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happito

1

Jorge is one of the people I work with who inspires me.

He is a dishwasher who does a great job, but that’s not what gets me. Jorge works at both the restaurant at Duke and the Durham restaurant where I work. From Monday to Friday, he works from 7 am to 3 pm at Duke. On Tuesday through Saturday, he works at the Durham restaurant from 4 pm to close. On Sunday he works there from 8 to 4. He is not a person who has the luxury of deciding whether or not to be a workaholic. He works because he needs the money and he has family to support in Mexico. He works every chance he gets. And he works hard. His work ethic is exemplary. But even that is not what gets me.

I am moved by his attitude toward his life and his work. He always has a smile and a good word. I’ve never seen him lose his temper. Yesterday, I saw him at shift change and one of the other chefs said, “Jorge, are you happy today?”

“Not today,” he answered, which surprised us. “Not very happy.”

“What’s wrong?” the chef asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Only poquito happy.”

“Happito?” I said.

Jorge laughed. “Si,” he said, “happito.” And he went back to washing dishes.

When I got to Duke this morning, he was already settled in by the dishwasher. working through the pile of pots and pans that surrounded him.

“Buenos dias, Jorge,” I said. “Happito today?”

“No,” he answered. “Today very happy.” And he smiled.

“I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content,” Paul wrote to the Philippians. I think of that verse as I see Jorge, the Mexican incarnation of those words, live out his life in front of me. I’m sure there are things about his life he wishes were different. I don’t know much more about him than what I see day to day. Yet, what I see calls me to remember that I, too, am called to be content, to be happito in all things.

I’m grateful for his reminder.

Peace,
Milton

yard work

1

I mow the grass not out of conquest,
but obligation — even simple necessity:
if I don’t, our little dog disappears in
the growing greenery that passes for
a lawn. I’m not much of a turf builder.
And so I pull-start the machine and
begin traversing the yard, cutting
patterns as Ella runs ahead, buoyantly
announcing impending doom to the
weeds and daffodils. We both get tired
about halfway through the job; she lays
down on the porch and I keep to my
appointed rounds. She joins me again as
I push the now silent mower back into
its small shed; we turn to walk to the house,
and I see one diligent and determined daffodil
who has managed, magically, to avoid being
cut down by my actions. Her small yellow head
waves as we pass, not taunting as one might
expect, but swaying as if to say the blades
don’t get the last word. Such news is worthy of
a cookie and a nap for both me and the pooch.

Peace,
Milton

the whole plate

2

Some parts of my job come easily for me – the cooking part, for instance. Some parts have a steeper learning curve – figuring out food costs, for one. In order to be profitable, what it costs to buy all the food needs to cost less than a third of what we sell it for, which is hard to do. There are different kinds of formulas to help chefs do the math. I don’t really come to work to do math, but I’m learning.

One of the most helpful conversations on the topic for me recently was with James, one of the other chefs who has culinary school training and thinks creatively about most everything that happens in the kitchen. I was telling him about trying to cost out the menu at Duke and he said he thought the best way to lower food costs was to begin to figure out how much food – by weight – was going on each plate. Besides controlling costs, he said, you also give people a responsibly portioned meal.

I had never thought of it that way. I tended to look item to item: if salmon costs $6.50 a pound and I cut eight ounce servings, then I’m putting $3.25 on each plate. James challenged me to think more holistically. I’ll stick with the salmon for my example. On my menu at Duke we serve a pan seared salmon filet with a roasted corn risotto cake, grilled asparagus, and a lemon thyme beurre blanc. I began to do some figuring. If I serve

a 6 ounce portion of salmon
a 4 ounce risotto cake
4-5 ounces of asparagus and
2 ounces of beurre blanc

I’m putting a pound of food in front of my customer, which is plenty of food and not bad for $14. I have to admit I still struggle a bit when I cut the salmon or weigh out the risotto, so the cakes are consistent; they both look small. When they come together on the plate, however, they look like a good meal. So far, no one has complained about going away hungry. Yet, even as I’ve seen the truth in James’ logic play out in my kitchen, I struggle with coming to terms with the big picture. It’s far too easy to get caught up in a more fragmented view of both my menu and my life.

Another James, who goes by Jimmy and writes a blog and raises bees, stopped by this morning to bring me some of his Front Porch Blend honey. He has kept me supplied since we moved to Durham, so I was glad to see him. He also kept me distracted for the last hungry and horrible hour before I went for my colonoscopy (everything’s good). I’m grateful for both things. I’m also grateful to be developing a friendship with someone who doesn’t share the same political perspective. I like knowing that developing friendships run deeper than political views (there’s that big picture again), and I just like Jimmy. He is a kind and thoughtful person.

Our conversation did turn to the presidential campaign and one of his comments has stuck with me through the day. In the context of talking about the two choices for vice president he said, “Well the goal is to win the White House.” I can hear the reality in Jimmy’s statement and it makes me sad. If the goal of either side is simply to win, then neither one is looking at the whole plate. If the goal of either side could be reached the first Tuesday in November, then we need leaders with bigger goals and broader vision.

When I hear another new friend here, Terry, talk about what he does, he says he’s working to prevent and end homelessness in Durham. I love his choice of words. He’s not working with the homeless, or waging war on homelessness, he’s working to bring an end to the things in our society that keep people on the street. And he’s doing it, along with a growing group of people – many of them formerly homeless – who can see the whole plate Terry seeks to serve. Their big picture is a masterpiece.

I had another couple of paragraphs that turned into more of a sermon than I wanted from this post, so I cut them out. My point here is not to preach as much as to say I’m beginning to understand, whether I’m in the kitchen or not, I have to remind myself to look at the whole plate almost everyday. The big picture is not my default view. I need help to see more than my little piece of the meal. We all do. I also need to be reminded to look again and again at how I think about my life – my time, my relationships, my vocation – so that I have a sense of calling that is more than mere accomplishment.

Another blogging buddy, Towanda, offered this quote today, which spoke to me:

The only dream worth having … is to dream that you will live while you’re alive and die only when you’re dead … To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or to complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.

– Arundhati Roy
From her book, The Algebra of Infinite Justice

Now that’s a plate full.

Peace,
Milton

fall music sampler

0

I got wrapped up in my mind tonight and found myself to tangled to write, so I untangled myself by browsing through some of the music my nephews have shared with me. Here are some folks doing great stuff.

Brett Dennen opens “Ain’t No Reason” by singing:

There aint no reason things are this way
Its how they always been and it tends to stay
I can’t explain why we live this way, we do it everyday

and it gets better from there.


Denison Witmer’s
title track, “Carry the Weight,” nods at the old Beatles song and then very simply states

Carry the weight of your neighbor
Carry the weight of a stranger
I’m not afraid to say I don’t know what to do

JJ Alberhasky is full of good things, once you learn how to pronounce his name. The chorus to “Isabel” says:

Isabel it’s not so sad
He numbered every hair upon your head
Isabel don’t be afraid
He heard every word you ever prayed

The rest of the lyric fills those words with the poignant paradox of grace in these days.

OK, these last two are old friends who found me among the tunes tonight. First is Son Volt singing “Windfall.”

May the wind take your troubles away
May the wind take your troubles away
Both feet on the floor, two hands on the wheel,
May the wind take your troubles away

Finally tonight, Randy Newman has a new record on which he records a song he wrote for Bonnie Raitt, “Feels Like Home to Me.” I love her version, and there’s something moving about this crusty old guy singing this love song:

Something in your eyes makes me want to lose myself
Makes me want to lose myself in your arms . . .

Here’s to the melodies that carry us.

Peace,
Milton

recipe for living

3

The beginning of the school year has meant a move for me. I’m back at Duke, as the chef for a restaurant my boss contracts to run on the Duke campus. We are open Monday to Thursday nights, and then I still work Sunday nights at the restaurant where I worked this summer. I like being able to be a part of both places. The Duke restaurant was a new venture last year and I came on board in January. By the end of the school year, we began to get a pretty good idea of what we needed to do to really make it work. The restaurant is the nicest place on campus for students (or anyone else) to eat dinner. As Ginger says, “We never had a place on campus with salmon and sirloin and linen tablecloths and beer and wine.” And they can use their meal plan points to boot.

Last year, I worked from two until about ten, Sunday through Thursday. This year, my Sunday nights run until eleven because the other restaurant is open later, and, because my chef wants me to be a part of what happens at lunch in the same room at Duke (primarily a faculty restaurant), my days begin at eleven, rather than two, but still aren’t over until after nine o’clock. When I factor in the time I spend at home dealing with work email or refining recipes or doing other administrative tasks, I’m up to close to sixty hours a week.

I love to cook. I love what I’m getting to do at Duke. I get to come up with the menu, design how the dishes should taste and look, go out into the dining room and get to know some of the students who eat with us regularly, and hone my skills as a chef. When I’m at work, I’m not conscious of time. I get lost in the making and serving of the meals. I’m doing what I most love to do.

And I know doing it sixty hours a week is no way to live. Something’s got to give.

On our trip to Texas, I had time to read. One of the books I picked up was Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Meal by Margaret Visser. Though the book was published in 1986, it was new to me. Visser begins with the idea of a simple meal – corn on the cob with butter and salt, roast chicken with rice, salad dressed in lemon juice and olive oil, and ice cream – and then, as a self-described “anthropologist of everyday life,” tells more than you could ever imagine about each of the ingredients in the meal. She spends fifty-five pages on corn alone. Here’s part of what she has to say:

Corn, beans, and squash are as constantly wedded in Indian cooking today as they were in the past. . . And always they added ash: burnt hickory or the ash of some other wood, ot the roasted and crushed shells of mussels they had eaten, or (as in modern Ecuador) they burnt shells of land snails. All this was sheer tradition: corn, beans, and squash with a pinch of ash in every pot. Only very recently have scientists fully grasped the wisdom of the Indians’ behavior. Corn, we now know, is about 10 percent protein, but is deficient in the amino acids lycene and tryptophan, which people must get from food. In addition, although corn contains the vitamin niacin, almost all of it occurs in a “bound” form called niacytin, which makes it biologically unavailable to human beings. Corn, in other words, cannot feed people adequately if it is not supplemented by other foods, and beans and squash are excellent complements to corn. The holy threesome, in fact, enabled corn to be consumed as a staple. Wherever the rule has been broken, and corn eaten without the correct supplements, the consequences have been disastrous: outbreaks of pellagra and kwashiorkor, the agonizing diseases of nutrition deficiency. (32) (emphasis added)

Let me pull out the highlighted part, so you can see it as clearly, I hope, as it jumped out at me.

Corn, in other words, cannot feed people adequately if it is not supplemented by other foods, and beans and squash are excellent complements to corn. The holy threesome, in fact, enabled corn to be consumed as a staple. Wherever the rule has been broken, and corn eaten without the correct supplements, the consequences have been disastrous.

One of the central quotes we used at the retreat on vocation was Buechner’s definition of vocation: the place where your greatest joy and the world’s deepest need intersect. As best I can read my spiritual GPS, I’m pretty close to that intersection. I would like to be feeding folks who needed the food more than I am, (I’m working on that) and I have a strong sense of calling and peace about doing what I’m doing where I’m doing it. Coming from a family of fairly intentional workaholics and having spent a lot of time and energy trying to learn a different way to look at life and work other than burning out for Jesus, I struggle to heed the traffic signal in my vocational intersection that tells me to stop and rest, or to go do something else that feeds me, such as spend time with Ginger or write or read or head for the gym.

Visser’s brief history of corn caught me because, even though corn was the crop that spread around the world once the Europeans learned of it from the Native Americans, it isn’t enough all on its own. In her history I found metaphor: work, even work I see as my spiritual vocation, doesn’t have the spiritual nutrition to sustain me all by itself. My life has to have its share of beans and squash if I am to be the human being I was created to be.

Human being, as someone else noted long ago, not human doing.

The days ahead, for me, are ones of discernment, working to figure out how to balance the recipe of my life so I am nurtured and sustained and I nurture and sustain those who matter most to me. Part of the task for me will be drawing some boundaries around my job and sticking to them, which doesn’t come easily for me (see earlier comment about workaholics). Part of it will be making sure how I actually spend my time matches with what I say matters most to me. Ginger deserves more than the dregs of my day; so do I. I’m not in a crisis, but I am aware that the recipe of my life isn’t quite right. And a good cook knows if something doesn’t taste right you change the recipe.

Peace,
Milton

what sam has to say

1

I’ve always been a big fan of words.

I love their sounds, their meanings, the many ways they can be put together. I am pulled by poetry because it is words at their best, standing in fresh light, speaking deep truths, unlocking hearts. After the last couple of nights of convention speeches, I’m prepared to say politics is the opposite of poetry when it comes to how words are used, turning them from gifts into weapons, cheapening them by repeated use and misuse, throwing them around like hand grenades. It’s enough to make me less fond of words.

So tonight I pulled out a CD of a singer-songwriter we met on our Texas sojourn, Sam Baker, who is a nurturer of words. This is a man who knows how to tell a story in a way that pulls people in rather than causes them to choose sides. What strikes me about Sam’s songs is how his faithfulness to the description – to the story – without feeling the need to explain too much or somehow say, “Here’s the point,” lets the words say so much more than if he had chosen to be more directive.

The song that pulled me tonight is called, “Waves,” because I know some folks close to me who are living out the story Sam tells. I will resist the temptation to tell too much myself and let the song speak for itself.

waves

so many years so many hardships
so many laughs so many tears
so many things to remember
cause they had fifty years

and now the kids have got their own kids
and their own kids have grown
she told him not to worry
said he’d be fine when she was gone

he walks down to the ocean
bends to touch the water
kneels to pray
he writes her name in the sand
waves wash it away

there are sea gulls circling shrimp boats
that turn inside the bay
there’s an emptiness inside
that never goes away

he walks down to the ocean
bends to touch the water
kneels to pray
he writes her name in the sand
waves wash it away

That’s what words can do. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

home room

1

(with apologies to middle schoolers)

I’m sitting between Gustav and Hanna
in the homeroom of life, wondering how
to make sense of everything coming through
the loudspeaker, the stream of non sequiturs
that passes for news and the endless storm
of chatter that follows, each of us choosing
sides without bothering much to choose our
words. Life looks and sounds a great deal like
a middle school cafeteria. Shouldn’t speaking
our minds beg us to use our minds before we
speak? Instead, our lunch table politics build
allegiances based on fear or desperation or,
for the lucky ones, popularity, none of which
does much for real conversation: “Hello – and
I really mean that.” We worry about hurricanes,
but the small winds of breath that carry our
words are more destructive. We wear labels
like bunkers around our hearts and look only
at those who look and act like us. We learned
our vocabulary and jumped through all the
right hoops, but face it: we’re seventh graders.

Peace,
Milton

he gave us wings

7

He took the wings we weren’t going to use for dinner.

We serve a roast chicken dish, so we cut up the birds so each customer gets one piece that is half of a breast with the first section of the wing bone attached and a second piece that is the leg and thigh. Abel, the cook next to me on the line every Sunday night, took the rest of the wings and some of the other leftovers, but I didn’t see what he did with them. And I lost track of them because we were busy tonight. I don’t know what was going on, but people were out to eat to night here in Durham and about one hundred and fifty of them came to our place, About eight-thirty, when we had a small break, I looked up to see Abel filling a line of plates with food.

For us. There was a small stack of diced potatoes, some carrots and onions, a wonderful looking burnt orange colored sauce, and a stack of small chicken bones – the leftovers – on each plate. He had made enough for everyone in the kitchen. I picked up my plate at the same time as the Shift Leader and we both made the same sounds of satisfaction as we began to chew our food. The dish was amazing. The Shift Leader handed Abel the left over chicken – the good pieces – and said, “Make some more.”

As he began to cook, Abel motioned to me and I moved closer. He was holding fresh herbs in his hands. “This is it,” he said. “You take some mint, some cilantro, some thyme, and a little chipotle peppers. And some of the Dave’s spice mix (a sort of red salt mixture: cayenne, chili powder, paprika, etc.), then you just cook it slow. That’s all.”

This is a guy who comes everyday to work at our restaurant after having worked a full shift at another restaurant. This is a guy who knows a lot about what he does and doesn’t get the credit because, as they say, he’s not from these parts. And this is a guy, in the middle of a very busy night, who took time and thought and effort to cook dinner for those of us who stand along side him in the kitchen every week.

This is a good guy.

Rich Mullins has a song that says

Talk about your miracles
Talk about your faith
My dad he could make things grow
Out of Indiana clay
Mom could make a gourmet meal
Out of just cornbread and beans
And they worked to give faith hands and feet
And somehow gave it wings

That’s it. In the middle of a hectic night, Abel gave us wings. No one flew, but we watched as he took what was broken and discarded and with care and creativity filled our stomachs and lifted our spirits.

Not bad for a Sunday night.

Peace,
Milton

texas wants me anyway

6

Life is clipping along for me at a speed that makes reflection feel a bit like a luxury. Though I’m grateful for most of the things going on right now, I’m always wary of going too long without taking stock and doing my best to listen. They don’t call it break-neck speed for nothing, I suppose. We headed to Texas a couple of weeks ago to help lead a retreat with Gordon and Jeanene Atkinson (Gordon’s already posted here), which enabled us to tack on a few days and see family and friends. One of my favorite things about our sojourn was the first day, which Ginger and I did in true Brasher-Cunningham fashion.

On our first date, I took Ginger to see Lyle Lovett in Fort Worth. As it turned out, Lyle was playing the Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth the weekend we arrived. In my mind, I bought tickets for Friday night, which meant we could land Thursday in San Antonio, drive through Austin to eat lunch with David Gentiles, and the end up in Waco at my parents’ house. Friday afternoon, then, the ninety minute drive up I-35 to Cowtown would not seem so bad. Ginger drove to Birmingham on Wednesday to leave Ella with my in-laws and our other Schnauzers. Early Friday morning – I mean early – we both got up to catch flights that would let us meet up in Dallas and fly together to San Antonio. At about five, I pulled the tickets out of the envelope to see that they were for Thursday night – THAT NIGHT – not Friday. So we kept our schedule, seeing Davy and stopping at my folks, but then we kept going on to Fort Worth. When I handed the usher our tickets, he showed us to our seats and said, “You’re just in time.” As my butt hit the cushion, Lyle walked out on stage:

I went to church last Sunday
So I could sing and pray
But something quite unusual
Happened on that day . . .

We had not been in Fort Worth in more than a decade, so we weren’t quite prepared for the transformation of the downtown area. What I remembered as a concrete jungle is now a vibrant mixture of residences, businesses, and entertainment (though I’m not sure where they shipped all the homeless people). We walked around until we got our bearings, had a bite to eat, and then – even though we had only been in Texas for twelve hours, spent time in four cities, and still had an hour and a half to drive before we could sleep – we drove around to see the house where Ginger was living when we got engaged and the first apartment we shared after we married. Once again, they were hard to find in a city that appears to have gotten on fine without us.

I was a youth minister in Fort Worth when I first began talking about the idea of appropriate insignificance. The concept was new to me, though I’m sure it wasn’t original. What it means to me is each one of us is uniquely created in the image of God and of incredible value because we’re breathing and (not but) no one is any more valuable than anyone else. One night I was talking about it with the kids and I took a glass of water and stuck my finger into it.

“As long as I leave my finger there, the water moves to make a place. But when I take my finger out,” I said as I removed it from the glass, “the only evidence it was even in the water is my finger’s wet. The water filled in behind me.”

For most of our time in Texas, we were in places we had been before. Though we had not been to Laity Lodge before, we stepped back into the Baptist life that is our heritage, and I stepped among many people who had known my family, if not me, for a long time. What I took from the trip, most of all, was the treasure of having time to sit around tables with friends I keep up with but have not had a chance to see in person for years. We shared meals, told stories, laughed, cried, and tightened the bonds that remind us of what matters most.

As Lyle sang when he closed the show:

That’s right you’re not from Texas
That’s right you’re not from Texas
That’s right you’re not from Texas
But Texas wants you anyway

Peace,
Milton

There are new recipes here (with a story) and here.