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advent journal: going into labor

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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4

Everything has a past, or at least a precursor. Before there was a blog, or even email, I wrote a Lenten Journal to a specific friend as my spiritual practice during the season. When I got an email account, I started sending it to more and more friends, mostly because I could. The email list grew, Gordon Atkinson explained what a blog was to me, and two days after Christmas two years ago, don’t eat alone was born. I’ve continued my practice of writing everyday during Lent; last year I did the same during Advent. The discipline for me is less about the frequency that it is the focus. During these two seasons, I’m intentional about choosing two or three books for the journey and using my writing more specifically as theological and devotional reflection while, hopefully, not losing sight of the things that are my usual subjects.

I started thinking about books a couple of weeks ago, though the ones I’ve chosen found me rather than me them. Over the past couple of years (mostly since I’ve been blogging), I’ve read bits and pieces about the “emergent church,” without knowing much about what it was or who was writing about it. About the time I would begin to think I had a little bit of a handle, I would find something that would make me wonder. This Advent season seemed like a good time for me to become more intentional about learning about it. Based on the buzz I’ve read, I thought I would get one of Brian McLaren’s books, since he seems to be at least one of the most prolific emergent writers. Another blog lead me to McLaren’s own site where I was a bit put off by his article against consumerism that suggested one of the ways to fight back was to buy his book and give one to a friend. (I’m not trying to pick on him; he’s certainly not alone. Springsteen’s first single off his new album is called “Radio Nowhere,” decrying the loss of local radio and everything else, yet his website announces a satellite radio station; the Eagles’ new CD, full of protests against globalism and capitalism run amok was available exclusively at Wal-Mart in its initial release.)

About the same time, Ginger received an email note inviting her to hear Samuel Wells speak on his book, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics. The connections made in the title intrigued me and I decided to let McLaren wait for another day. I wanted one more book and let Amazon do some searching for “emergent”; they provided me with Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church by James K. A. Smith. I punched a couple of buttons and both books showed up at our new house on Friday. The third book for the journey (one for each of the Magi?) is one I’m rereading: David Jensen’s In the Company of Others: a Dialogical Chistology.

An Advent season doesn’t pass that I don’t go back to Meister Eckhart’s words:

What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the son of God fourteen hundred years ago and I do not give birth to the son of God in my time and in my culture?

Neither does an Advent season pass that I am not aware of the difference in giving birth and using birth as a metaphor, whatever the discussion. I’m a straight white male who has no idea what it feels like to have your body writhe and clench and ache, or for a new life to come bursting out of your belly. Several years ago, when our first godchild was about to be born, we were in the hospital with the mother to be. The nurse walked in and said to her, “It’s about time to herniate you membrane.” As I stood up to leave, the nurse assured me I could stay.

“Oh, no,” I said, “I make it a point to leave the room anytime someone says, ‘It’s time to herniate your membrane.’”

I will be the first, therefore, to say I am not an expert on childbirth, postmodernism, literary theory, the emergent movement, or theology, for that matter. My hope is my journey through the season is kin to the shepherds following the angel chorus, or the magi chasing the star: I’m just trying to get to the manger in my time and in my culture, which means, for me, it’s time to break some stained glass and let some different light seep into what has become an all too sanctified barn.

Yesterday morning my phone rang and the voice on the other end identified herself as someone who reads this blog and lives here in Durham. She called to invite me to a lecture on Sacred Harp shaped note singing and, she hoped, some singing as well. I drove to the Watts Street Baptist Church where the event was to take place. When I walked into the foyer of the church, there was a poster delineating some of the highlights in the church’s history, one of which was it was the first Southern Baptist church to ordain a woman in 1964 (four years after it integrated). As I read a little more about the church, I realized they, like me, had Southern Baptist roots that had sprouted into a tree of a different sort, if you will. As I said, everything has a past.

Shaped note singing was designed to do at least two things: one was to help people learn to sight read without having to read music. The shapes on the scale helped the singers learn the notes. The second thing was it was designed to be participatory. The singers sang to one another – together – rather than for an audience. They sang as a community of singers, or perhaps better said, a communion of singers, getting their pitches from one another, listening to one another, following the shapes, and creating rich, evocative harmonies. By the end of the 19th century, shaped note singing was losing ground because, as they handout I was given said,

pianos and organs had become more abundant, and printing techniques more economical. The old song books lost favor to modern hymnals and their completely different arrangements with the melody in the top line and harmonies more easily rendered on a piano or organ.

Then came my favorite line:

“Clearly,” according to the introduction in The Social Harp, “the pleasure of the singer has been sacrificed to the ineptitude of the pianist.”

The obvious bias of the statement notwithstanding, I came away from the quote with a question: what will it take for me to unleash the enthusiasm of the shepherds in me this Advent, or the tenacity of the three kings, to go into a labor of Love in these days, rather than to allow myself to be one of those slouching toward Bethlehem, or worse, one sitting silently while others give birth to Christ this year?

Peace,
Milton

hey, that’s for me!

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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4

We found this sign hanging off the front porch as we drove up to the house yesterday. I wish you could see the individual notes written all over the banner.

I do feel welcomed. Thank you.

Peace,
Milton

the last leg

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3

As we got ready to leave Birmingham last Sunday, I quickly made a couple of CDs for the road while we were packing the cars, almost randomly picking tracks — mostly I picked artists I wanted to hear. Looking back on yesterday, it appears I picked a pretty good soundtrack.

put the message in a box
put the box into a car
drive the car around the world
till you get heard

— World Party

This was going to be the day: we were driving to Durham, to our house (OK, our rent house), to park in our driveway, and sleep in a room that didn’t require us to check in at the desk. The day played out with a few hitches, the biggest of which was we couldn’t get into the house we were renting until this morning; we were trying to get home, but it seemed to be a moving target. We left Chattanooga late in the afternoon, determined to get to as far as we could and we made it all the way, walking into the lobby of our last hotel (for awhile) at 11:47 pm.

I can hear your voice in the wind
are you calling to me down the long road
do you really think there’s an end
I have lived my whole life down the long road

— Cliff Eberhardt

Our last day in Chattanooga that left us with a couple more stories to tell. After I took Ginger back across the bridge to get some tennis shoes at Fast Break, we decided to find some lunch and came upon the Between the Bridges Café, a small lunch-only place with a whimsical flair. We were the only ones in the place since it was almost closing time (they’re only open from 11 to 2:30) and we got to talk to two of the three women who are the co-owners. We learned they were all former teachers (as am I) who wanted out from under the burden of school work to do something they enjoyed and something that allowed them to set boundaries they wanted to live with. One woman described how her school administrator had caused her to decide to leave teaching.

“She was crazy,” she told us. “I think on the application it says, ‘Are you crazy?’ and if you answer, ‘Yes,’ they put you in charge.” There was more to the story. “But that crazy lady saved my life.” She went on to tell us of having a mammogram soon after she quit teaching (“I would have put it off until summer.”) and finding breast cancer, even as they were planning to open the restaurant. “I kept trusting God and coming in here. Some days all I could do was sit; other days I felt better and I did what I could.” The small café has gotten some good buzz and the women look like they are having fun chasing their dream together. Sounds like a pretty good deal all the way around.

he’s eight years old with a flour sack cape tied all around his neck
he climbed up on the garage figuring what the heck
he screwed his courage up so tight the whole thing come unwound
got a running start and bless his heart he headed for the ground

he’s one of those who knows that life is just a leap of faith
spread your arms hold your breath and always trust your cape

— Guy Clark

On the way back to our cars at the hotel I invited Ginger to ride with me on the electric shuttle so she could get a taste of the experience. The driver was the one I met my first night riding and he recognized me, even remembering my hotel. About halfway through the route a short, sturdy woman got on the bus and plopped down beside me. The seat cushion let out the same exhausted wheeze as she did when she dropped into the chair. “How are you doing today?” she asked. I said I was fine and reciprocated with the question. “Oh, I feel turrible,” she said, “just turrible.”

She was dealing with the headaches and stuffiness that come with a sinus infection and was quite animated and descriptive as she told us about it, which she did with both a dramatic and humorous flair. Ginger and I both laughed along with her at one point and she slapped me on the shoulder and said, “Now how about that – I got both of you laughing and I feel turrible. That’s pretty good.”

I’m a stranger here, no one you would know
I’m from somewhere else, well, isn’t everybody though
I don’t know where I’ll be when the sun comes up
until then, sweet dreams, goodnight America

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

We left this friendly city behind knowing I-24 connects to I-75, which connects to I-40 and that would get us to Durham. We drove out about four o’clock, which let us enjoy part of Chattanooga’s traffic and a good amount of Knoxville’s as well. It also put us winding through the mountains between Knoxville and Asheville on roads we didn’t know in the dark. Tennessee and Carolina don’t simply glide into one another, they crash, leaving a wreck of winding, climbing, diving roads that left me feeling (as I drove in the dark up and down a road I did not know) like the driver in some bizarre version of Space Mountain, going up and down the mountains, all the while navigating the giant trucks, those moving canyons of steel and wheels bearing down all around us, fueled by gasoline, gravity, and capitalism. Somewhere in the middle of it all, we crossed into North Carolina, one step closer to home.

dark and silent late last night
 I think I might have heard the highway calling
geese in flight and dogs that bite
signs that might be omens say I’m going , going
I’m gone to Carolina in my mind

— James Taylor

As we got out of the mountains and most of the trucks, the songs came round again and I smiled and cried as the words filled the spaces in the car not occupied by boxes and bags. About sixty miles out, Durham started showing up on the mileage signs and we both began to realize our journey was almost through.

there’s a highway rising in my dreams
deep in the heart I know it gleams
for I have seen it stretching wide
clear across to the other side

— Emmylou Harrris

Just before midnight, we pulled into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn Express where we stayed not long ago when we were traveling with the pups. A gracious and welcoming Indian woman checked us in and said with some surprise, “You’ve stayed with us before,” as though we somehow belonged. By the time we got to our room, it was Thursday – today – the day we will get to move in to our house, the day Ginger will go to her office for the first time as the pastor, the day we start living here. I queued the last song up on purpose:

dust in our eyes our own boots kicked up
heartsick we nursed along the way we picked up
you may not see it when it’s sticking to your skin
but we’re better off for all that we let in

and I don’t know where it all begins
and I don’t know where it all will end
better off for all that we let in . . .

— Indigo Girls

The driving is done; the journey continues . . .

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — I couldn’t help but add this little early nineties video treat.

the way home

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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4

John Wendland, my best friend in first and second grade, had horses. He was the youngest child in a big family and his two oldest sisters, both in high school, said they would take us riding. Mary, the oldest, pulled me up on the saddle behind her, told me to wrap my arms around her waist, and off we went. John was riding with his sister, Sarah. The horses moved gently across the field and then among a small stand of trees as we rode for about twenty or thirty minutes until Mary said, “I guess we’d better head home,” which apparently in horse language translates as, “Get back to the barn as fast as you can.” The animals broke into a dead run and I hung on for dear life, scared to death. I was still squeezing Mary when the horses stopped.

As Ginger and I are on the cusp of completing our one-way journey from home to home, I’ve thought a lot about horses, both those I’ve ridden (not too many since that frightening afternoon) and those I’ve watched run for the roses on television. In most races, the horses find a new level of effort, a different gear, when they make the club house turn and head for home. It’s language with meaning beyond the racetrack: it’s what matters most in baseball; it’s where the cookie is at the pig races at the State Fair (my personal favorite); and it’s almost always in a circle. This time, however, we aren’t going back home, we’re going to home. The reliable circle is taking on a new shape, following I-40 across Tennessee and Carolina, until we stop some time tonight in front of our new address.

Last night, as Ginger and I walked back to the hotel from a wonderful dinner, a woman stopped us on the sidewalk. She was small, maybe five feet tall, with glasses and grey hair kept in a long braided ponytail that exuded an elegant simplicity. “I’m a street poet,” she said. “May I share a poem with you in exchange for some money so I can find a place to spend the night?” Ginger and I looked at each other and then back at her and nodded. She started reciting a list of things I thought was the poem, only to find out, when she finished, that it was simply a list of topics on which she was willing to recite. Ginger was fooled as well. We tried to think back on what she had said.

“Did you say ‘philosophical’?” I asked, grasping at straws.

“I said ‘positive,’” she answered.

“Positive is good,” Ginger said, and the woman began to speak in a quiet, rapid rhythm. I’ve been trying to come up with an adjective to describe how she came across: resilient. Yes. Resilient. She is probably someone who has gotten more good news than bad, who appeared (to Ginger’s well-trained sensibilities) to be probably dealing with some sort of mental illness, and who stood on the street with the poise of a poet to risk sharing her words, hoping for a compassionate response. Her voice was soft enough that I couldn’t get most of the words, but I do remember, “we are all children of God,” as one of the lines.

I don’t think I’m belittling her condition to say I found some resonance with her homelessness as we stood together on the sidewalk. These past three days, when people find out we aren’t from Chattanooga, they ask, “Where are you from?” I respond with a longer answer than they were expecting, I’m sure: “I was living outside of Boston and I’m moving to Durham, North Carolina for my wife to start a new job.” I’m between addresses. I’m heading for home, but the road doesn’t go in a circle this time.

My coffee shop du jour is Greyfriar’s. (Chattanooga is a good coffee town.) I rode the shuttle from the hotel with a new driver who told me Durham had a great NASCAR track (speaking of ovals) and a new set of characters and found a great cup of coffee, a wonderful cranberry-cinnamon scone, and a wall plug by the table. The barista came by the table to see how I liked the scone and we talked about scones for far longer than most people would consider normal. The three guys at the table next to me are spending more time talking about chess games than I consider normal. The latest arrival at the table is the most vocal, with the look of one of those guys who plays speed chess in a New York park. He’s reading from a book on chess and has been reading aloud such that I can’t help but hear. He talks with the rhythm of a street poet in a poetry slam, determined to win with his words. He’s talking faster than I can write down what he says, or even understand it, except for this sentence: “The more you learn about playing chess, the more you realize what you don’t know.”

I’ve not ridden many horses since that second grade afternoon. One afternoon in Mexico, where Ginger and were on vacation, I agreed to go riding because Ginger wanted to ride horses on the beach and the desk clerk at the hotel assured me the horses stayed in line the whole time. No one would bolt for the barn. When we got to the starting point, the man put Ginger on a small horse and then said to me, “Hermano grande! You need big horse,” and put me on the Mexican equivalent of a Clydesdale. The ride was uneventful until we got to the beach, where my horse decided not to stay in line but to trot into the ocean, walking parallel with the others but with water over both his legs and mine. I could hear Ginger behind me, laughing. All I could do was hold on and keep saying, “Be nice, Big Damn Horse, be nice,” until he came out of the water and turned toward home.

Life, this time around, looks more like an opened paper clip (you know – where the outside leg kicks straight out) than a racing oval. Tonight we will stop driving and stay awhile in Durham; a long while. In moments like these, the soundtrack of my life seems to rise up, over even the guy next to me who is still talking about chess:

The Way Home

If you’re ever in the Richmond Jail
With no one around to go your bail
If you’ve lost your way it might help to know
Jesus is the way home

If you’re trying to put that whiskey down
And you realize you’re losing ground
You don’t have to walk that road alone
Jesus is the way home

You don’t have to worry where you’re at
Or why you’re there he knows all that
You just let the Good Book be your map
Jesus is the way home

If you think nobody understands
And life’s not going like you planned
There’s a friend who’ll show you how to go
Jesus is the way home

There’s a garden down in Alabam’
Not too far south of Birmingham
Painted signs and crosses by the road
One says Jesus is the way home

For the Bible tells me so
Jesus is the way home

Thanks to Kate Campbell for the song, to Chattanooga for the welcome and rest, to family gathered in Birmingham, to all those back at home in Massachusetts, and to those waiting at the home just down the road in Durham. We’re making the club house turn.

Peace,
Milton

baby got background

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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8

Ginger and I are officially in The Week of Transition between Marshfield and Durham, so we snuck away for a couple of days together in a town where neither of us had ever been: Chattanooga, Tennessee. Yesterday, we spent a good bit of time at the amazing Tennessee Aquarium and found a pretty good burger and a great shake at Cheeburger Cheeburger. Today, as we often do on vacations, we chased different muses. Her favorite form of relaxation involves wraps and massages; mine has more to do with bookstores, street food, and aimlessly wandering around town. Tonight, we will find each other for dinner and have a chance to swap stories and relax together.

We are staying on the outskirts of the rejuvenated downtown area. The city has a free electric shuttle that runs well and frequently, which I have made good use of – particularly today. I just got settled in at a great coffee shop this morning when I got a phone call that required of me to deal with transition issues, so I rode downtown and back to the hotel twice with the same shuttle driver who gave me a little history lesson on each trip (did you know Coca-Cola was invented in Chattanooga, not Atlanta?).

I also learned about the social makeup of the city from the people who got on and off the shuttle as I rode. The publicity for the shuttle makes it sound as if it is primarily a method of transit for tourists; in reality, it provides a free and safe way for street people to get around. Most of them, it appears, keep a fairly consistent schedule. My driver knew all of their names and made unscheduled stops when she came to the places where those folks needed to get off the bus. Since I was the new guy, they were happy to tell stories, give directions, and provide reviews for most any institution or activity in the downtown area. I had conversations about grandmothers who dipped snuff and how things weren’t like they used to be. One guy swapped Thanksgiving recipes with the bus driver. A woman got on wearing a Winnie the Pooh hoodie, so we talked about Pooh for a couple of blocks.

My favorite interaction was between two women who were new to town. One was a large woman with boxed blond hair that was passed its prime. She was wearing bejeweled sunglasses and had a silver post puncturing her bottom lip. Her companion, Wendy, was slight and mostly silent. She had mousy brown hair that fell on both sides of her face. She sat timidly, clinging to her shopping bag. They got on the shuttle with me on my second trip downtown.

“I cain’t (that’s how she said it) believe this bus is free,” she repeated three or four times.

“You’re not from here?” asked the bus driver.

“Well, I am now. But I’m from Memphis and then I lived the last seven years in Nashville.” She spoke with the authority of a traveler who was well acquainted with life on the street. “Ain’t nothin’ free in those places.”

She then began to ask about a bar and grill she had seen the night before. We all started saying names of places as we moved down Broad Street, only to find out the bar she was looking for was on Market, one street over. My hunch is she wasn’t up to walking over there. She changed her focus. She and Wendy were going to the Convention Center to look for work.

“With my background,” she said, again with confidence, “I can get a job at the Convention Center.” Then she asked the most wonderful question: “Wendy, you got a background?”

“Yes,” said Wendy, without giving anything away.

My first stop, after a killer chili dog at Chazzy Dogs, a street vendor near the aquarium, was the Hunter Museum of American Art. The woman who gave me my ticket had a sort of Jessica Tandy sensibility about her and gave me a wonderfully lilting explanation of the collection that left me welcomed and hopeful as I made my way among the paintings and sculpture. I recognized a few names, saw a couple of Hopper watercolors that did my heart good, and found a thoughtful exhibit on museum architecture that also included information on Chattanooga’s background: downtown was not always like it is now, to say the least.

I walked across the Walnut Street Bridge (now only for pedestrians) to the North Shore neighborhood of shops and restaurants, mostly because I was in search of a new pair of sneakers. I’d worn out the ones I was wearing. The woman at The World Next Door, a fair trade shop, pointed me to Fast Break Athletics, where I received service like I had never had in a shoe store. The man who waited on me was the owner and told me the story of the shop as he fitted my feet with new shoes. My hot dog was history, so I walked (comfortably) a couple of blocks down to the Mud Pie Coffee House, which appears to be going through a transition of its own. What drew me in was the menu in the window that announced “new Cuban dishes.” The place was under new ownership, who were Cuban, so they were adding a bit of their background to the storied little haunt. If everything tastes as good as the “Cuban Tamale” I had, they are going to do well.

I kept walking in no particular direction after lunch and saw a barbershop. Normally, I would see no need, since my head is shaved, but I packed my beard trimmer in a box I have yet to find, so I went in to inquire as to the possibility of getting my mustache and beard shaped up. A southern version of Lorelai Gilmore was happy to help and made me look a little more presentable for the grand price of three dollars. New shoes, a sharp beard, a full stomach – what else could I need but a good cup of coffee and wifi? That was to be found two blocks up at Stone Cup Roasters, a funky little dive overlooking the Tennessee River; they are hosting this post, even as I write.

Cities that don’t know me have fascinated me for as long as I can remember. (I wrote a poem about them some time back.) I’ve slid into town as a traveler on the way to Somewhere Else, using this place as a way station and respite in my journey. I’ve walked up hills and down streets and in stores, wondering at times what it might have been like if this were going to be home, if this were going to be the place where I let myself belong, all the while knowing I am only passing through.

The sun is setting now, outlining the Walnut Street Bridge as its giant lighted snowflakes begin to twinkle. In the background I can see the aquarium and some of the other buildings on the southern shore of the river. My bus driver has finished her day. Some of the people I rode with are probably bedding down on the back porch of the library where a number of homeless people sleep, as last night’s driver pointed out. The chances of any of us ever seeing each other again are slim. Tomorrow night, we will drive into Durham intending to do more than pass through; we are going to make a home there. The prospect is as daunting as it is promising. A good bit of our lives gets lived out like the shuttle bus, full of incidental contact and anecdotes, each of us getting on and off without much regard for our fellow travelers. Home starts to happen when we sit down together and ask, “You got a background?” and then listen and wait to what needs to be said beyond, “Yes.”

Peace,
Milton

once-in-a-life time

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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7

highway eighty-four ran due east across the
Central Texas night, I remember the moon
rising over the top of the telephone poles

the road was lonely enough for me to turn
my headlights off in deference and drive
in the dark to the light as if I would reach it

every Sunday night after, I drove and waited
for the moon, but it happened only once
how does one keep once-in-a-life time?

all the sands in the hourglass aren’t enough
to make a beach to hold a tide to pull
the moon close again, close enough for me

to turn off my lights and trust what I can’t see
to find myself lost in the night and light
I don’t drive that way much anymore

down all the days, could it be enough now
to say, one night I drove into the moon
and not need it to happen ever again?

Peace,
Milton

*this poem was prompted by the Poetry Party at Abbey of the Arts.

get out the map

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2

I woke up before everyone else in the house this morning, thanks to Gracie, our youngest Schnauzer. I started the coffee pot and then started looking for something to read, having already devoured the latest issue of The Nation yesterday morning. I remembered packing some books among the pots and pans that have traveled with me, so I dug around in the garage and found The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime by Miles Harvey that had been living in the still-to-be-read pile that stayed in the kitchen in our former home. I poured my coffee and opened the book. I made it to the end of the introduction when I found my writing prompt for the day and set it aside to turn to my MacBook:

Filling in a life, it turned out, was like filling in a map, and my search for Gilbert Bland soon transformed from an investigation into an adventure. (xxii)

In a world where we can dive into Google Earth and see most anything from space, the idea that our known world was been “one of the dark places,” as Marlowe sets out at the beginning of Heart of Darkness, is something we let quickly fall out of our consciousness. The closest we get these days, I suppose, is gazing into the images of deep space Hubble sends back to us, leaving us to make the same sort of conjectures as those of people like Gerard Mercator’s 1569 image of what he thought made up our planet. Harvey describes it:

Gazing at Mercator’s chart, I see a planet strikingly different from our own, a world full of blank spaces and never-never lands. North America turns into an amorphous blog that reaches so far west it is almost joined to Asia at the hip. South America has an unaccountable protrusion from its southwestern shores, a topographic tail feather that makes the continent look something like a giant waterfowl. This beast is, in turn, perched upon a peculiar nest – a huge polar landmass, many times the size of present-day Antarctica. Known as the Great Southern Continent or the Unknown Southern Land (or, to more optimistic cartographers, the Country Not Yet Discovered), it was a place ancient geographers had dreamed up to complement their belief that the Earth was perfectly symmetrical.

The inclination to draw the map and then go exploring seems to be deeply rooted in our human nature; we do our best work, perhaps, in pencil, eraser at the ready. Our need for maps, in a more metaphorical sense, speaks to our need for certainty, as if life were some sort of cosmic mall (God forbid!) and we stand in need of the diagram with the “X” and the arrow that says, “You are here.”

Harvey’s book reminded me of another, this one a novel: A Mapmaker’s Dream: The Meditations of Fra Mauro, Cartographer to the Court of Venice by James Cowan. Mauro is a monk who sets out to draw a map of the world without ever leaving his cell. He does so by relying on travelers and adventurers who come and tell him what they saw and experienced. His world, if you will, is overturned when he meets a Muslim mapmaker who is drawing the world from the perspective of those who come and talk to him.

Same world, different maps.

Where Harvey’s words took me first, however, was back to the conversation around the table Thursday night as Ginger and I sat and talked with all of our parents. When I read, “Filling in a life, it turned out, was like filling in a map,” I saw my father sitting at the end of the small table in the kitchen telling stories of his adolescence I had never heard, or at least did not remember. His words called me to go back and redraw my map of him, filling in some of the dark areas I had, until now, filled in based on my own assumptions. I also had a chance to describe what it was like to live with diagnosed depression over these last seven years in a way I had never been able to talk to them in the past, giving them the chance, I suppose, to do a little corrective cartography of their own.

I haven’t lived in the same town as my parents in over thirty years. I know a great deal about them and we talk regularly, but I don’t know how they live on a daily basis, or who their friends are, save a few who have been around for many, many years. I don’t know most of the books they read or the places they eat, what they talk about over dinner together or what they do for fun, beyond what I remember about them from the days when I did see them daily or what they tell me when we talk in our couple of hours of phone conversation each week.

My parents are my example here because the scene around the supper table is what set me to thinking. In most any arena in our lives, I need to be reminded my maps need revising. When I was teaching high school English, one of my colleagues made a comment about one of the students he was struggling to reach. The student was not making it easy for him to do so. The teacher, in frustration, was ready to write him off. I knew the kid from church youth group and was able to fill in a few of the dark places in my colleague’s map of the kid. “What I have to work to remember,” I said, “is I see these kids for forty-five minutes a day, five days a week, on my turf and working on my agenda. I’m fooling myself if I think I know who they are based on that little slice of life we share together.”

“Faith,” says Frederick Buechner, “is a journey without maps.”

What I have always taken from his words is God calls us to a life of trust rather than certainty. There is no way to nail this thing down, to find the “X,” to know for sure where we are headed next, other than, like Jesus, we have come from God and we are going to God. I can do pretty well with that when it comes to living out my minister to teacher to minister to chef life story (that’s the abridged version), yet I think I’m less flexible when it comes to mapping those around me. I can far too easily label people and use them as road markers to help me stay among those I agree with most easily. Like Fra Mauro, I have mapped too many folks based on what someone else has told me and made assumptions far beyond what is right or fair.

What I heard in my dad’s story the other night was not as much something new as it was something more. At this point in our lives, we’re both pretty good at letting each other be who we are and sharing both a deep sense of affection and appreciation. He just filled in a little more of his map and gave me room to do the same.

Now that’s something to be thankful for.

Peace,
Milton

on beyond kingdom

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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8

When my family gets together, the conversation eventually turns to church. On my Cunningham side, it’s the family business going back three generations and we love to talk. On my Brasher side, I married a minister who dives into her faith and her profession with both head and heart; we all have a lot to contribute to the discussion. Somewhere in the course of the afternoon or evening – I think it was after the first round of pie – I climbed up on one of my soapboxes to wax on about how much energy churches spend perpetuating themselves as institutions as compared to time and money actually spent on ministry. My father responded by quoting my brother, who was not with us, who summed it up by saying God is most able to use us when we see ourselves not as a part of the church, or a church, but as a part of the Kingdom of God: churches, as institutions, come and go; our calling runs deeper than doing what we can to keep the doors open; we are called to invest our lives in the Kingdom of God in the world.

I woke up thinking about my brother’s words and realized I resonate deeply with the theology and struggle with the terminology. Yes, I know the words go back to Jesus and even into the Old Testament and are translated from the original languages in which our scriptures were written. As a person who has spent most of my life fascinated by how words and how the way we say things empowers and inhibits what we think and feel and do, I think faith often floats on metaphor and the way in which our word pictures can expand our imagining when we try to incarnate what it means to be created in the image of God. I take issue, therefore, with kingdom as our working metaphor because I don’t think it works very well for most people. OK – for me.

When I was in seminary, I went on a mission trip into the interior of the Yucatan peninsula. Our job was to dig wells to help the subsistence farmers in that region to survive. One morning, I walked out into the rocky field to see a man with a small pouch draped over his shoulder walking among the stones with a pointed stick. He would wedge the stick in between the hard places, looking for the tiniest invitation from any sort of soft spot, and then he would drop a couple of seeds in the hole and cover them up. Most of the seeds he planted had about as much chance of growing to fruition as I have of breaking the world record in the 100 meters at the Olympics next summer. The next time I read the parable of the Seeds and the Sower, I saw it in a whole different light because I had seen an incarnation of the story in the Mexican man poking his way across his field. The metaphor made sense in ways it had not to me and my shrink-wrapped-produce-watching-International-Harvesters-as-I-drove-down-the-highway world. If the stories are going to maintain meaning, we have work to do, both to reach back and understand the world in which Jesus told them and to reach deep into our own world for new metaphors to help the stories travel well across time.

I searched this morning for modern day kings and queens. Here are some of the folks I found:

Lyonpo Khandu Wangchuk, King of Bhutan

Margrete II, Queen of Denmark

Abdullah II, King of Jordan

Letsie III, King of Lesotho

Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin ibni al-Marhum Sultan Mahmud, King of Malaysia

Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Deva, King of Nepal

Harald V, King of Norway

Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden

George Tupou V, King of Tonga

Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom

Best I can tell, all of the ones listed hold a mostly ceremonial office, other than King Abdullah II of Jordan. We don’t have many monarchs in our modern world who are credible examples of leadership. The words king and queen are anachronistic and archaic. In the days of the Hebrew kingdoms, where the ruler sat as God’s representative, they knew how to think of God as the Ultimate Emperor. In Jesus’ time, as the Romans exacted empire on the world around them, the metaphor of God’s kingdom rang true because of its stark contrast to the government under which the people were forced to live. No to mention that much of the language we use to talk about the historically significant monarchies of the past is a language of violence and conquest (a discussion for another time).

Even as I write, I’m mindful that one of the most moving pieces of sacred music I know is Jane Marshall’s arrangement of the ancient Latin poem, “My Eternal King.”

My God, I love Thee;
Not because I hope for heaven thereby,
Nor yet because who love Thee not must die eternally.
Thou, O my Jesus, Thou didst me upon the cross embrace;
For me didst wear the nails and spear, and manifold disgrace.
Why, then why, O blessed Jesus Christ, should I not love Thee well?
Not for the hope of winning heaven, or of escaping hell;
Not with the hope of gaining aught; not seeking a reward;
But as thyself hast loved me, O ever-loving Lord!
E’en so I love Thee, and will love, and in Thy praise will sing;
Solely because Thou art my God, and my Eternal King.

And so, all of my meanderings thus far are leading me to questions rather than one particular point. I don’t have a substitute metaphor to champion – I don’t think this is an either/or discussion — and I’m not trying to say those who use kingdom language are erring. I wonder, if we were to work to find new word-wrappings for the foundations of our faith to speak alongside of the language we already use, might we not invite more people to join in the journey? (I realize my thought is in no way original; it’s just what I’m thinking about today.)

I remember my father preaching a sermon years ago, as he was challenging the church he then pastored to dream and vision beyond their walls and ultility bills, and he read to them Dr. Seuss’ On Beyond Zebra. The story begins with a young boy’s pride at having learned all twenty-six letters of the alphabet. The other kid congratulates him and then tells him it’s only the beginning: the alphabet doesn’t stop there. Those of us who populate the planet right now are the only ones who have seen the picture taken from space that let us see the whole world at once. The Psalmist could only gaze into the night sky. Jesus never got more than a day’s walk from his birthplace. We can see deeper into space than we even know how to comprehend. Yet, it seems, that those who scattered seeds by hand and washed dust from their feet had more expansive imaginations with which to think and talk about God. We cannot allow ourselves to be content with words that have been handed down, however packed full of meaning they were for those who came before. We don’t need to discard them; they are treasures for sure. And we need new metaphors on beyond kingdom: inclusive, insightful, intimate, incendiary words that will pull us beyond our complacency and committee meetings, even beyond our good intentions and dutiful service, where we can be lost in wonder, love, and praise and found kicking it up in the valley where the dry bones dance.

Peace,
Milton

christian names

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2

As Ginger and I looked through the Yellow Pages last Saturday trying to find a phone number for Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, I began to notice the names of the churches as sort of a “found” poem. Here, then, is what we found:

Christian Names

First, Friendship
Galilee, Grace, Gethsemane
Mounts Calvary, Carmel, Sinai, Zion
New Canaan, New Hope, New Testament

Upper Room, Open Door
Bridging the Gap
Deliverance of Truth
House of Refuge, Nest of Love

Earnest Chapel, Redeeming Grace
Lamb of God, Prince of Peace
Beloved Community
Church Without Walls

Highways and Hedges
Good News, No Condemnation
Ebenezer, Integrity, People’s Church
Million Dollar Lake Church of God

Peace,
Milton

what it takes to get ready

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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10

Though it is only Tuesday, today is the day I start working on the turkey. I’m writing from the café at Whole Foods Market in Birmingham where I called last week to reserve my bird: free range, fresh, never frozen. “I want one of those birds who spends all day running and playing and sitting on the couch eating ice cream every evening watching Andy Griffith reruns,” I told the woman who took my order over the phone.

“A happy turkey,” she responded. “That’s all we have.”

I’m picking it up early today because I like to brine the bird before I cook it. Brining, which means soaking it in salt water, prepares the bird. The big-breasted white turkeys we all buy these days are not the most flavorful of birds, to be honest. Brining helps them retain their moisture and gives them some flavor.

Here’s what I do: I take two big Reynolds turkey-sized browning bags and put one inside the other. Then I mix a gallon of water, 1 cup Kosher salt, 1 1/2 cups brown sugar, and a handful of black peppercorns and stir it until the salt and sugar are dissolved. I then stand the bird bottom side up in the bag and pour the brining mixture over it. Seal the bag tightly and refrigerate or, if you’re working with limited refrigeration space, put it in an ice chest and pack with ice. Close the lid and leave it alone until tomorrow morning at least (eight to eighteen hours). (When I open the bag tomorrow, I have a second soaking for my turkey you can find here.)

I guess the brining is on my mind because I’m having a hard time getting ready for Thanksgiving on a personal level. Though I’m happy to get to be with both sets of parents, I’m in the wrong town, I’m shopping in the wrong stores, and it’s too damn hot.

A Boston friend who also just moved from the Hub but who is back for the holiday, left voicemail for me this morning saying cheerfully, “It’s snowing! It’s snowing!” I know he was working to reconnect, since this is the first Thanksgiving we have not shared together in many, many years, yet his sentimental elation was not helpful for me. I was standing in a hot kitchen wearing shorts and a t-shirt, trying to figure out how to get dinner ready when I can’t use my front porch as a refrigerator. I need to go soak in something to get ready for our shared day of gratitude. I need something to help remind me that life is flavored with much more than grief and uncertainty in these days, because I know it is. I just can’t taste it.

And so I’ve been sitting here stewing in Whole Foods, posting a few more recipes (see the post below) and working hard to taste the gratitude. Actually, it’s less work than it is simply cleansing my palette, if you will. I’m getting to spend some good time with my father-in-law, whose Alzheimer’s is progressing steadily. This may be the last Thanksgiving that he knows who I am and we are here together. Last night, a couple who are my some of my in-laws’ truest friends came by to visit and to see us. They brought their nineteen-year old granddaughter with them who is mentally handicapped because of chemotherapy she received as a baby. She is full of joy and spent most of the evening looking at me and laughing.

My mother-in-law, Rachel, was amazing with her. At one point, she asked if I would get my guitar and sing for Hailey. I sang a couple of songs and then her grandfather asked if I would play and sing her favorite song, “Amazing Grace.” I started to sing and she began to sing along in her own way. Regardless of my pace, she sang a couple of words behind me the whole way, adding powerful punctuation to the end of each line. When we finished, she laughed at me again and said thank you.

It’s easy for me to get the turkey ready for Thanksgiving Dinner. I know what I’m preparing it for and how to prepare it. I don’t always know how to get ready for life. For all the love that has infused the Brasher household over the years, they were not prepared for Alzheimer’s. All nine months of her mother’s pregnancy could not have prepared Hailey’s mom for, well, motherhood as it is incarnated at her house. For all the weeks that have passed since we said we were moving to Durham, and all the boxes packed, and all the things passed on to others, and all the dinners and cards and hugs and goodbyes and smiles and tears and miles, for all that has been and all that will be, I don’t much know how to get ready for what is to come except to keep singing:

through many dangers, toils, and snares
I have already come
‘tis grace that brought me safe this far
and grace will lead me home

I don’t imagine the dinner the first pilgrims shared so many Novembers ago looked anything like the spread I’ll stretch out in a couple of days anymore than I think the dinner was much more than thanksgiving for not being dead yet. We’re a week away from joining another band of pilgrims in Durham with much more for which to give thanks than our ancestors. As I look at the days ahead, I can’t see any farther around the bend than they could, so I will follow the same path, tracing their footsteps through the forest of faith. They were faithful because they soaked in the Spirit, allowing God to infuse them with grace and gratitude to sustain them for the journey.

Maybe I can be ready for Thanksgiving after all.

Peace,
Milton

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