don't eat alone

Ash Wednesday showed up early for me this year because I was given the chance, thanks to my friends Lori and Terry, to hear Garrison Keillor tell stories. Though I have listened to him on the radio for thirty years, I’ve never heard him live. Monday, he showed up unadorned, without any of his Prairie Home Companion peeps or props, without even an introduction. Promptly at 7:30, he strode onto the stage wearing dark pants, a sports jacket, a white shirt, and a red tie that matched both his red socks and red sneakers, and he began to chant. That’s the best way I can describe it. He told a story with the cadence and melody of a priest inviting congregants to the Eucharist, his rhyme and humor calling us into community. Then, for a little over two hours, he talked of family, faith, love, death, and sex in a more intimate and vulnerable way than I had ever heard him on any of those many nights when he began his tale with, “It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown . . . “ – a phrase he never uttered in our time together.

Through the course of the evening, he invited a bluegrass singer to join him on stage, and for us to join them in song: Tom Waits’ “Picture in a Frame,” “You Are My Sunshine,” “It Is Well With My Soul,” and, to close the evening, “Angel Band.” Our voices provided the connecting soundtrack to his stories, which eloquently told how he got from there to here: from childhood to writer, from “sanctified Brethren” to Episcopalian, from son to father, from wherever he was before to our Monday night in Durham, reminding me again of the power and purpose of ritual, or sacred road markers like Ash Wednesday and Lent and Communion that call us to ask and answer the question David Byrne asked best: “Well – how did I get here?”

“We tell two kinds of stories,” Keillor said. “We either tell bragging stories to show we’re better than everyone else, or we tell stories of confession, which are, I suppose, a kind of ostentatious humility to show we’re more honest than everyone else.” From there he meandered into a maze of faith and family, both confessional seed beds, I suppose, commenting almost in passing that Christianity “is a religion of failure.”

With those words it became Ash Monday: Lent began for me.

In the jargon of my students, Lent might be renamed “Epic Fail” – the season of coming up short, the season of stark reality, and the season of forgiveness because it is in failure that both our compassion and redemption take root.

Yes, I know God is both great and good. Yes, I trust that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Yes, I know we are only weeks away from that Great Resurrection Morning when the stone gets rolled away and up from the grave he will arise to show that Death is not the final punctuation mark on the sentence that is our human existence. Even though Death has lost its sting, our story – all the way to that Land To Which We Go – is marked, quite indelibly, by failure. The tenacious love of God calls us to faithfulness, not success. Jesus bent down to wash the feet of the disciples because, John says, he knew “he had come from God and was going to God, not because it was all a brilliant strategy for success and conquest.

The disciples left the Upper Room and failed epically in the hours that followed their gathering only to find themselves still in the circle, still called, and still loved. For the rest of their lives, they did their best work when they simply told that story. The same holds true for us. We do our best work for and with one another when we tell and listen to our stories – and that thought takes me to familiar words worth repeating: Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese”:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

As Keillor differentiated between the bragging stories and the confessional ones, he said the confessional stories were the ones you could count on to be “mostly true.” When we come to the place, however we get there, that we share our despair in order to find one another and remind one another we cannot run out of or away from the love of God, we are true – even in our failure. In the longings and the losings of life we come back again and again to stones we have stacked up and songs we can sing together.

when peace like a river attendeth my way
when sorrows like sea billows roll
whatever my lot thou has taught me to say
it is well it is well with my soul


I’m gonna love you
till the wheels come off
oh yeah

I love you baby and I always will
I love you baby and I always will
I love you baby and I always will
ever since I put your picture in a frame

We are not beginning a sojourn to success. When we get to Easter morning, or any other day for that matter, we will still be people of constant failure. Jesus didn’t come out of the tomb to take his place on the medal stand. He went to the beach and made breakfast for his bleary-eyed followers who had failed, once again. He loved them and he fed them. And he told them stories.

May we go and do likewise.

Peace,
Milton

This poem is in response to Random Acts of Poetry over at The High Calling.

word play

I love the way
words yearn
for one another:
the way they
join hands
like children
on the playground,
the way they
laugh at each other
climb up the slide
and then crash
into the leaves;

the way they
spoon together
like lovers
in the night,
holding tight
in desperation,
in hope, in love
waking sometimes
just enough
to pull closer
and then sleep
until morning.

Peace,
Milton

My students are embarking on an annual journey at our school we call the Academic Exposition, or Expo, which is a big research paper and presentation. We take a day at school for everyone to show their stuff and all the parents come to see what their children have learned. It is an arduous journey to say the least.

In past years, the Expo has not been well guided, leaving the students with their topics and a stack of notecards and expecting them to find their way out of the academic wilderness on their own. This year, we decided to be more directive and instructive on the journey, the idea being to make it more meaningful for them (and us) and maybe even a little fun. Being a good guide, I’m learning (again), is hard work.

At the heart of research lies the adage that your paper is only as good as your question. Both the middle school English teacher and I sat with each of our charges individually to hammer out their vague interests into specific and hopefully interesting questions. The topics ranged from concussions in sports to CNC 3-D printing technology to why we turn prisons into tourist attractions to epilepsy. The last one came from Pete, one of my students who lives with epilepsy and, because of his changing teenage body, has had a very hard year regulating his medication and controlling his seizures. When we sat down for his conference he said, “My question is, ‘How close are we to finding a cure for epilepsy?’”

All I could think was, “Not close enough.”

Yesterday during class, we spent time in the computer lab so they could look for sources. As we searched, he found a rather extensive list of people in history who had epilepsy. He called out across the room, “Mr. B-C, Alexander the Great had epilepsy.” As the others surfed and searched, our time was punctuated by his continual uncovering of this geneology of sorts: Napoleon Bonaparte, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh – at which point I said, “Do you feel like you need to go paint something?”
“Mr. B-C,” he said, “Theodore Roosevelt!”

One of the other students, weary of the role call, responded, “You know, Pete, not everyone in the world has epilepsy.”

He was undaunted. “But – Theodore Roosevelt.”

Discovery that he was of the house and lineage of people who were known for more than the disease they shared in common was encouraging, even life-giving to this bright young man. He was beginning to understand he belonged to a group that mattered. He was not alone in his struggle, nor in his seizures. I thought of Hemingway’s old man, fighting with the fish and feeling the pain of his bone spur, only to be comforted by the thought that Joe DiMaggio understood how he hurt. The validation that our pain and our wounds are not unique is one of the most profound invitations to community that we receive.

So Pete’s exposition appears to be to go out and find himself, or at least his kinfolk, out there in the great unknown, to find those in whom he recognizes himself, or – better yet – those who help him see his epilepsy as something other than his most defining word. Perhaps, in another generation, a kid will look up from his or her own discovery and say to the teacher, “Hey! Pete had epilepsy, too!”

Peace,
Milton

This morning, in preparation for our church’s participation in the Durham CROP Walk (feel free to make a donation here), we watched a short film from Church World Service about women in Kenya who spent eleven hours of everyday walking to find water until CWS was able to help them build a sand dam which both captured and cleaned water for their use. After the video, one of our church members who is a Kenyan immigrant told us of her life, which pretty much matched the movie. Despite the difficult circumstances she has known in her life, she has a deep and abiding trust in God and in other people that radiates from her. On this Transfiguration Sunday, she let me see the presence of God in a fresh way.

sunday sonnet #19

Today we told two summit stories:
they climbed to meet God in the clouds.
Common folk met uncommon glories
that left them wondering and wowed.

Both stories on the mountain peak –
Ten Commandments, Transfiguration –
tune our hearts to praise and seek
more than just an explanation,

and ask, “Where is God in all of this?”
whether mountain tops or canyons,
to look for light in the abyss,
and live with faithful abandon.

Would I could spend all my days
found in wonder, love, and praise.

Peace,
Milton

The Durham Bulls put out an open call for anyone who wanted to audition to sing the National Anthem to show up at the ball park last Saturday and take their best shot. I got there about thirty minutes before auditions were to begin, only to find I was sixty-eighth in line. Fortuitously, Number Sixty-Seven was my friend Terry. Neither of us knew the other was coming. Our serendipitous encounter turned the day from a lonely audition to an adventure in friendship. We took our seats on the third base line and waited our turn.

“Number One,” said the first woman who took the mic, and she began to sing, setting the pattern we would all follow. All 164 of us. The paper they handed us in line spelled it out. We were to walk down to the field when it came our turn, take the mic, say our number, sing, and then hand the mic to the next person in line. We had to sing the anthem in seventy seconds or less without venturing from the traditional melody because, should we be selected, we would be leading the crowd in the song, not performing for them. If we were good enough, we would receive an acceptance letter in a couple of weeks, though that didn’t guarantee we would sing at a game. If an opening came up, we would get a minimum of one week’s notice before our turn to sing. The best news for me was the tryout was for real: I got to stand at home plate and sing the song over the PA. Whether or not I get selected, I got to sing the National Anthem at the ball park.

The first woman started singing at ten o’clock. It was ten minutes till twelve when I held the mic for Terry to play the anthem on his harmonica (he rocked!) and about sixty seconds after that I took my turn. By then we had heard sixty-six renditions of the song. I can do without if for awhile. I think we were fifteen versions in or so when Terry turned and said, “It’s kind of fun to hear the different takes and see all the different people here. I wish we could hear the stories behind why they showed up and why they want to sing.”

Yet all we were allowed to do was sing. There was no time for stories. The first woman, white and middle aged, offered a comfortable version, followed by any number of elementary and middle school students. The four older men did a precise barbershop version that was harmonious and somehow lacking in passion. The twenty-something couple offered their version with acoustic guitar and bluegrass harmony and gave the song new life. An African-American woman sang it like a gospel song and almost brought us to our feet, even though we had already heard it twenty-five times. One young boy picked it out on classical guitar, and then a teenager did an electric version without most of Hendrix’s improvisation. The teenage girl right in front of Terry was taken over by her nerves after the first line and two hours of waiting and handed me the mic as she walked away in tears.

It’s not an easy song. The range is wide and the lyrics are, well, a little foreign to us in these days. I think it’s safe to say the only time most of us use the word rampart is when we’re singing the anthem. The lyric is more militaristic than inspiring. I would much rather “America, the Beautiful” took its place, yet there I was on the field, microphone in hand, singing with all the power I could muster. The scene is not without its irony because I don’t have a nationalistic bone in my body. Being an American doesn’t always come easy for me. I didn’t grow up here. I don’t always know how to belong here. Yet, there’s something about baseball that connects me to my country in a way I only know how to describe as a “Field of Dreams” moment. Remember Terrence Mann’s speech in the movie?

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again. Oh people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.

When I took the mic, there were no corn stalks to be seen, nor ghosts of players past. I looked out over the left field wall where the flag hung motionless in front of the Tobacco Road Sports Bar and the office building that houses it. I was singing due north, aiming my voice at our home which lies a little over a mile from the park, beyond the bar and the Performing Arts Center, and the prison, and the Farmers’ Market, and the old Bulls’ park where they filmed Bull Durham, and the skate park, and Fullsteam – my favorite pub. I sang because I love to sing, I love baseball, and I want to feel connected to my country even though that’s not always comfortable. I sang and, in that moment, I felt unabashedly American.

And when I finished, I wanted a hot dog with everything.

Peace,
Milton

The lectionary is still camped out in the Sermon on the Mount. Today’s passage was Matthew 6:24-34, best known for Jesus saying we cannot serve two masters and that the lilies of the field know how to trust better than we do. Ginger and I had good discussions about how we were to read the verses when we know there are Christians who die of hunger everyday and whose needs are not met. Then we began to talk about this passage as a follow up to Jesus’ outlandish words about living non-violently and began to see both as calls to community and generosity: when I can trust God to be generous without making sure I’m taken care of first, I can begin to feel a little more lily-like.

Ginger finished her sermon this morning asking us, “What would it take for us to humble ourselves before God?’ I’m still working on my answer.

sunday sonnet #19 

The question is just what we’re after
while living our days on the planet:
we’ll choose between God as our master
or ourselves in control, just like Janet.

The lilies we’re called to consider
as trust in it’s best incarnation;
Jesus we don’t take for a kidder –
the image requires explanation.

“Don’t hit back,” he said just before –
the point being to pull us together,
the self-centered hunger for more
eats away at life’s basic tether.

The lilies compel our ability
to live out our faith with humility.

Peace,
Milton

we may hold
these truths
to be self-evident
life, liberty, and
the pursuit
of happiness

however
even truths
have their limits
when we wrote
those words
we were young

and isolated
and thinking mostly
of ourselves
now, we are older
and established
and powerful

and something
has been lost
in the translation
of your cries
for freedom:
our gas prices

are going up
along with our
fear and anxiety
we know
you have suffered
but the world

was working
pretty well
like it was
change is hard
when it costs us
for you

to be free
we hope
you understand
perhaps this truth
or, at least,
reality lives
in the shadows:

our comfort and power
matter more (to us)
than your freedom
we do understand
your yearnings
can’t that be enough?

Peace,
Milton

Whether it’s Gadhafi or Guantanamo, torture is wrong. Thanks to Amy Laura Hall to organizing an event that gets us talking about it out loud. Come to Durham and join the conversation, please.

Peace,
Milton

I am still unaccustomed
to the spring sun shining
down in February after so
many years of snow on snow,
nor have I grown to grasp
what is already growing
in our yard: gentle shoots
of promise, tree buds of
tenacity, but I do know
enough to dig and clear,
to rake and remulch,
to prune and prepare . . .
and then come inside
smelling like hope,
like the good earth,
and already hungry
for the vegetables
I have yet to plant.

Peace,
Milton

I preached this morning, using part of the same passage Ginger preached from last week. (The sermon is in the previous post.) A sermon and a sonnet in the same day is hard work.

We read the same passage in church today
as last week — about loving enemies
and turning cheeks when violence aims our way –
though Jesus’ words, they leave us ill at ease.

We see competition as our raison d’etre –
Non-violence is not on the table;
Love, joy, peace, and hope are quite the quartet,
but his plan, well, it’s just not that stable.

If you don’t fight back then you will get whacked,
Yet, look at Ghandi, Mandela, and King;
Their courage and resistance to fight back
Meant love could do a new and blessed thing.

Turn cheeks and open hearts to forgive;
Love is the only force that lets all live.

Peace,
Milton