don't eat alone

Everything was new for our new year: new place, new people, new traditions. We drove up to Raleigh, as Andy and Barney used to say, for their First Night celebration, one of the grandchildren of the original First Night in Boston. We heard some good bluegrass, Ginger saw an African dance company, and we spent the last couple of hours of 2007 listening to Tift Merritt. Best of all, we got to watch the “Raleigh Acorn” drop at midnight. The video is sideways because I’m still learning how to use my camera.

Before the year ended, Tift closed her concert with a song called “Shadow in the Way.”

Before a word is spoken,
Everything is broken,
Even what you hid inside.
The world has let you down,
wrung the shame out of your pride.

But even as you falter,
Like sunlight on the water,
You shine on my face.
This darkness in your heart,
It’s just a shadow in the way.

When the fire leaves,
When no one believes you,
When you give yourself away
To a stranger on the road
Who gives you nothing in exchange.

Even when the door shuts,
Even though the night cuts
Like a silver blade,
In the morning you will find
It’s just a shadow in the way.

Though we’re caught in the darkness,
Don’t be afraid.
Though we’re caught in the darkness,
Don’t be afraid.
This world of sorrow,
It’s just a shadow.

Got to get up again,
Let the light in,
Throw your tears away.
That mountain looks so high,
It’s just a shadow in the way.

We knew no one in the crowd when we got there. We talked with the couple standing next to us for the concert, Jay and Andrea, and came away with a new connection.

In Shakespeare’s plays, the problems begin in the city and the characters move out into nature to try and work them out. We didn’t find or create any new problems up in Raleigh last night, but we did head for the woods this afternoon as a way to begin our new year. We joined the members of the Eno River Association for their annual New Year’s Day Hike. The day was sunny and in the low fifties, and the setting was pastoral and pacifying. Again, we were surrounded by people we didn’t know, yet we came away with new acquaintances and connections.

Tonight, we are back in the city again, getting ready for what tomorrow brings. The days ahead will certainly hold their share of sunshine and shadows and perhaps less than their share of solutions. Certainly, we have many new connections to make in the days ahead and many to tighten and maintain.

As for the shadows, I think they’re a crucial part of the deal. If the darkness were complete, there would be no shadows. There has to be some light somewhere.

Peace,
Milton

Ginger and I went to see No Country for Old Men a couple of days ago. I’ve been a huge Coen Brothers fan since a friend in Fort Worth took me to see Blood Simple. I can also quote most of Raising Arizona and Fargo. I knew I wasn’t going to the feel good movie of the season and I knew I was going to something that would keep me thinking for several days. I wasn’t disappointed. The movie is bound to win a few Oscars.

I haven’t read Cormac McCarthy’s novel on which the book is based, but the reviews say the film is very true to the book, so I assume it’s worth the time as well. The story is stark and dark and challenging. In a world full of violence, the characters make choices and deal with the consequences along with the parts of life that just happen. As Ellis, the father of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, says:

You can’t stop what’s comin’. It ain’t all waitin’ on you. That’s vanity.

You can’t stop it and you can’t see it. As this year rolls into the next, however arbitrary our calendars might be, we don’t know what’s coming and so we have choices to make about how we prepare for the uncertainty. What jumped first to my mind is one of my favorite borrowed prayers, by Dag Hammarskjöld, the former Secretary General of the United Nations:

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

How we choose to embrace what lies ahead is, in large part, determined by how we find meaning in what has already come and gone. Thanks comes before Yes.

In one of my favorite movies – also an Oscar winner, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are looking off the cliff into the water below as their pursuers are gaining ground. Sundance hesitates:

Sundance: I can’t swim!

Butch: (laughs) Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill you!

They jump – and live – and before long B. J. Thomas is singing “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head.”

Another gem comes from Tripper Harrison in Meatballs (not nominated for any Oscars):

And even if we win, if we win, HAH! Even if we play so far above our heads that our noses bleed for a week to ten days; even if God in Heaven above points his hand at our side of the field; even if every man woman and child joined hands together and prayed for us to win, it just wouldn’t matter because all the really good looking girls would still go out with the guys from Mohawk because they’ve got all the money! It just doesn’t matter if we win or if we lose. IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER! Rest of group: IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER! IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER…

With theologians like Paul Newman and Bill Murray doing such good work, how can we lose? The truth is the fall is going to kill us; we don’t get to hang out here forever. The truth is most of the stuff we think we have to have or do to make us matter isn’t going to be enough. Knowing that we’re going to die and come up short (not necessarily in that order), how can we choose to live in something other than a posture of fear and self-centeredness?

The answer for me is in saying, “Thanks.”

Gratitude gives birth to courage and hope. Gratitude lifts my eyes up beyond my little life. Gratitude opens my heart to love.

The year ahead doesn’t promise to be any less harrowing or hopeless than the one we are completing. There is much in our world that is dangerous, difficult, and wrong. We are in desperate need of leaders who don’t appear to be stepping forward. We have set things in motion we don’t know how to control in many different arenas. And – and – none of that gets the last word.

For the harvests of the Spirit,
thanks be to God.
For the good we all inherit,
thanks be to God.
For the wonders that astound us,
for the truths that still confound us,
most of all that love has found us,
thanks be to God.

Thanks and Yes.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. – There’s a new recipe.

Christmas was gone
before they got
to the manger,
with entourage

“We saw his star in the east,” they said.

Mary wondered why
a sign from God
didn’t get them
there on time

“You missed the angel choir,” she said.

Nevertheless they
knelt before the babe,
offering gifts and
hopeful hearts

“What matters is we made it,” they said.

Peace,
Milton

On Christmas Eve, I was driving home from finishing my shopping when Ginger called to tell me to expect to see a man in our front yard raking leaves. We had lots of leaves. Tim had knocked on our door asking for work so he could have Christmas with his daughter. When I got home, I took him a bottle of water and wrote down his phone number for future reference. He was doing a great job. He’s been unemployed for two months and thought yard work might be a way to get back on his feet. He had a gentle manner and a sweet spirit. When I came back in, Ginger said, “Once he showed up it felt like Christmas.”

A couple of hours later, I was in Harris Teeter (one of our local supermarkets) with Jay getting groceries for Christmas dinner. As I came to the end of the row, a man in a wheelchair turned to enter. We both stopped. I motioned for him to go ahead and he said, “Please, you first.” When I got even with him, I realized it was Reynolds Price, an author who has meant a great deal to me over the years, in particular for his books Three Gospels and A Serious Way of Wondering: The Ethics of Jesus Imagined. He smiled and I said, “Dr. Price?” He nodded and I continued, “My name is Milton Brash – actually that doesn’t matter. What I want to say is you have befriended me for many years through your books and I’m grateful.” He thanked me and we both went on our ways.

Today I worked the lunch shift at the restaurant. Evan is one of the guys I work with. He is the Sous Chef, and another quiet and gentle guy. In small conversations over the past couple of weeks, I’ve learned he as a philosophy degree from college and couldn’t figure out what he wanted to do, so he started cooking, which he’s been doing for a decade. He’s often a man of few words, but as we were doing prep work today, he asked me how I started cooking in restaurants. I gave him the short version (or as short as I can tell it) of how I fell into a clinical depression after my treatment for sleep apnea unmasked it and how, after doing my best to just get out of bed and get through the day for about eighteen months, Ginger helped me get out of the house since I needed to make some money. I started driving around the South Shore of Massachusetts, looking for something I wanted to do. I got a part-time summer job as security at the South Shore Music Circus, which meant I got to hear good music for free, and I talked my way into a cooking job at a small restaurant that was just opening.

I could see the resonance in his eyes when I mentioned I lived with depression. I could also see the connection when I said I had found the kitchen to be a depression free zone. However deep the gathering gloom, the light shines in the kitchen and the darkness can’t extinguish it. We talked about the theories we have of why it’s true: the very tactile, hands on work; the pace and busy-ness; the concentration required; the sense of accomplishment and the fairly immediate gratification in seeing your meal go out to those who came to eat; the sense of community that grows out of working together to make the place function well.

A month ago, I’d never met these guys. (OK, I did go to a Reynolds Price book signing in Boston years ago, but I’d never met him in his natural habitat.) I know them now because I entered their world, not they mine – they were here first. I’m new to this orbit. Here’s how life gets colored in: through chance meetings, incidental contact, meaningful coincidence. And in some cases, souls stick to one another – even in small ways – and we create something that wasn’t there before. I can see the seedlings of friendship taking root in my conversations with Evan. I feel compelled to keep in contact with Tim. I find it interesting, therefore, that I thought it wasn’t important to tell Reynolds Price my name. I was aiming to bounce off of him like a billiard ball, I guess; I wasn’t trying to be friends. I didn’t want to impose.

Friendships thrive on imposition, however, and give birth to good and unexpected things. In the summer of 2005, I met an old friend, Nancy, at the UCC Synod in Atlanta. The meeting was a surprise to us both since we had both been Baptists the last time we were around each other: she had been my pastor in Dallas. We found time to catch up and I learned she was a UCC pastor in Charlotte (at the home church of the associate pastor of our church here in Durham). She learned about my depression and my cooking and my trying to figure out a way to write. She responded by telling me about our friend Gordon’s blog, Real Live Preacher. I had never heard of a blog and I hadn’t talked to Gordon in a long time (our connections go way back as well), so I called to impose and learn. Thanks to his friendship and patience, don’t eat alone was born two years ago today.

The blog has fed me much like the time I spend cooking because I’m writing regularly, I’m working on my writing, and I’m doing it in the context of community. Whether you are a commenter or not, that you are reading is another inextinguishable light in my darkness. My aim has been to write about one thousand words a day (except when I write poetry) and to write at least 250 posts a year, which means I’ve stacked up almost a half a million words in the past two years, writing at first in the cracks of my life and then learning how to carve out time and keep my promises to myself. In the incidental contact that comes through these web pages, I’ve seen some friendship seedlings take root as well, nourishing me in ways I had not expected.

My depression has beaten me like a rented mule this past week. I’m hopeful it’s a seasonal thing rather than another long ride on the monster. However deep the darkness, I don’t eat alone and I don’t write alone: I am not alone.

I am not alone.

I know that tonight. I’m going to have to impose on you to keep reminding me.

Peace,
Milton

The sun is gone and darkness is settling down here. We’re off soon to a potluck dinner at church and then a service together. Later, Ginger, Jay, and I will go to the midnight service of lessons and carols in Duke Chapel (Jay and I are even going to sing in the choir!). This year, I’m deeply grateful for the reality of the Incarnation. These are days in which living as a human being doesn’t come easy for me; to think our God chose to join us leaves me feeling less alone, even less depressed.

Emmanuel, God with Us
(Amy Grant, Chris Eaton, Robert Marshall)

We dim the light
We stoke the fire
We breathe the ever-green
Young ones wait
While the old ones make up
Tales of how it used to be

China dolls, candy corn
Painted wooden toys
Treasures found to the wondrous sound
Of carolling the Savior
Born to us on Christmas morn

Emmanuel, God with us
Emmanuel
Emmanuel, God with us
The son of Israel

And still he calls through the night
Beyond the days of old
A voice of peace to the weary ones
Who struggle with the human soul

All of us travelers
Through a gvien time
Who can know what tomorrow holds
But over the horizon
Surely you and I will find

Emmanuel, God with us
Emmanuel
Emmanuel, God with us
The son of Israel

And the years they come
And the years they go
Through we may forget somehow
That the child once born in Bethlehem
Is still among us now

Merry Christmas.

Peace,
Milton

The two quotes were from Ginger’s sermon today.

The poem below follows the pattern of Longfellow’s “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” one of my favorite carols.

I wish the bells on Christmas day
could toll and take our pain away
to ring out wrong and sound a song
to make our world feel whole again.

We’ve torn our hearts to shreds, it seems
and given up on most our dreams;
as wars persist we make our fists
and fight out of our fears again.

I’m not the first to bow my head,
knocked down by both my doubt and dread,
despite dismay I try to pray
that God would make us whole again.

The ring the bells, to my surprise,
“The change will not be planet-size,
you start with one and change can come
to make the world feel whole again.”

I thought how Mary’s gentle “Yes”
and Joseph’s ardent faithfulness
had birthed the boy and brought the joy
so heaven and nature sang again.

“Forgive, forgive,” that’s all I heard
and something in my spirit stirred;
I felt the tones deep in my bones
of how I might be whole again.

I wish the bells on Christmas Day
could toll and take our pain away,
but peace will come when one by one
we all learn to forgive again.

Peace,
Milton

Ginger made a quick trip to check in on her folks this week and our pups who are staying in Birmingham until our housing situation becomes more permanent. I drove her to the airport early Thursday morning and then decided to run a couple of errands on the way home. One was to go by the bank, or at least the ATM, to deposit checks that would enable us to pay our bills in the days ahead.

Bank of America has new ATMs here that no longer require an envelope to make a deposit; you feed in the checks one by one and the computer reads them and confirms the deposit. Thursday morning was my first time to use the new system. The first two checks went in easily and the confirmation. I put the third check in – the big one that really mattered – and the screen never changed. My ATM card and my check were in the machine and I had no way to prove it, no way to get them out, and no one around to tell since the bank didn’t open for another forty-five minutes.

I found a number for customer service and, after six or seven of those computer voices explaining my options, I finally got to a real person: Marie. I told her my story and the first thing she said was, “I’m so very sorry this happened to you. Let’s see what we can do to make things right.” And she meant it. I wasn’t expecting such compassion at all. The story goes on until the bank opened and most of the details are best spared. After we had tried all her options and she had contacted the computer people to see if they could manipulate the ATM from wherever they were (they couldn’t), she said, “I’ve notified the computer people to shut down the machine so no one can get to your card. Now let me give you a case number so we can follow up on your deposit. Once I give you this number, you will be contacted in about ten days with the results of our investigation.”

I was incredulous. “I can’t do that,” I said. “This money is going right back out to pay the mortgage and other things. We can’t wait ten days without creating some real problems.” I could feel the crush of the giant corporation beginning to come down on my shoulders.

About that time, a guy pulled up, got out of his car, and began to unlock the door to the building that housed the ATM. “Are you going in there?” I asked. He nodded. “Do you think you can get my card out of the machine?”

“I’m not allowed to do that,” he said. “Sorry.”

I went back to talking to Marie, who was still trying to figure out how to help me. I think she could sense the desperation in my voice. Moments before I was squashed by the impending weight, the guy inside opened the door and said, “Is this your card?” He was holding my ATM card.

“Yes,” I said. He handed it to me. “Thanks,” I said. “Any chance you can get my check out of there too?” He closed the door. I told Marie I had the card, which saved her continuing to tell me how I could get a temporary one now that the bank was open. She was trying to figure out how to help me get some sort of credit when the door opened again and the guy handed me the check.

“Wait, wait, Marie,” I exclaimed. “I have the card and the check. The guy in the room gave them both to me. Please don’t cancel anything. I can make the deposit.”

“Oh, Mr. Brasher-Cunningham,” she said, “that’s such good news it’s going to make me cry. I feel so bad about what you’ve gone through this morning and I was running out of ways to help. I think I’m going to cry I’m so happy.”

“Marie,” I said, “Your tenacity and compassion really helped me not lose hope. Thank you.”

“Oh,” she said again through her tears, “this really is a Christmas miracle.”

At the end of the first act of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, Rebecca Gibbs describes a letter addressed to one of her friends. The address read

Jane Crofut
The Crofut Farm
Grover’s Corners
Sutton County
New Hampshire
United States of America
Continent of North America
Western Hemisphere
The Earth
The Solar System
The Universe
The Mind of God

“And,” Rebecca says, “The postman delivered it all the same.”

When I walked out of work last night, I could see a few stars strong enough to shine over the streetlights. I couldn’t name them or even begin to guess how far away they were and how old the light was that was finally reaching me. What I did think was I’m looking out into the universe at a star from which my little planet couldn’t be seen with the naked eye: it’s too small. We don’t figure in the grand scheme of things anymore than Nazareth or Bethlehem mattered in the world they knew at that time. We feel like a big deal to ourselves because we’re the ones living out this small story.

I don’t know much astronomy, but I do know the skies change every night. The constellations keep time differently from us, meaning they might cross a morning sky or sneak by when our planet has its back turned. A few familiars come by often enough for me to call them by name (“Hello, Orion.”) but our encounters always carry a shimmer of serendipity: we never meet the same way twice. The night sky is also filled with rarities and once-in-a-lifetime moments, as Mary Chapin Carpenter sang about in “Halley Came to Jackson”:

It came from the east just as bright as a torch
The neighbors had a party on their porch
Daddy rocked the baby, Mother said “amen”
When Halley came to visit in nineteen ten

Now back then Jackson was a real small town
And it’s not every night a comet comes around
It was almost eighty years since its last time through
So I bet your mother would’ve said “amen” too

The chances of me seeing Halley again in my lifetime are better than those of Marie, ATM Angel Guy, and me ever sharing the same orbit again. But this week, they looked up and saw me and I saw my way out of a darkening situation thanks to their lights of patience and perseverance.

In the vastness of our universe, my little dilemma didn’t even register as forgettable, yet, last Thursday morning in our town, I felt found.

Peace,
Milton

As Jay and I were eating breakfast this morning, he began laughing at an email message he received, a Christmas letter from one of his co-workers. Her holiday letter of gratitude focused on forwarded email. Here’s part of what she had to say:

As another year will shortly be a memory, my heartfelt appreciation goes out to all of you who have taken the time and trouble to send me “forwards” over the past twelve months. Thank you for making me feel safe, secure, blessed, and wealthy.

Special thanks to whoever sent me the one about rat poo in the glue on envelopes because I now have to go get a wet towel every time I need to seal an envelope. Also, I scrub the top of every can I open for the same reason. Because of your concern, I no longer drink Coca Cola because it can remove toilet stains.

I no longer drink Pepsi, or Dr Pepper, since the people who make these products are atheists who won’t put “Under God” on their cans. I no longer use Saran Wrap in the microwave because it causes cancer. I no longer check the coin return on pay phones because I could be pricked with a needle infected with some weird disease. I no longer use cancer-causing deodorants even though I smell like a water buffalo on a hot day.

I no longer go to shopping malls because someone might drug me with a perfume sample and rob me. I no longer receive packages from, nor send packages by UPS, or FedEx, since they are actually Al Qaeda in disguise. I no longer answer the phone, because someone will ask me to dial a number for which I will get a phone bill with calls to Jamaica, Uganda, Singapore, and Uzbekistan.

I no longer eat KFC, because their “chickens” are actually horrible mutant freaks with no eyes or feathers. I no longer have any sneakers — but that will change once I receive my free replacement pair from Nike. I no longer have to buy expensive cookies from Neiman Marcus, since I now have their recipe. I no longer worry about my soul, because at last count I have 363,214 angels looking out for me.

Thanks to you, I have learned that God only answers my prayers if I forward an e-mail to seven of my friends and make a wish within five minutes. I no longer have any savings, because I gave it to a sick girl who is about to die in the hospital (for the 1,387,258th time). I no longer have any money at all – but that will change once I receive the $15,000 that Microsoft and AOL are sending me for participating in their special email program.

I am taken in by her wit and reasonably gentle sarcasm. I like it when someone can make fun of something with style. What I noticed during my day of cooking is the letter took me beyond the humor to somewhere more substantive. Once again, I’m taken by the verb, which I think of first as a direction rather than an action word: forward. We had our mail forwarded from Massachusetts – sent forward would be the fuller expression, which means it is catching up with us. Forward can mean prompt, presumptuous, progressive, and pertaining to the future. It can mean eager, advanced, and being ahead of current trends.

And it can mean radical or extreme. We belong to a forward God and, perhaps, a forwarding God, one who is out in front and catching up with us all at the same time. In the language of grace, forward is a word that means we’re surrounded, enveloped, challenged and comforted by the God who was and is and will be all at once.

The visceral reality of a birth in a feeding shed behind a tiny hotel in a land that knew little of wealth or health or hope, for that matter, means what is being forwarded to us is not an empty scheme or a devious trap. No, it’s the real deal: Love radical and extreme enough to awaken shepherds and sages, angels and animals; a Love so amazing, so divine that lays an unflinching and unyielding claim on our lives and calls us to forward that same love in the way we live with and touch those around us.

Jesus was born in the dirt and the straw two thousand years ago; move forward twenty-one centuries and we still follow the star and wait to hear the herald angels sing not so we can be thrown back into long ago, but that we might be forwarded into the lives of others who need to know a radical, extravagantly loving God who is also a little nuts and has a pretty good sense of humor.

I can picture God laughing at the email, if, of course, someone had forwarded it.

Peace,
Milton

Tonight I had the privilege of experiencing another blogging incarnation. Jimmy stepped from screen to real life and met me, along with my friend Jay, who is here for Christmas, at the Durham Pizza Palace, which professes to be the oldest pizza parlor in the Bull City. Jimmy greeted us with some Tupelo honey harvested from his own bees and a hug and a smile. We sat and talked long after we had finished our salads, pizza, and beer. We talked over the karaoke that peppered the evening with everything from “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” to “New York State of Mind” to “Call Me By My Name,” the self-proclaimed “perfect country song” (written by Steve Goodman and John Prine) because of the last verse:

I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison
and I went to pick her up in the rain
but before I could get to the station in my pickup truck
she got run over by a damned old train

and I’ll hang around as long as you will let me
‘cause I never minded standing in the rain
you don’t have to call me darlin’, darlin’
you never even call me by my name

Most of the folks who took the mike did so knowing they were among friends, and forgiving ones at that. It was obvious we were in a room of people who knew each other, even as we were working to be better acquainted. Our technology affords us amazing ways to connect, even before we have adequate vocabulary to describe the connections. (We have e-mail for notes we send wirelessly; perhaps our friends we find while blogging should be called b-friends.) Something happens when we’re together in the flesh, looking at each other, talking, sharing food. A different kind of knowledge – the stuff stories are made of – gets shared and stored so that we can begin to be friends.

I’ve often wondered what possessed God to decide to put skin on. I wonder about the others involved, the timing. I catch a glimpse of understanding on nights like tonight, as Jimmy became flesh before my eyes and an abstract connection became a person who did call me by my name.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas . . .

Peace,
Milton