don't eat alone

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

I don’t like eating alone, but cooking alone is another story – particularly on a day like today.

The owner came back from across the sea last night and a storm is already brewing at the Inn. He spent most of the day wandering around with a scowl on his face. Chef and the other cooks in the restaurant were in moods that covered the gamut from anxious to surly. I was in the function kitchen by myself, listening to NPR and making hors d’oeuvres for the wedding this weekend. I was the only one working in a decent climate.

After I was laid off back in January and then rehired, I did some real soul searching before going back. I needed the work (and the paycheck) and I liked it, but I didn’t want to feel owned. I also had to come to terms with the fact that part of the equation was mine: I chose to work in a place owned by a person who thrived on chaos and who did not share many of my values. After I survived the layoff, I realized pretty much all he could do to me was fire me — nothing else — and I could survive that. I also realized I’m at his mercy when it comes to my employment. So I go to work understanding I could come home without a job as easily as I could come home still employed and, somehow, coming to terms with it in this manner has helped me relax and cook.

Today marked the first day he’s been back since the layoff. I did my thing and enjoyed myself, but when I got home tonight I was exhausted. I’m trying hard to stay awake enough to write coherently. The uncertainty that has been mostly hypothetical is now tangible and it makes me sleepy (my preferred means of escape).

Both growing up in a minister’s family and starting off my employable years in ministry, I didn’t learn how to differentiate between who I am and what I do until much later along the way.

When we moved to Boston in 1990, I got a job at the local Blockbuster in Charlestown because we needed money. The store was in walking distance and I liked movies, so I took the job. One night, I was straightening shelves when I noticed a woman looking for a movie and I asked if she needed assistance.

“Oh,” she said, “I don’t usually talk to the help in these places.”

Her comment sent me into an identity crisis. I’d never had to think about where I stopped and the job started when I was in church work, but how could I BE the guy who rented copies of Terminator 2? My time at the video store gave me room to learn who I am and what I do are not the same things. I think I’ve told that story somewhere along the way on this blog, but it came back to me today in a new way because I am a cook – to the very core of my being. In the worst throes of my depression, I can find respite when I’m cooking.

I’m also a chef for a living, yet it’s not exactly the same thing. I still find joy when I’m cooking at the Inn, but when I leave work and come home I find more joy cooking dinner for Ginger. Cooking feeds my soul; I’m grateful it also helps to pay the bills. I’m also grateful that my job is only a segment of what cooking means to me. I love how much I’ve been able to learn at the Inn and for the people I work with. I’ve gotten better at what I do because of my days there. If the rumor mill proves true and he does let us go, I’ll still be a cook. If the rumors prove false and I get to keep doing the functions this summer, I’ll still be a cook.

Who I am is not determined by what he does.

Peace,
Milton

William Delahunt, my representative in Congress, is one of the good guys leading the fight against extraordinary rendition. Read this article from his web site.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are both working to bring the issue to light.

Another article can be found here.

You can even buy a transcript of the hearing I mentioned yesterday here.

Witness.org provided this video that is both informative and disturbing.

Peace,
Milton

I’ve got something I’ve been carrying around for a few days I have to get on the page.

Last Wednesday, the NPR program Here & Now aired a segment on a congressional hearing on our government’s practice of “extraordinary rendition,” which sounds like more like a critique for a performance on American Idol than it does something that deserves congressional attention. As cool as it sounds, it’s not fun and games at all. Rendition is the practice of our government finding ways to hand over political prisoners to governments that will torture them for us, since our constitution forbids us from treating people that way. Our government has sent people to Syria and Egypt, among other places, just because we suspect they know something – not because we have anything more tangible than a hunch – and let those governments beat the living daylights out of these people.

If that doesn’t send a chill up your spine, wait until you hear what Michael Sawyer, a former CIA officer who helped create parts of the program, had to say in the hearing. When he was asked about the fact that many innocent people had been rendered, he said, “No one really cares what happens to these people. Let me rephrase that: I don’t care what happens to them.”

William Delahunt, one of our Massachusetts Congressmen, asked, “What about those who are ultimately proved innocent, even after being tortured.”

“Well, mistakes are made.”

“So they’re mistakes,” said Delahunt.

They’re not Americans; I really don’t care.” Then Sawyer laughed.

The congressman who had invited Sawyer defended his stance by saying something about our living in a time of war and having to do these things. He’s got it backwards: we are at war because we do these things. If our fear and anger has reduced us to people who don’t care about anyone’s life but our own, then we are not so easily distinguishable from the terrorists we are so determined to exterminate. Yes, I know we live in a dangerous world and there are people who would like to do us harm. I saw the Twin Towers fall just like Michael Sawyer did. But I refuse to accept his definition of reality. Torture will never sow the seeds of peace.

Yesterday, I found this new poster on the Amnesty International web site:

I like the sentiment, yet I have to say believing in America isn’t going to change much. These are days that call for an extraordinary rendition of our faith, a brazen articulation and incarnation of Jesus’ words:

“Love your enemies; be good to those who hate you.”
“Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”
“Love everyone as I have loved you.”

Do we think Jesus was being hyperbolic or sentimental or unrealistic? Do we assume somewhere along the line the caveats he added at the end of those imperatives were somehow lost in translation? (“Love your enemies; be good to those who hate you – unless, of course, you can find someone else to torture them.”) At the heart of our incarnational theology is the reality that all of humanity is connected. When people die in Darfur, we die. When our government arranges for people to be tortured, we are tortured. Jesus pointed that out as well:

“When you do it unto the least of these, you do it unto me.”

Torture is wrong. Rounding up people on the basis of fear and suspicion and flying them halfway around the world to throw them in prison without any rights is also wrong. Justifying any of it with the idea of making the world safer for us is both wrong and misguided. Jesus never called us to be safe. He didn’t call us to take care of ourselves first. He did call us to love the world, over and over again.

I don’t know if Michael Sawyer is a Christian, so I can’t speak to the ethic that guides him. I also don’t expect our government to be Christian in its actions because it’s not Christian. I do pray that American Christians will grow in their courage and compassion to be peacemakers instead of seekers of safety. The people being tortured are someone’s father or brother or son, someone’s wife or mother or daughter. Before they are suspects, or enemy combatants, or even terrorists they are human beings just like me. Whether they choose to be a neighbor or an enemy, they are people whom Jesus called me to love.

I can’t condone their torture under any circumstance.

No, that’s not an easy statement to live with. Our world is dangerous and there are people who would like to do damage to as many Americans as possible. That’s the life they have chosen. I have to decide whether my choices will be determined by my fear of being hurt by them or by my commitment to follow Jesus’ life and teaching.

You would think the choice was obvious.

Peace,
Milton

When we were in Istanbul a year ago, Ginger and I were both taken by the calls to prayer that went out from the mosques five times a day. Istanbul has more mosques than Dallas has Baptist churches, so the various calls wound together in a haunting sacred harmony that moved us both, even though we could not understand the words being sung. Then we noticed that we were the only ones on the street who stopped to listen or notice it was time to pray, a realization that saddened us both.

Our worship service has a fairly regular form, particularly at the beginning: the prelude is followed by announcements, then a choral introit to mark our move from having gathered to beginning to worship, and a responsive call to worship. Sometimes, I’ll admit, I’m about as attentive as the people we saw on those Istanbul streets until we get to the first hymn, but today the call to worship grabbed me and held on.

Here’s what we said:

Nothing we do is complete: No statement says all that should be said; no prayer fully confesses our faith; no set of goals or objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about:

We plant seeds that one day will grow or maybe die; we water seeds already planted knowing that they hold future promise; we lay foundations that will need further development;

We provide yeast that leavens far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and we can find in that realization a sense of liberation that enables us to do something and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning; a step along the way.

It is an opportunity for divine grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the results.

We are workers, not master builders; we are prophets of a future that is not our own.
(adapted from a prayer by Oscar Romero)

On the day following a weekend where I worked twenty-five hours out of thirty-six, on a day that marks the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the genocide in Darfur and a rally in Boston (among other cities) I was too tired to attend, on a day when more car bombs went off in Iraq, on a day when I awakened thinking of two or three things I had promised to do by today and had not yet completed, I was greeted with an invitation to come to terms – even to embrace – the finitude of my humanity: I’m not everything – perhaps not even enough — and I’ll have to learn to live with that in Jesus’ name.

Then we sang:

There is a balm in Gilead that makes the wounded whole
There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul

and

O, love that will not let me go
I rest my weary soul in thee
I give thee back the life I owe
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer fuller be

George Matheson, who wrote the hymn, said this about his composition:

My hymn was composed in the manse of Innelan [Argyleshire, Scotland] on the evening of the 6th of June 1882, when I was 40 years of age. I was alone in the manse at that time. It was the night of my sister’s marriage, and the rest of the family were staying overnight in Glasgow. Something happened to me, which was known only to myself, and which caused me the most severe mental suffering. The hymn was the fruit of that suffering. It was the quickest bit of work I ever did in my life.

What happened was he told his fiancée he was going blind and she walked out on him because she didn’t want to be married to a blind man. The words that came so quickly to him, in the face of his humanity, were “O, love that will not let me go.”

I am not enough and I am loved unfathomably. Talk about your creative tension.

The sermon was about Tabitha, whom Peter resurrected after she died because the widows she cared for implored him to do so. Her vocation in the church was to take care of the widows, among the most disenfranchised of people in that time. Though the church had other people, perhaps, who could have picked up the ministry, the widows convinced Peter that Tabitha’s life was essential to them and so he “woke her up.”

Ginger’s question for us, as she unpacked the story, was, “Is our church like Tabitha: so vital that we too need to wake up because people are counting on us?”

One of the terms we imported from French so we didn’t have to figure out a way to translate it and could sound cool when we say it is raison d’etre: reason for being. If we can’t be enough, then why are we here? There is more to life than quiet desperation or pompous grandiosity. Our reason for being is not to justify our existence or prove we are worthy of our creation. We matter because we’re breathing. We are wonderfully created in the image of God. Our raison d’etre, therefore, is to create and sustain life in what we say and do for and to one another.

When I worked as a hospital chaplain, one of my patients taught me the difference between thinking of herself as living with cancer, rather than dying with cancer. The change in vocabulary gave her resurrective possibilities even in her final days on the planet. I’m not called to be essential, important, or famous; I am called to be creative – to give life, to sustain life, to love life every chance I get.

I heard yesterday that, in his new book, Pat Robertson predicted the world was going to end today, April 29, 2007. That’s one way to kill your book sales. Since he’s in Virginia, I’m assuming he was talking about Eastern Daylight Time, which means I’ve got about an hour and a half once I finish writing. My guess is I’ll be here for breakfast and beyond. The unintentional humor in his prediction notwithstanding, I don’t find much that helps me. The One he’s expecting is coming with fangs out and teeth bared to wreak havoc on the world. Telling us all to look busy because Jesus is coming doesn’t call us to live, but to fear. The point of the Rapture is to make sure we know some of us are getting left behind.

It sounds like he’s expecting a bomb in Gilead.

I can’t get it all done. When my life comes to an end, I will leave things unfinished. (Hell, I’m doing that already.) I will never be enough and I can’t allow myself to be satisfied with what I perceive as my limitations. Tabitha woke up because of the creative power of those around her. When I take my place in the creative lineage of the people of God who are committed to incarnating love any and every way they can, I am taking my place in the realm of God that is unending. I am a prophet of a future that is not my own. However my life comes to a close, whatever happens to this planet we inhabit, love never dies.

And it never, never lets go.

Peace,
Milton

You have to see this:

Peace,
Milton

I’ve got a poem I’ve been working with for awhile about punctuation. I decided now is a good time to talk about it because of the poem of the day from Poets.org, which deals with the same subject.

Appeal to the Grammarians
by Paul Violi
from (Hanging Loose Press)

We, the naturally hopeful,
Need a simple sign
For the myriad ways we’re capsized.
We who love precise language
Need a finer way to convey
Disappointment and perplexity.
For speechlessness and all its inflections,
For up-ended expectations,
For every time we’re ambushed
By trivial or stupefying irony,
For pure incredulity, we need
The inverted exclamation point.
For the dropped smile, the limp handshake,
For whoever has just unwrapped a dumb gift
Or taken the first sip of a flat beer,
Or felt love or pond ice
Give way underfoot, we deserve it.
We need it for the air pocket, the scratch shot,
The child whose ball doesn’t bounce back,
The flat tire at journey’s outset,
The odyssey that ends up in Weehawken.
But mainly because I need it—here and now
As I sit outside the Caffe Reggio
Staring at my espresso and cannoli
After this middle-aged couple
Came strolling by and he suddenly
Veered and sneezed all over my table
And she said to him, “See, that’s why
I don’t like to eat outside.”

The poem made me laugh out loud and also made me go back to my poem and make the necessary choices to finish it. Here is my offering.

Can You Help Me?

I would gladly give up
the exclamation point!
or eliminate the ellipsis . . .
in exchange for more
interrogative punctuation.

The single combination of
curve and dot is not
enough to delineate
and describe the
questions I have.

I need marks that
reflect what I’m asking:
is there any milk?
is not the same question as
will you forgive me?

How are you?
The question is in dire
need of punctuation to
differentiate between
compassion and pleasantry.

I have casual questions,
rhetorical questions,
nagging questions,
philosophical questions.
You’re up to the challenge;

you did so well with the semi-colon.

That’s all for today. Period.

Peace,
Milton

Peace,
Milton

Affirmation is life-giving.

When I was teaching high school, I started putting stickers on vocabulary quizzes (and then on other papers and tests) for good grades. The kids went nuts over them. I was teaching junior Honors Brit Lit and they were clamoring for Sponge Bob stickers. I know how they feel. I started back to Weight Watchers a couple of weeks ago. They give you a star for every five pounds you lose. A small, very disposable, gold star. I got my second one on Tuesday. I think I’m as excited about the little sticker as I am about losing the weight.

A good word goes a long way.

Maggi Dawn affirmed me this week by giving me a Thinking Blogger award. I greatly appreciate it. (I would also like to say thank you to two other folks who did the same while I was writing my Lenten Journal. I intended to follow through after Easter and lost track of your comments.) The award is a meme that began with this post.

One of the things I like about the meme — besides getting an award (my first) — is it’s designed to foster greater affirmation. Maggi mentioned me as one of five blogs that make her think; my task is to do the same. Here are some folks who feed me:

tgraypots web log is a wonderful mixture of pottery, faith, and a fair amount of pizza, as well as other cool food. Reading Tom’s work has led me to some great stuff on learning to eat locally and ethically. The passion and tenderness with which he writes is contagious.

Spilt Milk is a blog I discovered recently. Tee’s writing is thoughtful and challenging. She writes about some of the political issues in our world with a personal touch — particularly when it comes to Christian – Muslim – Jewish relations. Her writings and links took me to both Hometown Baghdad and Raising Yousuf, Unplugged.

Look What Love Has Done is a blog with which I’ve had a connection almost since I started blogging. She was one of the first people to begin to comment with some regularity. Beth writes beautifully and poignantly about what she is learning about faith and family in these days. Her latest post is about affirming her son. She’s a good mom.

Closeted Pastor is a new find for me. Cecilia writes about pastoring and working through not yet being able to come out to her congregation. I’m hopeful that she will find affirmation and encouragement here among the blogs to help her move toward feeling more integrated. I’m thankful I get to be a part of the journey.

Simply Simon is writing about “life, food, faith, and the city” — the city being Melbourne, Australia. Simon is a professor, writer, cook, and all around interesting guy. There’s lots of stuff going on at his place. He’s one who helps me to keep paying attention.

There are others that move me (as it is, I managed to sneak in a couple). Today, these are folks I want to affirm as blogs that make me think. I’m grateful for the connections.

Peace,
Milton

In the weight of these times, I found myself looking for a little relief tonight. And, since we are in the waning days of National Poetry Month, I offer yet another poem.

Naming the Animals

“Our job is to name the animals,” she said.
“All of them?” he asked.
“Why? Where do you have to be?”
She smiled.

“Aardvark — your turn,” she said.
“Dog.”
“Platypus.”
“Pig.”

“That’s a bit plain”, she said.
“Well — what would you call it?”

(pause)

“Pig is OK, I guess.”
“Keep going,” he said.

“Salamander.”
“Sheep.”
“Okapi.”
“Cow.”
“Gazelle.”
“Fish.”

“I have to stop you,” she said.
“Why?”
“Fish won’t do.”
“But wasn’t it my turn?” he asked.

(long pause)

“Poisson,” she said.
“Pwa — who?”
“I switched to French.”
“It’s still a fish,” he said.

Peace,
Milton