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the sound of solidarity

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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6

I heard two things today at church I want to pass along.

After our ten o’clock service, Bob, who is a fellow NPR listener, asked me if I had heard this week’s SoundClips: Audio Experiences on All Things Considered. They have asked people to send in audio clips of meaningful or unusual sounds and then they do a short piece on what the sound is and what it means. This week’s feature was the sound of glass Communion cups being put in the cup holders after Communion at the Mayflower Congregational Church UCC in Oklahoma City. Vicky Werneke, who sent in the sound clip, said her pastor likes to refer to the sound as “the clicking sound of solidarity.”

Tonight at Senior High Fellowship, Tom, who is a fellow lover of odd movies, brought The Brave Little Toaster for us to watch together. Last week I mentioned we would do a movie night and Tom jumped at the chance to bring his favorite movie. I had never heard of it before I heard him talk about it. I don’t know why that’s the case because it is a wonderful piece of work. The story follows five appliances – a desk lamp called, Lampy, a small electric blanket called Blanky, a vacuum cleaner called Kirby, an old-fashioned radio who is nameless, and the Toaster (who is affectionately known as “Slot Head”). They live in a cabin that was the summer home for a child whom they love and think of as master. He hasn’t been back in a long time, so they decide to go to the city and find him. At some point in the story, each of the group has to do something sacrificial to help the others and to keep them going on their journey. Though the toaster’s bravery gets him the marquis billing, everyone in the group made an essential contribution in one way or another. They, too, understood the sound of solidarity.

I heard it in the way Bob and Tom brought something to me they knew would help us connect. What wonderful news it is when someone says, “I heard something the other day and it made me think of you.” Sometimes solidarity clicks as the cup hits the holder. Sometimes it sings in a song that carries a memory in its melody. Sometimes it whispers in a word of encouragement or connection. Sometimes it travels silently in a touch or an act of hopeful sacrifice. However it comes, it’s a great word.

I don’t hear the word without thinking of Lech Walesa and the Solidarity Worker’s Union in Poland, whose uprising in the summer of 1980 led to the overthrow of the Communist government there and contributed to the dissolution of Soviet control in Eastern Europe. They stood together and changed the world. I thought of them this week as crowds have begun to gather in Hungary to demand a more honest government. Walesa said, “The thing that lies at the foundation of positive change, the way I see it, is service to a fellow human being.” He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983.

Most of the noise in our world these days is divisive: we are labeled Red or Blue, black or white, right or left, right or wrong, us or them. War has become our primary metaphor for living. But listen – listen to the strain of hope underneath the cacophony of chaos. You can hear it in the clink of a cup or the word of a friend, in the bold marching of an earnest throng and the small gathering of people coming together to create a memory. It infuses life in everything from Communion cups to small appliances, youth groups to labor movements.

The sound of solidarity keeps on clicking.

Peace,
Milton

intelligent design

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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4

I was listening to Weekend Edition on NPR as I drove to work onSaturday and was fortunate enough to hear a wonderful interview with Chris Smither, a folk/blues singer from this neck of the woods. He has a new album out and he sang a couple of songs. My favorite was “Origin of Species,” which begins:

well eve told adam, “snakes – I’ve had ‘em”
let’s get out of here
go raise this family somewhere out of town
they left the garden just in time
with the landlord cussing right behind
and they headed east and they finally settled down
one thing led to another
one son killed his brother
and they kicked him out with nothing but his clothes
but the human race survived
because those brothers they found wives
though where they found them ain’t nobody knows

The song was still floating around in my head when I read the news about the Dikika baby, a 3.3 million-year-old infant skeleton discovered in Africa by an Ethiopian paleoanthropologist called Zeresenay Alemseged (that’s almost as much fun to say as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad). He said the skeleton was a key piece in the human “biography,” pointing to a time of transition in our development as a species when our childhood became longer so our brains could grow larger and we could develop further. The article closes with this paragraph:

The Dikika baby’s biography is short, but the evolutionary steps she embodied have had profound and enduring effects. Although bipedalism and big brains carried a high cost, particularly for the mothers of our lineage, these traits ultimately combined to produce smarter babies who would eventually be able to master technologies, build civilizations, and, yes, explore their own origins.

I wonder if I ought to send Zeresenay Alemseged a copy of Smither’s record. Here’s his closing verse:

well charlie darwin looked so far into the way things are
he caught a glimpse of God’s unfolding plan
God said, “I’ll make some DNA and they’ll use it any way
they want from paramecium right up to man
they’ll have sex and mix up sections of their code
they’ll have mutations
the whole thing works like clockwork over time
I’ll just sit back in the shade while everyone gets laid
that’s what I call intelligent design

yeah, you and your cat named felix
are both wrapped up in that double helix
that’s what we call intelligent design

Of course, I’m sure the hardcore Creationists – er, Intelligent Design guys will weigh in soon. I wish I understood why they feel these kinds of discoveries threaten the wonderful story that begins the book of Genesis. True, many of the scientists who study the development of the human race are not Christians, but that doesn’t mean they are out to disprove or threaten the Bible because they are trying to make sense of what they’ve found in the dirt of the very planet God spoke into existence. Why do some Christians get defensive so easily when we can’t explain something with a Bible verse?

I have always been somewhat amused that we call the part of Christian theology that has to do with defending or proving Christianity “apologetics,” as if we are somehow saying we are sorry for our arguments. When I was in seminary, Josh McDowell was doing big business with his Evidence That Demands a Verdict. (When I “googled” him tonight I found out he’s still going strong.) I struggled with his approach because I never felt like God was on trial. Yes, I know many Christians around the world are persecuted for their faith, but that’s not what I’m talking about and that wasn’t his point back then, either. The courtroom metaphor quickly tires me because I don’t think we’re going to debate anyone into faith.

In my bookmarks I have a link to the UDF Skywalker, which shows pictures taken by the Hubble telescope. The picture on there now shows ten thousand galaxies and captures light we are just now seeing that goes back to when the universe was 800 million years old, which is, according to the site, one seventeenth of its current age. 17 x 800,000,000 = 13,600,000,000 years. And we’re trying to come to terms with a three million year old skeleton.

Our brains need to keep growing.

The Psalmist said to God, “When I gaze into the night sky and see what kind of imagination you have, I wonder why we ever cross your mind” (my translation). His intent was not scientific observation or theological explanation. It was a statement of faith by one who was “lost in wonder, love, and praise.” To make this a battle between science and faith is to create unnecessary adversaries. Read the Psalmist again and then take in this quote from Stephen Crane (sorry, I can’t find the context):

A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.”

In some ways, the conversations don’t appear to be so different, but the Psalmist’s question begs for a response and carries hope of relationship: the Creator of the Stars does notice him standing in the dark. Crane’s character cries for affirmation only to be humbled without much hope.

Let’s speak up about that. Let’s quit fighting straw Neanderthals and debating in Theological Moot Court and speak, to borrow Paul Simon’s words, “of things that matter and words that must be said.” We were dreamed up and breathed into existence by a God who made us to do something more creative than argue about bones and biology when we live in a world crying out for hope.

Peace,
Milton

church as family

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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0

As the day fades, the thoughts in my head swirl like water going down a drain. I’m not sure I can make much sense of them before they disappear. Since Sunday is getting closer by the minute, I’ve been turning the idea of family as metaphor for church over and over in my mind. Here are a few random, yet tangentially connected thoughts that I will remember better if I write them down.

_____________________________

I was late getting to my adolescent rebellion, so my twenties were hard on me and my parents. One of my seminary colleagues called me one day and said, “I heard your dad preach today and he talked about you.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“He said, ‘We face two kinds of difficulties in life: problems and predicaments. A problem is something you can do something about; a predicament is something you have to learn to live with. I used to think of my eldest son as a problem; now I understand he is a predicament.’”

Since I was carrying a chip on my shoulder the size of Cleveland at the time, I failed to see the humor and the grace in his words. Since then, we’ve both learned to live with each other rather than trying to solve or fix one another. I’m glad.

_____________________________

Here’s a great quote from Erma Bombeck: “The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.”

_____________________________

In my search for quotes, one of the things I noticed was a majority of them focused on children. Neither Ginger nor I have ever felt called to have children of our own. We have amazing godchildren and have been foster parents, and we have spent a great deal of our lives helping raise other people’s children in one way or another. Family begs for a wider definition that we often give it.

_____________________________

I learned a new name tonight in my search for quotes: Mignon McLaughlin. Here were her thoughts on family: “Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back” (The Neurotic’s Notebook). Both her words and the book title make me want to know more about her.

_____________________________

After my folks and I worked through The Hard Years, we had a conversation about how we had experienced those days. My mother said, “There were times we thought when we hung up the phone that we would never hear from you again.”

I can remember feeling surprised by her words. The thought that I could just walk away had never crossed my mind. I figured family stayed family whether I walked away or stayed. The challenge was not to find a way to escape, but a way to live with it. Dad was right: it was a predicament.

_____________________________

The church is a family. What then shall we say?

Peace,
Milton

einstein’s ipod

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2

The last of the seniors from youth group leaves for college tomorrow. She’s going to a school in Washington State that, I suppose, starts late so they don’t cut into anyone’s time in the sun. I’m particularly glad it worked out for her to be here for our Mission Trip dinner because she was the catalyst for our youth group during her time in high school. We went to breakfast this morning to say our farewells. She’s an awesome kid who is well grounded and knows how to dream big – an incredible combination. She’s headed out west because of her interest in environmental and oceanographic things and she has an adventurous spirit. I’m looking forward to hearing about what she finds in the days to come.

As we sat at breakfast, she told me about some of the classes she is taking. One she had to miss out on, because of scheduling, was a seminar that combined art and biology. (That makes me think of a guy from my youth group in Texas who majored in geographic biology. I pictured him saying to someone, “If your body were a map, your spleen would be Spain.”) Since my days in college, more and more schools have moved to a synthetic approach that pulls a variety of disciplines into conversation. When I was teaching, I became acquainted with The Coalition of Essential Schools; part of their emphasis was on learning in context. Each year there was a topic, time period, or area of study that connected all the disciplines – the Great Depression, for example – creating possibilities for students to draw cross-disciplinary conclusions from their learning.

We don’t live in solitary confinement, neither do we deal with life in single issues. Everything is interrelated. We are influenced and shaped by what happens around us, what happened before us, as well as what happens to us – maybe even stuff we don’t know about. My college history professor (my major) taught all his classes using novels as textbooks; he told us the novelists were the ones who captured the essence of the times in which they lived more effectively than those who came later to catalog wars and dates. I learned about the Industrial Revolution from Dickens and Tsarist Russia from Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. What Dr. Daniel imprinted most on my mind was the story part of history, and a good story has lots of layers.

In seminary, I read Hans Kung’s Does God Exist? An Answer for Today and was profoundly moved by something that was not his main point. In the book, Kung gives an amazing history of modern Western thought, beginning with Descartes. When he got to Hegel’s dialectic, he talked about how the philosophy played out in the psychology of Sigmund Freud, the economics of Karl Marx, and the theology of Karl Barth. I knew something about all three men, but I had never thought of them as contemporaries. That discovery has never let go of me. I wonder what Einstein would have listened to had he had an iPod; what Jackson Pollock read; who was alive alongside of Gandhi or Genghis Khan or Jesus. For all of the classes I sat through in New Testament and theology, I never heard any professor talk much about what was happening beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire. We studied theology in the context of theology. What were the Chinese doing in those days, or the Africans? I know Jesus didn’t talk to them, and I would love to know what was on the wind that blew across cultural and religious lines. What’s to be learned from noticing that Martin Luther King and the Beatles stormed this country at the same time? There are more layers to the story that what we have already been told.

Our stance as Americans is too often like Bette Midler’s character in Beaches: “Enough about me; let’s talk about you. What do you think about me?” While I’m at it, I’ll make another cinematic allusion: we’re not listening, Barton. When life is reduced to pragmatism, to looking out for Number One, to focusing on one slice of existence, we lose the layers of life that offer opportunity and hope. We cease to be story tellers: we quit listening and we lose sight of the layers. We have to push ourselves to see more than The View From Here, and I mean more than keeping up with current events on other continents. The same dynamic is true on a relational level. Sunday night, I made up a recipe for our Mission Trip dinner, which I called Barbeque Bonfire Packs. I knew how to make it up because of what I’ve learned from working with Robert, the Head Chef at the Red Lion Inn. He made me look good. I had a better story to tell because I know his story.

This month, Don and I are preaching on different metaphors for church. I chose family because it is a metaphor rich with possibilities and contradictions. Even in a family like my family of origin, which is small enough to have a family reunion in a minivan, there are layers of life that require intentional listening of each of us if we are going to do more than be related to each other. The commonalties we share are a good jumping off place, but it’s in the differences and divergences where we find the real possibilities for relationship. My brother and I are both committed Christians, he in a Southern Baptist mega-church and I in a small church that is part of the United Church of Christ, deemed by some as “the last house on the left” in the Christian neighborhood. We have both grown into learning how to ask good questions of one another, trust one another, disagree with one another, and love one another. (That last sentence, by the way, has taken the better part of our adult lives to write.) I’m better because he’s my brother.

A rabbi, a priest, a physicist, a yoga instructor, an auto mechanic, a bag piper, a farmer, a ballet dancer, a soccer player, and an economist all go into a bar. I’m not sure where that story goes, but it will be better than one that begins, “Six teachers (or accountants, or artists) locked themselves in a room together and said, ‘Good. Now we’re safe.’”

At least the first one will have one hell of a punch line.

Peace,
Milton

talk like a pirate

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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5

I would be remiss if I did not begin by pointing out that September 19 is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Please act and speak accordingly. Arrr.


I would guess it’s a big day in Arrrgentina and Arrrkansas, among other places. Might be a good day to go to an Arrr-rated movie. I’m going to be a landlubber, myself, spending most of the day around the house, cleaning the yarrrd and so on. Maybe I’ll wear an eye patch just for fun or just stand out front and yell, “Ahoy!” at people passing by. I might even invite them in for some grog.

I would have to say that my favorite pirate is the Dread Pirate Robert from The Princess Bride, which ranks as one of my favorite movies. The other pirate movie I could watch again and again is Hook. I know it didn’t get great reviews, but I still find it enchanting. I think it’s the kids. But the best pirates in the world are The Pirates Who Won’t Do Anything who will soon have their own movie. In honor of Talk Like A Pirate Day, I leave you with the lyrics to their song.

Arr, arr, arr, arr

We are the pirates who don’t do anything
We just stay at home and lie around
And if you ask us to do anything
We’ll just tell you we don’t do anything

Well I’ve never been to Greenland
And I’ve never been to Denver
And I’ve never buried treasure in St. Louie or St. Paul
And I’ve never been to Moscow
And I’ve never been to Tampa
And I’ve never been to Boston in the fall

We’re the pirates who don’t do anything
We just stay at home and lie around
And if you ask us to do anything
We’ll just tell you we don’t do anything

And I’ve never hoist the main sail
And I’ve never swabbed the poop deck
And I’ve never veer to starboard ’cause I never sail at all
And I’ve never walked the gangplank
And I’ve never owned a parrot
And I’ve never been to Boston in the fall

‘Cause we’re the pirates who don’t do anything
We just stay at home and lie around
And if you ask us to do anything
We’ll just tell you we don’t do anything

Well I’ve never plucked a rooster
And I’m not too good at ping ball
And I’ve never thrown my mashed potatoes up against the wall
And I’ve never kissed a chipmunk
And I’ve never gotten head lice
And I’ve never been to Boston in the fall.

(spoken) Huh? What are you talking about?
Whats a rooster and mashed potatoes have to do with being a pirate?
Hey, thats right! We are supposed to sing about pirate-y things.
And who’s ever kissed a chipmunk? That’s just nonsense!
Why even bring it up? Am I right? What do you think?
I think you look like Captain Crunch.
Huh? No I don’t!
Do too.
Do not!
You’re making me hungry.
Thats it! You’re walkin’ the plank.
Says who?
Says the Cap’n, thats who!
Oh yeah?
Ay Ay, Cap’n Crunch! hehehehe
Arrrgggghh
Yikes!

And I’ve never licked a spark plug
And I’ve never sniffed a stinkbug
And I’ve never painted daises on a big red rubber ball
And I’ve never bathed in yogurt
And I don’t look good in leggings (You just don’t get it.)
And we’ve never been to Boston in the fall!

(spoken) Pass the chips!
Who’s got the remote control?
Here it is! Time for Heraldo.
It’s definately time for Loch Nech.
Ohh.. I don’t like this show.
Hey look! I found a quarter!

Have a piratey day.

Peace,
Milton

feeling and failing

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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4

After today, I have two weeks before my time at Hanover comes to an end.

Tonight we had the Stockholders’ Dinner for those who helped us go on the mission trip to Jackson, Mississippi. The evening went well and I sorely missed all our graduated folks who are now writing the first chapter of their college lives. One was there tonight because she doesn’t leave for school until Wednesday. The others who went on the trip and the adult sponsors were there to tell about our experiences. We fed folks, talked a lot, and then watched a movie that one of our college students made of the trip. We asked him to go along as “documentarian” and he filmed all week and then put together a wonderful twelve-minute film that really captured the emotion of our experience.

Ginger asked me when I got home if I was sad. The short answer to her question is yes and I also feel good about the move I’m making to cook full time. Within about thirty minutes, I had descended into a strange funk that gave off such a toxic vibe it almost had an odor. I came upstairs to try and figure it out. I’ve been sitting here for an hour, and I think I understand it better: leaving feels like failure to me. I know I’ve worked hard the last three years. I feel good about what I’ve done. I’m grateful for the relationships that formed in the time I was at Hanover. I can hear the compliments and affirmations that have come from folks in the church AND leaving feels like failure to me. It always has. On a visceral, guttural, core of me being level, something tells me I’m leaving because I’m not enough. I’m on my own now because I’m not enough. The song that keeps running through my head (and showed up out of nowhere) is David Bowie’s “Ground Control to Major Tom” about the astronaut who goes out on a spacewalk and never makes it back:

here am I floating like a tin can, far above the moon
planet earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do . . .

I don’t know how to articulate more than that tonight because I’m falling asleep and my exhaustion is probably exacerbating the intensity of the emotion. I do know it’s more than an Oskar Schindler saying, “I could have done more.” Of course I could have — and I did a good job. It is also something other than desperately needing someone to tell me they’re proud of me. The best I can describe it, I feel a sense of failure in the disconnect and, at some level and quite forcefully, what I hear – even in making this move for reasons I believe in – is I am more alone, therefore I failed.

I know the voice is insidious. I know it’s a lie. And it wounds my soul and makes life miserable for Ginger. I don’t know anything else to do right now but to name it and work hard to do more than just stink up the place.

Peace,
Milton

so long, ann — and thanks

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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5

Ann Richards died yesterday of esophageal cancer. She was seventy-three.

Living in Texas during the seventies and eighties meant getting to hear and watch Ann Richards. She was, to me, the epitome of a Texas woman, brash and beautiful at the same time. I’m proud to say we share the same alma mater — Baylor University — though Baylor, who keeps hoping to land the George W. Bush Presidential Library (one trailer, two books), has never been quick to claim her, even though she ranks among the best they have helped produce.

She was a person who knew herself, flaws and all, and had no problem admitting hers and calling others to own up to theirs, which made her an unusual and refreshing addition to both the Texas and national political scene. She served one term as governor of Texas — the last Democrat to hold that position, losing her bid for reelection to none other than Dubya himself. When she was asked if she would have done anything different had she known she would only serve one term, she said, “Oh, I probably would have raised more hell.”

Her life story is an inspirational one. When she spoke, she had a way of drawing on her life experience to connect with others, rather than making it all about her. She was bright, sometimes bawdy, witty, and honest. No wonder she was happy to leave politics. Many of her words are worth remembering. One of my favorites comes from her Keynote Address at the 1988 Democratic Convention, where she described George Bush 1 by saying,”Poor George, he can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”

The most poignant quote I found today was also from that speech.

I’m really glad that our young people missed the Depression, and missed the great big war. But I do regret that they missed the leaders I knew. Leaders who told us when things were tough, and that we would have to sacrifice, and these difficulties might last awhile. They didn’t tell us things were hard for us because we were different, or isolated, or special interests. They brought us together and they gave us a sense of national purpose.

I read those words and thought, here we are eighteen years later and the problem is still the same. We don’t have leaders as large as the problems we face. We are hard pressed to find folks who live, act, and speak by the courage of their convictions rather than the latest poll numbers or the directions of their handlers. My point is not to wax nostalgic, but to voice concern. We have done a lot of things well in America, but creating a society that fosters and develops capable people to lead it is not one of them.

Yesterday, our list of enchanting leaders was decreased by one.

So long, Ann — and thanks.

Peace,
Milton

learning from laughter

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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4

Good news to report tonight: Rachel went home today, five days after her surgery. She is in good spirits and is feeling well, all things considered. Now the challenge is figuring out how life will look for her and Reuben, my father-in-law, who has some issues of his own. Thanks again for your prayers.

On the nights I have not been working, I’ve watched a couple of movies that I knew would not interest Ginger. The one that got me thinking the most was Albert Brooks’ lastest film, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. The title was enough to make me pick up the movie, but I had also heard about it on NPR a while back. If you’ve never seen one of his movies, I will say he is an acquired taste, but a taste worth acquiring. As in his other movies, Brooks plays himself — this time as a comedian who is asked by the U. S. State Department to go to India and Pakistan for a month to find out what makes them laugh and then to write a five hundred page report. In return, they promise him the Medal of Freedom.

He goes to New Delhi, and when he can’t get anyone to respond on the street when he asks them what makes them laugh, and because he can’t find any comedy clubs in the city, he rents a school auditorium to put on a free comedy concert. He begins with this joke:

Why is there no Halloween in India?
Because they took away all the Ghandi.

He got nothing but crickets. They don’t have Halloween in India because it’s an American holiday. His search for humor reflects the way most Americans tend to ask questions about the rest of the world: why aren’t they more like us? His quest is painful, informative, poignant, and funny.

One of the things that struck me had to do with the original request from the State Department. They were asking about comedy as part of the war on terror: if they could learn what made the Muslims laugh, they would have another weapon in their arsenal. The shallowness of their understanding shows through when Brooks comments that India is a Hindu country. Rather than point out there are more Muslims in India than in any other country in the world, the response is, “When you learn what makes the Hindus laugh, you’ll know what makes the Muslims laugh.”

Right.

In the comedy concert, Brooks tells the audience he is going to show them what improvisation is. He brings out a blackboard and asks them for suggestions to help shape a character he will embody: nationality, occupation, married or single, kids or no kids, rich or poor. He takes their suggestions and, one by one, changes them until he gets to the character he wants to do, which is not at all what the audience gave him. They didn’t laugh. He was trying hard to connect, but he wasn’t listening; he wasn’t looking for what they thought was funny, he was looking for them to tell him he was funny.

We, as Americans, are not malicious or malevolent for the most part, but we do damage around the world because we take much the same approach: we don’t listen, we tell; we don’t investigate, we assume; we don’t cooperate, we lead; we don’t see ourselves as equals, we see ourselves as heroes. In the end, Brooks, for all his good intentions and earnest need for affirmation, didn’t understand what made Muslims laugh anymore than George Bush understands what’s going on in the minds of those he calls “evil doers.” Neither knows how to make sense of those who are different from them (though I think Brooks, as writer and director, understood that was the point he was making).

I remember my dad telling me a story of an American journalist who came to visit Zambia when we lived there. He was staying a month and was going to write a book on Africa. One of the Zambian pastors told him, “It is good you are only staying a month, because then you will leave with all the answers; if you stay longer, you will find you have none of the answers.” Whenever my dad told that story (we Cunninghams are good at repeating the stories we like), he always laughed. Now that was funny.

And sad.

My favorite joke is one I heard on Prairie Home Companion several years ago on the April Fools’ Show, which is always filled with jokes. It goes like this:

Two penguins are talking.
One says, “Some people think we look like we’re wearing tuxedos.”
The second one says, “Maybe I am.”

I love that joke. I can’t explain it. But then again, if you have to explain a joke, it’s no longer funny.

Peace,
Milton

the art of friendship

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2

We are in the middle of a string of beautiful early autumn days in New England. I have the day off and I’m sitting at my MacBook in the Kiskadee Coffee Company in downtown Plymouth relishing the afternoon. My mother-in-law is continuing her good progress: it looks like she’ll go home tomorrow. Amazing.

I got out of the house because I wanted to write at some other time than midnight and the Nap Monster was lurking behind the couch, with the two Schnauzers acting as his minions, determined to put me to sleep beneath the soft sea breeze. Once I finish writing, I plan to go home and allow myself to fall prey to their devious plot.

One of my favorite things about working at the Red Lion Inn is the variety of people with whom I get to interact. The staff in the function kitchen is from El Salvador, the dishwashers and some of the restaurant staff are from Brazil, the manager is French, the owner is German, and the servers are an interesting collection of twenty-something white people. Together we make a good team. Life in the kitchen is often hectic, yet also offers room for conversation. Two such moments caught me by surprise last week. The first was finding out that one of the Salvadorians, a gentle good-humored guy who is among the most helpful people I know, fought against the rebels in his country years ago. His brother told us about it with a great deal of admiration. Now, he strikes me as a kind and peaceful guy, but in another time and another place, he was different.

The second surprise was similar: I was talking to one of our servers, a twenty-one year old white woman who weighs about a hundred pounds soaking wet, and found out she was in the National Guard and had served a year in Iraq as an Army aircraft gunner (I’m not sure my military terminology is precise). She will probably have to go back to the Middle East after the first of the year. I still can’t picture her in a plane strafing the desert for insurgents.

We live much of our lives like billiard balls, bouncing around and grazing each other on the way to whatever the pocket is. My encounters last week remind me of how quickly I allow myself to decide I know who someone is, when all I know comes from brief contact or my own preconceived notions drawn from external circumstances.

In the first restaurant where I cooked, I came out from the kitchen late one afternoon with a carry out order. The man who came to pick it up said to me, “You look familiar. You a cop?” When I said no, he responded confidently, “Hockey player.” I said yes so he could get going. My large frame and shaved head had led him to his own conclusions. He wasn’t looking for his mind to be changed.

My friend Doug is a painter. He and his wife were in Maine a couple of weeks ago and he took the opportunity to paint some wonderful landscapes. One of them was of the bay at sunrise. He talked about how they got up early, made a pot of coffee, and drove in the dark to the site from which he wanted to paint. In the early morning twilight, he set up his easel so he could be ready to catch the moment. “You only have a few minutes to get it down on canvas,” he told me. And he got it; the painting is beautiful.

What works for the painter is not a good metaphor when it comes to dealing with one another. Too often we do a quick study and then paint the portrait of someone, frame it, and hang it on the wall in our minds as if we have captured the essence of that person the way Doug captured the sunrise on the water. Such a two-dimensional glimpse is not good art when it comes to friendship. In the late ninties, a movie called Smoke told the story of Auggie (Harvey Kietel) who owned a smoke shop in Brooklyn. Every morning at eight o’clock, he walked across the intersection from his store and took a picture of his shop. He kept each and every photograph in albums behind the counter. When one of the other characters asked him why he took the same picture everyday, he was quick to point out it was not the same picture. He was taking a picture of the same store at the same time everyday, but the details were always different: the weather, the people walking by, the traffic. The art of friendship requires us, as artists, to commit ourselves to picture after picture, offering a more complete image of our subjects by learning from the details and the differences.

My Salvadorian co-worker is more than a soldier or a prep cook; the Italian-American woman is more than a server or a tail gunner. I have to be willing to keep taking pictures if I want my friendship to be good art.

Peace,
Milton

marking the day

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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I started my day, as I’m sure many did, being inundated by the various morning talk shows’ commemoration of the September 11 anniversary. By nine-thirty, I was on my way to the restaurant, having said goodbye to Ginger, who was on her way back to Birmingham. I didn’t get off work until 9:30 tonight, which meant I didn’t hear anything else about the anniversary; my world today consisted of the folks I saw at work.
Anniversaries can be strange things. When it comes to public events like 9/11, something pulls us to notice and remember, but I’m not sure we can articulate – or have articulated – what we want the moment to mean. Perhaps the meanings among us are so diverse that we struggle to find cohesion, or even understanding. We want it to make sense. Two planes full of people crashing into the Towers will never make sense. The talk shows seemed to think that pulling our emotional strings was a way of giving the day meaning. The teaser before one commercial break was they were going to talk to the children who had been in the schoolroom with Bush when he found out to see what they remembered about the day. They were six or seven; now they’re eleven or twelve. Do they really have something to add to the public conversation?

September marks the fifth anniversary of the onset of my depression. Though I think it lurked in me like a terrorist for many years, as I look back now, it was September of 2001 when it took me down and took me down hard. In past years, this has been a dark month. So far this year, it does not seem to be so. Other than feeling I have lived another year and learned some things about how to live with depression, I don’t know what to make of the anniversary. Next year I will say it has been six years, and then seven after that. Septembers will pass like mile markers giving me a sense of the distance I have traveled, but not much else.

My aunt died five years ago last spring. For the first couple of years, I called my cousin on the anniversary of her death to say I was thinking about her. After the second or third anniversary, I got an email asking me not to do that again. The day was not one to be marked for her. “Call me on my mom’s birthday,” she said; “ that’s a day to celebrate and remember.” Composers are remembered on their birthday rather than they day of their death. For most other historically significant figures, it’s the other way round. I like thinking of Pegi as a composer; she created quite a symphony in the way she lived.

I wish I could say all my rambling was leading to some incredibly insightful comment, but I don’t know how to make sense of the day any more than anyone else, other than to say I spent it well. Something in that is worth remembering.

Peace,
Milton

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