alike and how inextricably linked we are to one another. We are at our best when we share with and pull for each other.

Saying all those words is easier than incarnating them.

But I’ll try. I need more than what I can do to give this book a good life and to have the chance to make the connections and tell the stories and share the meals I think were meant to come out of this project. My publisher is working hard, but book tours aren’t in their budget. Nor are they mine. I need help to see my dream become a reality.

It seems you can’t really dream alone either.

This week I launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a book tour, which will give me some funds to buy gas and meals and hotel rooms and books so I can take to the highways and see who wants to eat and talk together. I am hoping to go to bookstores, churches, and dining rooms wherever I can we can share stories and meals. This link gives all the details.

The campaign is off to an amazing start. My request is that you share the link. Tell people about the book and the campaign and ask them to tell others.

And then invite me over for dinner.

Peace,
Milton

the rain stopped
just before I woke up
and opened the back door
to find
fresh-washed sunshine
dustless leaves
and a brand new day
splashing barefoot
in the puddles

now I am out in the dark
so the dogs can make
one last circle
of a yard they know
by heart
so we can go to sleep
while a brand new night
soaks itself
into the soil

Peace,
Milton

Here is the manuscript of the sermon I preached this morning at Pilgrim UCC here in Durham.

For many of us, text messaging is a part of life. There’s much of what comes with sending texts that works for me. I like being able to send and receive messages that don’t require I answer the phone. I like that I can make contact in situations where the phone would be disruptive. I like that people can text from the second floor of our house down to the kitchen to let me know what they need. Still, as one who loves language and spent many years as an English teacher, there’s a great deal about texting that drives me nuts beginning with the use of “texted” as the alleged past tense of an alleged verb to the rampant disregard for the need for correct spelling and punctuation.

(I can’t see Ginger right now, but I assume her expression is a combination of a smirk and an eye-roll.)

Punctuation makes a difference. If I say, “The panda eats shoots and leaves,” I am describing a vegetarian bear until I add commas — then he becomes a brazen killer. The presence of the comma in the sentence, “Let’s eat, grandma” is the difference between an invitation and cannibalism. And though not quite as humorous, our understanding of today’s passage swings on the punctuation, along with a few participles.

Now I realize I am getting my geek on, but to aid our language study, I am going to ask you to do something out of the ordinary: please open your pew Bibles.

I need you to see this. Turn to Ephesians 5 and find your way down to our passage today, verses 15-21. If you will notice, the Bible in your hand has a paragraph break between verses 20 and 21. Here’s the thing: in the Greek, it’s one big, long-running sentence that ends with verse 21. For Paul, how we sing and worship together was inextricably tied to how we relate to one another.

Let us bring fresh ears and listen again to the passage:

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

As we look more closely at the passage, let us recall what Ginger said last week: the church at Ephesus was a strong church. Paul was writing to people who were committed to incarnating their faith in their daily lives to challenge them to an even more profound encounter with God. So he called them to be thoughtful, wise, and filled with the Spirit. I would like to spend our time together this morning focusing on that last admonition: be filled with the Spirit.

And I would like to keep my geek on for a few minutes and talk about the theological implications of the participle. The final sentence of our reading has four participles that describe what the call to be filled with the Spirit means:

• addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs;
• singing and making melody to God;
• giving thanks in all things;
• submitting to one another in Christ.

“Addressing” seems an odd verb choice when it comes to singing. I get this image of the lounge singer saying, “This one’s going out to a very special lady right here in the front row” before he sings some worn out standard. But the word means our manner of speaking to one another; our personal bearing in conversation. Singing together as a congregation is one of the ways we tighten the bonds, we unite ourselves — even before it becomes a way to offer ourselves to God. Randy Cooper writes,

Singing is more than making a joyful noise. God has given us singing and worshiping to break down categories of gender and age and race and class. In singing and worshiping, we enter the life of God through the Holy Spirit. If God’s Triune life is indeed one of mutual submission and love among the [Creator, Christ,] and Holy Spirit, then as we become one body in Christ we share in God’s eternal “singing” . . . Music and singing can be a means of grace that makes the Body one.

Our singing together — our addressing one another in song — then, becomes our worship: we sing together, making melodies for God. The hymns we sing together in this room are not just traveling music or melodic segues; they are at the heart of what we are doing together, actually and in metaphor because the first act of singing is not making sound but listening. For the melody. For the harmonies. Listening so we can sing our parts and help build the song.

As I lean into the metaphor, I understand not all of us sing well. Perhaps that is why the psalmist enjoined us to make a joyful noise. Our making melody together is not about everyone hitting the note as it is about as raising our voices together as we worship the God who created us for one another. The way we address one another, how we show our regard and deference for one another, begins in how well we are listening.

And if you think singing is the hard part, look at the next phrase: giving thanks always and for everything to God in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Two things come to mind for me here. One is the cliche that we are to live in “an attitude of gratitude.” Yeah, I know it’s cheesy, but it’s pretty close to the mark. The other thing that came to mind is one of my favorite poems by W. S. Merwin entitled “Listen.”

With the night falling we are saying thank you

We are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings

We are running out of the glass rooms

With our mouths full of food to look at the sky

And say thank you

We are standing by the water looking out

In different directions

Back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging

After funerals we are saying thank you

After the news of the dead

Whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

In a culture up to its chin in shame

Living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

Over telephones we are saying thank you

In doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators

Remembering wars and the police at the back door

And the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you

In the banks that use us we are saying thank you

With the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable

Unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

With the animals dying around us

Our lost feelings we are saying thank you

With the forests falling faster than the minutes

Of our lives we are saying thank you

With the words going out like cells of a brain

With the cities growing over us like the earth

We are saying thank you faster and faster

With nobody listening we are saying thank you

We are saying thank you and waving

Dark though it is

“We are saying thank you dark though it is.” And we are not alone. We are singing together and giving thanks together in order that we might be filled to intoxication with the Spirit of God. And in that flow comes the final phrase: submitting ourselves to one another in Christ.

Submit is a difficult verb to me because it carries such a notion of over and under. To submit feels like giving up or giving in. Capitulating. J. B. Phillips offers a different view by translating the phrase as “‘fitting in with’ each other, because of your common reverence for Christ.” Once again, the phrase has to do with how we learn to live together: how we fit together. We worship together, we draw out the gratitude in one another, and we work to learn how we fit together as the Body of Christ. We are, as the old song says, one in the Spirit. In my Baptist days we sang a chorus that said,

We are one in the bond of Love
We are one in the bond of Love
We have joined our spirits to the Spirit of God
We are one in the bond of Love

That’s pretty good four line theology. If we are going to be filled with the Spirit of God, we have to give the Spirit something to fill. As we learn how we fit together, we create a vessel which God can fill to change our world — and to continue to transform us into thoughtful, thankful people making melody together in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

On an afternoon he will not remember
I watched a little boy follow his feet along
the brick walkway, caught in the cracks —
in the mystery of the moss and the
pull of the pattern on his eyes not yet

three feet off the ground. The sun
looked over his shoulder like a friend
as he stooped to touch — to read
between the lines, to see a story
he would find only once and then forget.

I came home to hear the tales of those
who had swum and run and jumped most
all of their lives to get to their golden
moment — one they would never lose:
they stood as if nothing mattered more.

Somewhere between podium and pavement
is where I walk, where I write my story,
sometimes seduced by winner-takes-all
and grateful for those sidewalk afternoons
I can remember for as long as they last.

Peace,
Milton

We talked about miracles at our church Sunday, as did most folks who follow the common lectionary since the Gospel passage was about Jesus feeding the five thousand. Ginger asked a group of us to help pantomime the scripture as she read it; our drama included passing bowls of Pepperidge Farm rainbow goldfish throughout the congregation.

But I’m getting ahead of myself: before we acted out the miracle, we saw one.

We had a baptism Sunday. Court is about four months old and is an absolutely beautiful little boy. He has a full head of hair, blue eyes the color of the sky on your favorite late summer afternoon, defined facial features that make him look more like a little boy than a baby, and a smile that demands nothing less than a smile in return. He also pays attention, as though he’s storing it all up for future reference. As he stood with his parents at the front of the church, Court’s mother held him with his back to her chest so he could see everyone. One of her arms was wrapped around his waist and the other supported his bottom. As Ginger read through the vows, Court followed every word. When Ginger asked of his parents, “Will you remind him that he is wonderfully and uniquely created in the image of God and worthy to be loved?” Court waved his arms and legs up and down and giggled as if the Spirit was bursting out of every part of him. In that moment, the Word once more became flesh right in the middle of us all.

A few minutes later, we were up acting out the Bible story. After we collected the bowls with the leftover goldfish and finished the scripture reading, Ginger said what she says most Sundays at that moment: “May God grant us wisdom and understanding of this passage.” Maybe it stood out more this week because we were talking about  a miracle and miracles are, in a way, like jokes: they lose something when you start trying to explain them. The gospel account doesn’t give much information on how the single lunch turned into a catered affair, only that there was more than enough food when all was said and eaten. Somewhere in her sermon, Ginger quoted from a hymn we sing regularly:

In the bulb there is a flower; in the seed, an apple tree;
In cocoons, a hidden promise: butterflies will soon be free!
In the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that waits to be,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

The song is a perfect soundtrack for this discussion because any miracle from the Feeding of the Five Thousand to fireflies starts as something God sees first — and then shares. As I held that thought, Ginger made an interesting statement: “Miracles are about timing and awareness.”

I thought of Court waving his wings at the exact moment Ginger said he was worthy to be loved.

I thought of Pentecost where some heard the mighty rush of the Spirit and some only felt the wind blow.
And then I thought of a story Madeleine L’Engle told in one of her books about the couple who brought their second child home from the hospital still a little unsure of how he would be received by the older sister. As the evening progressed, the little girl demanded time alone with her new baby brother. The parents stood at the door as the girl approached the crib and said to her brother, “Tell me about God; I think I’m forgetting.”

Then Ginger said, “Rather than try to explain miracles, let us learn to live with them and assist them.” She went on to reference Annie Sullivan and her work with Helen Keller, which was chronicled in the play The Miracle Worker, one of Ginger’s favorites. Annie worked hard for the miracle of Helen’s comprehension to happen, just as the disciples worked the crowds somehow in a way that everyone was more than satisfied.

We finished our service with Communion. We vary the way in which we serve the meal. This time we lined up and came to the front to receive the bread and the cup through Intinction. Ginger and Carla and the deacons who were serving stood in front of the line of bowls filled with goldfish and offered us the Bread and the Cup; when the service was over, the left over bread and the goldfish both made reappearances in coffee hour, along  with Court and his family.

Ii took another piece of bread and gave thanks for both the timing and awareness that let me in on the miracles around me. Here’s hoping I can be as awake and aware more often.

Peace,
Milton

I found out this morning that the brother of a college friend was killed in the theater in Aurora, Colorado. He was there with his two daughters; they survived, but he did not. The connection doesn’t change how I feel about the killings, or how I ache for those who lost their lives or lost loved ones in the tragedy. For whatever reason, however, it makes me want to speak up even though much has already been said.

Alongside of the shock and compassion that follows an event like the shootings, we as Americans spend a great deal of time and energy looking for causes and explanations; we also look for ways to feel safer. A friend of ours organized a group to go last night to see the Batman movie in Raleigh. The event had been planned for a couple of weeks. After some discussion, they decided to go on with their plans — and they were the only ones in the theater on a Saturday night. I realize there is more than one way to interpret the empty seats, and I think one of the reasons many didn’t darken the doors for The Dark Knight Rises is they were afraid it would happen again.

And it might. But, as people of faith, we can’t stay home.

I don’t mean you have to go see Batman; I do mean we cannot choose to participate in America’s newest national past time since September 11: running scared. Thanks to the fear-mongering by our press and politicians, we have been encouraged — even trained — to be frightened and led to believe that we are all walking targets who are going to be picked off in time if we don’t stay scared.

Paul wrote to Timothy, his young protege, and said,

I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well.  For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands,  for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. (II Timothy 1:5-7)

Granted, he was speaking to Timothy’s trepidations about starting out in ministry, still I think the admonitions carry over: we were neither created nor called to live our lives out of fear. Yes, this world is filled with scary stuff. Yes, we have no guarantees of protection. And — not but — AND we have been given a spirit of power and love and self-control. We are called to make meaning of our lives, to carry the light into the darkness and remember the darkness cannot put it out.

So let us speak out.

Speak out in favor of limiting access to weapons that do nothing but kill people. We need more courageous people who will stand against the money that has been able to buy our politicians thus far. Assault rifles are not for hunting. Freedom is not the issue. We have been given sound minds. Let us move beyond our cultural inclination to run to opposite poles and scream at each other, which only adds to the violence. Let us use our God-given self control and do what is best for all of us, rather than choosing only to protect what we see as ours.

Speak out against the media who sensationalizes events such as these and makes the perpetrators famous. The shootings were news. The endless chatter that follows is not. In 2002, Gus Van Sant directed a movie called Elephant that chronicled a high school shooting. The film came out after the tragedy at Columbine. In his review of the movie, Roger Ebert wrote:

Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. “Wouldn’t you say,” she asked, “that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?” No, I said, I wouldn’t say that. “But what about ‘Basketball Diaries’?” she asked. “Doesn’t that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?” The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it’s unlikely the Columbine killers saw it.

The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. “Events like this,” I said, “if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn’t have messed with me. I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.”

In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of “explaining” them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used.

We have been given sound minds, as some translate Paul’s words. Why, then, are we so easily swayed by those who fill the airways with mindless drivel and incendiary rhetoric. When the media move to place blame and find fault, as they will once the stories of heroism and compassion wear thin by their measure, let us think otherwise. Let us choose to power off our televisions and empower one another to even greater acts of compassion and solidarity.

Above everything else in our lives, we are called to love. Paul had words about love, as well:

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

I’m not saying anything new, I know. But I wanted to say something.

Peace,
Milton