don't eat alone

I know I’m late to the game, but I finally saw Ratatouille Sunday night. Ginger and I watched it when I got home from work. What a wonderful movie. When I got to the restaurant this afternoon, I couldn’t help but talk about the film and the appreciation of the story of a little rat who dreamed of being a French chef was unanimous.

How can it be that the folks at Pixar could lead us to embrace as the chef an animal who is among the least appetizing of any, when we think about them being in the kitchen? This is good work and they didn’t miss a detail. The first thing Remy the rat does when he gets into the kitchen at the restaurant is wash his hands. The Little Chef, as he is called, has to convince the humans he belongs in the kitchen and convince his family he wants more out of life than scavenging for garbage.

Since we’ve not yet unpacked the remote to our DVD player, we weren’t able to watch any of the extras to find out how they researched the food side of things. What I can tell you is they were spot on in most every detail. James. one of the other chefs at work who had seen some of the extras said Thomas Keller, who owns the French Laundry and is arguably the best chef in America, consulted on the film, even to the point of letting his ratatouille be the model for the dish in the movie.

There was one moment in the film that took my breath away. The movie builds to a scene where the young chef, guided by Remy, has to cook for Anton Ego, the food critic. Remy decides they should make ratatouille. The others are not so sure; after all, it’s a peasant dish. When Ego takes a bite of Remy’s creation, he flashes back to his boyhood, sitting at supper eating the same dish. Here’s what food can do: pull you back to your true self. James also loved that scene, he said, because it affirmed what he most wants to do: food therapy. He thinks there’s a way to use cooking in intentional therapy. I think he’s on to something.

I suppose if I were really doing this right, I would have a ratatouille recipe to post along with my review. I‘ll work on that and get back to you. For now, I’m soaking in the aromas of Remy’s dreams and biting into the belief that following our hearts is how we are truly fed.

Peace,
Milton

The restaurant where I work is a little over three months old, which means those who have been there since the beginning are worn out. The food service world already has a built in what-have-you-cone-for-me-lately component: you can’t put the food on the table and say, “Gee, I really wish you had been here yesterday” and expect to stay open for long. Layer on to that the seemingly unending little changes and corrections that need to be made to help the business find its rhythm and everyone is doing more than a full time job.

This week, people started dropping like flies. Three of our cooks have been out sick; two or three others are running on fumes. The good news for me was I worked double shifts most of the week, which is good for two reasons: one, I made more money and two, I got to spend a lot more time in my Depression Free Zone. Part of the reason for the illnesses has been the Durham weather, which can’t seem to make up its mind between winter and spring. But I think most of the weariness comes from another source. January and February are traditionally slow months in the food world. Though we want the business so we can stay open, everyone was looking for a respite this week so we could catch our breath and it didn’t come. We had the busiest week in the restaurant’s brief history and we were short staffed.

Life, like orders in a restaurant, just keeps coming. As Roseanne Rosanadana used to say, “It’s always something. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”

As I was driving home from my shift Friday night when I called my brother to catch up a bit. He filled me in on his week and I told him about mine, mentioning how dark the days had seemed. He then said something I knew and yet needed someone else to say so I could hear it: “You know, Milton, I’ll bet a lot of what you’re feeling is because of the move. Every time we’ve moved it’s taken me six to nine months to sort through things. You lived in Massachusetts for seventeen years. You’re grieving. It’s going to take some time.”

On Sunday, Ginger (who says a lot of things I need to hear) quoted Nancy Sehested (who shares our Baptist roots and is now in Asheville) in her sermon:

In our Epiphany journey, we go with two sisters. One is Rachel, her eyes still weeping and looking backwards. The other is Mary, arms filled with the fragile promise of new life, looking ahead. Our journey must be made slowly because neither Sister Grief nor Sister Promise can walk too quickly.

I went to church thinking I was waiting for the Wise Men to come to town, only to learn I’m traveling with Two Sisters, one an incarnation of inconsolable grief and the other of intractable hope. How one journeys with them feels a bit like trying to ride Dr. Doolittle’s Pushmepullyu at first, but the more I’ve thought about Miller’s and Nancy’s and Ginger’s words, the more I come to see the creative and faithful tension in traveling with people vested in looking both forward and back.

My blogging pal and nearby neighbor Jimmy told me about his daughter’s interest in genetics and he talked about how scientists are learning there may be the possibility of turning off “switches” in particular genes that could prevent disease, like my depression. I’ve pondered that option for some time now and come to the paradoxical conclusion that I’m not sure I would want to flip that switch. When I think of the pain I’ve inflicted because of my depression, particularly on Ginger, I wonder if flipping that switch might not be a good idea. And I also have questions. How do I know where the depression ends and I begin? Would I be the person I am had I not lived through days like these? Is the point of life to avoid pain and suffering or to make meaning of them?

The questions aren’t any easier than living day to day, holding past and promise in the present tense (tension?), as voiced in this quote from Chase Peeples (also from Ginger’s sermon):

The example of the Magi begs the questions, what do we see when we look in the darkness? And what could we see if we allowed our eyes to adjust to the light available to us?

Annie Dillard wrote (in which book I don’t remember), “If you want to see the stars, you have to go sit in the dark.” It’s less about flipping switches than it is adjusting to the light and being mindful of the sisters who flank us on each side, calling us to slow down, reflect, and persevere daily, faithfully, and intentionally. Mary pulls us to remember there is life beyond grief and Rachel reminds us we are all walking wounded. Healing comes in traveling together.

There’s an old gospel hymn, “God Leads His Dear Children Along,” that has always spoken to me. I found the story behind the hymn today and now it means more.

The author of this hymn, George Young, was a carpenter and a pastor. He didn’t make much money in either profession. Most of his life was spent in small farming communities. Finally, however, he and his wife were able to build their own home, and they moved in. Shortly afterwards, while the Youngs were holding meetings in another small town, someone set fire to their house and it was reduced to ashes. It was probably out of that experience that George Young wrote this hymn.

Here are the lyrics:

In shady, green pastures, so rich and so sweet,
God leads His dear children along;
Where the water’s cool flow bathes the weary one’s feet,
God leads His dear children along.

Some through the waters, some through the flood,
Some through the fire, but all through the blood;
Some through great sorrow, but God gives a song,
In the night season and all the day long.

Sometimes on the mount where the sun shines so bright,
God leads His dear children along;
Sometimes in the valley, in darkest of night,
God leads His dear children along.

Some through the waters, some through the flood,
Some through the fire, but all through the blood;
Some through great sorrow, but God gives a song,
In the night season and all the day long.

Though sorrows befall us and evils oppose,
God leads His dear children along;
Through grace we can conquer, defeat all our foes,
God leads His dear children along.

Some through the waters, some through the flood,
Some through the fire, but all through the blood;
Some through great sorrow, but God gives a song,
In the night season and all the day long.

I’m tired this week because I chose to work double shifts when I was asked and because I’m living with a depression I didn’t choose. I’m traveling with Two Sisters who were walking long before I took to the road and they are telling stories of how God holds us all, in grief and in joy, in past and in promise, in darkness and in light. Life will never be fixed by the flipping of a switch; neither will it be stopped: it just keeps coming.

Sisters — and brothers — come, let us keep walking together.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — Here is an excellent article on the roots of the violence in Kenya.

I got a note today inviting me to a reunion of folks who went to Nairobi International School back in the seventies. My parents were missionaries and we lived outside of Nairobi in a small town called Karen that took it’s name from Karen Blixen or Isak Dinesen, as she is known to many. I was in ninth grade, my brother in seventh. On Saturday mornings, we would walk out to the road and hitchhike into the city to eat at Iqbal’s (whose specialty was chipati and keema).

My view, looking back, is romanticized because I was a ninth grader and I’ll also stand by my statement that Kenya was a great place to grow up. Though it shares many of the same problems of other African nations – poverty, HIV/AIDS, postcolonial tribal issues – Kenya has been a haven for refugees of the surrounding war-torn countries (Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia, and others), so the brutal rioting and ethnic violence that broke out in Kenya over discrepancies in the most recent presidential election are damaging in many, many ways.

Here are two first hand video accounts from a Kenyan television station, one from Kisumu

and one from Nairobi.

I follow my blogging pals Bill and Laurie in asking for prayers; I would also ask you to talk about what is going on to those around you. On a night when our presidential race is officially beginning (does it ever really end?), a country I love dearly is imploding over the election of their president. Hundreds have been killed. Tens of thousands have been displaced.

Please, please, talk and pray.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — NPR has a good collection of information.

there are days when it’s hard to put one word
in front of the other and push a page past blank.
there are nights when what looks like tired is
more. there are afternoons spent preparing for
evening meals for people I never see and I have
energy to cook the steak to order and reduce
the sauce to a perfect consistency, hanging on
to the meat even as it pools on the plate. I want
that stuff to follow me home, but it trails off
like air out of a balloon and, by the time I bring
what’s left of my day to her and she asks how
I am, all I can say is, “OK” unconvincingly. Being
with her is the best part of my day, yet I know it
costs her deeply to be here with me. still, she stays.
that’s true everyday, thank God.

Peace,
Milton

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