don't eat alone

Dear Mr. Wallis:

Yesterday, you published a post on your blog articulating why your magazine refused to publish an ad from the “Believe Out Loud” campaign, which calls for the full inclusion of LGBTQ folks in our congregational life. In explaining your choice you said, in part:

But these debates have not been at the core of our calling, which is much more focused on matters of poverty, racial justice, stewardship of the creation, and the defense of life and peace. These have been our core mission concerns, and we try to unite diverse Christian constituencies around them, while encouraging deep dialogue on other matters which often divide. Essential to our mission is the calling together of broad groups of Christians, who might disagree on issues of sexuality, to still work together on how to reduce poverty, end wars, and mobilize around other issues of social justice.

As one who grew up Southern Baptist and found Sojourners to be people who stretched and challenged my concept of who I was called to be in this world as a follower of Christ, I am deeply disappointed by your words because they lack the courage and conviction that I’ve seen in your work for justice over the years. I’m sorry to see you, well, play politics and play it safe. At least that’s how it feels to me — and I know from reading just a few of the comments on your blog that I am not the only one that feels this way. Had the issues regarding equal acceptance and equal marriage were being drawn along racial lines, would you have written the same paragraph?

Last week on Grey’s Anatomy, Callie, one of the doctors who was about to get married, and who was also lesbian, was doubting herself and her commitment to the one she loved because her parents had walked out on the wedding since “the church” would not sanction it. Miranda, one of my favorite characters, challenged her to stay true to her commitment. “The church has a lot of catching up to do with God,” she said. Her words rang in my ears as I read your post.

You are falling behind.

None of us has the luxury of deciding what parts of God’s calling we are going to live out. I understand that we all have interests and abilities that perhaps lead us into one area or another with greater emphasis, but cannot decide, as you have done, that we won’t take up an issue because it’s too controversial or it might affect our ability to raise awareness – or funds – in other areas. Your work in fighting against the injustice of war and poverty is important and valuable. Yet how can we deal only with economic poverty and not come to terms with the spiritual bankruptcy that allows us to discriminate against GLBTQ folks in Jesus’ name? If we, who have the choice to say it doesn’t affect us or it is not our top concern, do not make it a vital issue in our lives how will things ever change? You advocate for the poor because you know their voices will not be heard on their own. Does that stance not demand a universal application?

You are right to think that taking a stand will cost you. Trying to not have to take a stand will cost you more. I also understand, as you say, that not all of us who call ourselves Christian agree on this issue, just as Christians have been divided each time they have had to catch up with God when it comes to including and loving one another. At this crucial intersection of faith and justice, please don’t settle for playing it safe. Whatever you deem your priorities, who knows that you are in this world for such a time as this.

Peace,
Milton

I went to sleep last night after hearing President Obama announce the killing Osama bin Laden and woke up to any number of blog posts and commentaries already written. You people need less sleep than I do – and I’m running on fumes. Those of us who love to put words to paper find moments such as this begging for us to write something while, at the same time, I wonder what I have to say that will add constructively to the virtual Tower of Babel filling everything from Facebook to Twitter to the Huffington Post. My reality is writing is part of the way I process what I see happening in the world and in my life. Though I would love to feel that I am saying something original and profound, I’m willing to own that I’m mostly writing to help me sort things out and choosing to do that in conversation with whomever chooses to join in because I believe we sort things out better together than on our own.

Osama’s death doesn’t change much of anything as far as I can tell. Even early this morning, one of the headlines at the Huffington Post talked about the possibility of reprisals from Al Qaeda. We are not safer because we killed him. We will still have to take off our shoes at the airport, still spend a ridiculous amount of money on national defense, still have to listen to our politicians whip themselves (and us) into a frenzy of fear to try and get elected as the one who can protect us. We are still running scared. Some have talked about his death as closure for what happened on 9/11, but their statements beg the question as to what is being closed. The grief is not over. His death replaces no one, nor does it measure us as some sort of equitable revenge. Ghandhi’s oft-quoted words find particular resonance today: “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” Nothing is solved or healed or bettered by killing Osama. We got revenge, not justice. The satisfaction will be short-lived.

I am left particularly incredulous by those who chose to “celebrate” his death, particularly those who clothed that celebration in Christian terms, as though this was some sort of victory for Jesus – that would be the same Jesus who said, unequivocally, “Love your enemies.” I’m pretty sure assassination was not one of the ways he imagined that love being expressed. Osama’s death is not a religious victory not a triumph of Christianity over Islam. We are not in a holy war. Our nation has chosen to participate in an increasing spiral of violence the consequences of which are far from over. Bin Laden didn’t represent Muslims any more than Fred Phelps or Terry Jones speak for all of Christianity. His presence and actions in the world called us to check our character and our resolve as Christians to show whether or not we are willing to follow Jesus in difficult and dangerous days. We appear to be about as reliable as Peter in the courtyard.

Here’s the part in the post where I begin feeling the creeping resignation that those who share similar views will read on and those who don’t will either stop reading or take time to send some sort of comment to tell me I am idealistic or naïve and even God knows there comes a time when you have to open a can of Whup-ass on those whom you see as enemies. I despair because most of the posts I read today – and perhaps this one – weren’t written with the expectation of a genuine conversation about how to live out our faith. We are writing to be heard more than we are writing to listen, which is the way in which Christianity in America has become most acculturated: we operate by the same polarizing, violent rules of conversational engagement that paralyze our country.

Since early this morning I have had a David Wilcox song on my mind called “Show the Way.” The opening verses say,

you say you see no hope
you say you see no reason we should dream
that the world would ever change
you’re saying love is foolish to believe
’cause there’ll always be some crazy
with an army or a knife
to wake you from your day dream
put the fear back in your life

look, if someone wrote a play
just to glorify what’s stronger than hate
would they not arrange the stage
to look as if the hero came too late
he’s almost in defeat
it’s looking like the evil side will win
so on the edge of every seat,
from the moment that the whole thing begins

it is love who makes the mortar
and it’s love who stacked these stones
and it’s love who made the stage here
although it looks like we’re alone
in this scene set in shadows
like the night is here to stay
there is evil cast around us
but it’s love that wrote the play
for in this darkness love can show the way

As I spoke of this song, a friend reminded me of another Wilcox song written when the AIDS epidemic was the designated dividing line among Christians called “Fearless Love.” The song tells the story of someone in a protest stand-off between the two sides. The verbal violence escalates to someone throwing a stone and hitting a man who was HIV postitive on the head and causing him to bleed. The person holding the sign of judgment was then confronted with what to do about the bleeding person at his feet.

your mind snaps back to where you stand
your church is here to fight a cause
and at your feet a fallen man
whose head is cradled in his arms
though his blood contains his death
and though the lines are drawn in hate
you drop your sign of Bible verse
and help the wounded stand up straight

oh yes the high religious still will scorn
just like that did all that time back
they’ll say you helped the other side
they saw you haul that soldier’s pack
but now how could you carry that man’s sign
in your heart the choice was clear
you didn’t join the other side
the battle lines just disappeared
when fearless love, fearless love
fearless love makes you cross the border

“Nothing changes just because one guy gets killed, even if it is Osama,” said one of my eighth graders as he came into class this afternoon. Fearless love, however, changes all of us.

Peace
Milton

Sometimes a life can get defined
by a single moment or event:
as the “doubter” Thomas gets confined,
though that image does not represent

the complexity of his whole being
nor his broken spirit on that night
when he spoke of touching and seeing —
there’s not one way to grieve that is “right.”

When Thomas asked to touch and see
the others named him by his doubt
when hours before their judging spree
they had been the ones freaking out.

After the cross, not knowing what to do
I would have asked to touch and see him too.

Peace,
Milton

I did my best not
to watch but couldn’t
help but listen when
they talked about it on
the radio as
I drove to work to
play with kids and words
the announcer spoke
of the prince and his
longtime girlfriend . . .
they were just pronounced
man and wife she said
and I wondered how it
feels for her to be
sentenced as both
anachronism and
appendage so
unceremoniously

Peace,
Milton

Mary came to the grave yard alone
expecting to pour out her grief;
and she met someone she should have known
even though their encounter was brief.

She stayed after the others had gone
back to town to tell Christ was alive;
in the light that came after the dawn
he called her – and her heart was revived.

And she walked with him and talked with him,
and he told her that she was his own;
her heart must have been filled to the brim –
more was rolled away than just a stone.

Share the words by which we are freed:
Christ is risen, risen indeed.

Peace,
Milton

When we moved into our house last summer, we moved into a home where the house had been fixed up (it was built in 1926), but the yard was – well – a trash heap, in the back at least. The front yard was mostly weeds, some prettier than others. Because we wanted Ginger’s dad to be able to enjoy the backyard, since we could secure it, we put our energy there, building a fence and a deck (thanks to our friend, Cameron) and, with the help and expertise of the folks at Bountiful Backyards, we turned the trash heap into an edible, beautiful landscape. This week, which has been my spring break from school, it was time to do something about the front. Ginger and I bought some plants, were given many more by Mary Anne, our generous neighbor, and I went to work.

I started this morning by digging a hole for a camellia and I kept hitting bricks. After about the sixth one (yes, I catch on quick) I realized I was hitting more than some random refuse. Rather than digging down, I started scraping the top layer off of what turned out to be a brick walkway that ran across half the yard. The bricks were in good condition and lined up beautifully. In the nearly ninety year history of our house, it has spent little time unoccupied. Granted, our neighborhood has been what is called euphemistically “transitional,” but people have been in the house. I had to wonder how people could forget a brick walkway. At the same time, I knew how people forget sidewalks and even cities. I remembered a passage from Annie Dillard’s wonderful book, For the Time Being.

New York City’s street level rises every century. The rate at which the dirt buries us varies. The Mexico City in which Cortes walked is now thirty feet underground. It would be farther underground except Mexico City itself has started sinking. Digging a subway line, workers found a temple. Debris lifts land an average of 4.7 feet per century. King Herod the Great rebuilt the Second Temple in Jerusalem two thousand years ago; the famous Western Wall is a top layer of old retaining wall neat the peak of Mount Moriah. From the present bottom of the Western Wall to bedrock is sixty feet.

Quick: Why aren’t you dusting? On every continent, we sweep floors and wipe tabletops not only to shine the place but to forestall burial. (123)

I planted azalea bushes that are about eighteen inches tall, a Japanese maple seedling that after three years has almost grown two feet, a hydrangea that isn’t much taller. Our neighbor to the right has one azalea that almost covers the whole front of her porch. She has no idea how old it is because it preceded her. Whoever planted them is long gone. Spending my day digging and planting was an exercise in mortality, in all that is temporal. I was not doing eternal work. I was planting living things whose days, like mine, are numbered. And, somehow, I was enlivened by the process. After seven hours of hard work, I came in energized as much by the process as whatever I might have accomplished.

About the time I bought Annie Dillard’s book, I also heard Dave Mallet sing. I used to volunteer to run sound at Club Passim in Cambridge MA and he was one of the performers I worked with. He had a number of very cool songs, but the one he is perhaps most remembered for is called “The Garden Song,” or as it is often referred, “Inch by Inch, Row by Row.” One of the verses says:

Grain for grain, sun and rain
Find my way in nature’s chain
Tune my body and my brain
To the music from the land

The last two lines describe how I felt digging around today: in tune with the land, with the eternity that lives in passing moments and daily gestures of mortality, with the hope I find in planting something I will not see full grown, with the connections in the conversations with passing neighbors, with the holy that lives in hard work. I have spent the day in the dirt, the very stuff we are made of, planting things that will bloom and die.

I am ready for resurrection.

Peace,
Milton

Today was a cold and rainy day here in Durham.

The sky never brightened beyond the dull gray of the clouds that rattled and wept most of the day. Here, where spring has arrived in full force, the temperature struggled to reach sixty degrees. In a week full of bright sunshine, the weather somehow knew how to set the scene for Good Friday. My plans to spend the day digging and planting fell by the wayside, because of the rain and a fairly sleepless night thanks to my allergies.

I had two things on my calendar for the day. One was to meet Ryan, a new friend as well as a Methodist minister and community activist, and the organizer of the Jack Crum Conference on Prophetic Ministry I wrote about not long ago. The plan was to meet him at the Pie Pushers food truck for a slice of pizza and conversation. The truck was parked in the lot at Sam’s Quik Shop, which shares the lot with a self-service car wash. We got our pizza and made a table out of a shelf in one of the car wash bays so we could eat and talk. We stood in the stall for almost an hour and a half. I had imagined the time between noon and three today being quite time alone in the garden, planting and praying and thinking about Jesus’ execution. Instead I came away both challenged and encouraged by time together with Ryan and Ginger as we talked about how our faith is best lived out in our broken world.

Late this afternoon, Ginger and I went out our back gate and across the alley to Mary Anne’s house. She is our back fence neighbor and a wonderful gardener. She sent a note out on our neighborhood listserv inviting everyone to a plant swap, which was followed by a sentence that said you didn’t have to have anything to swap to come and take part. Five or six other neighbors showed up, most with plants from their yards. Everyone was generous and helpful. We came home with six or eight buckets full of plants from irises to day lilies to Lamb’s ear to a Japanese maple seedling. Everything we brought home was small. My planting tomorrow will be an exercise in hope because most everything will need a year or two to take root and grow into itself.

I love working in the garden and I don’t always know the names of the things I’m planting. As we walked around Mary Anne’s yard, she knew them all by name and could not only tell you how to treat them in replanting, but also had stories to tell about how the various plants came to take up residence in her garden. Her stories seeded tales from the rest of us about plants and gardens and homes and families. We all left with plants for our gardens and seedlings of relationships in our hearts.

By the time we got back home, it was time to fix dinner. Ginger, her parents, and I shared the meal around our dining table. The Alzheimer’s continues to disappear my father-in-law, but tonight he had a few lucid moments. One of the things Ginger does best is invite him to step back into old memories that are still alive in his mind. He can’t recall the names of our Schnauzers for more than a minute or two, but can revel in every detail of his life growing up and while he tells those stories a little lightning sparkles in his now mostly vacant eyes.

Those who had followed Jesus stood together while Jesus was dying on the cross; many of them stayed together in the days between death and resurrection. Even in the deepest darkness, faith is a team sport. It is not good to be alone, even in the dark. Thinking about those with whom I gathered today sent my mind back to a Wendell Berry poem that moves me each time I read it. I offer it tonight as we sit in the dark together.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Love the Lord. Love the world. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

Brothers and sisters, from where have you come?

Such was the question that greeted us as we prepared to share Communion in our Maundy Thursday. Those of us scattered across the sanctuary had come from different places. The answer we were called to give in unison was compelling:

We have come from the dust, and from the earth, and from the breath of God.

I had spent the afternoon digging in the dirt, planting azaleas and hydrangeas and camellias and gardenias and all the other things that ought to grace the front yard of a Southern home. I looked down at my hands to see the dirt still under my fingernails. One of the reasons I love gardening is because of how it has helped me deal with my depression. Something about digging in the dirt centers me, encourages me – and it appears to be at an existential and theological level: I am handling the very building blocks of my existence. The difference between me and the topsoil is breath. God’s breath. Ginger begins most every service as she did tonight, inviting us to sit still and then “Breathe in the breath of God; breathe out the love of God.” It is a distilled metaphor of the flow of life: from breath to love, all belonging to God. As we sat in the pew, I could feel the air in my own lungs and hear my breathing, thanks to my allergies. The questions continued:

And why have you come?

Again, none of us was there for the same reason, or so I assumed. I was one of the readers in the Tennebrae service; I was also there because I love this service as much as any during the year. And, again, we were called to answer in unison:

We have come to receive the bread and the cup: the bread and the cup of promise, the bread and the cup of remembrance, the bread and the cup of hope.

Tonight after church, Ginger and I went to Six Plates, a wonderful wine bar here in town, to celebrate our twenty-first anniversary. We ordered the cheese plate, as we always do when we go there. Tonight, Manchego cheese was one of the offerings. It reminded me of the Manchego crème brulee I had at the Magnolia Grill on my first birthday in Durham. It was amazing. When I mentioned it, we began recalling great meals and dishes we had had together. Life happens around the table, in the making of meals and memories, in the sharing of food and friendship. And, on this night, it all came down to a meal for Jesus and those who loved him.

What is the bread and the cup of promise?
The bread and the cup of promise is Christ Jesus our Lord. We come to receive the promise of his life in ours.

Twenty-one years ago, Ginger and I looked into each other’s eyes and made promises. Outrageous promises. We used time tested words about better and worse, richer and poorer, sickness and health without knowing what lie ahead. We were mostly committing ourselves to grow into the promises. I read the passage tonight that described Peter denying he even knew Jesus – not once, but three times, each one more vociferous. Then he heard the rooster and remembered he had promised he would be true to the end. In the next week or two, we will read the story of the next meal Jesus and Peter shared together – a meal in which the promise was restored because of who Jesus was in his life.

What is the bread and cup of remembrance?
The bread and cup of remembrance is Christ Jesus our Lord. We have come to remember Jesus and his life in ours.

Most any time I come to Communion and we talk of remembering, I think of a youth camp many years ago when Kenny, who was the camp pastor, asked us to identify the opposite of remember, to which most answered, “Forget.”

“No,” he said. “The opposite of remember is dismember: to take apart. When we re-member Jesus in this meal, we put the Body of Christ back together again. Last weekend, Ginger and I sat around a table with Jay, Cherry, Julie, and Diane, who are our accumulated and intentional family. Over the years, we have chosen to put ourselves together and the bonds run deep. The call to re-member we are one in the Spirit is a call to remember love is an act of will, not an emotion.

What is the bread and the cup of hope?
The bread and the cup of hope is Christ Jesus our Lord. We have come to renew our hope in him and his life in ours.

Jesus shared the bread and cup with his disciples and was dead by the middle of the next afternoon. They knew nothing of Easter. They only knew the one they had trusted had been executed among common criminals. They ran. They hid. They went fishing. They went to the tomb. When it comes to acting out the Easter story, we know the Cross is not the Last Word. As Tony Campolo has preached more times than he can remember, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming . . . . In our daily lives, we, like the disciples, have no idea what tomorrow holds. We know only the pain and promise we find in today, and the hope we have mustered and saved from days gone by, based on the love we have found to be true. Or, perhaps untrue. Hope is keeping on. We hope when we set the alarm clock for tomorrow morning, when we plan whatever’s next, when we look beyond all that so easily besets us, when we sit down together for dinner.

After we answered the questions, we prayed and then we sang:

Lord I want to be like Jesus in my heart
Lord I want to be like Jesus in my heart
In my heart in my heart
Lord I want to be like Jesus in my heart

And then we shared our meal of promise, remembrance, and hope together and went out into the night, knowing tomorrow is the day that marks God’s magnificent defeat,
and knowing we will gather again on Sunday morning for Resurrection and pancakes.

Peace,
Milton

the wildflower patch is coming
back for an encore performance
after last year’s inaugural run

right now everything is a verdant
vibrant and bloomless array of
weeds and flowers, best I can tell

so I hesitate to pull anything
up by the roots because I just
might be pulling up wildflowers

from the highways of my youth
I remember fields of bluebonnets
surely weeds were among them

is it reason enough to pull up
what I don’t recognize because
it’s not something I planted

Peace,
Milton

Because Easter is a moveable feast, our twenty-first wedding anniversary falls on Maundy Thursday. So we celebrated tonight. The Playmakers Repertory Company at UNC is doing a production of Big River, a musical telling of the adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The musical was on Broadway in the mid-eighties. The songs were written by the King of the Road himself, Roger Miller. Playmakers put on a great show, as usual, and we had a wonderful time.

At one point early on in the play, Jim tells Huck that life has “considerable tragedy and considerable joy.” One comes with the other. I would go as far to say one is essential to the other. When we have the capacity to experience considerable tragedy, it opens up to considerable joy, and vice versa. To be able to feel deeply means all of the feelings. To keep pain at arm’s length is to do the same to joy. It is also to keep others at bay as well. The shared experience of considerable emotion, regardless of the emotion, is a tie that binds.

One of the songs that most moved me this evening was called, “You Oughta Be Here With Me.” A daughter was singing in grief at the death of her father and in uncertainty of what the future might hold.

if you think it’s lonesome where you are tonight
then you oughta be here with me
if you think there’s heartache where you are tonight
then you oughta be here with me

because with you I’m whole, without you I’m cold
so if you think about me where you are tonight
then you oughta be here with me

if teardrops are falling where you are tonight
then you oughta be here with me
loneliness calling where you are tonight
then you oughta be here with me

because with you I’m whole, without you I’m cold
so if you think about me where you are tonight
then you oughta be here with me

“There’s bound to come some trouble in your life,” Rich Mullins used to sing, “but that ain’t nothing to be afraid of.” Poets and songwriters all the way back to Ecclesiastes have known what Jim was telling Huck. The contour of our existence goes as low as it does high. The human race is not run on a flat track.

I listened to the woman sing, “You oughta be here with me” seated next to the person who has been here with me more than anyone in my life. Twenty-one years ago, we were juggling last minute wedding details and imagining a life together. The years that followed have brought highs and lows that neither of us could have anticipated. We grew into the promises we made on our wedding day as we walked into days that offered both better and worse, sickness and health. We’re still waiting on the wealth to show up. Now as Ginger’s dad continues to disappear incrementally as his Alzheimer’s takes a stronger hold, we are learning new levels of feeling and sorrow.

The joy takes the face of gratitude for me these days. In the midst of hard times, I lie in our bed at night and listen to the symphony of breathing sounds offered in concert by Ginger and the Schnauzers and I am grateful to be in the room listening to what joy sounds like. The best news I have is, after twenty-one years, the best place I know to be is with my wife.

A number of years ago, I wrote a song with my friend Billy where I tried to imagine what love looked like farther on in a marriage than I was at a time. The title I came up with was “Well Worn Love,” which conjured up an image of lives that had been gently and daily softened and polished by the love they shared in much the same way that the stairs on the old buildings in Boston were changed by the daily foot falls, or the tails of library lions worn smooth by thousands of small touches. The chorus says,

this is the story of two common hearts
that started out young and grew old
they have practiced a lifetime
the waltz of a well-worn love

We’re not yet as old as the couple in my song, and I look forward to many more years together. I’m also happy to say, twenty-one years on, I wrote a pretty good song back then. It was not just my imagination running away with me. I am grateful for the considerable love that Ginger and I share in both our tragedy and joy.

And that we still stay our late on a school night.

Peace,
Milton