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lenten journal: shield the joyous

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
7

My day started with a bowl of Cheerios, a cup of coffee, and this prayer of Saint Augustine, which is part of the Compline in the Book of Common Prayer and found in Nora Gallagher’s book:

Keep watch dear Lord with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake.

She records her brother’s response:

Shield the joyous. I like that. When you are joyful, you need a shield.

I read the prayer to Ginger as she was getting ready for work and she repeated the phrase thoughtfully: “Shield the joyous.”

I’m a big fan of verbs. They’re the best card we have to play in English. When I studied Greek in seminary, I learned that language was driven by nouns, which could be packaged in several different cases. Not English. We rely on action – and the verb is the action word – so much so that we try to turn our nouns into verbs. My new pet peeve is people saying they “were gifted” something. No. We already have a verb for that: they were given a gift. All of that to say I went back to the prayer to look at the verbs.

  • tend the sick
  • give rest to the weary
  • bless the dying
  • soothe the suffering
  • pity the afflicted
  • shield the joyous

The five verbs that precede shield feel like the natural partners for the needs to be met. What we can do best for those who are sick is tend to them – take care of them. The answer to weariness is rest. Bless is packed full of forgiveness and compassion for those who are coming to the end of their days. Certainly those who are suffering need words and actions that lessen the pain. In Augustine’s day, pity was not about feeling sorry for someone but was also a word of compassionate action. All the recipients are vulnerable and fragile. In Augustine’s mind, so were the joyous. They needed to be shielded.

Joy is fragile.

I’ve never really thought about it that way, which makes me feel kind of stupid because the more I think about it the more obvious it seems. It’s fragile because it’s fleeting. Whatever the moment or the experience, there’s another moment quick on it’s heels. Perhaps that was part of Jesus’ point on the mountain after the Transfiguration when Peter wanted to build a small hotel and stay up there, caught in a moment of joy. “Wrong,” said Jesus in so many words. “We’ve got to go back.” When the returned to the others, everyone was in such a frenzy that no one asked what had happened. I realize there’s room to talk about joy as something at the core of our beings, thanks to God’s presence, but when we experience joy it’s at the thin places of life when it rises to the surface. Those don’t last long.

Joy is fragile because it’s unfamiliar. I work with a lot of really good people who I think don’t expect joy in their lives. They know about the pursuit of happiness and love to have a good time, but as I watch some of them they seem to have allowed themselves to choose to believe that this is the way life is: you go to work, you party when you can, and you live with a lot of shit. Some of them have good reason to think that’s the way life works, based on what they’ve been through. It makes me sad and it makes me understand the prayer better. If I could give any of them a chance to expect joy in their lives, I would want them to be shielded long enough to know it was real.

It’s also fragile because it’s so basic. In the Periodic Table of Life, it is an essential element, just like suffering. Though I make no claim to being any sort of scientist, I’m going to take my shot at a chemical analogy. I think I remember (from some chemistry class long ago) that some elements are not stable enough to hold together when they hit the air. They have to be protected, shielded, if you will. (And I know you will.) So it takes a lot of work to figure out how to make use of the substance because you have to live with the fact that it’s probably going to fall apart.

I don’t mean to sound as pessimistic as that last sentence felt when I reread it. Joy is essential to the fabric of our humanity and it isn’t stable when it hits the air. (I think I’ll move on.)

Though I read his prayer over breakfast, Augustine was praying at the close of the day, which is when I’m writing. He prays for those who have to work the night shift, or are keeping watch, or whose grief has taken away any chance of sleep, and then he moves to his list of vulnerable ones: sick, weary, dying, suffering, afflicted, joyous. As much as anything, he seems to me to be praying that we could all get a good night’s rest from the circumstances of the day. As Hedwyg quotes Madeleine L’Engle, “The problem with life is that it’s so damn daily.”

And we are so damn human.

The house is quiet now. All three of my girls did their best to stay awake until I got home from a very long day at work. Our friend Jay is spending the night, so Lola is keeping him company on the couch instead of being tucked in with Ginger and Gracie upstairs, as she always does when he stays with us. The night will be a short respite for us all because tomorrow already feels as though it is rushing to get here. As I think about Augustine’s prayer, I can name at least one person I know that fits each definition, so I will close by writing it one more time:

Keep watch dear Lord with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: in harmony

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

My reading this morning came from one of the books I got for my birthday: The Intellectual Devotional. The subtitle is great: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently with the Cultured Class. The book is a series of daily readings, each day of the week focusing on a different field of knowledge.

Monday – History
Tuesday – Literature
Wednesday – Visual Arts
Thursday – Science
Friday – Music
Saturday – Philosophy
Sunday – Religion

Today’s topic was melody. The entry began:

Melody, often referred to in everyday speech as the tune, is perhaps the most immediately recognizable element of music. A melody can be played on one instrument or many and, along with harmony and rhythm, is considered one of the three basic elements of all music.

Driving home from work tonight I started thinking about some of my favorite melodies. The one that stuck in my mind was an old American folk tune, “The Water is Wide.” I particularly love the way James Taylor sings it.

the water is wide I can’t cross o’er
neither have I wings to fly
give me a boat that can carry two
and both shall row my love and I

I realize I’m typing lyrics and not melody, but I’m counting on you to sing along at home. There are a lot of tunes that can get down inside of me and pull up all kinds of emotions. What I realized as I thought about them on the way home is the melodies that move me are the ones that lend themselves to harmony, because of the three basic elements of music, harmony is the one I love most. As long as I’ve been singing, I’ve looked for the harmony part.

In ninth grade I got a record player of my very own to keep in my room. We had a stereo in the living room, but the record player meant I could listen to my music in privacy. The next thing my parents gave me was a pair of headphones and they thought they were all set. They were wrong. One of my favorite records was Crosby, Stills, and Nash – the one with the three of them sitting in front of an old house – that had “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” “Marakesh Express,” and “Helplessly Hoping,” among others. I would go in my room, put on the ‘phones, start the record, and lay down on my bed to listen, and to sing along.

I sang the harmony parts. All of them. What the rest of my family heard was only me, singing at the top of my lungs and changing from part to part, which sounded a lot like a howling cat on crack. Their revenge was I sang with my eyes closed. So they all stood at the door of my room and laughed until I opened my eyes and found them there.

Good times.

In college, I remember buying James Taylor’s Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon, still one of my favorite albums. All those years later, I was still sitting and listening and singing along, once I’d heard a song one time. The record is full of great harmonies, but I had one unsurpassed moment my first time through. He started singing “Long Ago and Far Away” –

long ago a young man sits and plays his waiting game
but things are not the same it seems as in such tender dreams

and then the harmonies came in

slowly passing sailing ships and Sunday afternoon
like people on the moon I see are things not meant to be

I couldn’t believe it. But there was more. He began singing the chorus

where do the golden rainbows end

and then Joni Mitchell’s voice came in behind him

where do the rainbows end

and it may have been my best moment ever listening to a song. Her harmony line still grabs me by the heart.

One of the things still on my To Do List, as far as my life is concerned, is to sing in a bluegrass band, mostly because I think it’s the best music for harmony. The simple melodies yearn for company and make room for layer upon layer of voices. I also like it because the harmonies are found rather than predetermined. Though I’ve been around music all of my life, I can’t read it. I learned to play guitar by ear and by learning chords; I find the harmony part by listening and joining in, or learning it from someone else. Growing up Baptist meant learning a lot of good old gospel hymns, which carry the same kind of invitation. One of the curious things about many modern hymns is they are written to be sung in unison and without harmony. I think they are making both a musical and a theological mistake.

At the risk of offering my third big metaphor in three days, which feels a little excessive even for Lent, my other realization driving home tonight was I’m built to not only sing harmonies, but to live them as well. I like being the pastor’s husband rather than the pastor. One of the things our congregation expects with some regularity is in the middle of a sermon or another part of the service, Ginger will say, “Milton, would you sing this song?” and I stand up and sing. I don’t know it’s coming, yet I’ve been harmonizing with her long enough to not be surprised. I know my part: she’s Gladys Knight and I’m a Pip. No — The Pip.

At the Inn, one of the things I do best is get things set up for Chef before the dinner rush. I know him. I can tell when things aren’t going well, or he feels isolated. I know how to find the harmony part that gets him back to the melody and we both have a good time. It happened again tonight.

If I ever got to meet Joni Mitchell, I’d have a lot of questions. But I would certainly put on my James Taylor record and say, “Tell me what that moment was like.” I don’t expect she would have an answer, but I’ll bet we’d listen to the song over and over again before she went home.

Peace,
Milton

PS — There’s a new recipe.

lenten journal: the lay of the land

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

My friend, Doug (aka Pork Butt, for those who read the comments on this blog), is a surveyor. Before we became friends, all I knew of surveying was in the glimpses I had of the guys in orange vests holding poles by the side of the highway while another guy looked through some sort of viewer. During our regular lunches –also known as meetings of the Pastoral Spousal Support Group — I’ve learned a bit more about the field, but I’m far from an expert. What I now know about the two guys by the highway is together they provide the perspective that allows for the land between them to be properly mapped. You have to have a second point of reference from where you are standing to get an accurate reading.

I started three books today as a part of my Lenten journey, all three memoirs: Practicing Resurrection: A Memoir of Work, Doubt, Discernment, and Moments of Grace by Nora Gallagher; A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah; and The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection by Michael Ruhlman. I picked up Gallagher’s book because her other memoir, Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith continues to be meaningful to me. This time she’s writing about learning to deal with the grief of her brother’s death. John Stewart’s interview with Beah sent me looking for the second book, in which the author tells how he lived through being a child soldier in the civil war in Sierra Leone. My friend Mia sent me the third book some time ago and I’m just now getting to it. The author chronicles seven chefs trying to pass the Certified Master Chef exam. In some sense, each writer is telling the story as a way of getting (or giving) some perspective, asking us as the readers to hold the other pole.

That I got to read most of the day was the result of pulling a muscle in my back yesterday (doing nothing). Since the weekend holds a couple of long days at work, I decided to take it easy today. Ruhlman got the lion’s share of my time because his account of the grueling ten-day chef’s exam reads like a thriller. I couldn’t put it down until I found out how the test came out. Seven chefs began the ordeal, all of them qualified and successful in their own restaurants and/or careers. Three made it through all ten days and only one became certified as a Master Chef mostly because those judging the tests were culinary inerrantists, demanding a level of perfection that saw no other pole in terms of the skill and creativity of those cooking beyond their own need to see themselves as the banner carriers for Auguste Escoffier, the chef whose name is above every other name in cheffing circles.

The first year I taught at Winchester High School, I was taken by surprise. My Honors Brit Lit kids came to class like it was their job. They worked hard and I worked with them as though none of us had anything to prove. We all had a blast. During the summer between my first and second years there, I lost sight of the sense of trust and resulting freedom that had made the class both enjoyable and meaningful and fell into thinking that my job was to uphold the standards of Honors classes. Though I had my reasons at the time, looking back from where the poles are now for me, I see I lost sight of something simple and important. I began teaching the subject rather than the students. I lost sight of the people in the room in my search for perfection.

When Ishmael Beah spoke with John Stewart, he talked about perspective in his own way. The government soldiers who forced him into service gave him an AK-47 and lots of drugs, one of which was a combination of cocaine and gunpowder. Beah said he lost sight of his humanity. By some amazing turns of circumstance, he ended up in the US with people willing to love him back into being. He had to learn how to sleep again, he said. Over time he began to remember what it felt like to be human and felt compelled to tell his story. “Your book made my heart hurt,” Stewart told him.

As someone who lives with depression, I was moved by Gordon’s reflection at RLP of the humanity two years of depression had taken from him:

I had thoughts that were not based in reality. Do you know how frightening and horrifying that is to a person like me?

At one point I decided that my wife of twenty years no longer loved me. I thought that, baby. THOUGHT IT.

And I thought that the people in my church didn’t like me anymore and were probably talking about how to fire me without totally devastating our family. I figured they would be nice in the way they did it, but yes, people were talking about me and trying to find a way to get rid of me.

Our humanity suffers any time we lose sight of our connectedness.

Gallagher actually made mention of the surveyor’s poles in the section I read today. Her brother had been a surveyor for the Bureau of Land Management in New Mexico before he got cancer. She writes:

In order to survey, Kit said, you always have to have two points. In a photo, he leans over his tripod looking through the scope high above Otowi Bridge in northern New Mexico, sighting a distant point on the other side of the river. Below him are mesas dotted with pinon trees, a river gorge, a line of blue mesas, and beyond them nothing but a line of clouds in the sky. He marched through salt cedar and tamarisk, the bosque thick with snakes, finding the landmarks that aligned with each other. He could map anything. I thought of him then as making sense of geography. (27)

When Doug talks about people hiring him to survey land, he says it’s often to settle a dispute and determine where a property line really is. When the result isn’t what the clients want, they get perturbed. Doug smiles and says, “Look, this is not interpretation; this is just the lay of the land.” Sometimes, I suppose, the geography of the heart is not any easier to make sense of than the reality of the landscape that surrounds us. Both require more than one set of eyes.

Brian was one of the chefs who didn’t pass the test. It was his second attempt and second failure. Ruhlman describes Brian’s guilt and grief at missing his two-year old’s birthday because of the exam and then describes Brian getting in his Jeep and heading home to his wife and five kids, as well as his successful restaurant, gaining a better sense of perspective with each mile away from the test site. Beah found a new view through the eyes of those who loved him back into humanness. Gallagher tells of those around her who helped her grieve and discern where God was to be found in all of it.

Finding the lay of the land takes more than one point of view.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: lenten reduction

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
24

One of my regular tasks at the Inn is making the demi-glace, which is one of our “mother sauces,” providing a base for a number of our dishes. Our version is not exactly the old school French cuisine version, but it tastes good and it takes a long time to make. On Monday mornings, I begin by putting fifty pounds of veal bones onto baking sheets and roasting them for three or four hours. In the mean time, I rough cut ten pounds each of celery, carrots, and onions, which all go in the big fifty gallon kettle, along with all the herbs I can find, a big can of tomato paste, extreme amounts of red wine, and water. When the bones are done, I deglaze the pans with red wine and all of it goes in the kettle. By about four o’clock, I set it to simmering and I leave it cooking until I come back on Wednesday morning. By then, the liquid has reduced by about a third to a half.

I drain and strain what is now a rich brown liquid and put it in the square skillet, adding some more water and red wine and then I bring it to a boil and let it reduce by a little over half. By mid-afternoon on Wednesday, I’m ready to strain the sauce one more time and put it in containers to cool. What started as almost fifty gallons of water and eighty pounds of ingredients reduces down to eight to ten gallons of demi, which will last three or four days. On Saturday I will start the process again to finish on Monday. We always need more.

As I was working this afternoon, I heard an interview on NPR with Dennis Ziegler from Tulsa who owns a company that supplies ashes to churches. He described how they took the palm fronds (what a cool word) and dried them and then burned them to make the ashes. He said two thousand pounds of palm fronds (just had to write it one more time) reduced to forty or fifty pounds of ashes.

I’ve held the ashes of both Hannah and Phoebe, two of our beloved Schnauzers, after they died. What was left of our dear little dogs could be held in one hand. In both cases, Ginger and I took their ashes down to the beach at low tide and scattered them across the water in the moonlight. In those moments, I was reduced to tears.

In the kitchen, we reduce sauces to intensify both substance and flavor. When we get ready to plate an order, we put a ladle full of sauce in a sauté pan and let it simmer on the burner until it’s thick enough to grab the steak and hold on as we pour. The flavor becomes rich and intense. If we didn’t take time to reduce the sauce, the whole dish would be something other than what we intended. It takes time and patience to reduce everything to its essence. Of course, we have to pay attention. There is a point where the sauce can move rather quickly from reduced to burned. No one is interested in those ashes.

As a part of our Ash Wednesday service tonight, we moved from taking Communion (by intinction) to being marked with the ashes from fronds of our own. As I dipped my bread in the cup, Dana, one of our seminarians, said, “From ashes you came and to ashes you will return.” As Ginger marked me, she said, “You are wonderfully and uniquely created in the image of God.” In that moment, my faith was reduced to an intensity of both body and flavor. The service congealed both truths into one: I am a fleeting image of God. It’s not about being eternal, it’s about being right now.

Monday nights are my night to run the kitchen, which means I get to come up with the special for dinner. Since it is the first night of the week (and after the weekend), I have to make a special out of what we have. What I ended up serving was an eight-ounce sirloin steak (with a caramelized red onion teriyaki demi-glace – reduced, of course) and two crab stuffed shrimp (with a lemon thyme beurre blanc) served with a warm fingerling potato salad and fried green tomatoes (I married a girl from Irondale, Alabama; you don’t think I know how to make those?). The plate was beautiful and it tasted good, as well. And, for at least one night, a few folks in New England learned that fried green tomatoes are something other than the name of a movie. But cooking is a temporary art form. My creation stayed intact only as long as it took to get it to the table. When we closed the kitchen Monday night, that was the end of that special. My calling is not to make pretty plates for a display case or for posterity, but to make food for folks who are hungry right now. And then it’s time to do it again.

No matter how many times I make demi-glace, it’s always time to do it again.

No matter how many meals I make, there will always be another ticket.

No matter how many times I hear I’m created in God’s image (even if I’m a firefly in the universe), I will always need someone to tell me again.

When we reduce existence to it’s essence, we come down to daily living. I quoted it yesterday and we read it tonight: “Consider the lilies,” Jesus said. He went on to say we need not worry about anything other than today. One of my favorite benedictions in church is “The Lord bless you in your going out and your coming in.” When you think about it, that’s pretty much what we do on a daily basis: we go out and we come in. Either way, we’re blessed. I like the image of God in that blessing because God’s presence is infused into every small and seemingly insignificant move we make filling our lives with the substance and flavor of Love, over and over and over again.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: don’t read alone

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

I woke up this morning to images of Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans. Today is Fat Tuesday. Based on the way I ate yesterday, it was Chubby Monday. Like the old blues song says:

They call it Chubby Monday
I got Fat Tuesday on my mind . . .

In our house, today holds two traditions: Ginger clears the house of anything chocolate and I start putting together my reading list for the season to serve as raw material for my daily commitment to writing. This year, the process is a bit different because I’ve been writing regularly all year long. In the past, the forty-odd days of the Lenten season were when I wrote consistently. A couple of years ago, I kept writing weekly after Easter. Since last Lent, I’ve written five days a week on average, finally allowing myself to really feel like a writer. The reading list, therefore, takes a different place in the season because, thanks to work, writing, and other choices, I’ve not been a consistent reader. I want to be consistent in the practice of reading.

I stumbled on one of the books I’m going to carry with me in the bookstore today: Life, Paint and Passion: Reclaiming the Magic of Spontaneous Expression by Michelle Cassou and Stewart Cubley. While I was waiting to meet Ginger for our Tuesday afternoon Panera date, I started reading and came across these words:

Our experience, after working with many different types of people, is that a hidden wave of passion lies just below the surface of most people’s lives, a passion yearning to be liberated from the paralyzing myths of talent, skill, inspiration, accomplishment, success and failure, and just plain not being good enough (xix).

At a certain point you must make a choice in painting between the process and the product . . .You cannot serve two masters. You cannot embrace product and process at the same time. If you paint freely, you will most likely end up loving what you do because of your intimacy with it, but in the meantime it is necessary that you let go and surrender. You do not need an incentive. The process is enough (23).

As I copy the quotes, I’m thinking of my artist friends, who work hard on both product and process, and wondering how they hear those words. I hear them with a poet’s ears: as metaphor. I find a deep and resonant attraction to art as metaphor for faith. God created us and the universe with reckless abandon, an obvious sense of humor, and, it seems, a passion that grows out of process much more than product. (Seriously – what’s up with the manatee and the platypus?) The earliest chapters of the Bible remind us we are created in the image of our Creator and imbued with the same sense of passion and play.

“Consider the lilies,” Jesus said.

“If you want to see God’s realm, become like a little child.”

Jesus said that, too.

Where the analogy between art and faith becomes even more interesting is when we begin to talk about how to be an artist within a community of artists. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen something painted by committee. That thought’s a little sobering. Can we paint with passion and abandon if I want to draw purple flowers in the same place that you are determined to paint pink polka dots? It reminds me of Woody Allen’s essay years ago called “If the Impressionists Were Dentists” in which he wrote as though he were Van Gogh:

Mrs. Sol Schwimmer is suing me because I made her bridge as I felt it and not to fit her ridiculous mouth! That’s right! I can’t work to order like a common tradesman! I decided her bridge should be enormous and billowing, with wild, explosive teeth flaring up in every direction like fire! Now she is upset because it won’t fit in her mouth! She is so bourgeois and stupid, I want to smash her! I tried forcing the false plate in but it sticks out like a star burst chandelier.

As a community of artists, process becomes the product, in a way. The calling is to come together, create together, and encourage one another. As soon as we allow ourselves to believe that the institution is the product, all the color drains from the room. What if we were determined to create an environment that freed one another from “the paralyzing myths of talent, skill, inspiration, accomplishment, success and failure, and just plain not being good enough”?

Lent traditionally has the rep of being a dark season when some think the point is to remind ourselves we are lower than pond scum (but saved by grace) and others see it as a walk through the Valley of the Shadow on the way to the Cross. A former choir director thought Lent was the time to sing “all the bloody songs.” Certainly, Lent is a season of reflection and focus. We are on a journey that takes us to Death before we can experience Resurrection. They don’t call it ASH Wednesday for nothing. And, if passion is artist’s fuel, Lent is also a season to create, to live with the same abandon, even if the nights are long and cold. In the quiet, perhaps, our “hidden wave of passion” can finally break on the shore.

Part of the reason I add things to my life during Lent is I don’t learn much from giving stuff up. I just get surly. Another part of adding things is it makes me come to terms with time, which is one of my most precious commodities. “I didn’t have time” is one of my favorite rationalizations for why things don’t get done. So, for Lent, I will engage in the creative process of making time to read. I’m not after product. I’m not assigning myself the task of finishing all the books I put in the stack for the season, or even having to mention them when I write each night. If Lent is the canvas, then my books will be my brushes. I’ve always loved to read, but many of the books I’ve read have been to fulfill an assignment, to give an assignment, to lead a discussion, or to mine for quotes. My reading today calls me to think about how I can read without adding up the pages or trying to make a point. Perhaps I’ll pick up a random volume each day and see what I find. Perhaps I will juxtapose passages from unrelated texts. Perhaps I’ll just read for a half an hour and then begin to write. Who knows.

What I do know is it matters to me to create in the context of community. I’m a more faithful writer because I come to this page most everyday because I know you come around as well. I don’t like to eat alone; I’m better when I don’t write alone.

I guess I won’t read alone either.

Peace,
Milton

waiting for billy collins

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
2

I don’t know what made me think of this poem tonight. Perhaps I’m just missing my friend. I wrote it several years ago after he and I went to a Billy Collins reading. For whatever reason, tonight seems like a good night to let it see daylight again.

Waiting for Billy Collins
for Jack

We are in the stand-by line
for a sold out poetry reading;
(now you know we live in Boston. . .)
Ten or twelve of us chain
Down the side of the building
Like beads waiting to be strung into
A necklace of hope.

Almost everyone has a paperback in hand —
But not of the poet we have come to see;
(that would be uncool. . .)
The books are credentials for the conversation.
We flash them like driver’s licenses in a bar,
Giving ourselves permission to become
Intoxicated on metaphor.

We toss around the names of poets,
Both famous and unfamiliar.
(I know someone you don’t know. . .)
We do agree we don’t understand
Wallace Stevens but he’s good, yes, very good;
And, of course, we must make mention of
The red wheelbarrow.

The guy behind us likes
To dress up like Walt Whitman,
(coming soon to a school near you. . .)
And he seems to think that every
Poem we discuss is about him;
No one else in our quixotic queue appears
To have come to that conclusion.

I am standing with Jack
Between Walt and a guy we’d rather talk to;
(I brought a friend instead of a book. . .)
We are each other’s ticket into the evening.
Yes, we came to hear the poet,
But if we don’t get in the theater
We have lines of our own to deliver

At a nearby pub. The important thing
Is to get to spend time together.
(surely someone won’t show up. . .)
But I keep hoping we two can enter the ark
And set sail on the poet’s words,
Hearing each syllable of hope and humor
As metaphor of our friendship.

Peace,
Milton

let’s go to the movies

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
13

I saw a promo for the Oscars next Sunday and it got me thinking about movies that have moved me for various reasons, so I thought I would share a few, in no particular order. These are ones a little out of the mainstream; all are worth chasing down at your local video store.


Bottle Rocket (1996)

This is, I think, the first collaboration between Wes Anderson and Luke and Owen Wilson. Owen plays Dignan, a guy who has a seventy-five year plan for how to be a successful criminal, which he describes well. The comedy is off the wall and you have to watch it more than once to make the most of the side comments.

Miss Firecracker (1989)

I’ve mentioned this movie before. Holly Hunter plays a young woman determined to win the Miss Firecracker Pageant in Yazoo City, Mississippi. What unfolds is a deeply resonant story of family, dreams, failure, and grace.

Cry, the Beloved Country (1995)

To say I love this movie is to say a great deal because the novel from which it is adapted is one of my favorite stories and Stephen Kumalo, the man at the heart of the story is one of the great characters in literature. This movie was the first independent movie produced in post-apartheid South Africa and is worth seeing again and again and again (after you read the book over and over).

The Elephant Man (1980)

David Lynch’s movie is based on the life of John Merrick, who was known as the Elephant Man because of his deformities. Anthony Hopkins plays the doctor who befriends him. One of my favorite scenes is Hopkins’ questioning his motives in helping the man, because his compassion brought him some fame.

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)

Peter Weir directed Mel Gibson in two of his best movies: Gallipoli and this one. The movie is set in Indonesia during the political turmoil of the 1960’s. The key character is Billy Kwan, played by Linda Hunt (a role for which she won an Oscar). This movie works on lots of levels.

The Killing Fields (1984)

Before there was Law & Order, Sam Waterson played Sidney Schaunberg, who was a reporter for the New York Times during the Cambodian War and won a Pulitzer Prize for his stories. Dith Pran was the Cambodian who helped him. When the Americans evacuated, Pran and the other Cambodians who had helped them were left at the mercy of Pol Pot, who was out to kill pretty much everyone who disagreed with him. This is an amazing story of our human capacity to both endure and forgive.

The In-Laws (1979)

Yes, I said these were movies to watch more than once. I suppose I should also say you have to give yourself some time to recoup between viewings. I will close my list with one you can watch as many times as you want. This is one of the funniest movies ever. (The remake a couple years back sucked, by the way). Peter Falk is a former CIA guy who is pretty much of a loose cannon and Alan Arkin is a Manhattan dentist who has never colored outside the lines. They are great together.

There are more where those came from. I would love to hear the movies that matter to you.

Peace,
Milton

farther and faster

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
5

The phone rang about 5:45 this morning: Ginger called to let me know she was getting on a flight and would be in Providence by 7:30. I got there about 8:00 and we left around 10:00. One of her bags has still not made it home. I drove her straight to the church for a meeting and I ran errands until it was time for to pick her up and take her on a Valentine’s date (Mexican food) and then home for a well deserved and anticipated nap. As usual, while I was driving around, I was listening to NPR. On Point was focused on the legacy of Carl Sagan ten years after his death. One of the questions Tom Ashbrook asked was what advances had been made in astronomy and physics since Sagan died. The answer intrigued me.

What we know now that we did not know a decade ago is the universe is both expanding and accelerating. (Sagan only knew it was expanding.) Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of the scientists being interviewed, said the implication of that combination meant that astrophysicists of the future would not see the same sky we see. A time will come when it will look as though we are alone because the universe will have expanded so far and so quickly that we will only be able to see the planets closest to us. He went on to say it’s important for us to keep and preserve good records of what we see so people in the future will not think it has always been the way it looks then.

We live in a time when we are able to see deeper and farther into space than anyone who has lived before us, thanks to Hubble and the like, and we are people who can see less of the stars than anyone who has come before because we have been too busy making lights of our own. When the Psalmist, captured by the wonder of the night, wrote,

I often think of the heavens your hands have made,
and of the moon and stars you put in place.
Then I ask, “Why do you care about us humans?
Why are you concerned for us weaklings?” (Ps. 8:3-4)

he saw a sky crammed full of stars with his naked eye. For centuries, ships determined where they were on earth by what they could see in the heavens. The sky that was familiar to them and the stars they knew by name are not things most of us know anymore. From our back deck here in Marshfield I can see more of the night than I could in the city. My incredibly amateur eye can recognize the Pleiades, Ursa Major (since when does a bear have a tail?), Casio Pea, Orion – my favorite, and Sirius (the dog star, not the satellite radio). I know the names because they have been passed down, person to person, over the centuries, but the list of names I know is far shorter than those known by those who named them to begin with. As my universe has expanded to include iPods and oil fields, hard drives and Hubble telescopes, I’ve lost sight of what was once the common field of vision.

About a decade ago, I remember reading that the body of knowledge in the world doubled every five years, which means there is now four times as much to know as there was when I first learned that bit of information. When the term “Renaissance Man” was coined to describe someone who pretty much knew everything, knowing everything was an accomplishable task. Now there is too much to know before we even get to the stars. Tyson is right: as the universe accelerates, we are left to assume the universe is only as big as what we can see.

When it comes to the stars, we measure distance in time: light years. If the scientists tell us a star is three million light years away, then the light we are seeing is three million years old. What we see on any given night is light that is old and tired and yet new to us; we have no idea what is really happening where that light began. What looks like a sky full of lighted dots to us is a panoply of history, a polyglot of light we can barely begin to translate. It makes me wonder if the first draft of Psalm 8 went something like, “Who are we to think we matter at all?”

When we lived in Boston, one of our favorite places to take people who came to visit was the Mother Church of Christian Science. The main sanctuary has a beautiful dome. About the second or third time we visited, I noticed the room was considerably lighter. I asked the docent leading our tour what had happened. She told me they had been renovating the dome when they discovered skylights that had been painted over during World War Two. Once the war was over, people forgot to uncover them and they had stayed dark for over fifty years. I was struck by the fact that the church had met in that room every Sunday since the windows had been darkened and yet still managed to forget what they had done as life accelerated and moved away from the fear that caused them to paint the skylights to begin with.

We, as human beings, have already forgotten more than we have discovered. A trip to the Mayan ruins or the Pyramids will bring that home in hurry. One of the fallacies we have bought into in our age is that an accelerating universe means we have to keep looking ahead if we want to keep up. What I continue to find to be paradoxically true is most of the meaning I’ve been able to make of my life and our world comes from looking back and taking in the light that finally reached me. We get some sense of ourselves in our universe from the records we keep and the stories we tell. However fast and far we are flung by the centrifuge of existence, what makes us human is our capacity to remember that the oldest, most tenacious, and most permeating light is love. We are not alone.

Peace,
Milton

near miss

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
1

I called Ginger to wake her up this morning and to tell her the morning flight that was going to bring her home was delayed at best. By the time I was ready to go to work and she was ready to go to the hospital, we knew the flight was cancelled. She went to the Birmingham airport to sort it out and let me know later she had gotten on a 6 pm flight that would get her to Providence at 10:55. As I was leaving work this evening, she was going through security in Birmingham. He plane for Baltimore took off before I got home and had a chance to check the connecting flight.

It was cancelled.

Ginger will call in a few minutes to let me know she is spending the night in Baltimore and to tell me what time to meet her in Providence in the morning. We gave it our best shot. For us, Valentine’s Day will be February 15.

She’s closer to home and I’m glad. I’m glad most of all because I’m home. Now I’ve got to go find my Billy Joel CD.

when you look into my eyes
and you see the crazy gypsy in my soul
it always comes as a surprise
when I feel my withered roots begin to grow

well I never had a place that
I could call my very own
but that’s all right my love
‘cause you’re my home

when you touch my weary head
and you tell me everything will be all right.
you say use my body for your bed
and my love will keep you warm throughout the night.

well I’ll never be a stranger
and I’ll never be alone
wherever we’re together
that’s my home.

home could be the Pennsylvania turnpike
Indiana’s early morning dew
high up in the hills of California
home is just another word for you

well I never had a place
that I could call my very own
but that’s all right my love
’cause you’re my home

if I travel all my life
and I never get stop and settle down
long as I have you by my side
there’s a roof above and good walls all around
you’re my castle, you’re my cabin
and my instant pleasure dome.
I need you in my house
‘cause you’re my home

Peace,
Milton

heavenly day

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
4

Ginger is coming home tomorrow for one main reason: it’s Valentine’s Day.

We had only been dating a couple of weeks when our first Valentine’s Day came around. I took her to the Hard Rock Café in Dallas because that was her favorite place. Though we had not been going out long, we both had a sense that something important was happening between us. A live band was playing that night. In the middle of the set, the lead singer proposed to his girlfriend and they brought champagne out to everyone. Ginger and I both spilled our glasses. She looked great that night – and she had on a hat (after all, it was the late 80s). The hat I remember because when we got to the car and I went to unlock her door, I kissed her – and it was a great kiss, enough to knock her hat off.

I’m saving another one for the airport tomorrow night.

At work the other day someone was writing off Valentine’s Day as another “Hallmark Holiday.” They said they didn’t participate because they thought the whole thing was overly sentimental and commercial. A third person standing there asked me what I did for Valentine’s and I said, “Commercial or not, I figure I’m not going to miss a chance to tell Ginger how much I love her. I’m in for the roses and the chocolates – the whole bit.” The date is arbitrary, as far as I’m concerned, but loving my wife is too much fun to let cynicism win the day.

The other nemesis of love is obligation. Most all of the male DJs I heard today were reminding their (mostly male) listeners to get their flower orders in so they didn’t end up in the dog house. Our NPR stations use the day as a fundraiser, offering to send roses and chocolates for a pledge to public radio, thus killing two obligations at once. In church we make the distinction between habit and ritual. Habit is doing something because you’ve gotten used to doing it that way or you feel like you have to do it that way. Ritual is meaningful repetition: you don’t have to keep the tradition but you do because it’s meaningful and you take time to remember why it means something even as you do it. Eighteen Valentine’s Days into our relationship I’m grateful for the marker, even as we stack up the stones once again.

When I talked to Ginger last night, she said her father had had a rough day and he and her mother had gotten cross with each other at one point. Ginger talked about what a tender moment it was to watch them work to find each other, knowing they had hurt each other’s feelings and wanting to make things right. “You could just see how much they love each other,” she said.

The story reminded me of a verse from Marc Cohn’s song, “True Companion”:

When the years have done irreparable harm
I can see us walking slowly arm in arm
Just like the couple on the corner do
’cause girl I will always be in love with you
And when I look in your eyes
I’ll still see that spark
Until the shadows fall
Until the room grows dark
Then when i leave this earth
I’ll be with the angels standin’
I’ll be out there waiting for my true companion
Just for my true companion

Both Ginger and I uncharacteristically asked for specific things this Valentine’s: she asked for me to get the house cleaned before she came home and I asked for Patty Griffin’s new album. I listened to an interview with her on NPR, where they also have a link to hefr new single, “Heavenly Day.” Once more, she is providing the soundtrack of my life:

Oh heavenly day, all the clouds blew away
Got no trouble today with anyone
The smile on your face I live only to see
It’s enough for me, baby, it’s enough for me
Oh, heavenly day, heavenly day, heavenly day

Tomorrow may rain with sorrow
Here’s a little time we can borrow
Forget all our troubles in these moments so few
All we’ve got right now, the only thing that
All we really have to do
Is have ourselves a heavenly day
Lay here and watch the trees sway
Oh, can’t see no other way, no way, no way
Heavenly day, heavenly day, heavenly day

No one at my shoulder bringing me fears
Got no clouds up above me bringing me tears
Got nothing to tell you, I’ve got nothing much to say
Only I’m glad to be here with you
On this heavenly, heavenly, heavenly, heavenly
Heavenly day, all the trouble’s gone away
Oh, for a while anyway, for a while anyway
Heavenly day, heavenly day, heavenly day

If the weather forecast is correct, Ginger’s going to fly in with a Nor’easter tomorrow afternoon and we will drive home together in the snow. The roses will be waiting at home; I’ll take the chocolates with me to the airport. This year is hardly fifty days old and we have already dealt with my job loss and her father’s cancer. Come Thursday morning, she will head back to work and we will try to find our usual rhythm. I’m glad tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, Hallmark or not, because I get a chance to do my best to make it a heavenly day for her.

Even if it is just for a little while.

Peace,
MIlton

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