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advent journal: happy to be here

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1

In my reading earlier in the week, Madeleine L’Engle (on a page I can’t find now) talked about the necessary structure of life giving us freedom. She used poetry in general, and the sonnet in particular, to make her point: the boundaries of the form create the space to move freely. I’ve had my copy of Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks in the CD player this week and he proves her point:

‘Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
“Come in,” she said,
“I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”

This morning, Raymo reminded me the structure that fosters creativity runs to the very core of our existence.

Blake was right to see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower. The silicon and oxygen in the grain of sand and the carbon in the flower could not have come into being unless the forces that hold the universe together had exactly the values they do. Adjust the strength of the electromagnetic force or the nuclear force but slightly, and you knock out of kilter the resonance in the carbon nucleus that allows three helium nuclei to come together in the cores of stars to form that element. Stop the synthesis of elements at helium, and never in a billion years of burning would a galaxy of stars produce enough silicon or oxygen to make a single grain of sand. No, the coin did not come down on its edge. The situation is more improbable than that. The coin was flipped into the air 10(to the fifteenth power) times, and it came down on its edge but once. If all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth were possible universes – that is, universes consistent with the laws of physics as we know them – and only one of those grains of sand were a universe that allowed for the existence of intelligent life, then that one grain of sand is the universe we inhabit. (93)

And in that universe, on a tiny planet revolving around an average star, I am one small being; one small, grateful being. Had the synthesis stopped at helium (notice the way I write as though I understand), we would not be here. Here, in the middle of the afternoon of the day that begins my fifty-fourth year, I’m aware that the journey that is my life, that has gone from Corpus Christi to Bulawayo to Lusaka to Nairobi to Accra to Houston to Dallas to Boston to Durham, with intermittent stops in Fort Worth along the way, is equally as full of structure and surprise as any planet or poem. The structure of Facebook allows for birthday greetings to come across the years, like light from distant stars, all arriving at the same time, a meteor shower of memories and affection. What a gift.

While I’m here typing at Beyu Caffé, Durham’s newest coffee shop and restaurant, Ginger is presiding at a funeral for one of our church members who passed away a couple of weeks ago. Her family had to come some distance, and so the service was set for today. I know that one way to look at life is to see each passing year, even each day, as a step closer to the end. What often comes with that is an aversion towards, if not a fear of, aging. I am growing older; my intention is also to be growing, period. These are not days to begin winding down, or settling in, but to be looking up and out, buoyed by all the gratitude I can muster. I turn to another poet, Guy Clark:

I got an ol’ blue shirt
And it suits me just fine
I like the way it feels
So I wear it all the time
I got an old guitar
It won’t ever stay in tune
I like the way it sounds
In a dark and empty room

I got an ol’ pair of boots
And they fit just right
I can work all day
And I can dance all night
I got an ol’ used car
And it runs just like a top
I get the feelin’ it ain’t
Ever gonna stop

Stuff that works, stuff that holds up
The kind of stuff you don’t hang on the wall
Stuff that’s real, stuff you feel
The kind of stuff you reach for when you fall

I got a pretty good friend
Who’s seen me at my worst
He can’t tell if I’m a blessing
Or a curse
But he always shows up
When the chips are down
That’s the kind of stuff
I like to be around

Stuff that works, stuff that holds up
The kind of stuff you don’t hang on the wall
Stuff that’s real, stuff you feel
The kind of stuff you reach for when you fall

I got a woman I love
She’s crazy and paints like God
She’s got a playground sense of justice
She won’t take odds
I got a tattoo with her name
Right through my soul
I think everything she touches
Turns to gold

Stuff that works, stuff that holds up
The kind of stuff you don’t hang on the wall
Stuff that’s real, stuff you feel
The kind of stuff you reach for when you fall

Thank you.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: birthday musical interlude

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2

Since I share a birthday with Frank Sinatra, Jennifer Connelly, Emerson Fittipaldi, Tracy Kidder, Dickey Betts, Edvard Munch, John Jay, Gustave Fluabert, and Dionne Warwick, among others, this song feels appropriately celebratory.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: comprehending a metaphor

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1

These are the words with which my day began:

Only a daredevil makes metaphors. To make a metaphor is to walk a tightrope, to be shot out of a cannon, to do aerial somersaults without a net. The trouble with metaphors is that you never know when they’ll let you down. You turn a somersault in mid-air, you reach for the trapeze – and suddenly it isn’t there.

Take the butterfly for instance. Surely the butterfly is a safe bet for a metaphor. The delicacy of beauty. The fragility of life . . . Even Shakespeare does it: “ . . . for men, like butterflies, show not their mealy wings but to summer.” And there you go, sailing through the air, the daring young man on the flying metaphor, when . . .

Along comes the mourning cloak butterfly. (Raymo 77)

I know. I hadn’t heard of it either. But the mourning cloak butterfly, it turns out is one tough little creature, hibernating through the New England winter, among others, and showing up at the first sign of any kind of warmth (using that term loosely). I was one of those who thought of butterflies as poster children for all things beautiful and fleeting (except for Monarchs, maybe), until I read Raymo.

And there goes the metaphor. Beauty is fragile? Life is fleeting? Not at all. Beauty, it turns out, is tough, and life is well nigh impossible to extinguish. The mourning cloak proves it . . . It is an old tattoo ringing in the ears of philosophers and poets, physicists and mystics: the power of the mourning cloak, the resilience of its beauty, what makes it tough, what makes the flame of elegance impossible to extinguish, is something that cannot be seen. (78,80)

Before I finished my first cup of coffee, my mind was off and running to connect the dots. First, an old favorite from Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes –
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

And then on to a passage I read from L’Engle last night that quoted the very verse from John that Raymo echoed twice:

St. John said, “And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not understand it, and cannot extinguish it (I need the double meaning of the word comprehend). This is the great cry of affirmation that is heard over and over again in our imaginative literature, in all art. It is a light to lighten our darkness, to guide us, and we do not need to know, in the realm of provable fact, exactly where it is going to take place. (183)

One of my working metaphors for faith is art: living faithfully is living artistically, imaginatively (as in image of God). Art is prophetic, compassionate, even incarnational; so is faith. The artist doesn’t set out to make sense as much as make meaning, to find ways to connect whatever he or she can, to move others to respond and relate. Art is both disquieting and cohesive. Art is the fire that burns without consuming; so is faith. The opposite of art is fear, destruction. The heart of art is love, imagination.

So where does the metaphor break down?

I heard a clip from President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech and went to read the whole thing. Here is the transcript of what I heard:

I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war. What I do know is that meeting these challenges will require the same vision, hard work, and persistence of those men and women who acted so boldly decades ago. And it will require us to think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace.

We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.

I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.” As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there’s nothing weak — nothing passive — nothing naïve — in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

I understand he was making a speech in a world hell bent on beating each other up, and as president of a nation that tends to believe that a realistic worldview is synonymous with arming ourselves to the teeth. I realize he felt he had political realities to take into account. And I think he showed that my metaphor represents a minority opinion. We allow ourselves to believe force answers fear, rather than art, and peace is not as much a viable option as it is a Quixotic goal. The limits of reason are not the limits of either faith or art.

They never were.

We are preparing our hearts for Christ to be born again in our time and our culture. The first time the story was told, the baby was born into poverty and grew up on the margins of society. He grew up, surrounding himself with people of no power or means and taught them, expecting they would keep on going. And then the ones with the power – those who saw the world realistically – killed him. His death was not the last word because of force or power, but because of love, imagination, and mystery: because of art: faith.

All the just wars we can wage will never resurrect anything. Onward Christian soldiers is a metaphor that fell apart long ago. Go out and stand in the dark, under the stars. Get up early and watch the sunrise (I’m not going to, but you do). Go out and find a mourning coat butterfly. Listen to songs like this one:

I woke up this morning
and none of the news was good
death machines were rumbling
cross the ground where Jesus stood
and the man on my TV told me
it had always been that way
and there’s nothing anyone could do or say
and I almost listened to him
yeah, I almost lost my mind
then I regained my senses again
looked into my heart to find
I believe that one fine day
all the children of Abraham
will lay down their swords
forever in Jerusalem

or this one:

and in despair I bowed my head
there is no peace on earth, I said
for hate is strong and mocks the song
of peace on earth goodwill to men

then rang the bells both loud and deep
God is not dead nor doth he sleep
the wrong shall fail the right prevail
with peace on earth goodwill to men

And then let us say again, together, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot comprehend it.”

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: suppertime

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1

Who would think a single motion
could carry multiple meanings.
I spend my days stirring the soup,
measuring out the corn meal,
making sure everyone eats well;
it is good and honest work.

Tonight I stood over the soup
in the warm light of our kitchen,
carried by the scent of cornbread
in the oven, the scuttle of schnauzers
at my feet, pouring more of myself
into the recipe than usual.

Jesus spent his days feeding people,
yet, when he broke bread with
friends, his chosen family, gathered
in a small room like our kitchen,
he called them to remember —
to never forget what a meal meant.

It’s easy, you know, to forget,
to let food be only fuel for function.
Supper, tonight, was an end not
the means; now, washing clean
the bowls, I am put back together,
remembered in our simple supper.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: a circle of friends

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1

Time is a living thing.

We talk about it as something that ticks by or slips away, something we make or take or keep or lose, but it is a force, a dimension, an entity on its own terms. Though we often talk about telling time, we do better to listen to what it is saying, or revealing. Chet Raymo talks about looking out into the night sky as a venture back in time, the light in the sky coming from different stars and galaxies, all different light years away. What we see in the present moment, standing underneath Orion, are layers of time all arriving at once; tonight I am found anew by words from a few old friends.

Paging through an old book, particularly one I’ve read several times before, is much the same experience. Madeleine L’Engle published A Circle of Quiet in 1972; she was past fifty and I was closing in on sixteen and preparing to move back to the States for good, leaving Africa behind. I finished high school, college, seminary, chaplaincy, and was working as a youth minister when, Blair, a friend from Baylor Hospital days gave me the book for Christmas. I was thirty-two. Seeing the name written on the inside cover took me back to conversations long since buried under all that collects in life like the dust that buries ancient civilizations. I can tell from my margin notes that I’ve been though the book at least three times, not counting this Advent. Some of the comments I can calendar easier than others. I have names written in the margins next to lines that remind me of someone, or something someone said. Others are distinguishable because of the different colors of ink.

This time around, I’m reading the book at about the same age that Madeleine wrote it and I picture her being my age for the first time in our literary friendship. I am getting to know her when she was my age. And I smiled when I read this paragraph:

Jung disagreed with Freud that the decisive period in our lives is the first years. Instead, Jung felt that the decisive period is that in which my husband and I are now, the period of our middle years, when we have passed through childhood with its dependency on our parents; when we’ve weathered the storms of adolescence and the first probings into the ultimate questions; when we’ve gone through early adulthood with its problems of career and marriage and bringing up our babies; and for the first time in our lives find ourselves alone before the crucial problem of ho, after all these years, we are. All the protective covering of the first three stages is gone, and we are suddenly alone with ourselves and have to look directly at the great and unique problem of the meaning of our own particular existence in this particular universe. (113)

My twenty-year old margin note reads: “hope for growing old.”

In certain moments, the years feel as though they flow by like a river; in others, they stack up like altar stones. Either way, the more of them I live through, the more I find myself thankful to be here, and to be. Madeleine died a little over two years ago. My father-in-law is here, but disappearing in his Alzheimer’s. I went to Texas several weeks back because I thought my mother was not going to recover from surgery (she’s still here and doing fine). I am a couple of days away from turning fifty-three, perhaps the same way a farmer turns the soil in preparation for planting. I suppose I could think of turning, as in turning a car down a different road, or the way a horse turns toward the clubhouse; then there’s turning, as in repentance, and the turning of the leaves, blazing their way to death. Maybe all of those.

Everything in the universe shares the same arc of being, if you will, moving from where we entered the story to where we exit, stage left. We are both essential and temporary. At the bottom of Page 99, Madeleine wrote:

Paradox again: to take ourselves seriously enough to take ourselves lightly. If every hair of my head is counted, then in the very scheme of the cosmos I matter; I am created by a power who cares about the sparrow, and the rabbit in the snare, and the people in the crowded streets; who calls the stars by name. And you. And me.

My twenty-year old margin note reads: “Living with a sense of appropriate significance.”

Fifteen years after that note, my friend Burt called one day and asked me to write a poem about the value of daily work for worship at his church, and I sent him this.

daily work

In the crush of afternoon traffic I sit
in an unending queue of cars, staring
at the stoplight; from my driver’s seat
I can see the beckoning billboard:
“Come visit the New Planetarium
You Tiny Insignificant Speck in the Universe.”

When the signal changes, I cross the bridge
over river and railroad yard, turn left
past the donut shop, and park in front
of my house. Only my schnauzers notice
because they have been home alone.

I have been hard at work in my daily orbit,
but I stopped no wars, saved no lives,
and I forgot to pick up the dry cleaning;
today would be a good day to be Jimmy Stewart:
to have some angel show me I matter.

As I walk the puppies down to the river,
I wonder how many times have I come to the water
hoping to hear, “You are my beloved child.”
Instead, I stand in life’s rising current only to admit,
“I am not the one you were looking for.”

I stand in the stream of my existence,
between the banks of blessing and despair,
convinced that only messiahs matter,
that I have been called to change the world
and I have not done my job.

Yet, if I stack up the details of my life
like stones for an altar, I see I am
one In the line of humanity,
in the river of love: I am a speck,
in God’s eyes, of some significance:
so say, also, the schnauzers
every time I come home.

However the years stack up, I have spent more days than I can count going to the river or the altar or out under the stars to be reminded (convinced?) that I matter, even as I know I am only passing through. I lean into Madeleine one more time:

So my hope, each day as I grow older, is that this will never be simply chronological aging – which is a nuisance and frequently a bore — the old ‘bod’ at over half a century has had hard use; it won’t take what it did a few years ago – but that I will also grow into maturity, where the experience which can be acquired only through chronology will teach me how to be more aware, open, unafraid to be vulnerable, involved, committed, to accept disagreement without feeling threatened (repeat and underline this one), to understand that I cannot take myself seriously until I stop taking myself seriously – to be, in fact, a true adult. (132)

And one more twenty-year old margin note, quoting another friend, Reed: “We stop doing things that prepare us way too early.”

For all that has been, thanks. For all that will be, yes.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — There’s a new recipe.

advent journal: musical interlude

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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0

James sings Joni.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: towards a fascinated faith

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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0

I first found Chet Raymo in the Science section of the Boston Globe where he wrote a weekly column. I was neither an ornithologist nor an astronomer, but he talked of birds and stars in a way that fed both my curiosity and my faith: he made me think I could understand what he was talking about and share his sense of wonder. The first time I read The Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage, I discovered we shared a faith background, though his was more history and mine present tense. He described his journey using a bird as his metaphor:

The upland plover is a shy bird. It is the color of dry grass. In the rare event that one I flushed, it takes to air with a soft, bubbling whistle . . . If the poet wanted an image for the absconded God, he could have found none better than the upland plover.

I can’t say exactly when it was that the God of my youth took to the upland plains. He was not driven from my soul. His flight was no fault of my teachers’. My lapse from faith occurred not long after graduation from college, at the end of a period of intense belief during which His face seemed palpably near . . . And sacred plovers leapt from every page, took to wings in coveys, and made a tumult with their wings that drowned the thin voice of doubt. Emily Dickinson called hope “the thing with feathers.” The plover was our hope. The plover was Faith, Hope, and Charity.

Then one day I woke up and the plover was gone . . . I turned to my science books and got on with the business of life. (55-56)

One of the songs that makes the rounds this time of year begins with the little lamb aasking the shepherd, “Do you hear what I hear?” I learned how to look at the night sky with a greater sense of wonder because of Raymo’s Science Musings and yet, he doesn’t see what I see anymore. The bird has flown, he says, and so he moved on. It doesn’t surprise me that he has found his new church, if you will, among scientists because scientists are the explorers of our age. We have circumnavigated the world time and again, but we are learning about particles smaller than we ever imagined, finding stars and quasars and black holes farther away than we ever dreamed we would be able to see, and dimensions to our existence far beyond the three we were taught in school. The legacy of the psalmist (“When I gaze into the night sky and see the wonders of your hands . . .”) has been passed beyond the church walls, and we are the lesser for it.

Shane Claiborne wrote an article for Esquire magazine (HT to Jan for pointing it out, since Esquire is not one of my regular reads) and said something that connects here, I think:

The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination. But over the past few decades our Christianity, at least here in the United States, has become less and less fascinating. We have given the atheists less and less to disbelieve. And the sort of Christianity many of us have seen on TV and heard on the radio looks less and less like Jesus.

In 1972, Madeleine L’Engle was struggling with being told that identifying as a Christian would turn some people off. She responded:

I wouldn’t mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it is. I wouldn’t mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities. I wouldn’t mind if, once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the word “Christian” means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and holier-than-thouness. Who, today, can recognize a Christian because of “how those Christians love one another”? (98)

How did we become the keeps of the status quo, the defenders of truth, the rational ones determined to be relevant? Why are we not primarily consumed by and with the mystery and fascination of the Gospel story? What happened to lost in wonder, love, and praise?

We were breathed (laughed) into being, along with quarks and quasars, by our over-the-top-everything-matters-hey-look-what-I-can-do-I-love-you-with-all-my-heart-and-everyone-else-too-let’s-go-make-more-stars-and-stuff-all-ye-all-ye-oxen-free-crazy-go-nuts kind of God. Yet we talk about God as though it’s all business, and serious business at that. We live and worship as though our primary task is to explain God to the world, rather than introduce the One Who is Love to everyone we can and see what happens. Our God may be an awesome God, but our God is not rational. Our God is Love.

The Incarnation doesn’t make sense. Why God would choose to become human, and partake in the entire human experience from birth on, is in itself an outrageous act of redemption. Being fully human is a good thing. It matters; we matter because God loves us from the word go and never, never stops. That Unbridled Love let loose in the world means a peasant girl gives birth to the Messiah in a barn, poor shepherds hear angel choirs, rich foreigners chase stars across the sands, and there are mores stories than we can tell about those who healed and helped, even saved. We, as Christians, are not called to explain any of it, but to become carriers. of redemption, infected with the same irrational exuberance that lives in the heart of God.

A healthy church has less to do with making sure the theology is right than it does with being right with each other. If we chose to redeem our time together rather than make demands, we might see God differently and the story as well. Though I love Raymo’s imagery, I don’t see God as a shy bird hiding in the high places. The story we are telling in these days says just the opposite:

Love divine, all loves excelling
Joy of heaven to earth come down

Why, then, are we not out under the stars with the shepherds and the scientists asking, “Do you see what I see?” Oh, that we might live out a fascinated faith together.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: a sense of humor

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3

Some time during the evening on Saturday I first noticed the little wisp that floated into my vision. It looks like a pen and ink drawing of a cloud, or a thin line of black smoke, except it has a certain bounce to it, based on my blinking, that makes it do a little dance and float down and then back up to the top of the frame. I learned today at the eye doctor that my smoky little dancer is called an eye floater, and that it’s probably here to stay. What looks like it is hanging out in front of me is actually something going on inside my eyeball, in the vitreous humor, and is part of growing older – at least for me. The humor in my sight is a bit twisted, it seems.

When we were in Texas for my mother’s surgery a couple of months ago, a friend came by to see her. He is a cellular biologist, which is actually a bit of a misnomer because he is way inside the cell dealing with particles smaller than I even know how to imagine. I asked what he was studying now and he told us they had just gotten a new microscope that allowed them to see exponentially deeper into the cell and its subparticles, and he began to tell us how these submicroscopic parts of us open up related to our emotions. When we feel good, they are open to receive nutrients; when we are angry or sad, they close. Then he said something even more interesting: “They open up the most when we laugh.”

Raymo tells of an Mediterranean creation myth that says God brought everything into being with seven laughs: Hha Hha Hha Hha Hha Hha Hha. (46) As he goes on to speak with his continuing sense of wonder about the universe, he says,

God’s Hha Hha Hha was no snicker, but a roaring belly laugh. (50)

I love the idea of all creation bursting forth in a fit of divine laugher. I picture everything from the giggles that made monkeys, the chortles that produced platypuses, and the guffaws that gave us hippos. By the time God got to humans, I picture the kind of laughter that makes your sides hurt and your nose run. I love the idea, and it’s hard to hear on a day like today. My in-laws are visiting this week, which means we are up close and personal with my father-in-law’s continuing descent into Alzheimer’s. This wonderful, gentle man who turned seventy-nine yesterday and has always carried a sparkle in his eye that gave us a glimpse of God’s creative laughter looks empty now. His eyes are vacant; he is in the room and he is not here. His very existence is being insidiously erased while we watch and our hearts are broken. The comfort we find is in watching our Schnauzers gather around him with a love that finds him when we cannot; he sits and pets them and they love him back, for which we are grateful, even as we are exhausted by the prospect of what is yet to come. As we prepare for Christ to be born again, we are also trying to prepare for the grief that is yet to come. It’s hard to hold wonder and weary together.

Yet what are the options?

Madeleine L’Engle tells of being asked at a workshop for high school students, “Do you really and truly believe in God with no doubts at all?” She answered, “I really and truly believe in God with all kinds of doubts.” (63) She continued to talk to the students about the three choices we had about how we live our lives. We can live as though the whole thing is a cosmic accident: a bad joke. We can live as though Someone started the whole thing but chose to remain aloof. Then she articulated her choice:

Then there’s a third way: to live as though you believe that the power behind the universe is a power of love, a personal power of love, a love so great that all of us really do matter to him. He loves us so much that every single one of our lives has meaning; he really does know about the fall of every sparrow, and the hairs of our head are really counted. That’s the only way I can live. (64)

My mind moves to melody in times like these, to those words put to music that find a way to carry the strains of laughter that endure across the years like starlight from distant galaxies just now bringing light to our darkness. Richard Thompson wrote

this old house is falling down around my ears
I’m drowning in a fountain of my tears
when all my will is gone you hold me sway
I need you at the dimming of the day

And this from Kris Kristofferson:

there’s a song in my soul for the sun going down
when it dies at the end of the day
with a sadness descending as soft as the sound
of the light that was slipping away

the heavens above me seem empty and gray
as dreams that won’t ever come true
then the star spangled glory of love fills the sky
and my heart with the wonder of you

As Christmas draws closer, we will begin to speak more of shepherds and stars, weary and wonder, if you will, walking hand in hand to the manger: the tired tenders of someone else’s sheep lost in wonder at the angel band.

and ye beneath life’s crushing load
whose forms are bending low
who toil along the winding way
with painful steps and slow
look now for glad and golden hours
come quickly on the wing
o rest beside the weary road
and hear the angels sing

Christmas will come this year without bringing answers of what the days hold for our family and they will also come with reminders that God has never stopped laughing or loving. God didn’t inflict Reuben with Alzheimer’s to teach us a lesson or to prove a point. God didn’t set things in motion and then sit back to see how we deal with it. God is with us. In the midst of our pain, Love has taken up residence to show us the Laughter that brought the universe into being runs deep beyond our sorrows, deep into our beings, feeding our cells and our souls.

for the wonders that surround us
for the truth that still confounds us
most of all that love has found us
thanks be to God

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: the specificity of sacredness

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3

I’m not sure the first time that it happened; over twenty years, I’ve lost count of how many times we have repeated the scene. Ginger always begins the conversation, and the statement generally comes out of nowhere:

“OK,” she’ll say, “name three reasons you love me.”

And I name three specific things – three the-way-you-wear-your-hat kind of things — that pull me to her as to no other because it is in the details of life that love finds a place to live and grow. I know what love is because of those details, though I’m hard pressed to write a definition that explains it. We talk about love as a feeling, but that idea quickly runs out of steam. Madeleine L’Engle quotes Hugh Bishop of Mirfield (not to be confused with the other Hugh Bishops) who said, “Love is not an emotion. It is a policy” (45). It is, as Billy Joel sang, a matter of trust.

Many years ago before Ginger and I even met, I saw Alan Alda interviewed by Barbara Walters and she asked about his then twenty-five year old marriage, commenting that bonds like that didn’t hold well in the Hollywood. “How did you do it?” she asked.

“We just kept our promises,” he answered. “We said we would love each other through life and we have. Everyone is looking for a custom fit in an off the rack world.”

The simplicity of the metaphor stuck with me as worth remembering. He wasn’t saying just find someone and get on with it. He was saying when you decide to love, then love. Don’t keep looking to find a better fit. Let the veracity of your commitment shape you to fit. Pick three things, and then three more things, and then three more until you have a lifetime of reasons for finding love in the one who has kept the promises with you. L’Engle says a similar thing:

Love can’t be pinned down by a definition, and it certainly can’t be prove, any more than anything else important in life can be proved. Love is people, is a person . . . I am slowly coming to understand with my heart as well as my head that love is not a feeling. It is a person. It has a lot to do with compassion, and with creation. (43)

I was hardly through the paragraph before I was humming an old song by my friend, Billy Crockett called “Portrait of Love.” The premise of the song saw Paul as an artist painting a picture of Jesus with the words of 1 Corinthians 13. The chorus says:

Love is patient, love is kind
Never jealous, free of pride
Love will never be confine
And love will abide
Love is hopeful, love’s not blind
Love is faithful, every time
Love is Someone, and
If you’ll open your eyes, you’ll find
That love is alive

I met with the other deacons around the Communion Table at the front of the sanctuary to practice before the service. We have been working on our consistency in serving the elements as a means of communicating how essential the Meal is for all of us. Making sure we are lined up as we need to be, or that we are clear about who will pass what, or that we move in some cohesive sense is not about being efficient or perfect as much as it one of intentionality our love for the congregation. We mean to be prepared to serve and share the meal. We mean to keep our promises in our little off the rack church, which means we have to be able to be involved in the moment and detached enough to see what we are creating together. L’Engle says it this way:

Detachment and involvement: the artist must have both. The link between them is compassion.

Sacredness requires specificity. The grand esoteric themes of theology have their place, but love takes root in those specific moments when we voluntarily and intentionally enter one another’s pain. “God so loved the world” makes sense when love has a name and is lying in the manger. The Incarnation (big theological concept) comes alive in the person of Jesus, God with us in all our off the rackness, all our struggles, in all our, well, lives.

In the specific person of Jesus, God says, “Me, too” in a way that had not been said before. The stories in the gospels are full of specifics, Jesus making particular movements, though not spectacular ones, to offer compassion and healing. He stopped when the woman with the hemorrhage touched his coat. He asked Zacchaeus if he could come over to the house. He wrote in the sand to move the focus off the adulterous woman in John 8 to take the attention off of her for at least a moment. He offered Peter breakfast.

On the way to church this morning, I heard an interview on Weekend Edition Sunday with the authors of Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates: Using Philosophy (and Jokes!) to Explore Life, Death, the Afterlife, and Everything in Between. The book is a humorous and thoughtful look at how people regard the afterlife, the authors having chosen to tell jokes to get their points across. Here is the title joke:

Heidegger and a Hippo stroll up to the Pearly Gates, and Saint Peter says, “Listen, we’ve only got room for one more today. Whoever gives me the best answer to “What is the meaning of life?” gets in.

Heidegger says, “To think Being itself requires disregarding Being to the extent that it is only grounded and interpreted in terms of things and for beings as their ground, as in all metaphysics.”

But before the hippo can grunt one word, Saint Peter says to him, “Today’s your lucky day, Hippy!”

The Incarnation is a mind-blowing theological concept. How do we explain God with skin on? We don’t – we can’t, anymore than we can define love. But when we look at the specific brush strokes of Jesus’ encounters with those around him, we begin to get the picture, to see the portrait of Love. When we gather together at the Table and participate in the simple act of passing bread and wine to one another, we remember Jesus, as in we re-member the Body of Christ and put it back together again. Love lives in the looks, the touch, the simple words of affirmation, the daily acts of recalling the promises we’ve made and keeping them.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: the more I hear the story

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
2

the more I hear the story

the more I think of you
the young girl who took
the weight of grace
and carried it to term
along with the secrets
and accompanying slander

my four weeks of waiting
are a failing facsimile of
pregnancy and preparation
and I know who the boy
became while you were
left to grow up as well

some make you sound perfect
as though Jesus would be
somehow sullied being
born to a peasant girl
who met the angel’s words
with adolescent awe

and childlike openness
to a life of hope and hurt
of devotion and disquietude
and I wonder why it took
so long for me to come
and say simply thank you

Peace,
Milton

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