don't eat alone

A couple of weeks ago, I arrived early for my shift at the computer store, so I got a coffee at the Barnes and Noble next door and sat down at a table to read a little of my John Berger book. The chapter I opened to started:

It begins like this . . . .

Just as I was settling in, a woman moved between the crowded tables to the only vacant one available. She was middle aged, as best I could tell, Asian, a little tired, and quite determined to make sure she got a table. She was carrying a large satchel and a stack of documents on top of it. She pulled out one of the chairs and placed her things in it. Then she opened the bag and retrieved some paper towels and began to wipe off the table. She cleaned it like it was her job, wiping away any remnant of those who had left only moments before she had arrived.

At first, I assumed she cleaned out of fear, determined to not be exposed to any lingering germs, but there was not an iota of anxiety in her movements. The more I watched her (trying not to appear as though I were studying what she was doing), I began to see that she moved with an artist’s flair. Rather than wiping anything away, she was creating cleanliness, if you will, laying it down like paint or polish, a varnish of intention preparing the table for the moment for which it had been created when she would sit with her tea and her notebooks in the light of the last of the afternoon sun.

It begins like this . . . .

I kept rereading Berger’s opening sentence as I looked back and forth between the words on the page and the woman at the next table who had finished her preparation and had seated herself to begin that for which she had prepared a place. I took out my Moleskin notebook and began writing down details so I could repaint the picture at a later time. She opened the satchel and pulled out a stack of about ten greeting cards, all still in their plastic sheathes. She carefully opened one of the envelopes, pulled out the card, and laid it on the table. As she turned to sip her tea, I read the card:

“Thank you for being special.”

That’s all of the story I was able to get. My time was up and my shift ready to begin. I wished for the freedom to lean across the chair between us and tell her it had been fascinating to watch her lay down her layer of intention, but I would have been the only one talking across tables and she had never turned in my direction during any of her work. She was also not the only story in the room; she was the only one I noticed. I marked my place in my book with the receipt from my coffee and made my way out of the store, wondering about the beginning I had seen unfold.

When I was a kid, my brother and I used to like to make up stories about people we saw in airports and such. OK, I liked to make up the stories; Miller was kind enough to listen, since we were the only audience each other had during our family travels. As you might imagine, my image of who the strangers were leaned toward the fantastic and intriguing. Everyone was a spy or some sort of exotic vagabond. It never crossed my mind to say, “The man in the overcoat is lonely and wishing his daughter would call to see how he is doing,” or “The girl in the corner has kept a journal everyday for seven years – and it all rhymes.”

I keep thinking about the woman and the table and the card and wondering how the story played out. It begins like this: on a winter afternoon, she prepared her heart and a table to make time and room to write the filling for a card whose outside read, “Thank you for being special.” Perhaps it was an expression of unflinching gratitude. Maybe, they were words that needed to be said to span a breach or heal a wound, but they weren’t words that came easily, so she had wiped the table and laid down a layer of love and a blanket of forgiveness in which she could wrap her words and write what she felt rather than what she ought to say. Then again, maybe she was a spy and the whole thing was a brilliant cover.

It begins like this . . . .

Berger was talking about being asked to restore a painting a friend of his had found in a junk shop that was worth something, though quite deteriorated. She had asked him to see if he could repair it and he worked to find a way to connect to the moment in the past when the painter had laid brush to canvas. After a couple of days of anguish, he wrote

I paint freely, inspired by the longing of what is there on the canvas. I discover how in the corner of a small room the light, falling on two peeling walls and half a dozen throw-down flowers, is a kind of promise from some distant, unimaginable future.

The job is done. There it is, a painting by Kleber, 1922.

A moment has, for a moment, been saved. This moment occurred before I was born. Is it possible to send promises backwards?

As I look back to my recent past and the incidental encounter with the woman at the next table – an encounter known only to me – I wonder why the image of her preparing a place hangs so fresh in my memory, why it matters I tell it tonight, or why I am moved by Berger’s idea of sending promises back in time as I think of her and her table and her greeting card.

I have better questions than answers.

Peace,
Milton

Today is Steve Earle’s birthday.

I’ve been listening to his songs all day, which is not so different from many other days, just more purposed. I love both his music and his story: he is a living testament to hope and redemption. One of my favorite tunes is “Some Dreams,” which was used as the theme song for The Rookie and embodies his tenacity and determination.

The chorus says, simply

some dreams
they never come true
they never come true
yeah, but some dreams do

As a recovering addict, he knows of what he speaks. As I listened to it this week, the two middle lines were the ones that hung with me: some dreams never come true. Life, often, doesn’t go the way we plan or even hope for. There are dreams we can taste and see, things we know how to bring into being if things were to fall a certain way and those things don’t fall. We have worthy ideas and good plans and, still, some dreams . . . .

I know. Aren’t you glad you read this far?

Please keep going, because I did. As I kept singing the song, something hit me in a way that it had not before – and I can express it best in a paraphrase of the same chorus:

some dreams
they never come true
they never come true
yeah, but someone’s do . . . .

On the heels of MLK Day and the countless repetitions of his “I Have a Dream” speech (which never gets old), I am aware in ways I was not before that dreams come to life – and death – in community. Whatever a dream becomes is born out of togetherness. AS long as I’m paraphrasing, there is no “I” in d-r-e-a-m. (Now you will quit reading.) Dreams have a chance to come true when community congeals around them; when mine don’t, I then have the chance to find meaning and healing in a dream that belongs to someone else in this shared adventure we call life together. I get to help your dreams come true or, perhaps, we will stand together in our magnificent defeats. That’s good news all on its own.

When I was in seminary, I pastured a small rural church in Central Texas populated, mostly, by farmers and ranchers, most all of whom planted some sort of hay each spring. When it came time, harvesting was a communal exercise. We all showed up at whoever’s farm ripened first and helped them cut, bail, and haul the hay into their barn. By the time we were finished, someone else’s field was ready. Over the course of a couple of weeks, we worked our way around four or five farms. My contribution was to bring out a couple of my large seminary friends who knew how to haul hay. We worked hard, ate well, took care of each other, and came away with some good stories to tell. Occasionally, a mistimed thunder storm would mean the hay that was cut but not yet bailed was going to be lost on one of the farms. Again, I saw the power of community as the ranchers took care of one another.

And they would all plant again the next year.

John Berger is a writer and artist who inspires me. I am in the middle of his latest work, Bento’s Sketchbook: How Does the Impulse to Draw Something Begin? is stretching both my mind and heart. In a chapter that has nothing to do with what I’m talking about here, he makes this statement, describing the work of another artist:

A sense of belonging to what-has-been and to the yet-to-come is what distinguishes [us] from the other animals. Yet to face History is to face the tragic. Which is why many prefer to look away. To decide to engage oneself in History requires, even when the decision is a desperate one, hope. An earring of hope.

I smiled when I first read the last sentence. The two little silver rings that have lived in my left ear lobe for twelve or thirteen years found a new shine and significance in his words. These are days around here – and by here I am drawing a larger circle than our address – where pain and grief and loss feel as common as weather. Things we thought would happen will not. People we hoped would stay have gone. Here, in between the what-has-been and the yet-to-come, we are working hard to engage. Were it a matter of saying, “I must go on,” I’m not sure many would do so. But even as we face the tragedy that is life, we are also being offered invitations by those around us to remember we belong. Some of the invitations to dream beyond ourselves are as small as trusting we can get to lunch or carry on a conversation. Others offer the chance to see dreams come true in everything from supporting midwives in Guatemala to opening an urban farm in East Durham to making music and writing books. And that’s just here in Durham. I don’t mean to make it sound as though the strings well up at sunset and everything is hunky dunky, and yet I do catch a glimpse of something in the midst of my melancholy, a flash of promise.

An earring of hope.

Peace,
Milton

if I had a nickel for every song
written about how hard life is
out on the road singing I’d have
enough to buy the record and sing
along with the self-indulgence
and understand how the beat of life
(kick-drum-karma?) molds a melody
out of misery in search of a sing-a-long
to the click track of daily existence

or maybe those songs come to mind
late at night as I stare at a blank
computer screen looking for words
to describe how hard it is to write
when I have stayed away from
the page long enough to lose
confidence or any sight of the
resonance with the readers

I imagine are on the receiving end
could it be these words and music
are less self-indulgent than simile
(living my life is like real life)
offered with a hint of interrogative
verses in search of a chorus
of folks who recognize the tune
and know the words but are kind
enough to let me feel original

Peace,
Milton

On Tuesday, December 27, 2005, I began writing this blog with these words:

I’ve been staring at the “posting” screen for several days now trying to figure out how to join the world of food bloggers. Since I’m writing from a Mac and I don’t know much about HTML, I’m still not sure about adding links and so forth. I wanted the blog to look less plain, but I decided to work with what I have rather than wait for everything to be perfect.

Tonight, Tuesday, December 27, 2011, I am still working with what I have rather than waiting for everything to be perfect. That train never comes. What has arrived in my life over these six years is a feast of friends and connections and experiences, along with the practice of writing which has helped me, challenged me, inspired me, and humbled me.

I am grateful for the journey.

Peace,
Milton

fifty six  christmases

and it matters more than
ever that Christ is born again
in the carols round the tree
in the sharing of meals
in the gift-wrapped bits of love
in the quiet streets of the city
in the empty chair at the table
in the ache of growing
and knowing too much
in the memories that hang
on the tree and in my heart
more than ever this year
I need Jesus to be born

Peace,
Milton

we have several mangers on our mantle
made of materials from ‘round the world
each a collection of the usual suspects
along with a contingent of livestock

but there’s no food

the magi made the effort to bring
incense and offerings, but not one
covered dish made the journey
the shepherds too were empty handed

on his way out Jesus gathered
his friends and fed them a meal
to remember over and over
every time you eat he said

but for all the angels and alleluias
all the stars and promises
how can it be no one thought
mary and joseph might be hungry

Peace,
Milton

here’s how love comes to town

on the back of a donkey
in the womb of a teenager
to a sleepy little town
without a decent hotel

on the smile of a friend
in the heart of a stranger
who shares your grief
and makes room for it

on the whisper of hope
in the ear of the darkness
calling out our names
as if we all mattered

Peace,
Milton

On this longest night, we gathered in our church sanctuary for our annual “Blue Christmas” service, which is designed to offer sanctuary to those who are grieving in the midst of the festivities, no matter what the loss. Ginger had candles across the altar at the front of the church, along with those in our Advent wreath and a table set for dinner (using our Christmas dishes) at the front as well. My friend Terry and I opened the service with “I Wonder as I Wander.” I sang the first verse acapella and then he wandered and wondered on his harmonica, drawing us all deeper into the darkness and the hope.

We then sang “In the Bleak Midwinter,” which is one of my favorite carols. I love the intentional simplicity of the lyric:

in the bleak midwinter frosty winds made moan
earth stood hard as iron water like a stone
snow had fallen snow on snow snow on snow
in the bleak midwinter long ago

As we sang together on this longest night of snow stacking up, I thought about how those in the early church tied celebration of Jesus’ birth to the solstice. Some say it was to counteract, or even appropriate, pagan cultures and celebrations. But as I sat in the service tonight, thinking of Jesus who was born nowhere near either any December or snow on snow, I found a compelling pull to celebrating Christmas right now. Tomorrow night, you see, will be a little bit shorter than tonight, and the one that follows even shorter still. We sing of frozen water and snow drifts and celebrate Jesus’ birth just as the planet is turning back to the light as a way to remind ourselves that it will not always be winter or dark or painful. The tiny baby in Bethlehem, who never knew of snow or much of winter, is born in our time and in our culture just as the tide is turing.

Alleluia.

The promise of a Messiah was centuries old by the time Mary and Joseph settled in behind the inn. The Messiah that showed up was not yet fully formed, so everyone had to wait another thirty years for him to come into his own. When the angel came to tell Joseph what was going down, he comforted the carpenter by saying, “You should name him ‘Emmanuel,’ which means “God With Us.”

God. With. Us.

Whether the night is long or the day full of summer, whether the snow is stacking up or the sunshine beats down, God is with us. We are not alone.

Terry and I also performed one of my favorite hymns, “Come, Ye Disconsolate.”

come ye disconsolate
where’er ye languish
come to the mercy seat
fervently kneel
here bring your wounded hearts
here tell your anguish
earth has no sorrow
that heaven cannot heal

I learned the hymn as a child and it sounded much like this. This afternoon while I was rehearsing, my friend Jay and I found this version that changed the way I thought of the song from a great old hymn to a great old bluesy gospel number. The discovery gave me the freedom to sing a bluesier version myself. We also found an “original lyric” to the hymn that changed the third line of the second verse to sing:

joy of the desolate
light of the straying
hope when all else is dead
faithful and pure

Whatever night Jesus actually came into the world twenty centuries ago, for most it was a bleak midwinter of the heart, a season of grief that meant most everything was dead or frozen, the trees had turned to skeletons, and the dark seemed endless.

So it was tonight as it was long ago.

We finished our time together singing of the hopes and fears of all the years, yet what we felt were those that belong to this year, to pain and despair. How good to sit together, to wonder together, to sing together and remember the boy was named Emmanuel.

God. With. Us.

Peace,
Milton

penultimate

on this tuesday night
we sat around the table
as though we had
all the night we wanted
to eat and drink and
laugh and talk and hope
we even had time for pie

tomorrow night
our prodigal planet
will wander as far
as it ever does from
the light of the sun
and then start back

what a gift that we can
live out a prophetic parable
with pork chops and pecan pie
leaning into the light
even as we head deeper
into the darkness

Peace,
Milton

a midnight clear
angels bending near the earth
peaceful wings unfurled

there in a manger
little lord Jesus laid down
cattle are lowing

angels heard on high
and the mountains in reply
gloria Deo

wander as wonder
poor orn’ry people like you
and like me (not I)

Peace,
Milton