don't eat alone

Ash Wednesday

I didn’t grow up knowing much about Lent, much less observing it. The word sounded oddly like the stuff that collects in your belly button when you wear a fuzzy sweatshirt. My first real encounter with the power of the season was through an Episcopal colleague in Fort Worth. She was the youth minister at the Episcopal church near the Baptist church I was serving and she invited me to the Ash Wednesday service and shared with me her own sense of power and meaning in both the service and the season. I started sneaking into the back of other Anglican services and found great meaning in the ritual of the service and the contour of the ecclesiastical year.

About the same time, I wrote a letter to Madeleine L’Engle, who was a lifelong friend –even though she didn’t know me – because of her wonderful book, A Wrinkle in Time, which Ms. Reedy, my fourth grade teacher in Lusaka, Zambia read to us at the end of each day. Madeleine wrote me back and we corresponded briefly, until I got a form letter from her after the death of her husband.

“He became sick at Epiphany,” she wrote, “ and he died just after Pentecost.”

I was struck by the way she marked time, with the difference in her words and saying he got sick in January and died in May. Her book, That Irrational Season, is a collection of linked essays that follow the church year expanding on the power marking time in a more sacred sense. True, the calendar is contrived somewhat, in the sense that Jesus’ life did not happen in such a particular order, yet that’s not the whole picture.

“Teach us to number our days,” the psalmist says. Moving from Advent to Lent to Pentecost to Ordinary Time (I love that name) is living out that prayer.

For me, the pilgrimage is one of reading, writing, and connecting. I have, over the last several years, developed a ritual of my own, which involves writing a thousand words a day about what I have found in that day. I’ve also learned to carry the words of others with me as I go. Here are my companions for this season:

The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring by Parker J. Palmer
Suffer the Little Voices, poems by Nathan Brown
Talking the Walk: Letting Christian Language Live Again by Marva Dawn
Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L’Engle
Tell Me a Story: The Life-Shaping Power of Our Stories by Daniel Taylor
Life Work by Donald Hall
Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller (still haven’t finished it!)

Some of the books are well worn and marked up from reading and re-reading, some are new adventures for me; all seem to be good bread for the journey.

Frederick Buechner says, “Faith is a journey without maps.” Lent, for me, is a journey within the Journey, a living metaphor for all of my life, an intentional time of focus and reflection to remember, as the old saying goes, who I am and whose I am.

I’m starting the journey already tired. I have a sense, somehow, that life may look very different on the other side of Easter than it does right now. Part of that sense is I need it to look different. I’m moving at a pace right now that I can’t maintain. I’m also trying to discern how best to live my life so that I’m feeding and expressing the deepest passions of my heart. Over the past four of five years, much of my Lenten journey has had to do with coming to terms with my depression. This winter has given me a bit of a respite from that, for whatever reason, so I’m charting some different territory, for which I’m grateful. Though I’m tired, I’m not without some energy.

And so I wonder, “How do I get there from here?”

The question sounds as if I know where I’m going. I don’t, other than to say I know this is a journey through the Cross to the Resurrection. Part of any journey is knowing what to hang on to and what to let go. Along with my faith, I know to hang on to Ginger; other than her (and, of course, the schnauzers), the rest is up for grabs. I’m looking for a conversion experience, a transformation, a deep encounter with my God.

My new blog-friend, Beth, wrote this week about living in the context of “never getting over what Jesus has done for us.” Yes. I want to live like I will never get over Love.

We mark Ash Wednesday at our church with a bread and soup fellowship supper and then a service. Ashes are not necessarily a part of Congregational tradition, so we use other symbols of commitment and contrition. Tonight, however, I have to miss the service because this is one of my days at the restaurant, where it is just plain Wednesday. Some of the folks who will come into the pub and the restaurant tonight may be coming from church, but most will not. What focus I find to begin my journey will be in how I choose to frame the evening. So, tonight I’m going to consider each meal I make an offering. Though I won’t see the faces of those whose food I’m preparing, I’m going to imagine that we are all at a big table – with the folks from church, those of you who are reading here, my friends and family in faraway places – and I am helping to prepare the meal that calls us all together.

What makes work sacred is not the work, but the heart of the worker.

I’m headed to work expecting today to not be just another Wednesday; I’m beginning my Lenten Journey expecting it to not be just another forty days. I want my eyes, ears, and heart to be open to all there is to find in burning bushes, pregnant silences, deep ritual, and daily work. I want to be changed.

Hear my prayer, O Lord: how do I get there from here?

Peace,
Milton

It’s hard to write when you feel stupid.

I’ve run up against something I didn’t know about that should have been on my radar. I’m deeply disturbed, convicted, and dumb.

It’s also hard to write when you have too strong an agenda.

I’m pissed. I want to preach, to rant, to tell everyone what they should do – not particularly compelling reading.

About thirty minutes after I heard the symphony of trucks on Monday, I heard a report on Marketplace that disturbed me, to say the least. The story had to do with a lawsuit filed against Nestle, Cargill, and Archer Daniels Midland for their connection to child slavery on the cocoa farms in Ivory Coast. The suit is being brought on behalf of three boys who escaped the horror, with hopes that it will become a class action lawsuit to move these corporations beyond “studying the problem,” which they have been doing for years, to moving to a fair trade model that would not allow for slavery in any form.

I had no idea.

Some of the specifics I heard in the story and found in some other material are:
70% of the cocoa used in America comes from Ivory Coast;
90% of the cocoa grown in Ivory Coast is connected to child slavery;
though new to me, it’s not a new problem.

I’ve spent the last hour chasing down links, trying to learn more. I’m overwhelmed by what I’ve found. Rather than repeat it all, I offer these links so you can read for yourself.
“Why slavery still exists: those along the ‘chocolate chain’ put blame on someone else”
“Chocolate and Slavery”
“Fair Trade Chocolate”

I’m just trying to figure out what to do with the fact that I’m killing children when I buy M&M’s.

Unfortunately, there’s no hyperbole in that statement. Tim Bergquist, president of International Chocolate Company, said it this way: “Every time one closes his eyes and buys a product made by children, then he is also responsible. He becomes an accomplice.”

Ginger, my wife, put it more succinctly: “No more chocolate.”

And Valentine’s Day is next week. This year we’ll be skipping the Reese’s Hearts.

Every trip to the supermarket, it seems, is a test of faith. Globalization means that my picking up grapes from Chile in the dead of winter means some poor farmer is taking it in the face. I have more fresh produce available to me in the dead of a New England winter than the people who live in the countries that grow the stuff ever get to see themselves. So I’ve joined the growing band of folks who are working hard to figure out how to eat more locally and challenge the big corporations.

But this chocolate thing goes to a whole different level.

Children are being sold as slaves, being beaten and killed for not working fast enough, just so I have ninety-seven inexpensive candy options when I step up to the register at CVS. Kids are dying for candy.

What in hell are we doing?

I know I’m late to the game in adding my voice to the chorus of concerned folks demanding change. But now I know and I can’t keep quiet.

When I lived in Dallas, my roommate and I decided to make a concerted effort to quit adding salt to our food, since both of us came from families with heart issues. We decided the best way to do it was to quit calling it salt; we called it “White Death.” If we wanted to salt our food, we had to say, “Please pass the White Death.” We soon cured ourselves of the desire to use the stuff.

Maybe it’s time to say, “You want a Child Killer?” instead of “You want a candy bar?”

I know this is raw. It’s how I feel.

Peace,
Milton

Today I’m cooking for a Teacher Appreciation Dinner at church and I’m making fresh pasta (report and recipes tomorrow), which brings me to pass on another poem shared with me by another friend. She found it through the Writer’s Almanac. The poet is Kate Scott, from her book Stitches.

Pasta

In the yellow kitchen her pink hands
play with creamy dough. Squares of sun frame
things that shine; spoons, cups, hair.

She sits the fat belly on the table.
She pokes it with one finger, it dimples.

Stroked with flour, her rolling pin
works roundness to flatness,
teases out a thin cream sheet.

She picks up the sheet with a nimble pinch,
feeds it into the teeth of the steel machine.

She turns the handle, smiling at me
Though I know she is tired, not very happy.
She hangs the frail strips on chairs, on doors.

As the dampness lifts they start to flutter.
She hangs them lightly over her arm, padding to the stove.

She boils water, opens wine, puts vegetable in pots.
Lights click. Smells blossom.
Everything feels suddenly invited.

Dinner is at 7:00 in the Parish Hall. We’ll save you a seat.

Peace,
Milton

This poem was passed along by a friend from long ago: Sarah McManus Bickle. Her first email did not say who wrote it. When I inquired, i found out she did! Sarah is an ESL teacher at Jasper High School in Dallas, Texas.

Great work, Sarah!

How Black Bean Tacos Saved My Life

In the beginning there was Seven Meat Gumbo,
a thick mess of something my cousins had brought home
-my big cousins with their guns, Coors hats, and waders –
I don’t remember how it tasted, but it was the pageantry,
the story-telling men and the bread-baking women
all laughing in the kitchen,
the delicious chaos that impressed me the most.

Next, I guess, was Christmas fudge,
a more orderly endeavor wherein Grandma was commandant.
Glasses perched low, she directed us:
Grandpa and Dad cracked (and ate) the pecans,
Mom kept the baby, and I studiously stirred and licked my fingers.

Then came the nineties, and the suburbs,
and it was grilled chicken and rice for the entire decade,
punctuation coming in form of canned green beans, peas,
perhaps a green salad.
It was a sad time.

In college, I wasted away on a diet of
soft serve ice cream and tuna fish sandwiches
until I could bear it no longer.
I ventured into our low-rent neighborhood’s corner grocery store,
where women with long black braids carried fat babies from aisle to aisle.
I followed them, watching their actions like Columbus’s men
must have watched the Tainos, incredulous that the Indians
survived the suspicious tomato.

I went home with cilantro, jalapenos, cumin, black beans, limes,
and a dollar fifty dozen of fresh tortillas.
My kitchen sang. Ancient aunts, country cousins, and my grandmother
rose up in the steam from my skillet, though their accents had changed a bit.

So in this way a talent came to me like sourdough starter or live coals,
the gift of nourishment. Fat roots reached up from the kitchen floor to claim me.

Here’s to being claimed in the kitchen.

Peace,
Milton

Last week I had a small catering gig for a gathering of the In-Care students for the Southeast Area of the Mass. Conference of the UCC. In-care students are our seminarians. Various congregations take them “in-care,” which means we provide support and encouragement. If you are going to support and encourage people, you gotta feed ’em. Last year the job fell my way because we had to have it at our house at the last minute and I ended up being the cook. This year they hired me on purpose.

They wanted some sort of pick up food for breakfast, along with coffee and fruit. I made the World’s Easiest Monkey Bread, but was also on the lookout for something with a little more flair. Thanks to Cookin’ in the ‘Cuse, a great food blog I found through my connection to Real Live Preacher, I found a recipe for Breakfast Cookies, which I adapted a bit for my purposes. (You can read her recipe here.)

For lunch I made an Israeli couscous dish, a winter salad, pumpkin apple soup, and this lentil vegetable soup.

While I cooked and cleaned, they met. I could not hear specifics from the room, but I could pick up a vibe. What I loved most was, as the day wore on, the level of laughter increased.

Peace,
Milton

When I was growing up, Saturdays meant Taco Salad for lunch.

My mother made this wonderful mixture of beef, beans, lettuce, cheese, and Fritos that may have mostly consisted of opening cans and packages, but tasted like home. We never got tired of Saturday lunches. It is still one of my favorite meals. I don’t make it every week (more like every couple of months), but even for Ginger and I it connects to something beyond the ingredients in the bowl.

But what?

My mother is the other cook in my family of origin. We still swap recipes and remind each other of meals gone by. How she re-members those Saturdays (how she puts the pieces of our family back together) is not the same as my re-membrance. For her, a bowl of Taco Salad recreates the memory of a family once closely knit and now scattered to the winds. I recall a family that ate and laughed together but one who did not know much how to really tell each other who we were.

Let me rephrase: I did not know how to tell them who I was.

Saturday lunch bounced back into my consciousness because I’ve been reading Suffer the Little Voices, a new book of poems by my friend, Nathan Brown, published by Greystone Press. (Read a review of his first book of poetry here.) This morning at breakfast, I read “Soul Savers”:

I gaze back at the pain and
disdain we felt for “the lost”
in covert planning sessions
we called Bible studies. Then

I turn my head away with a jerk
from the sight of my old church
in a weak and strained attempt
to push down the past stupidity —

a stupidity constructed through
millenniums of bad dogma,
which was “not busy livin’ . . .
just busy dyin’,” as Bob Dylan,

a theologian of different cut,
tried to tell us in the years
we couldn’t look past his
prophetic, soul-felt addictions.

My sighs and shaking head
signify the inevitable departure
from that, from them, not Jesus
[still my favorite hippie socialist

and, yes, Son of God].
But, I do realize, I’m afraid,
that in the nouns and verbs
I now choose to express myself,

I’ve certainly lost them,
the “they” I once was.
And I’m struck with the fear
that now. . . it’s me they’re after.

Like Nathan, I grew up Southern Baptist. After years of watching the denomination implode and finding my faith community elsewhere, I am surprised how often I go back to those days to re-member them with something other than anger or disdain. I put back together the memories that helped shape me and taught me how to live in the grace of God, much like I go back for another helping of Taco Salad. Though it is not a place I could stay, it is where I am from.

The choice, it seems, is between re-membering my life — putting the pieces together in some meaningful fashion — and dis-membering it — cutting off the sections that aren’t comfortable, I’m not proud of, or embarrass me. But I don’t want to live as an emotional or spiritual amputee. I need all of my days stacked up to help me remember who I am.

In my weaker moments, I look back on my family days and think, “They didn’t understand I was not like them.” Yet, I am “them.” To say so doesn’t mean buying into an idealized memory of what family was; we were not perfect, but we did make memories that marked each other. We are family.

I have the recipes to prove it.

Peace,
Milton

PS — If you would like to get a hold of Nathan’s books, you can contact him at nub@ou.edu. Tell him I sent you.

My friend Patty sent me a link to an article in the Boston Globe which began:

“Last year around this time, a Cardiff University psychologist named Dr. Cliff Arnall scored some publicity with his declaration that January 24 is the most depressing day of the year.”

Alex Beam’s wonderful column went on to describe the mathematical formula this guy had configured to deduce today was going to be The Suckiest Day of the Year. Beam had an alternate formula designed to bring a different result: read the Globe, ditch work, watch rerun of the Daily Show and the last half of the Law & Order rerun, take a nap and eat at Anna’s Taqueria.

Our local NPR station annouced this morning the Globe was taking a chain saw to their staff and gutting the paper to try and save money. I hope Alex springs for the grande burrito.

Today was a good day for me because I got to go back to my iconography class after a long break of six months. My teacher, Christopher Gosey, lives in Manchester, New Hampshire, so I had a bit of a drive. We met in the basement of the Russian Orthodox church. I am trying to finish an icon of St. Nicholas for a friend. Chris was playing a CD of an Orthodox liturgy as he guided me through the process of laying down the layers of paint that will make up the shading on the face. This particular step always freaks me out a bit because the first couple of applications make the face look a lot like Tammy Faye Bakker. Yet, somehow, with each application of the colors, a face begins to emerge and the icon takes on personality.

I drove back for staff meeting and then met Ginger at the home of some folks in her church where the deacons were meeting for a fellowship dinner. Once again, church folks around a table together; I knew it would be good. Jim and Nancy, our hosts, served Spaghetti Pie — good comfort food. And a good time was had by all.

Law & Order:SVU just came on and The Daily Show will follow, but the formula for my day was head north, write icons, take a quick nap with the schnauzers, and have dinner with friends.

January 24 turned out pretty well.

Peace,
Milton

I don’t even think I knew what couscous was until about ten years ago.

One of my first encounters was hearing a three-year old’s answer to his mother’s question of what he wanted for dinner: “Couscous.” Next thing I knew, she had pulled out this container of microscopic grains, poured boiling water over them, let them soak up the water, fluffed them a bit, and handed them to her kid.

What I have since learned about couscous is it originates from Morocco and is made from semolina flour (or a mixture of semolina and durum), which is what is used to make pasta. Making couscous from scratch is hard and arduous work; I don’t know anyone who does it. One article I read said even in North Africa only the poorest people still make it by hand. Thanks to the French occupation of North Africa, the dish traveled across Europe and into Palestine and Israel.

About two years ago, I was in Whole Foods and found “Israeli couscous,” which is a much larger size, though also a pasta. It is also called pearl couscous. I like that name: I’m keeping pearls in my pantry. The pearls are much more versatile and easier to handle. It has become an important part of my diet on the what-do-I-want-to-eat-that-won’t-take-long- and-is-good-for-me days.

Like today. My lunch looked something like this:

3/4 c water, brought to a boil
1/4 c craisins (dried cranberries) added to cold water before boiling
1/2 c Israeli couscous, added to boiling water

Cover, lower to a simmer, and let cook for about five minutes, or until most of water is gone; turn off heat and let sit for another five minutes. While it’s resting, dig through your fridge and figure out what you want to add. Today that was:

a handful of fresh spinach leaves, torn
some diced pieces of leftover pork tenderloin
some mandarin orange segments
some Gorgonzola cheese crumbles

I put the couscous in a mixing bowl, stirred in the spinach leaves to let them wilt a bit, and then added the rest of the stuff when the couscous had cooled a little.

It tastes even better when you share a few of the pork chunks with your favorite schnauzers.

Who knows what any Israelis might think of what I did with my bowl of little pearls, but it tasted like manna to me.

Peace,
Milton

I’m working two jobs right now: one as a cook at the Red Lion Inn and the other as part-time associate pastor at a UCC church in a nearby town. Together, the two jobs take up most of my evenings. In the past few days I have been a part of gatherings related to both my vocations, and both gatherings related to church life.

Monday night our church cabinet — about twenty-five folks — met to go over the budget for the coming year, but what erupted through the budget discussion was the ongoing hurt and anger that is swirling through our congregation — or parts of it — right now. The flashpoint is that some members are withholding their pledges for the coming year because things aren’t going the way they want, which has created a $45,000 gap between pledges and what we need to spend next year to be the church we want to be. The gap makes all of us edgy; the meeting moved from finances to frustration. Though the angry folks are in the minority, their venom is viral: the whole room was infected. I don’t think anyone slept well Monday night.

Our UCC area minister is coming to mediate a meeting next week to help us figure out where to go from here.

Last night, I got to be the chef for a “Cooking Class” for the women’s association of another UCC church in another nearby town. About twenty-five women gathered at one home, I cooked and talked about what I was cooking, and they — OK, we — ate and drank and told stories. When I told Robert, the chef I work for, I was doing the class he cautioned me that only about a third of the folks who come to such an evening are coming to learn; most come to eat and hang out with their friends. He’s right.

I had put together a menu I was proud of:

Winter Salad
Curried Squash Soup
Molasses Marinated Pork Tenderloin
Three Potato au Gratin
Maple Glazed Brussel Sprouts
Sheet Apple Pie with White Pepper Ice Cream

I also made recipe booklets for each of the participants. They brought the wine and the stories.

Most of them listened as I introduced the evening and put the salad together. Most were still listening while I put the soup together. By then, the house was full of good smells and good conversation; by the time we got to the entree they wanted to eat and be together. I had fun just watching the friendship swirl around me. I filled my plate and sat down to listen to them tell me where the meal took them.

In two nights I got to see church at its best and its most difficult. It makes me wish we were having a pot-luck dinner next Wednesday. At least it would start to tear down the walls. When you start to think about an upcoming meeting and you can’t eat because of the feelings, you know you’re in trouble.

Other than the food, the fundamental difference between the two gatherings was in the first meeting people kept talking about “not being heard”; in the second, people were mostly interested in listening. Therein lies the difference between community and catastrophe.

Years ago, I heard Tony Campolo speak and he said, “You have two choices in any relationship: you can respond in power or in love.” As simple as it sounds, his statement has held up in my experience. We either do what we do to get our way, or feed our fear; or we create the possibility of deeper relationship by trusting one another.

Faith is a team sport (even though there is an “i” in faith). There are always two or three gathered when it comes to figuring out how to be the people of God. We are called together to love and be loved.

Like Andrew Peterson sings,

After the last disgrace
After the last lie to save some face
After the last brutal jab from a poison tongue
After the last dirty politician
After the last meal down at the mission
After the last lonely night in prison

There is love, love, love, love
There is love, love, love, love
There is love

And in the end, the end is
Oceans and oceans of love and love again
We’ll see how the tears that have fallen
Were caught in the palms of the Giver of love and the Lover of all
And we’ll look back on these tears as old tales

I trust the anger of Monday night’s meeting is not the last word.
I believe with all my heart that the joy of last night’s meeting is the best word.

Peace,
Milton

My friend Gordon has taught me most of what I know about blogging.

He’s taught me a bunch of other stuff, too.

He has a blog called Real Live Preacher, which has some great stuff, not the least of which is a recent posting entitled, “Unmade Children and Never Written Words,” and it’s one of those ideas I hoped I would think of one day, even though it hasn’t really crossed my mind so far.

Go read it.

Peace,
Milton