don't eat alone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of the best parts of my day is coming home to Lola and Gracie, our two miniature Schnauzers. In the midst of all that is going on, I offer a poem on the lighter side because it’s where I needed to go today.

taking a nap with my schnauzers

tuesday afternoon
my day off
we have finished
our lunch and retired
to the sectional sofa
some people are at work
others are out walking
both people and dogs
but we are not concerned
we’re going to sleep

my dogs rest more
easily than I
they don’t weather
any guilt for the birds
who won’t be chased
the passers-by
who won’t be scolded
the toilet paper
that will go unshredded
while they slumber

Gracie lies with her head
tucked in behind mine
she whispers her secrets
then stretches out
on her back
all four feet
flying in the air
as though the couch
were a magic carpet or
a slow moving raft

Lola climbs on top
of the back cushion
a little night watchman
taking her station
not wanting to miss a thing
when I have settled
she will move down
next to me
spine against thigh
and snore

once I’ve dozed off
they wake each other
and watch to see
if my leg twitches
or my arm jerks
and turn to each
other and say
“people dream,”
then they slowly
close their eyes

Peace,
Milton

We are headed into a difficult week.

We got word a few days ago that Ginger’s father has to have a mass removed from his lung. He’s already survived a battle with throat cancer. When a spot showed up a couple of years ago, they tested and said it was scar tissue. Now there’s a mass. Over the past year, we have watched him begin to slip slowly into Alzheimer’s. Now there’s a mass. Ginger goes to Birmingham on Tuesday to be there for the surgery on Thursday.

For obvious reasons, Ginger carried all of these things into the pulpit with her this morning. She was preaching from the lectionary, so she was talking about Jesus telling the disciples, after they had fished unsuccessfully, to cast out their nets again in deeper water. She began her sermon this way:

On February 3, 1937, she was born in the south the third child of four, the baby girl, and was very cute. However, this particular combination could prove to be a hindrance. As a result of my mother’s birth date, birthplace, and birth order, she was well loved and cared for — even spoiled — until her father died when she was fifteen. Then she (without much choice or option) became the primary responsible party of the household. Her little brother was too young and the others were expressing their grief in a myriad of ways. She had to cast her net, if you will, into deeper waters than she had ever known.

Through the years, my mother continued to take care of her mother and siblings and watched them die one by one. Now she is caring for my father who has Alzheimer’s and who will have major lung surgery this week. Again she is casting a net in deep and unknown waters as she learns to take on my father’s role of driving roads beyond their immediate community and as she faces the possibility of living alone for the first time in her life. She can curl and become immobilized or, like the disciples, she can move into uncharted territory casting her net into waters that seem to be without.

It’s true: my mother-in-law turned seventy yesterday. Of our four parents, she is the last to do so and, because we made a big deal for the other three, she has reminded us for several years that her seventieth birthday was coming. Ginger spent several hours (no, days) selecting, collecting, wrapping, and mailing seventy presents as my mother-in-law hoped she would, since we did a similar thing for my father years ago. Ginger spent an hour and a half on the phone yesterday while Rachel opened her presents with glee. Now, in the first week of her seventy-first year, she is taking her husband to the hospital.

Whatever my father-in-law understands or doesn’t understand about what is going on with him, he is being quintessentially himself. There has never been a day in his life when he didn’t feel “fine, outstanding, wonderful,” regardless of the circumstances. When they talk to him about the surgery, he simply says, “Whatever will be, will be.” This is a man who trusts God with the reckless abandon of a child jumping off a porch into the arms of a waiting parent. Though all of us have a strong sense of God’s presence in these days, he is not feeling the burden of the questions that have fallen on the rest of us. The doctors are operating to learn what is going on inside of Reuben as much as they are to remove the mass.

It’s a strange word. The dictionary gives lots of definitions; two stood out to me:

• A lump or aggregate of coherent material: a cancerous mass.
• Public celebration of the Eucharist in the Roman Catholic Church and some Protestant churches.

In one of English’s little ironies, the word for cancer and Communion are the same.

Our opening hymn this morning was “God of Grace and God of Glory,” one of my favorites. Some of the words in the second verse stuck out for me today:

From the fears that long have bound us,
Free our hearts to faith and praise.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage
For the living of these days,
For the living of these days.

Whatever happens on Thursday may create as many questions as it does answers. We are living through something that requires faith, wisdom, and courage of us. Though the prospects seem about as hopeful as the disciples’ after a long night of fruitless fishing, Ginger is right: the best we can do is head into deeper water and cast our nets, trusting that God will provide sustenance for the living of these days, whatever they may hold.

Peace,
Milton