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lenten journal: dawn on me

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

I see more sunsets than sunrises at this stage of my life.

Tonight, I stepped out of the kitchen to take a short break just as the sun had disappeared below the horizon. Just above the silhouettes of the rooftops, the sky was still bright, but as my eye moved upward the brightness turned to a burnished orange and then through whatever spectrum of shades it takes to get to azure blue. From the azure, the blue deepened, as if my eye were sinking into the depths of the ocean rather than the expanse of the sky, until the blue was black enough for the stars to shine. Night fell softly like snow or a gentle rain rather than a guillotine.

Daylight comes the same way, just in reverse.

Most of the nights during Lent have required of me to write in the dregs of the day, so I’m usually under a deadline since we choose to say our days begin once the clock strikes twelve. The reason our days begin then is it was the only way to standardize time – or so said Sir Sanford Fleming, who developed the idea so trains could run efficiently. To standardize things required an arbitrary starting point: midnight. We‘ve continued to play with our clocks over the years, acting as if we can make time do what we say, but a day doesn’t begin in the middle of the night.

My days usually begin with Gracie, our youngest Schnauzer, pawing at my head to wake me up. If that doesn’t work, she lets out one pointed yelp right in my ear and then licks me when my eyes open. All of this happens somewhere between six-thirty and seven. As the days grow longer, her paw will move into action earlier, I assure you. Summertime around here means the windows are open all through the house. Most New England homes don’t have central air, so we turn on fans and pray for a sea breeze. Those early summer mornings are filled with waking sounds of birds and waves and people in our neighborhood, all sliding gradually into the beginning of the day.

In the world Jesus knew, days began and ended at sunset. What came first everyday was rest. Or maybe they ate and then went to bed. Halfway through the day, they got up and worked and walked and did whatever they needed to do before the day was over. We think of light as the beginning of the day; for Jesus, the day began in darkness and finished with light. They ate supper first and sang lullabies first. Dawn came later.

I wonder why we changed. (Actually I kind of wonder – my comment is mostly rhetorical.)

The day was half over when Mary went to the tomb to care for Jesus’ body. I can’t imagine she had rested well. The stone had been moved and Jesus was not where they had laid him, but the light fell gradually on Mary until it dawned on her what had happened when Jesus called her name. And just as it takes a while for the morning sun to vacuum up the shadows left from the night before, so the light moved gradually across Peter and John and the other disciples, finally landing on Thomas.

One of the reasons I’m glad life circles around to the Resurrection every year is I know I need to hear the story again because there is still much about faith and life that needs to dawn on me. Here in the dead of night, halfway through the day, I’m waiting again for the dawn, for my every morning metaphor of midday sunrise, to call me again to trust and follow the Risen Christ.

And this night, most of all.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: a matter of trust

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
7

Ginger and I left for work about the same time this morning. She went to be a part of the town ecumenical Good Friday service and I went to work to get ready for a wedding tomorrow and the Easter Brunch on Sunday. While she read through the last words of Jesus, Alfonso and I were making hors d’oeuvres for two hundred. As far as I know, I’m the only one at work for whom this week is spiritually significant. No one is antagonistic when I talk about faith matters or what’s going on at church. Some have family connections to a church, but it’s more like a nationality rather than a faith connection. It makes me sad to think Easter means this will be a busy weekend for brunch. These are good people – people I like working with. For whatever reasons, they are not engaged by the story that has me by the heart.

After work I met Ginger at Panera for some reading time. The place was bustling with folks drinking coffee and chatting, a few families having dinner, and small gangs of teenagers just hanging out together on a school holiday (at least in Massachusetts). It looked like any Friday. Whatever the day meant to me, they were marking time in other ways.

As the gospel writers recount the events around Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, they tell it as if all of Jerusalem was captured by his fate: the crowd waving palms at his triumphal entry, the mob who shouted for him to be crucified, the gathering at the cross to watch him die. I have no doubt there were sizeable crowds at each of those happenings and I imagine there was a larger portion of Jerusalem that was too caught up in getting ready for Sabbath to notice what was happening, or to worn out or disinterested or busy to pay attention to what was happening to Jesus.

Not everyone saw or heard the story unfold the way it has been passed down to us.

At Pentecost, the believers and seekers heard the gospel proclaimed in their indigenous languages. Yet, we are told, those who did not believe simply heard the sound of a rushing wind that carried no particular translation. If the answer was blowing in that wind, it blew right on by much of the crowd.

I remember seeing Field of Dreams for the first time and how I was moved by Ray Kinsella’s pursuit of his dream, as well as his dream’s dogged pursuit of him. To me it remains one of the great stories of grace, forgiveness, and hope. A few weeks later, I saw a news report saying George Bush the Elder had seen the movie and responded by saying, “If someone understands it come explain it to me.” I was incredulous. How could he not get it?

I felt superior then. That’s not how I’ve felt today.

Growing up Baptist taught me to think of all those people who didn’t see what we saw when we looked at Jesus as lost. Some of them were. Some of us were, too. But were they lost just because they couldn’t find themselves on our map?

In the languages of Jesus and the early church, faith was a verb. All we have is a noun. We don’t faith anything, we have faith, making it sound like we possess it or carry it around in our pockets. The verb we often use is believe, which is not the same thing in my mind. As always, it makes me think of an old joke: a person’s got to believe in something; I believe I’ll have another beer. We came up with a language that is driven by verbs – the action words – and we didn’t give ourselves the vocabulary to incarnate our faith.

The difference between those who followed Christ and those who went on their way, or those who heard God’s message in their own words and not just white noise, is not that one believed the “right” things and the other did not. The verb we’re looking for is trust.

I don’t believe in Jesus; I trust him.

I trust the darkness of today is not the last word.
I trust that the story doesn’t end with the Resurrection.
I trust God never quits looking for us and that God finds some people in different ways than I was found.
I trust there are times when God speaks to some and I’m the one hearing nothing but the wind.
I trust Jesus is who he said he was.
I trust my faith makes my life worth it, regardless of what comes next.
I trust, as we say in the UCC, that God is still speaking.
I trust God is speaking to more than just me.
I trust God expects to speak through me, both because of and despite me.
I trust God’s love is the final word.

I trust it will be a word we all can hear.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: sounds and shadows

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
6

Of all of our services of worship during the year, the Maundy Thursday service is perhaps the most meaningful to me, and the most disquieting. At our church, we share Communion and also have a Tenebrae service, which is a liturgy that has roots all the way back to the fourth century. The word tenebrae is Latin for shadows. The service consists primarily of reading the story of Jesus’ betrayal, trial, and crucifixion in sections and extinguishing the light in the sanctuary gradually after each section until the room is dark, save the light of the Christ Candle. Everyone leaves in silence. We will gather again on Resurrection Sunday.

Though the passages are read thoughtfully, the candles put out quietly, and the service has a meditative tone, there is something visceral and unsettling about the experience, so much so that I find I’m almost agitated when I get to church on this particular Thursday each year. For much of the gospels, Jesus is the subject of the sentences; on this night he becomes the Direct Object of vicious verbs: they kissed him, betrayed him, abandoned him, spat on him, slapped him, whipped him, flogged him, beat him, questioned him, mocked him, ridiculed him, put thorns in his head, dragged him out to Golgotha, crucified him.

With each action, another light went out in the sanctuary. Those of us reading last did so by a single candlelight. The darkness outside the church was on pace with our failing candles, shadows pouring through the windows as we grew our own inside, until there was one light. One single light.

In our service, the final acts are for Ginger to carry the Christ Candle out of the sanctuary as we sing “Were You There.” Tonight, the choir sang the first verse, the congregation sang the second verse, and I sang the third from the balcony as the candle left the room:

were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble . . .

I left the verse unfinished and turned to ring the church bell thirty-three times to commemorate each of the years Jesus walked on the earth. As those tones drew to a close, Ginger returned the candle to the front of the church and we sat in silence. People then left when they chose to do so.

Our church bell is as quaint as they come, just like our white clapboard New England church building. A rope hangs down in the balcony from the steeple and requires a fair amount of effort to render a ring. Outside the church, you can hear the bell. Inside the church, you hear the muffled sound of the bell, the scrape and moan of the rope going back and forth, and – tonight – the labored breathing of the middle-aged man pulling hard on the rope and trying to keep count of the tolls. At about number twenty, I must say I wished Jesus had died a few years younger. At thirty pulls, I was glad he didn’t live to be my age. When I got to thirty-three, I stopped the rope from moving and the bell from ringing and I sat down in the nearest chair, my arms weak and my shoulders sore, to catch my breath as everyone else sat in silence. I thought back to the first hymn of the evening:

I take, O Cross, thy shadow for my abiding place

When I was working as a minister at another church, I decided to get the point of my sermon across by having the people in the congregation move around. (I’m trying now to remember exactly what the point was.) I wanted those on the right side to move to the left and vice versa as a tangible way of showing our need to find new perspectives in our lives. There were a couple of things I had not anticipated logistically, but things went pretty well. The following Tuesday at deacons’ meeting, I asked for feedback, since it was something they had not done before. Everyone seemed to appreciate the idea except for one who said with a perturbed tone, “I come to church to feel comfortable.”

I knew right then I was not going to be one of her favorite preachers. As the old saying goes, I think we ought to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. On my way to work today, the discussion on NPR centered on pressuring China to bring about change in Darfur, since China is one of the few governments in the world that has a relationship with the Sudanese government. As one guest noted, “China buys 2/3rds of Sudan’s oil. China’s investments in Sudan have made the US sanctions irrelevant largely in Sudan.” Much of the discussion centered on using the 2008 Olympics, scheduled for Beijing, as a focus of shaming China into action. One of the callers said something about moving slowly because so much was at stake politically. Eric Reeves who was pressing the issue said to the host, “I’m on Darfur time, so I don’t care about the politics. On Darfur time, ten thousand people die every month. On Darfur time, four and a half million people have been displaced and are in need of urgent attention right now. On Darfur time, there is no room for political maneuvering; we must act now.”

I wondered, as the bell was wringing me, how the people outside the church tonight interpreted what they heard. We, on the inside were keeping time with each toll, counting the years of Jesus’ life, watching the lights go out and the shadows grow, setting our hearts and our clocks for Easter. For our neighbors around their supper tables or in front of their televisions, I wondered if they were curious or annoyed or nonplussed. I was moved, rattled, exhausted, disquieted, encouraged. After everything, shadows and all, the light was still burning.

I could see it through the window, even when I got to my car on the other side of the street.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: hanging by a thread

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
2

Over the past couple of weeks, Ginger and I have had a couple of movie dates over breakfast. Both our schedules have pulled us out of the house in the evening, so we have fed our film habit in the mornings. This morning we watched an amazing piece of art and prophecy: Children of Men.

The story is set in 2027 and presents a frighteningly plausible vision of the future. There are no flying cars or laser toys, nobody dodging bullets like The Matrix, just a world that appears to be the result of things we have set in motion now: global warming, terrorism and the politics of fear, the flu pandemic. The human race has become infertile and the world is made more tenuous when the youngest person on the planet, “Baby Diego,” dies – he is eighteen. Theo, the main character played by Clive Owen, begins the movie as one who copes with all the pain and horror by disengaging from life. Part of the story is his waking up to the pain, as well as to the possibility of hope.

The movie echoes one of the crucial themes of Holy Week: our enduring hope often comes down to holding on by a thread. When John wrote, “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot extinguish it,” I imagine he was thinking of a small single oil lamp that continued to burn rather than a giant bonfire. If the light were going to remain, it was up to that one small flame. Today is the anniversary of a day when hope took a severe hit as Martin Luther King, Jr. fell to an assasin’s bullet on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel and the thread was not broken. My friend Billy and I wrote a song about it called “Down with the Ship.”

martin was ahead of his time
time was so far behind
he had no eye for an eyein his point of view
what he could see
it was a beautiful dream
the trouble with dreaming things
is seeing them come true

when you’re sailing on the high sea
when you set out on a hope trip
sometimes you get to your bright tomorrow
sometimes you’ve got to go down with the ship

martin had the fight of his life
stared right into the enemies’ eyes
tried to wake them from their comfortable lies
that’s how ships go down
he wasn’t praying for a long white robe
prayed for strong hearts and hands to hold
for people right here to sing and know
that we shall overcome

when you’re sailing on the high sea
when you set out on a hope trip
sometimes you get to your bright tomorrow
sometimes you’ve got to keep sailing on the high sea
believing love has got a firm grip
and you’ll get to your bright tomorrow
sometimes you’ve got to go down with the ship

the truth won’t die just because your hero falls
someday all flesh will stand to see it all
and we’ll go sailing on the high sea
and we’ll set out on a hope trip
put our eyes on a new horizon
and don’t look back
we’ll go sailing on a high sea
believing love has got a firm grip
set our eyes on a new tomorrow
set our hearts to go down with the ship

sometimes you’ve got to go down with the ship

When you read King’s sermons, you can sense he knew he wasn’t going to be around to see his dreamcome true. The night before he died he even said, “I may not get there with you . . .” And he finished his sermon, checked into the motel, and got up the next morning. As we relive this week, it seems obvious that Jesus knew those whom he had counted on to stand with him were falling away. He told Peter he would deny him. He told Judas to go and do what he needed to do. The disciples didn’t come through. When Jesus prayed, “If there’s any other way,” part of his anguish must have come from a profound sense of loneliness and desertion. If the light were not going to go out, it would be because Jesus moved beyond death and anger and indignation and betrayal to forgiveness.

If there is no forgiveness, there are no stories, there is no life. The light goes out.

This afternoon, I found this poem in my email from Ken, my spiritual director. It was written by John Shea (I think this is him here).

Prayer for the Lady Who Forgave Us

There is a long-suffering lady with thin hands
who stand on the corner of Delphia and Lawrence
and forgives you.
“You are forgiven,” she smiles.
The neighborhood is embarrassed.
It is sure it has done nothing wrong
yet, every day, in a small voice
it is forgiven.
On the way to the Jewel Food Store
housewives pass her with hard looks
then whisper in the cereal section.
Stan Dumke asked her right out
what she was up to
and she forgave him.
A group who care about the neighborhood
agree that if she was old it would be harmless
or if she were religious it would be understandable
but as it is…they asked her to move on.
Like all things with eternal purposes
she stayed.
And she was informed upon.
On a most unforgiving day of snow and slush
while she was reconciling a reluctant passerby
the State people
whose business is sanity,
persuaded her into a car.
She is gone.
We are reduced to forgetting.

Hope is not sane or safe, and is often scarce when compared to fear or cynicism or despair, or even sin. On any given night, the darkness is larger than the flickering flame. When the nay sayers confronted Jesus about forgiving a man’s sins, Jesus asked, “Which is easier: to forgive his sins or to heal him?” Jesus did both. Forgiveness doesn’t come easy, whether we are the forgiver or the forgivee, but it is the fuel that keeps the light burning.

I was reminded again today it will not go out.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal — to know and to be known

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
2

I talked to a friend today who had just returned from a workshop on using “emotional intelligence” in dealing with conflict. The term was new to me, but is a rather well formed theory and/or practice it seems. I’m struck more by where the idea of emotional intelligence took me than learning what the whole deal is about. If I’m emotionally intelligent, do my “smart” tears, like smart bombs, know where to fall?

I was teaching high school when the idea of “multiple intelligences” first began to come into prominence. I found there really is something to working to give kids – or anyone else – a chance to show how they understand and express things, whether they feel word-smart, music-smart, people-smart, or nature-smart. It challenged my educational intelligence: could I look up from my lesson plans long enough to notice who was not getting the opportunity to show their smarts?

Ed Hirsch’s book Cultural Literacy came out during that time as well, causing quite a discussion about what we should all know in order to be able to converse with one another and maintain some sense of American community. As an English teacher, I was often a part of discussions about what books the students should read. Was there a “canon” of essential (to some, sacred) texts? Was the point to be multicultural? Was it about reading specific books or teaching kids how to read meaningfully? I wrote my Masters thesis on “Teaching The Scarlet Letter in a Multiethnic Setting” because seventy percent of my students were nonnative English speakers and first generation immigrants. To them, reading about the Puritans was multicultural literature.

One of the terms that showed up in the little reading I did online about emotional intelligence was “emotional literacy,” which connected in my mind with Stephen Prothero’s new book Religious Literacy, in which he seeks to contend with the lack of religious knowledge in this country, particularly among those who say they believe in God. Here are some of the things he found:

  • half of all Americans cannot name one of the four gospels
  • a majority cannot name the first book of the Bible
  • sixty percent of evangelical Christians think Jesus was born in Jerusalem
  • fifty one percent of Jews think Jesus was born in Jerusalem
  • ten percent of Americans think Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife
  • many high school students think Sodom and Gomorrah were married
  • a third of Americans don’t think Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount
  • seventy five percent of American adults think “God helps those who help themselves” is in the Bible

And that’s just the Judeo-Christian stuff. Dig in on Hinduism, Buddhism, or Islam and we know even less. I have yet to read the book, but I found this quote in one of the reviews of the book:

“Some friends tell me that they don’t bring their sons and daughters to worship services or talk with them about their faith because they want their children to be free to choose a religion for themselves. This is foolhardy…. [I]f you offer them nothing, you are telling them that religion counts for nothing.”

Religion is a problematic word for me. I don’t think of it as a synonym for faith necessarily. Religion represents the bureaucratic, self-perpetuating institution rather than the relational, spiritual, mission-minded church. As far as words go, I’m all for losing my religion. I am, however, interested in what it might mean to be spiritually intelligent: to be God-smart. “Have this mind in you,” Paul wrote, “which was also in Christ Jesus.” Evidently, this idea has been around for a while. As we make the journey through Holy Week, both Paul and Prothero make me wonder if most of us know where we are going. And it also reminds me of an old joke about the small town pastor that visited regularly with the village drunk, trying to convert him. One day the drunk said, “You think I don’t know the story. I do.” He began to give a fairly accurate telling of the events of this week, right up to the stone being rolled away from the opening of the tomb; then he said, “And when Jesus comes out, if he sees his shadow, we’ll have six more weeks of winter.”

In one of the more interesting twists in the English language, for a long time the word know was used to mean sexual intercourse as well as mental perception or understanding. In the KJV, Adam “knew” Eve. (For one of my seminary friends, that turned the inscription on the oracle at Delphi, “Know thyself,” into a stealthy way to curse at someone.) The connection, I think, is that knowing is an intimate act. To know someone is to be invested deeply in their lives and they in yours. To know God – to be God-smart – is being vulnerable and intimate with the Very One who knew us, as the psalmist says, before we were even born.

One of the things we share in common with the disciples who walked with Jesus is how often we prove that we act like we know what’s going on while we show that we’ve missed the point. The gospel accounts of Jesus’ last days before his death show again and again that those who had been with him for three years and had heard most of his parables and seen most of his miracles still didn’t really know him or understand what he was doing. When Jesus was arrested and killed they denied him and scattered into the night as though they were taken completely by surprise. To be a part of a lineage of faith that connects back through two thousand Easters, we share an amazing resemblance to those we so easily see as less than spiritually intelligent.

Thank God the focus of our faith is not on who is smart enough to connect with God. “We see now through a glass, darkly,” Paul said, “but one day we will see face to face.” When that clarity comes, I don’t expect a quiz, but I look forward to knowing and being known.

Peace,
Milton

PS — there’s a new recipe.

lenten journal: diamond days

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
11

I wrote before I went to bed last night and I’m back at it this morning because I’ve got a deadline. According to the counter on my desktop, the Red Sox take the field in Kansas City to open the 2007 baseball season in less than six hours.

LESS THAN SIX HOURS!


In the steroid-ridden-unconscionable-salary-giving-over-the-top-
loss-of-perspective world of professional sports, I’m an unabashed Red Sox fan. I have been as long as I can remember. It’s something about both the team and the game. “Baseball, it is said, is only a game.” writes George Will. “True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.”

As far as games being unequal, here is one of my favorite George Carlin routines in which he compares baseball and football.

Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game.
Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.

Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park. The baseball park!
Football is played on a GRIDIRON, in a STADIUM, sometimes called SOLDIER FIELD or WAR MEMORIAL STADIUM.

Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life.
Football begins in the fall, when everything is dying.

In football you wear a helmet.
In baseball you wear a cap.

Football is concerned with downs. “What down is it?
Baseball is concerned with ups. “Who’s up? Are you up? I’m not up! He’s up!”

In football you receive a penalty.
In baseball you make an error.

In football the specialist comes in to kick.
In baseball the specialist comes in to relieve somebody.

Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting, and unnecessary roughness.
Baseball has the sacrifice.

Football is played in any kind of weather: Rain, snow, sleet, hail, fog…can’t see the game, don’t know if there is a game going on; mud on the field…can’t read the uniforms, can’t read the yard markers, the struggle will continue!
In baseball if it rains, we don’t go out to play. “I can’t go out! It’s raining out!”

Baseball has the seventh-inning stretch.
Football has the two-minute warning.

Baseball has no time limit: “We don’t know when it’s gonna end!”
Football is rigidly timed, and it will end “even if we have to go to sudden death.”

In baseball, during the game, in the stands, there’s kind of a picnic feeling. Emotions may run high or low, but there’s not that much unpleasantness.
In football, during the game in the stands, you can be sure that at least twenty-seven times you were perfectly capable of taking the life of a fellow human being.

And finally, the objectives of the two games are completely different:

In football, the object is for the quarterback, otherwise known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use the shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy’s defensive line.
In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! “I hope I’ll be safe at home!”

I write a lot about trying to get home, or at least to find it. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I love this game: home is that well defined base with a rooftop between the dugouts, surrounded by the grandstands. Home is the smell of the popcorn and peanuts, the incessant murmur of the crowd that bursts into cheer when the Hometown Team makes them proud. Home is the place you go to sit and watch and talk and eat and, for awhile, keep time by innings rather than hours and minutes. Home is the place where the kid in the top row of the upper deck brings her glove because she just might catch a fly ball. Home is the kind of place that calls up the kind of feelings Milton Bracker describes in “Tomorrow!” (after all, it is National Poetry Month):

Hoorah, hooray!
Be glad, be gay-
The best of reasons
Is Opening Day.

And cheering the players
And counting the gate
And running the bases
And touching the plate.

And tossing the ball out
And yelling Play Ball!
(Who cares about fall-out-
At least, until fall?)
Let nothing sour
This sweetest hour;
The baseball season’s
Back in flower!

I would love to see the Sox take the Series this year as much as any Boston fan and, cheering for a team that has won two championships in the last ninety years, I’ve learned winning is not the only reason to go to the ballpark or turn on the radio at night to see how the boys are doing. In August of 2004 I got to perform a wedding at Fenway Park, thanks to a friend who recommended me to the couple getting married. That Sunday was the first day the Sox allowed weddings up on the right field porch and ours was the second wedding of the day. The attendees received a program and a box of Cracker Jacks when they sat down. I stood with my back to the park, so the couple looked out over the ball field as they exchanged vows. Afterwards, we went down on the field and had our pictures taken in front of the Green Monster, just steps away from where Manny Ramirez stands during a game. When the Sox went on to win the Series that year, we all took partial credit for helping to break the Curse. We couldn’t help but make ourselves a part of Red Sox history.

“Time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all its sons away,” wrote Isaac Watts. “They fly forgotten as a dream dies at the opening day.” (I had no idea he was a baseball fan.)

Find your cap and dust off your glove. Watch The Sandlot or The Rookie or Field of Dreams. Swing for the fences. Make yourself a hot dog. The parks are open and the season has begun.

Put me in, coach; I’m ready to play. Today.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: I am . . .

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
4

Since today marks the beginning of National Poetry Month, I have a statement to make: Jesus was a poet.

Why not? Vaclav Havel was a poet who became president of his country; why can’t a poet be Messiah? Jesus thrived on metaphor. His “I am” statements, as we’ve come to call them, are among his best: I am

  • the bread of life
  • the light of the world
  • the door
  • the good shepherd
  • the resurrection and the life
  • the way, truth, and life
  • the true vine

The seven statements use everything from cooking to animal husbandry to describe who he was and why he stepped into our skins. Like a good poet, he did more provoking than explaining, offering metaphors that refused to be easily pinned down. Some have even expanded. Light, for instance, we know now is one of the few things than can be perceived as both a wave and a particle, but not at the same time. We draw light from an abundance of sources not available to Jesus’ hearers the first time around, leaving us to unpack the poetry in ways Jesus, perhaps, didn’t even think of during his time on earth.

I love the way he began each statement: I am . . .

In the extensive Bible study I did while driving from church to work this afternoon (which means I tried to remember every statement of Jesus I could), I couldn’t come up with a single instance where Jesus, when trying to communicate his person and mission, began a statement with “I am not . . .” He never described himself by reflecting – or deflecting – off of those he considered rivals or enemies. He had poetry to speak and to do, so negative, competitive, and judgmental words had no place in the equation. And he was standing in a lineage of poets.

When Moses asked God whom he should say sent him to Pharaoh, God answered, “Tell him, I AM sent you.” The verb TO BE. Isaiah talked about trees clapping their hands and the rivers singing because they grew tired of waiting for the human poets to catch on. The writer of Ecclesiastes had to be sitting in a coffee shop somewhere writing those words, with a small jazz combo (can you play jazz on lyre and timbrel?) sitting in the corner.

This weekend, the presidential candidates had to report how much money they’ve raised so far. They’ll spend a good deal of the money telling us why they aren’t like the other guys. But does that really tell us anything? The Democrats keep saying they’re not the Republicans, and the Republicans tell us they aren’t Democrats, but do those statements reveal any thing significant about who they are? The candidates who stand up and say, “This is who I am and here’s what I’m trying to do live mostly in TV dramas and rarely cross over (Fred Thompson notwithstanding).

I was in a Baptist seminary when the hostile takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention began. Those who masterminded the coup were clear about who they were. Those of us who were against them lost ground first because we could articulate little more than, “We’re not them.” How can you build any momentum and passion by yelling, “We’re not them! We’re not them!”? Many of us on the more moderate side of the Baptist continuum at the time could have articulated who we were as Baptists and who we hoped we were becoming. Instead, we got hooked into the power struggle and have the scars to prove it.

“I am,” said God.
“I am,” said Jesus.
“I am, I said,” sang Neil Diamond.
“I am what I am,” said Popeye.

Poetry might get you elected president, but it’s more likely to get you killed. Jesus was crucified because of who he said he was. Had he been willing to speak the prose of competition and power, or if he’d been willing to allow those around him to tell him who to be, he might have lived longer. But for Jesus to say, “I am the way and the truth” was about as comfortable for the power brokers of his day as running their hands down the business side of cheese grater, because his poetic self-awareness told them who they were not. They squash you like a bug for stuff like that.

One quarter into my fifty-first year and I still feel like an apprentice poet trying to learn how to say, “I am . . .” authentically and intentionally. I’m far more to used to the language of subversive comparison, the barbed phrases of ambush: I’m not you; take that. When I talk about who I am, there is no violence in my words. There is hope. There is love. There is truth.

There is poetry.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: timing

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

One of the crucial elements of the function kitchen is timing. Most everything is done in stages and needs to be finished just before it is served, so the food is fresh and attractive – both of which can be difficult when you’re trying to get the meals to two hundred people at the same time. The salads are made, put on racks that resemble a medieval torture device, and then the rack is wrapped in plastic and stored in the walk in refrigerator until five or ten minutes before they are served, when we cut open the plastic and descend on the salads with our squeeze bottles full of dressing. If the dressing goes on too soon, the salads are limp; if it goes on too late, the salads are, well, late.

We have a general idea of the schedule for serving, but every event is a little different, both in the way it is planned and the way it plays out. How we timed the meal at tonight’s wedding was not quite the same as the night before, or the one tomorrow. We expend a lot of energy trying to get the perfect the timing; the truth is, I think, it matters and it doesn’t matter. The folks in the room came to celebrate a wedding, not to stand in awe of my culinary prowess.

Palm Sunday marks the turn towards home, as far as Lent is concerned: Easter is in sight and, for most churches, we gear up one way or another to move intentionally through Holy Week. Palm Sunday is also Passion Sunday for some, which I suppose came about, in part, because of the reality that many people won’t participate in services other than Sunday, so the gradual reliving and retelling of the story is lost on them. If they are going to be a part of our journey through the Cross to the Resurrection, then they need to hear it tomorrow. So many churches divide their worship services starting with palms and ending with the Crucifixion, which I think is a good thing, since there is no need for a spoiler alert: we all know where the story is going.

At our church, we begin by gathering before church in the garden to bless the palms and then we process, singing, into the church to begin worship. The idea is wonderful and has been logistically challenging to coordinate the singing on the outside of the building with the music and singing on the inside. We’ve tried several things – opening windows (too cold), strategically placing choir members along the path – and some have worked better than others. Over the years, we’ve gotten better at it and we’ve learned that part of the deal is those of us processing into the church are never going to be exactly in sync with those inside until we all get inside together. That was never the point. We process because we, like the people in Jerusalem that day, are trying to understand who Jesus is and what he has done for us.

The first time around, I’m sure there was a much smaller gathering of the faithful at Golgotha than on what we have come to call Palm Sunday. Even the first Easter was not so well attended. I wonder how many years on it was before churches began putting out extra seating for the “Easter crowd.” I don’t know of any minister who doesn’t wonder what could be done to get more of those who come primarily on Christmas and Easter to participate more regularly and meaningfully in the congregation. The reasons for why people don’t find a more significant connection are as varied as the number of them who come: grief, pain, indifference, priorities, hurt feelings, time, to name a few. But on Easter, and maybe even Palm Sunday, they’re in the room.

Let’s start there. Don’t worry about the timing. Feed them.

I have mixed feelings as we gather in the garden with our palms each year. We wave our fronds and sing hosanna, emulating the people who welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem, yet, as I read the story, we are emulating people who sort of missed the point. The king they were cheering for was not the one coming to town. Jesus rode into town on a donkey, not a valiant steed. Did they not notice that as they cheered? Whether fair-weather or faithful, few if any knew where the path they lined with their coats was heading. My feelings get mixed because I have a hard time coming to terms with identifying with them, which I need to do if I’m going to get to Easter. I miss the point too, even though I’ve always waved my palms knowing where the story goes. I still miss the point, sometimes.

The timing of the week is significant from Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday. We’ve worked hard to outline the courses and to move with intentionality. We know where the story is going and there is still room for surprise. Though we have done this many times before, just as I know the way an evening rolls out in the kitchen, there is still room for surprise, thank God. Some people will sit down for all the courses, some will show up only for the appetizers or the entrees, and there are seats for all, if we’ve done our job well.

“I love to tell the story,” the old hymn says, “for those who know it best seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest.”

In my kitchen, I get the food ready and work to serve it well, but I don’t get to sit down and eat. At church, we are those we prepare the table and who gather around it. We are the ones who both issue and receive the invitations, the ones who tell the story and who need to hear it. May we serve whoever shows up and sit down and eat whenever we can. It’s not the timing; it’s the meal.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: work in progress

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

Today held a small and important victory for me.

One of the challenges in cooking for large functions is figuring out how much to make. We have a “banquet and event order” or BEO that delineates how many people are eating each entrée offered, but how many pounds of mashed potatoes we make is up to me. As far as appetizers go, I’m told to make a cheese platter or an antipasto tray and then what different passed hors d’oeuvres were requested, but nothing is quantified other than the number of folks coming to the event. All of a sudden my job becomes a word problem:

If one hundred and fifty people are coming for dinner and you are supposed to make sausage stuffed mushrooms, chicken satay, goat cheese and eggplant crostini, and coconut shrimp, how many of each hors d’oeuvres do you make?

Chef says there are formulas to help answer the question, but my guess is they play it safe. Catering concerns are supposed to create the illusion of excess. We’re supposed to make too much food so the people at the party think they’re getting their money’s worth because there’s so much left over. Making too much is easy to do and is too easy an answer. The first couple of weeks I was doing functions, I made as many pieces of each appetizer as there were people at the event: one hundred people, one hundred bacon-wrapped scallops. If there were one hundred people and four hors d’oeuvres, I made four hundred pieces and had most of them left over.

Today, I took a different approach. The BEO said a hundred and twenty were coming to the wedding. I made a hundred chicken satay, a hundred stuffed mushrooms, a hundred coconut shrimp, and I put the eggplant mixture in a pastry bag and piped it on to the crostini each time I made a tray so I could save the bread to use for croutons. When cocktail hour was over, all the shrimp was gone and I had ten mushrooms and eight satay for the servers’ snack.

Like I said, it was a small and important victory.

I kept thinking about the Truth Shop as I cooked today: do I want the whole truth or a partial version? The unquestioned belief in the food industry is more is better: always make too much, always hedge your bets, never tell the customer you’ve run out of something.

Why? Why? and Why not?

I’ll keep working on both my questions and my answers.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: every last one of us

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
4

Of my two days off during the week, Thursday is usually the run-the-errands-and-hang-out-at-Panera-with-Ginger day. Not his week. I met with my spiritual advisor this morning because he’s going to be gone for the next couple of weeks, then I went to work because there was a function this evening (I was off yesterday), and then I came home to hang out with Ginger and watch Grey’s Anatomy, which was a rerun but one we’d not seen.

I jumped the gun a little bit in spiritual direction. When Ken asked me how Lent has been for me I ended up talking about resurrection, even though we’ve still got a week to go. Actually, I think he brought it up. I talked about my realization this week that I had made it through the winter without a major depression. What I see looking back is I started seeing Ken in October 2005, when he challenged me to figure out what I most wanted to do with my life, determine what it would cost to do it, and then figure out how to pay the bill. In December 2005, I committed to writing regularly – five days a week. In October 2006 I chose to step out of professional ministry and be the spouse of the pastor rather than the pastor. I also became a full-time chef. Though I can see only through a glass, darkly when it comes to where this road is going, I like and trust the direction in which I’m headed.

“It sounds like resurrection to me,” he said.

The conversation that ensued will show up again in my writing, I’m sure, because it was rich. What comes to mind now is a comment he made a few moments later:

“I think most people are afraid of resurrection.”

His words were like a finger on the “Play” button and my mind was the CD player. Resurrection is about more than death. Jesus pushed beyond the known boundaries to show what was on the other side. When we talk about what is happening in Darfur and feel overwhelmed or helpless or even indifferent, resurrection calls us to push on through to find what is on the other side of those feelings, just as Jesus pushed beyond the tomb or walked through the walls to get to where the disciples were. Resurrection means we are not confined by the boundaries to which we have become accustomed, or which make us comfortable. Ken responded by quoting the story, “The Truth Shop” by Anthony de Mello by heart:

I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw the name of the shop:

THE TRUTH SHOP.

The saleswoman was very polite: What type of truth did I wish to purchase, partial or whole?

The whole truth of course. No deceptions for me, no defenses, no rationalizations. I wanted my truth plain and unadulterated.

She waved me on to another side of the store.

The salesman there pointed to the price tag. “The price is very high, sir,” he said.

“What is it?” I asked, determined to get the whole truth, no matter what it cost.

“Your security, sir,” he answered.

I came away with a heavy heart.
I still need the safety of my unquestioned beliefs.

When I came home tonight, I found this comment on an earlier blog entry:

Milton, would you think about, and comment on, the story that aired tonight on All Things Considered about the UCC congregation and the man who is a registered sex offender?

I always appreciate your insight,
Charlotte

Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad, California is struggling with how to respond to a twice-convicted sex offender who asked to join the church. The man visited the church for a few weeks and then came to the pastor and told him who he was, what he had done, and that he wanted to join the church because it was a community where he felt safe. The pastor introduced him to the congregation at the end of worship one Sunday, explained the situation, and then asked the man not to come back until the church had figured out how to respond.

I’m writing about this as a fellow struggler and a fellow traveler in the UCC, not as a critic, judge, or any kind of expert. Ginger and I have no children of our own. I was not abused by any adults as a child, though we have a number of people close to us who were. I’m aware of the damage that lingers in their lives alongside of the healing.

When I asked Ginger about it, she said, “I’ve thought about this a lot. That’s why I went to the police station to find out who is on the sex offender registry in Marshfield. If someone came to us, I would want us to welcome them and I would want us to be very clear about what the boundaries were: they could never sit near children or sit near where the kids come for the children’s message; they could never teach Sunday School or be in the Sunday School area; they could never talk to a child one on one; I would assign a deacon each week to stay with them during Coffee Hour and to help them keep the boundaries.” She continued, “We are called to welcome everyone and we also know the high rate of recidivism for sex offenders. The issue is how do we make everyone feel safe, the offender included.”

She was talking about resurrection: beyond death, beyond violence, beyond abuse, beyond despair, beyond comfort. No wonder it scares us. The watchword of the UCC these days is “Whoever you are and wherever you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome here.” Situations such as this provide the opportunity for us to step into the heart of those words. Whoever and wherever are expansive and exhaustive. The whole truth of Jesus’ resurrection is God’s grace is unlimited and unearned for all of us.

Every last one.

I will pray that Pilgrim Church will be able to incarnate that grace as resurrection people in wonderful, frightening, and uncomfortable ways. And with that prayer, I send them a song I remember from my days leading youth camps. It was recorded by the Lost Dogs ten or fifteen years ago and is a wonderful expression of the wideness of God’s mercy.

“Breathe Deep (the Breath of God)”
music and lyrics by Terry Taylor

Politicians, morticians, Philistines, homophobes
Skinheads, Dead heads, tax evaders, street kids
Alcoholics, workaholics, wise guys, dim wits
Blue collars, white collars, warmongers, peaceniks

Breathe deep, breathe deep the Breath of God
Breathe deep, breathe deep the Breath of God

Suicidals, rock idols, shut-ins, dropouts
Friendless, homeless, penniless and depressed
Presidents, residents, foreigners and aliens
Dissidents, feminists, xenophobes and chauvinists

Breathe deep, breathe deep the Breath of God
Breathe deep, breathe deep the Breath of God

Evolutionists, creationists, perverts, slumlords
Deadbeats, athletes, Protestants and Catholics
Housewives, neophytes, pro-choice, pro-life
Misogynists, monogamists, philanthropists, blacks and whites

Breathe deep, breathe deep the Breath of God
Breathe deep, breathe deep the Breath of God

Police, obese, lawyers, and government
Sex offenders, tax collectors, war vets, rejects
Atheists, Scientists, racists, sadists
Photographers, biographers, artists, pornographers

Breathe deep, breathe deep the Breath of God
Breathe deep, breathe deep the Breath of God

Gays and lesbians, demagogues and thespians
The disabled, preachers, doctors and teachers
Meat eaters, wife beaters, judges and juries
Long hair, no hair, everybody everywhere!

Breathe deep, breathe deep the Breath of God
Breathe deep, breathe deep the Breath of God

Yes. Every last one of us.

Peace,
Milton

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