don't eat alone

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

Yes, I know I’m posting a couple of times today. I wanted to talk about the blog tour, but the thing most on my mind is the Global Days for Darfur initiative taking place this week around the world thanks to the Save Darfur Coalition. The volume of voices calling for significant action to save the people of Darfur is rising and things are beginning to happen. This could be a pivotal week in holding our world leaders accountable for changing the plight of the people who are being raped, starved, and murdered in the Sudan.

Please take time to look at the site.

You can find an event in your area here.

You can download a faith action packet with worship resources here.

The time is now for us to step forward and save our brothers and sisters.

Peace,
Milton

(Photographs are from SaveDarfur.org)

There’s a new site worth visiting (actually a new version of something already going pretty well called The High Calling of Our Daily Work, which looks at what it means to be called to our vocation whether or not that means we are professionally spiritual. They have some great stuff. I particularly like the categories things they explore: work and family, gifts and talents, leadership, excellence, integrity, attitude, professional relationships, and service. The site is easy to navigate and full of good things.

You can sign up for a free membership here.

Then you can take the blog tour to some of these sites to see who hangs around at High Calling:

Gordon Atkinson
L. L. Barkat
Gina Conroy
Craver VII
CREEations
Mary DeMuth
Karl Edwards
Emdashery
Every Square Inch
Green Inventions
Amy Goodyear
Marcus Goodyear
Al Hsu, Jennwith2ns
Charles Foster Johnson
Mike McLoughlin
Eve Nielsen
Naked Pastor
Ramblin Dan
Charity Singleton
Stacy
Camy Tang
Writer… Interrupted

Peace,
Milton

Ginger and I celebrated our seventeenth wedding anniversary yesterday. We both had full workdays: I had three functions and she had a funeral, a wedding, and a fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration to attend. At ten o’clock last night we pulled out of the driveway to make the forty-minute trip into Boston and the Hard Rock Café, where we go every year because we got engaged at the Hard Rock in Dallas. (Last year, we were at the Hard Rock in Athens.) I didn’t have a function on Friday night, so we had talked about celebrating then, but neither of us wanted to settle for not being there on the actual day. We got home a little after one and went to church feeling tired this morning.

But it was a good kind of tired.

April 21, 1990 was Earth Day, Paula Abdul Saturday (according to VH-1), and our wedding day. In the seventeen years since, we’ve shared four addresses in three different towns and two states, had five Schnauzers, two washing machines, five computers, and six cars. She’s seen me go from working as a minister to an English teacher to a minister again and then a chef. I typed and edited as she got her doctorate. We had no way to anticipate then where life would take us. All we knew was we wanted to be together, wherever we were going. We knew we were moving to Boston, but we had no idea we would be living the life we are today. Regardless of our address, we have made a home in the country of marriage, an unbounded land that calls us each day to a journey for two.

From time to time, Ginger asks me where I think I would be if we had not married. My answer has always been the same: “I don’t think I would be alive.” I don’t mean to be morose or hyperbolic; I don’t know how to picture having lived these years without her. When I look back over these years – my struggle to find my true sense of vocation, my depression, to mention a couple of things – I know I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve been sustained and even reclaimed by the way she has loved me. Maybe I answer the question that way because the prospect is unimaginable to me: I don’t want to know what it would have been like to live without her.

If this sounds over the top, then so be it. And I have one more thing to say. I’ve gotten to do some pretty cool stuff in my life. I’ve worked hard to learn a lot of things and tried my hand at any number of jobs and hobbies. I’m proud of my work and my accomplishments. And what matters more than anything else in my life is I got to be Ginger’s husband. Regardless of how the rest of my days add up, to have spent these years with her make mine an extraordinary life.

I am a proud citizen of the country of marriage.

Peace,
Milton

I’m thankful I woke up this morning late enough to miss NBC’s airing of the video of Cho Seung-Hui that he mailed before he started shooting people in Blacksburg. I don’t want to see it. I know I don’t need to. What I did read were the anonymous comments from one angry person to Tracy’s wonderful post at Spilt Milk. If you could scream when you write, this guy was yelling at the top of his lungs about how crazy and angry all the Muslims were. I don’t think he saw his own irony. I read a sad story on Raising Yousuf about a Palestinian woman’s difficulty leaving the Amsterdam airport just because she was a Muslim woman.

The level of violence we reach in the name of “securing the homeland,” or whatever name we use to say we want to be safe, makes me angry. To avoid adding to the violence and turmoil, the best things I know to do are add a new recipe and turn to poetry.

Response

Fear is hand delivered:
trench-coated high
schoolers, hijackers,
car bombers,
suicidal shooters.

Fighting to feel safe
is like eating gravy with a fork.

Get on a plane.
Go to class.
Drop off the kids.
Cross the street.
See what happens.

Life doesn’t follow
an ascending trajectory.

Fearing and fighting
are not our only options.
We can choose faith —
drop our guards
and our guns.

We won’t feel safe, secure
or even in control.
Waging peace
has never been
for the faint of heart.

Peace,
Milton

I found a new blog recently called Poetry Thursday. They have all kinds of cool stuff — columnists, writing prompts, thoughts on poetry, and poems themselves. One of the posts this week talked about the villanelle, a very strict poetic form that requires not only a specific rhyme scheme, but also the repetition of particular lines. Two of the best known villanelles are Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night” and Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art.”

The form attracted me today as a metaphor for life. In these days full of violence and questioning, it struck me that we have to work to find a form for our expression and action. As we try to figure out how to respond to the world around us on multiple levels, we need some sort of rhyme scheme, if you will: some way to not only articulate our faith but to give it form in a way that connects us in the same manner that a great poem speaks from deep to deep.

All of that said, I took my shot at a villanelle today — my first successful effort. I don’t claim to be anywhere close to Thomas or Bishop, nor do I claim it necessarily lives up to the metaphor; I’m just putting it out there.

Blogganelle

I call my blog “don’t eat alone”
and wish for friends at every meal
as I keep cooking in our home

or at the Inn that I don’t own
my joy with food I can’t conceal
I call my blog “don’t eat alone”

the kitchen is where love is grown
at least, for me, that’s been the deal
and so I cook to make a home

‘cause home is not a place I’ve known
since I grew up on wing and wheel
I call my blog “don’t eat alone”

the ache for home lives in my bones
belonging I most want to feel
so I keep cooking my way home

following crumbs that love has strewn
to what is real – (more than ideal)
I call my blog “don’t eat alone”
as I keep cooking in our home

Peace,
Milton