don't eat alone

Ginger and I were watching something on TV on New Year’s Eve when one of the characters said something that gave me my watchword for 2007. I told her I had decided that, when someone asked me how I was, rather than saying, “I’m fine,” or “I’m doing well,” I was going to answer, “I’m living the dream.”

We met at the gym yesterday afternoon and decided to grab a cup of coffee afterwards. In between the gym and the Au Bon Pain – about a three-minute drive – Chef called to tell me I had been laid off. The owner decided to let all of the non-salaried employees go without any notice. In a matter of moments, I joined the ranks of the gainfully unemployed. I was stunned.

I think I still am.

After fifteen months and some choices, on my part, to become a full-time chef, I’ve gotten used to the rhythm of my week and a life in the kitchen. I love what I do and I do it well. Now I’m not doing it. And I’m not making any money. Both things are significant issues.

I’ve spent most all of my professional life in vocations that had some sense of stability to them. If I was going to leave, I gave them fair warning; if my position was going to change, they gave me adequate notice. The idea that they can simply call and say to me, a full-time employee, so long and thanks for the fish is both foreign and shocking.

Here I am, living the dream.

I got up this morning and went to the Unemployment Office sign up for unemployment compensation. I got there at 11:00 and left at 1:37. I was not alone. The room was fairly full of folks filling out the same form I was. There were even a couple of families. I assumed they had nowhere else to leave the kids. While I waited, I looked through some of the want ads that promised good money for delivering phone books and stuffing envelopes, and I looked through booklet of jobs the agency had put together. Out of ten pages of possibilities, with about twenty entries a page, less than fifteen of them paid more than ten dollars an hour.

There were no restaurant jobs, other than an invitation to join the McDonalds’ management training program at $20,000 a year.

I heard my name called and looked up to see a small man with a long grey ponytail and a big smile. I followed him back to his cubicle, which was filled with stacks of papers, Zen books, and pictures of his daughter and felt welcomed there. He worked through the filing process, but did so with grace and humanity, making me feel like a person who had something to contribute. We talked about schools and music and history and books, as well as how to follow up on my application and make sure my checks start coming. He helped me.

Ginger suggested I wait until Monday to begin looking for a new job to give myself time to get over the shock and build a little bit of a thicker skin. On the way home from Plymouth, I stopped at a new Mexican restaurant that just opened (and we like) to see if they had any openings. They don’t. Ginger is right. Even knowing it was a long shot, the rejection was tough to take.

When I started going to spiritual direction about eighteen months ago, Ken said the questions I had to answer were what I wanted to do with my life, what it would cost to make it happen, and how to pay the bill. My passions are writing and cooking. I was doing both everyday, and counting on the second one to bring in at least a little money. These are the things I want to do. This week, I learned part of the cost is working in an industry that sees me as a “cost,” much like the cleaning supplies and the produce. What I see as relational, the owner sees as bottom line: I’m looking to make memories with our meals; he’s looking to make money. When he cut costs, he cut me, just taking care of business.

Though an anti-capitalist rant is tempting and maybe even appropriate, I want to do more with what is going on here than be pissed off. Though I trust that one day I will look back on these days and see lessons learned, I can’t get out from under the pressure to do something to lessen the financial burden that is quickly descending. We live in an expensive part of the world; I need to be working. That said, I want to find a good job, not just a job.

When Chef called, he said (after he apologized for not being able to stop the owner from axing me) if business picked up my job might open up again in anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, but I don’t think I can go back there and maintain my self-respect. I don’t want to feel owned. I, like anyone else, deserve to feel valued. To go back, for me, would be to say I was condoning the way he treated those of us whom he laid off and that I understood why I was cut so he could save a couple of thousand dollars. I don’t, on either count.

I also have to remember, according to the Global Rich List, Ginger and I fall in the top one percent of the richest people in the world, even without my salary included. 400,000 are dead in Darfur and another two million displaced who have never known anything close to my standard of living even in the best of times. I also think about the Brazilians I work with who got the same call yesterday and face bleaker circumstances than mine. I’m not the first one to go through this, nor am I at the bottom of the pile. Therefore, I must live in the creative tension between my privilege on a global scale and my personal problems. Both are very real.

Three days on, this is not what I expected from 2007. But what can I say? I’ve got to just keep living the dream.

Peace,
Milton

Ginger told a wonderful story for the children’s message yesterday.

A second-grader was having trouble with his writing assignment and kept making mistakes. Each time, he would erase what he had written to the point that he tore a hole in his paper. He went up to the teacher unsure of what to do. She said, “Why don’t I give you a new piece of paper. It’s a fresh start.”

Ginger then went on to give each of the children – and then each of us in the service – a clean sheet of paper as a symbol of the fresh start available to us.

A bit later in the service, a man in our congregation who grew up going to British schools commented that Ginger had helped him understand something about Americans. In British schools, he said, the pencils don’t have erasers on the ends. He continued with his point, but my mind went its own way since I, too, spent a couple of years in British schools when we lived in Zambia. They taught me to write.

With a fountain pen.

Each of our big wooden desks had an inkwell and inside was a nib pen with a big handle like a paintbrush. Blotting paper was part of the school supplies we were supposed to have. Along with learning to make our letters, we learned how to dip the pen, blot it, and then begin writing. Neatness was always a part of the equation. If we made a mistake, we were to draw one line through the error and then write it correctly. My teacher explained we didn’t have to mark it out over and over and it didn’t matter that there were words marked out on the page in order for it to be neatly done. One line said, “I made a mistake and I corrected it.” We didn’t write in pencil, she said, because writing in ink meant we meant what we were putting on the page. Pencils were for arithmetic.

Her lesson stuck with me in ways I didn’t even know. As a high school English teacher in America years later, my students struggled to understand why I would not accept work in pencil, which was what most brought with them to class.

“Writing in ink means you’re serious about what you’re writing,” I said.

However language came into being, “Oops” must have been one of the first words ever uttered, along with a few more colorful expressions as the mistakes mounted up. Error and failure are essential elements to our humanity. Screwing up is one of the things we do best – and one of the things that leads us to our most brilliant successes. What we do with our mistakes is more profound than choosing to erase or cross out. Life rarely divides into such an easy either/or.

Something tangible, even visceral, happened in the room yesterday as the deacons passed out the clean sheets of paper to the adults seated in the pews. We all knew more about erasing until we had destroyed the paper than our children did. We all have things we would like to do over, things we hope are not irrevocable. The small blank sheets were leaves of grace and forgiveness, even hope that failure is not the final word, nor perfection the ultimate value.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “The Birthmark,” tells of Alymer, a scientist, and his love for Georgiana, his wife and a woman of incredible beauty. Alymer saw her beauty as perfection except for the small birthmark on her cheek. It was only a problem for him, as Hawthorne noted:

In the usual state of her complexion — a healthy though delicate bloom — the mark wore a tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly defined its shape amid the surrounding rosiness. When she blushed it gradually became more indistinct, and finally vanished amid the triumphant rush of blood that bathed the whole cheek with its brilliant glow. But if any shifting motion caused her to turn pale there was the mark again, a crimson stain upon the snow, in what Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fearful distinctness. Its shape bore not a little similarity to the human hand, though of the smallest pygmy size. Georgiana’s lovers were wont to say that some fairy at her birth hour had laid her tiny hand upon the infant’s cheek, and left this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were to give her such sway over all hearts.

Nothing would do but Alymer find a way to erase what he saw as a blot on her beauty. Georgiana was not so sure.

I know not what may be the cost to both of us to rid me of this fatal birthmark. Perhaps its removal may cause cureless deformity; or it may be the stain goes as deep as life itself. Again: do we know that there is a possibility, on any terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this little hand which was laid upon me before I came into the world?

He continued to obsess until she relented to its removal, a process that ultimately cost her life. The quest for perfection is an exhausting, even deadly, enterprise. Whatever the yardstick, we can’t measure up. Sooner or later, we’re going to drip ink on the page, or erase a hole in it trying to correct our mistakes. The stains go as deep as life itself.

In a past life, I played golf fairly regularly. I was with some friends one day when one of our group hit a ball into the rough ten or twelve feet off the fairway and behind a tree. When he got to his ball, his kicked it a couple of times until it was lying on the mowed grass and in full view of the pin. One of the other guys in our group said, “You can’t just kick the ball like that. It’s against the rules.” The conversation that ensued was instructive.

“Are we playing for money?”
“No.”
“Are you going to give me a trophy if I win?”
“No.”
“Are we even keeping score?”
“No.”
“Then relax and enjoy the game. I’m out here to have fun.”

When Jesus said, “Forgive and you will be forgiven,” I think he meant hand out as many blank sheets of paper as you accept. The more we make room for one another to fail and try again, whether we are working in pencil or pen, the more we come to terms with our humanity and then with the amazing possibility of the grace we can incarnate to one another.

I’ve got a small clean sheet of paper in my pocket to help remind me.

Peace,
Milton

My beautiful lapis blue 1997 Jeep Cherokee Sport turned 166,000 miles today and it’s still going strong. Watching the odometer flip made me think about the waning days of this year and what awaits us in the next.

Is this an ending or a beginning?

For my car, on a day long before it became mine, there was Mile One when all but the last numbers on the odometer were zeroes. A little over two weeks ago, I marked the day I came into the world: my Day One. I missed being born on the eleventh by a little less than two hours.

The odometer counts actual miles. I stack up my years from the day I was born. Yet, when it comes to our calendar, our choice to begin our year on January 1 marks nothing more than our arbitrary decision to say our year begins on January 1. The Hebrew calendar marks the beginning of the year usually in what we call September and says we are in the year 5767. Because their years are of different lengths, the Chinese New Year is in either January or February. This coming year, 4705 (The Year of the Boar) begins on February 18. The Islamic calendar marks the year as 1427. The Hindu calendar, which is quite complicated, marks the new year in May and sees this year as 5108. The Coptic calendar sees the year 1724 beginning on January 1. Best I can tell, this is the year 1376 on the Zoroastrian calendar and the year begins in March. The Baha’I calendar uses the same date for New Years and marks nineteen months of nineteen days. For them, we are in the year 163 BE (Baha’i Era).

Quick – tell me what day it is.

In Time Lord: Sir Sanford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time, Clark Blaise tells the story of how Fleming came up with and implemented the idea of standardizing time after he missed his train because the time at the departure point and the time at the arrival point were not synchronized. He’s the one who decided the day should begin at midnight because sunrise wasn’t quantifiable. One of the people Blaise quotes in the first chapter is George Smoot, whose cousin, Oliver, was used by his fraternity brothers to measure the length of the Mass. Ave. bridge across the Charles River when he was a student at MIT. Instead of using a standard measurement, they used something they knew. Today, current students at MIT can tell you the bridge is 364.4 Smoots and one ear, but few – if any – know the length of the bridge in feet and inches.

Blaise also says:

First of all, time comes in two distinct varieties: the untamed mysterious Time, born with the big bang itself, and civil, obedient standard time, as in “What time is it?” or “How long has this been going on?” It’s not clear that the same word even applies to both, or what the nature of their relationship, if any, might be. Perhaps time should have two names, like “horse” and “equus,” the one to stand for hardworking, domesticated time, that which we control and can describe – the calendars, clocks, minutes and hours of the civil day – and the other for the untamed and unnamable, that which nature has not yet released.

I love that last phrase: that which nature has not yet released.

We can measure the time that has passed – or at least give ourselves a way to think we can – but we can’t quantify what is still to come. We may have things on the books for 2018 or 2029, but who knows how far away they are. Who knows if we will even be here. We can’t even see the next sunrise until the light is already breaking on the horizon.

One of the things Ginger gave me for Christmas is a Watercolor Lesson-A-Day Calendar. I enjoyed working with watercolors a number of years ago and Ginger wanted to encourage me to get back to painting, so she gave me a calendar that calls me to pick up my brush everyday. I spent a lot of years wanting to be a writer without writing. As I wrote the other day, this has been a year where I marked the days by spending time at the keyboard putting words together. I have no idea of where the words or paints will take me, but I’m going to use them to mark my days to see what nature might release in the sunrises still to come.

“Stack up the stones,” Joshua said, “so when the children ask what the stones mean we can tell them the story.”

One of the things I gave Ginger for Christmas was a recording of me singing, “When You Say Nothing at All,” one of our favorite songs. I learned how to use the GarageBand program on my MacBook and turned my office into a little studio. I also went to the Apple Store for instruction. One of the biggest challenges was learning how to keep time as I played and sang, which meant I had to learn how to play consistently with the beat so I could use the drums and bass sounds stored in the computer.

It’s a funny phrase: keeping time. It can’t be done.

Time moves less like the clicks of a metronome and more like the meanderings of a small stream as it pushes its way through the valley, running over stones, cutting into the soft clay, winding back and forth as it finds its way to the sea. I learned early that Christian theology holds that time is linear: history is going somewhere. The contrast was with those religions that see time as a circle: the great mandala. I don’t think it’s either/or, but both/and. Like any good story, the history of creation is going somewhere, though I doubt seriously that any of us has yet to peg the ending. And the cycle of life, from sunrise to sunset to sunrise, year to year, generation to generation, goes around and around, even as we, as a planet, circle the sun. The circle is one of the archetypal images of creation, from the life cycles of the tiniest of insects to the awesome wonder of the galaxies. We are circling on our way to somewhere.

When I write again, it will be a new year because we have deemed it so, even though it is only four sunrises away. As the sun and moon traverse the sky, I will make my circles to work (again), to church (again), and come home (again and again), as I do my part to unlock the time that nature has not yet released, setting loose the untamed and the unnamable.

Peace,
Milton

don’t eat alone is one year old today.

Corndogmatic mentioned a meme that’s going around where you post the first line of the first post of each month as a way of reviewing your blog for the year. I’ve altered the idea a bit, going back to pull out some quotes along the way that point to some of things that matter most to me.

Mary rose before sunrise;
The baby was still sleeping,
As was Joseph and most of
The animals, except for one cow
Who looked a little sheepish.

The shepherds were long gone.
In their excitement, they had not
Cleaned up well after themselves.
The Magi were resting somewhere,
Waiting for night and the Star.

But Mary did not yet know
Of gold and myrrh and frankincense,
Neither did she know much about
Motherhood, messiahs, or
Life beyond this nativity.

I am up early with a cup
Of coffee and a donut
Of a dog asleep in my lap;
The house is quiet. Christmas
Has come and is fading away.

I know little of parenting, or
Babies, or what to do with
Swaddling clothes. I do know
Christ is born again, for the
Fifty-first time in my life.

In my mind’s eye I watch
Mary turn back to the stable
When she hears her little one cry
For the first time on his first
Morning; she is smiling.

My dog perks up her ears,
As though she, too, hears
The crying, and looks up at me.
“Merry Christmas,” I say,
Wondering what gifts have yet to be opened.

My favorite caroling memory happened when I was in fifth grade in Lusaka, Zambia. Christmas came in the summer there, so we sang in shorts – actually, our Wolf Cub uniforms. Our den mother announced that we were going caroling at State House, the presidential residence. We practiced hard to sound good. None of our voices had changed, so we did our best Vienna Boys Choir impersonation. I was a first soprano and can still remember the descant on “The First Noel.”

A couple of nights before Christmas, we walked up to the front door of the home of President Kenneth Kaunda and our den mother rang the bell. The president and Betty, his wife answered the door (they did know we were coming) and we began to sing. Zambia had only been independent for a little more than a year, so seeing him was seeing someone larger than life: this was the man who led us to independence. Now he was listening to us sing “Joy to the World.”

After we finished singing, President and Mrs. Kaunda invited us inside for tea and biscuits (which is British for cookies). We sat in a parlor with our president having snacks. Then he said, “You have sung for us about the birth of Jesus Christ. Now I would like to sing for you of my faith.” He sat down at the piano and played and sang “The Lord is My Shepherd.”

Not long after we moved to Marshfield, I was listening to The Connection, a call-in show on NPR and Dick Gordon announced that Kenneth Kaunda was his guest. I dialed the number and one of the producers answered. “I grew up in Zambia and would love to just say a word of appreciation to him,” I said.

“Well,” she replied, “as much as I would love to let you do that, this is a radio show and you’re going to have to make it more interesting.”

I told her the story and she asked me to hold. The next voice I heard was Dick Gordon saying, “Our first caller is Milton from Marshfield. Go ahead, Milton.”

I recounted that night to a man I consider one of my real life heroes and he remembered it. All these years later, I had the chance to thank him for that night and for the life of integrity and faith he has lived. Most of Africa has never gotten to experience much beyond What Might Have Been. The population of Zambia today is nearly forty percent HIV positive. Through both hope and adversity, Kaunda has shown himself to be a person of tenacious faith who has incarnated love and compassion.

One of the songs we sang that night is an odd British carol that I learned to love. The king in the story reminds me of the man I first knew as President.

Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the feast of Stephen
When the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even
Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel
When a poor man came in sight Gath’ring winter fuel

“Hither, page, and stand by me
If thou know’st it, telling
Yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?”
“Sire, he lives a good league hence
Underneath the mountain
Right against the forest fence
By Saint Agnes’ fountain.”

“Bring me flesh and bring me wine
Bring me pine logs hither
Thou and I will see him dine
When we bear him thither.”
Page and monarch forth they went
Forth they went together
Through the rude wind’s wild lament
And the bitter weather

“Sire, the night is darker now
And the wind blows stronger
Fails my heart, I know not how, I can go no longer.”
“Mark my footsteps, my good page
Tread thou in them boldly
Thou shalt find the winter’s rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly.”

In his master’s steps he trod
Where the snow lay dinted
Heat was in the very sod
Which the Saint had printed
Therefore, Christians all be sure
Wealth or rank possessing
Ye who now will bless the poor
Shall yourselves find blessing

Peace,
Milton

I realize I just posted a story a couple of days ago, but this one feels right for tonight. It was also written for a Christmas Eve service and was inspired by my wonderful red-headed godson, Samuel.

Once upon a time – that’s how stories start,
At least all the good ones that pull at your heart –

But that would mean this one happened one past December;
Yet I think, if it did, we would surely remember

And we would be different – marked, as it were,
If this trail of events had already occurred.

So here is a story of a Christmas to come,
In a time much like ours, In a place we’d call home.

It was the night before Christmas, or sometime that day
And Samuel was thinking about the cool Christmas play

They had done at the church on the Sunday before
And he wished he knew someone who could tell him some more

About shepherds and mangers and prophets and things,
But mostly what it sounds like to hear angels sing

Because that was the part that attracted him most:
When the shepherds were sung to by the heavenly host.

Samuel didn’t know a lot about shepherds and such,
But he figured that they didn’t look very much

Like him in his bathrobe with a towel on his head;
So at pageant rehearsal that’s just what he said,

Though not expecting to bring his teacher to tears
By asking if all shepherds bought their clothes at Sears.

Yet bathrobe and all, he was struck with deep wonder
By the choir of angels and it caused him to ponder

What all they could change and what joy they could bring
If the angels would only come once more and sing

To the poor and the hungry and those out in the cold,
To parents and children, to folks young and old.

‘Cause the shepherds were moved when they heard the song
And came out of the cold to a place they belonged;

They were poor and outcast, so the minister said,
And then angels showed up and sang up over their heads

Of how Jesus had come to bring love and light
And so they were changed on that Christmas night.

He looked for the angels as he walked downtown
In the big crowds of people who were gathered around

The shops and the stores getting last minute stuff —
Though most of them seemed to be in quite a huff.

In all of the noise, the clack and the clatter
There was no room for angels: that’s what was the matter

Thought Samuel as he watched people caught in the fray;
How could this be such a terrible day?

He scoured the sky with all of his might,
But nowhere – but nowhere – was an angel in sight.

He walked out of the store and into the street
And there on a park bench he happened to meet

A woman who sat without boxes or bags,
And was dressed not in warm clothes, but mostly in rags.

She was mostly invisible to the folks passing by,
But something about her caught Samuel’s eye

And his heart — for he knew she was out in the cold,
A lot like the shepherds in the story of old.

He wished that the sky would fill up with a song,
And the angels would tell her how much she belonged

But there weren’t any angels up over their heads,
So Samuel decided that he’d sing instead:

Gloria in excelcis deo
Gloria in excelcis deo

He finished his song and she looked with a smile;
For no one had noticed her in quite awhile.

She opened her arms to give him an embrace
And he saw the kindness alive in her face

And he knew that he had to keep singing his song,
But what he didn’t see was she followed along,

So when he paused at the bus stop to sing once again,
The woman was with him and she joined in.

Gloria in excelcis deo
Gloria in excelcis deo

From the bus stop they headed straight into a store
And this time the voices amounted to more

Than just two, there were three, six and ten,
Each time that he sang, the choir grew again.

Gloria in excelcis deo
Gloria in excelcis deo

Until finally it seemed every one in the town
Had stopped all their shopping and put packages down

To join in the song that the angels once sang
And together their voices all joyfully rang

Gloria in excelcis deo
Gloria in excelcis deo

When the singing was finished and people headed for home,
Samuel and the woman were once more alone

And were back at the bench where they first had met
And she hugged him up tight; “You’re an angel,” she said.

I wish that we’d had the chance to be there that night
When everyone took the time to sing with delight

As if angels surrounded as they sang along,
As if the world could be changed by a sweet simple song.

Oh, we are: for tonight the babe will be born
Into our world, our time, to bring our Christmas morn.

Shepherds ran to the manger when they heard that first song;
Tonight open your hearts and lets all sing along:

Gloria in excelcis deo
Gloria in excelcis deo

One of my favorite people at work is Pedro, one of our dishwashers. He is Brazilian and is still working on learning English. He and I have struck up a friendship and I look forward to him coming in each evening because I know I’m going to be greeted with a big smile, a big hug, and a big “What up?” He gets to work about five or five-thirty after working construction all day, so about seven he is ready for something to eat. Last night, he came to my side of the line to ask me to fix something for him and the other dishwasher. He said it this way:

“Milton, can you please make two hungrys for me and Viviana.”

I knew exactly what he meant and fixed their dinners and I’ve spent some time since thinking about the way he chose his words, wondering if he might be on to something. Instead of saying, “I need a nap,” how about, “I need a sleepy,” for instance. I remember an old interview Bill Moyers did with the poet Carolyn Forche in which she talked about how her immigrant grandmother used words functionally: instead of calling it a colander, she would ask for the “macaroni stop water go through” and everyone knew what she wanted.

I don’t know much Portuguese at all, other than my one unintentional pun. I also don’t know much about the lives of most of the folks I work with, other than what I see in the kitchen; they don’t know much about me, either. We come together to do our jobs, then we go our separate ways.

Today, I didn’t have to go to work and I spent the day working on my present for Ginger, which I can’t tell you about since she reads the blog, and eating lunch with my friend Doug for our Support Group Christmas Party. Doug and I go to different places for work and then come together to not talk about work and really get to know each other. Regardless of what Doug does to pay the bills, he is a painter. He gave me one of his paintings for Christmas. Over the last few years, he has spent a lot of time and energy learning about painting and honing his skills. Based on the piece hanging in my house, he has spent his time and energy well. Based on our conversation at lunch, he’s not spending his time and energy, he’s investing it. This time last year, I was determined to feel like a writer rather than wish I was one, so – with much help from Gordon – I started this blog. Tonight marks my 250th post, which was my personal goal before the anniversary date on December 27. I can say I’m a writer.

The BRH Choir put out a Christmas album while I was at Baylor and it included a song I had not known before then that I thought of driving home from my time with Doug and our quest for being more than doing. It’s called “Baby, What You Goin’ To Be?”

Baby, Lying in a manger, slumbering so sweetly,
What you goin’ to be?
Baby all the world is watchin’,
all the world awaits to see,
what will you be?
Baby sleeping in a stable, underneath the heavens,
what you goin’ to say?
Baby, did you bring the Good News?
Did you come to light our way?

Oh, look, see the cattle asleep, see the shepherds beside,
See the Wise Men, they bow unto you.
Are you the one who was meant to be Master?
To bring in the Kingdom too?

Alleluia

Baby, Hope of all the people,
what you come here to do?
What you come to say?
Baby, can you be the Savior?
Come to save the world one day?
Baby can you be the Savior?
Come to save the world one day?
Baby lying in a manger,
will you save the world one day?

As someone once reminded me, we are human be-ings, not human do-ings.

Peace,
Milton

Driving to work this morning, I was thinking about what I might write when I got home tonight. Though a couple of things came to mind and the day offered its own stories, what seemed ripe to share is a story I wrote for our Christmas Eve service a few years back. As you will soon see, I want to be Dr. Seuss when I grow up. Forgive the indulgence, enjoy the story, and take time to read it out loud.

A Faraway Christmas

by Milton Brasher-Cunningham

As we gather together on this Silent Night,
To sing ‘round the tree in the soft candlelight,

From a Faraway Christmas, from time that’s grown cold,
Comes a story, you see, that has seldom been told.

Of all of the legends, the best and the worst,
From Christmases all the way back to the first,

This little tale isn’t often remembered
From then until now, down through all those Decembers.

But I found an old copy tucked away on a shelf,
And I turned through the pages, and I thought to myself,

Of all of the times between now and then,
This is the Christmas to hear it again.

Once upon a time in a place we might know,
‘Cause their woods, like ours, often fill up with snow,

Was a small little hamlet — a Long Ago Town —
Of no great importance, or no real renown,

Filled with people who seemed fairly normal to me,
With names like Francesca, Francine, and McGee.

They had puppies and children, ate bread and ice cream,
They went shopping and swimming, they slept and they dreamed;

They laughed and did laundry, they danced and they dined,
And they strung Christmas lights on the big Scottish Pine

That grew in the square in the middle of town,
And when Christmas was over, they took the lights down.

They read the newspaper, they sometimes told jokes,
And some of the children put cards in the spokes

Of their bicycle tires, so they made quite a din
Till it came time for parents to call the kids in.

Yet for all of the things that kept people together,
The nice festive feeling, the Christmas Card weather,

For all of the happiness one was likely to hear,
This Faraway Christmas was marked, mostly, by fear.

Well, yes, they were frightened — but that’s still overstated;
What bothered folks most really could be debated.

Some were tired (exhausted), some were sad or depressed,
Some — the best way to say it — well, their lives were a mess.

Some felt pressure from not having paid all the bills,
Some were keeping dark secrets that were making them ill;

Some felt guilty and thought they were headed for hell,
But the town seemed so happy, who could they tell?

So everyone kept all their feelings inside,
And wished they had someone in whom to confide,

To say, “Life is lousy,” or “I’ve made a mistake,”
Or “Sometimes I’m so sad I don’t want to awake,”

Or “I miss my Grandma,” or “I loved my cat,”
Or “I never, no never get my turn at bat.”

Everyone kept it in, no one said a thing
Until once Christmas Eve, when the man they called Bing

Came to turn on the lights on the tree in the square
And nobody — not anyone — no one was there,

And he looked at the lights as he sat on the curb
And he said — to no one — “I feel quite disturbed;

“I know that it’s Christmas, when I should feel warm,
But I don’t think this year that I can conform.

It’s been hardly two months since my friend passed away;
How can I smile when he’s not here to say,

“’Merry Christmas’?” he asked and burst into tears,
And all of the sadness from all of the years

Came out of his eyes and ran down his cheeks,
And he thought he would sit there and blubber for weeks.

When Samantha showed up — she had not been expected —
And sat down beside him ‘cause he looked neglected.

He looked up through his tears, she said, “You look kinda bad.”
And he answered, “The truth is I feel real sad.”

When she heard those words, tears jumped straight to her eyes,
“The truth is,” she said, “I tell too many lies.

I want people to like me, so I try to act cool,
But deep down inside I feel just like a fool.”

So they sat there and cried, like a sister and brother,
And were joined by one, and then by another,

With a story to tell and feelings to free,
And they wept and they hugged ‘neath the big Christmas Tree.

Can you imagine how many tears fell,
After all of the years that no one would tell

How much they were hurting, how broken or mad,
How long they had smiled when they really felt sad.

How long does it take to clean out your heart,
To get it all out, to make a new start?

That answer’s not easy to you and to me,
But they found out that night, those folks ‘round the tree.

They cried until daybreak, till the first rays of dawn
Broke over the tree tops and spread ‘cross the lawn,

in the new morning light Bing could see all the square;
He also could see the whole town was out there.

They had come through the night, first one, then another
To sit down together like sister and brother

To pour out their hearts for the first time in years,
And let out their feelings, their sadness, their tears.

Samantha stood up and then turned back to Bing,
“You started us crying, now help us to sing.”

So he started a carol, the one he knew best,
About joy to the world, and it burst from his chest.

The others joined in, not because they weren’t sad,
But because they’d admitted the feelings they had,

Everyone sang along, both the sad and the scared,
Because true friends are found when true feelings are shared.

There’s more to the story, but our time is short,
Of how life was changed I cannot now report,

But instead I must ask why this story’s forgotten;
It’s not hopeless or humdrum, it’s not ugly or rotten.

Do you think it’s because people said how they felt,
And if we tell the story then our hearts, too, might melt?

What if we spoke the truth, what if we named our fears,
What if we loosed the sadness we’ve tied up for years?

Would we ever stop crying, would the dawn ever come?
And like those in the story, once the tears had begun

Would we sit on the curb, first one, then another,
And talk about life like sister and brother.

Oh, that is exactly why I chose to tell
This lost little tale we know all too well.

Our world is no different; we’re frightened and sad,
We feel helpless and hopeless, and certainly mad,

But none of those words is the last on this Night
That we wait for the Child, that we pray for the Light,

That we sing of the good news the angels did bring,
And we wish for peace, more than any one thing.

Yes, this story that came from a Long Ago Town
Of no great importance, of no real renown,

Could be ours, if true feelings were what we would say;
And we’d find such a Christmas not so faraway.

Peace,
Milton

Ginger and I got one of our Christmas presents early tonight: Jay took us to the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus “Home for the Holidays” Concert. Chad, the organist and choir director at the church in Hanover is the musical director for the group and we know a couple of folks who sing in the choir, so I was psyched to get to hear them. They lived up to my expectations. It was a wonderful evening.

Along with the obvious holiday emphasis, the other theme that ran through the evening was that of family. Between songs different choir members told stories about growing up, about their families of origin, and about their chosen families. The stories were full of both pain and hope, as any good story is. As the evening drew to a close, they sang a song called “God Bless My Family.” The chorus said:

all of the family my life has given me
from the corners of the earth
to the beaches of the sky to love eternally
though my heart aches everyday
this Christmas I will find a way
to let each face I’ve loved shine out in me
God bless my family

I got to talk to my brother today. I’m twenty-one months older than he is, which means there have been times in our lives when the age difference felt insignificant and other times when it felt like a huge cavernous gulf between us. At fifty and forty-eight, we seem to be pretty much in the same boat. I’m deeply grateful that he and I are related because our interests are different enough that we might not have crossed paths otherwise. I’m glad I’ve known him most all of my life and that we shared a roof for so many years. I’m glad we’ve had to learn how to communicate and live out our love for each other. I’m glad we’re getting to grow old(er) together, even though we are separated by several states and a lot of miles.

I spent an hour today with Don, the pastor at the Hanover church where I worked for three years. We’re family by choice, finding a sense of brotherhood in the many hours and cups of coffee that fueled our ministry together. I also called Doug, the other charter member of the Pastoral Spousal Support Group (OK, the only other member) to tell him the Social Committee had dropped the ball on our Christmas party so we were going to have to schedule it on our own. He and I are going to have Mexican food on Thursday. We’re related to one another by our love for our minister-wives, our willingness to explore interesting ethnic cuisine, our senses of humor, and beer.

Last week, both my parents and my in-laws were here to celebrate my birthday. I’m grateful that I got to turn fifty with all of them around the table, along with Cherry, Jay, and Eloise who are among my chosen family. I loved blending the two together as we stuffed our faces with Brazilian food.

Ginger and I are a little over a month away from having known each other eighteen years. We met on a weekend youth retreat and the short version is I followed her around until she would go out with me. (I can say that shamelessly because she married me.) No one in my life has made me feel like I belong more than she has. I have learned more about love and what it means to be family from her than I can tell.

Family has not been an easy concept for me. I know there were many years I made my brother and my parents wish they were related to someone else as I tried to figure out how to let them or anyone else get close to me. In my twenties, when things between my parents and me were most distant, I can remember praying that my father wouldn’t die before we had a chance to get things straightened out between us. I still don’t want him to die, but I can say the air between us is clear and good. If something does happen, we’ve both said what we need and want to say to one another. (Yet another thing I learned from Ginger about what it means to be family.)

Most all of the men in the chorus tonight were old enough to have had to grow up coming to terms with their sexuality in less than hospitable environments. Some were ostracized by their families when they came out, others were embraced. What was clear as they stood shoulder to shoulder, one hundred and fifty strong was their harmony was something more than musical and the family they were singing about something more than sentimental; they were a family whose arms were open to anyone else who wanted to join in.

The last verse of Lyle Lovett’s song, “Family Reserve” says:

and there are more I remember
and more I could mention
than words I could write in a song
but I feel them watching
and I see them laughing
and I hear them singing along

God bless my family.

Peace,
Milton