don't eat alone

In the days when I was actively engaged as a songwriter, my friend Billy and I maintained the practice of sending each other three titles and four lines of verse every night. Each of the titles had to be able to be explained (“This song would be about . . .) and the lines needed to be attached to one of them. We were writing long distance in the days before email and texting, so we faxed our work back and forth, often in the early hours of the morning. I still have the notebooks filled with great titles whose ideas were never fully birthed.

My practice for a number of years has been to carry a Moleskin notebook in my back pocket, which is the receptacle for ideas, possibilities, sermon notes, grocery lists, reminders, addresses, and just about anything else that needs to be written down — including the occasional title, even though I haven’t written a song in a long, long time. Looking back through my notes on Italy, I found a title suggested by my friend Lori, who was one of the participants in our Days in the Villa. One morning after breakfast, she said, “You need to write one post called ‘The Week of Luxurious Leftovers.’”

Here it is.

A professional kitchen lives and dies on its food costs. One of the ways that you control how much you spend is by how well you use what you buy. When I managed the kitchen at Duke, we never had a big budget, so one of the things I learned how to do well was use ingredients in more than one way. In my kitchen at home, I have always enjoyed figuring out what to do with what’s left over, which is one of the reasons I love making soups. The best ones have no recipe, you just use what you have. One night at the villa, I made polenta that I baked and cut into squares and served with Chicken Limone and grilled vegetables (expertly grilled by Lori’s husband, Terry). At the end of the meal, we had polenta and veggies left over. For breakfast the next morning, I pan-fried the polenta, made a hash out of the vegetables by adding a little prosciutto, and poached some eggs to top it all off: uova della villa. Another night we took the left over risotto, formed it into cakes, dipped it in egg wash and bread crumbs, and pan-fried them to go with a roasted pork tenderloin. One of the most enjoyable parts of the week was figuring out what to do with what was left from before.

When I open the fridge to see what I have to work with, whatever I’m in, I work to think of what might be rather than what was. Sure, there are times when we reheat a dish as it was and eat it a second time, but I’m talking about finding the containers with leftovers that are not enough on their own or who have lost their companions. I try to think about combinations that were not there before, about ways the colors and textures and tastes of the foods can compliment each other and become something new, even though nothing is. So leftover polenta becomes a variation on eggs Benedict, several meals of leftover vegetables become an improvised minestrone, or pita bread becomes crust for a pizza topped with cheese and apples.

Life is about leftovers more often than it is about new things. Few of us ever step where no one has gone before, think things no one has thought, do what no one has ever done and (not but) we take the pieces of what has been handed down and used before and make something new with our lives. Both things are true. No one has been more before, just as no one has ever been you. The recipes of our lives, if you will, are new offerings when we choose to look for what might be rather than continuing to use the menus handed down. Our plates fill up with grief and grace, with hope and heartache, with joy and pain, disappointment, surprise, anger, compassion, longing and love. What we make of the leftovers is up to us.

The stuff I find in the fridge is easier to manipulate that the stuff that fills up life, certainly, yet making the most of the leftovers in either arena requires of me to take my time, to move deliberately, and — most of all — to make sure I have help. That’s right: don’t cook alone. Our week of leftovers became luxurious because we had time to make it so. The best dishes take time: healing, befriending, dreaming, loving.

Now, why don’t we can see what we can make of what we have left?

Peace,
Milton

Last night, the Red Sox lost their last home game of the season. We have six away games left — three with the Orioles and then three with the Yankees — and then our season will be over. We will finish with a losing record for the first time in fifteen years. If Toronto continues to oblige, we may be able to avoid finishing last.

The lectionary passage from last Sunday seems well chosen for the end of the baseball season:

And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.”

In seasons such as this, I wish it worked that way in baseball. Between the Red Sox descent, the rise of ridiculous rhetoric in the election cycle, and my continued thoughts about our time in Tuscany, the passage has hung with me. What I quoted here was only a segment of the passage (Mark (:30-37) that began with Jesus making a prediction about his death. Mark’s economic prose doesn’t make it clear if the discussion of the pecking order grew out of that prediction, or if the struggle over superiority had kept them from hearing anything he had said to that point. Either way, they missed said point because they were so taken with themselves. Jesus moves them to the back of the metaphorical bus and then picks up a kid (I suppose one was nearby) and said, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me,” as though that cleared everything up.

You have to wonder what the kid thought about it all.

Though his admonition to servanthood is what is most often pulled from this passage, I’m intrigued by the verb in the last sentence: receive. Whoever receives a child in my name, receives me. It’s not about importance; it’s about hospitality. Who wants to come to dinner where the hosts begins by saying, “I brought you all here tonight to remind you I matter most.” But to be received — welcomed, included, brought in. Now we’re on to something.

And notice the verb that doesn’t show up in the sentence: deserve.

Some years ago, my friend Billy and I wrote a song called “The Last in Line.” The first verse said,

the last in line doesn’t ever make the team
doesn’t get a second chance
doesn’t find a field of dreams
the last in line doesn’t get a special prize
doesn’t ever hear his name
you don’t look him in the eyes
nobody wants to be the last in line

In our election climate, every candidate at every level, it seems, is required to pay homage to the fact that we are the greatest country in the history of the world. We’re Number One. U-S-A. U-S-A. I wonder who we are trying to convince, or why we feel compelled to make the point every chance we get? We are much like the disciples on the road with Jesus: too caught up in ourselves to hear the rest of the conversation.

The central part of the town of Lucca, where we were in Tuscany, is a medieval city still surrounded by the old city walls. As we drove one day, I saw ruins of an old aqueduct. The people of Italy live out their lives on top of and among the ruins of greatness and seem quite content to be an also-ran, if you will. Yes, they have their problems. But they didn’t seem to be keeping score. I was there for ten days, so I won’t claim to have a handle on the Italian cultural psyche. Maybe I’d do better to say I understood life differently among the ruins. No one stays Number One forever. Five falls ago, the Red Sox were World Series champions. And so it goes . . . .

Ther sports metaphor falls short, however, when Jesus starts talking about receiving the child (though I suppose I could switch to football . . .) because hospitality is not about what anyone deserves or has accomplished. Jesus brought the little one into the circle and said, “Receive her and you’ll see God with new eyes.” And we will see ourselves differently, too.We spend most of our American conversation around who deserves what or who is getting what they don’t deserve, or why I deserve to keep what’s mine and perhaps take some of what’s yours since you don’t deserve it as much. We get upset when other countries seem weary of our self-promotion. Perhaps we would do well to notice we are almost the only ones who feel compelled to keep proving we’re Number One. Or maybe simply come to terms with the truth that it just doesn’t matter.

What matters is how we welcomed one another, fed one another, included one another. Loved. One. Another. In her sermon Sunday, Ginger reminded us that such an approach to life and faith gets “messy and smelly.” Yes. When we move beyond the dichotomy of winner and losers and begin to receive one another, life gets smelly and messy and requires us to think about most every encounter, rather than lean on categories and cliches.

As Mark recounted beyond the lectionary passage, the disciples responded with a “yes, but,” asking about the other guy in town who was casting out demons. Jesus told them to receive him as well. Start with what brings us together. Start there. Now stay and receive whomever we can find. Doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as easily as “We’re Number One,” which is fine.

We’re not.

Peace,
Milton

The Kickstarter campaign to raise money for my book tour ends tonight at 9:20 Eastern time. Please pass the link along in these final hours. Thanks for all the support and encouragement.

My book, Keeping the Feast: Metaphors for the Meal, will be released on October 1.

Peace,
Milton

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