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the calculus of being human

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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6

I’ve been surprised with a week to myself because The Owner didn’t put me on the schedule at The Inn – and he didn’t give me any explanation. I called Sunday night to see if I was working Monday (which I have done for the last eight months) and was told they had not yet done the schedule and would call me Monday morning. No one did. I called back Tuesday evening and was told I wasn’t working this week and The Owner was not available to talk about it. I was going to drive up there today to see if this is his bizarre way of telling me I no longer have a job, but I got started spreading the mulch I ordered in the flower beds and opted for a day of feeling productive rather than one feeling frustrated and angry. I can do that tomorrow.

About three this afternoon I came in from the yard, showered, dressed, and drove over to Panera to meet Ginger and our friend Don for coffee. Our conversation lasted the rest of the afternoon and went all around the world. Part of it centered on my father-in-law’s Alzheimer’s, which is steadily worsening. As his memory becomes less accessible he doesn’t seem like the same person and yet he is, still, to his core one of the kindest, gentlest, most hopeful people I have ever known. Don talked about a swami who spoke at an interfaith gathering who talked about the essence of the soul staying the same (at least the way Don remembered it). If you cut off your arm, the swami said, your soul would still have the same essence.

As the three of us turned that over, we began to think a little differently. The relationship between heart, soul, body, and mind is complicated and multifaceted. All four are essential to our humanity and are, I suppose, part of our “essence.” When one is affected, the whole person is affected. When my father had open heart surgery a decade ago even he could see he was fundamentally changed by the experience. He was still recognizable and he was different. One of our friends was in a car accident a number of years ago that left her a paraplegic. Before the accident, most folks saw her as a carefree spirit. In the years since the accident, she has completed law school and is in private practice. She was a nurse before. Her essence has proven to be one of resolve, hope, and tenacity. Coming to terms with my depression over the past five or six years has changed me as I’ve learned to live with a disease that plagues both my mind and my body chemistry.

The picture painted in Hebrew scripture is of heart, soul, mind, and body creating a unity: they are inextricably connected. Rather than one being the essence of a person, the different aspects of our humanity – the raw materials – live in concert, in equation. There is a calculus to being human: when the variables in the equation change, we change. If we learn to think differently, more than just our minds are different. If we face some sort of physical challenge or change, our hearts, souls, and minds aren’t left unaffected. The impact of the change doesn’t stop at our skins. Ginger’s parents have been married almost fifty-one years. The changes in my father-in-law also have an impact on my mother-in-law, on their daughter, on me. None of us can stay the same.

I have been changed by my time at The Inn. I’ve learned a great deal about my craft and I’m a better chef. I’ve even learned a lot about the business, coming to a better understanding of dealing with food cost ratios and other fun stuff. Because I’ve had to deal with The Owner, I’ve had to learn how to speak truth to power without getting defensive or belligerent. I’ve also had to learn how to detach from the soap opera aspect and do my job. I’ve also had to learn to live with uncertainty when it comes to my job security, regardless of my performance. Though I can’t claim to have gone all Barbara Ehrenreich on the world, I have been changed by my first hand experience in the hourly wage, no benefits, no job security world that is The Inn, if not most of the restaurant business. As my equation of heart, soul, body, and mind has changed — so have I.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength,” says Deuteronomy, which I’ve always taken to mean, “Love God with all that you are.” One single aspect doesn’t hold our essence; it’s the whole intricate, complex, dynamic, amazing, and fragile package. It hurts to see my father-in-law slipping away. I hurt for my mother-in-law who is physically and emotionally present as her Loved One disappears.

The calculus of being human is hard work.

Peace,
Milton

no strings on love

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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14

I was at a Rich Mullins concert some time in the early nineties when, in the course of his concert banter, his tone took a turn that became as dangerous as it was didactic. “We should all be praying,” he said, “that Bill and Hillary Clinton would be killed in a car accident.” The words he spoke were incongruous with those he wrote and sang. I didn’t know where they came from and was both surprised and angry. Granted, my politics were then and are now closer to the Clintons than to his and I couldn’t understand how Rich could pray for God to kill someone he disagreed with.

Jerry Falwell died today.

According to the story I heard on NPR, he collapsed in his office about 11:30 this morning and could not be resuscitated. He was 73. I don’t know much, if anything, about Falwell beyond his public persona. I also don’t know of much of anything he and I agreed upon. In one article, he described God as “pro-war.” On September 13, 2001, he said, “I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians, who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who try to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.'”

I know that’s not all he said. I also know I don’t think what I consider to be an arrogant and judgmental expression of faith does much to help anyone. Of all the times I saw him on television, I don’t remember one instance where he appeared to be willing to learn something; he was always the one with the answers.

Some years back, Billy Crockett and I wrote a song together called “No Strings on Love,” which grew out of our desire to speak to the wideness in God’s mercy. Here are the lyrics:

got to tell you what I know
there ain’t no strings on love
wherever you are wherever you go
there ain’t no strings on love
you might scream and stomp the floor
pack your bags and hit the door
God keeps coming back for more
there ain’t no strings on love

told you about the prodigal son
there ain’t no strings on love
party time when he came home
there ain’t no strings on love
you’ve been running so have I
got a few more tricks that we can try
we’ll get tired by and by and
there ain’t no strings on love

they say life is all a competition
how can you survive
without some ammunition

lose your looks your hair falls out
there ain’t no strings on love
some of you know what I’m talking about
there ain’t no strings on love
you might live on borrowed time
broken heart a troubled mind
God thinks you’re the keeping kind
there ain’t no strings on love

spend your life keeping score
there ain’t no strings on love
joneses just moved in next door
there ain’t no strings on love
what you learned on grandpa’s knee
was equal reciprocity – forget it
ally ally oxen free
there ain’t no strings on love

they say life is all a competition
how can you survive
without some ammunition

listen to me one more time
there ain’t no strings on love
sunday morning friday night
there ain’t no strings on love
sunny day pouring rain
avalanche or hurricane
God keeps calling out your name
there ain’t no strings on love

When we wrote it, the open invitation was aimed at those who were marginalized. It puts to music what is proclaimed in many UCC churches on a weekly basis: “Whoever you are and wherever you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome here.” I was singing to the unloved, the outcast, the great unwashed, if you will – all those being kept down by The Man. I was singing to the very people Falwell was damning with his words and actions.

If grace is true and God is love, the invitation is for The Man as well. There ain’t no strings on love – even for Jerry Falwell.

That sentence is easier to write than it is to live – and it wasn’t so easy to write. The people I want most for God to judge are the people who have used or are using God like a club to beat people into submission, or at least scare the hell out of them. My righteous indignation remains intact as long as I don’t humanize the objects of my judgment. Then I read things like this:

In some ways, Falwell was an unlikely religious leader. He was born Aug. 11, 1933, and grew up in Lynchburg, the son of a one-time bootlegger who hated preachers. His grandfather was a staunch atheist.

Falwell was working out some old family stuff in the way he lived his life. I’ve done a little of that myself. (I’m not necessarily proud of that, but it’s the truth.) When I read that sentence, I realize he was probably a pretty wounded guy, just like the rest of us. I abhor that he dealt with his woundedness by inflicting pain on others. I think he was wrong – a lot. I have spent a good deal of effort reaching out to those who have been on the receiving end of his vitriol. I think he did damage to the image of Christianity in our country and around the world when he kicked into zealot-with-a-clear-conscience mode. And Jesus ate with the Pharisees just as he did with the sinners.

Sometimes, I suppose, we fall into both categories.

To me, Jerry Falwell was somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun. As a member of the United Church of Christ, I’m one of those who lives in “the last house on the left” in the Christian neighborhood. The boundless, stringless love of God covers the whole map.

I trust, tonight, that God surprised Jerry Falwell when God saw him and hollered, “Ally, ally, oxen free.”

Peace,
Milton

a time to plant

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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4

I got to spend a good deal of the day in the yard cleaning up, pulling weeds, and beginning to fill the various containers we have along the driveway and the fence. Over our years in Massachusetts, Memorial Day has been the beginning of the planting season for me; this year things have warmed up earlier, so I got an earlier start. I enjoyed my day outside, even with the somewhat ominous evidence of climate change. Though I’m pretty good at the flowerbeds, I suck at lawn care, mostly on purpose. I don’t really like lawns. When we moved to Marshfield, we tore up most of the grass in the front yard and created perennial beds. Last year, I filled in the gaps with herbs, a couple of pepper plants, and some arugula. This year, I’m going to do more veggies among the blooms.

I became a planter when we lived in Charlestown. Our “yard” was a two-tiered concrete slab next to our row house put in after the house that was on the lot burned many years ago. We covered it with planters – about fifty of them. A friend was visiting who was way ahead of me on the local food curve, said, “Why don’t you plant vegetables?” The simple answer was I had never thought about it. When we moved out of the city, I cleared out land behind the garage (mostly because I saw that was where my neighbors had their garden) and planted tomatoes. Lots of tomatoes. The next summer, it was tomatoes and zucchini. I missed one of the squash under the leaves for several weeks and it was as big as a baseball bat by the time I picked it. Each summer I’ve added a couple of things. Last year, I learned about Square Foot Gardening and increased both my variety and my yield, adding numerous herbs, Brussels sprouts, eggplant, and Swiss chard to the mix. I may also going to try a bit of Hay Bale Gardening (which I learned about thanks to Tigre) if I get really ambitious.

What I’m learning is I can grow a lot of food if I am consistent in my intentionality and effort. One of the joys of late summer and early fall for me is giving away tomatoes (that’s when we harvest them here). I’ve also learned what it means to enjoy things seasonally. I was allergic to tomatoes until about seven years ago. Thanks to a friend introducing me to NAET, which cured my allergy (I’m telling you it really works) and, for the first time in my life I could eat tomatoes. Our first summer here I grew my own and once I tasted them fresh from the garden I knew the year round varieties they sell in the supermarkets were impostors. I’ve learned a tomato is worth both the work and the wait.

When Jesus told us to “consider the lilies,” part of the consideration had to be they only bloomed for a short time during the year. Learning to live with seasons means discovering some wonderfully temporary things, turn, turn, turn. During our time in New England, I’ve discovered the temporal joy of fiddleheads, and have a great and simple recipe as well that may not be of much use to many readers since I don’t think they get exported much. Hell, they only last a week or two around here.

One of the things that bothers me about The Owner at The Inn is he treats people as a commodity: something he can consume at will without further thought. Our 24-7-365 world has taught us to disregard the seasons and all the other signposts built into creation, which leads to our thinking of the Earth in terms of commodities and production. Most of us can’t find one constellation, much less use the stars to find our place in the world. The steak or chicken we eat comes wrapped in plastic and we know little about how the animal lived or died. Neither do we know much of the plight of the workers who picked the bananas or grapes that were then flown halfway around the world so we could get them on special for seventy-nine cents a pound. (Actually, the bananas were twenty-nine cents here last week. Tell me someone in Haiti isn’t taking in the face on that one.)

Whatever the justice issues are when it comes to food – and they are legion, my day of gardening reminds me I am closer to figuring out a way to incarnate the ethics of living and eating to which I’m attracted when I’m growing at least some of my own food. I am working to live as the folks to, as The Ethicurean says, “chew the right thing.”

Peace,
Milton

call me noah

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3

For the past few weeks, the children’s message at church has involved the retelling of the story of Noah in different ways in preparation for our Church School switching to the Rotation Model curriculum next fall. The first week the story was told with a short drama, the second week we sang the “Arky Arky” song, and today the kids got a rainbow craft project. The woman leading the children’s time explained that when God said, “I will put my bow in the clouds,” God was taking the bow as a symbol of war (as in bow and arrow) and turning it into a promise.” My mind jumped to an alternative ending to her sentence: turning a symbol of war into a symbol of gay pride.

The idea of the Rotation Model is to speak to our multiple intelligences so we hear the story in new ways and, hopefully, in the way we can best hear it. As the ark has floated around in my head the last month, I’ve heard several things. I went back in my mind to a philosophy of religion class in seminary where the professor talked about all the flood myths in various ancient religions. “Does it bother anyone that Genesis says only Noah and his family were in the ark and yet any number of flood stories that don’t involve Noah have survived?”

It was the fact that he asked the question that bothered several of the folks in the class. To me, the variety seemed to speak to some sort of cataclysmic diluvian tragedy they all were trying to explain. That bothered some folks, too.

Noah’s Ark is one of those stories that can cause people to throw lightning bolts at one another. When I searched for web pages, I found articles and exhibits across the continuum of feasibility and belief. I found a page that lists the various flood stories, a Christian site that takes the story quite literally, an explanation at JewishEnclyclopedia.com, and a BBC story about a guy who has built a replica as a way of calling people to faith. In a book I have here at home, I found this interesting comparison:

Christian and Jewish historians and theologians give slightly different interpretations to the Noah story. For Christians, Noah represents an ideal faith in God – marked by trust and obedience and for which Noah and his family were saved. For Jewish interpreters, Noah represents a reluctant faith marked by Noah being one of the last to enter the ark as a sign of reluctance. This suggests his faith may not have been so strong. (The Intellectual Devotional 14)

And I found these words from Karen Armstrong:

Religious truth does not stand or fall by the historicity of its scriptural narratives. It will survive only if it enables people to find meaning and value when they are overwhelmed by the despair that is an inescapable part of the human condition. When we are discussing the meaning of life and the death of meaning, the historicity of the flood becomes an irrelevant distraction from the main issue. We are dealing not with history or science but with myth.

Today in popular parlance, a myth is something that did not happen, so to claim that a biblical story is mythical is to deny its truth. But before the advent of our scientific modernity, myth recounted an event that had – in some sense – happened once, but which also happened all the time. It was never possible to interpret a myth in terms of objective reason.

There were two ways of arriving at truth, which Plato called mythos and logos (reason). They complemented each other and were of equal stature; both were essential. Unlike myth, logos had to relate accurately to the external world: from the very earliest days, we used it to create effective weapons and to run our societies efficiently.

But humans are also meaning-seeking creatures, who fall very easily into despair. When faced with tragedy, reason is silent and has nothing to say. It was mythology and its accompanying rituals that showed people how to acquire the strength to go on.

Ever since the children stood at the front of the church this morning waving their rainbows and reminding us that God keeps promises, I’ve been thinking about Noah in a different way: as a study in depression. Whether Noah was determined or clueless or both as he began to build the ark, his task was an isolating one from the first cubit. Genesis chronicles the ridicule and the questions he endured. But Noah didn’t live in isolation. As the boat came to completion and the storm clouds began to gather, Noah had to come to terms with leaving friends – all his friends – behind to drown. His daughters-in-law couldn’t bring their families. Sometimes it sucks to be the standard-bearer.

I’ve always wondered what the sanitation system was like on the ark. The rain lasted for forty days, but when you add up all the time it took for the water to dissipate, they were in the ark for nigh on half a year. Our Schnauzers can only last about ten hours inside before sanitation becomes an issue. Six months?

The last thing that crossed my mind I had never thought of until today: the ark had no means of propulsion. All it did was float. Granted, in a flood, floating is important, but it was going nowhere. Put it all together – isolated in a boat that’s not going anywhere and is filling up with crap – and you have a pretty good picture of depression. “It was mythology and its accompanying rituals that showed people how to acquire the strength to go on,” Armstrong says. So it is. I’m acquainted with both floods and rainbows in my life and to find traces of that which most haunts my existence in the stories my faith uses to make meaning of life as a whole is strangely comforting. I know of days that feel as though I’m sinking in excrement, or endless days tossing about on an endless, restless sea, and days when the clouds break, the rainbow forms, and my feet find solid ground.

I know this story; I’m living it.

Peace,
Milton

capturing light

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
1

As I was wrapping scallops in little bacon blankets this afternoon, I heard a great story on All Things Considered about plans for a new telescope to replace the Hubble Telescope, which has given us some amazing images of things we had never been able to see before. The new one, to be called the James Webb Space Telescope will be sent into orbit over a million miles away from Earth and will be able to capture light from over thirteen billion light years away, which means that light will be thirteen billion years old when we see it for the first time.

One of the most intriguing things they said in the story was when they first came up with the design for the Webb Telescope twenty years ago it required ten technologies that had not yet been invented. I love that their dream was not tethered to their sense of limitation. The story didn’t say whether the ones building the scope also invented the ten technologies they needed or if other folks did those parts. Either way, the brilliance of their dream is the first bit of light captured by the Webb Telescope, even before it is built.

One of the phrases that caught my ear was “capture the light.” The Webb will not take pictures per se, but will capture the light using infrared technology to generate images of things we would not normally be able to see. Capturing light is not an easy thing to do. The image is something I’ll take to work with me tomorrow since the orbit of the Inn might as well be taking place in a black hole. Even now, there is light to be captured somewhere in the Inn. So I keep cooking and trying to capture new light, or at least new to me.

For now, I’m going to go close my eyes and enjoy the dark.


Peace,
Milton

hopper, harare, and hot sauce

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2

Today is Ginger’s birthday.

We drove into Boston around two because, thanks to a friend in the church, we had tickets to the Edward Hopper exhibition that just opened at the Museum of Fine Arts. Ginger and I have different viewing practices when we go to a museum. She moves through the room intuitively and I a bit more deliberately, reading all the notes and captions in the same way I stop to read historical markers on the highway when I’m by myself. When we finish looking, we spend some time in the café comparing what we saw and felt and, I think, expanding the impact and understanding of the art work for us both.

The exhibit fell in two major groups for me: buildings and people. He also had a few landscapes, but even then he seemed more interested in how the buildings fit in the picture. There were a lot of houses. One that particularly caught my eye was “Rooms for Tourists,” which showed the house at night. The various sources of light intrigued me.


I also liked this one of pharmacy. The caption said the guy trying to sell his paintings kept trying to get Hopper to take the word “Ex-Lax” out of the picture. He didn’t.


The other one that grabbed me was “Sunday Morning,” a row of shops laying fallow on the Sabbath. It was as if all the buildings had stories to tell and had not had a chance until Hopper painted them in solitude, without the crush of humanity, so their stories could sneak out and show themselves in the silence.


His paintings of people weren’t as narrative. This one, called “Automat,” shows a woman by herself with a cup of coffee. Only the title reveals where she is. There are few details to contextualize the moment; she is simply there, in solitary.


“Nighthawks” is arguably his most well known painting, and it is equally enigmatic: one man remains faceless; the street outside is dark; and there’s no way to know how anyone got in or out of the diner.


From there we made a stop in a wonderful little coffee shop called Uptown Espresso to wait for friends – actually, better identified as our intentional family here in New England — to join us. The folks working there were friendly and good at making coffee. From there we crossed the street to follow the recommendation of another church friend about an exhibit of sculpture by artists from Zimbabwe who call themselves Friends Forever and have joined together to figure out how to get their works to parts of the world where people can afford to buy art so they can make a living. These stones were full of stories. In fact, the man introducing the exhibit spoke of how the artists begin with a big slab of stone and “wait for it to speak to them.”

We quickly became attached to the work of one sculptor in particular, Colleen Madamombe, one of the few female artists and the creator of these wonderful stone women who told their stories through their posture. (Of course, at this point it would be great to show a picture of the piece we bought, but my camera is without batteries. Here a couple of others, though.)

From there we drove to Redbones Barbeque in Somerville where we were joined by one more family member and we continued our practice of laughing, talking, and eating together regardless of who is having the birthday. To some observer, painter or not, outside looking in, I suppose we could have been captured in a moment not unlike Hopper’s people, hanging in space without context. But the picture I see around the table with some of those I love celebrating the person I love most is too multidimensional to fit on a canvas or even a blog entry. To come to the table together reminds us there is no distance between the meals we have shared, regardless of how much time has passed. Our memories stack up like stones for an altar, one on top of the other, enabling us to live those moments in concert rather than a string of situations held together by the gossamer threads of time.

Since today really was a spring day, we took the top off of Ginger’s Jeep Wrangler. As we drove through Somerville, a car pulled up next to us and a man with a very recognizable African accent said to me, as I sat in the back seat, “I think this car is perhaps too small for you” and he smiled. The sound of his voice unlocked memories of my childhood in Africa that had been petrified like some of Hopper’s people. The melody I hear when an African speaks English sets my heart to dancing and sets the stories free.

So does celebrating Ginger’s birthday. Milestone days are stones that talk. They remind us where we have been, call us to ask where we are going, and implore us to continue to chip away at life until we can see ourselves as works of art. Though, I’ll admit, I can easily picture myself in Hopper’s diner, encapsulated in the melancholy and shadow of life as he sees it, the work of art that moves me most shared a cheese plate, a cup of coffee, and some hushpuppies with me, smiled and giggled when she opened her presents, and will lay down beside me in just a little while as she has done for almost as many nights as I can remember. I can hear the stones talking, telling me that out of these formidable rocks of remembrance as well as the sand pebbles of everyday living we are sculpting a portrait of love.

Peace,
Milton

dining room drama

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3

I was almost to the Inn today when my phone rang. Chef was calling to tell me he had been fired by The Owner, who appears to be clearing out employees like brush along a fence line. Last Friday he let three of our wonderful Brazilian folks go including the guy who helped me with the functions and, most notably, the woman who creates our wonderful wedding cakes and who is eight and a half months pregnant. He told her she couldn’t have her paycheck until she finished the cake for the Saturday wedding. Chef and our baker usually work the kitchen together on Tuesdays, so firing Chef today was not the most well planned move; The Owner spent a good part of the afternoon finding someone to work the line tonight. There aren’t that many of us left.

In her wonderful novel, Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel describes how the emotions of the cook are infused into the food he or she is making, thus infecting those who eat with the same feelings. In one scene, Tita is full of passion for her beloved as she cooks a meal for a large group and, by the end of the meal, everyone has paired up and run off to make love in the woods. In another, she transfers her anger and everyone is nauseated by the meal. If what Esquivel describes holds to be the least bit true, tonight was not a good night to eat at the Inn.

The rest of the week may not be so hot, either.

I have no idea what will happen in the next few days. All I know is I feel like I live in a soap opera. This is drama with a capital D. This weekend we have a wedding and three other smaller functions (50-100 people each), as well as a Mothers’ Day brunch (140 reservations so far), so I think I’m safe to assume the drama is not yet over. I’m assuming we will have some new folks join the cast, since we are incredibly short handed right now, and I also assume we have not seen the last of those, in the words of Top Chef, who will be told to “pack their knives and go.”

Even though I was only there for three hours today, I was exhausted when I got home. Ginger suggested I walk with her around the neighborhood rather than curling up on the couch and going to sleep, my escape of choice. She was right, as usual. We walked and I ranted and pounded my feelings into the pavement and came back home with a better sense of myself in the midst of the turmoil that is the Inn right now. I know who I want to be regardless of how the circumstances turn.

I also know I want to do more than use this page to vent my feelings or put the Inn on window display. Part of the reason I write is to distill the feelings and circumstances of life into something that is discernable and hopeful. I’ve been wondering all evening how it can be that the business of hospitality attracts some many volatile, if not violent people in the same way the business of faith, which is one of faith, hope, and love, attracts its fair share of power mongers and downright vindictive SOBs. I think the diagnostic clue to the primary toxin in both cases is the word business. It’s difficult to live in the creative tension of being both prophetic and profitable. Living in the midst of our dining room drama I’ve also been reminded Jesus was calling us into a dangerously creative tension when he said, “See, I send you out as sheep among wolves. Be then as wise as snakes, and as gentle as doves.” (Mt. 10:16)

The question I keep asking myself is, “Who am I called to be in these days?” I’ll continue to figure that out when I play my next scene on Thursday.

Peace,
Milton

how can I keep from thanking?

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
7

Last October, I wrote about what I called a “quintessential New England fall day,” which ended up with a hymn sing at church. If you will indulge me, I want to quote part of that post on my way to some new thoughts.

Tonight about twenty of us gathered at the church to sing. Growing up Southern Baptist meant I went to church most every Sunday night for evening worship. What I loved best about it was the singing. The service was less formal and had much more music. Those who were there seemed to be the ones who loved to sing and we all joined in on our gospel favorites to close out the day. Here we gather to sing on Sunday evenings once or twice a year, but many of the songs are the ones so ingrained in me from childhood that I still know them by heart. One in particular seemed to catch the spirit of my entire day, “How Can I Keep From Singing” by Robert Lowry. (You can play the melody in the background while you read if you wish.)

My life flows on in endless song;
Above earth’s lamentation
I hear the sweet though far off hymn
That hails a new creation:
Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing;
It finds an echo in my soul—
How can I keep from singing?

What though my joys and comforts die?
The Lord my Savior liveth;
What though the darkness gather round!
Songs in the night He giveth:
No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that refuge clinging;
Since Christ is Lord of Heav’n and earth,
How can I keep from singing?

I lift mine eyes; the cloud grows thin;
I see the blue above it;
And day by day this pathway smoothes
Since first I learned to love it:
The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart,
A fountain ever springing:
All things are mine since I am His—
How can I keep from singing?

As I sat down to write tonight, I did a little research on Robert Lowry, the hymn writer. He is responsible for several of my favorite hymns: “I Need Thee Every Hour,” “All the Way My Savior Leads Me,” “Savior, Thy Dying Love,” “We’re Marching to Zion,” and “Shall We Gather at the River?” The last hymn was written in 1864 when he was pastoring. As the Civil War was raging, so was an epidemic in New York and Lowry wondered what prospects for Christian community lay on the other side of death. He wrote “How Can I Keep From Singing?” in 1860, before the war began. In Lowry’s mind, what mattered most was his preaching, yet his music is his enduring contribution. As his biographer wrote:

While Dr. Lowry said, “I would rather preach a gospel sermon to an appreciative, receptive congregation than write a hymn,” yet in spite of his preferences, his hymns have gone on and on, translated into many languages, preaching and comforting thousands upon thousands of souls, furnishing them expression for their deepest feelings of praise and gratitude to God . . .. What he had thought in his inmost soul has become a part of the emotions of the whole Christian world. We are all his debtors.

For our anniversary, Ginger gave me a gift card to Newbury Comics, our local music store chain. I didn’t carry it for long. I got two things I really wanted: Beautiful Maladies by Tom Waits (a collection of his songs on Island Records) and We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (America Land Version) by Bruce Springsteen. I learned to play guitar thanks to folk music, so the Seeger disc has been an incredible feast. And it has also held a couple of wonderful surprises, not the least of which is a cover of Seeger’s version of “How Can I Keep From Singing?”.

According to several sources, Pete Seeger learned the song from a woman named Doris Plenn who told him she had learned it from her Quaker grandmother. Seeger adapted several hymns along the way and the same with this one. Plenn wrote a new third verse to reflect the fear and passion of that time when so many artists and activists were being accused of being Communists. Here is the lyric Seeger and Springsteen (and Eva Cassidy) sing:

My life goes on in endless song
Above earth’s lamentation
I hear the real though far-off hymn
That hails a new creation
Above the tumult and the strife
I hear its music ringing
It sounds an echo in my soul
How can I keep from singing?

What though the tempest loudly roars
I hear the truth it liveth
What though the darkness ’round me close
Songs in the night it giveth
No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that rock I’m clinging
Since love is Lord of heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?

When tyrants tremble sick with fear
And hear their death knell ringing
When friends rejoice both far and near
How can I keep from singing?
No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that rock I’m clinging
Since love is Lord in heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?

The song, on the Springsteen CD, is sung by a small choir of friends in beautiful harmony. It has become the soundtrack to my drive home from work the last couple of weeks; I keep hitting the repeat button and I’m pulled in by the very first line:

My life goes on in endless song above earth’s lamentation . . .

And I’m moved by Plenn’s courage that shows through in her verse:

When tyrants tremble sick with fear
and hear their death knell ringing;
When friends rejoice both far and near,
how can I keep from singing?

Faith oozes out of both versions – the kind of faith that frees slaves and frightens politicians; the kind that opens doors and hearts, that embraces everyone. The song certainly pulls me in, whether I’m singing Lowry’s words in church or singing along with Bruce and friends on my night ride home. To everyone who has carried this song to me – and carried me with it, consider this a thank you note.


Peace,
Milton

a sunday afternoon stroll

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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0

The first time Ginger and I came to Boston together was in May of 1989. We had been dating a little over four months. I attended a youth ministry seminar at Princeton Seminary and tacked on a week of vacation so I could hang out in Beantown. My mother was so excited that I was dating someone that she gave Ginger frequent flyer miles to come meet me here. We had friends who lived just outside the city and we stayed with them. Ginger left on Sunday morning and I was not going home until Monday. After I took her to the airport, I rode the T (our subway) back to Park Street Station and came up into the middle of some sort of giant celebration, which I soon found out was The Walk for Hunger, a longstanding Boston tradition. I bought a T-shirt (my default purchase most anywhere I am) and got Ginger some shoestrings for her high tops. Then I sat down on the grass of Boston Common and watched the people cross the finish line.

Today marked the tenth time Ginger and I have joined the walk since we moved to New England. According to the web site, over 43,000 people walked today. Here’s the real kicker: it’s a twenty mile walk. The main reason we have not walked more often is it’s always on the first Sunday in May and begins around seven or eight in the morning. When Ginger was serving the church in Winchester, she came up with the idea of a “worshippers’ walk” to allow us to keep our commitment to church and to social justice in our community, asking people to pledge as they would for someone doing all twenty miles. After our service, we would take a bus to Newton Corners and join the walk with about eleven miles to go. As Ginger loves to point out, my favorite thing to do is walk far enough away from the bus to not be connected to it and then say, “Man, this is great; I hardly feel like I’ve been walking at all,” as we join the folks who’ve already got nine miles behind them. It cracks me up every year.

Ginger brought the tradition with her to Marshfield and we have a regular group that walks every year. With the exception of our being in Turkey during May last year, she and I have been on every Walk since we moved to the South Shore. Our regular crew went without us last year. One of them reminded us today that ten walks means we’ve logged a hundred miles in our fight against hunger in Eastern Massachusetts. And we were in good company. The seemingly endless train of people was as diverse as their fashion senses. We saw girls walking arm in arm, sharing the headphones on a single iPod, groups from both urban and suburban schools and churches, parents pushing strollers, families marking a tradition together, and some folks just walking by themselves for the cause. I learned after we finished the walk today that the Project Bread people have also become more tech savvy, making it possible for people to gather contributions on line. If you would like to contribute to my walk, you can do so here.

Ginger and I try to walk together as often as we can. We don’t go eleven miles everyday, but we do have a pretty good three and a half mile loop through our neighborhood, including a walk down the beach if the tide’s out. Besides the physical payoff, I’ve learned there’s something that happens when we walk and talk. Somehow the feelings I verbalize find expression in my feet as well, giving me a new sense of the word “grounded.” There is something spiritual, even visceral, that happens in the combination of physical and emotional exercise.

Maybe that’s why there are so many walks these days: organizations are looking for more than a financial connection. That the Walk for Hunger is twenty miles long is also part of both its genius and its effectiveness. You have to be serious to take it on. Even the eleven miles is a challenge. Often when we try to recruit people for our causes (or our churches) we do so by trying to show them how little what we are asking them to do will require, as if “it’s not that big a deal” is an attractive invitation. The walk has shown for almost forty years that people want to be challenged to let their compassion cost them something. As we walked on pavement and through parks, each step helped to create a grounding solidarity with the poor and hungry in our state, whose numbers are growing daily.

Ginger preached today on Jesus’ words, “Love everyone as I have loved you.” The Walk seems to me to be an incarnational example of his command. Love that has hands and feet can make a difference. We walked and talked and laughed and ached and rubbed blisters on our feet so someone else who is hungry could eat. Each step grounded us in the earth beneath our feet and the grace that undergirds all of creation.

Not bad for a Sunday afternoon stroll.

Peace,
Milton

PS — Project Bread has a sense of humor, too. Here’s a clip from The Daily Show they have on their web site.

the language of fat

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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12

Though National Poetry Month is over, I’m still getting a poem-a-day from Poets.org, for which I continue to be grateful. The first stanza of today’s poem took me on an unexpected journey, or, I should say, raised an unexpected question. Here’s what I read:

Surf Buddha
by Matthew Lippman

There is a sandalwood Buddha on the desk that has my stomach
and I don’t suppose to call myself a Buddha
or even pretend to know much about Buddhist whirlings
but Rachel gave me the thing and it’s got my belly
the one my father has got
and the one his father had
and I know this bulge the way I know my name,
and can’t believe I’ve become the language of fat
that the boys in my family have kept quiet.
(You can read the rest of the poem here.)

The question needs a bit of contextualizing. As far back as I can remember, I’ve thought of myself as fat. When I see pictures of myself from high school and college, I don’t look like I remember feeling: I’m not fat. As I grew older, I grew larger, and round and funny has had its payoff. When I picture myself, I see a big, round guy. Three weeks ago, I started going back to Weight Watchers. I think this is my fourth time. Since I feel I’m on the verge of being a serial weight watcher, I’m working hard to approach it differently this time. So far, there’s fourteen pounds less of me than there was three weeks ago. And I still think of myself as the big round guy. So, my question is:

How do I stop speaking the language of fat?

Actually, the poem says it best: I’ve become the language of fat. How do I become a new language, a new vocabulary? How do I find fluency in something other than the destructive comfort that has felt so much like me for so long?

My family moved to what was then Southern Rhodesia to be missionaries when I was one year old. Like the others before them, they spent their first weeks in language school to learn Sindabele. I stayed with a wonderful woman named Selina who took care of me and spoke to me in both her language and mine. As my father tells it, the first day of class the teacher gave them some vocabulary words. The first word was “isikwapa,” which means “armpit.”

My father was indignant. He had come halfway around the world to tell people about Jesus and the first word he learned was armpit? (By the way, it’s the only word, all these years later, that anyone in my family remembers.) They kept going to class and I stayed with Selina. When I began to talk, I was bilingual from the start; my parents would have done better to stay home with us.

Part of the difference was I had no language to unlearn. They had years and years of grammar engrained into their bones that had to be at least circumvented if they were going to speak a new tongue. Sindabele is one of the “clicking languages,” where you have to learn how to make a particular sound with various consonants. It’s hard work. They did it and it didn’t come easy. Then they had to do it again when we moved north to Zambia. But, if they were going to do what they came to do, they had to learn a new language.

The language I know is as not just the language of fat but also the language of failure. In six and a half years, I will be the same age my grandfather was when he died. He, like me, was a barrel of a man who carried all his weight between his neck and his waist. He, like every male in his family, dropped dead of a heart attack. My father, who will turn 79 in September, rewrote the grammar of his life and is healthy and aging. I’m grateful for his tenacity and resolve. Even with his example, the family resemblance looms large in my life. I feel a little bit like an escaped soldier in one of those old World War Two movies who steals the German uniform and then has to try and fake his way out to get to safety. If he can’t convince people he speaks German, he’s not going to make it. Unless I learn the language of hope, when it comes to my body image, I’m sealing my fate.

I’ve lost fourteen pounds; I have sixty more to go. But the language I want to learn has more to it than numbers and pounds. It is about more than loss. As someone who is an amazingly average athlete, I must learn the words that let me articulate how spending time on the elliptical machine at the gym is paying off. I don’t enjoy working out, particularly, and I have begun to notice my endurance is better, as is my spirit, even at the end of a twelve-hour shift. I must develop a vocabulary that moves beyond whether I gain or lose weight from week to week and talk in more expansive images of how I will be alive and fit in twenty or thirty years. I need new metaphors to remind me I am more than my tummy. I’m not Buddha. Who I am is not determined by how much I weigh. I need images that help me describe what I’m setting free within myself rather than what I’m losing.

I don’t have to buy into the stereotype of the chubby chef. I can find language that expresses the love of good food and being fit and healthy are things that compliment each other, rather than standing at cross purposes. The language is already written; I just have to learn it.

I want the rest of my life to be different and I want it to last a long, long time.

Peace,
Milton

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