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nicodemus

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
7

When he first heard the words,
he was the first to hear them:
“You must be born again.”
He was old and the metaphor
muddled his mind: go back
into my mother’s womb–
at this age?

Jesus, however, was not about
to forsake his role as midwife.
There in the darkness, he called
the old man to think of something
other than dying, to let his heart
hear he was the one whom
God so loved.

When my grandfather died,
he was only five years older
than I am right now, maybe no
older than Nicodemus that night.
What kills us all in bits and pieces
is living as though love is earned;
birth is a gift.

The God who birthed the universe
has chosen to spend everyday
since in labor, in the pain of
birth and rebirth, a tenacious
expression of love, a ferocious
gift of grace we cannot deserve,
only receive.

Peace,
Milton

finding words

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
5

There are days I go out looking for words and, then, there are days that words come out looking for me, or at least stand hitchhiking by the road I’m on such that I can’t help but stop and pick them up. Today was a hitchhiking day. On my usual wandering through The Writer’s Almanac, I found this poem by Julie Cadwallader-Staub, who (from what I could find) lives in Vermont, works for a nonprofit, and writes poetry. Today was her first time to be selected by Garrison Keillor, and I am so glad he chose to let her poem flag me down this evening.

Reverence

The air vibrated
with the sound of cicadas
on those hot Missouri nights after sundown
when the grown-ups gathered on the wide back lawn,
sank into their slung-back canvas chairs
tall glasses of iced tea beading in the heat

and we sisters chased fireflies
reaching for them in the dark
admiring their compact black bodies
their orange stripes and seeking antennas
as they crawled to our fingertips
and clicked open into the night air.

In all the days and years that have followed,
I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced
that same utter certainty of the goodness of life
that was as palpable
as the sound of the cicadas on those nights:

my sisters running around with me in the dark,
the murmur of the grown-ups’ voices,
the way reverence mixes with amazement
to see such a small body
emit so much light.

The phrase that made me pull over and stop was “that same utter certainty of the goodness of life” because I’m acutely aware of the flow of sadness and struggle in the lives of so many folks around me these days. And I’m also aware of my propensity to allow the minutiae of my life to build up into a layer of funk and frustration that blinds me from gratitude. Our friends Lori and Terry came over for dinner last night. Lori was talking about the caladiums starting to bloom in their yard and Terry, who had spent the day power washing the mold and mildew off the side of their house, said he didn’t see the flowers because he was too fixated on the “gunk.”

“Once you start looking for it, you can get obsessed,” he said.

But he had his harmonicas with him and I pulled out my guitar and we played and sang our way to a couple of cicada moments, telling stories and sharing laughter late into the evening, giving us a chance to brush up against the goodness and lay the gunk aside, even if only for a few hours.

One of the questions I regularly ask myself is, “Why does my faith matter to me?” Why am I a Christian, a believer, a follower of Jesus? What difference does it make? (Perhaps that last one is better asked, “What difference do I let it make?”) For all of the great sweeping answers I might give about the fate of the world, I’m mostly asking on a day-t0-day level: what does it matter that I am a Christian while I chop celery and onions?

The poet reminded me of the answer: that same utter certainty of the goodness of life.

I’m not claiming hope as a uniquely Christian possession, and I am saying, to paraphrase an old hymn, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus. (Wow. I’m not sure this blog has ever sounded quite that evangelical.) One of the underpinning message of the Incarnation is it is good to be human. We were birthed out of God’s imagination, breathed into existence as evidence of that same utter certainty of the goodness of life. Jesus came into this world as a human being to call us to be fully human: full of grace and gratitude, awake to all that God has for us to see and do. That sense of goodness doesn’t disregard the suffering or overlook the grief, but it does say I am here to do more than get mired down in the details or let my heart get covered over with gunk.

In my ramblings, I’m afraid I might be weaving two or three strands into a confusing cord (chord?), so I want to be clear. I am, as I said, aware of several close to me who are hurting deeply for various and very serious reasons. I’m not saying they are covered with gunk. I am saying the poem today did a little power washing of its own to remind me how easy it is for my eyes to get gunked up such that I can’t see those who need so desperately for me to remember I can be a carrier of compassion and redemption, should I choose to be the human being I was created to be. I, like the cicadas and the fireflies, have a chance to offer a glimpse of that utter goodness to loved ones sitting in the dark if I am willing to look at my life as more a gift and a call and less as a series of frustrations, which is another way of saying I can choose to incarnate my faith, to let reverence mix with amazement. Or not.

I woke up this morning with an old hymn in my head and found myself singing in my mind:

stand up stand up for Jesus
ye soldiers of the cross
life high the royal banner
ye must not suffer loss
from victory unto victory
his army shall he lead
till every foe is vanquished
and Christ is Lord indeed

The odd thing is we didn’t sing that hymn last night and the whole battle metaphor doesn’t do much for me spiritually. With all my heart I know we must suffer loss after loss after loss if we stand up and follow Jesus. My faith isn’t worth much if it’s focused on looking for a fight. I’m grateful, then, that this poem flagged me down in the waning hours of this early evening and asked me to hear a different song, a cicadian rhythm of redemption accompanied with a firefly light show inviting me to welcome the gathering dark with reverence and amazement.

You’re welcome to ride along; there’s plenty of room.

Peace,
Milton

P.S. — There are new recipes here and here.

shameless commerce

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
1

Last year I published a book through Lulu.com called Seven Summers at the Beach that included poetry and recipes from this blog as a way of saying goodbye and thank you for our years in Massachusetts. Lulu was hard to find and the shipping charges were outlandish. This week, however, Lulu informed me that my book was selected to be sold in the Amazon Marketplace and you can now find it here for a more reasonable shipping price.

Should you ever desire a copy.

Peace,
Milton

seasons

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
4

we mark our seasons with changes
new menus for lunch and dinner
it’s the way we say goodbye
to strawberries and hello
to the tomatoes, who
show up only for summer

the blueberries are coming in
and both sweet corn and
sweet onions; this is the
season of vegetables,
and – oh, yes – peaches
but only for a short while

I can say with some certainty
I am not a vegetable
look at my calendar:
there is no sense of season
each week looks like the other
not that much changes

As I walk in my garden
and return, my hands
smelling like basil and sage,
I wonder how I grow and
ripen — or if I do
without some season-ing

Peace,
Milton

at my window

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
2

Steve Earle has a new record of Townes Van Zandt covers, one of the more complicated artists and people on the current scene paying tribute to his even more complicated mentor. Between what I have been reading and listening to this evening there is much to unpack, and I’m running out of night in which to do it. So I will leave you with a song and come back to say more later.

At My Window
(Townes Van Zandt)

At my window
Watching the sun go
Hoping the stars know
It’s time to shine
Daydreams aloft on dark wings
Soft as the sun streams
At days decline

Living is laughing
Dying says nothing at all
Baby and I are laying here
Watching the evening fall

Time flows
Through brave beginnings
And she leaves her endings
Beneath our feet
Walk lightly upon their faces
Leave gentle traces
Upon their sleep

Living is dancing
Dying does nothing at all
Baby and I are laying here
Wathing the evening fall

Three dimes
Hard luck and good times
Fast lines and low rhymes
Ain’t much to say
Feel fine
Feel low and lazy
Feel grey and hazy
Feel far away

Living is sighing
Dying ain’t flying so high
Baby and I are lying here
Watching the day go by

Peace,
Milton

run and catch the wind

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
1

On this Pentecost morning, I woke up thinking about this commercial. Yes, that’s right: this commercial.

May the day be full of discovery and disquietude.

Peace,
Milton

P.S. — There’s a new recipe.

waking up

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
5

I’m about a week and a half into the resurrection of the ritual of writing my Morning Pages and I’m already feeling a shift. I’m getting used to getting up and, other than making the coffee, letting those three handwritten pages be the first thing I do. Those scribbles are starting to shake up my soul.

Something about waking up with a pen in my hand seems to set the prevailing themes of thought for the day. I woke up today realizing I had not spoken to my parents or my brother in several days and I found time to call them this afternoon. On a more profound level, I’ve felt a growing sense of restlessness in my job of late and this morning I woke with Paul’s words leaking out through my fingers:

“[F]or I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.”

The seed was planted last night when Ginger asked me if I was happy. When I said, “Yes,” she told me I didn’t always seem that way of late. And she’s right, yet the past few days have brought a shift. As a therapist told me long ago (and I have repeated here more than once, I’m sure), the only two things I can change in any given situation are what I do and say and how I feel. My control of the circumstances ends there. I was in a more observant place when I answered her question last night and followed her response by saying when I took time to remember who I get to spend my life with, my home, my friends, and the fact that I get to do something I love for a job, I think life is pretty good.

Two nights ago left me almost sleepless because I had brought home my frustration with me from work. The events of the day had left me feeling taken advantage of and I chose to pack my bitterness in a take out box rather than shake it off in the parking lot. The bleary-eyed morning pages that followed woke me to the realization that, rather than allow myself to feel victimized and bitter (as Cherry’s friend says, “Bitter is a flavor, not an emotion”), I need to speak up for myself (I’m working on that one) and I can chose how I want to feel at work. You see, part of the changes are I’ve been moved from cooking on the line to expediting the shift, which means I call the tickets and check the plates before they go out to the dining room. It also means I get to set the tone in the kitchen, for the most part.

I love the job.

After my morning musings, I came across Marcus Goodyear’s post at HighCallingBlogs.com and began to see the theme of my day, which was my day off. Part of what he had to say was:

We can talk about glorifying God through our work all we want, but if we’re not also serving our neighbor we are completely missing the point. We can’t love God without loving our neighbors. And loving our neighbors means showing mercy to them.

He also quoted a line from a Marge Piercy poem that is one of my favorites and worth including here.

To Be of Use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

The real work of my life is in giving mercy: “a disposition to be kind and forgiving.” In the common tasks of the kitchen, I am called to contentment and compassion. I can’t do either one in my sleep. I have to be awake.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy,” Jesus said. Though my week has not necessarily borne that out, the real work of my life also entails leaning into those words as though they will come true, just as I must trust I am a vessel shaped to share love with those around me.

Sleeper, awake.

If I am going to be of use, I must remember every move matters: every cut of the knife, every spoon on a plate, every word from my mouth, every beat of my heart. If I am to be merciful, as I am called to be, I must be intentional. Compassion is not an accident. Neither, I suppose are bitterness or complacency.

The choice is mine.

Peace,
Milton

P.S. – How could I not end with this piece? And I love that the guy is sitting in his kitchen.

linguistics

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
7

It’s not so
much what I say
but what you hear –

I can pick through
my words like fruit,
choosing what’s
ripe and ready –

I can order them
meticulously, like
mosaic tiles turning
tiny chips of meaning
into a shining image –

I can pack them
like pipe bombs, full
of all I know the world
needs to explode
what is wrong and leave
peace in the ruins –

I, too, can listen
and lay open my heart
to the brushfire
that burns, baptizes,
and leaves me looking
for you and a way to say,
“I love you” in your language.

Isn’t that the message
of Pentecost?

Peace,
Milton

mixing metaphors

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
5

Walk into any professional kitchen and you will most likely find two things at a premium: knives and cutting boards. In fact, in many restaurants, it is customary for the chefs to provide their own knives. Practically, it means when you get a hold of a cutting board, you make the most of it – and you use it more than once. Of course, it has to be washed well if you are using it to prepare raw meat of some sort, but as far as veggies and bread and most other things, the way of the restaurant world is you wipe it clean between each action (or flip it over) and keep working on your next project. Whatever the task, it works best when you clean your work area of whatever you were working on before and then move on to the next thing.

How nice it would be if life were so easily segmented.

A chance to submit a piece of writing this week brought with it the residue of relationships and the trace elements of insecurity that somehow seem connected to much of life (at least for me) and have set me to thinking how I might clean my board, so to speak, so I can make a clean offering to the project. Perhaps it begins with finding a new metaphor.

Soup making is a regular activity in our kitchen. I love making soups mostly, I think, because it means seeing what new thing can come from things that already exist. Our soups, for the most part, are made from what we have on hand; other than some dried beans, we don’t order anything exclusively to make soup. After brunch on Sunday, for example, I set aside the last of the pinto beans (along with some extra we made), the salsa fresca, some caramelized onions, and some sautéed poblano peppers to become our soup for tonight. All I have to do is add some vegetable stock (our beans are vegetarian – I’ll keep them that way for the soup), adjust the seasonings, and puree the mixture and we will have something wonderful to offer our customers made from the things we carry, if you will.

Granted, the leftovers of life don’t always offer such a flavorful recipe, but the creative tension that lies between cleaning the board and making the best of what is left appears to be the path I’m pulled to walk in these days, if I wish to do more than let my insecurities get the best of me. And I wish. I want to clear out those things capable of turning toxic and hang on to all the tasty tidbits that add flavor to what I have to say. Sometimes those are easier to distinguish in the kitchen than they are in the rest of my life.

One of the lessons I learned from one of my chef mentors is you make soup ahead of time. You don’t, for instance, make tonight’s soup this morning. The bean soup I’ll finish today will be for tomorrow night or Thursday. We have a chilled carrot soup with orange and mint I made on Sunday that has been waiting to debut today. A little time lets the flavors marry to become what they want to be together, rather than merely a collection of ingredients. A good soup takes time, and patience. When we heat it up to serve, I will check the seasoning balance again to see how they have matured together, what they have become given some time.

Sometimes our insecurities get the best of us (and by us, I mean me) in situations seasoned too heavily with history. I struggle when I feel pulled back into who I was, rather than who I am in these days. Growing into wholeness as a human being requires some of the same sense of timing and patience as soup making, it seems; rechecking the seasoning and the ingredients added to my life along the way will help me remember who I am and who I have become, even as I step back into a context that connects to who I was. Growing into that same wholeness requires I clean the board, if I am to make an honest offering, and wipe away what is not healthy or useful and get to going on the work at hand in the context of the relationships as they are in these days, not as what they once were.

The best cooking is simple. By simple, I don’t mean quick or expedient, but well-chosen ingredients prepared in a simple, patient, and straightforward way that allows them to, well, be themselves. When we were in Turkey a few years back, my favorite dish was made of eggplant, tomatoes, onions, parsley, and olive oil. That was it – and it was amazing. Life, perhaps, is the same way. I have an invitation to write, which I love to do. I have a chance to lean back into an old friendship to find something new. The call, then, is for me to work in the same simplicity, patience, and straightforwardness and trust that it, too, will be a flavorful offering.

Thanks for listening while I worked this out.

Peace,
Milton

paying attention

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
0

In life, most days, it’s not so much what happens as it is what we notice, what we choose to remember and carry with us.

A week or two ago, I noticed Julia Cameron’s The Writing Diet on the shelf at Barnes and Noble. She is the author of The Artist’s Way, a book that has been significant to me at several different junctures of my life, so I browsed through this new (to me) book and was intrigued, since she speaks to me and I’m carrying around more weight than I want to. I chose to come back to our neighborhood bookstore, The Regulator, to have them order it for me, so I didn’t get it until late last week.

One of the key components to her approach to both art and losing weight is something she calls “morning pages.” No real mystery. The name says what it is: get up in the morning and write, first thing, three pages of whatever comes out and then go on about your day. What I learned before, when I wrote every morning as I began to come to terms with my depression and as I have written now for about a week, is my early morning scribbling is a living prompt, in the same way I’ve been given writing prompts in classes over the years: a call to pay attention.

Interesting phrase, isn’t it? Pay attention.

I must pay attention in the same way, perhaps, that I paid the man at the bookstore for my inspiring little volume – give something up for something I want. If I want to pay attention to life as it happens around me, it’s going to cost me. And it’s going to pay off in ways I seldom am able to imagine. Which leads me back to my opening sentence: in life, most days, it’s not so much what happens as it is what we notice, what we choose to remember and carry with us.

I clicked over to YouTube tonight, in search of a video we had talked about at work today and found a selection of four short films from the National Film Board of Canada (gotta love those Canadians) that were competing at the Cannes Film Festival. They range in length from about two and a half minutes to a little over nine, all of them incredibly well made and imaginative. As I watched, I began to think of all the love and work and play and art and sweat and struggle and joy and hope and despair and determination that went into each of these projects, knowing full well they would only be seen by a relatively small group of people. You don’t get famous making two-minute movies.

But you can tell a great story.

And, when you find someone telling a great story you should pay attention long enough to suggest to everyone you can that they might do the same.

Peace,
Milton

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