don't eat alone

The past few days have been marked by the words and actions of people around me who have offered love and encouragement in a number of tangible and meaningful ways. I’m still not past needing a melody to get through a post, but tonight I offer one out of gratitude: Pierce Pettis’ “Love’s Gonna Carry Me Home.”

these days I’m noticing things
the snow and the rain
the wind in the trees
when it gets moving
they seem to say
that I’m not alone
and someday
love’s gonna carry me home

these days I’m learning to smile
the hand of the child
has pulled me into fields of laughter
they make sure that I know
that someday
love’s gonna carry me home

amazing grace big surprise
hits you right between the eyes
hits you hard like a small flat stone
slays the giant and leads you home

these days my life is a song
it’s not very long and so I’ll sing it that much louder
don’t take it hard when I go
it’s ok – love’s gonna carry me home
it’s ok – love’s gonna carry me home

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — Cooking helps, too. There’s another new recipe here.

I spent the day on a men’s retreat with some guys from church. We were out at a lake house. The day was beautiful, the conversations were honest and open, and the day was full of meaning. I came home filled up and still ran out of gas before dark. The days feel too long and the nights too short. I sleep, but I don’t rest. I find, in days like these, that I turn to two things that offer me hope: cooking and music. I made dinner for Ginger. The meal was simple, yet it helped me to cook and then sit at our kitchen table with her.

I sat down to write and could do little more than listen. I leaned into an old friend, Emmylou Harris, and her “Prayer in Open D.”

There’s a valley of sorrow in my soul
Where every night I hear the thunder roll
Like the sound of a distant gun
Over all the damage I have done
And the shadows filling up this land
Are the ones I built with my own hand
There is no comfort from the cold
Of this valley of sorrow in my soul

There’s a river of darkness in my blood
And through every vein I feel the flood
I can find no bridge for me to cross
No way to bring back what is lost
Into the night it soon will sweep
Down where all my grievances I keep
But it won’t wash away the years
Or one single hard and bitter tear

And the rock of ages I have known
Is a weariness down in the bone
I use to ride it like a rolling stone
Now just carry it alone

There’s a highway risin’ from my dreams
Deep in the heart I know it gleams
For I have seen it stretching wide
Clear across to the other side
Beyond the river and the flood
And the valley where for so long I’ve stood
With the rock of ages in my bones
Someday I know it will lead me home

With the rock of ages in my bones, I’m going to lay down my head and my burden tonight.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. There’s a new recipe here.

I can remember the day in 1989 that I bought the CD.

I was in Sound Warehouse and picked up How Did You Find Me Here? by David Wilcox the same afternoon I bought Steady On by Shawn Colvin. It was one of my better music buying afternoons. Ginger and I moved to Boston the following summer and both Colvin and Wilcox played outdoor concerts in Copley Square. When we went to see David, I carried a copy of Any Starlight Night, Billy Crockett’s newest CD at the time (on which I co-wrote some of the songs) because I wanted to make a connection. I was early and David was behind the stage working on his guitar. I walked up and thanked him for his record and gave him my offering and went on my way. I don’t think I even told him my name.

Over the years, we saw him perform several times, most of them outdoors, as I look back now: in the Charlestown Navy Yard, at Harborlights, and one inside gig at the Berklee Performance Center. We bought his CDs and sent copies to friends because we knew the vulnerability and intimacy in his songs would resonate with their situations. Tonight, we found him again. David came to Durham and we went with our new friends Lori and Terry to sit and listen on the lawn of the American Tobacco Campus.

Ginger and I went early because we were used to Boston days where free concerts meant get there early to get a good seat – or a seat at all. We parked the car and walked past an Airstream trailer hitched to an SUV and there was David Wilcox leaning over his guitar case. Since then, he and Billy have gotten to know each other and David performed at Blue Rock, Billy’s artist ranch and studio. I walked up and said, “You don’t know me but we share a mutual friend in Billy Crockett.”

“He’s a good man,” David said. Then he asked if we would be willing to help him carry some CDs and DVDs to the stage area. We listened to a marvelous evening of music. After the concert – a good while after the show – he was still standing around talking and we walked up to thank him for the evening. I also got to tell him I thought his song, “Show the Way” should be our national anthem. I also got to tell him how the song has been a touchstone and a life line for me during my depression. Ginger and I stood and talked to him for about ten minutes, I guess. As we got ready to leave, he hugged me and we went on our way.

I never did tell him my name.

These past couple of weeks I have struggled against the gathering storm. My depression, it seems, is working hard to suck me in. As usual, Ginger gets hit hardest because the bottom drops out when I get to the end of the day and stop moving. I think it’s harder to live with a depressed person than it is to be the depressed person. Yet, on a night when we were only two of several hundred people sitting on the lawn under the Lucky Strike tower listening to David and two of any number of folks who wanted to talk to him, he found me with his words and music and helped me stave off the darkness, at least for tonight. He doesn’t know who I am, other than the guy who knows Billy and who got choked up when he talked about “Show the Way.” He’ll remember talking to Ginger, I’m sure, long after he’s forgotten talking to me. Still, almost twenty years after that afternoon at Sound Warehouse, it’s my turn to ask, “How did you find me here?”

And to say thank you.

Now, please rise for our national anthem.

You say you see no hope, you say you see no reason
We should dream that the world would ever change
You’re saying love is foolish to believe
‘Cause there’ll always be some crazy with an Army or a knife
To wake you from your day dream, put the fear back in your life

Look, if someone wrote a play just to glorify
What’s stronger than hate, would they not arrange the stage
To look as if the hero came too late, he’s almost in defeat
It’s looking like the Evil side will win, so on the Edge
Of every seat, from the moment that the whole thing begins
It is….

Love that mixed the mortar
And it’s love who stacked these stones
And it’s love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we’re alone
In this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it’s love that wrote this play…
For in this darkness love can show the way

So now the stage is set. You feel your own heart beating
In your chest. This life’s not over yet.
So we get up on our feet and do our best. We play against the Fear.
We play against the reasons not to try
We’re playing for the tears burning in the happy angel’s eyes
For its….

Love that mixed the mortar
And it’s love who stacked these stones
And it’s love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we’re alone
In this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it’s love that wrote this play…
For in this darkness love can show the way

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — There’s a new recipe here.

I was reading the June issue of Harpers last week and found this sentence:

That sentence led to this poem.

Ruthless Gene

I wonder how long gone
she was before anyone
noticed. The Moabitess had
been around, refusing to
leave Naomi and desperately
seeking Boaz, since Bible days.

Who knows how Gene came
into the picture, or why
he was being studied, or
how the researchers found
him, but by the time they
arrived, Ruth was long gone.

“Why did she leave?” asked
one of the white coats.
“Why do you think?” he
answered, stamping out his
Lucky on the back of hand.
“Why do you think?”

That’s just the way my mind works sometimes.

Peace,
Milton

Emmylou Harris released a new record today: “All I Intended to Be”. I thought a great way to celebrate might be to point to several folks who have caught my ear and my heart. The videos on YouTube have been disabled for embedding, so here she is singing “Midnight Train to Georgia” with the Indigo Girls and some other folks.

A good follow up is the Indigo Girls’ latest, “LIttle Perennials.”

In my recent roamings, I found Justin McRoberts, who covers one of my favorite songs — Patty Griffin’s “When It Don’t Come Easy” — on his new project, “Deconstruction.”

Tift Merritt is a North Carolinian and someone with a new record of her own, “Another Country.” Here is the video for the song, “Broken.”

Here is a song I got to sing when I sat in with Mark Cool a couple of weeks ago: “Wagon Wheel” by The Old Crow Medicine Show.

Jackson Browne has released the second volume of his solo acoustic recordings. Here is “Alive in a World.”

Finally, the clip that set me to searching for some other cool songs: Lyle Lovett’s cover of “God Only Knows,” which he sang at the Kennedy Center Honors Brian Wilson.

Thanks for listening.

Peace,
Milton

One of things I find to be true in this life is evangelical churches have it all over us mainline folks when it comes to sound systems. I’ve been in several on both sides of the aisle and my observation remains spot on. I don’t have an explanation for this phenomenon, nor do I intend to attempt to assign blame. I do wonder sometimes if of the mainline folks have just never heard the difference a great sound system makes and so they think what they have is good.

I notice it because I respond to sound. I’m moved by music. I would almost rather listen to a Red Sox game on the radio than watch it on television. When I go to the movie, I look for the theater with the Monster Extra Dolby Sound, even if it isn’t the biggest screen. I like to feel the bass line resonate in my chest cavity, to hear the clues before anyone sees them, to swim in the ocean of tight bluegrass harmonies.

I like to hear and it’s getting harder for me to do.

So when I get to church and I can’t hear, I end up complaining about the sound system. (I refer you back to paragraph one.) I want someone to do something about it; I want them to fix it where it works for me. About a month ago, in my frustration, I picked up one of the hearing aids we have available at the back of the sanctuary – a churchpod, as I like to call it – and used it for the service. I heard every word.

And I had to sit in church wearing a hearing aid.

About halfway through the service, I realized I was being discreet. I took it off during the hymns and the passing of the Peace. I was doing my best to not look like I was wearing it, even though I was not aware of my attempt to hide the little gray box. As I drove home from church, I tried to listen to myself to see if I could figure out what was wrapped up for me in wearing the churchpod. I’ve been thinking about it ever since, even as I pick up the little receiver each Sunday morning.

As far as sound systems go, the issue appears to be mine more than the congregation’s at large, because I don’t hear anyone else talking about it. We have a good audio committee that works hard and I don’t have the time or energy – or knowledge – to get on the committee to try and do the leg work to see if we could install a more effective system. If I’m not going to put in the time and effort to help change it, I need to quit complaining. “I’ve got a great idea of a couple of things you need to do” is never a helpful statement on any number of levels.

The emotion behind the whole issue for me has much less to do with sound systems or churchpods than it does with my own anxiety or even fear. I’m scared to come to terms with the fact that I am losing my hearing, even if it is incrementally. As both my ears and eyes change, I have to stare down my own fear of the claustrophobia that I think would come with being unable to read and listen. Books and music are two things that feed me deeply. What would I do if I lost them? I can rationally understand my question is reaching for an unnecessary extreme at this point, but that’s where the fear lives.

My other realization is not any easier to take: my limits are drawing closer; I need help. The truth in that sentence runs deeper and more profoundly than my embarrassment at wearing the churchpod. The earphone is the tip of the iceberg. I can hear I need help, even without the churchpod, and it’s hard to take.

In Earthly Good: Reflections of Life and God, Martha Sterne writes:

Because it is hard to see God, find God, know God, love God, when we get busy posing like the strongest, richest, happiest people who ever walked. Because it’s just terribly hard to connect with God when we don’t need God, it’s just a terrible curse to suffer from the awful soul-killing delusion of self-sufficiency.

All of us know the word “woe” from the inside. The woes are part of the truth of what it means to be human. Yen and yang, blessing and curse, heartbreak and heart open, life and death. We know that. And yet and still we people with much riches, much laughter, much power, we say “cheese” so well. We, more that poor people, can delude ourselves. So, for Christ’s sake, remember that self-sufficiency is not the truth of us, lest we forget our need for the One who made us and gives us every breath.

In her sermon Sunday, Ginger talked about the different self-sufficiencies in the tax collector, the synagogue official, and the woman with “the issue of blood,” as I’ve always remembered it from my King James days. Matthew chose a profession that alienated him, Jairus was used to power and position, the woman had to be on her own because no one would include her. Jesus called Matthew to follow, Jairus was brought to his knees by his daughter’s death, and the woman grabbed Jesus’ robe in an act of ultimate desperation. They each found healing because they let go of the myth of their self-sufficiency.

Even though evangelical churches will probably always have better sound systems, the truth is I can hear in our sanctuary when I use the churchpod. They keep them in the back for people – like me – who can’t hear in the sanctuary without help.

That’s me. I need help. Even when I hide it under the hymnal.

Peace,
Milton

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

I always knew her as “Grandma C.” Her name was Marie.

She was my dad’s stepmother. My father’s mother died a month after he was born and his father remarried when my dad was eleven. She saw me when I was born and then saw me get on a boat with my missionary parents to go to Africa when I was one year old. The first time I remember seeing her, I was five and we were on leave from the mission field. She lived in Hawaii. I remember the fresh smell of the leis they hung around my neck and the pineapple juice that came out of what I expected to be a water fountain at the Dole pineapple farm. She was, for all practical purposes, a Baptist minister without being named one, since Baptists allow women the title, even when they did the work. She was also by herself. My grandfather died before I was born. She still wore her wedding ring.

When I saw her again, I was in sixth grade she was living in Dallas and working at Wilshire Baptist Church. That’s the first time I remember eating her Ritz cracker crusted fried shrimp. I saw her again when I was in tenth grade and she was working at Dallas Baptist College, where she worked until she retired. She and I both lived in the Metroplex for most of the eighties and I saw her (and ate shrimp) with some regularity. I was in my twenties before I began to understand what it meant to have a grandmother.

One of my favorite memories of Grandma C was taking my two roommates, Burt and Robert, to eat shrimp at her apartment. Robert was adamant about not being called “Bob” and Grandma C called him nothing but that the whole evening. Burt and I did the hospitable thing and followed her lead.

I’ve thought about her the past couple of weeks while the strawberries have been in season because she is the one who taught me to cut them. She would pull off the green leaves and then cut a small circle around the stem with a paring knife leaving a small hole where the stem had been. I still do it that way.

In the early eighties, she suffered such a deep depression that she had to be hospitalized at Baylor Medical Center where I happened to be a chaplain. She fought hard to beat back the darkness. After thirty years, she took off her wedding ring. When I asked why, she told me she got to the end of her rope and knelt down by her bed and prayed for God to either take her or provide some means of relief. She said she felt peace wash over her and she decided to start writing letters, trying to reconnect with friends and rebuild relationships. One of those letters brought a response from a man, Roy, whom she had known in Arizona when she was married to my grandfather, who was starting churches there, and he was married and also pastoring. Though their story is worthy of more than this brief paragraph, the short version is the letter led to their dating and getting married when they were both eighty. I got to sing at the wedding.

They grew old together, making the transition from their home to assisted living to a full-fledged nursing home. As Ginger and I stopped to see them on our way to Boston, they gave us a hundred dollars. “You’re our missionaries,” Roy said. After his death a few years ago, her health began to fail, though her spirit did not. She lost her sight and most of her hearing and she still kept going, even if she never left her room at the nursing home. She outlived two husbands, many of her friends and siblings, and most of what you and I might think necessary for a meaningful existence.

Last night she died in her sleep. She was a hundred years old.

Marie Tatum Cunningham Sutton lived a good and a hard life. She was a stepmother, a minister, a curriculum writer, a lover of children, a dorm mother, a shrimp fryer. And she was my grandmother.

Today, for the first time in a long time, she knows what it feels like to feel whole. I can’t help but lean into song lyrics on a day like this: Mac McAnally’s “Somewhere Nice Forever.”

mama I know you’re feeling low
let’s be low together
got to say it’s time to go
somewhere nice forever

there won’t be no leukemia
they’re gonna keep it out
there’ll just be redeeming love
like we sang about

mama you never let it show
you talked about the weather
and jesus love me this I know
somewhere nice forever

you gave us all you had to give
I could not ask for better
you told us of our chance to live
somewhere nice forever

there won’t be no leukemia
they’re gonna keep it out
there’ll just be redeeming love
like we sang about

mama you’re tired we’ll let you go
promise when you get there
you’ll think about me here below
somewhere nice forever

for the bible tells me so
somewhere nice forever

jesus loves me this I know
for the bible tells me so
little ones to him belong
they are weak but he is strong . . .

Peace,
Milton

I had been youth minister at the church I served in the eighties about six months when the couple that taught twelfth grade Sunday School let me know – actually, they told the pastor – they were leaving the church. Because of me. He was a professor of youth ministry at the seminary and was not pleased with the changes I was making because they didn’t follow the denominational curricula and weren’t the things he taught. And I didn’t have a degree in youth ministry. And – oh, yeah – he had been the interim youth minister prior to my coming.

Their announcement caught me by surprise. I had asked him to be on the Youth Committee. He had two kids in the youth group who were very happy. But he was determined to leave and he took the family with him. I was hurt, confused, and angry. I took in personally – mostly because he said I was the reason they were leaving. I never got to have more than a cursory conversation with them before they left. When I talked to the wife, she cried and said she was sorry. When I talked to the husband, he was curt and dismissive (my read on his feelings). The situation didn’t seem to hold any possibility for healing. They left. I didn’t. Life went on. (Well, I worried about how they would talk about me to others and, of course, it hit at the heart of my lingering feelings of not measuring up.)

When I was associate pastor at a church in New England, several families left the church over our decision to follow the equal marriage law in Massachusetts and perform same sex marriages. The issue came up because a gay couple in town came to the senior pastor and asked to be married in our church. The issue with the families was not so much equal marriage as it was the process by which the decision was made: they felt left out. We asked our area minister to lead a conversation among the families, the deacons, and the ministers. As the meeting progressed, the anger moved from the immediate issue to things they had carried around for awhile, many of them having to do with me — my preaching style, my dress, my manner in general – their read on me being based on the assumption that somehow I was gunning for them. One specific example was I had sung “We Shall Overcome” as part of my sermon one Sunday, which they took to be a brazen in-your-face challenge to them. I reminded them the sermon had been an account of our visit to a church for homeless people on Boston Common where we had sung the hymn and I sang it because I was moved by people with nothing having the faith to sing those words. Again, despite our best efforts, the situation did not end in healing. They left. I didn’t. It wasn’t any easier to take the second time around.

In both situations, there were things I could have done differently, less defensively, more compassionately. In both cases, the point came when I decided I had done all I could do, or at least I couldn’t change their minds or their hearts. By that time, in both cases, I was beyond being mad; I was hurt and sad.

I thought about both situations this week with the news that you and Michelle had decided to leave the church that has been your spiritual home for the last two decades. I haven’t been able to find any more information than has shown up in the various news stories, so I know I don’t know the whole story. Your move has some personal impact because you are a part of the United Church of Christ, my denomination. So is Jeremiah Wright. So are the other people at Trinity. You are my peeps who are hurting and hurting each other. That’s hard.

I have no idea the kind of pressure you are living under these days. I imagine you are right when you say your candidacy has created a great deal of pressure on Trinity as well. I’m saddened that the pressure has broken relationships that took years to build. I’m sad your church was not a place you felt you could go for comfort and support after all of these years. I’m also sorry you didn’t post anything on your website that provided more explanation for your decision and left that, instead, to the media who don’t understand faith and church to begin with. They make it sound like a political decision, as though you needed to break the ties in order not to damage your campaign. I don’t want that to be true.

Only you know your heart. Here’s what I know, looking back. I stayed another six years as youth minister and would have had the chance to see both of those kids graduate from high school as a part of our youth group. At the Massachusetts church, one of the guys who left used to go to Red Sox spring training every year and send an nightly email about the games that rivaled any sports writer you can think of. After he left the church, he took me off the mailing list. I missed out on a great deal because we couldn’t (wouldn’t?) figure out how to be church together.

You’re walking away from people you love and people who love you. Walk slowly. And know you can always turn around and go back.

Peace,
Milton

Thanks to the folks at DirecTV, we have XM Radio in our house. Thanks to XM Radio, we have a channel called “The Village” that is all acoustic singer-songwriters. I play it when Ginger isn’t home, just as she listens to the disco station when she is alone in her car. When she came in from her meetings the other night, she left it playing while she got settled; I was writing. When she came back into the room, I had moved to the living room and was sitting on the couch. When she asked what I was doing, I answered, “Listening.”

The song was “My Father’s House” by Bruce Springsteen from his Nebraska album, which ought to make most anyone’s top ten list. The whole record is achingly sparse and beautiful. The song says,

Last night I dreamed that I was a child
out where the pines grow wild and tall
I was trying to make it home
through the forest before the darkness falls

I heard the wind rustling through the trees
and ghostly voices rose from the fields
I ran with my heart pounding down that broken path
With the devil snappin’ at my heels

I broke through the trees, and there in the night
My father’s house stood shining hard and bright
the branches and brambles tore my clothes and scratched my arms
But I ran till I fell, shaking in his arms

I awoke and I imagined the hard things that pulled us apart
Will never again, sir, tear us from each other’s hearts
I got dressed, and to that house I did ride from out on the road,
I could see its windows shining in light

I walked up the steps and stood on the porch
a woman I didn’t recognize came
and spoke to me through a chained door
I told her my story, and who I’d come for
She said “I’m sorry, son, but no one by that name lives here anymore”

My father’s house shines hard and bright
it stands like a beacon calling me in the night
Calling and calling, so cold and alone
Shining ‘cross this dark highway where our sins lie unatoned

After the song was over, Ginger came back into the room and said, “You want to know why you’re depressed? You listen to depressing music.”

We both laughed.

The evening came back to mind when I got to work this morning and one of the chefs (who also lives with depression) chose Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town as our morning prep music. I told him the same story I told you and we laughed again, then we moved on to talking about what the singer and the songs have meant to us over the years. Somewhere after we stopped talking and I was kneading the dough that would become the English muffins (our homemade hamburger buns), Bruce started singing “Promised Land.”

On a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert
I pick up my money and head back into town
Driving cross the Waynesboro county line
I got the radio on and I’m just killing time
Working all day in my daddy’s garage
Driving all night chasing some mirage
Pretty soon little girl I’m gonna take charge

The dogs on Main Street howl ’cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man
And I believe in a promised land

I’ve done my best to live the right way
I get up every morning and go to work each day
But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold
Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode
Explode and tear this whole town apart
Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart
Find somebody itching for something to start

The dogs on Main Street howl ’cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man
And I believe in a promised land

There’s a dark cloud rising from the desert floor
I packed my bags and I’m heading straight into the storm
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
That ain’t got the faith to stand its ground
Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the dreams that break your heart
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted

The dogs on Main Street howl ’cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man
And I believe in a promised land
I believe in a promised land…

For a guy from New Jersey, Bruce has spent his fair share of time in the dark and in the desert – at least in his songs. He’s always taking to the road, with despair driving and hope in the sidecar, the two inseparable traveling companions somehow, moving between the wounds of all that has been left unfinished and unatoned and the wonder of the cleansing storm that wipes things clean. We’re all on the same road between houses that hold the hurts that don’t heal, the places that have been vacated or abandoned, and the mansions that are being made for us, fueled by both hope and despair.

And I’m sure when we get to the Promised Land there will be no disco.

Peace,
Milton

Christine’s blog at Abbey of the Arts has been one I’ve visited regularly for about as long as I have been reading blogs. A couple of weeks ago, she offered me to take part in one of her “sacred artists interviews” that she does from time to time. She posted it yesterday. Here’s the first question:

Are you rooted in a particular faith tradition?

I was born into a Christian family that was also Southern Baptist. I turned one on the ship going to Africa, where my parents served as missionaries, and left the continent for good on my sixteenth birthday. During those years I was exposed to Christians of many denominations, many of whom my parents took seriously as colleagues in ministry. As an adult, I have found my home in the United Church of Christ and it’s gospel of extravagant welcome.

You can read the rest of the interview here.

Peace,
Milton