don't eat alone

I worked lunch at the restaurant, which means I was up early and in the kitchen by eight this morning. When the alarm went off and I stumbled into the bathroom to put in my contacts, I found my left eye was not yet recovered from whatever irritated it last night and the contacts were going to stay in the case rather than caressing my corneas. It was at this point that the fact I packed my prescription eyewear in a place I don’t recall became more significant than it has up until now. I had to go to work – in the kitchen – in all my nearsightedness. I knew I could read the tickets and keep from cutting myself, but everything else would be out of focus.

And that’s how I felt all day long: out of focus.

I had already finished chopping the herbs for the Russian dressing when one of the other cooks said, “Doesn’t the recipe call for parsley?” I had chopped cilantro. I know the difference between the two by smell as much as sight, but I just missed it. I felt awkward in the very room where I am usually most comfortable. I was without confidence doing what I know I do well. I felt out of sync, out of rhythm, out of focus.

I drove home (yes, I drove carefully) wondering what life was like when no one knew how to correct vision. Eyeglasses, as we know them, didn’t begin to come into being until late in the thirteenth century. For all of human history before then, people had to live with their eyes the way they were. Their vision couldn’t be corrected.

I think it’s interesting we use that verb to describe how we help someone see. We don’t heal or adjust; we correct. As a former English teacher, I corrected more papers than I can remember, or wanted to correct for that matter. In the context of the classroom, correct meant pointing out what was wrong: “to point out or mark the errors in,” the dictionary says. The vision version of the verb isn’t about pointing out the errors as it is “to set or make true, accurate, or right.” Simply put, my contacts (and my glasses, when I find them) let me truly see. What the lenses do, in my limited understanding, is refract the light, or bend it so it hits my eye at a different angle, thus allowing me to see what’s in front of me.

I got home from work late this afternoon in time to throw a soup together for our potluck before our Blue Christmas service, which is a refraction of sorts, bending the light of the season to let our sorrows stand in full view. The sanctuary was dressed in candlelight as eleven or twelve of us gathered to help one another see more truly what it means that Christ is being born again in our time. We sang:

what can I give him, poor as I am
if I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb
if I were a wise man, I would do my part
but what I have to give, I will give my heart

At the front of the church was a Christmas place setting. When we came into the service, we were given small place cards and then invited to write who and what we miss this Christmas. We then came forward and placed our cards at the table as we heard

the depth of God’s love reaches down, down, down
to where we are until we’re found, found, found
a quiet word or none at all pursues the heart behind the wall
and to those who wait with darkness all around
the depth of God’s love reaches down

At the close of the service, Ginger invited us to come forward and stand in a circle around the empty place setting, now surrounded with the small cards. “Take your left hand and place it over your heart,” she said. “Now take your right hand and place it on the back of the person next to you.” As our hands moved, we refracted the love of God one to another, allowing us to see truly we were not alone, even in our grief.

While I was waiting on the soup to finish before I went to church, I decided to try my contacts again. Whatever had irritated my eye was gone and I could see. When the service was over, I had much the same feeling. My part tonight was to sing Andrew Peterson’s “After the Last Tear Falls.” The bridge says:

and in the end, the end is oceans
and oceans of love and love again
we’ll see how the tears that have fallen
were caught in the palms
of the Giver of Love and the Lover of All
and look back on these tears as old tales
because after the last tear falls
there is love, love, love, love
there is love

John says, in one of my favorite verses, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot put it out.” Tonight, I beg a bit of a paraphrase:

The light bends in the darkness and the darkness cannot keep us from truly seeing.

Peace,
Milton

I have some things on my mind, but I also got something in my eye this evening that has left it difficult for me to see well, much less concentrate. So I offer a story (one I’ve posted before) that I wrote for a Christmas Eve service some years back. Here’s hoping it speaks to you.

Peace,
Milton

____________________________________________

In this week where the days are the longest, life is a little darker tonight. Dan Fogelberg died last Sunday morning after a long battle with prostate cancer. He was 56. The note on his website reads:

Sunday, December 16

Dear friends,

Dan left us this morning at 6:00am. He fought a brave battle with cancer and died peacefully at home in Maine with his wife Jean at his side. His strength, dignity, and grace in the face of the daunting challenges of this disease were an inspiration to all who knew him.

I feel like I grew up with Dan Fogelberg. The first record of his I remember was Souvenirs, which came out the month after I started to Baylor. What better words for a teenager on the cusp of college than

love when you can
cry when you have to
be who you must
that’s a part of the plan
await your arrival
with simple survival
and one day we’ll all understand
(“Part of the Plan”)

My across the hall dorm neighbor had an earlier album, Home Free, which was another revelation. Then Fogelberg released five more records between my freshman year and my seminary graduation:

• Captured Angel (1975)
• Nether Lands (1977)
• Twin Sons of Different Mothers (with Tim Weisberg) (1978)
• Phoenix (1979)
• The Innocent Age (two records) (1981)

He gave me the soundtrack for some very pivotal years in my life, mostly marked by searching. Listening back through those songs tonight, I still resonate with the hope informed by an underlying melancholy that runs like a river through his music. He made my heart ache and strain to reach for the heights he described:

once in a vision I came on some woods
and stood at a fork in the road
my choices were clear yet I froze with the fear
of not knowing which way to go
one road was simple acceptance of life
the other road offered sweet peace
when I made my decision
my vision became my release
(Nether Lands)

When I was in CPE and particularly broke, all I could do for my family one Christmas was make cards and try to give them something with my words. I borrowed some from “Leader of the Band” to try and reach out to my father at a time when the distance was palpable.

I thank you for the music and your stories of the road
I thank you for the freedom when it came my time to go
I thank you for the kindness and the times that you got tough
and papa I don’t think I’ve said I love you near enough

The grace he offered his father in the song helped me begin to see a different path to take.

Dan Fogelberg also helped me know I was in love.

On one of my first dates with Ginger, we were driving between Fort Worth and Dallas and she said, “What’s the purse song?” I asked to repeat the question, which she did, and without to much time passing, I said, “Oh – Dan Fogelberg’s ‘Same Old Lang Syne’: ‘I went to hug her and she spilled her purse/ and we laughed until we cried.’”

Right then I knew something special was happening.

I saw him in concert once, before that night with Ginger. He played solo at Reunion Arena in Dallas; I had tenth row center seats – or should I say seat: I went by myself. A grand piano, a guitar, and a small table that held a glass half-filled with whiskey were all that graced the stage. He came out and played for nearly three hours, making it seem as though we were sitting in his living room. When he got to “Same Old Lang Syne,” he moved to the piano and began talking about the 1812 Overture. He went on to demonstrate that the opening notes on the piano are the same melody: da da da da da da da dum dum dum. “Stuff like this cracks musicians up,” he said, laughing harder than the rest of us. Then, when he sang, “I said the audience was heavenly, but the traveling was hell,” we cheered like crazy and he laughed again.

One of his best moves was to sing a duet with Emmylou Harris (also something I wish I could do): “Only the Heart May Know.” The song is a dialog between someone looking back on childhood and those things he remembers. He asks questions of them and they respond.

Silent Sea, tell this to me:
Where are the children
that we used to be?

(Silent Sea)
At picture shows
where nobody goes
and only the heart can see.

In the bridge they sing, “Friends we knew follow us through all of the days of our lives.” How amazing it is to look up and look back and see someone’s fingerprints all over your life because of the songs he wrote. Like Madeleine L’Engle, Dan Fogelberg is someone who befriended me and helped keep me alive in ways I didn’t understand until much later; maybe even tonight. I’ll never meet him, but, thanks to the songs, he’s not completely gone.

and if you ever hear them calling out
and if you’ve been by paupers crowned
between the worlds of men and make-believe
I can be found
(“Scarecrow’s Dream”)

Even though I know how to get there from here (that’s a place I go quite often), I must say, “Goodbye, old friend — and thanks.”

Peace,
Milton

P. S. – I couldn’t pass up this concert clip.

Joseph had lines in our pageant today. He said:

The road to Bethlehem stretches out behind us. It has been a journey of love: love behind us, love before us, love above us, love under our feet, love around us, love inside us. Only a short distance is left; the stable where we will rest is just up the path. Love will carry us the rest of the way.

His words reminded me of Dave Matthews’ “Christmas Song,” which is going to be a part of our Christmas Eve service. Here he is with Tim Reynolds.

Watch it a couple of times and you’ll be singing, “love, love, love,” all day long.

I found a Mary Chapin Carpenter song I didn’t know called “Bells Are Ringing” adds a note of justice to the joy:

Bells are ringing, all over the world.
Bells are ringing, calling the light
Bells are ringing, all over the world, all over the world tonight.

Wherever you’re walking tonight, whoever you’re waiting for
Somehow, by the stable’s faint light,
Peace in your heart is restored.

For a great take on an old favorite, here’s James Taylor singing “Go Tell It On The Mountain.”

John McCutcheon’s “Christmas in the Trenches,” is a song I first heard many years ago and found it to be hauntingly hopeful. He tells a great story leading into the song.

To send you on your way with a smile (after the tears), here’s a video clip forwarded to me by a friend. The group is Straight No Chaser from Indiana University.

Everybody sing along.

Peace,
Milton

Madeleine L’Engle played a big part in my understanding of both Advent and the Liturgical Year through her book, The Irrational Season, which draws its title from her poem. She wrote essays working her way around the calendar in church time – Advent, Christmas, Holy Innocents, Epiphany, Lent, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity, Transfiguration, Advent – challenging me to learn to tell time differently. (I wrote more fully about this here.) Advent both began (“the night is far gone”) and ended (“the day is at hand”) her timekeeping because the Birth was the reason we have a calendar at all. Our year, our faith, our hope, begins here and calls us to expect a new year and to find new things in the Old, Old Story.

When I try to grasp the nature of the universe with my conscious mind, my humanly limited intellectual powers, I grope blindly. I come closer to understanding with the language of the heart, sipping hot bouillon and relaxing, standing by the dining-room window where I can no longer sit on the window sill because of our accumulation of plants – coleus and Swedish Ivy and ferns and alligator pears and philodendron and anything else we can coax to grow in the polluted air of the city – than when I think with mind alone. (4)

I’m sitting at my laptop in the makeshift dining room of our rent house sipping red wine instead of bouillon (not much of a bouillon sipper myself) next to the crush of crèches that adorn our mantle. Year after year, in quiet moments like these, the one in the story who pulls at me most is Joseph. While Luke’s telling provides the script for most of the pageants to be acted out in the next few days, with angels dropping in on Zachariah and Mary, Matthew writes about Joseph: Mary came up pregnant and they both knew he wasn’t the father, Joseph was trying to figure out how they could both step out of the marriage with the least amount of shame and scorn –

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:20-21)

After the dream, I imagine Joseph laying there wide-eyed (as if anyone could go back to sleep) and thinking, “Emmanuel – God with us. What am I supposed to do with that?” and then getting up to go find Mary. None of the gospel writers records any of Joseph’s words or feelings; all we are given are his actions: he stays with Mary, he takes her to Bethlehem, they flee into Egypt, and, as the boy grows up, he was his father. I did find one old ballad, “The Cherry Tree Carol,” that tells of Mary and Joseph being in a cherry orchard. She asks him to pick cherries for her and he tells her, rather snidely, to let the father of her child do it. It starts to rain cherries and he gets the point. (Fit that into your Lessons and Carols service!)

I don’t see him that way. As a carpenter, he was a guy who built things, who fixed things, who knew how to measure twice and cut once, who thrived on the kind of beauty that comes from precision as much as polish. When he found out Mary was pregnant, he wasn’t impulsive. He was thinking it through when the angel swooped into his dream. He moved from there to build a life for his family, such as it was, but all the measuring and planning the world could not have prepared him for what happened. The boy was born in a barn. People from shepherds to kings came to see him. They fled like refugees overnight because Herod wanted the baby killed. And that was just the first few months.

Like Mary, Joseph had to be filled with something other than reason – and fear. They had to swap angel stories at some point. He was the one given the name, which meant he would name the child as any father would do in those days. He grew into a role he never imagined he would be called to play and they lived out their days with a heartfelt understanding of the paradox of blessing: a life of meaningful pain and joy.

Down all the days, he still gets marginalized in most tellings of the story. He doesn’t do much more than lead the donkey and find a room, or at least a stable. I’m not pulling for equal billing, I just wanted to say when my heart hears the Story, I find deep resonance in this carpenter who chose to stay and stand with mother and child.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. – Two things: the artwork is from Bee Still Studio (thanks to Karyn who has a copy hanging at her parents’ house). Second, the Beatles had long since broken up before I realized Mother Mary’s words to the boys from Liverpool were straight out of Luke. Though it’s no carol, I hear it differently this time of year, both in light of the Season and as I often find December a dark month.

I’ve spent another afternoon
crossing thresholds
opening doors
picturing my furniture
in unfamiliar rooms

homes don’t change hands
without groaning
even breaking
I could hear the hurt
when I stood still

some houses hide their scars
under fresh paint
refinished floors
others are open wounds
crying for attention

I hope they understand
I’m a hunter
who is hungry
to find the right house
and come home

Peace,
Milton

In front of our church is a brick courtyard and over to one side stands a row of hand painted rocks, each one holding a phrase from the Lord’s Prayer, thanks to our children. The tradition here, during worship, is for the children to lead the congregation in the Prayer at the end of the Children’s Sermon. Noticing that connection makes we wonder if I think too much and trust too little. Still, I find deep resonance in the disciples’ request of Jesus: “Lord, teach us to pray.”

When Jesus answered, I’m not sure he imagined we would be quoting the exact prayer every week in worship. Like any of our rituals, it can become overly fraught with familiarity or it can be an experience of revelatory repetition. For most of us on any given Sunday, it probably falls somewhere in between because prayer is hard to comprehend.

Here’s where I get caught. We still own a house in Massachusetts (yes, I believe I’ve mentioned that) and we’re trying to figure out how to get settled here. We need to sell our house up north in order to begin to plant roots here in the south. We haven’t had one offer on the house since it went on the market last August. I have prayed for the house to sell and I don’t really think God is a real estate agent. I think my life is shot through with God’s presence (as is all of creation) and I don’t always understand what that means. There are people who pray better than I who have lost their homes in this mortgage mess. If someone calls tomorrow and offers to buy our house and I attribute it as an answer to prayer, does that not imply, intentionally or not, that God somehow picked me over them?

I wish I knew what happened when I pray.

Luke records Jesus’ answer to the disciples’ request as brief and straightforward:

So Jesus told them, “Pray in this way:

‘Father, help us to honor your name.
Come and set up your kingdom.
Give us each day the food we need.
Forgive our sins as we forgive everyone who has done wrong to us.
And keep us from being tempted.’ “
(Contemporary English Version)

I’m struck by the verbs in the prayer: help, come, set up, give, forgive, keep. They are all pointed at asking God to be, well, God. That helps me. I remember hearing Clyde Fant preach many years ago about the two most important statements the disciples made. The first was in response to Jesus asking who they thought he was:

“You are the Christ,” they answered.

The second statement was one the disciples made about themselves in a moment of conscious vulnerability:

“We are but human.”

If my prayer is for God to be God, then the first thing I’m letting go is my claim to that title. There’s also a second thing. I’m praying, implicitly or explicitly, for me to be, well, me. Regardless of the circumstances that swirl around me, I’m praying to be and to become the person I was created to be, which I think is another way of saying I’m praying to be faithful. It’s less about God fixing my stuff than it is about me retaining some sense of my place in this world. If God were in the wish granting business, I would like to go back and live the last seven years without having to live with depression. What I can see looking back is God never quit being God and I learned how to be someone who found God’s love runs deeper than my sense of worthlessness, which has helped me be a better me, a healthier me, and I hope a more faithful me.

When our house sells, someone will say, “God answers prayers,” which is a true statement. But I’m not praying for the house to sell. I am asking for wisdom to make sound choices in complicated times. I’m asking for patience and perspective enough to understand our world is not coming to an end because of the pressure we feel right now. I’m praying to remember the Lord is blessing me right now. I’m praying for eyes to see and ears to hear. I’m praying to be faithful. Jesus said God sees the sparrow fall; Jesus never said anything about God catching the sparrow.

Peace,
Milton

Growing up in Africa meant growing up with a number of British friends whose traditional birthday greeting was, “Many happy returns.” I was never really sure what it meant other than I was pretty sure they were wishing me a happy birthday. Tonight I learned it means, “Have many more happy days, especially birthdays.” I also found

Since the 18th century this has been used as a salutation to offer the hope that a happy day being marked would recur many more times. It is now primarily used on birthdays; prior to the mid 19th century it was used more generally, at any celebratory or festive event.

My morning started with a stunning spousal rendition of “Happy Birthday” followed by breakfast and cards. Ginger’s had this wonderful picture on the front

and the caption: “Does this hat make me look fat?”

She had a couple of things to do at the office and then we were meeting at the church to go lunch. My birthday traditions include doing something I’ve never done before (check: I’ve never had a birthday in Durham before) and eating in an ethnic restaurant that is new to me (check: she took me to the Palace International, an African restaurant – more later). When I got to church, the woman filling in for our office manager who is on vacation handed me a card from the Church Auxiliary which said:

Forget wishes, man, let’s go straight for emphatic claims. I loved it. I needed it. I’m hanging on to that card. I may even carry it with me so the next time things get a little tense I can read it to myself or, better yet, pull it out and show it to whoever is the stress distributor and say, “Back off, man, I’m being blessed.”

The Palace was a small, bright, and sparsely decorated room with one server whose smile sparkled as much as the sunshine that poured in through the windows. Her accent was one of the happy returns of my day, taking me back to the familiar voices of my childhood. I asked to go there because I passed it the other day and saw a photo in the window with a caption that read, “Come taste our world famous samosas.” They were the first thing I ordered and became my second return: samosas were street food when I was in Nairobi. I loved them. (I posted my recipe here.) The ones at the Palace did not disappoint. I may have to go back in, like Buddy the Elf, and say, “Congratulations on having world famous samosas.”

We meandered through the afternoon and a couple of Durham neighborhoods looking at houses to see if we can get a sense of where we will live once we can sell our house in Marshfield (doesn’t anyone out there want to buy a house six hundred feet from Cape Cod Bay?) and move out of our rental. We are beginning to learn street names and are a little more able to understand how neighborhoods connect to each other, but there is still much to learn. We returned home so Ginger could drop me off and go to one short meeting at church and then she came back around seven so we could go to dinner. Though the restaurant was new to us, the event was yet another return because dear friends in Marshfield gave us the gift certificate to the Magnolia Grill before we left Massachusetts; it was fun to feel them at dinner with us, though I wouldn’t have been willing to share much of my wonderful food:

Grilled Georgia Quail on Butternut Risotto with Hedgehog Mushrooms, Overnight Tomatoes, and Pomegranate Molasses Jus

Chesapeake Bay Wild Striped Bass with Sneed’s Perry Littleneck Clam “Chowder,” Organic Kennebec Potatoes, Roasted Pepper, Spanish Chorizo, and Squash Ragout

Manchego Crème Brulee with a Sweet Spanish Olive Oil Crisp and Poached Quince

The food tasted as amazing as the text feels intimidating. I felt the blessing of the Lord with every bite.

Throughout the day, my mobile phone would ring and someone on the other end would begin singing. Their voices full of celebration and remembrances were carried by that familiar melody of return. It was not until I got home, though, that I realized I had voice mail and got to hear my brother, sister-in-law, and oldest nephew sing to me in the same fashion as they do each year. The best was I can describe it is to say I picture them getting in the car together, driving to a drug-infested neighborhood, buying some crack, taking it together as a family, and then calling me and singing. This year, they each sang different songs at the same time, best I could tell. The sheer lunacy of the whole enterprise makes me feel loved.

After dinner, Ginger and I returned home, or what passes for home right now. It’s home to me because I return to her. What I see from this side of her amazing eyes is God is truly blessing me right now and returns over and over to do it again and again just because I’m at home with her. Very little feels settled, I feel a few dark clouds on the horizon, and we are walking much like the Magi with only a little light to guide us, and – and we keep returning to each other day after day after day: many happy returns.

Yes, the Lord is blessing me right now.

Peace,
Milton

Today was my first day cooking at the new restaurant. I did well and the learning curve was pretty steep. Thinking about my day, particularly in the context of these days of waiting and watching, led me to this poem.

nouvelle cuisine

I’m standing at the stove, staring into the sizzle,
waiting for the right time to turn the salmon.
The exercise is not new, but the kitchen is.
My mind tosses about like fish in the skillet,
wondering how context changes character,
what it means that I’m playing a new room.
I’m being me yet I have to wait to be recognized.

Jesus was cooking fish on the shores of Galilee
the morning Peter recognized the cook
and dove into the water to get to breakfast.
He walked the Emmaus road – Jesus, that is,
but no one recognized him until he broke the bread.
Not exactly cooking, but food let them see who he was.
That’s about as far as I can push the analogy except

to say I want to be known in the broiling and breaking,
to be seen in the motions of memory and making.
A day will come (will it?) when I grab the baby bok choi
out of the walk-in without asking someone where it is,
and in a moment no one else will probably notice,
I will feel recognized and received. For now I’ll cook
and wait for home to burn its way into my heart.

Peace,
Milton

Apropos of nothing, I want to point you to an interesting web site I found through Africa Kid and the World: Free Rice. As a former English teacher, a lover of language, and someone who wants to do something about hunger in our world, I love this site. Every time you match the given word with the correct definition, you “earn” twenty grains of rice to be given to hungry people around the world. (The site is for real; the food actually gets to people.) Please make it a part of what you do.

My new Chef is an excellent entrepreneur. She began here in Durham with a catering company, which has continued to grow, has the new restaurant where I have been working, and also runs a restaurant on the Duke campus for faculty during the day and students at night. That’s where she sent me to work this evening and said, “I want to know everything you think about the place when I see you tomorrow.”

The kitchen is huge, the staff is small, and they do pretty good stuff. I liked the people I worked with, I had a good evening working there, and something wasn’t quite right. I thought about it driving home, thought about it some more in the shower, talked with Ginger a bit when I got here, and decided before I tell Chef my observations and evaluations, I need to ask a question: “What are we trying to achieve there?”

The things I noticed had to do with making things better: better organization, better kitchen setup, better menu planning – all of which would help increase business. They do a good job; I think it could be a great place. But what I may not know is the university may just be paying for a good place. If so, everyone may be helping to create exactly what they had in mind. If so, talking about how things could change is not necessarily helpful; if not, I’ve got some ideas.

When I taught high school English, I intentionally chose texts I hoped would be incendiary in class. I wanted the students to be changed by the texts, to ask uncomfortable questions, to drive their parents crazy, and to grow up to be wonderfully outlandish adults. What I learned in high school the second time around was mine was the minority opinion. Our schools are designed, for the most part, to raise good workers and good citizens, people who will mow their lawns and pay their taxes. Not too many folks are saying they want a revolution (even though most of the parents have Beatles albums).

Michael Foucault looked at prisons and schools as case studies to analyze the point or goal of society. Smith paraphrases him: “The disciplinary society forms individuals into what it wants them to be: docile, productive consumers who are obedient to the state” (92). Without going on another quoting rampage, Smith’s analysis of Foucault’s theory as it relates to the church led me to the same question I want to ask about the campus restaurant: what are we trying to achieve here?

In most every church I have been a part of, regardless of denomination, I’ve met people with young children who have joined the church – usually come back to the church after some period of absence – because “they want their children to go to be in Sunday School.” I’ve always thought it would be rude on my part to respond by asking, “Why?” so I haven’t, but I do wonder. Do they mean they want them to learn basic values so they will know how to be “good” people? How would they have felt if I had said, “Great!” and handed them this quote from Brian MacLaren:

One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative . . . If we want to be fair, we must teach the young to be revolutionaries, revolutionaries against the status quo. (Smith 21)

Status quo is Latin for you and me.

When I was a youth minister back in the day, as you kids say, I planned a mission trip to Uptown Baptist Church in Chicago. One of the most active kids in the group came and told me, in tears, that her parents would not let her go. Both of them were deacons and very active in the church. I told her I would talk to them. When I approached the father, he said he wasn’t sure it would be safe. I gave him my stock answer in those situations: every year we took a ski trip and I took forty young people, tied long pieces of fiber glass to their feet and threw them up on the side of a mountain. Never once did I have a parent question if they were safe. How could a mission trip we were going to spend in a church, when his daughter would literally almost never be alone or out of sight of an adult be more dangerous. His shoulders dropped and he said,

“I’m afraid if she goes up there and sees what is going on she won’t want to come back.” She didn’t get to go. She became a missionary.

Her parents were good people, just like the folks in the kitchen tonight are good people, and the school teachers, and the young parents returning to church. Hell, we’re all good people. I’m just not sure God’s point in breathing us into existence was for us to be good. We were created in God’s image to incarnate God’s liberating love and grace to the world around us, which means we are left with a bunch of questions, as I wrote about in a short column for our church newsletter:

The backdrop to Jesus’ birth was an occupied land in turmoil. The world was troubled and uneasy, and yet the angels came and sang about peace on earth. But how do we find peace?

How do we make sense and meaning out of our lives when most of the world is poorer, sicker, hungrier, and more frightened than we are? How do we focus on our families and the relationships that sustain us and find time and love to share with people in Iran and Indonesia? How do we invest ourselves in our local churches to do what it takes for us to become who God is calling us to be and find time and energy to generate hope and change in places like Darfur? How do we fight the good fights that need to be fought on our local levels to make sure our towns and cities are caring for our citizens and find energy and determination to bang our heads against the brick wall that is our national government to hold them accountable for their lack of coherent leadership? How do we save the whales, save the rainforest, stop human trafficking, feed the hungry, house the homeless, wage peace, demand equality, struggle with our own biases, cook dinner, get the kids to soccer practice, pay the bills, love our significant others, meet new people, care for our friends, take care of our bodies, get enough sleep, stay informed, have some fun, do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God?

I’m not going to answer those questions, by the way, I’m just throwing them out there.

We are waiting expectantly for the Birth, the Incarnation, the Sacred Scandal, the God’s release of Unadulterated, Undiluted, Unfiltered Love into the world. God call to us in this season is to be prepared: if we go to Bethlehem open-hearted, we won’t want to come back, or at least we won’t want to come back the same.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — I have a short book review published here.