don't eat alone

In Arabic poetry, there are four great subjects worthy of the poet: love, song, blood, and travel. Roger Housden writes:

These were considered the basic desires of the human heart, and thus travel was elevated to the dignity of being a necessity for any human being who is truly alive. The Romans felt the same way. Plutarch tells us that before the departure of a ship in stormy weather, the captain would pronounce that “to sail is necessary, to live is not.”

Though I know they aren’t supposed to arrive until early January, my favorite characters in the Christmas story are the Magi, the Wise Men, the Three Who Kings of Orient Were. They are the out-of-towners, foreigners, the mysterious ones, the only ones away from home, and, perhaps, the least likely to end up in the Nativity Scene.

David Lynch has made a new movie, Inland Empire. I heard an interview with him on WBUR, our local public radio station, in conjunction with the screening of the film at a local art house. Laura Dern was also interviewed about her role in the project. She is a regular fixture in Lynch’s movies and was interviewed about her role in the new film. For all the movies that left me intrigued and confused (Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive), he made two of my all-time favorites, The Elephant Man and The Straight Story, both of them about the journey of the discovery of what it means to be human.

For this one, Lynch didn’t begin with a screenplay, but used a consumer-quality digital camera to film scenes as they came to him and then used those as the raw material to construct a movie from the parts, almost like putting a puzzle together without having the picture on the box as a guide. Dern talked about the challenge and frustration of making a movie that way, and about the authenticity it created. “One of the dangers for an actor, when you know where your character has been and where she is going, is to feel as though you need to telegraph some of what is coming to the audience, but life doesn’t work that way.”

The Magi embody what Laura Dern was saying about the daily unknown with which we live: all they knew to do was follow the Star. Our days dissolve one into the other like scenes in a movie, but without a formulaic plot or any indication of what the larger picture is, for the most part. We have very few moments where we can feel the orchestra begin to swell in the background to tell us a dazzling song and dance number is about to begin. We rarely get the kind of split screen effect they use on 24 to let us see what is happening in several different places simultaneously. And we don’t get to see all the loose ends tied up in a heartwarming ending very often. We have way too many scenes that go nowhere. The cosmic, or even existential, significance of misplacing our keys, picking up a box of Cheerios, or hanging up on a telemarketer is rarely unearthed in the movie that is our lives.

My fascination with the Gift-Bearing Bunch has led me to assemble a small collection of poems that look at them from a number of different angles, some even in response to others. (One person put many of them in a sermon here.) This trio that comes cameling in from off-camera with unbelievably odd baby gifts, unnerving kings, and willing to go wherever the Star took them are the quintessential Adventers, even though we ask them to wait until we are through waiting ourselves. They didn’t hear angel choir – or any voices for that matter, they were not steeped in Judaic prophecy; all they had was a light they had to wait until dark to follow. Traversing afar must have been hard enough, but doing it in the cold dark desert night only made it tougher.

In The Straight Story, David Lynch tells the true tale of an elderly man who gets word that his estranged brother is ill and decides to go see him. He can no longer see well enough to drive, so he takes his riding lawnmower cross-country – nine hundred miles – to get to his brother’s house, not knowing how he will be received. The movie is the story of not only his journey, but the journeys he interests along the way. A runaway teenager shows up at his campfire one night and they talk about family. A woman whizzes past him on a country road only to hit a deer not too much father along. Here’s the scene from the screenplay:

EXT.–DUSK RED ROAD HWY 18

Alvin drives up to the woman. Alvin executes his slow dismount. The woman glances briefly at Alvin but barely registers his presence because she is so distraught.

ALVIN
Can I help Miss?

DEER WOMAN
No you can’t help me. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. No one can help me.

Alvin moves around to the front of the car. He notes that the car has quite a few dents. We see that the woman has struck a nice eight point buck. Alvin’s face shows relief. All the while the woman rants and paces.

DEER WOMAN (cont’d)
I’ve tried driving with my lights on. I’ve tried sounding my horn. I scream out the window. I roll the window down and bang on the side of the door and play Public Enemy real loud…I have prayed to St. Francis of Assisi…St. Christopher too, what the hell! I have tried everything a person can do and still every week I plow into at least one deer. What is it?

Alvin shakes his head. She now begins walking around the car, the mower and Alvin. She flails her arms.

DEER WOMAN (cont’d)
I have hit 13 deer in seven weeks driving down this road mister and I have to drive this road every day 40 miles back and forth to work. I don’t know what to do…I have to drive to work and I have to drive home…

She pauses. Takes a deep breath and looks out over the flat landscape. She turns and pats the deer carcass.

DEER WOMAN (cont’d)
He’s dead.

She starts to cry.

DEER WOMAN (cont’d)
And I love deer.

She turns and climbs back in her car. She backs up and sprays gravel as she accelerates away. Her front fender falls off and she runs over it. Alvin watches her drive away, then looks down at the deer.

The colorful band of characters that end up at our mangers and mantles had no idea that was where they were going. Much as Laura Dern described, they simply played their daily scenes without knowing much of how they were connected, only that they were. We label our days – Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow – to give ourselves the same sense. Yet, how things stack up feels more like the Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime”:

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself – well . . . how did I get here?

We were breathed into being by the One who hung the Star the Magi followed; by the One we rehearsed the choir that sang to the shepherds; by the One who became fully human from birth to death and beyond; by the One who calls us to mark our days but not try to explain them, to know the Old, Old Story and tell it freshly every time. As W. B. Yeats wrote in his poem, “The Magi”:

Now as at all times I can see the mind’s eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary’s turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

Star of wonder, Star of Light, guide us to thy Perfect Light.

Peace,
Milton

My birthday means I’ve made some additions to both my literary and music libraries. One of the volumes I got to spend a little time with tonight is Ten Poems to Change Your Life by Roger Housden. The second poem is one by the marvelous Spanish poet, Antonio Machado called “Last Night as I was Sleeping” (translated by Robert Bly). Perhaps because I’m running on fumes and ready for some sleep the title pulled me.

I was also attracted because I love Machado’s poetry. Even in translation, there is a rhythmic beauty that pulses in ways English cannot on its own. His words are invocation, evocation, and benediction all at once. Housden quotes two small sections from Machado’s “Moral Proverbs and Folk Songs,” one of which says:

Beyond living and dreaming
there is something more important:
waking up

Machado is a poetic alarm clock calling us to awake, look, and listen. His words are those of a prophet. Here’s the poem:

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

I don’t remember dreams very often. I wake knowing that I dreamed, but with little clue to what they were about. Ginger remembers her dreams with all the detail of a forensic investigator and is able to learn a lot from them. The word dream is more alive to me when it means hope, possibility, or expectation. That one word is used for both is worth noting because I think both kinds of dreams are connected: both speak of our spirit finding voice and sight – waking up. Phillips Brooks must have understood the connection when he wrote:

the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

Dreams carry some of both hopes and fears, as well as a good dose of the unknown and the unexplainable. They also chip away at our senses of adequacy and control because they are packed full of paradox. The best thing a dream can do for us is to make us wake up. For Machado, waking was a spiritual act. Speaking to Jesus he said,

All your words were
one word: Wake up.

Wake up to a spring breaking forth, to golden bees, to a fiery sun, to God. Wake up to hard choices and good friends. Wake up to transformation.

Peace,
Milton

The first event of my birthday was Ginger giving me a t-shirt that read: “fifty is the new thirty.”

I then had a wonderful breakfast with Ginger and both sets of our parents at Percy’s Place in Plymouth, a wonderful breakfast cafe that boasts the biggest breakfast menu in New England and has good biscuits and gravy (not easy to find in this part of the world). After the meal, I got to open presents. All the gifts were thoughtful and meaningful and made me feel both known and loved. My parents gave me a four-volume scrapbook of my life – a two-year labor of love on my mother’s part. It is truly a treasure.

When we left the restaurant, Ginger drove out of town in the opposite direction of home. As she continued to drive, the road became less and less habitated and I had no idea where we were, but I knew it was going to be good. One of the traditions Ginger and I keep on our birthdays is to do something we have never done before. The something may be big or small, but beginning a new year with a new adventure is our way of looking to the future with open hearts and minds. While I was trying to figure out what was going on, she made one of several turns and we were driving on a road that ran beside the Plymouth airport. As she turned into of the driveway of the Alpha One Flight School, she said, “You’re going to take a flying lesson.”

How we got to that point goes something like this: Ginger was trying to think of a surprise for me when she found a coupon for a one hour flying lesson in the Val-Pac envelope that comes in the mail (see, you knew you ought to open that thing), called them and made the reservation. What the hour involved was about twenty-five minutes of orientation and thirty-five minutes of flying. Jeff, my instructor, was a great guy who enjoyed helping me mark the beginning of my fifty-first year. He walked me around the plane, talked about how to check it before take off, and explained how the different flaps and things worked. Then we got inside the Cessna two-seater and he explained the different gauges, switches, and levers.

The first thing I had to learn to do was steer with my feet. The rudders and the brakes are controlled with foot pedals, which were quite a challenge. We serpentined to the end of the taxi way and then Jeff talked me through turning the plane onto the runway. He raised the throttle and we began to gain speed as we moved down the runway. “Pull back on the yoke (airplane for steering wheel),” he said, which I did and we were airborne. We flew at about 2500 feet over Plymouth Harbor. I could see the beach near our house, which was not far away, as well as Provincetown and the Boston skyline in the distance.

Once we reached the altitude he wanted, he taught me how to gauge how the plane was sitting relative to the horizon and then told me to make a 360 degree turn and come back to where I could see the same view of the bay in front of me. I stepped on the rudder pedal and turned the yoke and the plane banked into a circle. When I made it all the way around, he had me do the same to the right. Then he began to talk about stalling, which he said is what most folks worry about when they get in a small plane. As he talked, he instructed me to continue to climb slowly. He wasn’t increasing the throttle, so we keep losing airspeed. When we fell to forty knots, a small alarm began to go off. He asked me how we could increase airspeed without opening the throttle; I answered by going down instead of up. He told me to lower the nose of the plane and head down, which I did – quickly. For a moment, it felt like we floated.

He smiled. “Most people are a little more frightened of that particular maneuver than you appear to be,” he said.

As we gained speed, he had me make the reverse move to slow us down and I could feel the increase in gravity as we started to climb. I was laughing out loud. We made a wide circle around the airport and came back in to land and I foot-steered us back to the hangar once we were on the ground.

Amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Until today, I don’t remember ever thinking about what it would be like to fly a plane, or wishing for the chance to do so. After my hour in the sky, I’m ready to go again (though flight school is not in our budget anytime soon). The experience reminded me I’m not through discovering or experiencing the wonder of living on earth.

We ate dinner at Cafe Brazil, also in Plymouth, where we were joined by our chosen family members that live in the area, and then Ginger took me into Boston – under the guise of taking Jay and Cherry back to the train – where I was surprised by friends who span all of our time in New England at one of my favorite haunts, The Burren. We laughed and talked until we had used up what was left of my day. Again, I left feeling known and loved.

All of my life, my birthday has been on the way to Christmas. When I was a kid, my parents didn’t decorate until December 13 so I wouldn’t feel like my birthday got swallowed up by the holiday. Becoming intentional about observing Advent has meant erasing that line, but my day has only grown in meaning. The photographs in the scrapbooks stack up like stones in an altar to show me a picture of the “me” it has taken fifty years to build. My family and friends gathered remind me that the building project has been a community effort: they are helping me to become who I am, just as I am a construction worker in their lives. Ginger, who has been a part of almost half of my history, stokes my dreams into a blaze of imaginative possibilities that give my heart wings. We drove home tonight under a starlight sky and she reached across and took my hand, as she has done countless times before.

I trust there are still countless times to come.

Peace,
Milton

I’m minutes away from completing my fiftieth year on the planet. I would like to anticipate that moment by paying homage to those with whom I share a birthday:

• 1673 Ahmed III 23rd sultan (Turkey, 1703-30)
• 1745 John Jay diplomat (NY-Governor)
• 1792 Alexandros Ypsilanti Greek resistance fighter
• 1805 Henry Wells founder (American Express Company & Wells Fargo & Company)
• 1805 William Lloyd Garrison abolitionist publisher (The Liberator)
• 1821 Gustave Flaubert Rouen Normandy France, novelist (Madame Bovary)
• 1835 Georges Jean Pfeiffer composer
• 1863 Edvard Munch Norway, painter/print maker (The Scream)
• 1913 Jesse Owens US, track star (4 golds 1936), spoiled Hitler’s Olympics
• 1914 Patrick O’ Brian, England, novelist (Master and Commander)
• 1915 Frank Sinatra Hoboken NJ, singer/actor (old blue eyes/chairman of board)
• 1923 Bob Barker Darrington WA, game show emcee (Price is Right)
• 1924 Edward I Koch New York NY, (Mayor-D-NY, 1977-89)/judge (People’s Court)
• 1925 Cora Lee Johnson social activist for rural poor
• 1928 Helen Frankenthaler New York NY, abstract expressionist artist (Arden)
• 1938 Connie Francis Newark NJ, singer/actress (Where the Boys Are)
• 1940 Dionne Warwick East Orange NJ, singer (Solid Gold, Way to San Jose)
• 1942 Mike Pinder Birmingham England, rocker (Moody Blues)
• 1943 Grover Washington Jr jazz artist (Mr Magic)
• 1943 Dickey Betts West Palm Beach FL, guitarist (Allman Brothers-Ramblin’ Man)
• 1946 Emerson Fittipaldi Brazil, Indy-car racer (over 10 wins)
• 1952 Cathy Rigby McCoy Los Alamitos CA, gymnast (Olympics-4th-1968, 1972)
• 1957 Sheila E. San Franciso CA, disco drummer (Krushgrove, Holly Rock)
• 1962 Tracy Austin Rolling Hills CA, tennis pro (US Open 1979, 81)
• 1970 Jennifer Connelly Brooklyn Heights NY, actress (Labyrinth, Rocketeer)
• 1970 Madchen Amick Reno NV, actress (Shelly Johnson-Twin Peaks)

From depressed artists to race car drivers to lounge lizards to psychic friends. Go figure.

Peace,
Milton

Earlier this week, Ginger asked me about buying ice cream for a Sunday School special event. She needed restaurant sized quantities, so I went to by East Coast Paper, a local restaurant supply, and ordered three gallons each of vanilla and chocolate for Ginger to pick up Saturday morning. Last night, on my way home from work around ten-thirty, I called to let her know I was headed her way and she asked if I would go by the store and get the sauces and sprinkles and whatever else I could think of for the kids’ party. So I did. I got home about eleven-fifteen.

This morning, as we were preparing to sing our congregational benediction, Ginger stood up and told everyone what I just told you and then announced that I had actually bought all the elements for my own birthday celebration at Coffee Hour, along with everyone else who has a birthday in November and December. She and her partners-in-crime had taken a ten-foot gutter, lined it with aluminum foil, and then scooped the ice cream into it to make one giant banana split. We each grabbed a plastic spoon and began adding sauces and so forth and had ourselves a grand old time. Only about a half a gallon of ice cream was left when it was all said and done.

I certainly did my part to make it disappear.

I can’t think of a much better celebratory substance than ice cream. (Guinness would be the one exception – put them both together . . .) I would rather eat ice cream than cake, as far as birthdays go. The one essential word I learned in Turkey that served me well as we traveled last spring was “dondurma” – ice cream. And let me tell you: they know how to make ice cream.

I loved sharing the sundae with all the (other) kids who stood wide-eyed waiting for the word to dive in. Though a couple of people assumed they would be able to stake out a small section of sundae as their very own, I encouraged folks to dive in wherever they wanted to. We weren’t going to get sick; we were having too much fun. Besides, it’s the joy that’s contagious.

I have a friend who was born on the same day as I was, but some years later. His life is falling apart right now. He feels alienated and alone. He is alone. The possibility of his being infected by joy is slim to none these days. I thought about him driving home from church and wished I knew a way to help him feel celebrated and included. My wife and my church family gave me an amazing gift today because they took the time to make me feel their joy in my being on the planet. I’m even more grateful that this year, short days and all, I’m not feeling depressed and am able to feel celebrated and loved in a way I have not been able to do the past few Decembers.

Even if my friend had been in the room today and we had all sung to him, he would not have felt any less alone. He is despairing to the point of hopelessness right now. Thanks to Sheep Days, I learned something about hope and waiting this week:

In a recent editorial in the Christian Century, John Buchanan noted that the Spanish word (and I will add, the Portuguese) for “to wait” is “esperar.” Being a little too close to the language to realize this myself, he pointed out to me that this is also the same verb we translate in English as “to hope.” It is true. In the Spanish brain, there is no differentiation in the actual words “hope” and “wait,” though I presume that just as we English-speakers have words that mean two things, context is everything (example: “wait” in the sense of passing time before an appointed event and “wait” in the sense of serving a table in a restaurant). “Hope” in Spanish is “esperanza,” derived from “esperar.”

The wise men had the wherewithal to follow the star, believing it was a sign of someone they had been waiting for, but the angels had to go and find the shepherds in the field who lived at the margins of life, slept in the pastures, and were waiting for little or nothing because there was little or nothing to wait for.

“Joy to the world,” sang the angels. Even for those who were not joyful.

When I was doing CPE at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, we were talking in seminar one day about how to be with people who were in situations that appeared hopeless to them. The chaplain leading the seminar said, “Sometimes all I can do is say, ‘I can see you are feeling hopeless right now. Perhaps the best thing I can do is offer to hope for you.’”

This is a birthday to remember for me; for my friend, it is one to forget or simply live through. And I plan to live thought it with him, hoping where he cannot that life will not always be the way it feels to him right now.

Peace,
Milton

Journeying through Advent has a bit of a Hansel and Gretel flair for me because I feel like I spend my day looking for a crumb or two to let me know where I am on the journey and to remind me where I’m going – which reminds me of a story.

A number of years ago, Ginger and I went to Las Vegas just because we had never been. We stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel (since we got engaged in the Hard Rock Café in Dallas) for a couple of nights and then we had had our fill. On the morning we were leaving, I was taking some stuff down to the rental car and followed two men and a woman out of the hotel. For me, it was morning; for them, it was still the night before.

The woman said, “There’s two things you gotta know in life: where you’re at and where you’re goin’.”

“Well, hell,” said the man to her right. “I always knowed where I was at, but I ain’t never knowed where I was going.”

I got to thinking about traveling tonight because of this photograph posted by Mark Heybo. He’s been dropping one great visual crumb after another ever since Advent began. This one knocks me out. The suitcases have stories to tell as evidenced by their missing latches, broken handles, and scuffed up exteriors. They seem to be leading the luggage parade, based on the others lined up behind them.

And then there are two sprigs of holly stuck in the handles as decoration, as if the ascending stack of cases is a luggage artist’s rendition of a Christmas tree. Even in the scuffed up places, there’s reason to celebrate and wonder.

For some reason, that takes me to one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems:

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 your 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.

Those are crumbs worth following.

Peace,
MIlton

I’ve decided to do my best to write each day in Advent as part of my journey to the manger. I ‘m not making any promises about length or coherence on Friday and Saturday nights.

On most any evening, part of my practice before I write is to do a bit of reading on several different blogs (most of whom you can find in the sidebar). Tonight I found this Henri Nouwen quote in a wonderful post at The Sacred Art of Living:

To wait open-endedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life. So is to trust that something will happen to us that is far beyond our own imaginings . . . The whole meaning of the Christian community lies in offering a space in which we wait for what we have already seen.

It makes me think of my favorite verses to one of my favorite hymns, “I Love to Tell the Story”:

I love to tell the story for those who know it best
Seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest . . .

Nouwen lays out some cool stuff in very few words. What I hear is Christ calls us

• to wait open-endedly (without schedule or agenda)
• and in community (we wait together, not alone)
• for something beyond what we can imagine (or plan or schedule)
• and we have already seen (and still struggle to trust).

I think he labeled it as “a radical attitude toward life” because waiting like that is allowing ourselves to be pulled into the vortex of a powerful paradox. The best way I can describe it is by using another – much older — word for waiting: attending.

Dictionary.com has these definitions for attend:

• to take care or charge;
• to apply oneself;
• to pay attention; listen or watch attentively; direct one’s thought;
• to be present;
• to be present and ready to give service; wait (usually followed by on or upon);
• to follow; be consequent (usually followed by on or upon).

Wait: be present, apply ourselves, follow, take care, listen, direct our thoughts. Mine have been directed by Dana, one of our seminarians at church to a poem by Denise Levertov that is good fodder for waiting:

Making Peace

A voice from the dark called out,
“The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.”

But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.

A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.

A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses. . . .

A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light–facets
of the forming crystal.

I love the image of “restructuring the sentence out lives are making.” We are all working on the same sentence and Nouwen’s words about taking “a radical attitude towards life” follow the same grammar.

“In the beginning was the Word,” wrote John; “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

We are called to continue to attend to the possibilities.

Peace,
Milton

We put up our Christmas tree tonight.

Seventeen years of Christmases together and Ginger and I have some definite traditions and patterns. Since both of us have sinus issues with real trees, we’ve always had an artificial one. My job is to assemble the tree and string the lights, which always means we’re a day later getting the tree up than we planned because the lights I saved from the year before never work and I have to go buy new ones. I get to pick the music while I’m doing my part and this year it was James Taylor.

Once I’m done, the real fun begins. Ginger hangs the ornaments and the music changes. The first song is always Brenda Lee singing “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree” followed by Elvis singing “Blue Christmas.”

Then she usually shifts into blues gear with B. B. King. Tonight he was followed by the Blind Boys of Alabama.

There are certain songs and voices that make it feel like Christmas is coming. On everyone one of Amy Grant’s Christmas records (has anyone recorded more?) there are songs I love to hear. Though I’ve never lived in the state, “Tennessee Christmas” is tied to the season for me. “Emmanuel (God With Us)” on the last record moves me. I have an old Christmas CD by the Roches that I love because of their wonderful sibling harmonies. They even do an acapella Hallelujah Chorus.

The song, “In the Bleak Midwinter” is one of my favorites, regardless – almost – of who sings it. We have wonderful versions by Shawn Colvin and James Taylor, to name a couple. If you would like to find a gem, go to iTunes and search for Christmas in Our Time, an old Urgent Records compilation. Billy Crockett and Bob Bennett sing the song to the English tune and it is well worth the buck.

Then there are the songs that wander off the beaten holiday track. I’ve always liked Greg Lake’s “I Believe in Father Christmas,” as much for the mood it sets as anything. I learned from Mark Heybo that Over the Rhine has a Christmas record, Snow Angels, that – if they are in true form – will be a different kind of holiday ride. My favorite melancholy Christmas song is Joni Mitchell’s “River”

it’s coming on Christmas and they’re cutting down trees
putting up reindeer singing songs of joy and peace
I wish I had a river I could skate away on . . .

Again, James Taylor does a mean cover.

One of the things I loved most about worship last Sunday was our music director played “Christmastime is Here” from A Charlie Brown Christmas. If you want to hear a different take on the tune, chase down Diana Krall’s version. As with most anything she does, it’s amazing.

If there’s one song I’m quite humbug about, it’s “O Holy Night.” I just don’t like it. Never have. That is until my brother sent me a CD with the absolute worst version of it that has ever been done in the history of the song. I wish I knew the story behind the recording, because it feels like the guy means what he’s singing and is entirely incapable of the task he chose for himself. If you’re like me, you will fall on your knees – laughing.

Now that the tree is up, the lights stay on until we take it down after Epiphany. And the music will keep playing as the soundtrack for our days. We do have one choral CD of the choir at King’s College. They sing songs with more history than most of the popular records we have. The song I wait to sing every year is “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” my favorite carol, mostly because of this verse:

and you beneath life’s crushing load
whose forms are bending low
who toil along life’s climbing way
with painful steps and slow
look now for glad and golden hours
come quickly on the wing
o, rest beside the weary road
and hear the angels sing

Here’s a thoughtful version by Catie Curtis.

Oh, yeah — I posted some new recipes: Rainbow Corn Chowder and Hungarian Mushroom Soup. Put on your favorite songs while you cook.

Peace,
Milton

I spend a lot of my day at the restaurant getting ready. In kitchen jargon, we call it “prepping.” Much of what we have to prepare are the things we use everyday: sliced tomatoes and red onions for the burgers, thin sliced sweet onions for the onion rings, chopped romaine lettuce for the salads, the salad dressings, the clam chowder, the French onion soup, the chicken soup, the sauces, and the dessert tray, to name a few. Then there are the specials.

Our owner has decided to create $12.95 weeknight specials to get folks in the place, It’s working; here’s why:

Monday and Thursday: Twin Lobsters (that’s right — $12.95)
Tuesday: All-You-Can-Eat Turkey Dinner
Wednesday: Prime Rib

Here’s the catch, as far as getting ready goes: as far as the regular stuff, what we don’t use today we can use tomorrow for the most part, but the specials are a one night deal. We have to try and guess how many folks are coming. Monday night we sold three dozen lobsters in a little less than an hour. Tonight, we had two full prime ribs we didn’t even cut. (We will use them; we don’t throw them out!) So part of what we get ready for everyday is what we cannot predict, so we just try to get ready the best we can. I drove home tonight thinking about getting ready and pretty soon I had a soundtrack to my thoughts: Curtis Mayfield’s classic, “People Get Ready.”

People Get Ready by Curtis Mayfield

When I searched for more about the song online, I found this NPR report from 2003 and the fortieth anniversary of the March on Washington. Here is part of the text from the report:

After hearing the Rev. Martin Luther King deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech that August day in 1963, the crowd of 250,000 sang “We Shall Overcome.” In 1965, another gospel song emerged — “People Get Ready” by Mayfield and the Impressions.

People get ready, there’s a train a-comin’
You don’t need no baggage, you just get on board
All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin’
Don’t need no ticket, you just thank the Lord

In addition to the march, the song followed several jarring events in American history: the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham — which killed four little girls — and the assassination of President Kennedy.

Music critic Stanley Crouch explains Mayfield’s response to those events: “…by saying ‘There’s a train a-coming, get ready’ that was like saying, okay, so regardless of what happens, get yourself together for this because you are going to get a chance. Your chance is coming.”

“The train that is coming in the song speaks to a chance for redemption — the long-sought chance to rise above racism, to stand apart from despair and any desire for retaliation — an end to the cycle of pain,” Williams adds.

Think on these things: the long sought chance to stand apart from despair and any desire for retaliation.

We are getting ready during Advent as much as we are waiting, if not more. Though there is both time and need for sitting out under the stars waiting for the angels to sing, there is also time and need to prepare, to do both the daily work of our faith and the special effort required in this season. And I’m not just talking about getting ready for Jesus’ birth. Tonight I’m thinking about those who will show up for their once a year visit to church. How are we getting ready for them in a way that might engage them beyond whatever brings them in once or twice a year?

One of the things I love about working at the Red Lion is if you want to alter the way a dish is described in the menu we are capable of going all Burger King on your butt so you can have it your way. What that means for us in the kitchen is another kind of preparation that makes us capable of improvising. I mentioned to Chef that I had never worked in a place so willing to accommodate people. He answered, “I’ve been in this business a lot of years and I’ve learned that the point is not to make them eat my way, but to do whatever I can to make them love the meal so much that they want to come back.”

A number of years ago, I spent some time learning about improvisation with my friend Billy as a way of improving our songwriting. We read Keith Johnstone’s Impro: Improvisation for the Theater and did a number of the exercises in the book. As I looked for information about him online tonight, I found the blog for The Applied Improvisation Network and the five common principles of improvisational theater “without which an improvised scene could not move forward.” They are:

1. Yes And
2. Make everyone else look good
3. Be changed by what is said and what happens
4. Shared agenda and shared focus
5. Serve the good of the whole

That’s what Curtis was singing about (read it again):

People get ready, there’s a train comin’
You don’t need no baggage, you just get on board
All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin’
You don’t need no ticket, you just thank the Lord

I think Jesus meant for the church to be a lot more improvisational theater and a lot less paint by numbers. As far as his birth went, no one cued the shepherds, angels, and magi to end up posed in a Nativity scene around the manger. They stumbled in, wondered out, and even had to go home by another way. No one was feeding them their lines or scheduling rehearsal. Everyone, including Jesus, was making it up as they went along; that’s the way Jesus approached everyday he lived: he prepared, he lived, and he gave instructions with lots of room for interpretation:

“Follow me.” (Sort of like Igor saying in Young Frankenstein, “Here – walk this way.”)

I feel like printing the five common principles on the back of Sunday’s bulletin (or maybe the front) in this Revised Standard Version:

1. Say yes to what is offered and then add your ideas
2. Make others look good before you do the same for yourself
3. Be changed by what is said and what happens in worship
4. Look for what shared ideas and focus we have before pointing out differences
5. Speak and act to serve the good of the whole community

All aboard.

Peace,
Milton

I was in and out of my car all day, running errands and hearing snippets about the confirmation hearings for Robert Gates to be Secretary of Defense. The language of both the questions and the answers had to do with winning and losing, with force and power, and with doing something quickly. After all, it’s only two years until the next election. At different points during the day, I heard news reports of more deaths in Iraq, both Iraqi and American. In three years of combat we’ve mostly left that country blind and toothless.

But there was another wind of words blowing my way today bringing a different message. Ela Gandhi, granddaughter of Mohandas Gandhi, was interviewed on On Point about her work in South Africa, where she runs a paper supporting nonviolence and sustainable development. The interviewer asked if her grandfather’s belief in nonviolence as a means to peace and progress had any currency today. (I don’t think the question was intended to be a soft ball; I think the interviewer wasn’t real sure Ms. Gandhi had a good grasp on the reality of life in the twenty-first century.) Gandhi replied,

For men to survive this century, [Gandhi’s] message of non-violence is the most relevant today.

She went on to talk about the patience required for peace, as well as the trust. She spoke of how her grandfather learned that ordinary people could grasp the concepts of nonviolence and passive resistance. Thousands of people stood their ground even as they were beaten down and their commitment to not retaliating won them their independence. Those who sat at the all-white lunch counters in the South, only to be dragged out and beaten, showed the same thing: the masses are capable of courage when they feel trusted and empowered.

As I drove, I tried to think of the last time I heard a significant discussion in church – any church – about how to be peacemakers. We talk about reaching people, serving people, what needs to be done, how the stewardship drive is going, how we get more people to come, and even what it means to be a follower of Jesus, but I don’t remember the last time the point of the gathering was to talk about how to be peacemakers: how do we wage peace in our families, our jobs, our churches, our world?

“His name will be called Prince of Peace,” Isaiah prophesied.

“Peace on earth,” sang the angels.

“Blessed are the peacemakers,” said Jesus.

God gives the “peace that passes all human understanding,” wrote Paul.

We’re talking a central theme of our faith here, yet we treat it too often as an anachronism. Peace was once upon a time, or is still yet to come. For now, gird your loins and get ready to fight. David Wilcox captures the image well in his song, “Good Man” (hear it here):

Let me apologize in advance
For the way my friend behaves
He’ll pick a fight and take a holy stance
He’s so proud that he’s so saved

I hope you don’t judge Jesus
By the things my friend will say
He holds a bible like a dagger
And he twists it just that way

He just loves conversation —
like a cat loves a bird
I guess he’s always been a good man —
in the worst sense of the word

The good knights went out to save the day
In the age of the crusades
A sharp sword on a tortured soul
They were sure the point was made
Any tool can be a weapon
If it’s used with that intent
The devil’s great at quoting scripture
And confusing what it meant

So all the evils done for Jesus —
it is a history so absurd
But there will always be a good man —
in the worst sense of the word

They ‘jacked a plane to make a sneak attack
They were trained to die in flames
Their last words were to God above
Just to praise His holy name

For all the terror and destruction
They felt no sense of shame
You gotta wonder why religion
Can make people so insane

But their devotion was unquestioned —
follow straight and never swerve
The devil always needs a good man —
in the worst sense of the word

As much as I would like to believe the guy in the song is a caricature, I’m afraid I know him all too well. “Never trust a zealot with a clear conscience,” one of my friends used to say. Somewhere along the way, the church has too often concerned itself with being right over being faithful and that has led to, shall we say, a less than nonviolent approach to life and faith. While it’s easy to point fingers at Jerry Falwell and others who put both the “fun” and the “damn” in fundamentalist, they aren’t the only ones who feel compelled to defend the faith. We all have traces of blood on our hands.

I heard one other story today on NPR, which for the life of me I cannot find now. It was about the Abraham Path Initiative. I’ll let the ones who are doing it describe their goal:

The aim of the Abraham Path Initiative is to inspire and assist the opening of a route for tourism and walking that retraces the footsteps of the Prophet Abraham.

The Abraham Path will link sites of historic and religious significance through the heart of the Middle East, from Urfa and Harran in Turkey, where Abraham first heard the call to “go forth,” to Abraham’s tomb in Hebron/Al Khalil. Along this itinerary of outstanding natural beauty and cultural interest, travelers will visit some of the most revered sites in the world — including the Holy Places in Jerusalem, the Ummayad Mosque in Damascus, and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The Path will eventually extend to encompass Abraham’s travels to and from Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.

The Path will offer an experience of the spirit of Abraham — a journey through his legacy of faith, hospitality and respect.

The man I heard talking about it said the idea grew out of Abraham’s central role in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The organizers see walking the path as a way to understanding and to peace. For students or tourists to start in Turkey and wander through Syria, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian territories would mean negotiating quite a terrain of thought, theology, and culture. Abraham wandered those same roads wondering what God had to say to him; we, too, could walk and listen.

Many times, when I talk about being peacemakers, someone will tell me I’m being idealistic, that I’m not dealing with reality. Why have we allowed ourselves to believe the lie that says war is more likely than peace? Why does it make more sense to talk about how to bomb people into submission than it is to learn how to walk together and talk to each other?

Peace takes patience, persistence, and a willingness, as Ela Gandhi said, to believe that there are things worth dying for but not worth killing for.

Blessed are the peacemakers . . .

One day, I want that sentence to be about me.

Peace,
Milton