The blog is taking on a new look because it was the only way I could figure out to deal with the disappearance of the sidebar on the other template. As much as I like blogging, that sentence is so boring it makes my teeth hurt. I know way more about HTML code than I want to — not that I know a lot; it’s just more than I want to.

Anyway, I think the new look is going to work. I appreciate your feedback.

I will be back tomorrow with something more interesting than cyber mechanics.

Peace,
Milton

One of the biggest hurdles to clear as a writer is the first sentence. You want to grab the attention of your reader and pull them into your story. One of the first authors I remember as a kid — Snoopy — began his work with, “It was a dark and stormy night.”

That is the way perhaps my favorite book of all time — A Wrinkle in Time — actually begins. And that story still has a hold on me. Back in the late eighties, I came across a book who used that opening line as its title, claiming it contained “the funniest opening lines from the worst novels never written.” I bought the book and learned about The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. (I’m sad to report the book and it’s sequels are all out of print.) I also loaned the book to someone years ago and forgot about it and the contest until The Goddess reminded me of it on her blog. Bulwer-Lytton used the sentence ito begin a novel he finished, and thus gave the inspiration for the contest over a century later:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Oh, yeah, baby!

The winning entry for this year comes from Jim Guigli of Carmichael, California:

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you’ve had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.

You can find the rest of the 2006 results here and a “lyttony” of winners over the years here. For my post today I offer a few of my favorites:

It had been a dark and stormy night, but as dawn began to light up the eastern sky, to the west the heavens suddenly cleared, unveiling a pale harvest moon that reposed gently atop the distant mesa like a pumpkin on a toilet with the lid down.
— Gerald R. Johnson, Vancouver, WA

Despite the vast differences it their ages, ethnicity, and religious upbringing, the sexual chemistry between Roberto and Heather was the most amazing he had ever experienced; and for the entirety of the Labor Day weekend they had sex like monkeys on espresso, not those monkeys in the zoo that fling their feces at you, but more like the monkeys in the wild that have those giant red butts, and access to an espresso machine.
— Dennis Barry, Dothan, AL

The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and pleasant for those who hadn’t heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it but your brain wasn’t reacting yet to let you know.
–Patricia E. Presutti, Lewiston, New York (1986 Winner)

Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek, shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit molding her body, which was as warm as the seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood; she was a woman driven–fueled by a single accelerant–and she needed a man, a man who wouldn’t shift from his views, a man to steer her along the right road, a man like Alf Romeo.
–Rachel E. Sheeley, Williamsburg, Indiana (1988 Winner)

The corpse exuded the irresistible aroma of a piquant, ancho chili glaze enticingly enhanced with a hint of fresh cilantro as it lay before him, coyly garnished by a garland of variegated radicchio and caramelized onions, and impishly drizzled with glistening rivulets of vintage balsamic vinegar and roasted garlic oil; yes, as he surveyed the body of the slain food critic slumped on the floor of the cozy, but nearly empty, bistro, a quick inventory of his senses told corpulent Inspector Moreau that this was, in all likelihood, an inside job.
–Bob Perry, Milton, Massachusetts (1998 Winner)

A small assortment of astonishingly loud brass instruments raced each other lustily to the respective ends of their distinct musical choices as the gates flew open to release a torrent of tawny fur comprised of angry yapping bullets that nipped at Desdemona’s ankles, causing her to reflect once again (as blood filled her sneakers and she fought her way through the panicking crowd) that the annual Running of the Pomeranians in Liechtenstein was a stupid idea.
— Sera Kirk, Vancouver, BC (2001 Winner)

On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs crooked and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree of annoyance that Angela had now almost attained.
— Rephah Berg, Oakland CA (2002 Winner)

They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably being a bland Cheddar and the white . . . Mozzarella, although it could possibly be Provolone or just plain American, as it really doesn’t taste distinctly dissimilar from the orange, yet they would have you believe it does by coloring it differently.
— Mariann Simms, Wetumpka, AL (2003 Winner)

Dolores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever skipping across smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an overdose of fluoride as a child which caused her to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred-pound barbell in a steroid-free fitness center.
–Linda Vernon, Newark, California (1990 Winner)

There are more where those came from; check them out and remember:

Grasshopper, the three secrets of life are as follows: first, keep your eyes and ears open; second: don’t tell everything you know.
— Andy Otes, Frenchs Forest NSW, Australia

Peace,
Milton

Ginger goes back to work today.

Her sabbatical and vacation have ended and she is getting ready to go to her office at the church. She woke up early and has been a bundle of activity all morning: she took Gracie to the beach for a walk and a prayer, washed her car and cleaned it out, did a couple of loads of laundry, and who knows what else — Lola and I slept through most of it.

I love watching her process because mine is so different. When I was teaching high school and it came time for a new year to begin, I would lay in bed and moan, “I don’t want to go back to school.”

“You’re the teacher;” she would say with a smile in her voice, “you sound like one of the students.”

I know returning to a job as relationally intense and complex as the pastorate after having had the chance to live for some time watching a clock without hands makes for harsh reentry. I also know, as I have listened to her prepare for today over the past couple of weeks, that she has missed seeing the smiles and faces of the folks at North Community Church and is truly at her best as a pastor, which is where her best self and what the world needs most from her intersect.

I’ve always admired her singular sense of calling. If purity in heart is “to will one thing,” as Kierkegaard put it, then she is as pure in heart as they come.

“Blessed are the pure in heart,” Jesus said, “for they shall see God.” I watch Ginger as she both works and plays and expect that if my Bible had illustrations, were I to look up that particular Beatitude I would find her picture. As for my own vocational experience, I think I know why there’s not a Beatitude that begins, “Blessed are those who want to try and do just about everything. . .”

Today, I send Ginger back to work with a poem — one by Mary Oliver, whom we both love:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Being a part of “the family of things” is as wonderful and as complicated as being a part of any family; it is both harsh and exciting. We have a great deal to say about how we choose to perceive and receive it. As we both head off to work today, Ginger to the church and I to the inn, we move in formation with the rest of our family, praying for eyes to see the world with imagination rather than buckling under the weight of obligation.

Peace,
Milton

My writing schedule is off this week because I’m working more at the Red Lion Inn. Robert, the head chef, had a chance to get away for a few days with his family and I’m filling in some of the shifts. He has been so generous in working with my schedule so I could go on our mission trip and to my in-laws’ fiftieth wedding anniversary party that I was more than happy to adjust how I would have spent these days.

What I want to tell you about is seeing Lyle Lovett last Thursday night. My first date with Ginger was to see Lyle Lovett at Caravan of Dreams in Fort Worth, Texas, a wonderful little club. Since then, we’ve seen him every year. He never disappoints. I will get a chance to post about the whole evening, but for today I would like to leave you with my nomination for our new national anthem, “If I Had a Boat”:

If I had a boat
I’d go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I’d ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat

If I were Roy Rogers
I’d sure enough be single
I couldn’t bring myself to marrying old Dale
It’d just be me and trigger
We’d go riding through them movies
Then we’d buy a boat and on the sea we’d sail

And if I had a boat
I’d go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I’d ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat

The mystery masked man was smart
He got himself a Tonto
‘Cause Tonto did the dirty work for free
But Tonto he was smarter
And one day said kemo sabe
Kiss my ass I bought a boat
I’m going out to sea

And if I had a boat
I’d go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I’d ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat

And if I were like lightning
I wouldn’t need no sneakers
I’d come and go wherever I would please
And I’d scare ’em by the shade tree
And I’d scare ’em by the light pole
But I would not scare my pony on my boat out on the sea

And if I had a boat
I’d go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I’d ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat

Peace,
Milton

Since our senior pastor is on vacation, I’ve preached three of the last four weeks. Since the Lectionary in August can’t seem to get away from “bread” passages, I’ve preached from some of my favorite scenes in the gospels. This week I realized I had created an inadvertent sermon miniseries on some of the miracles of Jesus: three weeks ago, I talked about the feeding of the five thousand; two weeks ago, Jesus’ healing of the man at the pool at Bethesda; this week, Jesus’ turning the water into wine at the wedding in Cana. I’m drawn to the accounts of Jesus’ miracles in the gospels because they speak to me of God’s creative and risky side, God’s effusive generosity and spontaneity, and maybe even a little of God’s mischief.

Yes, I know God is the Creator of All Things who breathed the universe into existence out of nothing, setting in motion an intricate and interconnected web of existence that continues to confound us at every level of life. And I know that part of the way we have come to terms with what we strain to comprehend is by identifying the order and patterns we can see and quantifying then. We have laws like the Law of Gravity or the Second Law of Thermodynamics (I never can remember what that one is); we have named everything from animals to asteroids; and we have set about trying to find a way to explain most everything through science and reason. All of that is good work and none of it leaves room for a guy to feed five thousand with a sack lunch, walk across the sea, heal a man with a few words, or change a hundred and eighty gallons of water into mighty fine wine.

He always had some mighty fine wine.

When I was a teenager, I lived, for a time, in Accra, Ghana. One Sunday, a Ghanaian seminary student was preaching. He was Indian by heritage and spoke English with a strong accent. “We cannot weigh God,” he said, “and we cannot measure God, which is a great disappointment to the scientists you know because they want to weigh and measure everything.” The scientists are not alone: there’s some of that in all of us. Most of us like to know what’s coming, like to be able to plan, like to feel some sense of structure and familiarity to life. One of the great paradoxes of our existence is the God who made us lean towards order is a God who is full of surprises and disguises, who loves to ambush us with grace and leave us with gifts we can accept but not explain.

Gail O’Day writes: “John 2:1-11 poses hard questions because the miracle challenges conventional assumptions about order and control, about what is possible, about where God is found and how God is known. Indeed, the impact of the miracle is lost if one does not entertain these and similar questions, because the force of the miracle derives precisely from its extraordinariness, from the dissonance it creates” (NIB IX 540).

The miracle described in John 2 is Jesus’ first recorded miracle. John begins his gospel by waxing eloquent about the Word becoming Flesh, describes Jesus calling his disciples and then recounts what Jesus did at Cana as a way of introducing who Jesus was and what he was about. One of my favorite renditions of the story of Jesus’ life is a play called The Cotton Patch Gospel, which retells John’s gospel as if Jesus had been born in Gainesville, Georgia and grown up in the South. As the wedding unfolds and Mary comes to Jesus and says, “They have no wine,” Jesus steps aside to pray and says to God, “You give me the task of saving the world and here I am playing bartender!”

However dissonant it feels to us, his mother thought it was an appropriate role. When Jesus seemed reluctant, she told the servants to follow his instructions. Just as he told the disciples to start handing out the loaves and fishes, and the crippled man to rise up and walk, Jesus told the servants to fill the six giant water jars with water and then fill their pitchers from them and serve the guests. They put in water and poured out wine – lots and lots of wine — and top shelf stuff so much that the guests accused their host of holding out on them. They thought the wine was gone and now there was almost two hundred gallons of the good stuff. Unless there were a couple of thousand people at the wedding, Jesus’ extravagance created enough wine to let the party go on for a long, long time.

God’s extravagance is the first stumbling block for us when it comes to miracles. Why have twelve baskets full of leftovers after feeding the five thousand? Wasn’t feeding them a big enough deal? If Jesus could change the properties of liquids so easily, why not have it happen in each guest’s glass? Why give the party a lifetime supply of Pinot Noir? I say stumbling block because we are created in God’s image and called to live like Jesus. If extravagance is the hallmark of our God, we have to come to terms with our unwillingness to live generously. God is extravagant; we are not – that trips us up every time.

We’re created in the image of a God who paints sunsets in so many shades of pink and orange that we don’t even have names for them. We’re created in the image of a God who built the universe out of particles smaller than we can detect and made them stretch out to be larger than we can fathom. We’re created in the image of a God who creates beauty in creatures deep in the rainforests and jungles, or at the bottom of the ocean, that we never see. We’re created in the image of a God who made wildflowers that bloom brilliantly for a couple of weeks a year, springs that flow constantly, hippos who bellow beautifully, and Schnauzers (one of my personal favorites). We’re created in the image of a go-for-broke-swing-for-the-fences-what -can-I-do-next-man-that-was-fun-do-you-know-how-much-I-love-you-you-ain-t-seen-nothing- yet-I-saw-this-and-knew-you’d-like-it-what-do-you-say-we-skip-school-and-go-to-the-beach- drive-with-the-windows-down-singing-at-the-top-of-your-lungs kind of God who does miracles and other things with an extravagance we can’t explain and we live much of our lives in fear. How can that be?

Jesus’ miracles are not the first indicator of God’s extravagance. When we look for it, we can see God has been the Ultimate Spendthrift since the beginning. In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard writes:

So I think about the valley. And it occurs to me that everything I have seen is wholly gratuitous. The giant water bug’s predations, the frog’s croak, the tree with the lights in it are not in any real sense necessary per se to the world or to its creator. Nor am I. The creation in the first place, being itself, is the only necessity, for which I would die, and I shall. The point about that being, as I know it here and see it, is that, as I think about it, it accumulates in my mind as an extravagance of minutiae. (129)

The creative and artistic extravagances we see all around us in creation becomes relational in Jesus, who incarnates God’s love and grace with the same kind of abandon. The first act – the first indicator of what kind of Messiah had come – was to keep the celebration going for one small wedding party. All of Jesus’ miracles have an intensely personal context. There were no grand gestures to rid the world of hurricanes, or eradicate all disease. Even when he calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee he did it because his disciples – his friends – were frightened. Though we may not be necessary to God (in the way Dillard describes), we are essential. Such is the nature of extravagant love: God doesn’t love us because God needs to or is required to; God loves us because God is Love and love thrives only in relationship.

“Be filled with the Spirit,” Paul wrote in Ephesians 5, “speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Then he says on more thing: “Subject yourselves to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

Actually, Paul finishes the chapter the same way he started it. In Ephesians 5:1 he says, “Be imitators of God.” When he wrote to the Philippians, he said, “Have the same mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus.”

We are called to be creatively extravagant in the way we act towards one another, speak to one another, pray for one another, share with one another, deal with one another, and help one another. John, in one of his letters, said it this way: “Little children, let us love one another.”

And may there always be some mighty fine wine – singing, “Joy to the world, all you boys and girls; joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea; joy to you and me.

Peace,
Milton

Ginger has an unusual attachment to her Wrangler. When she came back from the “southern sojourn” of her sabbatical, I drove her Jeep to Providence to pick her up. When she got to the car, she hugged it – she didn’t think I saw her. On these highs-in-the-seventies-cloudless- summer-afternoon-drive-with-the-top-down kind of days, I understand why she loves her car.

We were driving back from Boston the other afternoon and our soundtrack (you gotta have a soundtrack when the top’s down) was a CD I burned for her southern trip. Two Nanci Griffith songs are on it, both from her album Flyer, one Ginger’s favorite off the record and one mine. My song is a duet with Adam Duritz of Counting Crows called “Going Back to Georgia.” The melody is lilting and lovely and the harmonies full of friendship.

As the song finished, I said, “For all of our CDs — I’m surprised to say it – but I think Flyer is one of the most essential to us over the years.” She agreed.

When Ginger was working on her doctorate, the record was especially meaningful because of one song – the second one on the disc we were listening to in the Wrangler: “These Days in an Open Book.” Getting through the process of her D. Min. was hard work for Ginger and she handled the challenge with all the grace and tenacity that made me fall in love with her in the first place. As the deadline for finishing the dissertation drew nearer and consumed more and more of her days, Flyer was the only CD in the player. As she began to work, she would press play and Nanci’s voice would begin to sing:

Shut it down and call this road a day
And put this silence in my heart in a better place
I have traveled with your ghost now so many years
That I see you in the shadows
In hotel rooms and headlights
You’re coming up beside me
Whether it’s day or night

These days my life is an open book
Missing pages I cannot seem to find
These days your face
In my memory
Is in a folded hand of grace against these times

No one’s ever come between your memory and me
I have driven this weary vessel here alone
Will you still find me if I leave you here beside this road
Cuz’ I need someone who can touch me
Who’ll put no one above me
Someone who needs me
Like the air he breathes

These days my life is an open book
Missing pages I cannot seem to find
These days your face
In my memory
Is in a folded hand of grace against these times

I can’t remember where this toll road goes
Maybe it’s Fort Worth, maybe it’s a heart of gold
The price of love is such a heavy toll
That I’ve lived my life in the back roads
With your love in my pocket
If I spend the love you gave me
Tell me where will it go?

These days my life is an open book
Missing pages I cannot seem to find
These days your face
In my memory
Is in a folded hand of grace against these times

After the song played two or three times, she would get to work, looking for the missing pages. She found them and her dissertation and has been the Reverend Doctor Ginger Brasher-Cunningham for some time now.

(Brief pause while I beam with pride.)

A couple songs after Nanci and Adam sang in the Jeep, “These Days” began. We both looked at each other and smiled. Over the years, the missing pages and open book have come to stand for different things at different times. What hasn’t changed for me is the truth in the end of the chorus: her face is, for me, a folded hand of grace against these times.

Peace,
Milton

One of the summertime specialties at the Red Lion Inn, as in a lot of New England coastal restaurants, are Steamers. For the uninitiated, they are clams. We get ours from nearby Duxbury Bay and prepare them by boiling them in a mixture of white wine, clam juice, and rosemary. They are boiled until they open up and then served in the broth with clarified butter and garlic bread.

They’re good.

I bring them up because they also take some instruction to eat properly. When you take one out of the pot, it has a black tail hanging out of the shell. When you pull on the tail, the black skin comes off and you can pull the whole clam, both belly and tail, out of the shell to dip in the butter and eat. I had some with friends the other night at dinner and, as I watched them eat the steamers my mind flashed back to a recurring thought I have in similar situations: how did someone ever decide to eat a steamer the first time?

I was in Quincy Market years ago, which is a haven for street performers, and watched a guy juggle chainsaws. They were running at the time. I wondered then how he ever did that the first time, or practiced without ending up with a nickname like “Stumpy” or “Nub.” When the first person jumped out of an airplane, was he halfway down before he thought, “I should have invented the parachute first”?

Working with food offers many opportunities to ponder the question. Who was the first person, when they saw an egg drop out of a chicken’s butt, to think, “I should eat that”? What other animal droppings did they try before they found one that worked? Trial and error – perhaps trial and success – has to be involved. When I start trying to put new ingredients together, or I begin to think about how to prepare a dish, I lean into the history and experience of the cooks who have come before me and have stood staring at the ingredients in front of them, trying to figure out what to make for dinner. I have the luxury of following those who went first, those who gave it their best shot and then said, “OK, don’t do that again.” My seminary preaching professor used to say, “Being original means knowing how to hide your sources.” The truth is when I think of something for the first time, it’s a first for me but rarely is it a first for the universe. I owe much to those who have come before me.

Elaine Pagels has a wonderful book called Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. It has nothing to do with cooking, but it has much to do with how faith gets passed down, as she notes “Christianity had survived brutal persecution and flourished for generations – even centuries – before Christians formulated what they believed into creeds” (5). Faith has been passed down the years not by institutions but by individuals who lived, ate and worshipped together: “These simple everyday acts – taking off clothes, bathing, putting on new clothes, then sharing bread and wine – took on, for Jesus’ followers, powerful meanings” (14). My experience in faith is much like my experience with food: what is new to me is rarely new to the universe. I have learned about being faithful much like I learned to eat steamers: by watching and imitating.

Part of Pagels’ point is the variety we see in modern day theology has been there from the start, just as someone mixed coconut, pecans, and chicken long before I did. But imagination and originality are not the same thing. I don’t have to be the first one to ever think of something to be creative. We do our best work when we are mindful of what we have been given and what we have been taught and then we take the pieces and shape them into our own expression, which is both imaginative and full of history.

Peace,
Milton

I know part of the reason I like to cook is so people will tell me how good the food is. I come by it honest. One of my most enduring memories of dinner time as a kid was my mom biting into the food she had prepared for us and saying, “Isn’t this good?”

It was — as we were all happy to say so.

Last night was the first time I worked the dinner shift by myself. Mondays are notoriously slow in the restaurant business and Mondays at the Red Lion Inn mean only the pub is open, so we don’t need a full staff. Alfonso came in to wash dishes; Chris and Elaine were the bartender and server, respectively. Mondays are also our chef’s day off. I worked lunch and dinner and had the kitchen all to myself, which meant it was my job to come up with the dinner special, which is a challenge because Mondays are the days when our supplies are at their lowest. After perusing the dry storage area and the walk in refrigerator, I created Coconut and Pecan Crusted Fried Chicken. I served it with bleu cheese mashed potatoes, sauteed spinach, and a ginger-coconut rum beurre blanc garnished with a slice of grilled pineapple.

Since I was making it up, I made a plate for the staff to try during the late afternoon. Part of my logic is if I let them try the special they will sell it better. Part of it is, as I said, I just like to hear them say they like the food.

The night was slow, so I only got to make the dish once. Elaine went and got Chris so he could see the plate before it went out. I had to keep myself from going out to the table and watching the customer eat her dinner. Elaine was kind enough to come back and tell me the woman was making yummy noises.

I smiled and said, “It’s good, isn’t it?”

Peace,
Milton

Most Monday mornings, Ginger and I get to take our time eating breakfast and then I come up to my trusty old iMac to write. Two things are different today. Due to some staff changes at the Red Lion Inn, I’m working today so Robert can get his day off. He’s been so good about negociating my schedule that I’m happy to return the favor.

The second thing is I’m taking a step up in the computer world. Thanks to the Tax Free Weekend here in Massachusetts, I’m the proud owner of a new MacBook, which means the blog will become a bit more mobile. It also means, thanks to one of my neigbbors that I have a free wireless connection in my house. I’ll be “coming to you cordless.” (Extra points for anyone who can tell me what movie that comes from.)

I will also have more to say a bit later. For now, I’m off to the kitchen to cook for whoever wanders in on yet another absolutely beautiful New England summer day.

Peace, Milton