don't eat alone

Early Saturday afternoon, after we had spent the morning unpacking the last of the boxes from our move (last August), Ginger and I slipped out of the house for lunch together at a new Cuban sandwich shop that opened only last Thursday in downtown Durham called Old Havana. I had scouted it out on opening day and was ready to return. It was about one-thirty when we walked into a full restaurant. We ordered and found two seats on a couch at the far end of the place that shared a table with two chairs already occupied by a young couple. After a few minutes, we began talking to one another only to find out the woman was in a M. Div/MSW program and the man was a teacher. The commonalties were comforting.

After they left, our order came up and we dove into our sandwiches and the side of roasted plantains, which were worth the trip on their own. As things slowed down in the restaurant, the owner made the rounds of the tables and stopped to see how we were doing. I was effusive about the plantains and he said, “You should try them with some black beans and rice.”

“You have those on the menu?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I’ll get you some.” He returned with a bowl of beans and a plate with more plantains. I wish I had the vocabulary to tell you how good the beans were and how much he was telling the truth about how they even tasted better with the plantains. In between yummy noises, we talked with our mouths full and kept asking questions. “Are you open everyday?”

“We are closed on Sunday,” Roberto said, “for church.” We asked where he went to church and then Ginger identified herself as the pastor at Pilgrim and Roberto smiled and said, kindly, “Welcome, my sister and brother in Christ.”
One of my favorite stories in the gospels the account of Jesus walking with the two men on the road to Emmaus and how they only recognize him after they have sat down to dinner and he breaks the bread. Last Saturday morning, I caught a glimpse of what they must have felt: caught by surprise at the table, overcome by the sacred ordinariness of the Spirit.

Open the eyes of my heart, Lord . . .

Peace,
Milton

I was reading this morning in a small volume of poetry I have had for years called Poems to Live By: In Uncertain Times and found some words worth sharing today.

First, from Robert Bly:

Things to Think

Think in ways you’ve never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you’ve ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.

When someone knocks on the door,
Think that he’s about
To give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,
Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time,
Or that it’s been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

And this one by W. H. Auden:

Leap Before You Look

The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.

The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.

The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.

Much can be said for social savoir-faire,
But to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep;
No one is watching, but you have to leap.

A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear;
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.

And, lastly, from Naomi Shihab Nye:

So Much Happiness

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records…..

Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.

Peace,
Milton

Over the past several weeks, I’ve accumulated some new music — either in actuality or by listening and watching online — so I thought I would pass a few of the gems along since I haven’t done that in awhile. I’ll start with the newest: The Decemberists and “Rise to Me” from their new CD, The King Is Dead.

Justin Townes Earle, who has the distinction of being both Steve Earle’s son and Townes Van Zandt’s namesake, has a great record called Harlem River Blues. This is the title track.

Sara Watkins was a member of Nickel Creek, plays a mean fiddle, and even hosted A Prairie Home Companion a couple of weeks ago. I don’t own her new self-titled record, but here’s “Too Much.”

Another Sarah, whose last name is Jarosz, does some picking and singing of her own. Her new CD is called Song Up In Her Head. Here is her cover of Tom Waits’ “Come On Up to the House.”

Robert Plant’s latest project is Band Of Joy, which was produced by Buddy Miller and has Patty Griffin singing in said band. Here is “Angel Dance.”

Last, but not least, is a CD I know about because of Julie, our former foster daughter. Here is the Zac Brown Band with “Sic ’em on a Chicken” from The Foundation, which should keep your toes tapping and your face smiling for the rest of the day.

Peace,
Milton

I talked to one guy today
who got tired of construction
and “making the wrong
people rich,” which was as
far as he got before another,
who used to work with an
autistic kid, asked for help –
we were cooking breakfast
together for folks at the shelter
who stood single file for
sausage, oatmeal, and eggs.

As they took their trays,
I wondered what stories
were passing by untold:
the dishwasher in shirt and tie;
the baby in the stroller;
the old man who could not
speak and only growled –
with a smile on his face;
the four men in the back
who ate and never spoke;
the woman serving coffee.

I stood in the middle of
the used book store of life,
where worn copies of great
works seem to be stacked
to go unnoticed that they
might remain unread
and remainders remain
because we’re serving lunch.
“The rice was a little undercooked,”
said one, kindly, “but I loved
the concept of the meal.”

Me, too. I love a table
big enough for food critics
and failures, architects and
addicts, teachers and
turncoats, homeless,
hopeful, left out, left over,
betrayers and betrayed,
where – for a few moments –
every book on the shelf
was dusted off long enough
to be recognized.

Peace,
Milton

The assignment for my kids yesterday was to write for ten minutes about the word “explore.” I did the assignment as well.

to explore

— to go where I
have not gone before —

is to follow the

                       footprints

                                mindprints

                                          heartprints
of others who
dreamed before me
and wandered off . . .

(wondered?)

. . . into their great unknown
only to see

                                       home fires
                                       already burning
                                       on the horizon

Peace,
Milton

The title is not mine, nor is the poem that follows. A friend posted this video animation interpretation of a poem by a poet and teacher named Taylor Mali, which led me to his website and there I found this poem, which is one of those he-said-what-I-feel-and-I-want-to-give-him-credit-for-it kind of things. (An epithalamion, by the way, is a wedding song.)

Falling in love is like owning a dog
an epithalamion by Taylor Mali

First of all, it’s a big responsibility,
especially in a city like New York.
So think long and hard before deciding on love.
On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security:
when you’re walking down the street late at night
and you have a leash on love
ain’t no one going to mess with you.
Because crooks and muggers think love is unpredictable.
Who knows what love could do in its own defense?

On cold winter nights, love is warm.
It lies between you and lives and breathes
and makes funny noises.
Love wakes you up all hours of the night with its needs.
It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy.

Love doesn’t like being left alone for long.
But come home and love is always happy to see you.
It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life,
but you can never be mad at love for long.

Is love good all the time? No! No!
Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love.

Love makes messes.
Love leaves you little surprises here and there.
Love needs lots of cleaning up after.
Sometimes you just want to get love fixed.
Sometimes you want to roll up a piece of newspaper
and swat love on the nose,
not so much to cause pain,
just to let love know Don’t you ever do that again!

Sometimes love just wants to go for a nice long walk.
Because love loves exercise.
It runs you around the block and leaves you panting.
It pulls you in several different directions at once,
or winds around and around you
until you’re all wound up and can’t move.

But love makes you meet people wherever you go.
People who have nothing in common but love
stop and talk to each other on the street.

Throw things away and love will bring them back,
again, and again, and again.
But most of all, love needs love, lots of it.
And in return, love loves you and never stops.

One other note. I’ve had a Stevie Wonder song in my head all day that makes for a good musical companion to Taylor’s wonderful words. I close with a song.

Peace,
Milton

This morning I went to Watts Street Baptist Church to hear Tim Tyson preach on “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr: Black Power and the Religion of Jesus.” He rocked and I will have more to say about what I learned in another post (or two). But tonight I want to share the MLK quotes included in “A Litany of Rededication” we said together at the close of the service.

“One of the tragedies of humanity’s long trek has been the limiting of neighborly concern to tribe, race, class, or nation. . . . Our world is a neighborhood. We must learn to live together as brothers [and sisters], or we will perish as fools. For I submit, nothing will be done until people put their bodies and souls into this.”

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than peole, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

“There are some things in our society and in our world to which I’m proud to be maladjusted, to which I call upon all people of good will to be maladjusted, until the good society is realized. I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating efforts of physical violence.”

“I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. . . . Sooner or later, all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace. . . . [We] must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

“I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. . . . The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing . . . for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names; and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.”

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

I am saddened that these words spoken a half century ago sound as if they were uttered yesterday.

Peace,
Milton

Many years ago, my friend Billy Crockett and I read an article about a ship captain who, with his crew, abandoned ship when it began to sink, leaving the passengers on board. The story led us to the song title, “Down With the Ship,” which ended up being a song about Martin Luther King. Now that I have begun to learn how to use iMovie, I have been able to put pictures to the song. So I offer both lyrics and images as my way of giving thanks for Martin’s life and legacy.

down with the ship

martin was ahead of his time
and time was so far behind
he had no eye for an eye
in his point of view
but what he could see
it was a beautiful dream
the trouble with dreaming things
is seeing them come true

when you set out on the high sea
when you set out on a hope trip
sometimes you get to your bright tomorrow
sometimes you’ve got to go down with the ship
sometimes you’ve got to go down with the ship

martin had the fight of his life
stared right into the enemies’ eyes
tried to wake them from their comfortable lie
that’s how ships go down
he wasn’t ready for a long white robe
he prayed for brave hearts and hands to hold
and people right here to sing and know
that we shall overcome

when you set out on the high sea
when you set out on a hope trip
sometimes you get to your bright tomorrow
sometimes you’ve got to go down with the ship
sometimes you’ve got to go down with the ship

the truth won’t die just because your heroes fall
someday all flesh will stand to see it all
see the mountains laid low
and the rough made plain . . .

and we’ll go sailing on the high sea
oh we’ll set out on a hope trip
set our eyes on a new horizon
and don’t look back
and we’ll go sailing on the high sea
believing love has got a firm grip
set our eyes on a new tomorrow
set our hearts to go down with the ship
set our hearts to go down with the ship
set our hearts to go down with the ship
sometimes you’ve got to go down with the ship

Peace,
Milton