don't eat alone

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

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

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

Here are a few of the new recipes I’m trying out this year. Some have already been checked out in the Don’t Eat Alone Test Kitchen, others we’ll all taste for the first time on Thursday. I think they’ll all measure up just fine.

Here are a couple more vegetable ideas:

• roasted red curry carrots
• green bean casserole (from scratch)
• sweet potatoes and apples in browned butter

And for your dessert table:

• black and blue berry pie
• state fair pecan pie
• rachel’s nut brittle

Happy eating.

Peace,
Milton

Today was the first of two Sundays Ginger and I get to share together between her pastorates, if you will. Next Sunday – the first Sunday in Advent – she will lead worship for the first time in Durham as the pastor at Pilgrim UCC. I will admit to leaning toward going nowhere to church this morning other than to a coffee shop to hang out with the woman I love, but I asked her anway.

“I thought we might go to Sixteenth Street in the morning,” she said.

On April 16, 1963, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. made public his “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” in which he articulately and incisively called the white church leaders of Birmingham to take seriously God’s call to equality, justice, and compassion:

There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society . . . Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust . . . [p]erhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom . . . [t]hey have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.

On May 9, 1963, Ginger was born in Birmingham just down the street from where Dr. King was incarcerated. Her parents drove through the demonstrators and the police officers to get to the hospital. This stuff is in her DNA.

Sixteenth Street Baptist Church stands not far from the jail and the hospital. On September 15, 1963, the church was bombed by people who would be called “terrorists” in today’s parlance, ripping holes in the side of the church and killing four little girls. Today, November 18, 2007, we sat among the other worshippers in that room that is more than an historical site; it is a church. We sat down and were immediately welcomed by the woman who sat behind us, as well as by a number of folks who got up from their seats and crossed the sanctuary to say hello. The service began with choruses, and then we sang,

this is my story, this is my song
praising my savior all the day long

As the pastor stood to voice prayer requests, he mentioned the family of Rev. John Cross, Jr. who was the pastor in 1963 and who died last Thursday. The pastor spoke of Cross’ decision to respond to King’s challenge and make Sixteenth Street a rallying point for the Civil Rights Movement, which, he said, “was almost like a death sentence.”

As he sat down, the youth choir sang,

when the spirit of the Lord comes upon my heart,
I will dance like David danced,
I will pray like David prayed,
I will sing like David sang

Then the pastor rose to read the scripture passage for the day: Isaiah 6:1-8 —

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”

The pastor began to theologically and theatrically dissect the passage, masterfully stating the obvious message in compelling fashion:

If birds can sing for God; if fish can swim for God; if stars can twinkle for God; and the sun can shine for God; shouldn’t we be doing something to the glory of God?

Forty-four years after those little girls were killed, the bomb still leaves a mark. Ginger went downstairs to find the bathroom and realized she was in the part of the building where the little girls were when the bomb exploded. When I saw the pictures of the small memorial nook, I realized where we were standing in the sanctuary when we met the pastor after the service was underneath the window that was blown out. Four decades later, what exists on that site is not a mega-church, nor is it a museum. It is a group of Christians coming together to live out their faith in these days, carrying both the weight of memory and the hope of the future.

“I’m tired of coming to church to come to church,” he said at one point in his sermon. “I’m tired of people coming to church to find the errors in the bulletin or to catch up on the gossip. We come to church to experience and encounter God. Before we can serve God, we have to see God.”

The vision of God that speaks most profoundly to me is an incarnational one. Along side the story of Jesus, I see God in Doug who stayed late to pack (and all the others whose fingerprints are all over our boxes), in Dawn who told me I was overwhelmed and just needed to get out of town and leave all the trash in our house for her to clean up, in the painful compassion I see in Ginger as she cares for her father and his Alzheimer’s, in the woman who was effusive in her welcome to us as we entered the sanctuary this morning, in the little kids who danced and squirmed as they sang in the service:

showers of blessing
showers of blessing
overflowing down in my soul
there are so many blessings
I can’t count every one
Lord, I bless you
Lord, I praise you
for what you’ve done

As many times as I’ve heard the Isaiah passage, I think I’ve mostly heard God’s question and Isaiah’s response as having to do with duty: here is the task at hand; who is going to do the work? But as we wallowed in glory and gratitude this morning, sitting among the scars in that old church building, I got a glimpse of a God who calls us not to do our duty, but to respond to our destiny. Had those four little girls lived, they would be in their fifties, like me, or maybe a little older. They might have been the women who welcomed us so warmly this morning. Their grandchildren might have been singing in the choir today. They are not here, but I am.

I am. We are.

I offer yet another one of the voices that has been a part of the soundtrack for my sojourn, Pierce Pettis:

well I’m up and down
and I’m left and right
rich and poor
black and white
I am not alone
I am not ashamed
to make my home
in a state of grace

In this week without an address, where else can I call home except the intersection of God’s call and our response to incarnate the love and grace we’ve been given. Wherever the mail is ultimately delivered, this is where I need to live.

Peace,
Milton

*the banner was hanging in the basement of the church.

I made it to Birmingham all in one piece; both me and my Cherokee were weary and heavy laden. Though still in transition, at least Ginger and I are in the same place, which is my in-laws’ house. Next week, my parents are coming to Birmingham and we are all going to celebrate Thanksgiving together. With that in mind, I thought I would go back through my recipes and index some I think might be worth looking at as you gather around your table of gratitude.

Here is a turkey recipe that has proven to be a favorite for years now.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with a couple of soups:

• pumpkin-apple soup
• curried squash soup
• parsnip and apple soup
• autumn bisque

Moving on to breads:

• I learned to make refrigerator rolls from my mother;
• this monkey bread recipe is all about convenience — and it tastes good;
• pineapple cornbread is a twist on a couple of old standards.

Here are a couple of vegetable ideas:

• brussels and berries
• maple glazed brussels sprouts

OK, so I need to cook something other than brussels sprouts. Here’s a recipe that combines squash, apples, and onions:

• autumn galette

In the tuber department, try these:

• three potato au gratin
• sweet potato salad
• sweet potato polenta

And in our miscellaneous department:

• cranberry sweet tarts
• pilgrim punchers

I have a few other recipes we are trying out in our Don’t Eat Alone Test Kitchens and I know I haven’t posted any desserts. Stay tuned — more on the way.

Peace,
Milton

According to Google Maps, my journey from Marshfield to Birmingham is 1201 miles – all of it on interstate highways. The path I chose to drive has taken me through one-fifth of our United States: yesterday I saw Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania; today I added Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. And I’m still not to Birmingham. I got so sleepy I had to stop ninety miles short of Ginger.

I’ll be up early. Trust me.

These kinds of road trips are best suited for college students and not fifty-year olds, I think. Somewhere around Wytheville, Virginia my hips started to petrify so I decided to stop and walk for a bit. I went to the visitors’ bureau to find out what was around and discovered the Appalachian Trail crossed I-81 just south of where I was. I added a few miles to my journey and got off the interstate, winding my way up the side of a hill, only to find the park had closed about fifteen minutes before I got there. I looked around and saw the trail going up the hill on the other side of the road, so I parked the car and headed up the hill. I wasn’t too far away from the road when I realized there was a thin layer of snow on the leaves. I kept walking for about twenty minutes when I realized the sun was falling quickly behind the mountain and I wasn’t in the mood to participate in a casting call for the road company of The Blair Witch Project. I retraced my steps and continued my journey on wheels.

My friend Doug commented this week that the way we travel these days is unnatural. To be able to fly across country (or countries) in a matter of hours, or drive through ten states in a little over a day are actions our bodies and our minds don’t know how to translate. I’ve known a couple of people who have walked the Appalachian Trail from end to end, which is something like a six month venture. They started in the early spring in the south, so they could get ahead of the heat, and finished in early fall up in Maine, hopefully a little ahead of the winter. They made plans for shoes and supplies to be mailed to them along the way. And then they took off walking, taking in each step of the journey, feeling every bump of the trail.

My friend Billy and I used to make mix tapes whenever we got together. (We didn’t live in the same town.) When I talked to him yesterday and mentioned a mix CD I had made off iTunes, he asked if it was as fun as making a tape. It’s more efficient, but it’s not as fun. Making a cassette meant we had to record in real time – we had to listen to the songs. He and I would take turns choosing songs to add, making the mix a conversation of sorts, each song responding to the one before it and issuing a challenge to the song to follow. We never knew what we had made until it was completed. iTunes is the interstate of mixing: I compiled some great traveling music and I blew right by all the conversation.

Had I not stopped to unfreeze my hips, if you will, I never would have met the dear white haired woman in the visitors’ center who showed me where the Appalachian Trail was and I never would have walked among the tree skeletons, their fallen leaves crunching under my feet and their barren limbs reached skyward receptively.

I’m grateful for the highways that make it possible for me to have a late breakfast with Ginger tomorrow, which we will have to share with the Schnauzers. I understand there are some journeys that need to be mapped. And – I pray for more days lived in human time, sacred time, full of wander and wonder, listening and waiting for the next song.

Peace,
Milton

As I was working to find ways to get the last few things in the back of my Cherokee so I could head out of town, I found a mix CD I know I must have made but don’t remember doing so entitled, “Durham.” I put it in the small bag of things that was to sit next to me in the car and finished up. I had just reached the Mass Pike in the pouring rain when I remembered the disc and slipped it into the player. A couple of songs in, Cat Stevens sang from deep in my memory:

I listen to the wind
to the wind of my soul
where I’ll end up, well
I think only God really knows . . .

Last night, I went with my friends Betsey and Trisha to walk the labyrinth at the Hanover church. Don, the pastor (and also my dear friend) and Sue, his wife, were there also. Don had built a fire in the heart of the labyrinth and lined the perimeter with lanterns. The rows of stones delineating paths now covered with fallen leaves grew out of conversations some years ago after Betsey and Trisha went to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and walked the labyrinth there. Among the many meanings carried by the stones, one of the most important for me is they stand as a testimony to faith among friends.

Betsey and I walked at the same time and I became quickly aware of the power of the metaphor that lives in the ancient practice. As we both followed the turns in front of us, we would pass close to each other and then, almost instantly it seemed, be on opposite sides of the circle and then back together again before we both ended up seated in front of the fire. We stayed there a long time, re-membering our friendship with tears and gratitude, sitting among the stones we once thought might never be stacked and straightened.

“This gives me hope,” Betsey said, “because it came true. Most things don’t come true.”

I heard then the same words I listened to as I drove today, sung by one of my favorite theologians, Steve Earle:

just because you’ve been around
and had your poor heart broken
that’s no excuse for lying there
before the last word’s spoken
‘cause some dreams
don’t ever come true
don’t ever come true
aw, but some dreams do

While I was in Hanover, my friend Doug was back at my house packing. He and some others had come over to help in the afternoon and when it came time for me to leave he said he was going to stay and work. That was at five-fifteen. When I called the house at nine, he answered the phone. When I got to the house, I found he had finished everything that needed to go in the Pod so the movers could take it. We loaded the last of it together, cleaned up the driveway, and then went back to his house for well-deserved beers and sleep. I felt him riding along side me as another of my favorite spiritual advisors, James Taylor, sang:

the secret of life is in opening up your heart
it’s ok to feel afraid
don’t let that stand in your way
‘cause everyone knows that love is the only road
and since we’re only here for awhile
might as well show some style
give us a smile . . .

I called my friend Billy to catch him up on my journey and to catch up on his. He talked about pulling an old book off the shelf – Anthony de Mello’s Song of the Bird – and finding an inscription I had written when I gave the book to him about two weeks after we met in 1984. We spent about a half an hour moving seamlessly between past and present finding ourselves close together on the journey, even across the miles. The rain and the Berkshires conspired to drown the signal from my phone, but the Indigo Girls provided the perfect soundtrack:

why do we hurtle ourselves through every inch of time and space
I must say around some corner I can sense a resting place
with every lesson learned a line upon your beautiful face
we’ll amuse ourselves one day with these memories we’ll trace . . .

I found my brother along the road once the storm cleared and we talked across two state lines. It has taken a lot of years and miles for us to learn how to be fellow travelers; that we have learned how is one of the things in my life for which I am most grateful. One of the reasons I called him is to say to him what I have been saying about him to others over the last couple of weeks as I have had occasion to have a few extended conversations with one of my nephews – his son. He has two and both of them live with a sense of confidence an integrity that is undergirded by a sense that they know they are trusted. Miller and Ginger (yes, his wife is named Ginger also) have did a great job raising boys and have done an amazing job incarnating love and grace as trust so that the boys have been able to grow into young men. They don’t treat the guys like kids anymore; they treat them as though they believe in who they are and who they are becoming. What an amazing gift. Guy Clark sang for all of them about the time I hit the Pennsylvania line:

you’ve got to sing like you don’t need the money
love like you’ll never get hurt
you’ve got to dance like nobodys’ watching
it’s gotta come from the heart if you want it to work

All across the five states on my sojourn, I talked to Ginger, updating her on my progress and trying to articulate the thunderstorm of emotions I’ve felt over the last few days in particular. The longer I live, the more I trust that grace means I’m not required to prove myself before God, or anyone else, in order to be loved. If, however, there is some sort of final accounting and I’m asked what I made of my life, I will simply point at Ginger and say, “I was with her.” I won’t have to say anything else. That we have had two decades together in New England and are now moving together into a new chapter is full of great things mostly because we are together. And so my travel day ended appropriately with Billy Joe of Green Day singing one of Ginger’s favorite songs:

so take the photographs and still frames in your mind
hang it on a shelf in good health and good time
tattoos and memories and dead skin on trial
for what it’s worth it was worth it all the while

it’s something unpredictable
but in the end it’s right
I hope you had the time of your life

Betsey’s right: life is full of things that don’t come true. Today, however, I have been carried by those things that are: faith, hope, and love. And Paul is right, too: the greatest of them all is love.

I am not alone, in my going out and my coming in.

Peace,
Milton

There will be more words from the road tomorrow; there is much to tell. For tonight, a final picture of me in our home.

Milty doesn’t live here anymore.

Peace,
Milton

I worked my last shift at the restaurant last night. About a week ago, I asked Chef if I could cook supper for the staff as my goodbye present. He prepares a “family meal,” as he calls it, from time to time. Now it was my turn. For our last supper, I chose to prepare one of my favorite dishes growing up: King Ranch Casserole.

The King Ranch was a giant ranch that took of most of Texas that lies between Corpus Christi (the city of my birth) and Brownsville. It was a cattle ranch, so there is some question as to whether they really invented a chicken dish. Texas Monthly ran an article some time back that expanded on the origins of the casserole:

No one seems to know who invented it. The casserole may have come to King Ranch, but the descendants of Captain Richard King prefer to tout their beef and game dishes. “Kind of strange, a King Ranch casserole made with chicken,” noted Martin Clement, the head of the public relations for the ranch. Mary Lewis Kleberg, the widow of Dick Kleberg, admits that her heart sinks every time a well-meaning hostess prepares it in her honor. Most likely the dish got its name from an enterprising South Texas hostess or a King Ranch cook whose preference for a poultry doomed him to obscurity.

Yet King Ranch casserole’s general origins are easy to discern. Certainly it owes a deep debt to chilaquilas, which also contain chicken, cheese, tomatoes, tortilla chips, and chilies–the staples that campesinos often combine to stretch one meal into two while retaining a semblance of nutrition. But the dish owes as much to post-World War II cooking, when casseroles made with canned soups were the space-age cuisine. Because they could be made quickly and made for later use, casseroles liberated the lady of the house. ” The perfect entree for a minimum amount of time in the kitchen for the hostess,” the McAllen Junior League cookbook notes. The recipe made its way from one woman’s club to another, networking in its most fundamental form. ” It was one of those recipes that everybody just had a screaming fit trying to get,” Mrs. Joe Gardner of Corpus Christi recalls.

If the women of the fifties loved this recipe because it freed them of the family kitchen, their children love it because it takes them back there. They have adapted it to their taste, of course: Trendy cooks now substitute flour tortillas for corn, while the truly convenience-crazed use Doritos. Purists doctor the recipe for sour cream–a move back toward Mexican authenticity. Houston’s Graham Catering has come up with a low-salt version. Even that bastion of Junior Leaguedom, San Antonio’s Bright Shawl lunchroom, has changed with the times. Chef Mark Green has followed the lead of the late Dallas gourmet guru Helen Corbitt by dropping canned soups; he now adds his own “roux” of milk, shredded cheese, garlic, and sliced mushrooms. “It sells good,” he says. “It goes fast.”

My version is more like Mark Green’s than my mother’s; I didn’t open any cans. I made enough for at least twenty; the twelve folks working ate it all. I posted the recipe here.

I timed the serving of our meal to happen before the dinner service got busy, so we all stood around in the kitchen with our bowls and talked and laughed. “The reason I cooked dinner tonight,” I told them, “was to say thank you. This has been my favorite kitchen to work in and, even though it’s been a short time, I’m sad to leave. Thanks for our time together.”

At the end of the evening, they gave me a card, a Red Sox lottery ticket with a chance to win season tickets for life (it wasn’t a winner), and bought me a couple of Guinesses for the road.

“We’ll miss you,” one of the servers said. “You’re nice and you can cook; do you know how hard that is to find in this business?”

I was grateful for the compliment.

Peace,
Milton