don't eat alone

Twice, today, I got to feel like a teacher.

My school is understaffed, which means I teach a couple of courses out of my area. OK, out of the six classes I teach (out of six periods of the day), four of them are not English. My schedule, this term, looks like this:

Period One: English I and II
Period Two: European History
Period Three: Music Appreciation and Expression
Period Four: Government and Economics
Period Five: Financial Literacy
Period Six: English III

I will pause until the laughter over my teaching economics and financial literacy has had time to subside. I will also say it’s exhausting and I have to be intentional about letting my life and my job be about something other than feeling tired.

The music class is a euphemism. I have taught an eighth grade elective all year that began as media literacy and then changed to film studies last term. When we started talking about a music class, I offered to teach the history of rock and roll and the academic dean came up with the name. The class is my largest – ten kids – and my most energetic. We’ve had a good year so far and I’ve had a blast introducing them to songs, singers, and songwriters they didn’t know about. Last week we finished up their presentations on the British Invasion and then watched “A Hard Day’s Night” as we talked about the Beatles (we’re not done with them just yet); this week we moved on to Bob Dylan.

I wanted them to encounter the songs this time, where their work thus far has focused on personalities, so I went through Dylan’s catalog and tried to pick out songs that would match the kids. The ten I chose were:

Blowin’ in the Wind
Chimes of Freedom
Don’t Think Twice (It’s Alright)
Gotta Serve Somebody
Hurricane
Knocking on Heaven’s Door
Make You Feel My Love
Like a Rolling Stone
Mr. Tambourine Man
The Times They Are A-Changin’.

Their instructions are to listen to the song and read the words until they can begin to respond to it, look up what others have said and felt about it, find out who has covered it, and then write an essay about the song and create some sort of art project. I created a web page where they could find links to the song and the lyrics. The computer lab has never been as quiet as it was as they listened through their headphones and dug into their songs. At lunch, an hour or so later, one of the boys who is working with “Mr. Tambourine Man,” made a point to come by my room and say,

“Mr. B-C, this guy is a poetic genius.” I smiled and he continued. “He repeats lines, but he changes a word or two so it means something different. It’s really good.”

Bob Dylan was old before this kid was even born. His parents weren’t alive when “Mr. Tambourine Man” was first released and yet today the song was new – to him. Though the song is bumping up on being sixty years old, it was new in his ears:

hey, mister tambourine man play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to . . .

I have a student who deals with mild autism and is very concrete. He is a diligent and bright young man who works his butt off in class. He loves the feeling of accomplishment that comes with completing an assignment and presents it to me with almost an air of formality: “Mr. B-C, may I give this to you now?” His class, which is actually during first period, had a vocabulary quiz. Since they finish at different paces, I gave them an assignment related to To Kill a Mockingbird, which we are reading right now, and it listed the characters and asked the students to describe the ways in which each one felt trapped and how they responded to that feeling. The final section asked the students to write about a time they felt trapped in their lives and describe what they did to handle it. During sixth period, when the boy has a study hall, he finished the work and brought it in to me with the usual ritual, “Mr. B-C, may I give this to you?” Then he paused and said, “I put a lot of emotion into that essay.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.”

There is nothing new under the sun, said the writer of Ecclesiastes. Yes, and life is filled with discoveries of stuff that’s new to us. I’ve read Mockingbird twenty times if I’ve read it once. I learned how to play “Mr. Tambourine Man” in 1970 and it’s far too easy for me to agree “the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming.” But it’s not about me. They don’t know what I know, which means it’s yet to be discovered. Scout is still dressed like a ham and Dylan can almost carry a tune. The coolest thing is, thanks to them, I get to see with new eyes as well. What a gift.

hey, mister tambourine man, play a song for me
in the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you

Peace,
Milton

One of the joys of teaching English is vocabulary study. Every week or two, I turn the page to a new list of words for my students – expunge, bequeath, cogent, supercilious – and then put them through the paces of the exercises that come in their books hoping that a few of the words take hold somehow. I’m caught between knowing that a random list of words apropos of hardly anything is not much of a way to learn new words and knowing that the structure, however arbitrary, does help. And so we soldier on through the definitions, the completion of sentences, the synonyms, and the antonyms. When we start talking about what a word means, we learn from what we consider its opposite. If I say the opposite of high is low, I offer one meaning. If I say the opposite of high is sober, well, I mean something quite different.

We talked about opposites on Sunday morning in our Bible class. I am helping to lead a class that is using Walter Brueggemann’s great book, The Bible Makes Sense, to help us get a better handle on our scripture. Many in our class are not familiar with much of the Bible and the class has been interesting and inspiring. We talked about opposites as we looked at the stories of the manna falling to feed the Israelites and Jesus using the little boy’s lunch of loaves and fishes to feed a whole hillside of folks. Somehow in the discussion we got to opposites. I don’t remember how exactly, but I do remember saying the opposite of love was not hate. Hate is similar to love in that it takes a lot of energy. When you hate someone, they matter to you. The true opposite of love is apathy. You just don’t care, or even more you don’t even notice. In the judgment scene in Matthew 25, Jesus admonishes those gathered by saying, “I was hungry and you didn’t feed me. I was in prison and you didn’t come to visit . . . “ and the people responded, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or in prison?”

And Jesus replied, “Exactly.”

Another mistaken antonym shows up when we come to faith. I think the popular answer is often doubt, but I think Frederick Buechner had the right idea when he said doubt was “the ants in the pants of faith.” Then again, faith is a hard word in English because we’ve made a noun out of something that is really a verb. Faith is about trust – wholehearted, chips-all-in-before-we-get-to-the-casino (thanks for that one, Jules) trust. When the stakes are that high, doubt rides sidesaddle. The opposite of faith – of trust is fear because it propels us to run and hide rather than to leap and know that love will catch us.

The two Bible stories centered around bread and brought us to a discussion of Communion, which we share on the first Sunday of every month. We talked about what the Bread meant and what metaphors moved us at the Table. As our discussion continued, I remembered one more pair of antonyms that I have carried for a long time — thanks to an old friend, Kenny – and mentioned in this blog on more than one occasion, I’m sure. Jesus’ command as he passed the bread was to eat and remember. Who knows how many times I have heard the call to take the meal seriously so that I might not forget what God has done in Christ. And that’s a good word. But, perhaps, the opposite of remember is not forget.

Jesus said, “This is my body,” and then Paul said we, the people of God, are the Body of Christ, the incarnation of love in the world. When we remember Jesus, we put the Body back together again. Re-member, as in the opposite of dismember. The centrifugal force of life pulls us apart day by day and flings us to the edges. When we take and eat together, when we gather in close and trust that nothing can separate us from the love of God no matter how painful life is we re-member Jesus: we put the Body of Christ back together again in love so true that it casts out fear.

Peace,
Milton

Our former foster daughter came to Durham this weekend because she is hurting and needed to be cared for. The only words I can find tonight belong to Patty Griffin and her song, “When It Don’t Come Easy” because it is such a tangible description of what love is: “if you break down, I’ll drive out and find you.” I know it is not the first time I’ve mentioned this song, but tonight it’s time to sing it again.

red lights are flashing on the highway
I wonder if we’re gonna ever get home
I wonder if we’re gonna ever get home tonight
everywhere the waters getting rough
your best intentions may not be enough
I wonder if we’re gonna ever get home tonight

but if you break down
I’ll drive out and find you
if you forget my love
I’ll try to remind you
and stay by you when it don’t come easy

I don’t know nothing except change will come
year after year what we do is undone
time keeps moving from a crawl to a run
I wonder if we’re gonna ever get home

you’re out there walking down a highway
znd all of the signs got blown away
sometimes you wonder if you’re walking in the wrong direction

but if you break down
I’ll drive out and find you
if you forget my love
I’ll try to remind you
and stay by you when it don’t come easy

so many things that I had before
that don’t matter to me now
tonight I cry for the love that I’ve lost
and the love I’ve never found
when the last bird falls
and the last siren sounds
someone will say what’s been said before
some love we were looking for

but if you break down
I’ll drive out and find you
if you forget my love
I’ll try to remind you
and stay by you when it don’t come easy

Peace,
Milton

saturday night at ben and jerry’s
they were the only ones in the place
beside the two behind the counter
they could be identified by
the flavors they had ordered:
peanut and banana greek yogurt
new york super fudge chunk
chocolate with sprinkles
jimmy fallon’s late night snack
but that doesn’t tell the whole story
there’s also the flavor of pain
one lost her husband not long ago
another broke up with her girlfriend
one’s longtime friend had a stroke
the last one’s job is tentative
but that doesn’t tell the whole story
which is ok by me because I was
talking about this particular night
full of rain and fluorescent lights
when the ice cream was stronger
than the pain – for a little while

Peace,
Milton

My little school is imploding.

I have much the same feeling as I did when I worked in my first restaurant which was a small tea house owned by a woman who had always wanted to own a restaurant, so she found an empty space, took out a second mortgage, spent a lot of money, and lasted six months because she didn’t really know what she had gotten herself into. Though my school has been here six years, it is still trying to find its identity, which has proven to be quite illusive leaving us with predominant daily question of “How do we survive?” which is not a question that fosters growth and learning.

Our foxhole perspective sent me back to something I read in Art and Fear a few days ago.

It is an article of faith, among artists and scientists alike, that at some deep level their disciplines share a common ground. What science bears witness to experimentally, art has always known intuitively – that there is an innate rightness to the recurring forms in nature.

Science advances at the rate that technology provides tools of greater precision, while art advances at the pace that evolution provides minds with greater insight – a pace that is, for better or for worse, glacially slow. . . . [a]nd while a hundred civilizations have prospered (sometimes for centuries) without computers or windmills or even the wheel, none have survived even a few generations without art.

[I]n art as well as in science the answers you get depend upon the questions you ask. (104)

To give some context to the passage, the authors weren’t out to foster a divide between science and art as much as they were using the distinction to say some things about the way art tells the truth by contrasting with how science tells the truth. More about that in a bit. First, I want to go back to the statement in the last sentence: the answers you get depend on the questions you ask.

During one of my first units of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), where I worked as a hospital chaplain, I read an article that talked about how we could help our patients cope with what was going on by helping them to ask better questions. Those who faced difficult diagnoses, for instance, might find more hope in turning from “Why did God let this happen?” to “What will this mean for my life?” The first ends up in blaming or patronization; the second offers room for discovery and growth.

When I read the line about the quality of our questions, I made a note in the margin: what would Jesus ask?

My mind jumped back to the healing stories in the gospels. On the one hand, the disciples saw a blind man sitting at the gate and asked, “Who sinned that this man should be born blind?” On the other hand – and thank God for other hands – Jesus met the man at the pool who had been there for years and years waiting for his chance and asked, “Do you want to get well?”

The answers we get are only as good as our questions.

Instead of asking how we are going to survive or what else could go wrong, I keep asking for the grace to remember that the kids in the building need more from me than fear, bitterness, or resignation. They need me to act like this matters so they can do likewise. They need me to ask questions that call us together and help us figure out how to make meaning of these days, regardless of how much it feels like I’m teaching at Titanic High. I must, therefore, go back and pick up art as a metaphor for life and faith and then reread the following passage:

There is a moment for each artist in which particular truth can be found, and if it is not found then, it will never be. No one else will ever be in a position to write Hamlet. This is pretty good evidence that the meaning of the world is made and not found. Our understanding of the world changed when those words were written, and we can’t go back . . . any more than Shakespeare could. . . . The world thus altered becomes a different world, with our alterations being part of it. (106)

One of our teachers left this week because he got an offer that he was right to take. We had a goodbye party for him on Wednesday. He had been here for almost three years teaching in the middle school, so the eighth graders were only in sixth grade when he arrived. He asked a great deal of himself and the kids and he got great answers from all concerned. At the party, one eighth grade boy said, “You’re the greatest teacher I’ve ever had because you helped me learn to be myself.” That teacher changed the world for the boy and helped him make meaning of the cultural hell we call middle school, which ranks right up there with writing Hamlet.

In a school on its last legs, in a culture built on greed, in a political climate of rage and cynicism, in a world that is broken and hurt, what would Jesus ask?

What will I ask? And then, how will I answer?

Peace,
Milton

This is the first day this week I have not had to go to the computer store to work a shift after my day at school. This is also the morning I got up earlier than usual (4:30) to take Ginger to the airport to go help out a friend who recently suffered a minor stroke. I stopped at Fullsteam on my way home to meet a couple of friends, got to the house, greeted Rachel and fed puppies, and then came upstairs and fell asleep. Ran out of gas on the couch, surrounded by Schnauzers, which is a great way to be reminded you are loved.

I was reading something online the other day about people’s sleep habits before electricity and how they would often have a “first sleep” from dark until about ten or so, wake up and do something for a couple of hours, and then go back to sleep for the rest of the night. The idea of eight hours at once is a relatively new one. OK, those of you who know me also know eight hours has never been a part of my pattern; six is the basic aim. I realized, as I read, that I had never thought about sleep patterns being different in other times. That just seemed like something that had always been. The truth is there is very little of our lives, whether big or small details, that has always been, and we live in a time when that change feels as though it is accelerating.

In the midst of that change, I am grateful for some of the staples in my life: a wife with a big heart who takes care of her friends, friends of my own on a sunny afternoon, and Schnauzers who are as loving as they are demanding.

And now for my second sleep.

Peace,
Milton

One of the classes I’m teaching this semester is European History. How that came about is a story of its own that is still unfolding, but it’s also a story for another night. When they asked (and by asked I mean told) me I was teaching the class, I fashioned the course around twentieth century Europe and then backed up to the nineteenth century to get the kids to take a look at some of the antecedents to what happened in the last millennium. And then, as a good student of my favorite professor Wallace Daniel, I set out to do more with history than give an account of who beat whom in what war. I divided the class into Team Literature, Team Art, and Team Music and set them searching for the thoughts and themes and feelings that defined Europe in the 1800s. They gave their presentations today using a very cool web site called Prezi.com.

The music group began with a Brahms waltz and my mind and heart kept swirling around the room, one-two-three, one-two-three, while I did my best to pay attention. I love a good waltz in whatever form from classical to bluegrass to, well, you name it. Somehow the rhythm of the waltz feels like a heartbeat, like the rhythm of life. J. D. Souther has a song on an album from the Seventies called, “Jesus in 3/4 Time” that isn’t his greatest song (though I love the line, “Blessed assurance is one thing to know and another to sing in a song”), but he’s on to something. One-two-three, one-two-three carries a symphony of emotion in its simple count somehow; grief and joy dance together, as do melancholy and hope. Here are a few of my favorites:

“Waltzing for Dreamers” – Richard Thompson

one step for aching
two steps for breaking
waltzings for dreamers
and losers in love

“Last Chance Waltz” – David Wilcox (this guy does a pretty good cover)

won’t you please waltz me free?
the turns of our steps are untangling me,
free from some dragged around memory
and the rusty old remnants of fear
after ten years I’m melting the shackles with tears

“The Waltzing Fool” – Lyle Lovett

but the waltzing fool
he’s got lights in his fingers
the waltzing fool
he just don’t never say
the waltzing fool
he keeps his hands in his pockets
and waltzes the evening away

I’m not enough of a dancer or a musician to talk coherently about what is happening to both our hearing and our hearts when we move to three beats a measure, but sat in the room as the music swirled around the students even as it set my memories to moving, one-two-three, one-two-three. When the psalmist said that God would turn his mourning into dancing, he must have had a waltz in mind because it is a dance that grief can do. It is the rhythm of life, the rhythm of Lent, the rhythm of what it means to be together, perhaps (is this too much of a stretch) the rhythm of the Trinity:

one-two-three, one-two-three.

Peace,
Milton

Tonight, I am keeping my discipline with the help of an old friend whom I know only through his words. Still, he is one I turn to on nights like this when I can’t find words of my own. These are words I have come  to before. Join me; there is comfort here.

I Am Offering this Poem
By Jimmy Santiago Baca

I am offering this poem to you,
since I have nothing else to give.
Keep it like a warm coat
when winter comes to cover you,
or like a pair of thick socks
the cold cannot bite through,

I love you,

I have nothing else to give you,
so it is a pot full of yellow corn
to warm your belly in winter,
it is a scarf for your head, to wear
over your hair, to tie up around your face,

I love you,

Keep it, treasure this as you would
if you were lost, needing direction,
in the wilderness life becomes when mature;
and in the corner of your drawer,
tucked away like a cabin or hogan
in dense trees, come knocking,
and I will answer, give you directions,
and let you warm yourself by this fire,
rest by this fire, and make you feel safe

I love you,

It’s all I have to give,
and all anyone needs to live,
and to go on living inside,
when the world outside
no longer cares if you live or die;
remember,

I love you.

Peace,
Milton

I don’t remember how old I was, but I was young enough that my dad was able to beat my brother and me to the punch. “Boys,” he said with that this-is-how-it’s-going-to-be-don’t-even-think-about-it tone in his voice, “we can talk about most anything, but you can never have a motorcycle.” He gave good reasons. He had high school friends who had been killed on bikes, or at least that’s the way I remember it. As I said, we were young enough for them to feel out of reach anyway, so we agreed and adopted his fear and life went on – without motorized wheels or the future expectation thereof.

As we got into our forties, things changed. My prodigal brother began riding motorcycles while living in the far country of Tennessee and eventually got a Harley of his own, on which he still finds solace riding off across the Texas countryside. I, the dutiful older brother, still stayed away from them. I just got my ear pierced instead. Twice. The only bike I’ve ever been around much belonged to my friend Billy. In our songwriting days, I would drive down from Fort Worth to Manchaca, south of Austin, where he lived. He had a beautiful BMW motorcycle and I would climb on the back and we would ride to dinner. He’s the one who taught me to lean into the curves.

I wasn’t expecting to go motoring down this particular memory lane this Lent, but John Berger issued the invitation with this short paragraph:

For many years I’ve been fascinated by a certain parallel between the act of piloting a bike and the act of drawing. The parallel fascinates me because it may reveal a secret. About what? About displacement and vision. Looking brings closer. (111)

Part of where the passage took me was back to a conversation, or rather a host of conversations, with another old friend, Christopher, who is a graphic designer. He told me how his mentor taught him the basics of the craft. While in college, Chris approached him about being a mentor. The man agreed and asked him to come to his house for their lessons. In the backyard, the man had a tightrope a couple of feet off the ground. Christopher’s drawing lessons began with learning how to walk the tightrope. Chris didn’t understand at first.

“There are basic principles to life,” his mentor told him. “For example, learn how to walk the tightrope and you will also know how to draw a straight line freehand. Both require that you keep your eye on the end point – where you want to end up, rather than looking at what your hands and feet are doing.”

Berger agrees:

You pilot a bike with your eyes, with your wrists and with your leaning of your body. Your eyes are the most importunate of the three. The bike follows and veers towards whatever they are fixed on. It pursues your gaze, not your ideas. No four-wheeled-vehicle driver can imagine this.

If you look hard at an obstacle you want to avoid, there’s a grave risk that you’ll hit. Look calmly at a way around it and the bike will take this path. (112)

I think about the days when I have allowed myself to get caught up in a power struggle with a stubborn student. Most of the time it’s not because they were more stubborn than usual, but that I couldn’t look beyond them and set myself up for a collision. I think about how I have derailed some dreams by looking at who I am not and seeing only where I will fall short rather than keeping my eyes on where I want to end up. And I think about those times when I have been able to see beyond the chaos, beyond the obvious, beyond the obstacles and seen some dreams come true, some things change.

“I will lift my eyes up to the hills,” wrote the Psalmist.
“Come and see,” said Jesus.
“Draw me nearer, nearer, precious Lord,” says the old hymn.
“You are riding a drawing,” says John Berger (116).

I love the image. At the bottom of the page I jotted a verse from James that came to mind: “draw near to God and God will draw near to you” (6:8), and an old song floated down across the memories that seems a good benediction:

turn your eyes upon Jesus
look full in his wonderful face
and the things of earth will grow strangely dim
in the light of his glory and grace

Peace,
Milton

Ginger preached from the lectionary passage this morning. Here’s what I brought home.

“you are the light of the world”

I know were talking
about the difference
between daylight
and dark however
you of all people
ought to be able
to make room for
a little poetic license
I know about the dark
but today when I
heard your words
I thought of those
who claim to speak
for you in public
but they spew stones
and throw their weight
around to do damage
and your familiar call
had a new ring:
you didn’t call us
to be the heavy

Peace,
Milton