don't eat alone

when darkness falls outside
and inside at the end
of a pretty good day
I have turned on the music
I know – songs that have
lighted many nights
with the slide of fingers
along steel strings
fingers picking a pattern
of sorrow and sadness
as comforting as the wind

and as old as my childhood
afternoons spent sitting
in the grass trying to make
my fingers move like his
until I put down my
guitar and sang harmony
while he sang melody
and I knew he was telling
the truth, just as he
is doing again tonight
ain’t it good to know

I bought that record
in ninth grade almost
forty years ago – in days
when I was still learning
how to play guitar, to be
a friend, how to be me;
one harder than the others
four decades have drawn
new lines and old ones
I still can’t play like him
but I can sing the harmony

Peace,
Milton

Summer arrives in a few minutes
announced only by the estival breezes
and the clacking of the wooden
blinds in our room. The sun filled
the room with light just after five
this morning and won’t retreat
until nearly ten.

This is the longest day.

Somewhere around ten I watched
the taillights of the Wranger
disappear around the corner
as you left for a week of work
in another town. We will sleep
under the same moon, but
not in the same bed.

This is the longest day.

I picked lettuce for lunch
from the garden and I can’t let
this beautiful afternoon pass
without a walk on the beach.
These are things we do
together, you and I. Today
I will go alone.

The Mayans were so connected
to the seasons and the sun
that they knew exactly when
the first light would break into
their temple at Solstice
and they gathered to pray
and to feast.

I am connected to you
across the miles and meadows,
in the wind and wishes that
swirl around me; we’re connected
and so you feel as far away
as the shortest night is from
this summer afternoon.

This is the longest day.

Peace,
Milton

This has been one of those weeks where Ginger’s schedule and mine leave us feeling as though we live in different time zones, so I rode with her to her meeting on the other side of Boston just so we could have time in the car together both going and coming back. While she went to work, I spent a couple of hours in the Cherry Tree Pub in West Newton, Mass. – and it was time well spent.

The room was lit mostly by the two giant flat screen HD TVs that have probably never been on any other channels than ESPN or a Sox game. The left half of the shotgun room was taken up by a long wooden bar and the kitchen (in the back half of the room); the right side had a few booths. One woman, whose name was Pam I quickly learned since I was the only one who entered the bar without calling her name, was the server for the front of the house and there was one cook in the kitchen. They had almost as many different kinds of draft beers as they had customers at the bar. Pam knew what everyone was drinking the minute the walked in.

What mattered most to me was they had Guinness. I spent my evening with a big black beer and a cherry tree (with apologies to KT Tunstall). Sitting in a neighborhood bar in Boston, I couldn’t help but think of the theme song from Cheers all those years ago:

making your way in the world today
takes everything you’ve got
taking a break from all your worries
sure would help a lot
wouldn’t you like to get away

sometimes you want to go
where everybody knows your name
and they’re always glad you came.
you wanna be where you can see
our troubles are all the same
you wanna be where everybody
knows your name

you wanna go where people know
people are all the same
you wanna go where
everybody knows your name

From the time I first heard that song, I’ve thought (like many others) the sentiment expressed what church should be: a place where you belong and everyone knows your name. Don’t we all wish we could walk into the church building and be greeted like Norm when he walked into the bar every afternoon? Which reminds me of my favorite exchanges on the show.

Sam: “Hey, what’s happening Norm?”
Norm: “Well, it’s a dog eat dog world Sammy, and I’m wearing Milk Bone underwear.”

Last night I spent about an hour longer at a church planning meeting than I spent in the pub tonight. Everyone in the room was in a place where everybody knew their name. We had come together to talk about our plans for the near future and to dream about what we hope might (or might not) happen in the days farther out than we can see from here. We are a congregation that has worked hard to learn how to communicate openly and forthrightly with one another. We’ve done a pretty good job of diffusing any pew side bombs that may have been lying around. We like each other. We love our church. We want the best for our congregation in the days to come and we want to reflect Christ’s love in what we do and say. Even so, coming to consensus is often about as easy as herding cats.

To find togetherness in a Boston bar, all you have to do is love beer and the Red Sox. This review of the Cherry Tree makes my point:

Went here on Friday night. I can’t say the bartender was friendly, but it was a decent pub. It’s a long story about how the night ended, but the bar was ok. EDIT- I am moving this up to 4 stars cause me and the bartender are cool now…actually both bartenders. Typical Boston, ya know? Everyone is all cold at first, then they get to know you, and you’re in like Flint. What does that mean, anyway? (holly m.)

Well, Holly, according to World Wide Words, the phrase is “in like Flynn” and “It’s suggested by some writers that the phrase really originated with another Flynn, Edward J Flynn — “Boss” Flynn — a campaign manager for the Democratic party during FDR’s presidency. Flynn’s machine in the South Bronx in New York was so successful at winning elections that his candidates seemed to get into office automatically.”

As I’ve mentioned before, we, like many UCC churches, begin our services with someone saying, “Whoever you are and wherever you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome here.” I love those words and, tonight, I’m struck that the reason church can’t be just like Cheers is because we have more at stake when we gather. If it were just beer and baseball, or if it were just being welcomed, we’d all be in like Flynn, but what we were saying last night was even more profound, I think: “Whoever you are and wherever you are on life’s journey, you belong here – or at least that’s what we’re shooting for.”

That’s hard work.

As the meeting wore on last night, I could see the issues on which belonging hinged for different people; they weren’t the same for everyone. What made one passionate left another passive. What seemed urgent from one point of view was almost unnecessary from another. Long range church planning is a paradox on the cusp of a conundrum: it’s crucial work that can’t really be done with any specificity short of saying, “What we want to do for the next fifty years is follow Jesus.”

When we brush up against the mysterious ambiguity to which we are called, the institutional spontaneity, the faithful irreverence, the communal disquietude, then we are truly a place where our names are known, where we belong, and where we can most certainly find someone willing to go out for a beer when it’s all over.

Peace,
Milton

Summer has finally made it’s way here: the day is clear and we’re going to hit 80. (I realize that’s spring for you Texas folks.) Since I wrote about “Angel from Montgomery,” I’ve had songs on my mind and have now spent the better part of the morning perusing Youtube to see what I can find to share of some of my favorite songs and performers.

“Thunder Road” by Bruce Springsteen

I love this song because of the experience of seeing him live and getting to sing along with “Show a little faith — there’s magic in the night . . .” This ranks up there as one the best ballads around.

From one Bruce to another, here’s Bruce Cockburn’s “Lovers in a Dangerous Time.”

The video shows quickly that the album came out in the Eighties; the lyrics are timeless:

Don’t the hours grow shorter as the days go by
You never get to stop and open your eyes
One day you’re waiting for the sky to fall
The next you’re dazzled by the beauty of it all
When you’re lovers in a dangerous time
Lovers in a dangerous time

Following the lovers theme, here’s an amazing clip of John Hiatt singing “Have a Little Faith in Me.”

Hiatt’s touring partner this summer is Shawn Colvin. “I Don’t Know Why” is one of her most beautiful melodies.

I don’t know why
The trees grow so tall
And I don’t know why
I don’t know anything at all
But if there were no music
Then I would not get through
I don’t know why
I know these things, but I do

Those words are true for me. Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “The Moon and Saint Christopher” is one of those essential melodies, covered here by Mary Black.

Pierce Pettis has made a point of covering at least one Mark Heard song on each of his CDs since Heard’s death fifteen years ago. “Nod Over Coffee” is at the top of the list.

If we could see with wiser eyes
What is good and what is sad and what is true
Still it would not be enough
Could never be enough

So we nod over coffee and say goodbye
Bolt the door it’s time to go
Into the car with the radio on
Roll down the window and blow the horn

The video begins with a very old clip of Pierce playing the song with Mark.

Here’s an old clip of Nanci Griffith and John Prine singing his song, “The Speed of the Sound of Loneliness.” He must be a great songwriter — he rhymed surly and curly.

One last song. Emmylou Harris wrote one of her best songs out of her grief at Gram Parson’s death. This song, “Boulder to Birmingham,” lives deep down inside me.

I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham
I would hold my life in his saving grace.
I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham
If I thought I could see, I could see your face.

Perhaps the words feel a little melancholy for a summer day, but they’re music to my ears and my heart.

Peace,
Milton

Since I started blogging about eighteen months ago I’ve passed on most of the memes that have come my way (OK, all of the memes) mostly because I use this forum to work on my writing. This week, however, I’ve been tagged several times for the “Eight Random Things” meme and it’s Saturday morning and I’ve got an hour to kill before I pick up a friend at the train station and why not?

I’m what is known as a Third Culture Kid.
I grew up as a missionary kid and lived in four different countries in Africa – as well as a couple of years in the US – by the time I was sixteen. From kindergarten to twelfth grade I went to ten different schools in six different cities. I’ve lived in over forty different houses. Finding my way home is no easy task.

I have an irrational disdain for Celine Dion.
I don’t want to hear her sing or talk. I don’t want to see her on television. She is the only black mark on what I see as Canada’s otherwise impeccable record. The Mark of the Beast is somewhere on her body, I’m sure of it. She is the reason for most of the problems in our world today. (Remember, I said my disdain was irrational; please don’t try to convince me otherwise.)

My favorite song is “Angel From Montgomery” by John Prine, songwriter extraordinaire.
The person I most love to hear sing the song is Bonnie Raitt. My favorite story about the song is I was singing it at a coffee house one night and introduced it by saying I identified with it more than any other song I knew. Then I sang the first line: “I am an old woman named after my mother . . .”

As long as we’re talking about music, Christina Aguilera is my guilty listening pleasure.
I know my cool quotient probably crashes here, in alt-country acoustic terms, but I like her music. “What a Girl Wants” is fun to hear. I also like her cover of “A Song for You” on Herbie Hancock’s album of duets.

I feel called to help raise other people’s kids.
I have never felt called to have children of my own. Neither has Ginger, which has worked well for us. We have always felt our call was to have an open door for anyone who needed a place – and there have been several over the years. I love working with teenagers. Babies always seem to smile at me. I think it’s because we have the same haircut.

If I could figure out how to get paid for it, I would go to school for a job.
I love taking classes and learning. I don’t really care what the class is, I just want to go. Sometimes I think about pulling into a community college and asking what class is about to start and enrolling. I’m not particularly concerned about a degree or even credit; I just want to go to school.

I’m an incredibly average athlete.
My brother got the sports genes in my family. He also got the knee injury, unfortunately. In tenth grade, a kid who had a leg injury beat me in the hundred yard dash. I’m arguably the worst basketball player on the planet. Who else can only shoot a two-handed set shot? The one sport I can play well is volleyball.

I think Guinness may be the best liquid ever invented.
It is the nectar of heaven, the ultimate substance, the drink of all drinks. Great – now I’m thirsty.

Those are the first eight things that came to mind. I will leave you to decide whether or not you want to meme.

Peace,
Milton

an abandoned house
falls down from neglect
it’s true
I’ve seen it happen
loneliness rots the wood
emptiness eats away
the foundation
like a termite

keep a house
habitated and it won’t
wear out
as long as there are
feet on the floor
voices in the hall
reasons to
stay home

the one who first
drove nails into wood at
our address
couldn’t have known
we would paint
the kitchen floor
blue with purple
puppy paws

when we tore out
the plaster and lathe
I wondered
what escaped in the air
trapped in the walls
the stuff that kept
the house from
falling down

this week our home
has housed old friends
godchildren
my in-laws who have come
to stay the summer
our well-worn house
is alive and
very well

Peace,
Milton

that would be a good title
for your book about depression
she said, as if it were something
I could come home and put
into words that could one day
be pulled from the shelf

she knows I have it in me
my darkness has ebbed
and flowed like the tides
each season sometimes quiet
sometimes lashing against
the sea wall throwing stones

when we walk together
we stop at the same spot
and look out over the water
we gaze from the same place
but the view is different
every time we stop

seven summers at the beach
and I know my ebb
and flow, the gathering
storms and the quiet seas
and I have survived
like an old seafarer

one day my view will change
I will not see the sea
when I stop to find myself
she will be beside me still
that’s how I will know
where I am

and she will take my hand
and say, remember our
seven summers at the beach
oh yes, I’ll say and we
walk home together
as sure as the tides

Peace,
Milton

I know what the voice of God sounds like.

I heard it at church this morning when our pre-kindergarten and kindergarten age children led us in our prayer of confession as a part of our worship service celebrating our children. Five or six little munchkins stood at the front of the church and said together, “Let’s pray” with more energy than I’ve ever heard in such an invitation. Then, in unison, we all said:

God, we’re sorry for the things we did that were wrong. Help us love one another better. Help us love you better. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Then God spoke in the children’s voices:

God’s love is so big! We are forgiven! We get to try again! Thanks be to God!

And everyone said, “Amen.”

When I was a kid, Samuel was one of my favorite biblical characters. I loved the story of him going to wake up Eli because he thought the old man was calling him. When I pictured the priest, I saw him like my father who woke up in the night whenever my brother or I made a noise and then, as long as he was awake, would wander down the hall to the bathroom from which one of us was exiting because that was why we had made noise to begin with. In my mind, Eli was standing in the middle of the hall in his boxer shorts, his hair standing up in all directions, squinting and saying, “What are you doing up?”

“You called me,” Samuel said.

“You’re dreaming,” said the old man. “Go back to bed.”

When it happened a second time, I imagined Eli was a bit more perturbed and a little less sleepy. When Samuel came down the hall the third time, Eli was awake enough to realize what was happening.

“Samuel, you’re hearing a voice that’s not mine. The next time you hear it, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.’” (I learned the story from the King James.)

When I animated the story in my mind, I never had a clear idea how God sounded. I never really bought into the booming bass voice that blows out the woofers. And, I guess, I never spent a lot of time trying to imagine how God sounded at all. But this morning when the children proclaimed, “We are forgiven,” I knew that’s what God sounded like. I really felt forgiven.

When I caught up on my reading tonight, I found this wonderful poem at Anchors and Masts:

God Says Yes To Me
Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I’m telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

About three lines into this wonderful poem, I could hear the kids reading the words. “Yes, yes, yes,” is best said by energetic kindergarteners, don’t you think? Alongside of how it sounds, the voice of God reads like a Mary Oliver poem, for one. One of my favorites is her work simply titled, “Poem”:

The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning

in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body’s world,
instinct

and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,

to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is —

so it enters us —
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.

The watchword of the United Church of Christ is “God is Still Speaking.” What else would God be saying but, “Yes, yes, yes.”

Peace,
Milton

I came home from writing yesterday to find a small box addressed to me in the mailbox. Inside were four CDs of a band I knew only by name and a note from a wonderfully caring person who talked about what the music of The Innocence Mission had meant to her and how she hoped it would resonate with me. I started with their self-titled record and have yet to get to the second one. The music is haunting, meaningful, and resonant.

Here are the lyrics to the final cut on the record, “The Wonder of Birds”:

we keep our hands above the water
we know that, someday, we will fly away
with all the wonder of birds
with all the wonder of birds

we keep our voices as guarded secrets
wait for a while
and we will surely sing
with all the wonder of birds
with all the wonder of birds

we make a sky where we may be
we build a home with windows to fly through
windows to fly through

we learn to dance with broomstick partners
grace will be ours

when we will grow our wings
with all the wonders of birds
with all the wonders of birds

Sometimes around sunset, the bay near our house stills and the surface of the water smoothes to mirror the last flames of daylight as the turn to embers on the horizon. There is a medium sized bird, whose name I don’t know – who starts high and dives down, leveling out inches, perhaps centimeters, above the glass surface and glides without moving so much as a feather from one side of our little inlet to the other, pulling up at the last minute and climbing back into the sky, often circling to do it again, perfectly.

The wonder of birds. Grace will be ours.

Peace,
Milton