just a thought
after a supper
that took a turn
they didn’t understand
and an arrest
that left them lost
we do well to remember
not one of them said
“I’ll see you Sunday”
Peace,
MIlton
lenten journal: just a thought
lenten journal: tradition
I was rummaging around in The Hedgehog Review–mostly because I love hedgehogs and it’s called The Hedgehog Review–and came across an article titled “The Living Faith of the Dead,” which was a book review and had nothing to do with hedgehogs. The site, by the way, is based at the University of Virginia and hosts an academic journal by the same name. (I’d love to know the story behind that.) The title of the article came was taken from a book by theologian Jaroslav Pelikan, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living,”
Tradition, of course, is larger than religion, but when it comes to “the way we do things,” religious institutions large and small can get dug in emotionally, politically, and theologically on everything from communion to coffee hour. The word means “handing down” or “handing over.” The image that comes to my mind with that definition is passing tradition along like we pass favorite family recipes, but that’s not always how it works.
A sermon illustration I heard from my dad when I was young has stuck with me. (It is a well-traveled story, so I am sure many of you know a version of it, too.) A newly-married couple were preparing one of their first meals. They didn’t have much money, but they had splurged on a roast. The husband pulled out the roasting pan and then picked up the big knife to chop off about two inches of one side of the roast. The wife stopped him.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“This is how my mom did it,” he answered. That was not a good enough explanation for throwing away good beef, so they called his mother to ask why. She said it was how her mother had done, so they called Grandma with the same question.
“My roasting pan was too small.”
Much is lost when we aren’t attentive to the things we hand down. Good questions should go along with the exchange. In that spirit, I share what I learned today about the etymology of the word, tradition.
from Latin traditionem (nominative traditio) “a delivering up, surrender, a handing down, a giving up,” noun of action from past-participle stem of tradere “deliver, hand over,” from trans- “over” + dare “to give” (from PIE root *do- “to give”). The word is a doublet of treason.
When I looked up the word, treason I found this.
from Latin traditionem (nominative traditio) “delivery, surrender, a handing down, a giving up,” noun of action from past-participle stem of tradere “deliver, hand over,” from trans- “over” + dare “to give” (from PIE root *do- “to give”). A doublet of tradition.
I’m still thinking about that shared genealogy, as well as the connection between handing down and giving up. It seems to me we can find more than one example of things handed down that turned from blessing to betrayal, particularly (again) when we look at religious institutions, but my point tonight is not about those institutions (though I could write that post) as much as how crucial our questions are to how we carry on what has been handed down, and also when, perhaps, we need to give up.
Holy Week and Passover are both filled with traditions. I know the former much better than the latter. In the wake of our past and persistent pandemic, most of our traditions connected to worship were difficult to deliver. Across various denominations, I read of people struggling with how to share Communion. Did it count if all you had at home were Ritz Crackers and a Coke? Did an ordained person have to bless the elements and then hand them out somehow?
Different denominations, even congregations, answered those questions in different ways. At the heart of the struggle was a question I am not sure we always answered well: What is the heart of what we are handing down?
That question is alive, again, for me this year. We have The Things We Do Every Year, which are not automatically stale or ineffective, but it the heart of what we are handing down in the method or the meaning–or a bit of both. When the tradition is tied to method, we often hang onto it out of fear that trying something new might not work. But that definition reduces tradition to the technicalities of how we do things–we’re back to talking about roasting pans.
The real meat is in Jesus’ words: “I give you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other. This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you love each other.”
Love each other just as I have loved you.
Each other means everybody. EVERYBODY. What has been handed down to us is not about protecting doctrine or perpetuating the Church, it is about love that is not confined or condemning. Like Paul said, “It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Forget how big the pan is. Invite everyone to dinner.
Peace,
Milton
lenten journal: the edge
the edge
I feel like I have
walked along the
edge of despair today
not so much a cliff
as a dimension
you’ve seen it on tv
when they move
between one world
and another somehow
I sound crazy but
between remembering
Martin and visiting
a nursing home and
learning about Cyclone
Freddy left me sad
and angry I think
I was already angry
slipping into despair
wasn’t much of a reach
instead we walked
and talked to the
couple in their new
salad food truck
first day on the green
hope on four wheels
we made it home
along with the anger
and the edge of despair
but they are not the
only things on the menu
Peace,
Milton
lenten journal: practice
Since the NCAA Men’s Final started so late, I had time to participate in something I love that I have not been able to do for the past three years, which is to go to choir practice with the Shoreline Soul Gospel Choir. Angela Clemmons, the founder and director of the choir, is someone who has become a friend in our time here in Connecticut. She is a brilliant musician in her own right, having sung with Aretha Franklin, Steely Dan, Justin Timberlake, and Elton John, to name a few.
To say she directs the choir is an understatement. She creates a miracle. There are no auditions; anyone can sign up. We have no sheet music. She gives us lyric sheets and sends us mp3 files with our parts emphasized so we can learn them by ear. Then we gather for four or five Monday nights to practice and in that time she transforms a roomful of (mostly) white people in suburban Connecticut into a pretty good gospel choir. We even clap on two and four. Well, most of us.
I was invited to join the choir soon after we moved to Guilford by one of our church members and have sung with them five or six times over the years. Tonight was the first rehearsal in over three years because of the pandemic. Over one hundred and fifty people signed up to sing–twice as much as past choirs. When Angela sent the dates out, I realized that I will be out of town for the concert in June, but I signed up anyway because I wanted to practice, even if I wasn’t going to perform for an audience.
Whether it’s a choir in a concert hall or college athletes running from end to end of a basketball court, practice is crucial. We all know that. The amazing passing and shooting we have seen throughout both the men’s and women’s tournaments are testament to many hours spent practicing when no one was in the stands. But we also use the word in a way that has nothing to do with performance–spiritual practice, for instance. It, too, requires repetition and commitment, but it does not necessarily involve performance in the traditional sense.
My first restaurant job was in a small place that served breakfast (he said, telling a story he has told many times). I asked the chef to teach me how to flip the eggs in the pan. He showed me, but then he got a stack of pans and pulled out a flat of thirty eggs and said, “The only way you will learn how to do this is to practice. By the time you get to the end of the flat, you’ll figure it out.”
He was right. Somewhere in the low twenties, I had practiced enough that the flip of my wrist did the trick, over and over.
I had nothing at stake at choir practice tonight. I don’t mean it didn’t matter to me, but I can’t remember another time that I went to a rehearsal knowing I would not be a part of the performance. The choir matters a great deal to me. I love singing gospel music. I just love singing. And over the years I have noticed being a part of Shoreline Soul has given me a healthier voice. The tenor parts in gospel songs are high. I have to pay attention to my throat and work on using my falsetto and my head voice, rather than straining to reach the notes. I leave rehearsal feeling centered and relaxed, as well as invigorated by the harmony we make together.
I went to practice for the sake of practicing, for the sake of learning my part so I could share in the spiritual connectedness of singing together. The concerts are really fun, but practice is the real gift, even when I know that’s all there is to it.
It’s not always about results or performance. Practice is where we learn and grow, where we make mistakes and try again, where we look beyond ourselves and connect to something larger. For me, tonight, that was singing for the sake of singing.
It was perfect.
Peace,
Milton
lenten journal: wonderings
wonderings
we act like it’s a week
of happenings to call holy
but it’s only a day or two
most of the days go by
silent and unscheduled
like most days go by
sure there’s the donkey
and the coats in the road
but then nothing much until
supper for the last time when
no one really understood it
was their last time together
it’s late Sunday night
and I only have a hint of
what my tomorrow might
bring but I have questions
wonderings is a better
way to say it perhaps
what did they do on the
days that didn’t matter?
did they think it was
just another week
even with the donkey?
what did they think
was going to happen?
even in Jesus’ last week
not every moment was
saturated with significance
some days are for washing
cloaks and picking up palms
those don’t get written
Peace,
Milton
lenten journal: extended run
extended run
it was foggy and grey
almost the whole day
rain hung like a curtain
in an empty theater
the sun didn’t show
until late afternoon
by then we’d played
our small scenes
that felt more like
a dress rehearsal
for a series of solo
acts or so it seemed
but I don’t believe it
a scene unseen is
still a performance
a book unread is
still an offering
a rained out day
is not a loss but an
invitation to improv
or perhaps a chance
to rest like it matters
after all this show
has an extended run
Peace,
Milton
lenten journal: confession stand
In my newsletter this week, I wrote about Caitlin Clark, the point guard for the Iowa Hawkeyes who are playing tonight for a spot in the National Championship Game on Sunday. In describing her prowess, I said,
She is known for her shooting ability, particularly her three-pointers that she can drop from the confession stands on the upper deck of the arena.
The typo is obvious: I meant concession stand instead of confession.
I make errors on a regular basis–and not just on the blog–but a similar one that came to mind when I saw my mistake was this poem where I wrote,
would that we had a ladder to
make a consolation of ourselves
when what I meant was a constellation. After some thought, consolation seemed less of a mistake than I had imagined. We would do well to make a consolation of ourselves.
My life in church has been spent in Protestant houses of worship, so confessionals are not a part of my experience, but we normally have a prayer of confession during our services that we say in unison. My etymological dictionary tells me that the Latin roots of the word confess break down into con (together) and fateri (to admit): to admit together–which is what we do on Sunday mornings, but I’m not sure what that looks like on the upper deck of a basketball arena, much less what a confession stand might look like.
The point of confession is not to tell God something God does not already know. I had a friend in Dallas who said the maddest she ever saw her priest was when she, as a college student, went to Confession one Saturday afternoon and asked if she could confess what she knew she was going to do later and get it over with. It doesn’t work that way either. God is not keeping score. The power in confession is in coming clean to ourselves and to one another in the presence of God and reminding ourselves that God’s love and forgiveness aren’t riding on whether we left something out.
But I digress. I didn’t mean for this to become a mini sermon. Back to the confession stands.
I picture tables with folks standing around sharing stories, which means they would still need to serve food–hot dogs, for sure–since eating together opens our hearts to vulnerability. I’m not sure what would be served at a confession stand, but it wouldn’t all be about what we had done wrong. We confess more than our sins. We confess what matters to us, what moves us, what we are willing to go the wall for, what kind of long shot we are willing to take.
Come to think of it, this might be another way we make a consolation of ourselves.
Peace,
Milton
lenten journal: soft opening
soft opening
the boys of summer
took to the field
at Fenway Park on
a spring afternoon
at the end of March
with the sun shining
and the temperature
in the high thirties
to start the season
I watched from the
couch with the pups
and tried to learn the
new names on the
Olde Towne Team
and thought about
the t-shirts I own
with names no
longer in the lineup
the game was a
near miss another
name for a loss
made interesting
but maybe that’s
what hope is about
taking interest in
our losses rather
than just giving up
my team begins this
year with delusions
of adequacy rather
than championships
but they’re my team
my freakin’ Red Sox
love that Dirty Water
hard times never felt
so good so good so good
Peace,
Milton
lenten journal: nothing new
nothing new
I don’t know that I have
anything new to say
but grief is redundant
when the same thing
keeps happening again
and again there is nothing
new to say because there
is no one new to listen
we’ve heard it all before
we will hear it all again
after the next round of
gunfire in a classroom
I watched middle schoolers
walk down the sidewalk
in front of our house just
thirty miles from sandy hook
and wondered if they had
active shooter drills today
I did my best to avoid the
politicians who moved dead
children like chess pieces
in their calculated moves to
magnify the fear they know
will get them reelected
and then I sat down to write
wanting to say something
that could make a difference
and do more than entrench
both those who agree and
those who think I’m crazy
to imagine a nation that
was not continually at war
it’s our working metaphor
we don’t solve problems
we fight them because
violence is our pastime
we have armed ourselves
to the teeth and wonder why
we keep spitting bullets
see I told you I had nothing
new to say but then again
this is nothing new is it?
Peace,
Milton
lenten journal: taking care of each other
One Saturday morning when I was working as a Creative at the Apple Store in Durham, a man showed up for a training appointment with a bag over his shoulder and his iMac in his arms. We set up his computer and I asked what he wanted to work on in our hour together. I was not expecting the story that unfolded.
The man told me he had served in Vietnam. The job of his company was to go first and clear places where helicopters could land. He carried a tape recorder with him and periodically his group would make a tape to send back to the States to their loved ones. They had almost completed clearing the top of a small mountain and were taking a rest, and making a tape, when they came under fire and rushed to get into the bunker they had just completed. He forgot to turn off the tape recorder. When they got back to their base and he listened to the tape, he realized what had happened.
“It’s ten minutes of us taking care of each other,” he said.
He didn’t send it to anyone, but he kept it–for forty years. A couple of days before he came to the store, he was finally able to get it digitized. He also had a bunch of photographs of his team converted as well. Now he wanted to learn how to use iMovie to let the voices be the soundtrack under the images so he could share it with those who were still living.
We worked on the basic information he needed and then I told him I was going to sit across from him while he worked because I knew the pictures were very personal and they were not mine to see. If he needed help, I would be right there. He stayed at the table for about two and a half hours, long past his appointment. As he worked, I could see his face over the top of his monitor. From time to time, his eyes welled up; sometimes he smiled.
When he finished, I showed him how to burn the movie on to a disc (it was that long ago) and he thanked me for my help. He never showed me the movie.
I thought about him today as I drove home from a veteran’s coffee hour in another Connecticut town. I was invited by a member of my church who works with and writes a lot about veterans. They wanted me to come because the speaker was a man who was drafted in 1967 and served in Vietnam, and then had become an Army chaplain after he came back from his tour of duty. He is now in his late seventies, I’m guessing.
Perhaps because of my age, when I think of Vietnam soldiers, I picture young men and women–like the photographs we used to see in TIME or LIFE, or the clips on the evening news. But we have all grown old and our memories of the war and all that went with it have aged as well. They have become stories. In Tim O’Brien’s book about Vietnam, The Things They Carried, the narrator says,
And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.
As he stood in front of the group of men and women whose life experiences resonated with his, the chaplain, now retired, offered a detailed account of his company being ambushed somewhere in the jungles of Vietnam. Twenty of the twenty-seven soldiers were “dusted off” (which I learned means evacuated because of injury or death); seven survived unwounded. He, too, was telling a story of them taking care of each other. In the midst of it all, he said, he promised God he would do anything if they could live through it. Then he smiled and said, “Becoming a priest wasn’t what I meant.”
The last draft lottery occurred on March 12, 1975, exactly three months after my eighteenth birthday. though the last draft call had been in 1972, my roommate and I scanned the numbers in the newspaper with some trepidation. My birthday, December 12, was 18. Had there been a call up, I would have been called. Whether I would have answered is another matter.
Learning about the war as an American living in Africa altered my perspective on combat in general and Vietnam in particular. I knew more about protest songs than I did about being a soldier. As I sat at coffee hour and listened to the chaplain share his story, I shared the room with about eighty men and women, all of whom had been in the military. The camaraderie was palpable. They weren’t gathered to hang on to old things; they were there because they felt understood by people who had been where they had been and seen what they had seen. As one who doesn’t encounter people who grew up like I did very often, I understand how valuable that sense of belonging is and how much it matters to tell stories of us taking care of each other.
Peace,
Milton