Home Blog Page 220

lenten journal: don’t read alone

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Consider the lilies,” Jesus said.

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

Jesus said that, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I guess I won’t read alone either.

Peace,
Milton

waiting for billy collins

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
2

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

Waiting for Billy Collins
for Jack

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace,
Milton

let’s go to the movies

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
13

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


Bottle Rocket (1996)

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

Miss Firecracker (1989)

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

Cry, the Beloved Country (1995)

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

The Elephant Man (1980)

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

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)

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

The Killing Fields (1984)

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

The In-Laws (1979)

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

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

Peace,
Milton

farther and faster

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace,
Milton

near miss

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
1

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

It was cancelled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace,
Milton

heavenly day

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even if it is just for a little while.

Peace,
MIlton

a better picture

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
4

Here’s what we know tonight — the big news first: Reuben’s pathology reports came back this afternoon and they showed no lymph node involvement. They found nothing beyond the tennis ball-sized tumor they took out when they removed the lobe of his lung, even though the type of cancer has shown itself to be quite agressive based on how quickly the tumor grew. What that means is he does not have to undergo any other treatment but will have to go for regular tests. We are grateful. I got a message from a good friend who is also an oncology nurse who talked abut how great it was that Reuben only had to live “under surveilance.” I don’t think I ever considered that to be a hopeful phrase until today.

Reuben moved to a room on Saturday and is beginning to walk the long road of recovery — literally. His Alzheimer’s seems to show itself in his “sundowning” most every evening: he becomes more disoriented as the sun goes down, which is a quite common condition with Alzheimer’s patients. He is in good spirits and is only grumpy when people try to give him too many instructions. I told Ginger I thought that was more of a Brasher family trait rather than something having to do with being in the hospital. (You can’t believe how many times I’ve told that joke.)

There are still more hills to get over and more road we cannot yet see and what we see today is hopeful and has offered some relief. “Don’t worry about tomorrow,” Jesus said, “for today has enough trouble of its own.” Those words are deeply resonant tonight.

One of the coolest things Ginger told me was when she went to the mailbox on Saturday there were seven cards for Reuben and Rachel and all of them were from our church here in Marshfield. Their outpouring of support reminds me of the way the early Christians were describled by those outside of the church: “Look at how they love one another.”

We feel loved and blessed and strengthened. Thanks to all of you for your prayers and support as we prepare to get over the next hill.

Peace,
Milton

through a glass darkly

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
6

Reuben went into surgery about eleven, Birmingham time, and the surgery was over around three. The good news was he came through the surgery without any complications, which was one of our concerns beforehand. The hard news is they had to take one lobe from his lung and the mass in that lobe was malignant. Our new word for today is adenocarcinoma. The more detailed pathology report and the tests on his lymph nodes will not be back for a couple of days, so we must wait before we can see what the next steps might be.

I sat in the coffee shop this afternoon trying to write as I waited and could do little more than wait. Tonight, I don’t have more words than these. I’m grateful for the prayers and words of solidarity. I’m also aware of some of you who are facing harsh realities of your own in these days. Please know my prayers are with you.

Some day, Paul said, we will see face to face, but not now. Not now.

Peace,
Milton

working

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
1

My day at work was different than usual because I spent it in the function kitchen getting ready for a big wedding expo we have this weekend. The Inn hosts over one hundred weddings a year and they throw a couple of these bashes to let the wedding couples taste all the things they can choose for their dinners. The day was different mostly because I was by myself. The function hall is a different building than the restaurant. I like the work because I can get lost in the tasks at hand and the time passes quickly. I tuned the radio to NPR and started on my list: I made three different kinds of soups, mashed potatoes, and pan fried German potatoes (for the restaurant), pulled the stems out of 250 mushrooms, cut up five boxes of fingerling potatoes, roasted chicken to make chicken salad, and finished making the demi-glaze I started on Monday. There’s a calming effect to being so focused on the task at hand because I’m so captured by the moment. The repetition doesn’t get boring to me because the motion is useful and purposeful. I’m doing good work.

When I’m on the line in the restaurant, there is a sense of immediate gratification because I finish a dish and then put it up for the server to take to the waiting customer. I get to see fairly immediate results. Preparing for a function has a delayed payoff. Several days from now I will see my work begin to take its final form. For now, I am called to find satisfaction in the preparation. That I enjoy cutting up potatoes and pulling the stems out of mushrooms lets me know I’m doing what I was made to do.

I also love that I’m getting better at my job. Working in the function kitchen allows me to learn about another aspect of professional cooking, which will make me better all the way around. I’m grateful that I get to do what I love. I know that’s a gift.

Peace,
Milton

all we can see

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
8

Ginger’s on her way to Birmingham and I’m sitting in Panera, trying to get my post written before I go home to console Schnauzers, which will take up the rest of the evening. They hate suitcases.

When we moved from Texas to Massachusetts sixteen and a half years ago, one of the biggest adjustments was the difference in landscape. There are places in Texas where you can wake up in the morning, look west, and see what people are doing on their porches in Tucson. The reason the stars at night are big and bright is you have a 360-degree view of the horizon: you can see them all. Massachusetts is a little more claustrophobic. If there aren’t hills, there are trees preventing you from seeing what’s around the bend. Though things – and people – are packed much closer together, there’s no place to get a clear view of it all.

If life is a highway, then it’s a lot more like Massachusetts than Texas. The other thing about Massachusetts that makes that statement even more true is we don’t believe in street signs. If you are new here, you never know where you are.

Ginger is flying across America without being able to see over the next hill, which for our family is called Thursday. She has yet to talk to the doctor or get a clear picture of what the surgery is going to entail, but, even if she knew that, we still can’t see beyond Thursday. Some time, probably in the afternoon, we will top the hill and see what the next stretch of life looks like. More than likely, there will be another obstacle keeping us from seeing too far down the road.

Sunday after church, I was talking with someone about the things I had written about Darfur. She said she didn’t know what to feel other than overwhelmed. I said what I’m trying to figure out is what lies beyond overwhelmed and helpless. The more we talk and pray together, the more we will be able to come to a place we cannot now see.

I remember hearing Bonnie Hunt on Letterman several years ago talking about writing comedy. She said the challenge is to get past the easy stuff, which is the sexual and vulgar stuff. So, when she goes into a writing meeting, they take the topic or idea and let themselves get all the vulgarity out of their systems, understanding they have not yet really begun to write until they get over that.

I’ve always imagined some of the first white people to get to the Grand Canyon coming over a small rise and all of a sudden being at the edge of that giant rift. In my mind, the old timer turns to his wife and says, “Well, Martha, I think we’re going to have to go around.” Either that, or they settled there and opened a bed and breakfast for the others they knew would be coming.

I resigned from my job as a minister because I believed I was answering God’s call on my life to follow my passion to make good food for people. Twelve weeks later I got laid off. Two weeks after that, I went back to work with a raise. All the planning in the world couldn’t have gotten me ready for that turn of events.

If such is the topography of life, we have to choose how we are going to navigate and travel. Last night coming home from work, I got behind a car going thirty-five on a road where the speed limit is forty-five and the Massachusetts drivers add on another ten miles per hour. Let me be clear: thirty-five was their top speed. Every time the road curved in the least, they hit their brakes, as though that somehow made them safer. What they didn’t realize is they turned themselves into a hazard. The other extreme is to go pedal to the metal until we top one hill too many and end up going all Thelma and Louise into the canyon below.

Both approaches are based on fallacies. Being overly cautious doesn’t change the truth that life is not safe; being cautious is not the same as being intentional. Living without caution doesn’t change the truth that freedom is not the same thing as license.

One of the things I love about Mark’s account of Jesus’ life is most of Jesus’ contact with people happens in the context of interruptions. When he got up in the morning, the disciples didn’t greet him with a schedule for the day: “First, you heal the blind man. Then on the way to lunch, a woman is going to touch the hem of your garment and be healed, and then you will feed the Five Thousand.” Jesus just started walking and as he topped each rise he dealt with what was in front of him – all the way to Golgotha.

Eighteen years ago last Sunday was my first date with Ginger. I took her to see Lyle Lovett back when Lyle had one record and played really small rooms. When I took her back to her apartment, I said, “I really like you and want to see you some more, but this next month is crazy and I don’t know when we’ll be able to get together.” By the end of February – twenty-four days later – I had seen her everyday but two. If life is a highway, I started taking a new way home – past her house. Now, eighteen years later, I don’t know how to think about life without her in it.

Rachel and Reuben have been married for fifty years.

We talk about “getting over” illnesses and problems as though getting over means getting past. Sometimes, like this Thursday, getting over means coming to terms with what’s ahead on this journey without maps. The significant markers are those John used to describe Jesus: “Knowing he had come from God and was going to God . . .” With those brackets around our lives, we know there is love beyond whatever is over the hill.

Peace,
Milton

1...219220221...248Page 220 of 248
© Newspaper WordPress Theme by TagDiv