don't eat alone

Many years ago when I was a youth minister, I began our regular Wednesday night gathering by asking the kids to write down the names of the ten people most important to them. Then I said, “’I don’t have time’ is just a euphemism for ‘I don’t care.’ Then I said, “Your sports team is taking more time than you thought; cross one name off the list.” Except for a few minor protests, they did what I asked. I continued to come up with things that took their time and continued to tell them to cross out names. The mood in the room became tense, even desperate. Some were close to tears. I took it all the way out, until we had crossed out all ten names, and then I said, again,

“’I don’t have time’ is a euphemism for ‘I don’t care.’”

We talked for a good while about the veracity of my statement, struggling with the ideas and feelings, and then we shared Communion together. Yes, it was outlandish. Yes, it was somewhat over the top. And yes, it was true.

The evening came to mind for me this week when I heard that our government has spent nearly $500 billion so far on the war in Iraq. Here’s an ongoing count:

I have no idea how to wrap my mind around a half a trillion dollars. If I had a million dollars and was told to leave my house, spend a thousand dollars a day, and not return until the money was gone, I would not be back for almost three years. We spend $200 million a day in Iraq; I would have to be gone six hundred years to spend that much. $500 billion is 5,000 million. As I watch the counter move at such a rapid pace, I wonder if it isn’t fair to say, “’We don’t have money for that’ is the same as ‘we don’t care.’”

According to UN statistics, 40 million people in the world are HIV positive, most of them in the developing world. At the end of May, President Bush pledged, with great fanfare, to provide $30 billion to fight AIDS in Africa over the next five years, which amounts to almost $16.5 million a day — less than ten percent of what we are spending on the war.

The genocide in Darfur, Sudan began the same month the US invaded Iraq. According to the White House’s own numbers, the US has provided $1.7 billion in aid to the region during that time – and our government is the largest donor. We spend that much every couple of weeks to fight a war.

If time and money are euphemisms for compassion, our government is making a very clear statement.

And, I’m afraid, so am I.

The last time I wrote about Darfur was back in April. I keep links here, but I’ve not taken time to do my part, nor have I sent money to anyone. 2.5 million people have been displaced (a euphemism for running scared into the desert where they live lives worse than animals) by the violence. Over 200,000 have been killed. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 70,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the war there and those fleeing their country in fear and desperation are now counted in millions.

I’ve been busy with my own stuff. My car’s in the shop and is going to cost more than I expected. I have to go to work and then I have a lot of things to get done around the house. I haven’t had time. I haven’t had money.

I know this will probably be one of those posts that doesn’t draw many comments. I’m not sure how to respond to it myself. I wonder why we are so silent. Underneath the mindless chatter of the twenty-four hour news channels and their posturing pundits, we, the citizens, have been seemingly anesthetized by stress, fear, and overload to the point we are convinced our time and money can’t make a difference. Beyond the possibilities of mass movements, I realize I can easily go days without any significant conversations about Iraq or Darfur. How can that be? I’m paying attention. I think I’m a world citizen. I just haven’t had time.

Sara Miles talks about Jesus offering “a radically inclusive love that accompanied people in the most ordinary of actions – eating, drinking, walking – and stayed with them, through fear, even past death. That love meant giving yourself away, embracing outsiders as family, emptying yourself to feed and live for others.”

Man, I want to live that way. I want to love like that. I want people from Duxbury to Darfur to know that love. I keep saying that, yet, up until now, I haven’t had time to really live it out.

Peace,
Milton

About an hour before dinner service last night, one of the servers walked through the kitchen and whispered, “The health inspector’s here.” We had no cause to panic because we keep a clean kitchen, things were where they were supposed to be and at the appropriate temperatures. We knew we had nothing to worry about and we were all still a little nervous.

The inspector was a nice-looking man, about six-two, with a shaved head and an easy going air. He was in the kitchen for about six or seven minutes before he spoke to anyone. He moved from counter to counter, then into the walk-in refrigerator, and then on to the line, opening drawers and containers and flashing his digital thermometer to get his readings. He reached me station toward the end of his visit. Perhaps because we shared the same hair(less) style, he spoke to me.

“How’s everything today?” he asked.
“Pretty good. Almost time for dinner service,” I answered.
“That’s why I’m here now,” he said. “I try to get in and get out before it gets busy. It wouldn’t be fair to show up in the middle of the meal.”

He made a couple of other checks, spoke to the manager about his findings, and was on his way. We passed with flying colors – only some minor infractions, none of which was in the kitchen. For all we knew we were doing right, what everyone wanted to know was what we got wrong. Perhaps that’s partly because the job of an inspector is to point out what’s wrong more than it is to say what’s right. The way the evaluation form is set up, the only marks he made were for things not up to par. I wonder if that view of life is hard for him to turn off when he leaves work.

When I was in high school, I worked as an office boy for a doctor’s clinic. I would go in after school, make the coffee run, file charts, make copies, and do whatever else they thought of for me to do. The clinic was made up of ten or so doctors of various specialties and varying personalities. One day, the urologist and the proctologist got in a rather loud argument in the hallway near where I was standing. The proctologist finally stormed off and the urologist turned to me and said, “That’s what happens to you when you spend your life looking up a proctoscope.”

I walk into someone else’s kitchen and start looking around to see how easy it would be to cook in that room. (Most kitchens aren’t designed for people to actually use them.) Police officers and those who work to keep law and order often end up thinking no one can really be trusted. How we look at life day after day makes us think that’s how life looks, period.

The inspector looked at our kitchen as a place that has to make the grade and I see it as a place to make meals. Neither viewpoint can afford to be exclusive of the other. It does help for him to come in and remind us of how we can improve; it might help him to come in for dinner and see how the place looks from tableside. (I wonder if he ever eats out.)

Easier for me than him, I think.

Peace,
Milton

Half of my day is spent
getting ready for dinner.
The prep list hangs
from the ticket holder
and I pull my Sharpie
from my sleeve pocket
to mark my progress:
green beans, succotash,
gnocchi, Swiss chard,
cod, swordfish, halibut,
butter sauces.

There is a certain way
to do things.
The aim is consistency
rather than conformity.
Each portion of salmon
should weigh eight ounces.
The chives should be diced
to be the same size.
Does any diner look
at the plate and say,
“This chive is too large,”

or pick up his salmon
and reach across to grab
the fish at the next table
to see if their weights
are commensurate?
But I can tell
when I pick them up
and place them
in hot sauté pans.
They don’t know,
but I do.

After his days off,
Chef comes in early
and checks all
the dressings and sauces
to see if they match
the recipes. He looks
at peppers, mushrooms,
even the chives –
we sweat the small stuff.
It’s how we show
we mean what we cook.

Peace,
Milton

When I get to work, one of the first things I do is change into my white double-breasted chef’s jacket and don an apron to begin my prep work for the day. (I provide my own chef’s pants and shoes – and there are both made specifically for the professional kitchen.) Chef does not require we put on our uniforms during prep, but I like dressing for the occasion because it helps me step into my role and it keeps me from sweating through the clothes I’m going to wear home at the end of the shift.

Uniforms become standard wear for a reason – at least for the most part – and kitchen clothing is no different. Here is a brief history of chef wear:

Chefs, for the most part, wear their uniforms almost every day of their working lives, replete with toque, checked pants and double-breasted jacket. Though these uniforms are ubiquitous in the foodservice industry worldwide, they are often taken for granted and worn without much thought. However, many may find that the origin and reasons behind traditional chef’s attire are as interesting as it looks.

Much of the chef’s uniform has developed out of necessity. The jacket, for example, is double-breasted so it can easily be reversed to hide stains that may accumulate throughout the day; the double layer of cotton is also designed to insulate our bodies against the intense heat of the stove or an accidental splattering of hot liquid. Even the knotted cloth buttons were fashioned for a reason-cloth will withstand the frequent washings and abuse buttons often take from contact with pots, pans and other heavy equipment. Though executive chefs often wear black pants, working chefs and cooks usually don pants with black-and-white checks-the dizzying pattern of hound’s tooth camouflages minor spills and soilings. Today neckerchiefs are primarily worn for aesthetic purposes, to give our uniforms a more finished look, but originally cotton cloths were draped around ones neck to soak body sweat while working in the inferno-like kitchens of yesteryear.

Hats have fallen out of fashion in many kitchens. I wear a baseball cap backwards (to keep the bill out of the way) because I sweat profusely, but I’m the only one in our kitchen with headgear. When I ran the function kitchen at the Inn, if I were staffing a carving station for a wedding, I work a toque in public to play the part. I have a great kind of floppy one that makes me look a lot like the bear in the picture. At one wedding, an older woman asked me, “Do people ever just want to come up and take your picture and give you a hug?”

Sara Miles adds another layer to the uniform:

I learned what it felt like to become invisible: When I pulled on my slightly starch-stiff whites, the uniform changed me from an individual, with my own tedious history, to a ritual figure, one of millions of restaurant workers, with a time-honored and predictable role. (23)

The paradox of personhood I learn over and over again, dressed alike and standing side by side with my kitchen mates, is I am more true to myself as an “invisible” team member than I am if I were staking claim to the part of each dish I did myself. I am more true to the calling of both my humanity and my vocation when I take my place in the lineage of history, both cultural and culinary, in the same way I become one in the great cloud of witnesses when I take the bread and wine at the Communion table. True humanity is found in integration rather than individualism, in community much more than anyone’s claim to fame. If I’m at my best, I’m dressing to disappear. What’s the phrase I’m looking for? Oh, yes:

Lose your life to find it.

Peace,
Milton

the lie that is
the conformity
of the supermarket
is unearthed
in my garden;
the tomatoes here
have names:
lemon boy,
early girl,
cherokee purple,
green zebra,
roma, sun sweet –

and shapes,
and colors,
and tastes –
oh, the deliciousness
that bursts
with my bite
as I stand
in the dirt
by the vines;
I can’t even wait
until I’m back
in the kitchen.

their talents
and uses
are as varied
as their tastes:
sauced, sliced,
sandwiched,
saladed;
summer’s gift
from spring’s
planting –
and enough
to share.

Peace,
Milton

When I got to work yesterday, Chef said he wanted me to work garde manger, which is the salad and dessert station, since I knew the fish station well. Over the next week or two, I will learn the remaining stations – grill, appetizer, and pizza – so I can move and cook wherever he needs me. Garde manger is an assembling, rather than a cooking, station. The first key is good preparation. There are lots of bins that need to be stocked with dressings, condiments, fruit, vegetables, and lettuces so each salad or dessert can be put together elegantly and expeditiously. Our salads are:

• Caesar (chopped romaine, Caesar dressing, homemade garlic-Romano-herb croutons, shaved parmesan cheese);
• Spinach (baby spinach leaves, julienned red pears, crumbled Great Hill bleu cheese, candied walnuts, warm bacon vinaigrette);
• Mixed Greens (mesclun mix, sliced cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, sherry mustard vinaigrette, and beet curls);
• Wonton salad (mesclun mix, pine nuts, feta cheese, julienned granny smith apples, and artichoke vinaigrette in a fried wonton bowl).

Our homemade desserts are crème brulee, peach cobbler, flourless chocolate torte, warm chocolate peanut butter bombe, and mango cheesecake. Each of them is garnished with fresh fruit and berries.

The way the kitchen is set up, the salad and pizza stations are enclosed by a bar in the middle of the restaurant, so I got to see people as they came in to the dining room. Some were dressed nicely, others looked as though they had been out running errands or knocking over liquor stores and got hungry all of a sudden. There were couples, some small groups, and one woman who was eating by herself. When it comes right down to it, we’ll serve anyone who walks in to eat. We’re a restaurant; that’s what we do.

One of my favorite songs is Paul Simon’s “America,” which tells the story of two people traveling together. At one point, the lyric talks about a game they are playing:

Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces.
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy.
I said “Be careful his bowtie is really a camera.”

As I looked out over the dining room last night, I couldn’t help but play the game myself, imagining the conversation between the older couple that sat on the same side of the table together, or the younger couple who sat next to them, facing each other so that all I could see was the man’s face. The first couple looked much happier. There was a table of four women who were animated in their conversation and the six-top that came in around seven and clinked their glasses through two rounds of drinks before they even opened their menus. All of them, I’m sure, drove past other restaurants to come to our place. All of them, I’m assuming, have stuff in their refrigerators at home.

What brought them to our place to eat on a Tuesday night?

Before I went to work yesterday, I had a chance to read this post by Simon in which he talks about a sermon he preached entitled “A Maitre d’ in the House of God,” which may be one of the best sermon titles ever. He also includes this quote from his new book, God Next Door:

[I]f the only language of place and locality that we use in reference to the church is that of world, nation or society, we’re in danger of missing the most primary implication of the Incarnation …It is the localness of the Incarnation that makes this profound act of God so confronting and so comprehensively saving. So, too, the church. Should the church fail to grasp its most immediate relationship to place, it may well fail to be the presence of God in a much broader context.

This morning, Ginger handed me a package from Barbara in Brooklyn (thank you, Barbara!) that contained a copy of Take This Bread by Sara Miles. She begins her story this way:

One early, cloudy morning when I was forty-six, I walked into a church, ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine. A routine Sunday activity for tens of millions of Americans – except that up to that moment I’d led a thoroughly secular life, at best indifferent to religion, more often appalled by its fundamentalist crusades. This was my first communion. It changed everything.

Eating Jesus, as I did that day to my great astonishment, led me against all my expectations to a faith I’d scorned and work I’d never imagined. The mysterious sacrament turned out to be not a symbolic wafer at all but actual food – indeed, the bread of life. In that shocking moment of communion, filled with a deep desire to reach for and become part of a body, I realized that what I’d been doing with my life all along was what I was meant to do: feed people.

Both Simon and Sara are talking about church as a place where people feed and are fed: God’s Restaurant, to use Simon’s metaphor.

The [parable of the Great Banquet] in Luke’s gospel paints a radical and challenging picture of God’s kingdom. It’s a confronting picture for the church. It is certainly not comfortable, predictable, or safe. To be engaged in God’s restaurant is a potentially life changing and life challenging call.

It is God who makes up the guest list. We have no say in who is invited and who isn’t. The seating arrangements and dress requirements have nothing to do with us. Should the master wish to change from sit-down silver service to cafeteria-style buffet, that’s his call. We should be conscious of the ease with which we can become like those who made their excuses, those who had pre-determined what the host could do and could not do, who the host could invite, and what the seating arrangements would be.

Simon’s words reminded me of the way Ginger recounted a conversation in her sermon last Sunday:

Our friends, parents of three of our godchildren, live in an affluent white suburb of Nashville. I’ve spoken of them before and the measures they take to keep their children connected with a broader world outside of their very comfortable white life.

Yesterday we go to see them for a last minute surprise visit and a narrow window for conversation. During our hour together, we struggled with their church dilemma. They are caught because they want to be in their neighborhood church and appreciate the way their soon-to-be teenage daughter is accepted there, and yet what they hear in worship are subtle, fear-based messages about terrorists, homosexuals, abortion clinics, race, and economics. Questions about living out an intentional faith-filled life are not asked.

In the midst of their struggle, their twelve year old inquired, “Are we expecting too much of a church for it to be multiethnic and inclusive?”

On the dust jacket of Sara Miles’ book it says, “A lesbian left-wing journalist who covered revolutions around the world, Miles was not the kind of woman expected to see suddenly praising Jesus.” That sentence says at least as much about the church as it does about Miles and her friends. The painful reality in my goddaughter’s question is many local churches answer that question in the affirmative. We think it is too much to ask because we can’t be comfortable and challenged at the same time. We don’t trust that love casts out fear, even though God tells us that over and over and over again. In the face of that reality, Simon and Sara give me hope that fear will not triumph over faith when it comes to feeding Jesus to the world, one neighborhood at a time.

It’s God’s restaurant. Dinner is served.

Peace,
Milton

I’m on my way out the door to work and wanted to take a moment to say I haven’t written because I’m adjusting to regular work shifts and trying to carve out writing time between work and the rest of life. I’ll figure it out soon. For today, I leave you with lyrics to Patty Griffin’s wonderful song, “Making Pies,” about someone who worked at the Table Talk Pie Company in Worcester, Massachusetts. The video was put together by someone other than Patty.

It’s not far
I can walk
Down the block
To TableTalk
Close my eyes
Make the pies all day

Plastic cap
on my hair
I used to mind
Now I don’t care
I used to mind
Now I don’t care
Cause I’m Gray

Did I show you this picture of my nephew
Taken at his big birthday surprise
At my sister’s house last Sunday
This is Monday and we’re making pies
I’m making pies
Making pies
Pies

Thursday nights
I go and type
Down at the church
With Father Mike
It gets me out
And he ain’t hard to like
At all

Jesus stares at me
In my chair
With his big blue eyes
And his honey brown hair
And he’s looking at me
Way up there
On the wall

Did I show you this picture of my sweetheart
Taken of us before the war
Of the Greek and his Italian girl
One Sunday at the shore

We tied our ribbons to the fire escape
They were taken by the birds
Who flew home to the country
As the bombs rained on the world

5am
Here I am
Walking the block
To TableTalk
You could cry or die
Or just make pies all day
I’m making pies
Making pies
Making pies
Making pies

Peace,
Milton

Wednesday night was a good night for me at the restaurant.

Three weeks into the job and the learning curve is beginning to flatten a bit: I’ve learned the fish station well and have begun to pick up on the appetizer and garde manger stations. (Garde manger is the station that assembles the salads and desserts.) When I get to work, I am able to see what prep work I need to do without having to ask too many questions, which leaves me time to ask other questions of Chef, relating to how he organizes the kitchen, manages food costs, and creates the menus. Two things have impressed me most: one is how little waste there is in what we do and the second is the elegant simplicity of his dishes. The point is to let you taste the ingredients, not to cover them up with sauces and spices to show off.

Weeknights, there are four of us on the line: one at the grill (usually Chef), one at the fish station, one doing garde manger and pizza, and one on appetizers. Gianni, of pasta recipe fame, works appetizers. He is only 19 and came to the US from Italy about two years ago. His English is good and his accent is thick and musical. He has an affable spirit and he loves music – mostly classic rock. Occasionally, he asks me for a ride home, which he did on Wednesday. When we got in the car, he said,

“You like the classical music?”

“Sure,” I said. “I don’t know much about it, but I like it.”

“I found this CD used. For a dollar.” (I wish I could type the way he says, “dollar.”) “It’s OK to play it?”

“Sure,” I said again.

“It’s the Messiah (which he pronounced mess-see-ya) — by Handel. Do you know it?”

“That’s one I know,” I answered.

“It’s beautiful. And I found it for only a dollar,” he said again, since a bargain is a big deal on a line cook’s salary, I’m sure. He put the CD in the player and asked me to punch down to the ninth track. “Hallelujah Chorus,” he said, smiling. “It’s very beautiful.”

Wednesday was one of those New England summer days that make you remember why you live in New England. The air was dry, the breeze was cool, and the temperature barely got about seventy degrees. Driving home that night, we had the windows down and wound our way through Plymouth and Kingston under a starlit sky and an almost full moon. Since it was going on eleven o’clock, the streets were mostly empty and the towns were quiet. All we could hear was the quiet hum of the engine, the tires on the road, and the breeze as it carried the voices past our ears and out into the night:

and he shall reign forever and ever . . .

I couldn’t help but sing along. Between church and school choirs, I know the tenor part pretty well. When Ginger served the church in Winchester, the tradition was to invite members of the congregation to join the choir at the end of the service on Easter Sunday to sing the Hallelujah Chorus together. My schedule kept me from singing with the choir regularly, but I never missed an Easter opportunity. I sang quietly as Gianni and I rode along, not wanting to frighten him or to interfere with his experience with the music. We didn’t talk much; he listened and I sang softly.

When we got to his house, I pushed the eject button and he put his CD back in its jewel box. He thanked me for the ride and I told him I’d see him on Friday. He lives in a small house at the end of a gravel road tucked in a part of Kingston I didn’t even know was there. Every time I’ve dropped him off, the house has been dark and I’ve seen no one. I know nothing of what home feels like to him, other than listening to him talk in Italian to tell someone he had a ride – at least, that’s what I think he’s saying.

Since the Sox game was already over, I was hard pressed to think of what would follow Handel. I turned down the radio and followed the road out of Kingston into Duxbury and on to Marshfield. The engine, the tires, and the breeze continued their accompaniment, even though the choir had stopped singing.

The first time I saw Gianni make his pasta dish, I asked him if he wanted to add some mushrooms and he shook his head.

“You know Leenard Skeenard?” he asked.

I nodded.

“I, too, am a simple man.” He smiled.

Since the moon comes up as much in the south as it does in the east during the summer time, my next to last turn towards home set the yellow orb at the end of the street as if it were my destination. Just before I drove off into space, I made my final left and turned into the driveway. The light off the porch spilled out into the yard and I could see the silhouettes of the daylilies and hydrangeas that encircle our small lawn. The Schnauzers wagged and woofed as I came through the gate.

Life’s a lot like our menu: best left simple, where the flavors come through.

Hallelujah.

Peace,
Milton

Christine posted this wonderful picture a couple of days ago with an invitation to respond. Here’s where the picture took me.

empty chair

what is
the difference
between
open space
and emptiness?
vacancy
and opportunity?
barrenness
and belief?

in one of
my favorite stories,
Ian had a chair
in the shape
of a hand
an open hand
a tender hand
God’s hand
to hold him

I drive by
furniture stores
yard sales
sometimes
hoping to see
any chair
that might
offer me
the same invitation

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — There’s a new recipe.

On the same Saturday morning, while I was out running errands, I learned of two endings: the Weekly World News is ceasing publication and Annie Dillard is not going to write anymore.

For those of you who may not frequent supermarkets, the Weekly World News is the tabloid of tabloids, leaving behind celebrity gossip for tales of the apocalypse, Elvis sightings, and miracle cures. Where else could you learn that Moses wandered in the wilderness for forty years because he lost the map? Once it’s gone, who will tell us beavers have OCD? Or give us pictures like this?

As I’ve stood in checkout lines over the years, I’ve wondered who bought the paper. (OK, I bought a couple of them for youth group gags.) I don’t think I ever saw someone put one in his or her cart, but the paper was there week after week, billing itself as “the world’s only reliable newspaper.”

Who will we rely on now?

Scott Simon played his interview with Annie Dillard (which she notes was recorded some time ago) since she has a new novel, The Maytrees. Dillard’s writings have spoken to me over and over again through the years, her thoughtful and often audacious take on the world challenging both my faith and intellect. These passages from Holy the Firm are good examples.

If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness . . . The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.

The creation is not a study, roughed-in sketch; it is supremely, meticulously created, created abundantly, extravagantly, and in fine… Even on the perfectly ordinary and clearly visible level, creation carries on with an intricacy unfathomable and apparently uncalled for. The lone ping into being of the first hydrogen atom ex nihilo was so unthinkably, violently radical, that surely it ought to have been enough, more than enough. But look what happens. You open the door and all heaven and hell break loose.

I’d never heard her voice before. She sounded harsh and crusty, like the rocky New England shoreline on which she lives. The last section of the interview caught me by surprise:

“So, do you write everyday?” Simon asked.

“I do when I’m working.”

“So you’ll take some time off?”

“I’m tempted now to take the rest of my life off.”

“You don’t have another book working at the moment? You don’t want to?” He spoke with tenderness. She did not.

“This one just about killed me. It took ten years. And you write and you write and you write and you throw it away and you throw it away and you throw it away,” she said laughing. “And in those ten years I probably could have done something more useful, although I’ve always wanted nothing more than to add to the literature.”

“I just wondered – not to turn myself into a career counselor . . .” They both laughed.

“I’m not being totally truthful with you. I can’t write anymore. My fingers can no longer type, they can no longer write by hand; I don’t know how I’d be as a chisel. But the fact is that was the great story – The Maytrees was the great story — and I’ll never get another story that good. People want people to keep doing what they want. People want to change and grow.”

“You want to do something different?”

“I want to change and grow.”

Ginger preached on the Lord’s Prayer (Luke’s version) this morning, informing us she was going to look at the spirit of the prayer in its totality rather than going phrase by phrase. At one point, she quoted the African proverb, “When you pray, move your feet,” and then read the prayer again:

Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, as we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.

In a world where thousands upon thousands die of hunger everyday, how do we pray, “Give us our daily bread?” Who is “us”? Who am I praying to be fed? How are our feet moving to feed “us”? In a world in which violence is the primary currency, how do we pray, “Your kingdom come?” How willing are we to wage peace?

“We’re all going to leave a mark,” she said.

What came to my mind first was someone crashing into something and the other person saying, “Ouch! That’s going to leave a mark.” What kind of mark will we leave?
It could be a wound, or a scar; we could be doing damage. It could be a mark like a child writing with a Sharpie on the living room wall, an unappreciated creative expression. It could be marks of growth moving up the doorjamb of existence. It could be a handprint on the hearts of those we have loved.

Two of Dillard’s statements have haunted me since yesterday:

“And in those ten years I probably could have done something more useful, although I’ve always wanted nothing more than to add to the literature.”

“I want to change and grow.”

I felt sad when I heard her say she could no longer write. What she wanted out of life was to add to the literature, which she can no longer do. Her words have fed me and now I know there will not be any more of them. Yet she is resolved rather than resigned. She wrote “the great story” and now is ready to see what the days ahead can hold, even if she can no longer write or even travel.

I struggle with her stance because, I think, I have yet to find my great story. It’s taken me half a century to figure out my best creative medium; I’m just now starting to draw on the wall. I, too, want to change and grow. And I trust, as one created in the image of the Creator who marked up the universe with uncalled for extravagances and intimacies, that there are great stories still to tell.

Peace,
Milton